[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14794-14800]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        COLORADO CATTLE CONCERNS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Terry). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to invite those Members of 
the Republican Conference who may be monitoring tonight's proceedings 
and have something that they would like to add in the next hour during 
this special order to come on down to the floor and join in. I secure 
this hour every now and then on behalf of the Republican Conference 
just for that purpose.
  One of the topics I wanted to discuss was with respect to some good 
news in agriculture over the last couple of weeks. Because while the 
bull is still loose on Wall Street, months after the analysts and 
pundits first began warning in ernest of overpriced stocks and 
certainly financial meltdowns, another young crop of fresh-from-
college-20-somethings with a computer and a catchy slogan has launched 
their initial public offerings and made millions.
  Granted, short of cashing in their stock options, their net worth is 
only on paper and few Internet start-ups have yet to post real profits. 
But the investor cash fueling the IPO madness is real, and leading 
economic indicators suggest no predicted slowdown in the economy.

                              {time}  1845

  Consumer spending is up while unemployment rates are down. Business 
sector productivity, personal income and new home starts, all important 
indicators, are all on the rise.
  Yet while that bull stampedes through the streets of New York, many 
of the cattle along the dusty cattle roads of eastern Colorado are 
going nowhere. That just might change soon. Until this month, the 
Clinton administration has done little to help America's cattle 
industry and cattle ranchers in their decades-long trade dispute with 
the European Union over U.S. growth hormones which meant that 
Colorado's cattle intended for slaughter and export to European 
consumers were banned and banned on the basis of dubious science.
  Under prior World Trade Organization rulings, the European Union was 
required to drop its ban on U.S. beef imports absent risk assessments 
and scientific justificaton by May 13, 1999. The European Union refused 
to do so and in response the United States was notified of the World 
Trade Organization's intent to impose a 100 percent retaliatory tariff 
on approximately $202 million of European Union products. This level of 
retaliation is estimated to be far short of the true value of U.S. beef 
that would be exported to the European Union absent the ban, but it is 
enough to get the attention of those nations which might utilize unfair 
trade tactics in the future.
  Colorado agriculture increasingly depends upon the export market to 
expand sales and increase revenues and to expand world trade and 
agriculture has a significant impact on both the U.S. trade balance and 
on specific commodities and individual farmers. The cards are stacked 
against farmers and ranchers to begin with. No sector of the economy is 
subject to more international trade barriers than agriculture. The 
import quotas, high tariffs, government-buying monopolies and import 
bans imposed by other nations coupled with the overwhelming number of 
trade sanctions and embargoes imposed on other countries by our own 
government cost the American agriculture industry billions of dollars 
each year in lost export opportunities. These barriers continue to grow 
despite the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT, and the North 
American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Without question, they are 
devastating the ability for American producers to compete effectively, 
particularly at a time when exports now account for over 30 percent of 
U.S. farm cash receipts and nearly 40 percent of all agricultural 
production.
  This particular dispute over the presence of growth-promoting 
hormones dates back to 1989 when the European Union put into effect a 
ban on the production and importation of meat containing such 
compounds. Growth-promoting hormones are widely used in the United 
States as well as other top

[[Page 14795]]

