The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“KEEPING THE PROMISE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H8676-H8682 on Sept. 7, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
KEEPING THE PROMISE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hoekstra). Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the opportunity to share this evening with the C-SPAN viewers and some of my fellow colleagues who I am going to introduce in just a moment. We are going to have approximately an hour colloquy here this evening.
The topic basically is we just got back to Washington yesterday. We have spent the last month in districts all over this country talking with the people that we represent.
I, for example, had a town meeting in a community, a township of Delhi, we had a town meeting in Colerain Township. I visited a number of senior citizens' centers around my district, toured factories, really to find out what it is on people's minds back in my district.
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And it was a very, very positive response for the most part. The thing that I heard probably more than anything else is we really like the fact that you and most of the freshmen in particular, and some of the other Members that you have been working with, kept your promise. You did what you said you were going to do in the Contract With America, and they were very, very pleased that we have been doing that.
On the other hand, they have been a bit disappointed with how slow the Senate has been moving on a number of these things, so I did hear that a number of times, but they were very positive about what has been going on in the House, and there were many, many things that we talked about.
Particularly the one issue that kept coming up time and time again was the importance of balancing this budget. The people out there realize that the budget is just too large. This institution, Congress, has spent $5 trillion more than it has brought in over the past couple of decades, and the deficit is just too, too large. The American public, people in my district, realize that. They want us to do something about that, and the message came through to me loud
and clear that they believe that the answer to balancing this budget is not to raise taxes, but rather to cut spending, and I have talked to a lot of my colleagues here, and I think that is what their frame of mind is and what they believe we ought to do.
So at this point I kind of would like to introduce a couple of my colleagues that are here this evening.
First of all, let me introduce Mr. Manzullo. He is from Illinois. And then we have a good friend of mine, Mr. Jones, who is from the State of North Carolina, and I mentioned this, I think, last time, that my mother is from North Carolina. She was born and raised in Charlotte, NC, so she always likes to hear you speak. And we also have here Mr. Lewis from just across the Ohio River from me in the State of Kentucky. And then Mr. Hayworth is going to be joining us in just a few minutes here, and is from Arizona.
So at this time, Mr. Lewis, what do you hear back in Kentucky?
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Well many of the same things that you have been hearing. My constituents are saying, ``We are not concerned that you're going too far. We just don't want you to not go far enough.''
And they want a balanced budget. They want to see a future for their children and their grandchildren, and I have told them that I believe with all my heart that the 104th Congress is totally committed to balancing the budget. One thing that they said that they would like to see come out of the Senate would be the balanced budget amendment that will insure that future Congresses will be committed just as much as the 104th to a balanced budget, that they would have to be. I think that is an extremely important thing because, if we go to the trouble of balancing the budget and doing those things that we have to do in order to do that, I would hate to see a future Congress come along and start running up a tremendous debt again.
But across-the-board I saw a lot of positive responses to what Congress has done already; as you mentioned, the Contract With America, that we kept our promises now that we are moving forward with doing exactly what we said we would do in balancing the budget.
I talked to my constituents about the problem with Medicare, that it would go broke in 7 years unless we
do something about it, and they understood that. They want something done, they want it saved, and they want it to be secure for the future, and I think that now it is a matter of putting something together that is going to be acceptable to them and to everyone concerned.
So, I had a great response across the district, and I think that from talking to my fellow and lady Congress persons that they are receiving the same response that I did. I just think that we need to carry through now with what we have promised to do from this point on and make sure that we do save Medicare, that we do balance the budget, that we do take care of the welfare problem, that we take care of regulatory reform, that we take care of making sure that we have a strong defense.
You know, there are a lot of things that we are waiting, as you mentioned a minute ago, for the Senate to follow up on, but I think, when it is all said and done and the smoke is cleared, we are going to be there with all the promises kept.
Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Jones, what are you hearing in North Carolina?
Mr. JONES of North Carolina. Well, pretty much the same thing Ron was talking about.
As you know, I am delighted to be reminded that your wonderful mother is from Charlotte, NC, a great city in our State of North Carolina. I happen to have the eastern part of the State which actually I have the coastal areas. I have 19 counties, and I had the privilege to be in 15 of the 19 counties. I actually worked all but 3 days during the recess, so it gave me an opportunity to do numerous radio shows and speak in the civic clubs, speak in the senior citizens groups, church groups, and really getting out among the people to listen to the people, and, pretty much what the gentleman from Kentucky said, I found the majority of people are relatively positive about what the new Congress is doing because, as my colleague said, we are following through on our promise to the American people during the campaign, and it is a promise that we kept with the American people starting with the first 100 days in the Contract With America.
