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.
“UPDATE ON SOCIAL SECURITY” mentioning the Department of Interior was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H11459-H11465 on Nov. 3, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
UPDATE ON SOCIAL SECURITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, tonight what we would like to talk about is an updating for the American public about, not only what is happening currently in Washington, D.C., but to give people an understanding about why Republicans are standing up essentially on several themes.
One is Social Security, people's retirement. The future of people's retirement should not be taken to fund the government. Social Security should be used for that which it was intended, and that is to be put aside for people's future retirement like myself. I have paid in 27 years into Social Security, 27 years, both my wife and I, and we want to make sure Social Security is there.
Second thought process, we must continue to balance the budget. By balancing the budget in Washington, D.C., and not spending Social Security, we will make sure that government has to look internally for its needs to prioritize, to provide those things that the government has to do. It has given lots of money, and it needs to set priorities and make tough decisions just like people out in the States do, people who have families, people who run small businesses, people who work for corporations.
The last thing is no means no. Mr. President, we are not going to spend Social Security. One hundred percent is larger than 60 percent.
Lastly, that we want the government to do those things that the American public has done for many years, and that is look internally, set priorities, and try and meet those obligations and needs that one has.
Today, also, I am joined by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth), one of my fellow members of the Republican conference, and I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding to me, and I appreciate the fact that he has organized this time, Mr. Speaker, to go directly to the American people. Indeed, following, as we do, our colleagues from the left, I think it is important, even as much as we would like to set this up with a very positive dynamic, we are also compelled by the instant revisionism of the left to address a couple of their arguments.
Indeed, Mr. Speaker, as we hear the ferocity of the denial of what has gone on for so many years on the left, as the folks stepped up to the plate tonight, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to set the record straight.
First and foremost, the fact is, before the gentleman from Texas and I came to the Congress of the United States, for 40 years the Social Security surplus was routinely spent on pet programs of the left. Indeed, so much money was spent that the country was taken further into debt.
We heard all the name calling about the notion that Americans keeping more of their hard-earned money was somehow unpopular. Mr. Speaker, what is really unpopular on the left, sadly, is a failure to step up and recognize fiscal responsibility.
Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about is a 1 percent solution. There is a success we can already celebrate. The budgeters, the folks who take care of all the numbers, have done some studying. They tell us for this fiscal year, fiscal year 1999, for the first time since 1960, for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was ensconced in the big White House at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, this Congress balanced the budget, and did so using none of the Social Security surplus and, also, we might add, generated a surplus over and above the Social Security funds to the tune of $1 billion.
That is cause not only for celebration, Mr. Speaker, it is cause to signal our commitment. Now that we have done that, we dare not go back and to hear the charges from the left.
Let me offer what any computer student knows, what most folks understand here in the United States, one of the oldest games in the world, and, sadly, one of the first casualties in dealing in debate with the left, one of the first casualties of such debate is truth.
When one sends the folks in the budget office a set of false assumptions and one says, assuming the following things, then what does one see? The folks who crunch those numbers are honor bound to say, well, making those assumptions, we expect X, Y, and Z.
In the popular vernacular, Mr. Speaker, that comes down to garbage in, garbage out. My friends who preceded us here on this floor involved in the instant revisionism were offering a clear example of that.
I mentioned just a minute ago the 1 percent solution. Mr. Speaker, I hold here a shiny new penny, made, no doubt, with Arizona copper. What we are saying through this appropriations process, through what the media calls the battle of the budget is as follows: Cannot we step up and save one penny out of every dollar given the massive waste, fraud, and abuse fraught on the American people by Washington, D.C., cannot we save one penny out of every dollar to save Social Security?
An example is as follows here with this chart, which graphically demonstrates what has transpired. It is entitled, Mr. Speaker, ``Mr. Clinton goes to Africa.'' My colleagues may remember the trip in the news, a few positive policy notions discussed there.
But what was disturbing about the trip, Mr. Speaker, was the President took along 1,300 people. Included in his entourage were some Members of this body, the mayor of Denver, Colorado, and others. Mr. Speaker, what is compelling is the cost of that trip was almost $43 million, including an entourage of 1,300 folks.
Now, under our modest proposal, the 1 percent solution, saving a penny out of every dollar, what would have happened was that 13 members of this 1,300 member delegation would have had to stay home. Maybe the mayor of Denver had concerns he could have better added in Colorado within the environs of the city limits of Denver. Maybe 12 other folks could have stayed home. I believe Mrs. Curry, the White House secretary for the President, was also on the trip. Maybe she could have tended to things back here.
