[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 118 (Thursday, September 28, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H8454-H8459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HISTORY OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE AND THE ``NEW MAJORITY''
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized
for 60.
Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having this time this afternoon
to come before the House following the distinguished ranking member of
the Committee on Government Reform.
I have had an opportunity, since I came to Congress in 1993, to serve
on the Committee on Government Reform. I came as a freshman Member in
that year, in 1993, and served on that committee because I think it is
a most important committee.
Many of my colleagues may not be familiar with the history of the
Committee on Government Reform. It was called the Committee on
Government Operations, and it has had several other names through its
history. But I think the Committee on Government Reform is one of the
most important committees in the House of Representatives and in the
entire Congress. It has an interesting history that dates back to when
our Federal government started building a bureaucracy.
After the Presidencies of Washington and Adams, in 1808, actually,
Thomas Jefferson was quite alarmed by the bureaucracy building, he
termed it, in Washington. He did not like the huge bureaucracy in his
estimation that had been constructed previous to his taking office. The
founding Members in the Congress, early Members at the turn of that
century, the 19th century, again in 1808, created the predecessor of
the Committee on Government Operations.
They did not trust the appropriators. They did not trust the
authorizers. The authorizers would initiate a program, the
appropriators would fund the program, and they wanted an additional
check. All the checks and balances they put into our system of
government are really incredible when we think back that this was done
some 200 years ago. They wanted a government that worked and also a
government that had oversight and investigation responsibility.
So in 1808, they created the predecessor of the committee on which
the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) is the ranking member. He is
the chief Democrat. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is the
chairman of the full Committee on Government Reform. So from the very
beginning of the House of Representatives and the Congress, and the
beginning of our system and the checks and balances, our Founding
Fathers wanted that committee. Again, it serves a very important
purpose and that is to investigate, to conduct oversight independent of
all the other committees.
We heard criticism of the chairman, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr.
Burton). I would say that no one has done a more admirable job. We have
to look at the history of this Congress and we have to look at the
history of administrations. There have been many administrations. I
would venture to say that never in the history of the United States of
America and our government have we had an administration that has had
more scandals. They probably have had more scandals in the Clinton-Gore
administration than we have had in the 20th century and the 19th
century back to the founding of our government.
This administration has been riddled with scandals. I cannot even
keep track of the number of scandals that we have had. And for a Member
to come forward and criticize the chairman for his conduct of
investigations and oversight, I think, is unfair, because he had a
responsibility and a tough responsibility.
I submit, having served on that subcommittee, that never before had I
seen anything like this, and I have been a student of government since
high school days some many years ago. Again, in serving on the
committee under the Democrat control of both the House, the Senate and
the White House from 1993 to 1995, I saw how they ran that committee,
and it did not serve its purpose well.
{time} 1615
In fact, there was a great defect in that because the committee was
run in a fashion unintended by the Founding Fathers. I remember coming
to this floor and holding up a sign that said ``55 to 5.'' And I will
tell you how the other side ran the committee, the committee that kept
us straight in the House of Representatives. Again holding up that
chart that said ``55 to 5,'' I said, my colleagues, that is not the
score of a badly mismatched sporting event. That is how the Democrats
ran the investigation and the oversight committee. They gave us five
investigative staff and they kept 55. We did not even have a chance.
And they controlled the White House, the House and the other body; and
that was not what the Founding Fathers intended.
So if you want to talk about misuse of one of the most important
committees in the Congress or in the House of Representatives, merely
look back in a reflective manner on how the other side operated this
committee.
And time and time again, when I was in the minority, I came out and
said, this is unfair, they should not run it in this fashion. And time
and time again, they ran it in that fashion.
So to criticize the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) for his
record in conducting oversight and investigations for the most scandal-
ridden administration ever to set its face in Washington, and I will
include Philadelphia and New York, and we could go back to the
Continental Congresses where they met in Trenton, Annapolis,
Harrisburg, and some dozen State capitals, there has never been an
administration so racked with scandal. And it has been dumped in our
lap.
Now, do you think that is a lot of fun? Do you think we came to
Congress just to pick on the other side? No, we did not. We came here
because the Founding Fathers set up this check and balance to make this
system work.
There are some countries I found that have even adopted the
Constitution of the United States of America. They have adopted the
entire document. Yet they do not function like ours. And I submit one
reason they do not have that additional check that the Founding Fathers
established, such as we have with the investigations and oversight, is
because we are always trying to cleanse the process.