meat exporting countries to speed up growth rates and produce leaner 
meat for consumers who display an increasing preference for reduced fat 
and cholesterol diets. Hormones used within the U.S. are regulated by 
the United States Department of Agriculture and are ones which occur 
naturally in an animal's body or that mimic naturally occurring 
compounds. The European Union banned the production and importation of 
meat derived from animals treated with hormones following an incident 
where a young boy was harmed after ingesting a concentrated quantity of 
an unregulated hormone produced in Europe. Citing extensive scientific 
evidence that U.S. growth hormones have been proven safe, the United 
States challenged the European Union's ban on the basis that it 
violates a 1994 Uruguay Round agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary 
measures. The sanitary and phytosanitary standards agreement requires a 
scientific basis for measures which restrict trade based on health or 
safety concerns. The World Trade Organization ruled in 1997 that the 
ban did indeed violate several provisions of those sanitary and 
phytosanitary standards agreements and ordered the European Union to 
eliminate the meat hormone ban by May 13, 1999. When the ban was not 
lifted last month, the United States decided to take action in the form 
of retaliatory tariffs.
  Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to pick up a newspaper today without 
reading about the extraordinary resilience of the United States economy 
and the significant profits being reaped by corporations and investors 
alike. Yet it is also difficult for me and other Members of Congress 
representing rural districts to talk with our neighbors back home, 
conduct town meetings or read through our constituent mail without 
learning of yet more foreclosures, defaults and farm auctions. Most of 
these people are not sharing in the windfall. Indeed, farm country is 
still in serious trouble and there is no evidence things are getting 
better. Low commodity prices, disease, weather-related problems, 
coupled with declining export opportunities, weak demand and 
overregulation have taken a devastating toll on agriculture. Real farm 
income has fallen dramatically over the last 2 years and real families 
are feeling the effects. While Congress recently helped stave off 
disaster in rural America with an emergency assistance package, it is 
evident that more needs to be done and more needs to be done to 
establish real long-term solutions across the board. That is why the 
decision to retaliate against the European Union for its unfair ban on 
U.S. beef, even if for just a fraction of the overall monetary damage 
to the U.S. and U.S. producers, is a step in the right direction and a 
significant win for Colorado ranchers and farmers, and I would submit 
for ranchers and farmers throughout the rest of the country.
  It is abundantly clear that in addition to free trade, America must 
guarantee fair trade. If I, other members of the majority and my 
colleagues on the House Committee on Agriculture can continue to compel 
the Clinton administration to pursue additional rightful corrective 
actions like this one, it might just give our farmers and ranchers back 
home a fighting chance and allow them to run with the bulls.
  I recently had an opportunity to hear back from a number of State 
legislators in Colorado. Their concern on the floor of the Colorado 
House of Representatives was one for another economic issue, in this 
case the cause of balancing our Federal budget. As State legislators, 
my former colleagues and current friends in the General Assembly 
realize that it is important for the Federal Government to get its 
financial house in order. The State legislature recently sent to 
Congress a resolution that it adopted in both houses of the State 
legislature. It is a House Joint Resolution, 99-1016. It is based on a 
number of items. The resolution was drafted and offered by State 
Representative Penn Pfiffner from Colorado and also State Senator Ken 
Arnold from Adams County in Colorado. It concerns the General 
Assembly's support for legislation that would require a balanced 
Federal budget and the repayment of the national debt.
  They cite a number of statistics, that the Federal Government has 
accumulated a $70 billion budget surplus in 1998, the first surplus 
since 1969, and is considering policies for using that 1998 surplus and 
expected surpluses for 1999 and future years.
  The Federal Government has amassed a national debt of more than $5.7 
trillion and in 1999 Federal tax dollars will be used to pay $357 
billion in interest just to the national debt.
  The costs of servicing the national debt have become an increasingly 
large portion of the Federal budget, rising from under 10 percent of 
the budget back in 1978 to 22 percent of the budget in 1997.
  Paying down the national debt will relieve future generations of the 
burden of paying the costs of servicing the national debt, says the 
Colorado State General Assembly, and they are right.
  Paying down the national debt does not exclude the use of Federal 
moneys for tax relief or for saving Social Security for future 
generations.
  Paying down the national debt will foster economic growth and 
stability.
  The American Debt Repayment Act which provides for budgetary reform 
by requiring a balanced Federal budget for each year beginning with 
Federal fiscal year 2000 and requiring a repayment of the entire 
national debt by the end of Federal fiscal year 2029 has been 
introduced in both houses, here and in the other body across the hall.
  The Colorado General Assembly urges the Congress in the following 
way. It says:
  Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the 62nd General 
Assembly of the State of Colorado, the Senate concurring herein:
  Number one, that we, the members of the General Assembly, support the 
objectives of the American Debt Repayment Act to pay down the national 
debt and maintain a balanced Federal budget; and, two, that the members 
of the General Assembly strongly urge the United States Congress to 
commit to a plan to repay the national debt before approving a budget 
resolution.
  These kinds of resolutions, Mr. Speaker, are important. States adopt 
these kinds of resolutions in their State General Assemblies on a 
routine basis. This is just one example. It is signed in this case by 
the Speaker of the House, Russell George, and the President of the 
Colorado State Senate, Ray Powers. These resolutions are taken to heart 
and utilized by many of us here in Washington. These are the voices of 
the front lines when it comes to government. In our strong tradition of 
federalism, we, of course, have separated the duties and 
responsibilities of governing our great Nation into generally three 
levels, the local level, the State level and the Federal level, and I 
am one who fundamentally believes as the 10th amendment to the U.S. 
Constitution suggests that it is States that bear the greatest 
responsibility in organizing and leading our societies through the 
political process. And so when States issue memorandum such as these 
and memorialize Congress to act in a certain way, Members of Congress 
should take heed, Members of Congress should pay attention, Members of 
Congress should respect the opinions of those who truly are on the 
front lines of leading our society. Those 50, as a Supreme Court 
Justice once observed, laboratories of democracy, the States, really do 
understand the importance of a strong economy and a responsible Federal 
budget and a responsible Congress when it comes to managing the fiscal 
affairs of the entire Nation.
  I want to jump to another subject for a moment. This is a much more 
personal one but one that is being carried out in a public way. I met a 
woman recently, I was speaking at an education conference in the State 
of Florida and a woman after the conference came up and gave me her 
business card and gave me some information about a program that she 
runs, because in the discussion about education and looking out for the 
future and the well-being of our children, she has a program that she 
has initiated and is carrying out with great success in Florida that 
she told me about and asked me if I would not come to this floor at 
some point in time and share her thoughts and her