But all we are saying is this is not a draconian cut. My goodness. If anything, it is somewhat modest. But this demonstrates the waste. Let me point out to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Speaker, and others who join us, understand, the 1,300 people in this entourage did not, I repeat, did not include the security personnel that every American understands a President, given these trying times, needs both at home and abroad.
We are not talking about secret service. We are not talking about a security entourage over and above that. We are talking about 1,300 people. You combine this number of folks with other trips to China and Chile, and you are looking at a bill of close to $70 million.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, just to prove the gentleman's point, the President just today has vetoed the bill that was known as H.R. 3064 for Labor, Health and Human Services and the District of Columbia.
Today, and I will quote from what the President has sent to the House of Representatives, ``I am vetoing H.R. 3064 because the bill, including the offset section, is deeply flawed. It includes a misguided
.97 percent across-the-board reduction that will hurt everything from national defense to education and environmental programs. The legislation also contains crippling cuts.''
Well, what we have done in the Congress is we have tried to make sure that government was fully funded. An example of this in this bill, since the time that I have been a Member of Congress, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said it should be a national priority that this Republican Congress would double biomedical research over 5 years. We are now in the very midst of that. In fact, the Republican bill increased funding for the National Institutes of Health by 15 percent, that was in 1999, and 14 percent for the new year's budget.
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The President asked for $15.9 billion, and we gave him $17.9 billion. That is $2 billion more.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, would my friend please repeat those numbers, because I think it is important; and it is something, given the many curious mathematics of Washington, D.C., and the failure of both accountancy and accountability at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Would my colleague repeat those numbers. That is actually an increase, is it not?
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, it is a huge increase in some of the most fundamental things that are important for biomedical research and things that we are doing, funding in Washington, D.C., to solve medical problems of Americans that would be open then for the world.
What we did is we increased it $2 billion. Yet the President has said it is misguided. When we asked, after fully funding and more than funding this, the President said it is misguided to ask for a .97 percent of the budget to be looked at internally.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, what we are talking about here, we need to point out facts are stubborn things. And the chart, basically, sums it up right here.
In terms of spending, we see what is going on here. We are just simply talking about reducing spending, realizing savings of 1 cent, 1 cent on every discretionary dollar. My colleague from Texas pointed out the fact, and again, facts are stubborn things despite what some of this town call spin, others would more properly label as propaganda, how can you spend $2 billion additionally funding priorities and at the same time be accused of irresponsibility.
Mr. Speaker, my colleagues remind me of George Orwell's seminal book
``1984'' where the mythical republic of Oceania embraced slogans such as ``Ignorance is strength.'' ``War is peace.'' Now we are hearing in this town that fully funding, and then some, is a draconian cut. It just does not add up.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, could it not really be that what has happened is that the priorities that we have had to establish, in other words, ``no'' means no, no, we are not going to keep spending more and more and more; and, no, we are not going to spend one penny of Social Security, we mean we have to make tough decisions here in Washington, D.C., set priorities, determine what money will be spent on, is it not probably that it is too tough a decision for evidently some people to make?
Let me give my colleagues an example. When asked if there was absolutely no waste in his department, Is there no waste in your department, Bruce Babbitt responded, You got it exactly right, no waste in my department.
The Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, when asked about the administration's position on, we should not reduce at all the size of the Federal budget, Eric Holder said, That would be my view.
When Joe Lockhart, the President's spokesman, has talked about whether it is okay to spend Social Security, is it dipping into Social Security, should that not be a choice, he said, Listen, if you look at the budget that Congress has produced over the last 15 or 20 years, they have every year dipped into that.
And there is more. The more is, when Secretary of Education Riley was asked about how much money would be given to his department he said, The Republican plan slashes critical resources and schools well below the President's request.
And yet, we gave them our education budget, the Republican budget,
$88 million more than what the President was allowing for or asking.
So, in fact, what we are doing is we are making tough decisions. And they want more and more and more.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I think it is ironic that the Education Secretary, the man who is in charge of teaching children math, misunderstands the fact that when our budget is over the President's that we are slashing education. I think there is certainly a math deficiency there. Maybe we should have an investigation of that in itself. I know the Clinton administration loves studies. I am sure they would want to fund it. But it would also be a waste of money, so I am being sarcastic.
I wanted to point out to my colleagues that the Lockhart quote, the White House spokesman, when he said, yeah, Congress should go ahead and spend the Social Security funds because they have done it for 20 years, well, there are a lot of things that have been going on for 20 years in this town that we are slowly putting a stop to.
Now, the three of us wanted to put a stop to it really quickly in 1994 when we became the majority, but we could not. So it is kind of like stopping a runaway train. You just got to go slowly. You just cannot stop these things suddenly.
The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) has the same quote, basically, from the Democrat leader, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) saying, just take a little bit out of Social Security.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Georgia for his comments.