Sure, we may make a few mistakes in the investigations. It is not
intentional. Sure, we may have gotten some inadequate information. But
let me tell my colleagues, when we were in the minority, I saw how they
ran the show at least as far as investigations and oversight, and it
was not anything to be proud of.
In fact, again, I came many times asking for reform. And we did
institute that reform, and we shared staff on a more equitable basis so
we could do an honest job in conducting oversight of the House of
Representatives. But to come here today to criticize the chairman.
I have also served on the committee, and I have seen what we had to
contend with. And you can talk about witnesses, you can talk about Webb
Hubbell who served time in prison, can you talk about run-away Federal
prosecutors; but I am telling you, never before in the history has
there been such a scandalous misuse of the investigative process by the
other side. And I hope, for the good of the country, I hope for the
good of this Congress that it is never repeated.
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My colleagues, the House, Mr. Speaker, over 120 witnesses either
would not raise their hand and swear to tell the whole truth, they
raised their hand and took the fifth amendment. Over 120 witnesses fled
the country. We have never been able to conduct a thorough
investigation. And the other side that calls for campaign reform, 98
percent of the violations were on their side of the aisle, 98 percent
of the violations.
I submit that 98 percent of those serving in Congress obey the laws,
they do not get into the gray area. They know there is a controlling
legal authority. They have made a mockery of the law. And for them to
campaign on campaign finance reform is a mockery. Because almost every
one of the offenses that we see and we have seen, whether it is the
Vice President at a Buddhist temple raising funds, whether it is making
calls with no controlling legal authority, whether it is other gray
areas and now we see that the White House has reported the use of the
Lincoln Bedroom like a Motel 6, campaign contributions coming into
various people running for high office here or there, and the lights
are on at the Motel 6 White House.
So again, we have a very serious situation we have had to contend
with on that committee attempting to conduct investigations and
oversight in a responsible manner, whether it is campaign finance;
whether it is Travelgate, which was one of the worst misuses and abuses
of Federal authority planned, cooked, sealed, a misuse of that office,
a misuse of professional White House employees abusing them in the
fashion, and some of them have been compensated fortunately for that;
whether it is Filegate.
And we can go back to Filegate. Do we still know? Do we still know?
And our committee, under the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and
other Members, investigated Filegate, the illegal use of hundreds and
hundreds of personnel files obtained through the FBI into the White
House.
Everybody knows what they were up to. We know they were trying to get
dirt on their political opponents. We even know who did it. Now, do we
know who hired Craig Livingston? We do not know to this date because
this is the way these folks operated.
I had a conversation with a Democrat colleague, and the Democrat
colleague and I shared our concern that a future administration might
use the Clinton-Gore administration as a model in which to use the
system, and that would be so sad for the future of the country.
Hopefully, we can banish the Clinton-Gore method of operation because
the operation of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight has
always had involved bipartisan cooperation and people coming forward
raising their right hand and telling the whole truth to the committee
so we could proceed, not taking the fifth amendment, not fleeing the
country, not withholding information, shredding information,
information disappearing, and only reappearing when we were able to get
it somewhere else, information that unfortunately we have never been
able to obtain.
So it is sad to come and have attacks against the chairman. And I
will not say that, again, everything I have done is 100 percent. I make
mistakes. I am human. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) makes
mistakes. But I will tell my colleagues, he has done an incredible job.
The same method they used to go after everyone who questions or tries
to hold them accountable is find dirt on them, try to expose them in
some way with their friends in the press and belittle them and degrade
them in public is sad. My Democrat colleague and I both share our
concern that this is not the method of operation for future
administrations whether they be Democrat or Republican.
So I take great exception.
I wanted to spend part of tonight, I usually talk on the drug issue,
but following the ranking member and having background about how this
committee, which I have served on since the first day I came to
Congress and am knowledgeable about, I wanted to tell, as Paul Harvey
says, the rest of the story.
Let me also mention while I have the floor that there are some funny
things happening at this juncture. Of course, we are in a political
time and people are talking about what they have done and what they
have not done. And I think it is important to reflect.
I came into the Congress, again, as a minority Member in 1992. I was
from the business sector. I am not an attorney. I came here because I
was concerned about the future of the country, about us having a
balanced budget, about the huge deficit we were running, about getting
our country's finances in order.
I am pleased to come before my colleagues tonight to tell them that
in fact we have been able to do that. And it was not done during my
first term when there were huge numbers of majority from the other
side. They did not bring spending under control. In fact, what they did
was tax and spend more.
