[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 94 (Wednesday, July 19, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H6567-H6573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LOOKING BACK AT 6 YEARS OF REPUBLICAN CONTROL IN THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, we rise tonight to talk a little bit
about what has happened in the last 6 years, and I am delighted to have
with me tonight one of my colleagues who came to the Congress with me
in 1994. I think once in a while it is important to remind our
colleagues where we were in 1994, what was happening here in
Washington, what was happening with our government, when the American
people said, in effect, enough is enough.
{time} 1930
They sent 73 new Republican freshmen to this Congress to begin to
change the way Washington did business. We had with us a Contract with
America, not a Contract on America, some of the critics like to say,
but it was a Contract with America. And we said if you will elect us to
the Congress, here are some things we are going to do.
I am happy to report that virtually all of those planks in that
contract with the American people have now come to fruition. In fact,
we kept every item. We kept our bargain on every one of those items. We
had a vote on a few occasions. There were not the constitutionally
required majorities, and so those have not become law, for example,
with term limits. But on virtually every other item.
One of the first items on that contract was to make Congress live by
the same laws as everybody else, and perhaps later this evening, the
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) will join us and talk about that
particular plank. I am privileged tonight to have one of my colleagues
who came with me in 1994, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Watts); and
we have really come a long ways.
Let me just talk about the budget side of the equation, and I will
talk about this more after the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Watts)
leaves us. But when we first came to Washington, the Congressional
Budget Office, and I have a copy of this, if any Member would like a
copy of what the Congressional Budget Office said, our official
scorekeepers were telling us back in 1994 and 1995, they were telling
us that the on-budget deficit for each of the years 1994, 1995, 1996,
1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 was going to be $208 billion, $176 billion,
$207 billion, $224 billion, $222 billion, $253 billion and $284
billion. Now, that was the deficit that they were projecting when we
came to Washington in 1994.
That did not include all of the money that the Congress was regularly
taking from Social Security to spend on other items; if we include
that, we are actually looking at deficits of $259 billion growing
ultimately to $381 billion by fiscal year 2000.
That is where we were back in 1994, and what the American people said
in that election is listen, there must be a better way. Every family,
every business, every association has to balance its budget and somehow
they figured out a way to make the income meet the expenditures. Every
family does it every week.
It really is time for the Federal Government to do the same, and so
they sent some of us there and said, listen, if you do nothing else, at
least balance the Federal books.
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to report that we not only have balanced the
Federal books, we are now looking at enormous deficits. We will talk
more about that. I would like to yield to my friend and colleague, the
gentleman from the great State of Oklahoma (Mr. Watts) to talk just a
little bit about where we were, where we are and hopefully where we are
going with this Congress.
Mr. WATTS of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Minnesota
(Mr. Gutknecht) for yielding to me. And I am appreciative of the fact
that the gentleman has chosen this time tonight over the next hour to
talk about what we have done in Washington and, although, he and I are
Republicans, the wins, the victories that we have seen over the last
5\1/2\ years really are not Republican victories. They have been
victories for the American people.
I recall back when we were sworn in. I was sworn in on January 9,
1995, my colleagues were sworn in 4 days or 5 days before I was,
because of some obligations I had back home, but when I was sworn in on
January 9, I believe, and I think the gentleman has the numbers there,
that the deficit of that year in 1995 was about $285 billion, somewhere
thereabouts, $285 billion or $300 billion. Those were the deficits, and
deficits means that we have spent out a whole lot more money than we
take in and we create a deficit position.
As the gentleman has said, we came in and wanted to do things
differently. We felt like Washington could be better, and it is
interesting the Contract with America items that the gentleman has
mentioned, about 80 percent of those items today are law.
Although people campaign and they talk about the evils of the
Contract with America, 80 percent of the Contract with America today is
law and a Democrat President signed those things into law.
A balanced budget amendment, we did not pass that. We did not pass
term limits, but I think we both voted for term limits and both voted
to say that we should amend the Constitution, have an amendment to
force Congress to do about what 39 different States around the country
have to do, by law they have to balance their books. They cannot spend
out one dime more than they were appropriated or that the legislators
appropriated.
So what we have done over the last 5\1/2\ years, we do have a
balanced budget today. We do not spend out more money than we take in.
Welfare reform, we were beaten on that, because we wanted to reform
welfare to say, let us not define compassion by how many people we can
have on food stamps and AFDC or in public housing, instead let us
define compassion by how few people are on food stamps and AFDC and
public housing because we have helped them climb the ladder of economic
opportunity.
Today 6 million more Americans are in the workplace because we chose
to define compassion in a different way.
We cut committee staff by a third for the first time, I understand,
in the history of the House of Representatives. We audited the books of
the House of Representatives. If Members will recall, back when the
gentleman and I were freshman, every morning we would have people
pushing these little carts around that had these buckets of ice on them
that would give Members a bucket of ice. I thought this was somewhat
unusual. The gentleman thought it was unusual, because we had
refrigerators inside of our offices that keep
[[Page H6568]]
our Nehi peach and a Nehi grape cold, and these pockets of ice would
melt.
These were no good. So we looked into this, and I think it was
costing the taxpayers something like $600,000 a year. We cut it out. We
eliminated it. We said that is wasting taxpayers' dollars. I think the
people back in the fourth district of Oklahoma would be pretty proud
and folks in the gentleman's district back in Minnesota would be proud
to know we did not have to put together a task force to do that. We
just eliminated it. We said Congress, the American taxpayers are paying
for that. We do not need that.