[[Page 14796]]

objectives of her program with my colleagues. Her name is Tina Hesse. 
She is the abstinence coordinator for the Brandon Crisis Pregnancy 
Center in Brandon, Florida. She is one who comes to this particular 
mission of hers with tremendous commitment and compassion. She is one 
who has a personal story to tell and one who found herself at a young 
age to be with child and her credibility on the matter is one that she 
utilizes in a very positive way now to reach out to a number of young 
children all across Florida and hopefully even tonight throughout the 
country, because when she gives her presentation on teen sexual 
abstinence in high schools, her message is a personal one.
  She says, and I quote, I had a teen pregnancy when I was in high 
school, so I know where kids are in terms of their contemplation of 
sexual activity.
  She is 31 years old now and delivers a very powerful message to 
children, primarily in schools but in other settings as well. Her 
program is called ``Be the One'' which began as a West Palm Beach 
pregnancy center program in the early 1990s. Hesse said the program 
title means be the one to wait to have sex.
  There is a quote in an article that I am referencing here from the 
Tampa Tribune, May 20, 1999:
  Hillsborough Secondary Education Supervisor Tom Schlarbaum, who 
approved the abstinence program, describes Hillsborough's present sex 
education program as abstinence-based compared to the abstinence-only 
approach of ``Be the One'' but he says, ``The abstinence-only focus 
gives teachers another way to get a different message across.'' In his 
opinion it is an important one.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to point out on the subject of welfare reform 
just how well our country has done since the welfare reform.
  Approximately 42 percent of the people who were on welfare in 1994 
are off welfare now. We kind of take it for granted, well, welfare 
reform is working, but if we go back and we look at the struggle we had 
getting common sense welfare reform that was compassionate in that it 
wanted to help people, not push anybody out the door, not cut off 
anybody's insurance benefit or transportation or housing, yet at the 
same time say if you are able to work, you ought to be required to 
work. Yet despite that, the President vetoed the bill twice. The 
minority leader, Dick Gephardt, said this on the floor of the House in 
March 1995:
  ``A Republican welfare bill will throw millions of children out on 
the street without doing anything to move people from welfare to 
work.''

                              {time}  1900

  The gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink) said on July 17, 1996, it 
grieves me to be here this evening to see the end of a period of almost 
60 years in which this country's belief in its responsibility to the 
poor is going to be shattered. This is not reform. This is destruction 
of the basic guarantees of our democracy.
  Here is Representative Sam Gibbons on the floor, March 21, 1995: If 
Attilla the Hun were alive today and elected to Congress, he would be 
delighted with this bill that is here before us, and proud to cast his 
vote for H.R. 4, the Personal Responsibility Act. It is the most 
callous, cold-hearted, just listen to this rhetoric, the most callous, 
cold-hearted and mean-spirited attack on this country that I have ever 
seen in my life; just fighting that kind of irresponsible rhetoric to 
the rolls decreasing that were on welfare, people working, people 
feeling good about themselves, the teen pregnancy rates going down, the 
crime rates going down; people like this woman who are back in the 
education system or back in the workforce feeling good, happy, 
independent, no longer shackled by this government system which 
encourages dependence.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. If the gentleman remembers, at the time when that 
debate was unfolding here on the House Floor, the gentleman is right 
that a number of the more liberal Members of Congress, who view the 
government as the primary entity in organizing our society, believed 