As my colleague said, the majority of comments I heard about the major issues that we are dealing with is first to balance the budget. During my presentation, it always started with what a $4.9 trillion debt does for our children and the fact that
a child born in 1995, he or she, if they live to be 75, owes $187,000; that is their tax responsibility just to pay the interest on the debt if we do not balance the budget. So, I was very pleased to start the discussion off with the fact that we are talking about the future of our children, or maybe the lack of a future, and then I closed by talking about Medicare, wanting the people to know that we have a serious problem which was acknowledged by the Medicare trustees and that by the year 2002 the Medicare trust fund would be bankrupt.
The other side, primarily the liberals, keep saying that we keep attacking the Republicans' side, and yet I am pleased to tell you, my colleagues, tonight that the majority of people that I spoke to sincerely understand that we, the new Republican majority, are committed to preserving and protecting the Medicare trust fund for our senior citizens.
So, I can honestly tell you that, like my colleague, I was very pleased and very humbled by the confidence that the majority of people in my district feel toward this new majority that we will do what is necessary to tackle some of the most serious problems facing our Nation, trying to find a solution to those problems. So I can honestly tell you that I was well received, not just me, but this new Republican majority, and the people, we are helping to rebuild the trust that I think so many thought America had lost in elected officials because, as my colleague said, we are keeping our promise to the American people, and they know that we are very serious about trying to find solutions to very difficult problems.
So I am pleased to tell you tonight that right now I believe that the American people have more confidence in this new Republican majority than they have had in a Congress in a long time.
Mr. CHABOT. Good to hear it. Sounds like the people in my State of Ohio are saying the same types of things that we are hearing both in Kentucky and in North Carolina.
How about in Illinois? What are you hearing?
Mr. MANZULLO. Well, everything is alive and well in Illinois. It is a magnificent district that I represent, and I think one of the most interesting things that occurred, we had a series of three town meetings. It is the district that is well served by media, and some of the Members had as many as 30 town
meetings in order to get across the stretches of their congressional district, and fortunately we have an area that can be served by the media so that we can have fewer town meetings, spend more time in preparation, more time at the meetings, et cetera, and we decided to have a town meeting at one of the senior citizens high rises, retirement homes, and put on this demonstration with overheads showing, as Walter did, that, regardless of how you look at it, there will be no money for Medicare by the year 2002.
I mean you can talk about people having to receive less, if that is the case, and people said, ``Well, gee, that is going to hurt here and everything,'' and I said, ``Well, remember this thing will be broke by the year 2002 unless we do something to really radically transform the system of Medicare,'' and I said, you know, as you mentioned, that in this meeting that there are somewhere between 1 and 3 million people. I am not sure of the number of former Federal employees who are still on the big FEHBP health insurance plan that most of us still have, whether you work for the Department of Agriculture or you are a Member of Congress. You can opt 1 of 30 different plans.
Mr. Speaker, I said, ``Do you realize that there are seniors in this country that have health insurance in lieu of Medicare where they have prescriptive, dental, and optical coverage,'' and they, sort of stunned, looked at me, and they said, ``Well, how is that done?''
I said, ``Well, essentially what the Federal Government really does is it is a voucher, it is interjected, the private, private enterprise, into a stagnated governmental system and offering seniors more. Can you imagine that; more coverage because of the private sector?''
And I said what the Republicans are trying to do is, if you want Medicare the way it is, you do not have to do anything. You automatically are enrolled. You want to try a new plan? Come the anniversary date or the opting-in period, you get into that, and I said, you know, we are trying to experiment with ways to bring down the cost of Medicare and possibly even increase the coverage.
And so we talked about 20 minutes, and this was all seniors, and there were only about two questions on Medicare because they registered completely, understood, what was going on and then went on to questions about our legal immigration laws. There had
been a 30-minute documentary about our illegal immigration, and I left there a little bit perplexed because the people of this country underestimate the intelligence and the willingness to be part of the solution of the seniors and the seniors will not become political pawns in the hands of either party. What they really appreciate is the fact that the Republicans have taken the initiative to really delve into a highly controversial area, an area where people said what you mentioned, Medicare as the third rail of political death. That is not the case because the Republicans under the leadership of Mr. Gingrich, who came right out and said we have got a problem, let us meet the problem head-on with the seniors of this country, let us be honest with them, let us tell them what the trustees' report is showing, that the system is going bankrupt, and let us rely upon the integrity of the seniors of this country to understand the true message, and that is what I found having crossed the district.