We have given tax relief, $500 per child tax relief. We have done
that. We paid down our public debt by $350 billion. Now, 5\1/2\ years
ago when the gentleman and I came, that was just a theory that some day
we would start down that track of paying down our public debt.
We have done all of these things over the last 5\1/2\ years, which
these things are good for the American people. The gentleman mentioned
about stopping the raid on the Social Security and Medicare surplus. We
think that is important.
Why is that important? We believe that the FICA fellow who takes
money out of your payroll, he ought to do with it what he says he is
going to do with it, and that is set aside nothing but for Social
Security and Medicare.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, one of the comments that
I made, and I think that the people in my district really appreciated
this, was that when we started talking about taking money from Social
Security and spending it on other things, what I said was, when the
American people allowed the Federal Government to get into their
paychecks to pay for Social Security, they never told the Federal
Government that they could keep the change. That is what was happening.
The Federal Government was keeping the change and spending it on
other programs. And 2 years, thanks to your leadership and the
leadership of others in the House, we finally stopped that abuse. For
the first time, we are making certain that every penny of Social
Security taxes goes only for Social Security or to pay down debt.
As the gentleman has mentioned, we paid down $350 billion of debt
and, as a matter of fact, I believe by the end of this fiscal year,
that number will be greater than $400 billion that we will have paid
down.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I wanted to
point this out. Jimmy Carter wrote a book in the 1970s called Why Not
the Best? And he talked about rethinking. So many of the things that we
do routinely in government, and I think that even though we had
philosophical differences of what that blueprint should be, that is
what, in fact, happened in 1994.
I think it took many years with ideas like the challenge of Jimmy
Carter, Why Not the Best; and then Ronald Reagan saying, good morning
America, bringing out the best news. Now, in this day of great
prosperity, the day of great medicine, great technology, great
entertainment, great food supply, we still need to get to that next
level in a government where our priorities have been very focused in
the last 5 years. We protect and preserve Social Security. We protect
and preserve Medicare. Then we pay down the debt for the next
generation, and then the change.
If we go to WalMart and we buy $7 hamburger and we give $10 at the
counter, they are going to give us $3 back. The Federal Government, if
we get a congressional cashier, he is going to keep the change and give
us some more nails and all kinds of things we did not ask for. We are
stopping that.
To go after great communities, where the kids can walk the streets
late at night not having to worry about drug pushers and crime.
Education, where teachers in the classroom are getting the money, not
the bureaucrats in Washington. Just think about every dollar we spend
on education, 50 cents never leaves this city.
That is something we have got to change. Our constituents would never
put up with that in the private sector. It is outrageous.
Mr. WATTS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Kingston) for sharing those thoughts with us, because I think what the
gentleman has said, what the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht)
has talked about in getting us into this special order this evening, I
think it is critical to look at where we have come from to see where we
are going. Had we not made those tough decisions 5\1/2\ years ago when
we first came, putting more people in the workplace today. We balanced
our budget. We do not spend out more money than we take in. We have
sent more education dollars home. We stopped the raid on the Social
Security surplus and on the Medicare surplus.
We have cut our committee staff by a third. We have given tax relief.
We paid down our public debt, because we have done all of these things.
Now we are in a position over the next 8 years to 10 years that we are
talking about massive surpluses. No longer are people talking about
deficit spending any longer.
We are talking about massive surpluses, and over the next 10 years,
we really have an opportunity to do some wonderful things to secure the
future of America. Just think, just imagine, over the next 10 years,
because of decisions we made early on, we have surpluses that we can
find a cure for cancer. We can find a cure for sickle cell anemia and
diabetes and Alzheimer's. This is within our reach.
Mr. Speaker, consider an America that we had paid off our debt. I
mean, that is within our reach. Consider an America that every child in
America gets up every day and they went to a venue of learning that was
safe, that taught them how to read and write, do the arithmetic, have
the computer skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace,
imagine that kind of an America. Imagine an America that was safe from
foreign enemies, because our military was strong and people's
retirement security was safe.
They could retire at their retirement age with security. This is
within our reach, thanks to, in large part, by what we have done and
all the names we went through, what we were called and all the things
that we had to go through to get here, but we are here, and now if we
will manage it properly, not go on some wild goose chase of government
spending, these things really are within our grasp over the next 8
years to 10 years.
Finding the cure for these many illnesses out there, the many
diseases that plagues the greatest Nation in all the world. I said it
time and time again, as I close, this place that we all call home and
the rest of the world calls America, it is a pretty fascinating place.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. That is right.
Mr. WATTS. I appreciate what the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Kingston) said, and we should be about being our best, not our worst,
giving our most, not our least, understanding the importance of who we
are.
{time} 1945
Again, I am delighted in some very, very, very small way that folks
in the fourth district of Oklahoma that they have given me an
opportunity to be a part of what we have seen happen as Members of
Congress over the last 5\1/2\ years.
Mr. KINGSTON. One thing that he has done a lot for, that I think that
it is important to talk about in terms of getting everybody at the
table, because when we were passing welfare reform we were accused of
pushing children out in the street, pushing women out in the street.
The President vetoed the bill twice, and then as soon as it turned out
to be a success, 40 percent of the people on welfare got jobs and liked
those jobs, then the President went around saying it was his bill,
which is fine. If that is the way the system works, let us do another
bill like that.
