[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 28000-28007]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



             SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, tonight we need to talk about pizza, not 
just any pizza, but pepperoni pizza. I mean the hot, juicy, fresh-from-
the-oven, thick Friday-night, after-the-football-game pepperoni pizza.
  Because if you are like millions of Americans and you engage in that 
habit on weekends and other nights, you probably have great comfort in 
knowing that that pepperoni pizza was inspected by the United States 
Department of Agriculture to make sure that the pepperonis on that 
pizza were fresh, clean, and pure. I am glad that they do that, because 
food inspection is safe.
  Now, if you have a vegetarian in the family and that person wants 
just the cheese pizza, USDA cannot inspect that one. That pizza is a 
special pizza.

                              {time}  1930

  That pizza is inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. Now, you

[[Page 28001]]

may be saying to yourself back home, Wait a minute. You mean to tell me 
if I have pepperoni on my pizza, the Department of Agriculture inspects 
it but if I have a cheese pizza, the Food and Drug Administration 
inspects it. Why is that? Is that not inefficient? Is that not a 
duplication? I would say yes. And if you are asking that question, you 
are probably in the great majority of people in the United States of 
America from Miami to Maine to California and back, but there is one 
great exception and that is this place called Washington, D.C., because 
inside the Beltway of Washington, D.C., people think differently. They 
think, ``Pro-government, grow government, grow your agency, grow your 
department and then along the way if you create a little waste, don't 
worry about it.''
  Well, we have got an interesting phenomenon that the Congress is 
faced with tonight, Mr. Speaker, because we are in what I hope is the 
home stretch of the budget negotiations. In these budget negotiations, 
you have two schools of thought, that school that wants to spend more 
money and that school that wants to spend less money. Now, both schools 
of thought, I am sure, are good people. They both want a better world 
for our children. They both want security for our seniors. They want 
the uninsured to be insured and the unemployed to be employed and they 
want to make sure the uneducated get educated and those who have need, 
they want those needs answered. So I would say both sides are good 
people. But one side wants to spend more money. Now, the question is, 
where does that money come from?
  Well, we are in a situation, Mr. Speaker, where the only place to get 
new money in this town is Social Security. We on the Republican side of 
the aisle have said to our colleagues, ``We don't want to spend Social 
Security money on non-Social Security surpluses. And it is time for 
Washington to stop that habit.'' There is plenty of waste in our 
budget, such as the pizza program that we could get some additional 
savings out, so that the kids who need public services can get those 
services and the seniors can get them and the children can get their 
education. We can do this, but we are going to have to squeeze a few 
pennies out of the dollar. In fact I say few, only one penny. Let me 
show my colleagues a chart, Mr. Speaker.
  This chart, Mr. Speaker, shows what we are trying to do. We are 
saying in $1 to the United States Government, we want you to save one 
cent. That is not hard to do. I know it is not hard to do because I 
have lived on budget. I have got four children, two teenagers, then two 
children who still love me, and if you are the parent of a teenager, 
you know what I am talking about. My teen kids are very expensive and 
my little kids are very expensive, too, and I am not talking about 
buying clothes for them, I am talking about fixing the drier, getting a 
new refrigerator, getting new tires for the car because driving the car 
pools back and forth. That is real expensive. So it is not unusual at 
all at the end of a month or the beginning of the next one for my wife 
Libby and I to sit down at the table and say, ``Okay, we've got to save 
some money.''
  Where are we going to come up with some money? Usually on $5, we have 
got to come up with 2 or $3 worth of savings and we have to forgo nice 
things. My daughter, Mr. Speaker, is 16 years old. She thinks I am the 
worst dresser in the world. I might be except my dad is still alive and 
I still dress better than he does. But I say to my daughter, ``Hey, 
look, I used to dress well, until I had children, and I cannot afford 
to anymore. But you ain't looking too bad. I see the nice clothes 
you're wearing to school.''
  But we have got to sit around the table, Mr. Speaker, and find money 
in our savings, in our expenses. All we are asking the Federal 
Government to do is the same thing, get $5 and find a nickel out of it. 
Is there anybody in the sound of my voice who could not do that if you 
had to? If you had $5 and you had to come up with a nickel savings, 
could you not do that? We do it every day. Do you want the large drink 
or the medium-sized drink when you go through the McDonald's fast food 
line? ``I don't know. I'm not sure what the money looks like.''
  Do you want the large French fries or the small French fries? Do you 
want lettuce and tomato on your sandwich? ``I don't know. Is it 
extra?'' Should we pump the gas here at $1.07 a gallon or move down the 
street where it might be $1.05 a gallon? This is what the American 
public does every single day all over the country, except in 
Washington, D.C., where asked if you can come up with a penny out of a 
dollar, it becomes impossible. Let me show you proof of this.
  The President of the United States has a Cabinet. Those are his key 
advisers. One of the Cabinet members who has been asked to try to come 
up with a penny on the dollar is Secretary of Interior Mr. Babbitt. He 
was in a discourse with a reporter the other day, I say the other day, 
I am talking about October 27, so it was last week. The reporter said, 
``Is there no more waste in government in your departments?'' A simple 
question. ``Mr. Secretary, you're telling us there's no waste in your 
department.''
  Secretary Babbitt, and I quote, right here on the chart: ``Well, it 
would take a magician to say there was no waste in government and we 
are constantly ferreting it out but the answer,'' remember, the 
question is, is there no more waste, ``but the answer otherwise is yes, 
you've got it exactly right.''
  Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to ask you this: If you believe 
that there is not waste in the Department of Interior, I would like you 
to e-mail me and tell me your story, because I have never gone to a 
government business or even a private business where I could not find a 
way to save some money. I mean, it might be as unimaginative as turning 
off the lights a little earlier at night. It might be as unimaginative 
as putting on a valve on some of the water faucets. It might be as 
unimaginative as having to do a swing shift instead of paying the 
overtime all the time. I am not sure what the best solution is for the 
Department of Interior, but I know this: As somebody who sits on the 
Committee on Appropriations overseeing it, they have a lot of needs, 
and I can promise you, they have a lot of good projects, and they do 
not waste lots and lots of money, but I would still say to that very 
good department that runs our National Park Service and our Fish and 
Wildlife, ``You can still find a penny on a dollar. I know you can. 
You're good people, you've got that ability, so let's don't fool 
ourselves. But if you don't, where is the money going to come from?'' 
And the money is going to come from Social Security.
  Now, imagine, if you will, that we are in a room that is the size 
maybe of a triangle, and I am kind of thinking out loud on this, Mr. 
Speaker, but on one side of the triangle, you have a position staked 
out and that position is no tax increase. Then on the other side of the 
room you have a position that says you cannot take the money from 
Social Security. The other point in the room inevitably says you have 
got to cut your spending in order to balance the equation.
  Now, there are those in this body who still think Social Security is 
a cash cow for purposes that do not have anything to do with Social 
Security. In fact, the President of the United States in January in his 
State of the Union address stood right behind me in the well of the 
House, Mr. Speaker, right in front of you, and says, ``There's going to 
be a surplus in Social Security. Let's protect 62 percent of it.'' 
Well, why not 100 percent? And most Members of Congress opposed the 
President on spending the other 38 percent of Social Security and said, 
``We're not going to do that. We're going to preserve 100 percent of 
it.'' And the President did not like that idea, but we pushed and now 
we have not spent one nickel of Social Security.
  The President tried a tax increase. The tax increase fell on the 
floor of the House by a vote of 419-0, Democrats and Republicans saying 
``no'' to a tax increase. So now you have got to go back to cutting the 
penny out of the dollar. That is a savings. I had mentioned the pizza 
thing, but it does not stop there. Ben & Jerry's ice cream