that the American people really would not rally around the cause of 
helping the poor, of helping those who have become dependent on a 
welfare system, not just dependent but locked into a cycle of poverty 
that seemed to be never ending; that these liberals on the House floor 
who came to believe and approached the debate from the perspective 
that, my goodness, nobody else will be able to stand in the balance.
  I appreciate the comments about the reduction in teen pregnancy and 
what a positive result that has had. People like Tina Hess have really 
filled the void where government once was viewed as the sole provider 
of these kinds of services. She is one who has found a way, through a 
nonprofit corporation, to go into schools and deliver a curriculum that 
is helping to continue to reduce these numbers.
  Let me read one more final quote from one of the students. She said 
that the slides on sexually transmitted diseases show students how 
their lives can become miserable. A lot of teens think AIDS, or STDs, 
sexually transmitted diseases, will never happen to them but after a 
presentation at a school called Bloomingdale last week, one student 
wrote, and I am quoting the letter from the student, all this talk 
about pregnancy and STDs is going to make me stay a virgin until I am 
ready.
  Now that is the kind of response that has really flourished 
throughout the country where those who have made some poor decisions, 
but who also take their role as citizens seriously, have managed to 
provide a real leadership role in the community to help drive these 
welfare case numbers down. It is remarkable.
  In States like mine out in Colorado, over the last 2 years there are 
now 50 percent fewer families on welfare than there were just 2 years 
ago.
  Mr. KINGSTON. In the testimony of the people, here is a bus driver in 
Milwaukee, when welfare reform first started there were a lot of 
complaints; people were afraid how they would fit in. Everything was 
new and different, but now many people have gotten into it and the 
morale and self-esteem has been boosted. We can tell they feel good. 
Most of the people are happy, too. Look into their eyes. They are 
happy. The eyes tell no lies.
  Here is a former welfare mother: I could have succeeded long ago but 
I had kids and I was an over protective mother. I did take advantage of 
the welfare system, but now we are not living month-to-month running 
out of food. I earn $11.49 an hour. I am still in poverty but I know it 
is not going to last forever. Just a total turnaround.
  Here is an article from the New York Times, July 27, 1998: With 
caseloads falling at a startling pace for minorities as well as whites, 
taxpayers seem well satisfied with the new ethos of time limits and 
work demands, and yet here again going back to 1995 here was a quote 
from one of our colleagues, they are coming for the sick, the elderly, 
the disabled. I say to my colleagues, we have the ability, the 
capacity, the power to stop this onslaught. Another one said that 
welfare reform was like Nazi Germany.
  So often we in our society seem to work ourselves up into a froth; 
fear of the unknown. What we need to do is to have a little more self-
confidence and self-reliance.
  I love the story from the gentleman about this educator also.
  We have passed in this Congress, under Speaker Hastert, the 
Educational Flexibility Act, which has already passed the Senate and 
signed by the President, but the ed-flex bill gives local school 
systems more control, less Washington micromanagement, less bureaucracy 
breathing down their necks. Now, even though that is successful, we are 
starting it and most school systems say, yes, we want to run our show 
locally, we are trying to go a little bit further and do something 
called Straight A. What the Straight A program calls for is a charter 
between individual States and the Federal Government, and basically the 
Federal Government says that if the States meet certain outcomes and 
have high results, then we will free them from certain Federal 
regulations.
  My school boards in the 18 counties that I represent in southeast 
Georgia,