What I think the gentleman has been good at is getting everybody in
on it, pushing for an education system where no child is left behind
and saying, as the gentleman has pointed out, America's prosperity is
the envy of the world, but there are people in the world who are not
sharing in that prosperity. We are saying we want to invite them to the
table, and we are going to show them a pathway to the table, and we are
going to help them get to the table so that they too can enjoy this
great land and negotiate for a better America. I think that is
something that we do not talk about.
The gentleman has reached out to the children who are at risk, and I
[[Page H6569]]
think that that is something that we need to always keep in mind for
the next generation.
Mr. WATTS of Oklahoma. George Bush calls it prosperity with a
purpose. We are experiencing unprecedented prosperity in America. The
Dow is going through the roof. NASDAQ is doing very, very well. These
days if one is older than 30, they are too old to be a billionaire in
America.
It is fascinating the wealth that we see, and I think that if our
objective is just to make money, that is a bad purpose. Prosperity with
a purpose says that, yes, I want to take the wealth that we have in
America and make sure that those who are left behind, that in spite of
what skin color they are, in spite of what party they are in, we can go
to them and say these are my values, these are my principles, how can
we help accomplish what they want to accomplish in life?
This prosperity that we are experiencing, we have an opportunity to
do wonderful things for the United States of America, but I think we
have to be disciplined enough, composed enough, that we do not get
dollar signs in our eyes and say let us spend, spend, spend, spend,
spend. Let us grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. We have to have a purpose,
I believe, in the wealth that we have created in America and in the
surpluses that we have that we are experiencing today.
I think we have to have purpose in our surpluses. If we do, boy, we
will surely create that shining city on a hill.
I thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) very much for
letting me participate this evening.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from
Oklahoma (Mr. Watts) because I think in many respects he has done the
best job of communicating what it was we were trying to do. As the
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) mentioned, welfare reform was not
about saving money. I think to a large degree that was miscommunicated
by so many people.
Welfare reform was not about saving money. It was about saving
people, because we all knew that there were too many people that were
being trapped in an endless cycle of dependency and despair, and
because of our welfare reforms we allowed States and governors and
legislatures to decide what it was that they wanted for their people
and how it was that they could use the instruments of government to
encourage work, to encourage personal responsibility, to encourage
families to stay together, and that is what welfare reform was all
about.
The great news is, since we passed that bill, gave that authority
back to the States, we have seen the welfare roles in the United States
drop by 50 percent. That is a great story, not in terms of how much
money it will save but most importantly how many people it saves.
One of the stories that I love to tell, and many of us do visits to
our local schools, I was at one of my local schools a couple of years
ago, about a year after we passed the welfare reform, and we were
talking to the teachers after school.
One of the teachers said, Of all of the things that have been done
since you went to Washington, Gil, I think the best thing is this
welfare reform.
I said, Really? Tell me about that.
She said, Well, let me talk about one of my students and let us call
him Johnny. All of a sudden Johnny started to behave better. He was a
better student. He was a better kid. He carried himself better.
Everything about Johnny was better.
So finally one day the teacher said to Johnny, Johnny, is there
something different at your house?
Johnny said, Yeah. My dad got a job.
We sometimes forget that a job is more than the way one earns their
living. A job helps to define their very life, and when the breadwinner
of a family is unemployed and on a government welfare program, it not
only affects the attitude of the breadwinner, it affects the attitudes
of everyone in that family.
Mr. KINGSTON. I think that as we talk about welfare reform, and as
the gentleman said it is about people and giving people opportunities,
it is not about taxes, it is not about saving dollars but there are
really three legs to the stool. One is for those who are able and
capable, able-bodied to work. The other one is the single mother with
transportation needs, health care needs, day care needs, education
needs, housing needs. The third leg, though, is something very
important and the gentleman just touched on it when he talked about
little Johnny, and that is Dad.
Our welfare system for years has been geared under the premise that
if Dad is around, then one does not qualify for public housing; they do
not qualify for the health care benefits for their children. What we
are doing now under the leadership of the gentlewoman from Connecticut
(Mrs. Johnson) is a great Fatherhood Project, saying to the kids, in
some sectors of society it is as high as 70 percent of the children who
are born without fathers at home, we are saying we want to bring their
dad back because if we bring their dad back, the teenage dropout rate
will go down; the drug usage rate will go down; the grades at school
will go up and the teen pregnancy will go down.
I think that is the kind of common sense legislation that we need to
do, not just say, okay, we did welfare reform, now we are through; but
to go back and say, now look the father has to be in the picture. When
70 percent of the kids are born without dads at home, they end up on
welfare. Dad has to be brought back. I think that that is one of the
keys.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. In many respects what we have done since 1994 was to
reverse sort of the unwritten rule of Washington, which had become
almost an epidemic; and the unwritten rule was that no good deed goes
unpunished. If families stayed together, as the gentleman said, they
got punished. If people worked, they got punished. If they invested,
they got punished. If they saved, they got punished. If they created
jobs, they got punished.
If one thinks about that, that was a perverse incentive. It should be
no surprise that the welfare system particularly was destroying the
work ethic, was destroying families, was encouraging dads to leave the
household. It was the most perverse thing.
The good news is we have begun to reverse those perverse incentives.
As a result, I think we are not only going to save, quote, money we are
going to save families; we are going to save children from one more
generation of dependency and despair.
