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“IT IS TIME TO BEGIN SETTING PRIORITIES” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1633 on April 6, 2006.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
IT IS TIME TO BEGIN SETTING PRIORITIES
Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton).
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Texas?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I have recently introduced H. Res. 690, which would require this body to begin setting priorities. That is something the Federal Government, and Congress in particular, do not do a very good job at. In fact, we are really lousy at it, but it seems to me if we are able to set priorities on new spending, then we ought to be able to practice what H. Res. 690 would do which is require the House that anytime we create a new program of any size or scope, that we would have to, as part of that enacting legislation, eliminate an existing program of the same size or spending.
We have tough choices to make, but we just do not make those choices very well. You can look at the CBO's Web site. They publish a 50-year study of what they think this Federal Government will look like in the year 2050.
I have a grandson that will be about 53 years old at that point in time. The government that he will inherit, left unchecked, left unchanged, will be one that consumes 50 percent of the gross domestic product in this country, and there has never been a free market, free enterprise system anywhere where the central government could take half and the rest of us passed on the other half. We prosper by having growth in the standard of the living, opportunities and others kinds of things.
So I believe that the growth in this Federal Government is the single biggest threat that we face as a country to our particular way of life.
That sounds strange in a country at war, but the Taliban and al Qaeda and the thugs that threaten this country can get a few of us, but they cannot fundamentally change the way we live. They can hurt some of us and they try, and we work real hard to not let that happen, but this growth in this Federal Government I believe can in fact have a fundamental negative impact on the way our children and grandchildren will live.
I said I am a grandfather. I've got six wonderful grandkids and one additional one on the way which will be born in November, if everything goes well. Which grandfather or grandmother among us would gather up their grandchildren, take them down to the nearest bank, and say, Mr. Banker, I want to borrow every single dollar in your bank, I want these six grandkids in my case, I want my six grandchildren to sign that note. I am going to take the money and spend it, but you are going to need to look to them to collect it. Well, there is not a grandparent worth their salt that would do that on an individual basis, but somehow collectively as a group we think that is okay because that is exactly what we are doing as we continue to spend money that our children will have to probably not pay back but will at least have to pay the debt service on and that impacts their way of life in a negative way.
Every politician worth their salt will step before this microphone and say we need to cut Federal spending. It rolls off your tongue very easily. Both sides of the aisle say this on various occasions, but we rarely practice what we preach.
I would like to point out tonight one program that I think would go away and no one would even notice that it is gone. We have in this country appropriated for 2006 money to provide an America's Job Bank. This is an Internet-based listing of job openings nationwide. It is maintained by good folks at the Department of Labor. Since this was established, the Internet of course has grown exponentially and has created such private enterprise-based sites as monster.com and careerbuilder.com which provide thousands and thousands and thousands of listings every day; and, in fact, this America's Job Bank is a duplication.
Now the duplication only costs us $15 million, and that is a standard politician phrase, ``only $15 million.'' Well, $15 million is a lot of money for District 11 and is a program that I would include in those that ought to go away.
As I mentioned, I have introduced H. Res. 690. We are working with the Rules Committee to try to implement this rule for the 110th Congress, and I would encourage my colleagues to support it. The reason I am doing it is I have got six grandchildren and one more on the way, and I cannot think of a better reason why we should not begin to do a better job in setting priorities for spending at in this Congress.
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