[[Page 28002]]

gets this program, government program where they can spend $800,000 
exporting their ice cream and advertising overseas. I think it is great 
for people overseas to have the opportunity to munch down on good old 
Ben & Jerry's, but I do not think that the taxpayers need to be paying 
for a private business to do that.
  Another example, the President went to Africa last year. I am glad he 
is traveling and I think it is important to keep our international 
relations up, but who were the 1,300 Federal employees he took with him 
to Africa at a cost of $42.8 million? This was not a military exercise. 
This was good will. One thousand three hundred people to Africa at a 
cost of $42.8 million. It is absurd. Under our radical plan, all he 
would have to say to the 1,300 is cut it out, cut it down 1 percent, 13 
of you will have to stay at home. I know the gentleman from Colorado 
has joined me and he is not going to like what I have to say probably, 
but the mayor of Denver went on the African trip. I want to know, what 
is Colorado to our Africa policy? Not to pick on your lovely State 
where my sister and my mother live, but I can tell you one thing, that 
if the good people of Colorado were interested, then they ought to pay 
for their own Denver mayor to go to Africa.
  I feel the same way about the President's trip to China. He took 500 
people to China at a cost of $18.8 million. Who were the 500 people? 
Why did they need to go? I know the First Lady took a lot of members of 
her family and friends, but why not say, okay, some of you have to stay 
at home next trip, and that is not a radical idea. But if they do that, 
you can save Social Security. Let me yield to my friend from Colorado.
  Mr. TANCREDO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I also thank the 
gentleman for being as adamant as he has been and prolific in terms of 
the information he has provided for the American public on this issue. 
Certainly I should tell the gentleman that I had no input into the 
decision made by the mayor of Denver to go on that trip and certainly 
there have been no positive ramifications of that trip, to the extent 
that I am aware of it, anyway. I am a freshman and have only been here 
now for about 10 months. There are a lot of things that seem peculiar 
to me and a lot of things that when I come here and try to go home and 
then explain to my constituents about what went on and how this debate 
proceed on various issues, it is sometimes hard for them to understand 
it. I find myself often in a situation where I will be listening to the 
debate on this floor or in the committee and there is something about 
it that just does not ring true. You say to yourself, now, how would 
this play, how would this debate play out? What if I had to go home and 
explain this particular debate to the folks back home? And it really, 
when you think that to yourself while you are sitting there, it has 
this great effect on you, because it brings you back to reality. I do 
not know how many times I have said to myself in the last week or so, 
how would I go home and explain to folks the fact that I did not think 
that the Federal Government could afford to reduce expenditures by 1 
percent? How could I do that?
  There is a test I have, Mr. Speaker, and I think it is one you have 
paraphrased in a different way. I say, how would this play in the 
Arvada Republican Club? This is a group of gentlemen that have been 
meeting for years and years and years, gentlemen and ladies now, it 
used to be a men's club for a long time, it is now co-ed. I have been 
going to that club for 25 years, meeting on Monday mornings, in the 
Applewood area at a little restaurant. These are great folks, these are 
salt-of-the-earth-type people, and I think to myself, how would I stand 
up in front of them and say, ``In order to avoid the possibility of 
raiding the Social Security trust fund, we have proposed a plan to 
reduce spending by 1 percent, all agencies, and I think that that would 
be terrible. I think that that would somehow or other affect the 
operation of the government.''
  How would they respond? I mean, they would look at you and say, ``Are 
you kidding? What plane did you just land on? Was it the one from 
Washington?'' Because no one out there, Mr. Speaker, no one out there 
in the heartland of America thinks for a moment that there is not 1 
percent in waste, fraud and abuse. Most people would say that the 
figure is quite a bit higher than 1 percent, quite a bit more than 1 
percent.