I tell you I am so proud of the seniors that I represent, and they are indicative of seniors across this country. I think it is absolutely remarkable how fully they comprehend the problem.
Mr. CHABOT. I think that is exactly right, and you know you brought up Medicare, and you also mentioned the trustees and the report. Maybe we should talk a little bit about that; you know, the trustees' report included three of the President's high administrative officials. There were Democrats and Republicans who studied Medicare in depth and came out with a very detailed report that said, if we do nothing about Medicare, it starts losing money next year and goes bankrupt by the year 2002, which is 7 years down the road.
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So I think all of us here tonight and all the Republicans I have talked to, and I think in fairness some of the Democrats too, are committed to saving Medicare. It is absolutely critical to seniors, it is critical to those who will be seniors down the road, we have to save Medicare.
Now, let us be frank about this: There is a scare campaign that has been going on, we have heard it on the floor here now for some weeks and months even, where some liberals are trying to scare seniors and saying there is a plan to cut Medicare. I think, once and for all, we need to put that to rest. None of us are talking about cutting Medicare, period. We do need to save it.
What we have been doing back in the district is we have been talking to seniors and getting their ideas. One of the things I heard from seniors is that they believe there really is a lot of waste, a lot of fraud in the system right now. People have been overcharged. Hospital bills have come through for things that they did not get the service for.
One lady gave me some horror stories, and I just happened to clip an article out of the Washington Times newspaper recently. It is a short article. I would just like to read this. I found this very interesting.
Representative Joe Knollenberg, Michigan Republican,
He is a Member of Congress here,
Tells the story of a Michigan woman named Jean English, who, while going through the mail of her recently deceased brother, found a bill for his last hospital stay. Her brother, who suffered a terminal illness, died only a few days after being admitted. The bill for the four-day period came to over $368,000
For 4 days, $368,000.
All of it had been forwarded to Medicare for payment. Shocked by the expense, Mrs. English called the hospital for an explanation. What she got was a 14-page itemized statement. The greatest expense? A seven-hour,
and I will repeat that,
seven-hour stay in the emergency room, according to the bill, required over $347,000 worth of supplies.
Well, after much hemming and hawing, says Congressman Knollenberg, the hospital admitted it had made a mistake. Instead of over $347,000, the actual charge should have been
$61.30. That is right, $61.30. An overcharge of over
$346,000. The problem was found.
End of story? No. The errant bill had been sent to Medicare and paid by Medicare. That is right, they had paid the bill.
So this is the tip of the iceberg, one example. What we need to do, one of the things I think is we need to get seniors involved in giving them an incentive to closely look at those bills and see if they are being overcharged, and perhaps give them a percentage, some kind of incentive for them to look through the bills and help us to reduce the costs which have been soaring out of control.
Mr. JONES. If the gentleman will yield for one moment, I used a chart that showed that each year there was an estimate, that each year fraud, waste and abuse amounted to $44 billion a year charged to the Medicare Trust Fund, and that is exactly the example of what you just gave.
I did find my seniors, quite frankly, they had examples that applied to them as individuals or friends or family members. So there definitely is waste, fraud and abuse that we as the new Republican majority, we are going to deal with that problem and
try to reduce and eliminate. So I appreciate your sharing that with us.
Mr. CHABOT. I believe there should be, and we have gone through and really established a criteria. The only bill that I personally would support is one, for example, that continues to allow seniors to have the choice to choose their own doctors, to make things so they would have a series of choices to make, but not to have some bureaucrat up here in Washington telling them what their health care should be like or what doctors they should go to. I thing that is important. Let seniors have a high quality of care, continue to have a high quality of care, and have them have choices.
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. If the gentleman will yield, I would just like to reemphasize the fact that there is not a cut in Medicare, there is an increase in spending over the next 7 years. It will go from $4,800 per recipient per year on average to $6,700. That is an increase.
