[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14643-14644]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



THE SURPLUS, NATIONAL FORESTS, THE METRIC SYSTEM, AND THE DEFEAT OF THE 
                        NATIONAL DAYS OF PRAYER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to briefly mention three 
unrelated topics of national importance.
  First, the headlines this morning say that we will now have a surplus 
that is $1 trillion larger than we thought it was going to be over the 
next 15 years. This is the direct result of the Congress changing hands 
after the 1994 elections and becoming much more fiscally conservative. 
We should all be pleased about this.
  I remember in late 1993 or early 1994 when Alice Rivlin, who was then 
the President's director of the Office of Management and Budget, put 
out a shocking memo. She predicted then that we would have deficits, 
yearly losses, of over $1 trillion by the year 2010, and between $4 
trillion and $5 trillion a year by 2030 if major changes were not made.
  If we had allowed that to happen, our economy would have been 
devastated. Our children, who would have then been in the primes of 
their lives by 2030, would not have been able to buy homes or cars or 
almost anything else, as is the case today in many countries around the 
world. So we have made remarkable fiscal progress over the last 4 or 5 
years.
  A word of caution is necessary. We are still almost $6 trillion in 
debt. This still leaves us on very thin ice economically, but making 
good progress. Yet from what everyone up here is saying, people are 
starting to promise everything to everybody.
  I simply rise tonight to say that I hope we will not spend this money 
before we get it. The best economists in the world cannot tell us with 
absolute certainty where the stock market and the economy will be 1 or 
2 years from now. Yet, we are already gleefully celebrating and making 
major spending plans based on money we hope to get 15 years from now. 
We will get it if we remain fiscally conservative, but I say again, 
very simply, let us not spend it before we get it. If we do, we will do 
much more harm than good.
  Secondly, at a hearing of the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest 
Health this afternoon, it was brought out once again that we are now 
growing about 23 billion board feet of new trees and timber each year 
in our national forests. Yet we are allowing only 3 billion board feet, 
or only one-seventh of the new growth, to be cut.
  There is about 6 billion board feet of dead or dying trees and timber 
in the national forests. In other words, we are allowing trees to be 
cut at only half the number that are dead or dying.
  In addition, it was brought out that there are 500 million acres of 
forest land in the United States which are not in the national forests. 
This is an amount of land equal to about 900 Great Smoky Mountain 
National Parks. People look at a map of this country on one small page 
in a book and they simply do not realize how big this Nation is. Yet 
there are environmental extremists who just do not want us to cut any 
trees.
  If we are going to have healthy forests, we have to cut some trees. 
If we are going to have reasonably priced homes, books, toilet paper, 
newspapers, magazines, we have to cut some trees. And as shocking as it 
may to some who have heard only one side of propaganda from these 
environmental extremists, when we are growing 23 billion board feet 
each year in our national forests and cutting only 3 billion. We should 
cut much more so that our forests can be healthier and so that prices 
can be lower on almost everything.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to read on the front page of 
yesterday's Washington Times that many States are now moving away from 
the metric system. I am pleased that we gave the States some 
flexibility on this in last year's highway bill. This was something the 
Federal Government and a few powerful liberal elitists tried to force 
on us, but the American people never accepted the metric system. 
Unfortunately, this has cost our government at all levels and business 
many billions of dollars.
  There was never a good reason to go to the metric system in this 
country. We have made this very expensive effort only because it would 
be helpful to a few large multinational corporations and because some 
people unfortunately think that anything that is done in

[[Page 14644]]

most of the rest of the world should automatically be done here.
  Yet for most of this Nation's history, Americans were not afraid to 
be a little bit different, a little bit unique, a little bit special. I 
hope the Federal Government and all the State governments will be 
responsive to our own citizens for once and end this expensive and 
elitist effort to force an unnecessary metric system down on us.
  Let me add, Mr. Speaker, one other thing, just because of the vote, 
the defeat, we had on this national day of prayer bill that we just had 
in this body. William Raspberry, the great columnist for The Washington 
Post, wrote several years ago, he said, is it not just possible that 
anti-religious bias masquerading as religious neutrality has cost this 
Nation far more than we have been willing to acknowledge?
  A very good statement by William Raspberry, a very good question for 
all Americans to ask: Is it not just possible that anti-religious bias 
masquerading as religious neutrality has cost us far more than we have 
been willing to acknowledge?

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