In a few weeks, the American people have an opportunity to decide
whether they want to turn back to tax and spend or they want to remain
on a sound fiscal basis, they want the finances of this country run
like they would run their own finances so the income matches the
outflow. And if they do not do that and they have a personal checkbook,
they know exactly what happens, they keep spending and spending and
they get further and further in debt.
Except they had the ability to tax. In 1993 and 1994, they did
increase taxes on the American people. They did not balance the budget.
And we could not pin the President down on when we would balance the
budget; and every time we made a proposal, he would come back with a
different date and propose more government spending, more government
programs, more control in Washington, more takeover here, and they did
not balance the budget. They had their opportunity.
In fact, I remember them presenting their budget and for this fiscal
year after they came to the floor and proposed the largest tax increase
in the history of our Republic and told us this was going to balance
the budget, they found in fact that the information they gave us for
this year they would have had a $200 billion deficit. That was their
plan to this year have a $200 billion deficit.
Now, something changed there. I will tell my colleagues what changed
there. It was the Republican majority took control in 1995. And what we
did was not anything special. It was not rocket science. It was
not some magic formula from a Harvard economic Ph.D. We limited the
annual increases, we still have allowed increases, and we matched it
with our expenditures and income.
It was a simple plan. We balanced the budget. And we did that without
harming senior citizens, without harming education, but actually by,
and I will show in a few minutes, by helping education, by resetting
priorities. Because this place basically had run amuck. The finances of
the country were out of control.
Let me just tell my colleagues the way I found the House of
Representatives running when I came here. The banking scandal, as my
colleagues may recall, Members on both sides of the aisle would write
checks and the bills would be paid by bouncing checks that were covered
here really with taxpayer money.
The restaurant downstairs, the House restaurant, was run at a deficit
and the food there for Members of Congress and their guests was
subsidized.
I have given the example of ice being delivered and some 16 and 17
people working to deliver ice. Well, they instituted delivering ice to
the Members' rooms back in the 1930s and 1940s before they had
refrigerators and they were still spending three-quarters of a million
dollars a year to deliver ice to the offices when I came here and had
some 16 to 17 employees doing that.
I gave that speech many years ago, and someone could not believe it.
I had to send them the documentation. He said I was not telling the
truth. But that is how they ran the place. The place was in shambles.
The House of Representatives, the people's House, was a disaster.
And I sat with a Member of Congress, a freshman Member, and I was
telling him the things that we have done since 1995 just starting here
with the House of Representatives.
The first thing we did, and we said we would do it, was we cut the
staff in the House of Representatives by one-third. That is what we
started out with. We cut the staff by one-third. We cleaned
[[Page H8456]]
out one building and a half a building on Capitol Hill of the huge bulk
that the other side had taken on board and bulged the bureaucracy of
the administration of Congress.
{time} 1630
We cut the committees by a third. I took over the Civil Service
subcommittee, which at one time Civil Service and Post Office had over
100 employees. I chaired Civil Service, and in fact we operated with
seven staffers as opposed to more than 50 that had been devoted to the
Civil Service subcommittee. So we cut the staff.
If you walk around the halls of Congress today in some of the House
office buildings, you will see some empty rooms there that are there
for meeting. They were formerly filled with this huge bureaucracy that
the other side built up. That would be very sad to return to those days
of yesteryear when they had control, when they misused their power.
We instituted many reforms in addition to cutting staff.
Incidentally, since we cut the staff, we had a lot of parking spaces
left over here because we did not have the 3,000 employees that were
cut from the congressional payroll when we also cut the expenditures of
the House of Representatives. So we turned that into a public parking
lot. That parking lot actually has revenue into the House of
Representatives. The subsidized dining room is now privately operated
and not operated at a subsidy on the House side. A big change. The shoe
shine stand, the barber shop, all of these things have been privatized
and now accomplished. As I said, I sat with a freshman Member of
Congress, he did not know, and if a freshman Republican Member of
Congress does not know what we did, how can the American people or the
rest of Congress remember the reforms that were instituted here in this
House of Representatives?
One of the other great things that we have done, as long as I am
going to spend a few minutes talking about, again, a contrast between
the Republican control and the Democrat control, is our Nation's
capital. Our Nation's capital was a disaster in 1993 to 1995 when the
Democrats controlled the White House, the House and the Senate. It was
a national shame. The murder rate approached some 400. There was a
murder almost every weekend. Some weekends there were half a dozen
murders here. There was slaughter in the streets of Washington. The
public housing authority was bankrupt. The children who were supposed
to be protected, most protected, not at a disadvantage, were fed jello,
rice and chicken for a month because they did not have money to pay the
vendors.