What we are trying to do is to hold the rate of growth to what the private sector is, approximately 6.5 percent. If Medicare continues to grow at 10, 11, 12 percent, of course it will go broke in 7 years. Slowing the rate of growth, but increasing the amount that the recipients are going to receive, and giving senior citizens a choice, as you have been talking about and as Don has been discussing, and providing money.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hoekstra). The Chair is compelled to remind all Members that remarks in debate are properly directed to the Chair. It is not appropriate to address others in the second person or to refer to colleagues by their given names. A Member properly refers to a colleague as the gentleman or gentlewoman from Indiana, Michigan, or Ohio, or whatever State may be concerned.
The gentleman may proceed.
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I think that it is important that we emphasize the fact that we keep hearing from some of those in the House that we are cutting Medicare. It is just not the case. Then we keep hearing that we are going to take from Medicare and give to the wealthy tax breaks. That just is not the case.
We are looking at allowing families that today are paying almost 40 percent of their income in taxes, average family, to give them an opportunity to have a $500 tax credit per child per family. That does not seem like a tax break for the rich. We are looking at a capital gains tax cut that is going to be good for everyone that wants to sell a piece of property or an investment.
It just seems like that every time that we talk about anything in this House, Mr. Speaker, that we are trying to cut spending, we are trying to allow some tax credits and tax breaks for individuals and families, that it is a tax break for the rich. We have heard that from the school lunch program, from everything that we have attempted to bring the budget into balance, that the American people are asking for. It seems to me that every time we hear that, they are crying wolf on everything.
Mr. MANZULLO. If the gentleman will yield, I got into a very interesting controversy. I tend to get into those once in a while. Whenever you take an oath that you are trying to cut spending, that happens. I sit on the Committee on International Relations. We had an opportunity to take a look at all these incredible student exchange programs. USIA carries them, about 42 different agencies carry them, over $2.5 billion a year. In fact, I just got a request to meet with a member of the Italian Communist Party, brought over to this country, paid for by the USIA, so he can talk to American legislators about elections and democracy and things of that nature.
There has to be some good in every program, and I am itching my head, or scratching my head trying to find that one. So I had moved to the Committee on International Relations to cut out $40 million worth of these programs. I did not get too far there. So I filed an amendment on the floor for regular debate. And goodness gracious, USIA called people back in the district.
I got a fax, one of the nastiest faxes, from a State university not located in my district, written by the woman in charge of these exchange programs, three-page fax on letterhead, ``How dare you be so unkind and cruel in cutting these programs.'' And she went on for about two pages, and then at the end, ``I am going to organize my friends and vote against you.'' That did not bother me. She did not live in the district anyway.
So I called the president of the university. He was not in. I talked to the assistant and got back a three-page fax from the attorney for the school. He said, ``I don't see anything improper in people on our staff lobbying Members of Congress.'' Mind you, they are using Federal dollars if you stop to think about it, especially in her program, `` *
* * lobbying Members of Congress. Perhaps her letter was too strong.'' Then he went on for two pages of his own to extol the virtues of these programs.
There is this mentality. You have heard NIMBY, not in my backyard. One is cut everybody's program except mine. I got editorialized because the newspaper back home said Mr. Manzullo did not want to cut the Fulbright scholarships because those are popular with politicians and their kids. I moved to cut everything.
So in the end we compromised and cut out $20 million in those programs. I got a call from the staff of International Relations, and we worked out a compromise. We saved $20 million just like that. And yet you have to look people in the eye and say if you want to do something about this $5 trillion national debt, which according to a chapter called Generational Forecasts that appears in the budget that says by the time every child born after 1992 enters the work force he or she will have an effective tax rate of between 84 and 94 percent, that is guaranteed socialism. It is a guaranteed collapse of our republic as we know it. We have to be stern and say this country is going to collapse unless we stop that kind of spending.
What I found is that if you tell people that, they say, ``Well, but let me tell you about this program of mine because it is an investment.'' You know, you can take a look at any 1 of the 10,000 programs we have in the Government, and most of them will have some good that comes out of them.
I had a young man in my office who came from Russia, an 18-year-old kid. You can tell that some day he is going to be a leader in that country. We talked for a half an hour. He had come over to this country, 1 of 6,000 students who came from the old Soviet Union, at a cost of $30 million a year, paid by the American taxpayer.
Does the program have worth? You bet it does. But we have got to draw the line and say where does Congress have the authority to spend money we do not have?