[[Page 14797]]

they are ready for that. They know they have the ability to educate 
children better in Georgia than Washington can educate Georgia 
children. So they are confident about it.
  I am sure in Colorado, and I visited the gentleman's people, they are 
full of that good old western pride that made our country so strong and 
they are as independent as anybody. I am sure they are going to be 
delighted to get into this Straight As program.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Absolutely.
  Our governor, Governor Bill Owens, is one who is looking forward to a 
day when there is greater flexibility to allow not only him but the 
rest of the Colorado General Assembly, and not to mention our school 
board leaders who are elected officials accountable directly to the 
people, these are the folks where they actually know the names of the 
students and the teachers and the administrators, all of these folks 
are looking forward to the day when they will be unleashed from the 
Federal rules and regulations that hamper their ability to teach 
children in an effective way.
  We spend billions of dollars here in Washington and yet for the 
billions we spend the actual proportion of Federal funds that actually 
reach a classroom is relatively small, somewhere on the order of 7, 6, 
sometimes as high as 9 percent, in some needy or poorer school 
districts, but for that small, relatively small, portion of Federal 
funds that make up an overall classroom budget, the strings and the red 
tape and the requirements and mandates attached to that minority of 
cash is overpowering.
  There are school districts in my State that have to hire people just 
to fill out the Federal paperwork so that they can get the money.
  This is money that comes to Washington. The American taxpayers are 
working hard every day and paying their taxes. The money comes here to 
Washington, D.C. The Congress then, through its formulas and so on, 
divvies up this cash in a variety of ways and then there is this huge 
bureaucracy not too far from where we are now that then goes to work on 
this money. By the time that cash makes its way back to Colorado and 
back to the State of Georgia and every other State in the Union, there 
is just a fraction left for the kids.
  That is what our Straight As proposal is designed to resolve, not to 
spend more money in Washington. We do not need to do that. We can 
actually increase the proportion of dollars that make it to a child by 
cutting all these silly rules and regulations.
  I know there are people over there in the Department of Education who 
are nervous about this discussion, nervous about the debate and they 
oppose straight As, and with good reason. Our goal is to get rid of a 
lot of those people. I will be candid and frank with the gentleman and 
with them and with the American people. I frankly care more about my 
children in public schools and all of the children of my friends and 
neighbors back in Colorado than I do about these people down the street 
here in the Department of Education. I want the money to get to the 
kids and to the teachers who know how to teach, rather than the 
bureaucrats who know how to provide paperwork and produce more 
headaches for communities around the country.
  This Straight As proposal, it is a big thing. There are 760 Federal 
education programs. The ed-flex bill that we passed dealt with, I 
think, 9 of them; 9 significant ones. It was a big step in the right 
direction.
  To follow up, to take the next logical step, to show the American 
people that we are serious about moving authority out of Washington and 
empowering our local communities, this Straight As proposal is a 
significant one.
  I might add that we have almost 100 cosponsors now in this Congress, 
including on our side of the aisle, the Republican side, every Member 
of that committee is on board, every Member of our Republican 
leadership is on board. It is a bipartisan bill. We have Democrats who 
are cosponsors of Straight As. This is a big initiative and an exciting 
one, and the gentleman is right, before I turn it back over to the 
gentleman, to suggest that the education leaders in my State, and I 
would bet in the State of the gentleman also, and the other 48 states, 
are really getting excited about the prospect of receiving their cash 
back without Federal strings attached.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I think that the question also on the subject of money 
is, do we want the dollars that we earn, that we work hard 40, 50, 60 
hours a week for, do we want that money, those tax dollars, that 
portion of our income, to go to a bureaucrat in Washington or do we 
want it to go to a teacher in a classroom?
  One of the things we have been pushing are more dollars to the 
classroom, not tripling the bureaucracy in Washington who is 
micromanaging our school system, and I think that is important. I think 
the local flexibility is the key, though.
  In Colorado, the gentleman certainly had the big tragedy in Littleton 
that we are all aggrieved about, but we need to ask ourselves, maybe 
Washington is, in fact, part of the problem. Maybe pushing large, 
impersonal schools, where the teachers do not know the students as 
well, maybe the teachers are afraid to question kids who are acting 
suspicious or odd or peculiar because they are afraid of being sued 
themselves, and this kind of atmosphere really has been fostered by 
this large centralized government that has grown in the last 10 years 
in our country.
  If people could run their own communities, their own schools and 
their own lives, I think we would have a much better society.
  It is interesting, while this administration rushes out after the 
Littleton tragedy to pass more gun control laws, they have completely 
ignored the fact that last year there were only 8 prosecutions for 
possession or discharge of a firearm in a school zone, and only 8 
prosecutions for possession of a handgun or ammunition by a juvenile, 
and 6 prosecutions for the transfer of a handgun or ammunition to a 
juvenile.
  As the gentleman knows, in Littleton 23 existing gun control laws 
were broken. We have all of these on the books, but this administration 
is not prosecuting. What a difference it would make if they would 
prosecute. We do not know how it would have affected Littleton, but we 
do know that there are a lot of laws on the books that this 
administration, this Justice Department, has chosen not to enforce.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Right.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I think it could make a tremendous difference.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. The whole theme here is one of local government. Local 
government is the closest to the people, the most accountable to those 
who are paying the taxes, and all three of these topics that we have 
discussed here really center around the theme of local authority and 
the notion that centralizing power and decision-making in Washington is 
a recipe for failure.
  Going back to the welfare issue, when the debate took place on 
whether to reform the welfare system, the gentleman is right, there are 
people who said we cannot watch Washington give this authority up; it 
will hurt people.
  We are seeing now in the debate on education reform the exact same 
dynamics. People here in Washington are saying, wait a minute; we 
cannot cut the Federal bureaucracy in Washington. That will hurt 
schools.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will stop there.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Sure.
  Mr. KINGSTON. This particular president has been very wise in 
appealing to the population of the country. He talks about less 
Washington power and welfare reform, even though he vetoed the bill 
twice. He talks about more control of education locally. Now, 
unfortunately, we know, after 7 years that he does not always do what 
he says he is going to do, but maybe all politicians are that way, at 
least a little bit.