Two points. Number one, again, in the vernacular of this town, which some folks who are onlookers call spin, or should properly call spin propaganda, there is also something known as message discipline. And our colleague from Texas recites not only the statements of the White House press secretary but several cabinet officials involved in message discipline, to use the vernacular of the city.
How unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, that they cannot be involved in fiscal discipline, stepping up with us with a 1 percent solution. A penny saved out of every dollar of discretionary spending goes a long way toward protecting the Social Security Trust Fund. It is summed up like this: a penny saved is retirement secured.
My colleague from Georgia alluded to this. This was 2 weeks ago, October 24 of this year, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the House minority leader, appeared on this week on ABC. The question was, ``What's the problem with spending the Social Security Trust Fund? You've been doing it for years,'' which sounds to me like a set-
up question just as an average citizen in addition to a Member of Congress. But here is what the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) said: ``I understand. But there is a feeling now that since we have a surplus and since we got to get ready for the baby-boomers,'' and this is the key clause, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, ``that we really ought to try to spend as little of it as possible, none if possible. We really ought to spend as little of it as possible.''
This is not rocket science, Mr. Speaker. What you see are two very different visions of government. We believe to help Americans realize the limitless nature of their dreams, we should put limits on wasteful spending in Washington. The other side says, let us never put limits on spending. There is always more and more and more to be spent, and they engage in dubious mathematics and spin.
The President of the United States stood here in January of this year and talked about putting Social Security first and then had the audacity to say let us save 62 percent of the Social Security surplus. Now, a quick check of math, Mr. Speaker, indicates that that evening he was prepared to spend 38 percent of it on other priorities. And that is the operative factor: spend, spend, spend, spend some more.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, it sounds like to me that it is another example where the truth is held hostage in Washington, D.C., where we have gotten so much into spinning the message that we have forgotten what the truth is.
I would like to go back to the President's letter to the House today upon why he vetoed the bill and then, perhaps, to give the facts of the case.
The President, on page 8 of the veto, says, ``This across-the-board cut would result in indiscriminate reductions in important areas such as education, the environment, and law enforcement.'' In addition, this cut would have an adverse impact on certain national security programs. The indiscriminate nature of the cut would require a reduction of over
$700 million for military personnel, which would require the military services to make cuts in recruiting and lose up to 48,000 military personnel.
Let us now do a fact check. A fact check says, despite the 1 percent that we are asking this administration to look internally for efficiency for them to save the money, Congress has appropriated, that is, the Republican Congress has appropriated more money to critical areas of the Government than President Clinton ever even requested.
For example, in defense the President requested $263.3 billion. After the 1 percent savings that we are after, we appropriated $265.1 billion. That is $1.8 billion above what the President even requested.
For education, the President requested $34.71 billion. After the 1 percent savings, we appropriated $34.8 billion. That is $90 million above what the President's request was.
For crime, the President requested $2.854 billion for State and local law enforcement assistance, which includes his COPS programs. After the 1 percent savings that we are after, we appropriated more than $397 million more than the President requested.
And yet, if we look at what the President is saying is that, if he has to make this 1 percent savings within the administration, they will have to take the loss of up to 48,000 military personnel. We are talking about we fully funded above what the President ever even asked for, and he is still going to have to cut.
So it makes us wonder what is the truth and why should it be held hostage in Washington.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, what I find ironic is, frankly, these numbers are staggering to me as a conservative, as a Republican. I think that, in many cases, we as a Republican party spend too much money. But I understand we have got to work through the process, we have got to have 218 votes, we have got to have 51 votes in the Senate, we have got to have a bill that the White House will sign. So we, reluctantly sometimes, have to spend more money than our constituencies want us to spend.
But when the Democrats vote no on the appropriations bills because we do not spend enough and then say they do not want to take it out of Social Security, we want to say, okay, I give up. This is some kind of game. Clue me in. What is the missing element here?
The money that my colleague is talking about spending comes out of Social Security. And yet they say they do not want to spend it.
Of course, now the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) says go ahead and spend it. Joe Lockhart, the Al Gore spokesperson and administration spokesperson, says go ahead and spend it. And Al Gore's own budget, which he is tooting around the country talking about, spends lots of Social Security money.
I think that is maybe where the hope is that, perhaps because of the presidential year, the Vice President will come to his senses. But the reality is Al Gore is very much in favor of us spending Social Security money. We have got to put a stop to this.
I do not know, I guess this is maybe being an alpha male, you raid your grandmother's trust fund so you can go around telling your friends, I wear opaque shirts, or whatever the color is that alpha males are supposed to wear. I do not keep up with these kind of subliminal things outside the Beltway.
But the reality is, here is a guy running for President who wants to spend Social Security money and is fighting our budget because our budget does not spend enough money.