Mr. CHABOT. If the gentleman will yield, I think that relates to something I have heard over and over at my town meetings back home, and that is that one area where people really do think there has been a tremendous amount of waste, and I agree, and that is the billions and billions of dollars that we have spent on welfare over the years. In fact, since the Great Society years, we have spent about $5 trillion just on welfare.
I would argue and many of the people that I talked to back in the district felt this way, that most of that money was counterproductive. It encourages fathers to leave their homes and not to be home and help to raise their kids. It allows kids basically to just assume that a check will come from the Government every month, that nobody in the home ever goes to work, and the Government just supports folks. That is not the way it is; it is not helpful to those kids.
I heard over and over again that people were very pleased that we had passed a very good welfare reform package here in the House. Of course we are still waiting for the other body to act upon that.
Mr. JONES. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I am glad you brought that subject up, because in addition to balanced budget and Medicare and tax reform, and I want to touch on that in a few minutes, welfare reform, I heard that consistently in the radio shows and speaking to different groups and town meetings, that people were pleased with what the U.S. House of Representatives, led by the Republican Party, did to come out with a tough welfare reform bill, and they hoped that the other side will follow suit.
You are absolutely right that it is a tremendous problem. It has been a system that has perpetuated people being dependent on the system, instead of a system to help people get off the system and become productive citizens.
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I appreciate the gentleman bringing that up.
Mr. CHABOT. And the thing that again I heard over and over again is that people did want to help those who truly needed help. But they felt it ought to be temporary; it should not be a permanent way of life. Unfortunately, far too often that is what it has become, and in fact you have got generation after generation after generation of people who are receiving welfare and just never get off.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, it is good to be here with my colleagues this evening to discuss the matters at hand and what we learned on our summer vacation, among the constituents of our respective districts. I think it is also important, as our good friend from North Carolina pointed out, that sometimes things are misunderstood or mischaracterized.
For example, I listened with interest quite often to the gentleman down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue mischaracterize what this body has done in terms of meaningful welfare reform. Oftentimes, the President will appear on radio or television or in front of groups and point a finger of accusation at this institution, saying that this new majority is cutting off benefits to unwed teenage mothers. There is one word that the Chief Executive and indeed some of the folks who are guardians of the old order are leaving out of that characterization. And that word is, it is a four-letter word, but it can be discussed in polite company, c-a-s-h, ``cash.''
We do not advocate taking away benefits. We do not blame little children born into circumstances beyond their control. Indeed, as we have shown in our block grant programs and our efforts to reorganize and transform the welfare state, we are providing for women, infants, and children. But what we are trying to change are the days when someone can look to the Federal Government for what is in essence a subsidy, a cash subsidy for a way of life that abandons responsibility.
I listened with great interest to our friend from New York earlier. I believe you were touching on it just a second ago, the characterizations I believe of the economist Dr. Thurow, I believe at MIT, about some worldwide phenomenon of males leaving the household because of economic pressures.
Friends, there is no need to try and explain away via academia what is going on here as if it is some phenomenon. There are three words that describe it: abdication of responsibility. Economic pressure notwithstanding, for what is external cannot replace what is internal. If people are willing to abandon their responsibilities, and these are people at every level on the economic ladder, if people are willing to abandon their responsibilities, it creates the problem.
So we are not here to demonize one group of people or try to set Americans against each other. What we are simply saying is this: After 30 years of an expansive program whereby some estimates for every dollar we spent on so-called social spending, almost 80 cents are eaten up by the cost of government, is there not a better way to attack the problem? Is there not a better way to have a true safety net that is a trampoline instead of a hammock?
I learned a lot in meetings with our constituents in the district. A lot of people were saying, you have got a lot more you have to get done. There is a lot more we want to see done. We sent you to Washington to make a change. Of course those same constituents acknowledge that it is very difficult in 8 to 10 months to transform a policy of highly centralized power that has taken over four decades to concentrate here in Washington.
But in addition to that, I get letters from all over the country. Indeed we have people, Mr. Speaker, as you know, who join us via C-
SPAN. I got a nice note from a gentleman who is a constituent of our good friend Mark Foley who I believe is celebrating his 41st birthday today. He attached an item that first appeared in this Congressional Record in 1949.
Our friend from Florida sent this. It has been commonly called the ten cannots. A theologian from your State of Ohio first brought these up. They were attributed incorrectly first to Abraham Lincoln, but this is what Rev. William J.H. Bedcar said: ``You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of men or the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security
on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence. And, finally, you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to tell the viewers that the gentleman from Arizona was originally from North Carolina. We are delighted to see him in the United States Congress.