Sometimes you had to boil your water in the District of Columbia. The
morgue was not able to pay again for burying the indigent dead and
bodies were stacked up like cord wood because they could not meet their
obligations. This Congress was funding three-quarters of a billion
dollars of deficit for the District of Columbia before the Republicans
took control of the House of Representatives. Three-quarters of a
billion dollars a year in debt. Marion Barry who was a disgrace to not
only the capital but to the Nation, who set a horrible example for the
young people here, he had employed some 60,000 employees. About one in
every 10 people in the District of Columbia was employed by the
District staff.
What did the Republicans do? This year we have nearly balanced the
budget for the District of Columbia, first of all kicking and screaming
and you would think we had imposed martial law but we did impose a
control board over the District of Columbia. The District is our
responsibility. It is a trust given to the Congress under the
Constitution and we must work to try to maintain that trust as a good
steward of the District. You do want home rule and we have tried to do
that, but we did have to institute a control board. We have gotten some
of the agencies, not all of them, in order. But the District again is
running at a near balanced budget. They were spending more on education
than any other entity in the United States on a per capita basis and
performing at one of the lowest levels and we have turned some of that
around.
We had to turn the water system over to another agency to operate. We
have had to redo the District of Columbia building which once was a
beautiful building and it looked like a Third World practically bombed
out shelter when we took over. We have cut the employees from some
60,000 to in the mid-30,000 range, I believe, but we have dramatically
decreased the number of employees in the District of Columbia. And we
have cut the murders in the District. The person we brought in as the
financial officer to oversee the District's finances and try to get
them in order fortunately was elected the mayor and he has done an
admirable job in bringing the District finances under control, and now
we have returned most of the rule back to the District of Columbia.
But what a sad case. How sad it would be for the District of Columbia
or for the American people to turn the Congress over, the running of
the House of Representatives to the side that put it in such shame and
disrepute, how sad it would be to turn the District of Columbia back
over to the people who had that stewardship and in some 40 years ran
the District of Columbia into the ground. They were responsible. They
failed. We took on that responsibility both to run this House, run the
District, and I think we did an admirable job. So today, my colleagues,
I think it is time that we remember as Members are prepared from the
other side to come and bash what we have done, I want to put in the
Record and let the Congress and the American people know what we have
taken on as a responsibility.
I was appointed by Speaker Gingrich to be the chairman of the Civil
Service subcommittee. I spoke about that a few minutes ago. I talked
about some of the things we did with the Civil Service subcommittee. I
am not here to tout my own horn but let me tell you, we took the
Federal employees personnel office, which is the Office of Personnel
Management, and in the 1993 to 1995 period, just go look at the
statistics. Close to 6,000 employees in our personnel office, Office of
Personnel Management. We were able to get that down to some 3,000
employees. And 1,000 of those employees, although there was kicking and
screaming, there were Federal investigators, I was able, working with
others, to turn that into an employee stock ownership plan. So we cut
the number of employees. We took a thousand of those Federal
investigators and turned that into an employee stock ownership company.
I am sure you would not read about this but it is a success of again a
Republican initiative and something that we should be very proud of.
They now own that company. They now pay taxes, millions of dollars in
taxes. They do business with the Federal Government, with other
government agencies, with the private sector. But it is employee-owned.
They fought kicking and screaming, but we did it.
We can cut government. We can cut bureaucracy. We can make things run
more efficiently. I had never been chairman of Civil Service. I had
never been to a Civil Service subcommittee hearing. Again, it does not
take a lot of rocket science or a Harvard Ph.D. in economics or
administration management, it just takes some common sense. And somehow
in 40 years these people lost common sense.
Let me talk about one more thing that really got my gander last week.
We had the President of the United States at the White House in a
signing ceremony for long-term care. The President and the White House
announced the statement that the President and the administration had
passed long-term care for Federal employees and retirees and others in
the Federal workforce. The President of the United States had the gall
to say that this would serve as a model for the private sector. Little
did the President of the United States know the history of what had
taken place on long-term care. Nor would his aides ever reveal this to
the American public nor his press machine. But long-term care, ladies
and gentlemen, when I became chairman of Civil Service was not ever on
the radar screen. There was never ever a hearing in the Congress on
long-term care. When I took over and I came from the private sector, I
took over Civil Service, I started to look at some of the employee
benefit programs. And coming from the private sector, I wondered why we
did not have long-term care benefits for Federal employees. So I looked
into it, and I actually conducted a hearing. The first hearing
[[Page H8457]]
ever in the Congress was held on March 26, 1998, I chaired that, and I
said, why do we not have long-term care as a benefit for Federal
employees?
