[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14418-14419]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              CONGRESS SHOULD DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate our friend, the gentleman 
from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), for advancing the cause of fiscal 
restraint, something that we do need to do in this House. And it is 
interesting, particularly since the Democrats are right now promoting 
an expansion of welfare in an unfunded way, and proposing to increase 
spending on welfare $3.5 billion, and that is to give a tax rebate to 
people who have not paid taxes.
  It is an idea that is ironic since 197 of them voted against it 
originally in May 2001, but they all seem to want to spend more 
regardless of what our budgets are doing.
  I have just come from an appropriations meeting. And what is 
interesting about that is that on the appropriations bills, we have 13 
of them, I believe, Mr. Speaker, every bill, it is particularly 
interesting since every one of our 13 appropriations bills, no matter 
what we propose in the Republican Party, the Democrats make a 
counterproposal to spend more. And I realize that my friend, the 
gentleman of Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), is in the minority of the 
Democratic Party where they do wake up in the morning and worry about 
spending. And I am glad that he does because I share his concerns about 
it. But I just point out that the majority of his party, when it comes 
to spending bills, wants to spend more. And no matter what it is, we 
are not spending enough for this cause; we are not spending enough for 
that cause.
  I want to also point out, sometimes it is easy when you are in the 
minority and you do not have to necessarily make the vote for war, but 
we are in a situation after 9-11 where America was under attack. 
Americans were hurt, injured, and killed in their workplace. And while 
some on the left sat around and said what did we do wrong or why do 
they hate us, others in the greater majority, not just the Republican 
Party but in America as a whole, said, look, we are going to defend our 
borders. We are going to defend our domestic areas. We are going to 
just defend our homeland. And to do that, unfortunately, you do have to 
spend money because it costs money to go to Afghanistan, to send 
helicopters and tanks over there. It costs money to send troops to the 
Middle East. And that does add up to some deficit spending.
  It is something we do want to get under control. But I would 
certainly hope that the gentleman and others were not suggesting that 
the war for the liberation of Iraq was wrong, the war to find bin Laden 
was wrong, the war to liberate Afghanistan from

[[Page 14419]]

Taliban rule was wrong. Because I believe most Americans support those 
actions and most Americans are glad that we are taking these steps.
  When people say to you things like, how can you look the children in 
the eye, well, to me how could you not look the children in the eye and 
say, you know what, we are going to defend our homeland and we are 
going to secure our borders.
  There is an international war on terrorism and America seems to be 
leading the way. America has also been the victim of it, but we are 
going to win that battle.
  And if the gentleman and others would look at the budget, they can 
see that that is where the majority of our spending went and it is 
going to continue to go. But we want to work with the Democrats to get 
spending under control. My concern of it is not in just dollars and 
cents, but my concern is the encroachment of the government on the 
private sector. Every dollar we put in the government, that is more 
freedom we lose, particularly in the private sector.
  So I hope as we begin the appropriations process this year that we 
can have a lot of amendments from our Democrat friends that actually 
reduce spending so that when we run the legislative branch bill out 
here, when we run military construction out here, when we run the 
education bill out here, if they have ideas for saving money, I want to 
do everything I can to make those amendments offered by my friend, the 
gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), or anybody else over there, 
the so-called Blue Dog Caucus, I want their amendments to be in order 
so we can work together in a bipartisan fashion and reduce spending. 
Because I think that the best of our party and the best of their party 
should do what is right for the best of America.

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