Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Schaefer], another of the outstanding leaders in the balanced budget effort, who is also, as manager, the leader of the congressional Republican baseball team. (Mr. SCHAEFER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Istook], one of our more thoughtful Members on the subject of constitutional issues.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Bunning]. (Mr. BUNNING of Kentucky asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Tate], one of the distinguished members of our freshman class, who is a named sponsor of the amendment.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica].

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady], a subcommittee chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. (Mr. CANADY of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield that 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Denny Hastert, our chief deputy whip.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. I wish it could be more. (Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished majority whip, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay], a strong supporter of tax limitation.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that 15 of the 30 minutes that I control be allotted to the gentleman from Fort Worth, TX, Mr. Pete Geren, for such use as he may see fit.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton].

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert]. (Mr. BOEHLERT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the distinguished chairman. Let me say what a pleasure it is to have the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] presiding over this historic debate.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, let me thank the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] for his leadership in this effort. Mr. Chairman, I would also like to thank the new Republican majority leadership for their support. Special thanks to Lamar Smith, the task force leader on this item in the Contract With America, for his excellent work to get the three-fifths' vote in the contract. Stenholm], the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Geren], the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Schaefer], the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit,] and the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin], and all the other strong Members who, in a bipartisan way, have been pushing for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We have won the debate that there needs to be an amendment. The question is what kind of an amendment? Opponents have spoken on this floor, talked about the mechanics. They have talked about issues that are not the principal issue. The principal issue is how are we going to amend the Constitution? How are we going to get spending under control? It is not whether the Committee on the Judiciary is going to have oversight capability. The basic premise is we have simply got to stop spending as much money as we have been spending. Since 1965, which was the last year Federal spending went down, spending has gone up every year for 29 straight years: an amazing percentage of 1,300 percent. We are going to spend more money this year on interest on the debt than we spent for the entire Federal budget in fiscal year 1971. It is amazing. We do not have the backbone in the Congress of the United States to say no. We have to amend the Constitution, and if we are going to do it, let us look at the problem. The problem is not lack of revenue. The problem is too much spending. If you want to limit spending, what do you do? You limit revenues. How do you limit revenues? By limiting the ability to raise taxes. That is what generates the revenue. There are nine States that have tax limitation provisions either in their constitutions or on their statutes. The chart to my left shows that those States that have tax limitation provisions, they work. Taxes go up less in those States. They still go up, but they go up less. When the taxes go up less, spending goes up less. That means there is a greater likelihood that the budget will be balanced. My brother, Jay Barton, is a history teacher in Mt. Pleasant, TX. He is not a political expert. He called my staff this morning, and the said, ``Tell Joe Congress is like an addict. They are addicted to spending. They say give us one more spending fix, one more year, and then we will do the right thing.'' We have not balanced the budget since 1969. We have not had spending go down since 1965. Unless we do go into a cold turkey withdrawal by passing a constitutional amendment with a tax limitation provision, spending is going to spiral out of control and when that happens society as we know it today is simply going to collapse. The plain and simple solution is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, with a three-fifths' tax limitation provision in it. This three-fifths provision is not overly difficult. We have three-fifths to borrow money in the Stenholm/Schaefer amendment, three-fifths to increase the debt ceiling; let us go the third leg, put the three- fifths' provision to actually prevent tax increases. As has been pointed out since 1970, there have been 16 major tax bills on the floor of the House. Seven of those did pass with more than 60 percent. Seven failed, and two passed by voice vote. The largest tax increase in history passed this body a year-and-a-half ago by 2 votes, by 2 votes, 218 to 216. It would have failed if we had had the three- fifths' provision in. Would we have not addressed the budget problem? No. We would have done it by cutting spending, not raising taxes. Please vote for the tax limitation balanced budget amendment. The chart follows:

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Bass], another outstanding Member of the freshman class. (Mr. BASS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Crane], who year in and year out gains the most outstanding ranking as the most conservative Member of Congress.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the gentleman from Illinois. I would like to point out that the three-fifths requirement for a tax increase would not mean 290 votes in the House. It would mean 262 votes in the House. It is certainly more than 218----