Mr. KINGSTON. Getting back to this in just a second because the bill
of the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson), which will be
passed by this House, it has already been passed and we have another
version we are going to consider, I hope, next week; but I have been
involved with the Georgia Fatherhood Project with the director named
Robert Johnson, and then locally Robby Richardson, whose wife, Annette,
works with us, he is the Savannah coordinator of it, they invited me to
one of their meetings to talk to the men who are 23, 24 years old who
have said when I was 19 years old, I was irresponsible and then the
system kept pushing me out and pushing me further out the door. I made
a mistake or two, but I could not get back in because society kept
shutting the door on me.
Now through this fatherhood project I can come back in and get my
high school diploma, maybe get some college credits, get some
vocational learning, learn a skill, get my job; and it is not
necessarily the job I want, but it is the entry level job and then to
get to the next level of the ladder.
These guys are talking about I went four years without seeing my
little girl, and now I am seeing her again, and I am part of her life;
I do not have to hide from the Government to do this. Mom is in on it,
too. It is win/win for society; win/win for the mom; win/win for the
dad. But, more importantly, it is a win/win for that little girl.
Senior Citizens Should Be Able To Buy Their Prescription Drugs From
Other Countries
Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman has been a leader in something that I
want to talk about in terms of why not the best and in terms of common
sense legislation, and that is the fact that our Food and Drug
Administration has prohibited our senior citizens from buying drugs,
prescription drugs, medicine, in Canada, which is sold at a lower price
than it is in America.
I have a chart with some of these price differences on it, but I
thought the gentleman might want to explain
[[Page H6570]]
that because I think it is so important to our seniors and to the
family members.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank the gentleman for allowing us to talk about
this tonight. Actually, it all started several years ago at a meeting
with some senior citizens at one of my townhall meetings, and they
started talking about the differences between what prescription drugs
sold for in the United States compared to what they sell for in Canada,
in Mexico, in other countries in the world. So I began to do some
research and began to do some work, and I came to the realization that
they were in fact telling the truth; that there was a huge difference.
What the gentleman has next to him there is a chart based on some
information that we got from the Life Extension Foundation. These
actually compare some of the prices of drugs between what the average
price is in the United States. As a matter of fact, I might say that
those prices on that chart are probably about a year old now. They are
actually probably worse today in terms of the actual prices, but I want
to pick out a couple of them there that are important to my family.
The first one is Synthroid.
Mr. KINGSTON. Let me look at Synthroid here. Synthroid, why does the
gentleman maybe tell us what it is used for. In America, our American
citizens have to pay $13.84. In Canada they can get it for $2.95.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Let me clarify that. It is actually in Europe. Those
are all European prices. Now the price in Canada, I believe, is about
half what it is in the United States. The point is, it is even cheaper
in Europe.
Now, Synthroid is a drug that my wife takes because she has a goiter,
an enlargement of her goiter, and many Americans have to take that
drug. As long as she takes her drug, she has no medical complications
because of that. So it is a wonderful drug, and we are certainly
appreciative of that drug and that it is available.
We can afford the $13.85 or whatever the price is here in the United
States. That does not really break us, but it does begin to bother when
it has to be taken all the time. Literally, she has to take that drug
probably for the rest of her life.
When one looks at the differences between what the Europeans pay for
exactly the same drug, made in exactly the same plant, under exactly
the same FDA approval, one begins to ask the question, why is it the
world's best customers, the Americans, pay the world's highest prices?
Mr. KINGSTON. Let us look at Prozac. Prozac is $36.13 in America. In
Europe, it is $18.50, and I would suppose in Canada maybe it is $25.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Somewhere in there.
Mr. KINGSTON. People can go to Canada and buy it if they live in
Maine or Michigan; it is ready access. It will not really help us much
in Georgia, but the fact they could get it, and they should under the
North American Free Trade Agreement. Free trade means free trade for
anything that is a legal product, and yet they cannot get it.
Now, the legislation of the gentleman which was passed by the
Republican Congress 2 weeks ago stops this practice, does it not?
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, it begins to open the door. It is not a complete
solution.
Mr. KINGSTON. It stops the practice of not being able to buy the same
drug for a cheaper price in Canada?
Mr. GUTKNECHT. We begin to open the door. What happens right now, to
try and explain what happens, for example, and let me take another drug
on that list, Cumadin, that is a drug that my 82-year-old father takes.
The average price in the United States is over $30. The price in Europe
for the same drug is $2.85. What happens sometimes is people are
traveling, and they happen to have their prescription along with them;
they are traveling perhaps in Italy and they realize they are running
short on their Cumadin. It is a blood thinner. It is very commonly
prescribed. They go into a pharmacy and they buy it; and when they
convert the lira to dollars, they realize that it was less than $3.00.
That is 10 percent of what they pay back in the United States.
So when it is time to renew that prescription, some people have said,
I have the phone number of the pharmacy there in Rome. Maybe what I
could do is just give them a call, and see if I could get my
prescription refilled and have them ship it to me.
What happens is, and the gentleman has it behind him there, there is
another chart, what our FDA does when that drug comes into the United
States, even though it clearly is the same drug, made by the same
company in the same plant, what our own FDA does is they send a
threatening letter to that senior citizen or to any citizen, as a
matter of fact, who happens to be importing drugs, and this letter is
one of the most threatening letters.
It says, ``It appears that you are violating drug importation laws
and that you are importing a drug that is illegal in the United
States,'' even though it says clearly on the carton that this is
Cumadin or this is Prozac or this is Premarin or whatever the drug
happens to be.
{time} 2000
So it is clear to everyone what that drug is. As a matter of fact,
the FDA has the right to actually test that drug.