What we are saying to the Vice President is, hey, look, all we are saying is take a penny out of the dollar. That is all you got to do is take one cent and then you do not have to spend any of the money out of Social Security. Cut out some of the waste.
My colleague talked about Secretary Babbitt saying there was no waste in the Department of Interior, and you may have already mentioned this about the $30 million duck-breeding island in Hawaii. The Department of Interior has bought a $30 million island for ducks to breed on in Hawaii.
I was a honeymooning duck, I might want to go to Hawaii myself if I could fly over there. But the problem is only 10 ducks took them up on the offer.
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So now at a cost of $3 million per duck, we have got an island. As the majority leader says, that is a lot of quackery.
Mr. SESSIONS. The gentleman from Georgia is suggesting that the money that has been appropriated is more than what the President asked for in this bill that he vetoed. We have wisely provided it for not only the National Institutes of Health but $88 million more for education, and yet the President and the administration refuses to find one penny of taking out waste, fraud and abuse which we know is rampant, and the administration is even unwilling to look at the $30 million. Yet I know at Glacier National Park this year, the administration put a million-
dollar toilet that took 800 trips from a helicopter to place this outhouse at 7,000 feet. It is incredible. One would think that they could utilize some common sense just like what is done at my table, I am sure at your tables, where you have to make decisions just on one penny out of a dollar.
Mr. HAYWORTH. It is amazing the efforts which the left will employ to avoid common sense savings. I was especially surprised and sadly disheartened at the comments of my fellow Arizonan the Secretary of Interior, our one-time governor Mr. Babbitt to now say that there is no waste in that department. I would simply refer the Secretary to a finding made just a few years ago, in my first term in the Congress of the United States when I was privileged to serve on the Committee on Resources and we had the Interior Department's accountant, in Washington, we give accountants fancy names, the Inspector General was there, that is the accountant who takes care of all the books, conducts the audit, and sitting alongside him at that point in time was the director of the National Park Service. The accountant, the Inspector General for the Interior Department, reported to our committee that for that fiscal year, the National Park Service could not account for over
$70 million in funds authorized and appropriated to be spent by the National Park Service. They could not account for it.
Mr. Speaker, we have the crown jewels of the Park Service in Arizona, the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, a variety of amazing sites of natural splendor. We depend on the Park Service to be good stewards of those national treasures. But is it too much to ask the Park Service and other Washington bureaucrats here to also be good stewards of the treasure of the American people, the tax money they send here year in and year out? And so, Mr. Speaker, I would invite my fellow Arizonan to take a very close look, mindful of that report of a few years ago. Certainly there is savings of one cent on every dollar spent, because I know a whole lot of Arizonans who sit down every Sunday with their newspaper and start to clip coupons, because they need to save 50 cents on a box of cereal. This is something that is not foreign. This is something that we do not need any highfalutin economics for. It is just common sense. We can do better.
I yield to my friend from Georgia.
Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman from Arizona holds up the penny. I have got a dollar here. All we are saying is find a penny. You know about clipping that 50 cents off on the Special-K or the corn flakes made by Kellogg's versus buying the house brand which always is cheaper but not always up to the taste quality. It is not just a matter of having to do it, it is also a matter of wanting to do it, because it is stupid not to. That is the way Americans buy things. We are a country of hardworking, middle-class people. If we can buy gas for $1.12 a gallon, we are going to drive two blocks past the $1.15 a gallon station because we can save the three cents per gallon. If we can buy our clothes cheaper when they are on sale, we are going to wait until the suits go on sale before we buy one. If we go to a restaurant, and I know the gentlemen here are both fathers. When was the last time you bought steak? You always are buying chicken and the first thing your eyes go to in the restaurant is the right side of the menu where the prices are, and then you work your way back to what the food items are you can buy for that price. For the people who have to decide between buying a new piece of furniture or a new dress or probably not buying either because the dryer breaks or you need a new set of tires on your car, or if you are a runner, buying jogging shoes when they are discontinued because they have been marked down 50 percent, if you go to Wal-Mart every Saturday or Sunday to buy anything from shampoo to cleaning fluid for your car or anything else, this is what we are saying, this is all we are talking about, finding that one penny on the dollar.
All over America, it is easy to do, from Maine to Miami to San Francisco. But somehow in this little 50-mile radius of an area of Washington, D.C., and not even that, really just maybe about a five-
mile radius in the inner city here of government, it is impossible.
Mr. SESSIONS. We are talking about the things that happen back home. We are talking about decisions that families have to make. Sometimes you sacrifice, perhaps for a child. Sometimes you might sacrifice for a parent. But I would like to give some examples about how Washington, D.C. can make some tough decisions. It started with taking control of the House of Representatives that Republicans did in 1995. I would like to give some information about that.