                              {time}  1915

  But it is interesting that members of his party are often out of step 
with what he is in fact saying himself.
  In a case in point, in social security, we had a long debate about 
the lockbox concept, and the concept of a lockbox

[[Page 14798]]

is so that the Federal government would quit mixing social security 
funds for peoples' retirement with operating expenses to run government 
agencies. We passed that after a long debate. There were a lot of 
procedural tactics to keep the bill off the floor, but once it got on 
the floor it was passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.
  It went to the Senate, which up until this week has not moved on the 
bill and had no plans to move on it until the President finally came 
around and said it. But it is that fear, the fear-mongering that we 
hear over and over again. It is the same people saying the same 
irresponsible things to scare America's educators, America's children, 
America's seniors, the environment, and whatever. It is just a fear-
mongering tactic.
  Somehow, once we get through there, it is not as bad as they thought, 
for some reason.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. It is the culture of Washington that suggests to all of 
us here when we become a Member of Congress that no one in America can 
lead a successful life without somebody from the Federal government 
getting involved in their day-to-day affairs.
  The gentleman and I came here as part of a new Republican majority to 
throw that type of mentality out of the city. It is taking a long time. 
That mentality that I just described has deep roots in this town. But 
systematically, day by day, we are proving them wrong. We are showing 
that trusting the American people is a recipe for success, and we are 
seeing it now with an economy that is just cruising along and doing 
extraordinarily well. We are seeing that now with a discussion on the 
House floor and over in the White House about what to do with surplus 
revenues, if Members can imagine that.
  We are now talking about millions of Americans who are no longer 
dependent on the welfare system because we trusted local and State 
governments and the ingenuity of the American people to pull themselves 
up by their bootstraps. We just helped the Federal government get out 
of the way. That works.
  Listen to this quote, going back to the welfare discussion for a 
moment. ``The AFDC world is very insular.'' I am reading a quote from a 
high school counselor in Milwaukee, AFDC being the Aid to Families With 
Dependent Children program, which is really one of the primary programs 
in welfare.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Which incidentally is now temporary aid to needy 
families.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. He says the AFDC world was very insular. ``I don't 
think people left their neighborhoods. Now we are seeing a lot of 
mobility, people getting out more, families having a lot more exposure 
to services, like counseling and parenting classes. It seems like 
everywhere I go there is a sense of business in the streets, a lot of 
activity.''
  For a high school guidance counselor to make these observations in 
Milwaukee tells us where he is making these observations. He is seeing 
this in his children that he is serving. He is seeing this in the 
neighborhoods, where education becomes the important order of the day.
  I think the message of this high school guidance counselor and others 
who make these same observations is a message that needs to be told at 
the time we are debating education reform. It is the next step. If 
welfare reform worked by getting the Federal government out of the way, 
by empowering States, empowering local communities, and treating 
Americans like Americans again, perhaps we ought to try the same thing 
when it comes to schools: Get the Federal government and its 760 
Federal programs out of the way, and let those principals and 
administrators and locally-elected school board members and teachers 
and parents do what they know how to do, which is teach children and 
care about them and build strong communities.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I think it has worked for welfare reform, and we need 
to, I think, be bold in our initiatives with social security, with 
Medicare, with tax relief, and all of our other issues that we are 
dealing with in this Congress.
  The agenda, as the gentleman knows, that we are working on under the 
gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert) is the BEST agenda.
  B is for building a strong military, one that can fight a war on two 
fronts, defend our country, one that is ready and modernized and has a 
good quality of life for the soldiers; E, E is for education, local 
control, excellence in education; S is for saving social security; and 
T is for lowering taxes through spending reductions and through revenue 
that does not go to social security.
  One of the interesting things on the tax relief is that right now 
Federal taxes currently consume 21 percent of America's gross domestic 
product, the highest percentage in the history of our country.
  Last year tax revenues grew by about 9 percent, and the average 
American now works 129 days in order to pay off their total tax bill. 
This is an all-time high. When the gentleman and I were raised, our 
parents, say in the fifties, paid 5 percent Federal income tax on 
average. In the 1970s it was 16 percent. Today it is 25 percent Federal 
income taxes.
  What is really telling to me is that individuals and families who are 
earning $50,000 a year pay about 82 percent of the total Federal income 
tax revenue. Let me repeat that. Individuals and families earning 
$50,000, and I suspect that would probably be about 90 percent of the 
people who watch C-Span, they are paying 82 percent of the total income 
revenue, income tax revenues to the Federal government. That is a huge 
disproportionate tax burden.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. They are overpaying, too. The interesting thing about 
Washington, and what may frustrate many of these taxpayers who are 
working hard and know where every dollar of their income goes and where 
their taxes hurt, I turned on the news yesterday and discovered that 
the President of the United States woke up yesterday and found $1 
trillion laying around, discovered that there is $1 trillion in 
additional surplus revenue that the Federal government has all of a 
sudden found.
  That is a great thing, I think. What it shows is that the economy was 
even stronger than they realized over at the White House; that the 
entrepreneurial spirit of the American people is even more inspired 
than perhaps the White House gave it credit for.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me say this about that surplus that people often 
are missing in Washington. That surplus is projected on unrealistic 
spending restraints. We can say, we are going to have this surplus, but 
that is making a huge, a huge assumption that we are going to continue 
on a very moderate spending path which the gentleman and I know every 
day a new special interest group comes to us and says, break these 
spending caps, spend more than projected.
  To me, that is one thing that is wrong with the surplus. The other 
thing is, as the gentleman has already pointed out, it makes a big 
assumption that the economy is going to continue to roll along at the 
current rate.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. That is right. In order to make that happen and to 
encourage that kind of economic growth, the kind that we have 
experienced over the last 6 years, we have to make sure we do the right 
things that help foster economic growth.
  I want to ask the gentleman, just in terms of speculation and knowing 
the nature of the city, when there are extra dollars laying around, 
whether they are real or perceived extra dollars, can the gentleman 
define for the House what the gentleman thinks the debate will be over 
the next few months or years around this $1 trillion surplus that the 
President tripped over yesterday and accidentally discovered?
  What does the gentleman think will happen next on the House floor? 
Does the gentleman think we will have the courage to give that money 
back to the taxpayers?
  Mr. KINGSTON. There is a double-edged sword to bragging about the 
surplus. Number one, when we go out and talk about the surplus, we feel 
good politically because we say, look, some of our policies have 
worked, and for the first time since 1969 when Woodstock was held at 
Yasgur's farm, the budget now is balanced, or it is not in deficit.

[[Page 14799]]