But beyond that, it strikes me that it is outrageous because the
burden of proof right now is on the individual to prove, in fact, that
it is a legal drug. So what my amendment does is it reverses the burden
of proof so that the FDA must now prove that that is, in fact, an
illegal drug.
Now, in doing so, what it does is it changes everything. It begins to
reverse the process so that it will be virtually impossible for the FDA
to send these threatening letters to consumers who are abiding by the
law, have a legal prescription, and are importing legal drugs into the
United States. And when that happens, markets work. We have a world
market price for oil, we have a world market price for wheat, we have a
world market price for automobiles. And we should not allow our own FDA
to stand between American consumers and especially American seniors.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, it is common
sense, if the gentleman will yield, 86 percent of our seniors take at
least one prescription a year, and the average senior consumes about 18
prescriptions each year. The average cost for the drugs is around
$1,000 annually, or about $80 a month. Mr. Speaker, 44 percent of those
seniors that are having to take or buy their own drugs have an income
of less than $10,000 a year. So one of the things that we have done,
not just pass the ``Gutknecht Law'' in terms of allowing free commerce
between two nations who do have free commerce and are trading back and
forth, but we have also passed a prescription drug benefit for
Medicare.
The important thing is that it reduces the average cost of
prescription drugs by about 39 percent, it gives seniors still the
option to buy it where they want, it does not endanger Medicare, and it
does not come between the doctor-patient relationship, and that is
something very important.
Mr. Speaker, one difference that we have between the Republican plan
and the President's plan is, we are saying this affects about 30
percent of the seniors on Medicare. They do not have prescription drug
coverage. The other ones, about two-thirds do, either from their
Federal retirement program or from the program that they were in in the
private sector. But what we are saying is, because of that, we do not
want to pick up Ross Perot's prescription drug charges. That is common
sense.
Now, the President wants it universal, which has a great ring to it,
but when we do that, we buy prescription drugs for people who do not
need that benefit. That is not quite the American way to subsidize
somebody who does not need subsidizing.
So we are trying to work this out with the White House, but I say to
my colleague, I want the best plan to prevail. Prescription drugs is
not a partisan issue. I want the best of the Democrat ideas in the
House, the best Democrat and Republican ideas in the Senate, the best
ideas from the White House, and let us put grandmother's prescription
drug issue first and not politics.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, without being overly political, though, I
do have to say this: This administration has had 8 years to deal with
this issue and what they have given senior
[[Page H6571]]
citizens most are these threatening letters. I mean, hundreds of
thousands of seniors have received these threatening letters from our
own FDA. That is not the way to deal with this issue.
And let me also point out, if we could put the other chart up, so we
can talk a little bit about this, what we have said, what I have said
and I know the gentleman has joined me on this both on the agriculture
appropriations bill and some others, what we have said is, if we do not
deal with this price problem, because the real problem for seniors is
price, when we have drugs like Prilosec, for example, that sells for
over $100 here in the United States, sells for about $56 in Canada, the
same drug sells in Mexico for about $17.50, the average price in Europe
for the same drug is about $39.25, the problem is that over the last 4
years, prescription drug prices have gone up by about 60 percent.
When we look into the eyes of some of the seniors at our town hall
meetings and they say, I can afford the price of prescription drugs
today, now; it is not easy, but when we look at how much they are going
up every year, I do not know if I will be able to afford them in
another 2 years. The problem is, if we do not deal with the price side
of that equation, we will never be able to catch up just by pouring
more Federal taxpayers' money at this problem.
As one person put it, I think, very accurately, if we think
prescription drugs are expensive today, just wait until the Federal
Government provides them for free.
So we have said that we have to deal with this problem from both
sides. We have to open up markets so that Americans have access to
market prices for drugs, world market prices for drugs; and secondly,
we have to provide a prescription drug benefit as part of Medicare as
an option, if people choose it, so that it is affordable, available,
and that people have choices. That is the plan that we are working on.
I think if we attack the problem from both sides of that equation, we
can make certain that every senior has access to the drugs that they
need at affordable prices that will not bankrupt them now or in the
future. I think that is the right prescription drug plan. Frankly, I am
prepared to debate that with anybody in front of any audience, anywhere
in the United States, because I think once people have the facts before
them, they will see that the plan that we are trying to put together is
superior to what the President is talking about.
Saving Social Security and Responsible Spending
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman saying that.
The other thing along this line in terms of a safe retirement is Social
Security. The gentleman mentioned it earlier, but to think that this
House, for 40 years, routinely would take any surplus in the Social
Security Trust Fund and spend it on roads and bridges is just
outrageous to think about.
In 1999, in January, during the President's State of the Union
address, standing right behind the podium where I am right now, he made
the statement, let us save 60 percent of the Social Security surplus;
i.e., let us spend 40 percent. And we on this side of the aisle said,
no, Mr. President, we are not going to do it. We are going to protect
and preserve 100 percent of grandmother's pension plan, because there
is no business in the world that can mix operating expenses and a
pension plan. At the time, everybody said yes, you all are talking a
good game, but you are not going to do it. Well, we did do it. Not only
did we do it for 1999, but we did it for the year 2000, and we will do
it for the year 2001. The reason why that is important is once we have
set the precedent, we have that firewall.
In addition to that, I believe we could go another step and say, let
us put it in a lockbox. Just putting the money aside is not good
enough, let us put a lock on it so that in order to break that sacred
implied promise, that sacred practice, let us say we have to vote. That
would make it really impossible for people to frivolously spend this
hard-fought-for Social Security surplus.