                              {time}  1945

  They are right. It is far more than 1 percent that we could save if 
we just put our mind to it.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me claim back my time for a minute just to 
underscore your point. The Pentagon had to report as missing two $4 
million aircraft engines, two $850,000 tugboats, and one $1 million 
missile launcher. Anybody seen the missile launcher? We are looking for 
one missile launcher, $1 million worth. And the tugboats, the missile 
launcher blew up the tugboats when they put the aircraft engine in it, 
apparently.
  It is absurd. Erroneous Medicare payments waste over $20 billion 
annually. It is ridiculous.
  One example that I think is absurd, in Washington, D.C., which is 
largely funded by the Federal Government, they appointed a group to 
find jobs for people who are on welfare. This group had no employment 
placement experience at all. They got a contract, this is Federal 
dollars we are talking about, $6.6 million, to place 1,500 people. One 
year later they had spent $1 million and placed 30 people.
  I think the folks in Colorado would run you out on a rail if you said 
you could not find waste in government, as I know the people in Georgia 
would do to me, and most Members of Congress.
  Mr. TANCREDO. The gentleman is certainly correct in that. And, again, 
it is one of those peculiar things that you run into as a freshman when 
you end up here and people argue with great fervor against a 1 percent 
cut. People suggest that it will be the end of civilization as we know 
it, that people will be thrown out into the streets, people will go 
hungry if we in fact were to try to reduce this huge budget expenditure 
by 1 percent.
  But, you know, Mr. Speaker, I wonder sometimes whether or not people 
really and truly are concerned about the 1 percent cut, or they are 
worried about the possibility that this could start a trend. What if 
you could cut 1 percent and nobody could tell the difference? Did you 
ever think about that?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I think the gentleman has raised a good point. I 
believe you could cut 1 percent and most people would not know the 
difference. It is interesting that here is a quote I wanted to bring 
up, when asked why Democrats will not support finding a penny out of 
every Federal dollar in waste, fraud and abuse, even when the defense 
budget is $1.8 billion higher than the President requested, the House 
Democrat leader, Dick Gephardt, responded, ``They don't want 50,000 to 
70,000 people to be let go at the Department of Defense.''
  Well, here is the President, his own budget was $1.8 billion less, 
and now we are asking them to find 1 cent on the dollar, and the 
Democrats are claiming it is going to lay off 50,000 people. What was 
their budget going to do? It is just absurd. Only in this town can you 
have these kind of conversations. Out there in common sense America, 
you know, this would have been resolved in August, and we would be home 
by now.
  Mr. TANCREDO. If the gentleman will yield further, there is a 
situation that is analogous to this. I was appointed in 1981 as the 
regional director for the United States Department of Education, and I 
resigned my position in the legislature in Colorado to take that 
responsibility. One of the things we were told we had to do was to try 
to reduce the size and scope of the Department of Education to more 
accurately reflect its constitutional role. Well, of course, most of us 
realize that its constitutional role does not exist. There is not a 
single word in the Constitution about the Federal Government's role in 
education.
  But, anyway, we began the process of reducing the size of the 
department.

[[Page 28003]]