Just to point on a point that you made, and many fine points that you made, is that the concern about welfare is a concern by all Americans, no matter what race the individual is. Because they fully understand, and I heard this back to the gentleman from Ohio during my travels in my district, from all good Americans that we have a system that, again, needs serious reform for the future of this country.
I think you and the gentleman from Illinois and the gentleman from Arizona remember Bill Bennett appearing before our Republican Conference prior to the vote on welfare reform. He made a very passionate speech and told the conference that he was Catholic, he was pro-life, he was pro-family, but if we did not deal with a very strong welfare reform bill, that our society was in deep, deep trouble.
So, again, I am pleased to add to my good friend from Arizona that we, the House, the Republican majority, join with many conservative Democrats, have passed a very, very fine, tough welfare reform bill.
Mr. CHABOT. I think something that is important to point out is that some of the folks on the other side of aisle, those that tend to be more liberal, have had a tendency to try to paint us who are in favor of changing, reforming welfare, they have tried to paint us as being coldhearted and not caring about families, children that are stuck in welfare.
I would argue that there could not be anything more damaging, more dangerous to those kids than the current welfare system which will basically encourage them to grow up in that same destructive pattern of behavior that put their parents in that system to begin with.
We are trying to change that system to get these kids out of that very destructive welfare system that we have in this country, to totally reform the system. I am very optimistic that over time we will actually be able to accomplish that. I think that is really one of the most priority issues that we have facing this country.
Another thing about welfare that has always bothered me, that does not get mentioned, I do not think, enough, is that we have to figure out where the money is going to those folks on welfare is coming from. Oftentimes the money is coming from other parents, sometimes single mothers who are working two jobs that are paying more taxes than they ought to that comes up here to Washington and then goes back down to the States, back down to the folks receiving welfare. So you are taking money away from hard working, sometimes lower middle class folks and giving it to other folks who in general ought to be working to support their own children.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Indeed, that brings up another part of the equation that is sometimes not emphasized from good people on the other side of the aisle. Indeed when my colleague from New York was here in the previous special order, I know the gentleman from Illinois listened with great interest to this, the gentleman from New York talked about a disparity of income from the very wealthy to the very poor.
And I just think it is significant to note, indeed you probably have already done this during our time
together tonight, but I do not think it can be repeated enough to the American people. In 1948, the average American family of four was paying about 3 percent of its income in taxes to the Federal Government. By last year, the average family of four was paying almost one-quarter of its income in taxes to the Federal Government. When you combine that with State, local taxes and the hidden taxes of regulations and fees, it is not a stretch to say that almost every family is paying almost half of its income in taxes.
So the disparity comes not so much when a check is given out but what is taken away by Government. Indeed we have this across the middle class ladder.
Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, one of the really disturbing things that is happening in this country, and I believe it is due to the fact that we now have had three, indeed as many as four generations on welfare, is the destruction it does literally to the souls of those children who all they know is the welfare check.
Our colleague from Florida, Congressman Dave Weldon, during his campaign for Congress, talked to a friend of his who was interviewing three children. And he asked, what do you want to do for a living? One said, I want to be a policeman, and the other one said, I want to be a fireman. And the third child said, I want to collect checks.
I mean, I do not believe the people in this country are willing to cede personal liberty to the Federal Government in exchange for a promise of Government security.
I really do not believe that they are willing to do that. And yet what is happening is the more people get used to the fact of saying, well, let the Government do it, you know, my colleagues, let me just share with you a burden that is on my heart. I do not want to offend anybody when I do this.
When we were kids, the activities that were planned for us were done by our parents. I was raised before television. I remember the area in which we grew up in Kenrock in Rockford. It was a pretty tough area of town. On Saturday nights, my dad and some of the local merchants--dad ran a small grocery store--would take the 16 millimeter projector from the school, because the school was the community, and show movies on painters tarpaulins that were tacked to the back of billboards on the corner there. And hundreds of people, literally hundreds would show up, and we would have peanuts and popcorn. And there was a whole community together.
And my dad, who passed away about 6 years ago, said, when Americans tore the front porches off their houses, when they turned those front porches into TV rooms, the people of this country stopped talking to one another. And before we would look internally. We would look to the schools, to the churches, to each other. And when people stopped talking, they started looking to the Government for an answer.