Since 1995, the legislative branch funding has produced a savings of
$1.2 billion below the trend line. In other words, if you had put the trend line of where it was headed from 30 years' worth of Democrat control, we have now reduced that $1.2 billion. This year, for the year 2000, legislative appropriations is $124 million below the current year. That is a 4.8 percent reduction. That means from 1999 to year 2000, the legislative branch, which is run by Republicans, has reduced their budget 4.8 percent. The legislative branch has downsized by 4,380 employees since 1995. That is a 16 percent reduction. We have cut the number of printed daily congressional books by 8,200 copies. We have cut the number of House committee staffs by one-third. We have privatized the House barber shop and beauty shops and custodial care and the parking lot and transferred the House post office to the U.S. Postal Service. We have done things that made sense in Washington, D.C. But those were things that were underneath our own control. That was because we were able to make the hard decisions. That is what we are doing now. That is why Members of Congress, at least Republicans, said we believe that it is so important not to spend Social Security that Members of Congress should take a 1 percent cut in pay next year. Lo and behold, what happens? It gets to the President, wholly unacceptable. So the things that take place every single day back home, somehow is just not acceptable, will not cut it up here.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, we are all about the same age, born in the 1950s, raised in the 1960s. Just describing my home, and I know the gentleman from Texas, he may not know this, but I was actually born in Brazos County, Texas, and the gentleman from Arizona and I found out today we have cotton and a lot of other crops in common, and the folks back home live in a world totally different from the spending other people's money philosophy of Washington, D.C.
I was raised in Athens, Georgia, on Plum Nelly Road, plumb out of the city and nelly in the county. In that house, 215 Plum Nelly Road, Ann and Al Kingston did not let children leave the room with the light on. If you left the light on, dad would let you know you were wasting money. We did not pay the power company extra money by leaving a light on in an unoccupied room. If you left the water on when you were brushing your teeth, not after you finished brushing but during the act of brushing your teeth, you were also called to the mat for a little dialogue, and sometimes that dialogue was not always verbal.
Now, you washed your own car. My little sister Jean who had two older sisters, she did not know there were such things as new clothes until she got to be a teenager and was on a clothing allowance. She wore hand-me-downs. That is just the way we were raised. I will never forget walking to the Beachwood Shopping Center from my house with Jimbo Ray, we would pick up Coca-Cola bottles on the way because they were 2 and 3 cent return bottles. We were frugal but it was not because we were poor, it was just that was the culture. You did not waste money. That is the way people did in Arizona and Texas and California and all over. And somehow they come to Washington and forget that whole value system. It is bizarre. Because I know lots of good people in government, Democrats and Republicans.
Yet one of the absurd things, the Pentagon lost two $850,000 tugboats. They lost one $1 million missile launcher. Now, I ask my colleagues, has anybody seen the missile launcher? Who has got it? Come on, fess up. Somebody has got to have it. It just goes on and on and on. A contractor for the Pentagon paid $714 for an electric bell that was only worth $46. It is absurd. We pay $8.5 million to 26,000 dead people for food stamps. Hey, why do we not start paying the money to live people, and we might have less of a need for health care if we start feeding live people. But can you imagine $8.5 million worth of food stamps to dead people? It is unbelievable. And it only happens in Washington, D.C. It does not happen in large businesses, it does not happen in small businesses, it does not happen in Georgia, it does not happen in Arizona, it does not happen in Texas, it does not happen with my family, with your family, with my neighbor's family down the street and turn the corner and go up one, it does not happen in that household, but here in Washington, D.C., it is the rule and not the exception.
Mr. SESSIONS. We were talking about Bruce Babbitt, saying that there was not a penny that he could find in his department. Yet we go back just 4 months to August 11, 1999, and here is the headline out of the Washington Times. Junkets Found in Wildlife Service. Trips to Brazil and Japan to promote a logo cost $26,000. This is very similar to the number of people that this President takes when he travels around the world. We are not saying you cannot travel. We are saying reduce what you are doing. This is $26,000. Here is what it says:
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's employee spent $17,600 to travel from Brazil and Japan, including two junkets to promote the use of the sport fish logo, according to documents found by the Washington Times.
What we found out is that a gentleman made four trips to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil in 13 months at a cost of $9,084, according to the travel vouchers. And the director of the institute where they went said there is absolutely no reasonable justification for using the money to travel to these places. Here is what he said. His voucher stated that it was for the purpose of encouraging these manufacturers that he was going to meet with to use the sport fish logo on sport fishing equipment imported into the United States. In other words, he spent $26,000 to travel outside the country so that we could provide information so that our consumers in this country would want to see that sport fish logo. And yet the Secretary says he cannot find a penny.