This was, as I say, September of 1981 when I took over the 
responsibility in Denver. Region 8, it is responsible for six States, 
Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, and the Dakotas. We interact with all 
of the State departments of education and with school boards all over 
those six States.
  There were 222 people employed in the regional office at that time. 
In the course of about 4 years, because of budget cuts and transfers 
and a couple of other things, we were able to actually reduce the 
number of people in that agency, in that region, by 80 percent. We went 
from 222 to approximately 65, if memory serves. And, you know what? 
Here is the important point I want to make.
  After that I would go to each one of those six States, to the chief 
State school officer and to the State boards of education, and I would 
say, By the way, have you noticed any difference in the service you get 
from our office, in the quality of the workload, the output, the 
quality of our work? Have you noticed any difference? And never once, 
not just with the State departments of education, I would give this 
speech all the time and I would say, Has anybody noticed a difference? 
We had gone down 80 percent and no one knows.
  That was my point about the 1 percent reduction. The fear is that you 
could actually reduce the Federal Government by 1 percent, and nobody 
would know the difference. What would that tell you? What would that 
tell people who actually want to see the Government expand constantly? 
It would say to them that we have got a problem here. People recognize 
it.
  That is what I often say, when we, ``shut down the Government,'' this 
happened several times while I was the regional director of the 
Department of Education. The President of the United States, President 
Reagan at that time, and the Congress could not come to closure on the 
issue. We did shut down the Government at least twice, and it may have 
been three times. And, you know, I keep asking people, could you tell 
the difference? Did you know that in fact this happened?
  So the frightening part of this whole thing is that you could do it, 
and nobody would know the difference. That is what scares some of my 
colleagues.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me clarify and make sure people understand, you are 
not saying to shut down the government. You are saying just reduce.
  Mr. TANCREDO. No one is even suggesting, not even the most ardent 
supporters of the President's plan or the ardent opponents of the 1 
percent cut, have suggested this would mean a shutdown of government. I 
am saying if you did, and when it has happened, you wonder to yourself, 
who knows the difference?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me read you another quote that is interesting. 
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, when asked if the administration's 
position is we should not reduce the size of the Federal budget, he 
responded, ``That would certainly be the view of the administration.'' 
That was a quote from last Tuesday, October 26.
  You know, we are just saying get the waste out of here. I have got a 
quote right here from Dick Gephardt that was from October 24, 1999, and 
when asked about spending Social Security funds, he says, ``I 
understand there is a feeling now that since we have a surplus, and 
since we got to get ready for the baby-boomers, that we really ought to 
try to spend as little of it as possible, and none, if possible.''
  Well, you know, that is leaving the door cracked. And, you know, 
again our budget says cut out the waste and you can do it.
  A couple of other examples. I do not know if you are aware of this, 
but approximately 26,000 dead people receive food stamps to the tune of 
$8.5 million. That would feed a lot of live people. Maybe we should 
concentrate on those who are not dead and maybe more people would do 
better. That would be a little healthier.
  Supplemental Security Income fraud, and this is a special, basically, 
payment to people, fraud that exceeds $1 billion a year, including a 
convicted murderer who has been on death row for 14 years and received 
$75,000 a year in SSI benefits.
  Another example: the Government lost over $3.3 billion on students 
who never paid back their student loans. Then here is a story of a 
defense contractor who charged the Government $714 for an electric bell 
that was worth only $46.
  All we are saying is let us go after this before we go after 
Grandma's Social Security.
  I see we have been joined by the gentleman from Minnesota, the heart 
of Hormel and Spam country.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Kingston, thank you for yielding and having this 
special order. I was listening in my office to this, and I really had 
to come over here for a couple of reasons. First of all, to just 
highlight how far we have come.
  Since I came to Congress in 1994, in fact, next Tuesday we are going 
to celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the elections of 1994, November 
8. We are going to have a class reunion. I am the class president now 
of that class. I am happy to report virtually all the members are 
coming back. It is going to be a great reunion.
  But, because of that, I have been thinking a lot about what it was 
like in 1993 and 1994 when Washington believed that Washington had all 
the answers, whether it was talking about health care reform, we were 
going to have a government-run, State-run, Federal bureaucratized 
health care delivery system. And it was interesting, too, I need to 
make the point about that, when that was first introduced, it was 
supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. But then they 
started to get the facts and public opinion changed.
  We were talking then about larger and larger bureaucracies and more 
and more government spending, more and more government borrowing. 
Finally, the American people in November of 1994 said enough is enough, 
and they sent a whole new team of us, 73 Republican freshmen to 
Congress. They said, You know, we don't expect much from you, but at 
least balance the budget.
  We said, If you will elect us, we will balance the budget by the year 
2002, in 7 years. And let us go back and remind ourselves and some of 
our colleagues of what other folks were saying then.
  The folks in the White House were saying you cannot balance the 
budget in 7 years. You might be able to do it in 10, maybe 8, but not 
7. Well, then we went back and forth. But basically what we said is if 
you dramatically slow the rate of growth in Federal spending, if you 
begin to reform the entitlements, like welfare, that you can actually 
balance the budget and provide tax relief at the same time.
  I remember the argument that we had about tax relief. You probably 
remember it well, and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) was in 
Colorado, but you remember some of the arguments raised. They said if 
you lower the capital gains tax rate, you are going to deny government 
the tax revenue. This is the quote used over and over again: ``You are 
going to blow a hole in the deficit.'' Remember that?
  We lowered the capital gains tax rate; we lowered it 30 percent. On 
top of that, we said to every family in America, we are going to make 
it easier for you to raise your kids. We are going to give you a $500 
per child tax credit, and that is now in effect, so that every family 
in America has more money to spend themselves, because we said that if 
you limit the growth in Federal spending and you allow families to keep 
more of what they earn, guess what? The economy will grow faster. And 
it has.
  As a result, we did not have to wait until 2002 to balance the 
budget. We actually balanced the budget last year. On top of that, we 
did it for the first time in 40 years without raiding the Social 
Security Trust Fund. That was a huge milestone.
  I know some are saying, Yeah, you balanced the budget. You didn't use 
Social Security, but what have you done for us lately? That is no small 
accomplishment. It was accomplished principally by dramatically slowing 
the rate of growth in government, by letting people keep more of what 
they earned, and allowing Americans to do what they do best, produce, 
consume, and create jobs. So the economy grew.

[[Page 28004]]

  That is a huge accomplishment. But sometimes, though, we as 
Republicans talk in terms of dollars and cents, percentages, debits and 
credits; and we start to sound like accountants. Balancing the budget 
without using Social Security is really about generational fairness, 
because what it is saying to our parents is you are going to have a 
more secure retirement. It is saying to working people like ourselves, 
middle age folks, baby-boomers, the people who are actually working 
right now, it means you are going to have a stronger economy. And it 
means to our kids that they can expect a brighter future.
  So it is not an accounting exercise; it is really about generational 
fairness. And that happened because we have slowed the rate of growth 
in government so that not only do we have the first balanced budget 
without using Social Security, here is another amazing statistic that 
most of our colleagues do not know, so I just assume that most 
Americans do not know it. But for the first time in my memory, I think 
in my adult lifetime, this year the Federal budget will grow at a 
slower rate than the average family budget.
  In some respects that is an even more important statistic, because we 
are finally allowing families to catch up. For too long the Federal 
Government was growing at 2, 3, sometimes almost 4 percent higher than 
the rate of the average family budget. They could never catch up. All 
they could do is pay more and more taxes. That is why more and more 
families had to have both Mom and Dad working so they had less time to 
spend with their kids. All of a sudden you had more social problems.