Mr. BARTON of Texas. The gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg] has to ask the question of me, and then we would yield time to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Weller]. That is the parliamentary triangle that we have to honor.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. If the gentleman, the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, requests such time yielded to him as he may require.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg], and I see the former member of the Gang of Seven a few Congresses ago is back and loaded for bear and is just brimming to speak in the next 3 to 4 minutes. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, in order to answer that, it might be illuminatory to explain how the tax limitation balanced budget amendment is actually structured. Section 1 says that the President shall submit to the Congress a balanced budget and Congress shall vote on a balanced budget. It requires that the actual expenditures and receipts be less than the estimates, it requires that in order to increase receipts, there shall be a three-fifths' vote in both bodies in order to borrow money in any fiscal year and in order to increase the debt ceiling there shall be a three-fifth's vote in both bodies. There is a section that requires that the Congress shall implement the amendment by the appropriate legislature. There is a section that says the amendment shall become effective in the year 2002, or 2 years after requisite 38 States ratify the amendment. Every effort has been made to close all the loopholes so that in fact the President will be submitting a balanced budget, the Congress shall be voting on a balanced budget, the actual numbers during the fiscal year cannot exceed the estimates so the magic asterisk that OMB Director David Stockman used as a Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Reagan in the early 1980's, the magic asterisk has gone away. Even the unspecified savings that Director Darman, President Bush's Office of Management and Budget, unspecified, to be determined later-- he had over $300 billion in those types of savings--would go away. Under the leadership of the new chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] and the distinguished leadership of our new Speaker, and, of course, the Senate majority leader, Senator Dole from Kansas, we are going to present to the American people a true budget that does move us toward a balanced budget by the year 2002. There will be no budget gimmicks, no magic asterisks, no funny money. This is real, it is serious, it starts tomorrow at approximately 11:30 on this floor in this city when we vote to pass the tax limitation balanced budget amendment and send it to the other body. So people in America can call the U.S. Senate.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. In my town meetings, and I am sure as the gentleman begins to do his town meetings, his constituents are going to come and demand that he cut out that waste, fraud, and abuse and cut out pork-barrel spending. The gentleman would say that he will do it and he is going to be a bulldog to do it. The problem is there is no line in the Federal Government's budget that says waste, fraud, and abuse. When you get to a specific program and you say, ``Mr. Director, can you tell me where the waste, fraud, and abuse is, in your particular program?'' And the director is going to say, ``Congressman, there is no waste, fraud, and abuse in my program.'' Now, I was a White House Fellow at the Department of Energy in 1981, part of 1982, and was a staff liaison to the Grace Commission that President the executive branch of the Federal Government. One of my jobs was to look at all the committees that Department of Energy officials served on. It turned out there were over 300 standing committees that either the Secretary of Energy, Deputy Secretary of Energy, the Assistant Secretary of Energy served on. So I sent out a questionnaire to everybody who served on these standing committees. I said, ``How often do you meet? What are the subjects? Do you think you can do without this committee?'' Not one Assistant Secretary, Deputy Secretary, or Secretary himself wrote back in response to my question and said that the committee was eliminated and did not need to be established. Some of those committees have never met. They had never met, and yet they were not even willing to disestablish any of these intra- agency committees, Department of Energy, Defense, Department of Commerce. The bottom line, as the gentleman well knows, is we have simply got to put a disciplinary tool in the Constitution that says, ``You shall balance the budget.'' We need to put in that with it, ``You shall balance the budget, with the incentive being cutting spending, not raising taxes.'' That is why the three-fifths' tax increase is so important.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the gentleman from New York and I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from New York if he sought time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I, too, have received a number of telephone calls, and I had a constituent call my office in Texas today and said, ``We want Congressman Barton to vote for that Barton three-fifths tax- limitation amendment.'' And my receptionist said, ``Well, he is the named sponsor.'' He said, ``Well, you just tell him if he does not vote for it, he is not going to get my vote next year.'' She said, ``Well, I think you can expect the Congressman to vote for his own amendment.'' But there may be some people in this Chamber that want to make a phone call to their Congressman and do not know the phone number. The number, if anybody in the Chamber would like to make such a phone call tomorrow, is area code 202, 224-3121, and then just ask for their Congressman, Congressman Barton, Congressman Forbes, Congressman Weller, you know, whoever your Congressman happens to be, and you will be put through, and since the vote is going to be at about 11, 11:30, Eastern time tomorrow, those phone calls should come in earlier. If Congressman Forbes wanted to call his own office, he would need to do that before 11:30 tomorrow morning. I yield back to the gentleman from Illinois.