What really happened here after the Government Accounting Office did this investigation? Mr. Gordon said his organization requested vouchers from other employees after receiving information from agency workers of financial irregularities. ``This doesn't surprise me. I find that this is consistent with what we found in our organization.'' The GAO finds this every single day. Yet the administration refuses to find just one penny on their own and take action about it.
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Mr. HAYWORTH. I would say to my friend from Texas, I am indebted to him for pointing this out, and for my colleague from Georgia, who I think used a term that is all too revealing about the mind set of Washington and the wasteful spending therein and what transpires. The phrase is ``other people's money.''
Some folks in this town come to view the Federal Treasury as one big piece of pie, or, perhaps more appropriately, as the ultimate lottery winnings of all times, equating with trillions of dollars, rather than realizing this money belongs to the American people we are entrusted with.
While my friends talk about the accountability, we are also indebted to our colleague the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), who serves on the Committee on Education and the Work Force, who has gone back and done some checking, because our good friend, the former Governor of South Carolina, the Secretary of Education, Mr. Riley, has also said that there can be no reductions.
Mr. Speaker, our colleague the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) points out that the Education Department cannot account for $120 billion of taxpayer money. Today, more than 7 months after the March audit deadline, the Department of Education still cannot produce the required paperwork to allow their financial works to be audited by the GAO. In other words, they cannot even supply the information, and they cannot use the excuse that the dog ate the homework.
The Department of Education is the only Federal department that has not been audited for fiscal year 1998. The Department of Education is responsible for distributing $120 billion a year in education spending,
$35 billion in appropriated funds and approximately an $85 billion loan portfolio. Unfortunately, they do not know where the money is going.
Mr. Speaker, is it too much to ask for accountability? Is it too much to say based on the fact that the figures are incomplete, that apparently our friends in the Department of Education do not know where the funds are going, could they not at least take the modest step of trying to find one penny in savings out of these $120 billion?
I see we are joined by our colleague from South Carolina, who has helped to make a difference from the low country, who must hear with interest the comments of the former Governor of South Carolina, the current Secretary of Education, about this topic, the out and out refusal of the administration to join with us to find savings of one penny on every dollar. I yield to my friend.
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for doing so. I was sitting in my office catching up on paperwork and saw you over here and heard what you are talking about, which is this notion is it or is it not impossible to cut one cent out of every dollar spent in Washington? And the answer is a resounding yes based on what I hear from folks back home in South Carolina, and the answer is a resounding yes, in that if we are ever going to get serious about limiting the size of government, about limiting its growth, you have to establish precedent with this idea of a penny on the dollar. I think it is a great idea, and it is something that has got to happen.
One of the things that I think is interesting was I am on the Committee on International Relations, and I remember looking at a GAO report that talked about surplus properties within the inventory of State Department. As you know, we have got embassies around the globe.
Well, they had a surplus list of properties, and I remember in looking at this list, for instance, the State Department had a $90 million residence in Japan that was surplus. In Buenos Aires, the ambassador's residence down there is a $20 million home. You look at this, the State Department just got through selling the residence in Bermuda for I think it was $12 million or $14 million. You look at the amount of money that is out there, and, again, this was a GAO report that said you guys have too much in inventory, you might want to consider a little bit simpler accommodation. A $90 million residence in Tokyo is probably a bit much. It is not necessary to have that to do the job that has to be done.
So, one, there is a lot of fluff in the system, based on the inventory according to the Government Accounting Office.
The second thing that is interesting is this week we had a hearing on our policy with North Korea, and there is a new Government Accounting Office study that shows that over $365 million has been spent by the American taxpayer in food aid to North Korea. Never mind the fact that North Korea is testing missiles over Japan and basically disrupting the neighborhood, but you look at $365 million in food aid, the whole point of the GAO study was they could not quantify where the food was going.
So you have somebody that has declared themselves an enemy of the United States taxpayer, who at the same time is getting over $300 million worth of food aid that the Government Accounting Office says we cannot account for. We do not know if it is going to feed the army or if it is going to feed starving people in Northern Korea.
Mr. SESSIONS. If the gentleman would yield, what we are talking about tonight is waste, fraud and abuse. We are challenging the President to find a way within this administration to find one penny's worth of saving, without spending Social Security, and balancing the budget, and that is what we are asking the President to do.
I would like to go back and give a history of what 30 years of Congressional overspending does. What it does is very clearly seen on this chart. For those of you who might be a few feet away, the lower part here is deficits. This is spending too much money. This part that is on the right is the surplus.