                              {time}  2000

  So we have accomplished a great deal. What really got me excited when 
I listened to the gentlemen over there, when people say that we cannot 
find 1 percent of waste in the Federal bureaucracy, and we stepped up 
and we said, listen, Members of Congress, we have to lead by example, 
so we said, congressional pay raises should be on the table, as well.
  Nobody else's pay raise is on the table. I want people to understand 
that. Nobody's social security cost of living adjustment is on the 
table, nobody's veterans benefits, just congressional pay. But I think 
it was the right thing to do. We have to lead by example.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, is the White 
House or the executive branch's salary included?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I do not believe they are included in that as well.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I would ask the gentleman, has the President made the 
offer?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I do not remember that he has.
  Mr. KINGSTON. So the position on the social security money, do not 
cut spending?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. All I am saying is, we will lead by example, 
regardless of what the White House may do. That has been the example 
all the way through. When we said you have to reform welfare, we sent 
them a bill. They vetoed it. We sent a second bill, they vetoed it 
again. The third time, public opinion and the pressure of the polls 
forced the President to sign the bill. As a result, we had welfare 
reform.
  As a result of that, we have got 50 percent fewer people on welfare 
today than we had just 4 years ago, 5 years ago. That is an amazing 
accomplishment.
  But back to the story of waste. It bothers me when people with a 
straight face can say that there is not 1 percent worth of waste in the 
Federal bureaucracy. Try explaining that to any farmer in America. They 
are tightening their belts to the tune of 10 percent, 15 percent, maybe 
20 percent over what they were receiving just a few years ago for their 
crops, and so the idea that they cannot trim spending 1 percent really 
outside of the beltway is not even a funny joke.
  So I want to thank the gentleman for what he is doing, and I want to 
encourage the gentleman to continue to press this case in looking for 
ways that we can eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal 
budget.
  At the end of the day it is easy to forget in Washington, it is not 
our money. We are spending other people's money. They work very hard. 
It is easy to forget, and my colleague mentioned one of my favorite 
luncheon meats which we serve every Thursday here in the Capitol. I 
have gone there where they make that luncheon meat. I have watched 
those people work. They work very, very hard for their money. I think 
we owe it to them to make certain that we do not waste it. For too long 
that has been the standard here in Washington. We need to change that 
standard.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota. I want to elaborate on the 
point he has made on how incredibly important it is that we have 
accomplished something so significant, and it has to be heralded. That 
is that we have not only been able to do economically what the 
gentleman has suggested, balance the budget far before we thought we 
were ever going to be able to, not raid the social security trust fund, 
but we have done something more important than that, I would suggest. 
We have actually changed the way people think and talk about the social 
security fund, trust fund.
  Before, as the gentleman knows, since 1965, actually, or 1964, it was 
an accepted practice around here to spend all of the money that came in 
as a result of social security, FICA taxes, to spend it on government 
programs, not put it away for social security but spend it on welfare, 
and spend it, well, not all that much on the military, because that 
actually went down in the last few years, but spend it on programs.
  But now we have the other side fighting on our turf. This is an 
enormous accomplishment. If we can get the people in this country to 
concentrate on the fact that social security should be held inviolate, 
that we should never be able to spend social security dollars on 
anything but social security-related issues and the trust fund itself, 
we will have changed the course of history in America, because we will 
have stopped the government from growing by about $2 trillion over 10 
years just because of the way people think.
  If they hold our feet to the fire, if everybody out there says, next 
time, next Congress, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, if they say, 
no, no, what are you talking about, spending social security trust fund 
money on something else; if all of a sudden that catches hold and they 
stop the Congress from doing that just because of public pressure, and 
frankly, there is nothing else that can stop us, we all know that, if 
they can do that, we will have accomplished an incredible thing for our 
children, our grandchildren, and for America.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I think it is 
historic in its own right that we are even having the debate about not 
spending the money.
  Mr. TANCREDO. It is.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Republicans, we have been guilty, and Democrats, they 
have been guilty, have spent this money in the past. But this Congress 
has not done it, and so the fact that we are having this dialogue is 
great.
  Here is a chart from the Congressional Budget Office that certifies 
that we are not spending social security money. This is a number that 
came from the Congressional Budget Office or our congressional bean 
counters on October 27, last week.
  It said, projected on-budget surplus, $1 billion, under the 
congressional scoring system. This is from a neutral third party saying 
that we have not spent social security money.
  But again, this is historic that we have this opportunity. I kind of 
get a little bit charged up, and we do have some finger-pointing, some 
good bipartisan finger-pointing, in the morning, in the 1-minutes, 
where Members are saying, they are spending the money, they are not 
spending the money.
  Well, it is good that at least we consider this debatable, because it 
has not been. Again, both parties have been guilty of it, but this 
Congress is different. It is such a great position to be in now. But we 
have to continue with