Now, one reason why we know we need to do all of these things is
because Americans are working their tails off. They are working harder
than ever, and we need to protect their money and spend it like we
spend our own money.
Mr. Speaker, back in Savannah, Georgia and Glennville, Georgia and
Hinesville, Georgia and Brunswick, Georgia, what my constituents do is,
if gas is $1.47 at one pump and it is $1.42 down the street, they will
drive that extra block to get the $1.42 and pump it themselves, even if
they are wearing a coat and tie. If they need a new suit, they wait for
the sales when suits are marked down, and if we need to wait until the
fall to buy the spring outfit or the spring to buy the winter outfit,
that is what they are going to do. If they are buying a pair of jogging
shoes, they will wait until they are on sale with a discontinued brand.
If they buy some Kellogs Cornflakes, they wait until they have the 50
cents off coupon. That is how American consumers spend their money, and
that is how we should spend their money. We should follow that example
in everything we do.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, talking about coupons, sometimes we need
to be reminded of this here in Washington, that every Sunday, families
sit around their coffee tables and their kitchen tables and they clip
over 80 million coupons out of the Sunday paper, worth an average of 53
cents, and that is how they balance their budgets every single week.
They watch their pennies.
Now, we still have an awful lot of waste in the Federal Government. I
will not be one to say that we do not have waste. But we have much more
accountability, and I think we have less waste today than we have had
in the last 10 years.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to say this. My wife has one of the
most important jobs in America. She is raising John, Betsy, Ann and Jim
Kingston, who are all at home and we are glad to have them there, but
she clips those coupons every Sunday and she goes through the two for
ones and the 30 cents off and the good until next month, and she
reminds me every now and then, last month I saved $13.33 in coupons, or
this month I am up to $27. She asks me if she needs to report that
every now and then jokingly, and I am afraid that if Uncle Sam knows
that if we are so thrifty, that he will require it.
Simplifying the Tax Code
That is another reason why, in this Republican Congress, we have
passed a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, so that if the IRS comes to your
door, you are no longer guilty until you prove yourself innocent
through your lawyers and your accountants and 7 years of records; you
are presumed innocent.
A question that I ask people in coastal Georgia on occasion is all
right, now, look, you leave here today and let us say you leave the
Rotary Club today and you walk out and you remember for some reason you
pulled your wallet out of the car and you put it on the hood, or your
purses, and you meant to pick it up, but in the flurry of locking the
car and picking up your papers, your briefcase and all that and getting
to your meeting on time, you forgot. You walk out and you realize, I
left my wallet on the car and it is gone. All your credit cards, all
your cash, everything else. That is choice number one, losing the
wallet. Choice number two is you do not lose your wallet at all, you
just come home and you are going through your mail at the end of the
day and under that letter from Aunt Gladys and from the Visa to pay
your bill is a little friendly calling card from the IRS that says, we
have chosen you randomly to be audited.
Now, you are a hard-working, tax-paying American. What do you want,
to lose your wallet with all of your credit cards or to be audited by
the IRS? Most people, regardless of how conscientious they have been
paying their taxes, filling out the forms, getting an accountant to do
it, maybe, they would rather lose their wallet than be audited.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, it is an incredible tragedy in America
today that the IRS knows more about one's personal finances many times
than one's spouse.
Which leads me to the next point. I hope we have made some progress
in terms of simplifying this Tax Code. But it is very small progress. I
would hope that in the next Congress, with perhaps a different
leadership at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, we can get very
serious about simplifying and making this Tax Code much fairer. There
are several things we could do.
[[Page H6572]]
But it really is amazing that Americans even allow this system to
survive.
When we think about what Americans did back at the beginning of this
country, we started throwing tea in Boston harbor because the king
wanted to put a penny per pound tax on tea. I mean that outraged the
American people. Today, we allow an IRS to continue to look into every
nook and cranny of our personal lives, and if we make a mistake, even
to the tune of $1, it puts a tremendous burden on the American people,
and it is simply wrong.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, did the gentleman know that the Tax Code
contains 5.7 million words. Now, that is eight times as many words as
the Bible. One thing they do have in common is the Tax Code gives lots
of instructions, but the Tax Code gives very little inspiration and
zero forgiveness. In terms of the IRS laws, there is 101,200 pages of
IRS laws and regulations. Just to comply with this Tax Code, our
American taxpayers spend about $250 billion each year paying the H&R
Blocks, paying the accountant down the street, the local folks, paying
the lawyers or whatever, businesses, $250 million. To give my
colleagues an idea, for our Commerce, State and Justice bill that has a
lot of our drug enforcement money, we spend about $35 billion on that.
So we have $250 billion to comply with taxes, not to pay taxes, but to
comply, and yet to fight drugs, $35 billion. It is absurd.
Mr. Speaker, in terms of the amount that we take, Americans today
spend about 9 percent of their income on food, about 4 percent on
clothing, unless one has teenagers, then it spikes well into about 20
percent. My daughter told me, she said, ``You are a horrible dresser.''
I said, ``You are right, but I was not this way until you were born
and particularly since you turned 13.'' I tell her, I said, ``You know,
I still dress better than my dad does.'' She does not give me any
credit for that, but he is recovering from raising four kids himself.
Now, on housing, we spend about 16 percent, on transportation, about
7 percent, and yet, on taxes, the two-income family, 39 percent of our
income goes to taxes.
{time} 2015
We struck a blow for that here in the last couple of weeks, another
example of the ``No good deed goes unpunished.''