For 30 years, from 1970, when we first put a man on the moon was when we began ending surpluses in this government. For 30 years we have run deficits, and, for the first time, now, we have had 3 years worth of surpluses.
But we Republicans recognize that we should not with a straight face say that the work is done, because we recognize that what has happened is we are operating under rules that even today allow Social Security to be raided and to be used for regular government spending.
Since 1984, $638 billion that was given by people for their retirement, taken by this government, has been spent. So what we are trying to do is to say now that we are at zero in 1999. For the first time in 39 years, Republicans did not spend a penny of Social Security.
We are trying to challenge the President now to say Mr. President, let us put it in writing. Let us have an agreement that we will not spend the Social Security. We provided the President millions of dollars more in many areas as a result of us making tough decisions, but we have had to prioritize. We are going to keep challenging this President and keep showing ways, which there is plenty ways.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, I think it is important to say that this is not the President alone, this is the Vice President. Indeed, Mr. Gore's entire proposed budget spends all of the surplus that you are talking about. It goes right through the operating surplus and then goes right into the Social Security surplus. So, you know, this is not a problem that necessarily ends with the Clinton administration should the baton be passed on to the Vice President, because the vice president is very much in favor of spending the surplus.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Or, if my friend would yield, given the rather considerable elector difficulties that this Vice President is encountering, we should point out that our former colleague in the other body, former Senator Bradley, would not end this either.
Indeed, we should point out that the Washington Post, not exactly a bastion of conservative values, the Washington Post in work done in part by reporter C.C. Connelly pointed out 2 weeks ago that the campaign promises of Messrs. Bradley and Gore alone would require all of the surplus funds, including Social Security.
It boils down to a very simple choice, Mr. Speaker: If you want to empower the culture of spending and having Washington take more and more and more of your family's budget to spend on the national budget, well, the standard to follow on the left is pretty clear. It is offered unapologetically by their 2 presidential candidates. If, however, you believe the money you earn and the sacrifices that my colleague from Georgia pointed out as a common notion of light, if you believe for too long you have been asked to sacrifice so that Washington can allegedly do more, and we need to reverse that, as we have done with common sense priorities in this House, and make sure that Washington saves so your family can have more, then, Mr. Speaker, we should invite the American people to join with us to be understandably wary of the bill of goods offered by the left and to point out again the comments of the minority leader of this House, who now tends to hedge and says on national television, ``Well, we ought to try to spend as little of the Social Security surplus as possible.''
Again, Mr. Speaker, it is a very simple notion: A penny saved, one penny, out of every discretionary dollar spent, one penny saved, is retirement secured.
Mr. SESSIONS. Is it not interesting that as we go about telling the American public that it is their retirement, it is a savings that is for their future, and as we play this scenario out, that all of a sudden we are at zero, and now what we are trying to do is to fight the President, who says we should not spend any Social Security. He wants us to spend more and more and more. And even though this government is at $1.8 trillion, that he cannot find one penny. He will not even accept the challenge. He will not even accept the challenge to find one penny out of a dollar. And yet routinely in our family, and I am sure my colleagues, that happens every day.
It happens in small businesses. It happens all across this country, where families and small businesses and even large businesses have to do this. Exxon. Exxon is one-eighteenth the size of this government, and yet every single year they make tough decisions where they reinvigorate themselves.
I would suggest to you, and I have done this, that when I lost weight, I not only became healthier, but more efficient and things worked better. If this government looked inwardly to itself to take off the bloated fat that is in the bureaucracy, to exercise a little bit, to have to go and do something that it has never done, then I would suggest to you that we would have better employees also.
Can you imagine an employee who may have been with the government for 30 years, never being challenged to have to look for a better way to do his job or her job? Can you imagine the employees that still do have a sense of financial integrity with them, now, for the first time, being able to come to their bosses in the government and say, ``I think we should accept this challenge. I think I have found a way,'' we called it in my company an idea forum, ``a good idea. Here is what I think we can do to run ourself more efficiently and to be prepared to meet whatever our mission statement is.''
For the first time, Republicans challenged the administration openly, put our paycheck on the line to take a 1 percent pay cut, challenged the government to simply find what it could to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse to find the savings, and the President, our leader, was unwilling to accept this from the get-go.
Unilaterally he said, it is not something I wanted to engage in. Bruce Babbitt, there is no waste, fraud and abuse here. Can you imagine the disappointment on the faces of Federal employees when they came to work and found out that those good ideas that they could be presenting, those good ideas maybe that they had been trying to get up the ladder for a long time, can you imagine now that they were rejected by the President?
Mr. SANFORD. You mentioned the idea again of a penny on a dollar. Again, one of the committees that I serve on is the Committee on International Relations. It was interesting, we had an amendment last year that dealt with a number of these international study organizations that we fund indirectly through the foreign aid bill.