[[Page 28005]]

the waste and abuse or we are not going to be able to have these 
bragging rights come adjournment next week or next month.
  We have been joined by our good friend, the gentleman from South 
Dakota (Mr. Thune). I know he has been a leader in cutting out fraud 
and waste in government, and also one who has insisted on not spending 
the social security money.
  I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for 
yielding to me. I am glad to join in with my friend, the gentleman from 
Colorado, and my friend, the gentleman from Minnesota, with whom I 
serve on the Committee on Agriculture. That is an issue that is 
important to our part of the world.
  We have found within the existing budget resources we have the 
wherewithal to fund those important priorities. I do think it is 
important that we note in this whole debate that we are willing to 
fight the good fight, to continue this effort to make the Federal 
government smaller, make it more efficient, find those places in the 
budget that are wasteful, where the taxpayer dollars are not being used 
for the best return on the dollar, and guided by a very simple 
principle, which I think is what is so remarkable about the debate we 
are having this year.
  That principle is this, that we are going to, for the first time in 
30 years, not raid social security. I think that the American people 
whose retirement security, the trust fund, is ought to be delighted. I 
think this is really a cause for celebration in the Congress, because 
it is the first time it has happened in 30 years, and it is a tribute 
to those who have come before, people like the gentleman from Minnesota 
(Mr. Gutknecht), the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), who came 
here in the previous classes of Congress and said, we are going to get 
this Federal budget under control and we are going to make those hard 
decisions to bring Federal spending into control, and to a place that 
allows us to be where we are today, and that is the first balanced 
budget in a very long time.
  I think that is historic. It is significant. We need to stay the 
course. As we all know, and I do well know now, having been here for 3 
years, there is a tremendous inertia here in this city to spend money. 
It is the way it is. Washington spends money.
  My dad used to say, when I had a dog that I could not get to behave 
the way I wanted it to, he would say, it is the nature of the beast. 
The nature of the Federal beast is to spend money. The only way we can 
tame that beast is to apply discipline. It takes discipline.
  Those decisions are hard, those choices are hard. Yet I feel again 
very proud of the fact that we have been able to come up with a budget 
this year which meets all the important priorities: which actually 
spends more on defense; which beefs up our national security, which is 
a concern we have all had; which addresses those needs like law 
enforcement, education, and actually puts more into education than what 
the President requested in his budget, and yet does not go into or raid 
the social security trust fund.
  In order to do that, what do we have to do? We have to come up with a 
1 percent across-the-board reduction in discretionary spending, 1 
percent off of all the array of Federal Government agencies and 
departments as they go through their budgets. They do not even have to 
look at program areas, they can do this in the form of rooting out 
bureaucracy and getting rid of a lot of the administrative waste that 
exists in the government.
  I think the American people will believe, and I think most of us in 
the Chamber here this evening believe, Mr. Speaker, that we can find 1 
percent, that we can find that 1 percent in welfare spending and root 
it out, and thereby allow us to protect our pledge and our commitment 
to the American people that we will not raid their retirement security.
  I do not think Members can see this from there, but there is a chart 
there which essentially shows the same thing, but this is the amount of 
the social security trust fund which has been spent over the last 15 
years. That chart drops off dramatically, and it is down to zero today 
because we again adopted as a matter of principle in this debate over 
the budget that we are not going to raid the social security trust 
fund, that that is too important to the future of the people of the 
country who make the investment, who pay the payroll tax at every 
check. They deserve to know with confidence and assurance that when the 
time comes, those retirement dollars are going to be there for them.
  As this debate ensues, my understanding is that the President will in 
fact veto this legislation that we will send him, this proposal to 
reduce spending by 1 percent across-the-board, but I understand that he 
will be willing to sit down with us and to figure out exactly how we 
can fund the programs of government, and do it in a way that does not 
in any way jeopardize social security.
  I think that is a critical point. I do believe again, as a matter of 
practice, in the last several years since the Members came to the 
Congress, since I joined the class and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Tancredo) joined it most recently in the freshman class this year, 
there has been a conscious, deliberate effort to bring Federal spending 
under control, and do it in a way that allows us to shrink the overall 
cost of government, make it smaller, make it more responsive to the 
American people, and to shift power out of Washington, D.C. and back 
into the homes and families of so many Americans who I think have spent 
a lot of dollars over the years of their tax dollars.
  They need to know, again with some degree of certainty, that those 
dollars are going to be set aside for their retirement security. We do 
that in this year's budget. I think it is historic, and I look forward 
to the debate that ensues.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Committee on the 
Budget, what we are doing here, it is not only historic, it is very 
difficult. If it were easy to balance the budget, it would have been 
done 40 years ago. If it were easy to balance the budget without using 
social security, it would have been done a long time ago.
  But we have lowered the bar on ourselves and made it more difficult 
to balance the budget by, for the first time in 40 years, saying not 
only are we going to balance the budget using the old way of keeping 
score, we are going to change the way we keep score.
  That is the point the gentleman from Colorado was making. That is why 
it is so important, because once we change that in the minds of the 
American people and in the minds of the folks even here in Washington, 
that that now is off limits, all of a sudden we have changed the game 
for a long time to come. That is a very historic and important thing. 
But it made it more difficult.
  A couple of things that made it even more difficult, because 
sometimes we forget it, and the American people certainly forget this, 
and I think many of our friends on the left would like to forget this, 
but part of what made it so much more difficult is we have had so many 
``emergencies'' in the last couple of years.
  It is not just about hurricanes and earthquakes and floods and 
droughts and pestilence and the other things that we have had for 
emergencies, but we have had an emergency in the farm community. It 
happened for a variety of reasons.
  I know some of our friends say, well, it was all freedom to farm. 
Freedom to farm had nothing to do with the fact that we have had three 
consecutive worldwide surpluses, and crop prices and commodity prices 
have dropped through the floor. We had to respond to that. That was an 
extra almost $9 billion.
  On top of that, we have been involved in something like 33 different 
military adventures over the last 7 years. One of them just in Kosovo 
and Bosnia has ultimately cost us $16 billion. That $16 billion was not 
accounted for in our original budget plans over the years.
  A lot of our friends are saying, well, but even with that we had to 
use some