Now, this does not again take anything but common sense. I came from
the private sector. Businesses I had been familiar with had proposals
for long-term care for their employees. The bigger the business, the
better discounts you can get. With 1.9 million Federal employees, with
2.2 million Federal retirees, with 1 million postal people and millions
in the military, why could we not have a long-term care benefit for our
Federal employees, go to an insurance carrier for long-term care and
get a discounted rate for providing a group policy? I posed that.
``Oh, we can't do that. My goodness, we can't do that.'' The
administration fought, kicked, opposed, blocked, did everything they
could, said that this was a radical idea and fought us tooth and nail
as we moved along or put impediments in the way.
Finally, the President signed the bill. I was not invited to the
signing ceremony. There were other places I have not been invited to
that probably would be more offensive to me, but we must set the record
straight. And for the President of the United States to say that this
would serve as a model for the private sector, well, to the President
of the United States, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I must remind him
that this idea came from the private sector. It was delivered through
the person of Mr. Mica from Florida who held the first hearing on it
and who introduced the first legislation on this August 4, 1998 and
worked to try to get them to provide this simple benefit for one of the
largest groups in the United States.
But Federal employees, Federal retirees, if you think that Bill
Clinton or Al Gore did this for you, you need to have a serious
counseling session with me and I will be glad to provide you the data.
Of course he took credit for it and he had himself surrounded by people
who did not have a whole lot to do with this particular issue.
Another issue, just to reflect as long as I am on the subject of a
comparison of the Republican administration, the new majority, I must
say that the other side really has had a deficit in new ideas for some
47 years, long-term care being one of them. But again in chairing the
Civil Service subcommittee, I looked at the benefits that Federal
employees have, and I came again from the private sector, I had some
term insurance I had acquired in the private sector and as you get
older and if you have term insurance, you know you pay more for that
term insurance, and I thought, well, why not add on? I am now a Federal
employee. Even though I am a Member of Congress I fall in that
category. Why not add on to the Federal employees life insurance
benefits program? I could pay a little bit more in a group and have
those benefits. Now I am in that employ, I do not have the private
sector benefit, so I looked at the rates, and I said, ``My God, they're
paying higher rates for life insurance than I can get in the private
sector.''
{time} 1645
I thought, something is dramatically wrong. So I conducted a hearing
on Federal employee-retiree life insurance benefits. Come to find out,
the other side had not bid the life insurance policy for 40 years. For
40 years they had not bid it; they only had one product available.
If you are even familiar in the slightest sense from the private
sector of all the new options that are out there in insurance coverage,
and you have a group of 1.9 million Federal employees and 2.2 million
Federal retirees and other Federal employees, why could you not get a
better rate with a group that size? A no-brainer. I talked to my
friends in the insurance industry, and they said it was absurd not to
have more choices. It was absurd to be paying those rates.
Now, we did make a little bit of progress. We have some more choices
out there. Kicking and screaming, the Office of Personnel Management is
coming into the 21st century, whether it is long-term employee health
benefits, whether it is life insurance.
Let me just set up as a bit of warning something else that I found as
Chair of the Subcommittee on Civil Service that is on everybody's radar
screen. One of the most important things to me personally is that we
find ways to provide health insurance coverage for all Americans.
I personally remember when I was in college and my brother was in
college, we dropped out, my dad did not have health insurance, and we
went to work and were able to help the family meet their financial
requirements and then go back to school. But I know what it is like to
be in a family that does not have health insurance, and there are
millions of families that do not have health insurance.
My dad was a working American who did not have health insurance, so I
know what it is like; and I think it is important that we as
Republicans, that we as Democrats, that we as an Independent Member of
this body, work to find ways to find access to health insurance
coverage.
I oversaw the largest health care plan as chairman of the
Subcommittee on Civil Service in the country when I chaired that
subcommittee, and I saw what this administration did to that program.
It concerns me, because they are doing the same thing in prescription
drugs; they are doing the same thing with HMOs and other reform.
What they are doing is they are bogging it down, they are packing on
mandates, they are phrasing things like ``Patients' Bill of Rights''
and all of this that sounds good.
So I held hearings on what the administration was doing back several
years now when I chaired this subcommittee. They came out with this
Patients' Bill of Rights, and they could not get agreement in the
Congress, so the President, by executive order, imposed the Patients'
Bill of Rights on the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program.