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One of them was the Bureau for International Expositions. Another was the International Lead and Zinc Study Group. Another was the International Rubber Organization. Another was the International Vine and Wine. There are a lot of strange organizations out there that we fund. The idea that there is not a penny worth of waste in maybe some of these studies.
For that matter, we had another amendment that looked at three foundations. There are a lot of foundations around the country are privately funded. They go out there in the marketplace, they compete for funds. Yet, there are three Cold War era foundations that are still funded through the Federal government, and compete with a foundation in any one of the 435 congressional districts for funding.
So we went and said, you cannot have your cake and eat it too, except for in Washington. You cannot be funded through the Federal government and also compete in the private marketplace for research dollars.
A lot of the research topics were bizarre. I remember one of the studies was to identify the causes of premarital sex in Southeast Asia. Call me old-fashioned on this, but I think it has a lot to do with simple attraction. But anyway, there were these bizarre studies. I do not know that there would not be a penny worth of savings out there in one of these studies, much less the overall organizations that were being funded that were, again, offering the research for the studies themselves.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, I am on the spending end on that particular Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs, with the foreign aid bill.
If we follow the Clinton travel thing, $42.8 million, taking 1,300 Federal employees to Africa, and $8.8 million to go into China, and
$10.5 million to go into Chile.
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, could the gentleman tell me the Africa number again?
Mr. KINGSTON. That was $42.8. The gentleman from Texas has a chart on what we are talking about here, just to show the absurdity of this, 1,300 employees who went.
Mr. SANFORD. To me, it would not matter whether it was Africa or whether it was Chile or whether it was Australia or Great Britain, but the notion that there is not a penny worth of savings on one of those trips is just absurd to me.
Mr. KINGSTON. Five hundred people went to China. I do not know why we need five hundred advisors. These are Federal employees, and there are also private citizens who go who allegedly pay back the money.
I called the General Accounting Office, the accountability people in Washington, and I said, how many of the private citizens paid back their money? They said, well, you would have to ask the State Department. The State Department would have to get it from the White House, and we will never find out the answer to that.
If we look at the chart here, tell me, 13 of those people could not have stayed home? That is all we are talking about, 1 percent, 13 of them have to stay home. I would say the mayor of Denver, I know Colorado is very important to our African policy, but if it is the case, why cannot the people in Colorado pay for the mayor of Denver to go on this junket?
That is not even the expensive part. When Vice President Gore and President Clinton travel, the expensive part is the promises they make. In 1993, they promised $1 billion to Russia. In 1999, they urged the International Monetary Fund to release $4.5 billion in aid to Russia, one of the most corrupt countries in the world right now, and $400 million promised to the Ukraine, and then another $5 billion through the International Monetary Fund, and $1.8 billion to close Chernobyl, another $2 billion promised in 1995 by Clinton to Poland.
He promised $260 million to South Africa. He promised them $650 million, and do they not have the largest diamond reserves in the world, and we are going to pay $650 million for infrastructure development? To Costa Rica he promised $2.2 billion to extend the Caribbean Basin initiative, which the gentleman and I both know has absolutely decimated the textile industry in the Southeast United States, basically taken all of our jobs out of South Carolina and Georgia and put them in the Caribbean. He promised $360 billion to train soldiers in Bosnia, even though we have already spent $12 billion in the Balkans. It just goes on and on and on.
When the President travels, yes, it is expensive for his entourage, but it is even more expensive to hear what he promises to people.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If I can just make the point, I thank my colleagues from Georgia and from South Carolina, and our other good friend who serves on the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Oklahoma
(Mr. Istook) put pen to paper and started to estimate all the promises in the last 7-plus years.
Mr. Speaker, and I am glad the Speaker is seated, there are $22 billion in promises of American funds to foreign governments on the road, and Mr. Speaker, we ought to issue this travel advisory, the President again, following Veterans Day, November 11, I believe November 12, is scheduled to make another trip to Europe.
Mr. Speaker, we should ask the President to uncharacteristically restrain the price of his promises. We do not need finger wagging or redefinition of the word ``is,'' we need old fashioned fiscal discipline. We invite the President and the administration and our friends on the left to join us in that process.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues tonight who have joined me, the gentleman from Georgia, the gentleman from Arizona, the gentleman from South Carolina, for having what I think is a very interesting talk about a way that we can ask this president and challenge this president to save one penny.
We know what happened, today the President vetoed the bill because he wants more and more and more and more spending. He wants less accountability, and the worst part is that what it means is it would be spending our Nation's future social security.
Republicans will not allow this to happen. The gentleman from Texas
(Mr. Armey) will not allow a bill that places social security in danger. I thank the gentlemen.
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