[[Page 28006]]

gimmicks. I do not like the term gimmicks, but there are some things in 
the budget I wish we did not have to do. I wish we were not talking 
about a 1 percent across-the-board cut, though I think we should do it. 
I wish we were not talking about advanced funding or forward funding.
  But the truth is the President put some of those things into his 
budget when he submitted it back in February.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Actually, $18 billion comes right out of the Clinton 
White House budget. It is interesting that when the White House does 
it, it is sound accounting procedures, but when Republicans do it, it 
is a gimmick.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. The point is, we have all of a sudden been confronted 
with some expenditures, whether it was in agriculture or other 
emergencies here in the United States, and people say, what about the 
Census? The Census is not an emergency. That is correct, but do Members 
know what, for some reason, and it was an honest mistake I believe on 
the parts of all the negotiators, when we negotiated the balanced 
budget agreement in 1997 with the White House, which in itself was an 
historic agreement, and I was there the day the President signed it, 
but for some reason we did not include that $4 billion in our future 
spending plans, so some way or another we have to figure out a way to 
pay for it. Whether we call it an emergency or take it in regular 
spending, it still amounts to total spending.
  What we have said is, we are going to limit total discretionary 
spending to about $592 billion. That is still a lot of money, and I am 
convinced in my bones that there is more than enough money in that 
budget to meet the legitimate needs of the Federal government and 
everybody who depends upon it.
  There is not enough room in there for all of this fraud and waste and 
some of the things Members have been talking about. But the point I 
want to make is we have made it more difficult on ourselves to balance 
the budget because we have lowered the bar with the social security 
trust fund.
  The President and some other factors have made it even more difficult 
because of Kosovo, because of Bosnia, because of emergencies, because 
of what is happening out in farm country.

                              {time}  2015

  But you have got to hand it to our leadership. They have found a way, 
and in some respects using creative accounting, I will admit that, but 
they found a way to make room for all those needs and requirements to 
take care of the legitimate needs of our veterans, take care of the 
legitimate needs of educations, funding education at a higher level 
than the President asked for, funding veterans programs at $1.7 billion 
more than the President asked for, actually finding more money for 
defense, trying to squeeze other areas of the budget.
  Frankly, I am very, very proud of this budget; and I am very proud of 
this Congress, because we will have done something and hopefully 
started a new chapter for America that it will take many, many years to 
reverse. In fact, I hope it never goes back to the way it used to be.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Tancredo).
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, in Colorado, we passed several years ago, 
I think it was 1994, we passed something referred to as the Tabor 
amendment. It simply says that the government of the State of Colorado 
cannot spend more than it takes in, nor can it increase taxes by any 
more than a percentage equivalent of increase in population growth and 
inflation. That is it. If we take in more money than that formula 
allows, it must be returned to the people.
  Now, first of all, during the course of that debate, we heard the 
same kind of things from the people opposing it as we heard from the 
people who are worried about this 1 percent savings that we are 
proposing here, that it could not happen, that government cannot 
operate under such constraints, that there would, in fact, be people 
out in the street, there would be people hungry at night, that 
essentially it would be the end of civilization as we know it.
  Well, we passed this in 1994. Every single tax increase above that 
budget cap that is set now in the Constitution allowing growth only for 
population and inflation, and inflation has been very low, every budget 
increase at any level, State of Colorado, local districts, special 
districts, whatever, has to go to a vote of the people.
  Now, what has happened, the people in their wisdom have accepted some 
things, have passed some budget increases, and have rejected many 
others. It was not as if there was a wholesale disregard. No, people 
understood very well that some aspects of government needed an increase 
and some did not.
  But my point is this, that not only did we avoid the dire 
consequences that were suggested as a possibility if we were to pass 
such a draconian measure, but the economy has gone wild. Jobs increased 
tenfold. Every single good thing that could possibly happen in the 
economy has happened in the State of Colorado.
  We are paying the price in a way because, of course, now we have the 
problems with infrastructure catching up to the economy's growth. But 
those are good problems to have. They are in the exact opposite of the 
kinds of things that people said would happen if we were to try to 
constrain ourselves.
  I assure the American public tonight that if we took 1 percent off of 
next year's budget, that there would not be the kind of dire 
consequences that our friends on the left suggest would occur, that we 
can live within a 99 percent budget. We can do it. Believe it or not, 
America, it can happen.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, we have about 3 or 4 
minutes left, so I wanted to give everybody a chance to close. But one 
of the things I want to point out is that there are many Members on the 
Democratic side of the aisle who say it is hard to argue against 1 
percent reduction. We think we can do it. We, too, do not want to spend 
Social Security. So it is really a matter of let us work through it 
with the White House and get this thing done because I think that so 
often we look at this as Republican/Democrat, but there is this 
Congress, legislative branch versus the executive branch.
  But the vision is clear. Do not spend Social Security money. Do not 
increase taxes. But balance the budget through spending less. There is 
a lot of bipartisan agreement on it. What we need to do is finish the 
agreement up and leave town. I think the people in America feel a lot 
better when Congress is out of session rather than when we are in 
session.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I would also 
add, too, to what he just said that, another thing that is important, 
and I hear all across South Dakota when I travel the State is, why do 
you guys not do something about paying down the Federal debt?
  That is something now for 2 years in a row we are actually going to 
pay down debt. The reason that we are able to do that is because, 
again, through the hard work of the American people and generating the 
surplus and to agree that Congress has any control over this, it is in 
the area of controlling fiscal or Federal spending and keeping the tax 
burden under control, which we did, and we reduced taxes.
  The gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) noted earlier that 
reducing the capital gains tax actually increased revenues and put us 
in a position now where we are running surpluses. But the reality, of 
course, again is that we would not be in this position if we had not 
exercised control over Federal spending.
  It allows us to pay down Federal debt, which is a huge, huge 
priority, ought to be, so that for the next generation on whose back 
all of this is going to fall someday, we are actually lifting that 
load.
  So there are a lot of awful good things in here. I think, again, in 
the interest of trying to do this in a responsible way, asking Federal 
agencies and departments to come up with 1 percent in savings, we have 
all heard about the

