[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 81 (Monday, June 14, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6689-S6690]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          DEFINING THE ISSUES

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, we are faced now with a relatively short 
period of time to finish our work for this year. We are down to a 
certain number of weeks--not very many--to do many things. We have a 
short time to finish the jobs that need to be finished. So I wish to 
comment a little on some of the things I have been thinking about in 
terms of the broader aspect of what our responsibilities are in the 
Senate.
  In the Senate, we are faced, of course, with many and varied issues. 
We have to deal with all kinds of things that happen and all kinds of 
issues that are brought up which are very legitimate. I guess this is 
my point: Our job is also to define the kinds of issues that are 
appropriate to be handled in the Senate, to be handled in the Congress, 
to be a part of the Federal activity.
  Sometimes I think we find ourselves having all kinds of issues come 
up in this Chamber which one could question as to whether this is the 
role of the Federal Government. Of course, our basic decisionmaking 
comes from the Constitution. But the Constitution is obviously fairly 
broad in its terms, so there is always a different kind of feeling, a 
different definition for what are the appropriate roles, the 
appropriate issues in which the Federal Government should be involved.
  I guess I am sometimes reminded that the Federal Government is only 
one of the functions that we have in this country to carry out the 
leadership and the activities for our country.
  It is the United States of America, so that the Federal Government's 
role is to bring together those things that affect a number of States, 
and the States to do those things that are involved in their State. 
They are closer to the people in the State.
  We also, of course, have county governments. We have State 
governments, and we have city governments. We have nongovernmental 
units. We have voluntarism. We have all kinds of things that are there.
  One of the elements of our work is to decide what should be treated 
as legitimate Federal issues and the kind with which we should be 
concerned here. I think we are challenged every day with that kind of 
definition. I am not going to try to cite all the different ones that 
come up, but I can tell you there are things that come up that you 
would have a hard time saying: Hey, that is the role of the Federal 
Government to decide.
  It is particularly appropriate to bring this up, after having spent 
the weekend celebrating Ronald Reagan's work as President and the job 
he did in leadership. His basic thought, you remember, all through his 
whole involvement was less government rather than more and wanting it 
to be more efficient rather than less efficient. So it does seem 
appropriate that we talk about those kinds of things as we go about our 
struggle.
  We are involved now, for instance, with the establishment of a 
budget. Frankly, a lot of people say: What do you want a budget for; 
you don't pay any attention to it anyway.
  That isn't true. The budget is kind of that definition of where we 
are going, and the Federal Government has some control in that if you 
go beyond the budget in the appropriations process, which often 
happens, then there is the defense mechanism that you can raise a point 
of order where it takes 60 votes to get it passed. So it is interesting 
to me that now we are having time for the budget. In fact, time for the 
budget has actually passed. Remember, this is the fiscal year that ends 
at the end of September, and we are supposed to have all of our 
appropriations finished by that time. To do that, you really should 
have a budget. And we are here on the cusp of having a budget, yet with 
some fairly insignificant differences why we are held up and don't have 
one.
  I was struck the other day by reading a little quote from James 
Madison. He said:

       In framing a government which is to be administered by men 
     over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first 
     enable the government to control the governed; and in the 
     next place, oblige it to control itself.

  That is difficult, a large event like we have in the Federal 
Government, to control the size and the activities of the Federal 
Government. So I think in many ways it has grown beyond what most 
people would have envisioned in years past. Whenever there seems to be 
a problem here, now we have continued to create the notion that you 
need some money for this, you need some money for that on the local 
level. Let's get the Federal Government to pay it. Then, on the other 
hand, we say: taxes are too high. Why should we be paying this much?
  So there is this built-in contradiction that is always there. But we 
need to take a look at the dollars spent. We need to take a look at the 
size of the Federal Government, the number of employees in the Federal 
Government, the number of agencies we have, and more difficult than 
anything else is to kind of keep track of the number of programs that 
are funded by the Federal Government. It is difficult sometimes.

  One of the difficulties is programs become established, and they 
continue. Times change. What was appropriate to do 10, 15 years ago may 
not be appropriate now, but it seems to be very difficult to ever do 
anything about the programs that exist, that sort of perpetuate 
themselves.
  So I think it really is interesting to deal with this issue and, 
again, to think about the role of the Federal Government.
  We are doing something in the committee that I chair, the Parks 
Subcommittee, where we have more and more heritage areas. We find 
ourselves having heritage areas most everywhere, and you get a little 
advantage locally. I understand that. But we are trying now to put down 
the definition of what a national heritage area ought to be. There are 
State heritage areas; there are local heritage areas; and then there 
are national ones, each of which has different characteristics. So 
these

[[Page S6690]]

are the kinds of things at which I believe we have to continue to look.
  As we have grown, I wanted to bring a little exhibit. I asked the 
general services office to make for me a list of all the programs that 
are federally funded. This is the book of federally funded programs. I 
am not saying they are not all excellent, but I am saying this thing 
continues to get bigger, continues to get larger, continues to have 
more and more programs and not much of an effort to go back and 
evaluate them to see if they are still appropriate, to see if they need 
to be changed, to see, indeed, if they need to be there. We don't 
really evaluate as closely as we might the new programs that are thrown 
out there, whatever they may be, to see, is this an appropriate thing 
for us to do at the Federal level or, indeed, should it be done 
somewhere else.
  So I have been feeling fairly strongly about this point. I am not 
sure we all recognize the size of the things that we do have. For 
example, how many employees do you suppose there are in the Federal 
Government? Quite a few? Yes, about 1.9 million. It has gone up the 
first part of this administration, and now it went down by about 
29,000. Now it is 1.861 million employees. And they are good employees, 
I understand that. I am not critical of the employees. But I am saying 
this is the size of the Government. We try to do some things to hold 
down the size, to hold down the spending. Maybe even more importantly 
is to keep Government as close as can be to the governed. I think we 
see this regionally quite a bit.
  I happen to be from a State in the West, a small population State. 
The kinds of programs, the kinds of administration, the kinds of 
governmental activities you need in our State are quite different from 
what they are in New York City or in Philadelphia. So having it closer 
to the people allows for the kinds of changes that need to be there. We 
are concerned about spending. Indeed, we should be. We spent, last 
year, about $826 billion on discretionary programs, not defense and 
those others. As a matter of fact, nonmilitary spending last year was 
up 8.7 percent over the last 2 years. So that is an awful lot of dough.
  At any rate, I just couldn't resist the idea of saying, let's take a 
little look at each of these programs, and let's see if they are still 
current, if they are still doing the job they were designed to do, if 
they are appropriate to be done on the Federal level as opposed to some 
other level of government, and what can we do to make them even more 
efficient.
  I was very impressed over the weekend with all of our recognition of 
President Reagan, his efforts to sort of do some of these things, keep 
them as small as possible, keep them as appropriate as possible. I 
think it is a job that we have as well, and one that I hope we will 
take up with more vigor.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith). The Senator from Arizona.

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