What an incredible observation by a man who had been raised through the depression and talked about the great days, when everybody would sit on their front porches in the summertime and just throngs of people would walk down the streets, saying hello to each other, checking up on one another, being concerned about one another's children. He said,
``my dad passed away 6 years ago,'' he said, ``America has changed and not for the better.'' What a sad commentary.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, the challenge for us, and to the cynics who will be there, the bromide is this, oh, they want to turn the clock back. That will be the accusation that comes from the guardians of the old order who always look to concentrate power in Washington and also look askance at individual responsibility.
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We should hasten to point out that indeed we are building a sense of community in part because of the medium of television, the fact that indeed we have a community across America watching us, that is one of the advantages. But there are many different things that change in our society. The one thing that should not is the subject of another letter I received. Folks from my district in Arizona writing and agreeing that we have to return to this document, the Constitution of the United States. This is a remarkable document. An historian characterized this in a book called the Miracle at Philadelphia, that we have this document that is here and all-encompassing and can deal with different times and different changes. So whether it was the rise of television or, as some theorists purport, the creation of centralized air-
conditioning that kept government in business year round, there are changes that come to our society. But the danger for us is to ignore this document the Constitution or moreover, as the gentleman from Illinois suggests, to dismiss the notion of community. The school has become a surrogate family and not dealt with the community, I think the gentleman points that out quite correctly.
Mr. MANZULLO. The point I was trying to make is the fact that we look to government to create our community now and that is the real danger. We all do it. Good, solid, bedrock conservatives like ourselves, we think, well, why can the government not do something about it? Well, the government should be the place of last resort. Not the first place we go. It is the mentality with which we have grown up. We have to turn inwardly and try to resolve our problems.
Mr. JONES. The gentleman from Illinois is absolutely right, both you gentlemen and the gentleman from Ohio and that is what the last election was all about. The American people said enough government is enough. Enough taxation is enough. The gentleman from Arizona mentioned while ago, and I want to reiterate this because I do not think it can be said enough. The average working family in America will spend more on paying taxes than that same average American working family will spend on clothing, housing, and food combined. How can you hope to achieve the American dream for your family when you have got a government that overregulates, with excessive taxation and does not give the family the opportunity to work hard and to grow and to become part of the American dream?
Everything you are saying, I agree with. The nice thing about our frustration is that the American people last November showed their frustration by changing the U.S. House of Representatives, and we have a chance to bring a brighter future and to build a better American.
Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman from Illinois mentioned that we give government too much responsibility now basically to take care of people's every needs. I read a book recently, in fact it was on the list that the Speaker gave us earlier in the year and suggested that we read, it is called the Tragedy of American Compassion. It is a relatively long book, but the interesting and boiling it down to its main point is that for many, many years basically Americans took care of each other, through charities, through churches, and then at some point in our history, and the largest portion of it occurred during the so-called Great Society years, in the 1960's with L.B.J. and folks that thought along those lines, the government basically took over, people no longer
really helped their fellow Americans and people that were down and out as much. They expected that the government would do so. Welfare rolls went way up. The whole system basically has gone downhill from there. Not only has that been destructive but that helped to make the budget go out of balance. We are all paying for that huge debt in many, many ways. So this Congress is about finally trying to balance that budget.
As you gentlemen all know, we earlier this year passed the very first balanced budget resolution in the last 30 years. It puts us on a glide path to balancing this budget within the next 7 years.
Talking about what folks back in our districts were talking about and what kind of cuts we ought to make, one cut that I heard over and over again is that why are we paying so much in foreign aid? I agree with the folks that think that we have been paying far too much over the years and that is why we passed a resolution earlier this year to cut back on the amount of foreign aid that we are spending by $21 billion over the next 7 years. It is the largest reduction in foreign aid in our Nation's history. I think that that was a proper thing for us to do. It is going to help us to balance the budget.
Something that is coming up relatively soon that I think that folks, that maybe out at C-SPAN, we ought to give them a heads-up and let them know that we are going to be facing this, because we are going to be facing perhaps, I hope it does not happen, but perhaps an impasse with the President in the near future. We are saying we want to balance this budget, we are making what we think are the necessary cuts and this is how much we can spend and if we spend this much, we are on the glide path to balancing this budget. The President wants to spend more than we do. He wants us to add a lot of big spending back into the program. If we do that, we are not going to balance the budget. So we need very much I think to stick to our guns. That is what I heard: ``Don't blink, don't back down to the President, stick to your guns, balance the budget.'' What have you gentlemen been hearing?