[[Page 28007]]

illustration, some of my favorite ones, $850,000 for Ben and Jerry's 
ice cream to go to Russia and the $1 million outhouse at the top of 
Glacier National Park. Those are examples of things that we are talking 
about, finding that 1 percent that allows us to balance this budget 
without raiding Social Security.
  That is a huge accomplishment. Again, at the same time, couple that 
with allowing us to pay down the Federal debt. So these are all things 
that are incorporated in this budget process this year, and we ought to 
do the best we can to resolve the differences with the White House and 
to go home.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, just in 
summation, I would say that, really, the central questions are these: 
What are we going to do to guarantee our parents a more secure 
retirement, and what are we doing to make certain we leave our kids a 
legacy that we are proud of in terms of debt?
  I think the answer is we have to dramatically control, slow and 
control the rate of growth and Federal spending. If we do that, then 
everything else gets so much easier. The economy is stronger, interest 
rates are lower, everything gets better.
  We have made it clear, and if the President does not like our 1 
percent plan or some of the other things, we have made it clear is 
simply this, we will not raise taxes. We will not raid the Social 
Security. We will not close down the Government. Everything else is 
negotiable.
  We are willing to meet the President more than halfway. We are not 
saying our plan is the only plan. But we are saying we are going to 
stop the raid on Social Security. We are not going to raise taxes. We 
are not going to close down the Government. Beyond that, we will 
negotiate in good faith, and everything else is on the table. Really, 
it is about what kind of a future we are going to leave to our kids.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just a 
second, once again, I wanted to reiterate something that the gentleman 
from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) said earlier, and it is so important to 
remember, that when we are talking about numbers here, people have a 
tendency to just sort of glaze over and say, ah, it is just numbers. It 
does not matter. But it does matter. It matters in people's lives.
  What we do here, the actions we take here, the votes that we cast 
every day have an impact on what happens in the lives of Americans all 
over this land. If we can actually slow the growth of Government down, 
if we can reduce the amount that the Government would have grown in the 
next 10 years by $2 trillion, by simply holding Social Security 
sacrosanct, it is more than just a paper accomplishment.
  It means lives will change. It means that people will be able to buy 
homes that would never have been able to buy a home because interest 
rates will go down. It will mean that people will be able to take 
vacations they never thought they could take. They will be able to 
leave to their grandchildren and children an estate that is worth 
something, worth real dollars, because the Government will not 
confiscate it all in the process. It actually matters when we talk 
about reducing the size and the scope of Government. They are not just 
words. They affect the way people live.
  I want to say, as a freshman, once again, I am proud to be a Member 
of this Congress. I am proud to join my colleagues here who have done 
yeoman's work before I ever got here to get us to the point where we 
are today. I realize I can take very little credit for what we have 
accomplished. It is a result of the efforts that the gentlemen here, my 
colleagues, have put forward over these years to get us where we are.
  I simply want to tell my colleagues that, I mean this from the bottom 
of my heart, I thank them all for their patriotism, for their love of 
America, for what they have done for the country.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota 
(Mr. Thune).
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, I cannot add to that. But I would say, on 
behalf of the people that I serve in the State of South Dakota, that we 
believe, again, that, as a matter of principle, that the Federal 
Government is too big, and it spends too much, and that we can find 
ways to continue to reduce the cost of government, making it more 
efficient, find that 1 percent in savings that enables us to protect 
and preserve and safeguard the retirement security for every South 
Dakotan, for every American by not having to dip in and to raid the 
Social Security Trust Fund. That is a principle that is nonnegotiable.
  I hope that in these negotiations that will come up now with the 
White House that we can come up with a solution that serves the people 
of this country who depend upon programs that are essential but at the 
same time allows us to balance this budget, stay on the track that we 
are on, the course that we are on, and do it in a way that keeps us 
from going into Social Security, which is a change, a long change, a 
departure from precedent that has been on the books for a long time, 
again, as the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) noted, going 
back to the 1950s, I think, where we actually are going to be able to 
do this and say, that going into the new millennium, the new century, 
that this is the new way of doing business around here; that when we 
create a trust fund, that we want to keep it for that purpose.
  So, again, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) for 
yielding; and, hopefully, again, we will wrap this thing up soon and 
get this process completed.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from South 
Dakota (Mr. Thune) and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) and 
the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) for playing a part in this 
vital negotiation and this great debate that we are having, and it is 
worthwhile.
  We are trying to save Social Security. We are trying not to increase 
taxes. We are trying to ferret out waste in government. Who are we 
doing it for? We are doing for that family that drives an extra block 
to buy gas for $1.05 a gallon instead of for $1.07. We are doing it for 
that family who pushes to order medium Cokes instead of large Cokes at 
restaurants, chicken instead of steak. We are doing it for that family 
who gets three quotes a year on their automobile insurance. We are 
doing it for a family that does not buy a new suit unless the clothes 
are on sale. Finally, we are doing it for that family who will never 
buy cereal unless they have a 20-cents-off coupon that they clipped out 
of the newspaper.
  That is what this is about, 1 cent on the dollar. It is not hard. 
American families do it every single day. Congress can certainly do its 
part here in Washington, D.C.

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