I held a hearing and asked the people from the administration, what
does this Patients' Bill of Rights do? Tell me what it does
specifically. And each of them would say, well, it provides more
paperwork, it is more regulation, it is more mandates.
I said, well, what medical benefit is there to all this? And they
could not mention a specific medical benefit. But the President by
executive order, which he has used so much because of the slim
majority, and we do not have override ability here, imposed that on the
employees health benefit program for the Federal Government, and not on
all plans.
We had close to 400 plans at one time, before he imposed this, and he
did not impose on it the most contentious part of the Patients' Bill of
Rights, which is the right to sue. He imposed part of it, mostly the
regulations and paperwork, I guess to make it look like he was doing
something.
I will tell you what the result was. Instead of having, say, some 400
to choose from, we lost 60, 70 plans. When they added more mandates, we
lost more plans. So many areas that needed that coverage for Federal
employees out in the yonder started seeing fewer HMOs.
In addition, they saw the costs rise dramatically, and the private
sector costs have not risen for health care plans anywhere near the
extent, almost double digit for Federal employees, again with a system
that the administration could get its hands around and sort of
strangle, which they have done. So Federal employees, retirees, have
seen these dramatic increases in costs in premium, and also have fewer
choices.
We have to be very careful that we do not do the same thing here with
HMOs. I had a great letter from a constituent in my district. It was
really a prize letter. I think it started out with ``Dear Congressman
Mica and you other dummies in Washington.'' He had sent it to not just
me.
He said, you all are up there arguing about whether or not I have the
right to sue my HMO, and he said you all are out in space, because I do
not even have an HMO to sue. Three of them have disappeared.
That is a great concern to me, that something that was set up to
provide health care on a cost-effective basis, that we do not destroy
it.
Now, there are patient protections and things that can be written
without damaging the intent and purpose of HMOs to provide access to
health care, but we do not want more people like this who make a
mockery of the ability to sue because he does not even have a
[[Page H8458]]
plan he can go to. We see more and more plans being dissolved.
So if the Federal Government does continue to impose mandates, if we
put on a Patients' Bill of Rights that only adds paperwork and
regulations, and we increase the cost and we have fewer HMOs to choose
from, the gentleman who wrote me, unfortunately, will be very correct.
But he did have a great point: we cannot destroy something that is so
important to us, and we have got to find ways.
It is interesting that we have some 30 or 40 million people who do
not have health insurance coverage, and two-thirds of those people are
working Americans. On our side of the aisle, again, kicking and
screaming, we made the President sign welfare reform. I can tell you
there is no way, if we had not boxed him into a corner, if it had not
been close to the election, he ever would have signed welfare reform,
but he did sign it. We have some 6 or 7 more million people working,
thanks to the Republican initiative.
It is hard. I know it is easy to come here to come to Washington, to
say I am going to give you this, free prescription drugs; you do not
have to work; we will send you a welfare check from Washington, or
through Washington, and you will be taken care of cradle-to-grave.
They tried that in the Soviet Union. They had it all cooked, and,
unfortunately, the system was destroyed. You even see it in Europe and
some countries that have these huge tax rates, unemployment, people not
working, lack of productivity, and it is reflected now in their
economies, as opposed to our's.
But we must address the people that we have taken from welfare to
work and find a way that they can have access to affordable, quality
health care. I think that has to be through a partnership of the
working individual on the basis of their ability to pay.
We also have to do that through the employer; and most of the
employers who are providing these benefits are small businesses. The
majority of businesses in this country, the vast majority, is not big,
big business; it is small employers. A huge percentage of our
population is employed by small business people. So business, the
employer and government also has a responsibility, and it is something
we can do.
They had their chance to balance the budget. They did not. What is
interesting is this year, I believe we are going to have this year in
excess of $200 billion in surplus. They would have had by their plan
which they submitted to us, I was here, a $200 billion deficit. Not
only would they have had a deficit, but they were also taking out of
Social Security and putting in nonnegotiable certificates of
indebtedness of the United States.
So here is the crew on the other side of the aisle that brought us
these huge deficits, and all the finances of the country start right
here in the people's body, in the House of Representatives. They had
their chance to propose getting this right, but they now claim to say
that they can do a better job.
If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to
sell you. These are the same folks that not only had us in a deficit
position, had no way to get us out, tried to tax their way out, tried
to spend their way out, and had projected for this year a $200 billion
deficit, their best guess, and we have a $200 billion-plus surplus.