Most people were unaware until just a few years ago that literally
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of American couples, paid extra
taxes, in fact, pay extra taxes, simply because they are married. In my
congressional district alone, we have a study that says that there are
70,000 couples that pay extra taxes just because they are married.
There is the marriage penalty.
It works out, the amazing thing is, it works out to something like
$1,400 per couple that they pay in extra taxes. That is just not bad
tax policy, that is bad family policy, and if we think about it, it is
fundamentally immoral.
A couple of years ago at one of my town hall meetings I had an older
couple come up to me after the meeting. They said, you have to do
something about this marriage penalty thing. I said, really? Tell me
about that. They said, we are thinking about getting married, but we
have figured it out with our accountants and we would be penalized to
the tune of over $1,300 a year just because we were married.
After they explained that to me, I said to myself, the Federal
government should not discourage marriage. We all know that marriage
and strong families are the glue that holds this society together. Yet,
we have a system right now where hundreds of thousands of couples
around the United States that are married pay extra taxes simply
because they have a wedding certificate. That is simply wrong. This
Congress is sending a very clear message to the administration and to
the American people that we intend to change that.
Mr. KINGSTON. About the marriage tax penalty, I have found in my
district that the Democrats and Republicans are united on that. There
are 25 million people paying absurd taxes. People are in favor of it.
Another tax decrease this House has passed is the Spanish American
War tax. It is interesting, because I say with great pride, General
Wheeler, who led our troops over there, and the Rough Riders with
Theodore Roosevelt, actually one of his descendents lives in Savannah,
Spencer Wheeler.
General Wheeler was a Member of Congress, and the President actually
called him out of Congress to lead our troops in Cuba. What is
interesting, I have talked to Spencer Wheeler, a doctor in Savannah,
about it. I said, there is a tax that is still around that helped
finance the Spanish American War, and it is a little tax on our
telephone bills; not a huge tax, but it was earmarked or it was
implemented for a certain purpose, it was earmarked for that purpose.
But according to my history, we have been finished with the Spanish
American War a long time. Yet, only in Washington do these things live
on and on forever.
We have passed that bill. I think the Senate is going to pass it. I
hope the President will sign it. Again, it is common sense, kill the
Spanish American War tax. We are finished with it.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. On the tax side, it all fits with the total budget
plan. I only wish that he were here tonight. I remember so many nights
doing special orders with Congressman Mark Neumann of Wisconsin. He has
left us now, he decided to run for the other body, and now he is back
in the private sector and doing quite well.
I remember doing special orders and talking about, if we could get
Congress to limit the growth in Federal spending to roughly the
inflation rate, he had these models, he was a former math teacher, and
he showed us with charts what would happen, how we could balance the
budget, pay down debt, make certain that every penny of social security
and Medicare went only for social security and Medicare, and we could
provide real tax relief to the American people.
In fact, what he said is if we did those things, if we could limit
the growth in Federal spending to roughly the inflation rate, that we
could pay off the national debt in 20 years.
Americans have always loved big dreams. In fact, Ronald Reagan said,
``America is the place where we love to dream heroic dreams.'' That has
been the history of this country. What a great dream. What a great
dream, to say that we are going to leave this country to our kids debt-
free. The truth is, it can be done. We are on the path to do that
today.
Part of the reason is when we first came here, when I first came
here, Federal spending was growing between 6 percent and 8 percent. In
fact, years before that Federal spending was actually increasing by
more like 10 percent and 12 percent per year. Now we have reduced the
rate of growth in Federal spending so this year, if we can abide by the
spending agreement that we have with the Senate, we will limit the
growth in total Federal spending to only about 2.8 percent. That is at
a time when we are estimating the inflation rate will be something like
2.9 percent.
If we can do that, and that is going to be tough in the next several
weeks because all of these groups are descending on Washington and they
want more money for this and that program, and it is going to be tough
to limit that growth in spending. But if we do that, we can balance the
budget, pay down the debt, strengthen social security, but most
importantly, we can allow families to keep more of what they earn.
The interesting thing is, when we allow families to keep more of what
they earn, they spend it a whole lot smarter than we spend it on their
behalf here in Washington. They get more value for that money, and they
help grow the economy. A growing economy makes everything easier.
Mr. KINGSTON. Another part of that is not only passing the money on
in our Nation from one generation to the next generation, but from
family to family. The death taxes that rob so many of our families, our
farmers, is a factor.
I live in a growth area, and it is not unusual for me at all to see a
widow who has bought the family property on Whitmarsh Island on the
Intercoastal Waterway, bought it in the 1960s for $30,000, and after 20
years paid it off. Her husband is dead, she is on a fixed income, and
now that property is worth $700,000, $800,000, maybe $1 million, but
she is still on a fixed income and does not want to sell, does not want
to move, and does not want to develop. Yet, our property taxes are
pushing her
[[Page H6573]]
out, and then our estate taxes are. If she wants to pass that on to the
next generation, the next generation is going to incur a big tax on it.
Here is a woman who is really independent, not on public assistance,
who has money in the bank or an asset that if she needs emergency long-
term care, if she has a catastrophe in her family, she has something.
We are saying to her, you have to sell that cushion, because if you die
your children are going to have to pay a whopping tax on it. We run off
family farms because of that, and we make it impossible for small
businesses to go from generation to generation.
One of the things that is real important now is women own small
businesses in unprecedented numbers. As they find out, hey, I have
worked for the last 20 years to build up this company and it is worth a
little money now, $1 million, $2 million net worth of a business, and I
want to pass it on to my daughter, but guess what, Uncle Sam is saying
they cannot do it.