There is still this huge Federal debt, but just the annual spending is 
not a deficit. So there is a political punch to Democrats and 
Republicans about it.
  But the down side is that we are also sending a signal out to the 
special interest groups that, hey, there is plenty of money here, come 
and get it, and wink wink, nobody will mind if we break our spending 
caps, the bipartisan budget agreement of 1997, because we have new 
money, and no one likes new money better than Washington's special 
interest groups.
  I am a member of the Committee on Appropriations, but it is not 
unique to us at all. Every single day a new group comes up and asks us 
to break that spending cap, that 1997 agreement. There are legitimate 
concerns. It is not just coming up with frivolous things, it is just 
that hey, we have legitimate concerns, and do we really have to go back 
and do the hard work of reinventing government or reinventing the 
status quo and figure out a better way to build a mousetrap? Can't you 
just give us more money this year? We hear it from health care, from 
education, from all kind of government bureaucracies.
  I am very, very concerned that that anticipated surplus is not going 
to be as large as we want it to be because we are going to use it as an 
excuse to relax our austerity.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. That is actually the point I wanted to make, because I 
do not care who we are, whether we are a liberal over there in the 
White House or on the other side from where we stand, we do not just 
find $1 trillion laying around. We either know it was there, or maybe a 
portion of it. We just do not magically wake up one day and discover, 
hey, we have $1 trillion more cash than we thought.
  The point I was intending to get to here is this: That waving that $1 
trillion surplus figure around to the American people really does send 
the green light, it sends the go signal to all of the lobbyists, all of 
the special interests, and even to many Members of this very Congress 
that, start smiling, it is time to spend again. We have money laying 
around.
  We really do not have huge piles of cash laying around Washington, 
D.C. There are lots of games and lots of manipulations that go into 
bragging about the size of this debt.
  There is no question that over the past few years, since the 
Republicans have taken over the control of Congress, we have slowed the 
rate of growth in Federal budgeting. We have done so to the extent that 
we have allowed the economy to catch up with us. But we do not have the 
trillions and trillions of dollars laying around Washington, D.C. to 
begin to start celebrating and spending.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The odd part is, and just in a personal home, it is fun 
to buy a new boat or a new car. I have had one new car in my life, and 
I have never owned a new boat, so I really do not know the feeling, but 
I know it is a lot more fun to buy maybe a new TV or a new stereo than 
it is to buy a new drier or to get a new set of tires for your car.
  In politics it is the same way, it is far more glamorous and sexy to 
go out and create a new government arts program or a new program for 
some special interest group that is going to help a limited number of 
people but it is going to sound real good to all, and we rush out and 
do that rather than pay down the debt.
  With a $5.4 trillion debt, I strongly urge, and I know the gentleman 
has been fighting for it, that we include not just debt service but 
debt payment in every budget that we have. We should have, and last 
year our colleague, Mark Neumann, advocated I think it was a 25-year 
budget debt pay-down that would have paid off the national debt I think 
by the year 2025, or maybe even sooner than that.
  That should be the center of the debate, not what are we going to do 
with this new money.
  That debt right now, we do pay interest on it, and that interest I 
think is something like I believe $500 per person, so a family of four 
pays about $2,000 a year in taxes servicing the national debt. That is 
$2,000 a year that could be used for college tuition, for groceries, 
for a vacation, for a couple of months of house payments.
  That money is absolutely gone to the bondholders. It does not buy 
better education, better health care, better national security, it is 
just gone.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. People in Washington like to take the credit for the 
strong economy and take credit for balancing the budget, and we deserve 
some credit, I think. As I mentioned, we did slow the rate of growth in 
Federal budgeting over the last 6 years. That has allowed the economy 
to catch up. But the American people are the ones that really deserve 
the credit.
  We can help in a number of ways. There are many people here in 
Washington who believe that we were wrong to cut taxes over the last 
couple of years. We reduced the capital gains tax, we reduced 
inheritance taxes, we managed to provide a $500 per child tax credit. 
There are an assortment of other taxes that we managed to knock down 
just a little bit.
  We have not repealed them or pulled back the overall tax rate nearly 
as much as we can and perhaps should. But those people who criticized 
us for trying to reduce the tax burden and provide tax relief are also 
wrong, because what we found was that by leaving more cash back home in 
the hands and pockets of those people who earn it, we have inspired 
those individuals to become more productive with their own capital, 
with their own wealth. They have created more jobs. They have made 
wiser investments.

                              {time}  1930

  It is, in fact, that heightened level of economic activity that is 
saving the country today. That is the reason we balanced the budget. 
That is the reason the President believes that, if those American 
people continue to do the same things, make the same wise investments, 
perform strong economically as they have been, over the next 15 years, 
that there will be the surplus.
  But it really means for us, I think, that we need to find more ways 
to ease the burden on American families and American business owners 
and people who are creating wealth and continue to shrink this 
government. Those are the assumptions the President has built into his 
numbers, but I do not believe that he has the commitment that the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) and I do and the rest of the 
Republican majority to actually stick to those budget caps and actually 
see the surplus grow.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we do not see any signs of it in the 
rhetoric that we are going to stick with this bipartisan agreement that 
everybody signed off on.
  But to get back in terms of tax reduction, one of the big problems, 
and the gentleman from Colorado knows the expression, I think it is 
attributed to Jesse James, but I am not sure, ``Why do you rob banks?'' 
``Because that is where the money is.'' Why do the rich get tax 
reductions? Because they are the ones paying the taxes.
  Now, I know that is real hard to accept when one builds political 
careers on class warfare and class division, as many politicians do. 
But the reality is, if one wants to give tax relief, one has got to 
give it also to the people who are paying the big taxes.
  As I pointed out before, households earning more than $50,000 are 
paying 82 percent of the income taxes right now. We have got to let 
them have some tax relief. But what is the benefit of that? Job 
creation. The entrepreneurs that the gentleman is talking about.
  Ted Turner in Georgia makes a tremendous amount of money. Do my 
colleagues know what, in schools all over America, they should be 
teaching kids how they want to be an entrepreneur, they want to grow, 
they want to have capitalization, they want to be independent.
  Now, not everybody is going to do that, be able to do that, and we 
want to have all kinds of jobs and options for people. We want to help 
those who never will be independent. But the reality is, let us do not 
punish Ted Turner when he gets to be where he is.
  I mean, has it been good for the state of Georgia and Atlanta for CNN 
to be located there? Absolutely yes. Is it good, all those jobs? Yes. 
Are those