It has not been easy to do. Every time we have made a reform, they
have thrown the kitchen sink at us, saying we are going to have people
rolled out of nursing homes on the street, there will be breadlines in
America, welfare reform is a cruel thing, to insist that people work
and not stay on welfare.
But I submit that we have done an admirable job. One of the things
you can do when you balance the budget is you can talk about
prescription drug benefits, you can talk about adding more money to
education.
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a few minutes about education, because I
think that is important.
Now, I am a Republican Member of the House of Representatives. I come
from a background, I actually have a degree in education from the
University of Florida. I am very proud of that, and I never taught. I
did my internship.
My wife was a public schoolteacher, taught elementary school in
Corning, New York, and West Palm Beach when we moved and were married
some 28 years ago, and she was a great teacher. I admire her ability
with young people, and she has been a great mother to my two children,
and I respect her judgment.
So she went to public schools, I went to public schools, we worked
our way through college. I want to give that as a background. I am
interested in education.
My grandparents were immigrants to this country. One was an Italian
immigrant who came in after the turn of the century, worked in the
factories and got into business in upstate New York. My grandfather on
my father's side, they were Slovak immigrants from Slovakia, now a free
and independent nation, once part of Czechoslovakia. They came to this
country.
I will tell you, from the time I was a young child, I never heard
anything repeated more in my family than get your education, that
education is the most important thing. So the background of my family,
again, came from immigrants, and they were intent on educating their
children and grandchildren, and it was so important to us because they
saw education and they saw it so rightly as the key to being able to
function in a free democratic society that is dedicated to free
enterprise. So education was a very, very important part of my family's
background. I want to give that as a predicate.
Mr. Speaker, part of our work is trying to pass some 13
appropriations bills and do it in a responsible fashion. The contest is
between the spenders, they had their chance to tax, and they could not
impose any higher taxes on the American people because they are not in
the majority. And the other alternative is spending, trying to keep the
spending under control. The easiest thing for a politician to do is
just spend more of the money and get it out of the people's hard-earned
paycheck.
{time} 1700
But, again, on the point of education, education has always been
important to me. And once we get the finances of the country in order,
once we get our personal finances in order, we can do a lot. We found
that.
If I asked a question to Members of the House of Representatives, or
of the Mr. Speaker today, who would do more financially for education,
Republicans or Democrats, I am sure, Mr. Speaker, many people would
respond, Democrats, because they are bigger spenders. But a strange
thing happens when we balance the budget and have fiscal responsibility
in Washington. We have more money, as I said, for prescription drugs;
we have more money for education.
I can tell my colleagues that in the Republican Majority, K-through-
12 funding has been a priority. Now, we only fund about 5 to 6 percent
of all education dollars. The rest comes from local and State, usually
from State governments through sales tax or other taxes at the State
level or local property taxes. So we are the small contributor.
But these are the funding levels. Take a look at this. During the
time the Democrats had control of the House of Representatives from
1990 to 1995, they increased spending for K-through-12 some 30.9
percent. If we have our financing in order, we can set priorities. We
are not going further in the hole, and we are not robbing money out of
Social Security, Medicare, or letting other programs go astray and here
is what can be done. Under the Republican Majority from 1995 to 2000,
we have increased the funds for education.
So we can do this with a balanced budget. We can put more money into
education and the facts show that.
In fact, our side of the aisle has done that. Now, there is a big
difference between the way we spend money and the way they spend money.
Again, as a teacher, a former teacher-to-be, because, again, I never
taught, but as a graduate of an education school and the husband of a
teacher, I can tell my colleagues, and from talking to teachers
throughout my district and anywhere I meet them, the last thing a
teacher is able to do today is to teach. There are so many regulations,
so many rules, so many restraints. There are so many court orders, so
many edicts from Washington from the Department of Education, that the
last thing a teacher can do is teach.
[[Page H8459]]
So this Republican majority has a difference. We have a difference in
philosophy too about education. With Democrat control of the House of
Representatives and the Congress, we found that nearly 90 percent of
Federal dollars were going to everything except the classroom. We have
first of all put more dollars into education, but also to have them go
to the classroom and to the teacher. Those are the most fundamental
differences between what the other side has proposed and what we
propose and what this great debate is about.
They want that power; they want that control in Washington. They
think Washington knows best. Better than parents, better than teachers,
better than local school principals. In the meantime, they have created
a bureaucracy. They have 5,000 people in the Department of Education;
5,000 people in the Department of Education.