We have passed the end of that death tax penalty. There again, we
have passed a version, the Republicans have, but we are willing to work
with the President on it. If the President does not want to have too
many wealthy people, I think wealth is something that in Arkansas, at
least his school taught him that that was evil, that people who have
been successful are not the people who have enjoyed the American dream
but people who seem to be destroying the American dream.
There seems to be this constant class warfare. The idea that you work
hard all your life, you build up an estate, you build up wealth, you
want to pass it on to your kids, I think is part of being an American.
So we have passed estate tax relief.
Again, we are willing to compromise with the President. We want to do
what is best for America.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Let us not be too willing. The truth of the matter is,
no family should have to visit the undertaker and the IRS in the same
week. I do not think most Americans realize that very quickly, and it
does not take much of a farm in my part of the world to quickly be
worth $2 million, perhaps $3 million, that has been the family farm
perhaps for a couple of generations, all of a sudden the patriarch
dies, and in a very short period of time the family could have to cough
up upwards of 55 percent. So I hope we are not too willing to
compromise.
I agree with the gentleman, we have to be willing to meet the
President halfway. Frankly, I do not want to meet the President halfway
going in the wrong direction. Frankly, I think it is time for us to
say, this is not the government's money.
At some point, I think every one of these estates, every one of these
businesses, we have to be honest, they have been paying taxes all
through the years. They have paid sales taxes, they have paid income
taxes. As the gentleman mentioned, they have paid property taxes.
For the Federal government to step right in and say, oh, by the way,
we want upwards of 55 percent of the value of that estate, I am willing
to compromise and I think we are willing to meet the President halfway
on this, but I think the principle that families should not have to
meet the undertaker and the IRS in the same week is a very important
principle.
As we were told this morning at a breakfast meeting we were at, that
is not the Statue of Fairness, that is a Statue of Liberty. The people
who came here came here for liberty and freedom and opportunity. I hope
we will always remain a society that understands that the three magic
words are hope, growth, and opportunity.
We cannot make things completely fair. People came to this country so
they could create their own fortunes, so they could take their chance
at life, so they could use their God-given skills and create wealth for
themselves, for their families, and in many cases, for hundreds,
perhaps even thousands of other people. That is the magic of America,
where ordinary people are allowed to do extraordinary things.
We have to make certain that we have a government that respects the
fact that people have a right and an opportunity in America to make the
most of it.
Mr. KINGSTON. I think the gentleman is right. That is also one reason
that we are investing in fighting the drug war, because our children
need to be safe from drug pushers at their school, and we need to pass
this legacy on to the next generation.
It is odd, as much money as a company like Nike or Coca-Cola spend
advertising, that with drug dealers, there is no advertising plan, no
business cards, you cannot tell everybody who you work for, no pension
plan, no corporate logo. Yet as I go to the school districts in the 18
First District of Georgia counties and I ask in schools, private or
public, rural or city, ``How many of you kids can get drugs in the high
schools by the end of the day if you wanted to,'' in just about every
school, 50 percent of the hands go up.
That is too many. We have got to stop it. I would like to ask that
question one day and see zero hands go up. But that is one reason why
we are pushing for drug interdiction, keeping the stuff from even
coming to our counties; drug enforcement, that if you are caught
selling this deadly poison to our children, you are going to go to
jail; and drug treatment. To that kid, that user, who says, I made a
mistake, now I am addicted, I need some help, we want to give them a
lifeline.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. We are just about at the end of our time for this
special order, but I am really happy we have had the opportunity, and I
was delighted our colleague, the gentleman from Oklahoma, could join
us.
Because really, in many respects, this country is a much better place
than it was 6 years ago. Instead of a future of debt, dependency, and
despair, I really think we are giving to our kids a future of hope,
growth, and opportunity. Instead of having huge deficits piling up
bigger and bigger every year, we are now talking about surpluses. We
are not talking about leaving them a legacy of debt, but perhaps
actually paying off all of the debt held by the general public.
We have welfare reform so we encourage work and personal
responsibility. We want to allow families to keep more of what they
earn, because we know at the end of the day the magic of America is not
here in Washington, D.C. It really is back there in places like
Savannah, Georgia, and Rochester, Minnesota, in Kasson, Minnesota,
where real people, ordinary people, are allowed to do extraordinary
things.
That is the magic of America. That is the magic we cannot afford to
lose, because if we continued down the path we were on 6 years ago of
higher taxes and bigger debts, more government regulation, and even
more government interference in the activities of business, we were
absolutely guaranteed that we were on a downhill spiral, not only for
the economy but for our society.
The good news is we are moving up now, we are headed in the right
direction. Taxes should be coming down. The deficit is coming down.
Spending is under control. We are encouraging work and personal
responsibility. I think that is the future that we want to leave to our
kids. That is a legacy that I think we can all be proud of.
I want to thank the gentleman for joining us tonight. If the
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) has any closing words, I yield to
the gentleman.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I do want to say this. We lost a great
United States Senator this week. It is tragic for all parties.
In discussing him, I learned a lot from Senator Paul Coverdell. One
thing I learned, although he was a Republican and was a great, key
member of the Republican team, he always showed us by instruction,
never put politics over policy.
What we are about here is good policy. Our hands are open to the
White House, to the Senate, to the Democrats, to Republicans of
different philosophies, to let us all put our policies first for the
good of America.
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