[[Page 14800]]

people also, many of them who work for him, wealthy? Yes. Is that good? 
Yes. They buy lots of shoes and cars and stereos. They spend all kinds 
of money which creates jobs in Atlanta, Georgia.
  But we go at this thing with the myopic that they are rich. It can 
only be attributed to luck, not hard work and enterprise. Therefore, 
there is an injustice about it, and we have got to punish them for 
being rich. We hear that over and over again.
  But in this time of the surplus and the surplus, not all of it is 
coming from Social Security, but Americans are paying about $500 a year 
more than the government needs to operate.
  Now, I do not know anybody who likes overpaying a bill. I do not care 
who it is, if it is Bill Gates or the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Schaffer), nobody like overpaying.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. That is right.
  Mr. KINGSTON. So one are overpaying one's taxes by $500 more a year 
if one is an average family than we need in this room, in this Chamber, 
in this Congress to operate one's government with.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. It was Willie Sutton, by the way. Willie Sutton was the 
bank robber who told the judge, when the judge asked, ``Why do you rob 
banks?''
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman from Colorado intimate 
with bank robbers? How does he know these fine things?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I remember that. It was Willie Sutton.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, I only remember Shakespeare and Winston 
Churchill, so the gentleman can correct me any time on bank robbers.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I remember that in particular because 
there is another Willie in this town who looks at obtaining cash in 
much the same way. When asked why he prefers taxes to be high rather 
than low and why he prefers additional spending rather than less, the 
answer is much the same way. We are going to continue to tax the 
American people $500 more than they need to be paying because that is 
where the money is.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman has heard the old 
story about the man is driving down the road and sees a pig, and three 
of the pig's legs are wrapped up in bandages. Actually, he has three 
wooden legs. He says, what is the story about this pig.
  He says, oh, that pig is a magic pig. It has really done a lot. He 
said, one time the family was burning, the House was burning, and that 
pig ran in and pulled us all out of bed and saved the entire family. 
Another time, my son was drowning, that pig dove in the lake, swam out 
there and picked him up and kept him from drowning and pulled him back 
from shore. On another occasion, my little girl was in an automobile 
accident, and the car was burning, and the pig leaped through the 
window and pulled her out and saved her.
  The guy from the city said, well, that is amazing. That is a 
remarkable pig. But tell me, what about the bandages.
  He said, well, it is obvious. You do not eat a pig like that all at 
once.
  That is what the government is doing to the American entrepreneur, 
the American small business person, and the hard-working taxpayer in 
general, just grinding them down.
  Some statistics that I wanted to say, the Census Bureau says that the 
average household now pays $9,445 in Federal income taxes, which is 
twice as much as it was in 1985. The typical American family pays more 
in taxes than we spend on food, clothing, housing, and transportation 
combined. It is very similar to the story. You just do not eat a pig 
like that all at once, you grind them down.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, the people who have the most at stake in 
this debate really are those American families earning less than 
$50,000. They already pay above 82 percent of the overall tax burden, 
and they constitute 91 percent of incomes.
  When we talk about providing tax relief, trying to ease the burden on 
these very individuals, it will be the Democrats on the other side of 
the aisle that will come up here to these podiums and try to suggest 
that we are trying to reduce taxes on only the wealthy. Well, it is not 
the wealthy. It is 91 percent of all income taxes and 82 percent of the 
total burden being paid by those who earned $50,000 or less.
  I received a letter from a woman in Fort Collins who understands this 
full well. She says in one paragraph in this letter that she sent me, a 
woman from Fort Collins, Colorado, she says, ``Although my family is 
not wealthy, it makes sense to me to give the extra money back to the 
people who paid it.''
  I think that she accurately sums up the sentiment of most Americans 
if we ask, where should this tax relief go? Where should this 
overpayment and cash revenues go? It should go back to those who 
overpaid.
  Eighty-two percent of the taxpayers in America are those earning 
$50,000 or less, and those are the ones that we think deserve their 
money back.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I know that the gentleman's time is about 
to expire, so I will just close with this, that, again, under the 
leadership of Speaker Hastert, we are working on what we call the Best 
agenda. Again, the B is for the best, strongest military. E is for 
excellence in education. S is for saving Social Security. And T is for 
reducing taxes.
  We are making a lot of progress. This year, for the first year in 
many years, the appropriations bills will be passed out of the House 
ahead of the cycle, ahead of the calendar, and we are making a lot of 
progress.
  I appreciate the gentleman from Colorado allowing me to share some of 
his time tonight, and I look forward to working with him in the balance 
of the year.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia in 
joining this special order. America is good, not so much because of the 
Congress or our laws or things here in Washington. America is a great 
country because of the people and because of the philosophy of life 
that we have here in the United States. It is that philosophy and those 
people that we in order to honor more by not talking so much about 
growing Washington, but by shrinking the power of the Federal 
Government and encouraging and strengthen the lot of the American 
people.

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