Look at this administrative overhead. We have tried to get the
dollars to education. They have tried and actually succeeded in getting
the money to education administrative overhead. This is a chart from
1992 to the year 2000, and that has to be reversed. We do not need to
be paying for a bureaucracy in Washington. Of the 5,000 people in the
Federal Department of Education, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000
are located just within a few miles of where I am standing here in
Washington, our Nation's capital. Most of them are making between
$60,000 and $110,000. I do not have teachers that are making $60,000
and $110,000.
So we have a simple philosophy. Get that money out of administrative
overhead. And no matter what program they get into, when they took over
the Congress to have a Direct Student Loan Program as opposed to having
the private sector, and the costs every time have risen dramatically.
Look at the costs back in 1993. It has absolutely mushroomed. This is
in a student loan program.
So we have been able to put more money in education. We are trying to
do it without strings. We are trying to do it without a huge
bureaucracy. There were 760 Federal education programs when I came to
Congress. We have got it down to somewhere, I think, just below 700.
All well intended, as we will hear the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Goodling), the chairman of that committee, cite on the House floor. All
well intended. But there is no reason why we cannot get that money back
to the classroom, back to the teacher, back to basic education.
I tell my colleagues, and my wife will tell them as well as an
elementary educator, students must be able to read, write, and do
simple mathematics in order to succeed. And if students do not learn
that at the earliest stage. I just saw, and I wanted to say President
Bush, but Governor Bush's proposal and for what he did in Texas, what
he has done in teaching young people to read, to write, to do
mathematics. If we could duplicate this across the United States, what
a great thing we would be doing for all young people, especially our
minorities.
Again, we have to remember the value of education, to succeed in this
country. Because if a student cannot read and write and do simple
mathematics at the beginning, then they become the dropout problem,
then they become the discipline problem. Then they are the social
problem. Then they are sometimes even the prisoner problem and greater
social problem that we face.
So Republicans have a very simple proposal. Get the money to the
classroom. We have balanced the budget; we have additional resources.
But not the control in Washington. Not the strangling. Let teachers
teach. Do away with some of the Federal regulations.
We have seen it with charter schools. We have seen it with voucher
systems. Voucher systems do not destroy public education; but they
allow everyone, whether they are poor or black or Hispanic or white,
whatever, to have an opportunity for the best possible education. And
we find success, tremendous success in those programs in improvements
in basic skills.
We have done it in the District. We helped clean up some of the
District of Columbia problems. We have done it in the House of
Representatives. We have done it with the Social Security program that
was in disarray. We have done it with our Federal balanced budget. We
have tried to do it in a responsible manner. And here in education with
our seven key principles: quality education, better teaching, local
control, which is so important, accountability. It is so important to
have education accountability, dollars to the classroom, not to the
bureacracy, not to administration, not to Washington control or
mandates, but dollars to the classroom where they are most needed.
And not telling each school district they have got to use this money
only for this or that. They know, the parents know, the principals know
how to use those dollars.
Then parental involvement and responsibility. Responsibility which is
so important in our society. Sometimes it is a word that is forgotten.
No one wants to be responsible. And certainly we have had some 8 years
of people not taking responsibility, of also promoting a nonresponsible
society. That must change, because we must be responsible. We must be
accountable. And our young people must also be ingrained with that
philosophy if they are to succeed.
So we want to, again, take this message to the American people this
afternoon, my fellow Members of Congress. We are pleased to compare
what we have done, what we said we would do, and what we have
accomplished and what we want to do for the future. We have a great
model that we have presented.
Sure we have made mistakes. Republicans are human too. Sure, we have
not done everything the way we should do. But I can tell my colleagues
that this is not the time to turn to irresponsible management of the
Congress, irresponsible management of the District of Columbia,
irresponsible management over Social Security or Medicare that the
other side let go. This is the time to be responsible, to have programs
for the future based on sound experiences of the past.
Today, I have been able to hopefully outline some of what we have
done; what I have been able to do as a Member of this distinguished
body. And we are here to do the people's business and do it with honor,
and on a bipartisan basis. But, again, the American people must be
aware of the facts, particularly as we approach this most important
generational election. This is a critical election; and we do not want
to turn back to 1993, 1994, 1995, to tax and spend and regulate and
administrate from Washington in an irresponsible manner.
Mr. Speaker, this is the time for responsibility. It is the time for
us to really reflect upon the accomplishments that we can point to at
this juncture. With that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you taking time and
the staff taking time as the House concludes its business this
afternoon and returns on Monday. Thank you so much for the opportunity
to present this special order.
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