[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2639-2640]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



   GOVERNMENT'S DEMAND AND APPETITE FOR MONEY CAN NEVER BE SATISFIED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, we see on an almost daily basis here in the 
Congress that government's demand or appetite for money can never be 
satisfied. I believe if we gave a department or agency twice what they 
were asking for, they might be happy for a short time but they would 
soon be back crying about a shortfall in funding. However, the message 
we need desperately to get out is that everyone is better off the more 
money that can be left in the private sector. More jobs are created and 
prices are lower the more money that is left in the private sector.



  The most economical, most efficient way to spend money, the biggest 
bang for the buck so to speak, is to leave more money in private hands. 
This is because even though there is waste and inefficiency in the 
private sector, it pales in comparison to the waste and inefficiency 
within government, especially the Federal Government.
  This has been proven all over the world throughout history. The 
countries with the best economies and the greatest progress have always 
been and continue to be the Nations with the lowest percentage of their 
total national income going to the government. The opposite is also 
true. The countries with populations closest to starvation or the 
lowest standard of living have always been countries where the 
government has taken most of the money, such as Cuba, several African 
nations, the former Soviet Union and others.
  Also, big government produces a very small, elite class at the top 
and a huge starvation or under class. Probably the thing big government 
is best at is wiping out the middle class and creating huge differences 
between the rich and the poor. A small government such as in the U.S. 
prior to the mid-1960s produces a huge middle class. This is just part 
of why it is so important to pass President Bush's tax cut. The people 
are paying in a huge tax surplus. They not only deserve some of it 
back, but everyone will be better off and our economy will be stronger 
in the long run if we can get more money back into the private sector.
  I realize that some big corporations are mad at the President now 
because his plan has no corporate tax breaks but is going entirely for 
individuals. However, the average person today is spending almost 40 
percent of his or her income in taxes of all types, Federal, State and 
local; gas taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, excise 
taxes, Social Security taxes. The GAO reports that 80 percent of the 
people now pay more in Social Security taxes than in income taxes. 
Also, most estimates are that people pay another 10 percent in 
regulatory costs, things that government makes businesses do that are 
passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.
  This means that even here in the United States almost half of the 
average family's income is going to support government or pay the costs 
of things ordered by the government. This is not only enough, it is too 
much, and this is why President Bush and millions of others feel that 
it is time we started giving some of this tax surplus back to the 
people who paid it.
  Mr. Speaker, also just like government's appetite for money can never 
be satisfied, one can never satisfy government's appetite for land. One 
of the most important things we need to do to ensure future prosperity 
is to stop government at all levels from taking over more private 
property.

                              {time}  1545

  The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman has said, ``You 
cannot have a free society without private property.'' Over the years 
when government has taken private property, it has most often taken it 
from lower- and middle-income people and small farmers.
  Today, Federal, State, and local governments and quasi-governmental 
units and agencies now own about half the land in this Nation. The most 
disturbing thing is the rapid rate as which

[[Page 2640]]

this taking has increased in the last 40 years.
  Environmentalists who have supported most of this taking should 
realize that the worst polluters in the world have been the socialist 
nations, because their economies do not generate enough income to do 
good things for the environment, and that private property is almost 
always better cared for than public property, and at much lower cost.
  There is a very dangerous plan, Mr. Speaker, being pushed by some 
liberal elitists and wealthy environmental extremists called the 
Wildlands Project. This project envisions taking 50 percent of the land 
now in private hands into wilderness. If people do not think their 
property would ever be taken, they should just look around at all the 
land around them that government has already taken.
  We do not need more industrial parks, for example, where land is 
taken from small farmers or lower- or middle-income people and then 
given later to big multinational corporations, or land is taken from 
poor people and used for some project that enhances its value and then 
sold for big prices to rich people later on.
  We had a policy of no net loss of wetlands. What we need now is a 
policy of no net loss of private property, requiring government to sell 
off some of its land to private owners for every new acre they take 
from lower- and middle-income people.
  Private property, Mr. Speaker, is a very important part, a basic part 
of the freedom we have always treasured so highly in this Nation.

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