Mr. JONES. If the gentleman will yield, you talked about the balanced budget, talking about the President and the budget we are going to submit. Is it not true, and please correct me if I am wrong, obviously we are working toward balancing the budget for the year 2002. But to get to a zero debt, a zero debt, we must balance the budget every year for the next 25 years from the year 2002 and forward for 25 years, is that not correct?
Mr. CHABOT. Yes, we also have to start paying it off. So we have to spend not only no more than we bring in. We have got to spend less than we bring in for a period of time to get rid of that debt. The debt is so large now, it is mind-boggling. Fourteen percent of every dollar that our citizens send up here in the form of taxes goes just to pay the interest on the debt. It is scary, it really is.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman would yield, the way I can put it in a way that I certainly understand with stunning clarity is in this fashion. If we do not change what is going on and if by the good fortune and act of providence we are able to keep this government running with the equivalent of chewing gum and baling wire in the years to come, my son, who is now 21 months old, over the course of his lifetime as a working adult would pay over $180,000 just to service the debt alone, if things remained the same.
Now some good people across the country look to our friend at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and say, wait a minute, did he not come on television and
agree that we need to balance the budget? Well, that statement is fairly accurate as far as it goes, but once again, the problem is in the details. The same gentleman at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue stood at that lectern 2 years ago and pledged that he would only use numbers from the Congressional Budget Office in making budget forecasts. Well, a funny thing happened in the past couple of years. I guess a young lady by the name of Rosy Scenario took up residence there in the Rose Garden because the President and his budgeteers are listening to Rosy Scenario. You notice he abandoned the CBO numbers and now has come up with a whole new set of numbers, but the funny thing is this: When you look at his 10-year plan and you use the numbers that he now provides, apart from the Congressional Budget Office numbers, they result in deficits annually in excess of $200 billion for each of those 10 years when he purports that he has a glide path. No, that is not a glide path.
What we ask is for the President of the United States using the phraseology of our good friend Charles Taylor from North Carolina who said this last week, the President has to be the Commander in Chief, not the campaigner in chief. We all took an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution. Let us all step up to the plate, Democrats and Republicans alike, work out the differences and agree to put this Nation on a glide path to a balanced budget in 7 years and stick to it, because as we have heard from our constituents, even that step, as modest as it is, is an important first step but it is less than what many people desire.
Mr. CHABOT. I think the gentleman's analogy about his son paying over
$180,000 in his lifetime just on the interest is an excellent analogy. Another one I think that really hits home as to how large this debt is, that if we do not do something within the next year or so, we are going to be paying more just on the interest on the debt than we do for our entire military expenditures. Just think of how much we spend on the military, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Pentagon, just think of all the ships that are out at sea, the planes, the soldiers we have, how much that costs. It is a lot of money. We are going to be spending less for all of that then we will just for the interest on the debt. It is an incredibly large amount of money. We can no longer afford to pay that because it is driving us completely bankrupt. So I think it is important.
What I heard from the folks back in Cincinnati over and over again was, ``Stick to your guns, balance the budget, work with the President, there's no sense in going to war if you don't need to, but if he wants you to spend more money, don't do it. Balance the budget.''
Mr. JONES. We are getting close to the end. I just want to make this statement. What I was pleased with, I have been saying this and many of you here tonight, that this whole Congress is about the next generation, not the next election. I can honestly tell you that the people in my district, the Third District of North Carolina, are pleased to know that they have men and women that are committed to doing what is right to get this Nation straight for our next generation. I am proud to be part of the ladies and gentlemen that serve in this House.
Mr. CHABOT. I would like to thank all the gentlemen, and gentleman from Arizona, the gentleman of North Carolina, and the gentleman from Illinois for being with us here this evening.
Are there any concluding remarks that any of the gentlemen would like to make at this point?
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman from Ohio would yield, just simply keep those cards and letters coming because there is a diversity of opinion, there is not unanimity, but we all recognize we have to confront these problems to make a difference not only for the next generation but for the very future of this Nation as we go into the next century.
Mr. CHABOT. I would like to thank all you gentlemen for spending your time here this evening. Again I think the message that we got loud and clear was do not back down, balance the budget, do it now.
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