John Boehner

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the committee and Members on both sides of the aisle for the excellent work that they have done. Especially congratulations to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio] on a bill that really is reflective of our broader Republican agenda. The gentlewoman from California who spoke before me referred to this as another radical part of our agenda. What the gentlewoman refers to as ``radical'' most people in America would look at and say, ``Now this is common sense,'' because what we are trying to do is to move this power out of Washington, back to States and local communities, to make decisions for the people who live in their communities that can best help the people in their communities. One provision that will be in the manager's amendment that I am especially pleased with refers to title V of the McKinney Act that currently sets up a three-agency review process for processing applications by homeless groups for Federal surplus land. The process can take years and really does not reflect any local concerns. Even if there is a local homeless or low-income housing group that would like some of the land and the local community wants to give it to them, they cannot under existing law. The Federal Government decides here in Washington. This provision in the amendment cuts through all of this redtape. It says that if the local elected officials consent to the transfer of surplus Federal land to a local homeless or low-income housing group, that the Federal Government can transfer the property immediately. No endless process; no three-agency review. The property goes straight to local groups who have local support. If the local officials cannot agree, then the process goes on through the regular McKinney Act. I think this is a win-win solution. It gives local leaders the authority and the incentive to work with local groups who are trying to address the housing needs of the poor and the homeless. Local housing assistance groups will get a more receptive ear at city hall and will have more incentive to build local support within their communities. This is an important provision, and I would urge my colleagues to support the rule, support the manager's amendment and the bill.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to welcome Rev. Tom Kuhn to the House this morning as our guest Chaplain on this National Day of Prayer. Father Tom is pastor of the Church of the Incarnation in Centerville, OH, just outside of Dayton. He is a former principal at Cincinnati's Moeller High School, and I came to know him over a decade ago when he was the assistant pastor at St. John's Church in Westchester, my hometown. Father Kuhn is the spiritual leader of one of Ohio's largest Catholic communities. But just as important and not always as apparent are the countless ways in which he reaches out to young people, encouraging them to make the most of God's gift. His work has truly improved the lives of a great many in our community. Father Tom is well known for his 5-minute sermons, not for their brevity but for his way of bringing issues to a point in a very significant way so that in fact when people leave church after mass, they truly remember his sermons. As this House works for a better tomorrow for America's children, I think it is appropriate that we are joined today on this National Day of Prayer by someone who has dedicated himself to helping our Nation's youth. Mr. Speaker, please join me today in welcoming Father Tom Kuhn.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, the Reverend Charles L. Moore, at the age of 86, is the oldest active priest in the 19 county greater Cincinnati archdiocese. During his religious career, he has served as a parish priest, high school teacher, jail chaplain, mission administrator, church pastor, district moderator of the National Catholic Community Services, archdiocesan director of the Catholic Information Services, and military service counselor in World War II in Florida. Father Moore has spent the last 16 years serving the parishioners at the Holy Family Parish in Middletown, OH, the students at Fenwick High School, and John XXIII Elementary School. June 6, 1996 will be the 60th anniversary of Father Moore's ordination into the priesthood. I want to congratulate Father Moore on his years of service and dedication to helping the people of Southwestern Ohio.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, tonight we are having a debate about whether we should amend the Constitution to make it more difficult to raise taxes. If you look back over the last 15 years, over the last 30 years, take that amount of time, it has become clear that whenever Congress got into a bind, they just raised taxes. The fact is many of us believe that it ought to be more difficult to raise taxes and many of us believe that if we are going to balance the budget, we ought to do it by reducing spending and controlling spending and not by increasing taxes. A number of States already have tax limitation language in their Constitutions, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. They all have requirements to balance their State budgets. And so you can see that these States have a tax limitation amendment in their Constitution. They also have a requirement to balance their budgets, and they are doing just fine, and this Congress can do the same thing. The fact is it has been too easy to raise taxes in this Congress. What we are trying to do is to tell the American people, ``We're on your side, we're going to make it tougher.''

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, we are here, and over the last year I think all my colleagues know that none of us at any time thought we would ever get here, but I want to congratulate the chairman of the committee, Mr. Roberts, for the work that he has done to guide this bill throughout the last year. He has done a marvelous job, along with the members of our committee. Let me also say to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. de la Garza] and to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm], who were great partners along the way, sometimes difficult moments, but they were a great help to us in the conference. This is an effort that was a team effort, and all of us are to be congratulated for the job we have done on behalf of American agriculture.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the National Corrugated Steel Pipe Association [NCSPA], on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the patent for corrugated steel pipe. Under a submission prepared by James H. Watson, corrugated steel pipe was granted patent No. 559,642 on May 5, 1896. Today, corrugated steel pipe is extensively used in private and public drainage structures throughout the country and the world. Though its effectiveness was widely doubted in 1896, corrugated steel pipe has proven itself able to withstand the stress of dead loads, heavy traffic, unstable foundations, cantilever extensions, hillside installations, and sewer freezing and thawing conditions. This sturdy, durable product has earned its place as a mainstay within the construction industry, properly gained by its effectiveness, durability, and cost efficiency. I congratulate NCSPA and the corrugated steel pipe industry on this milestone and I thank my colleagues for joining me in recognizing this important occasion.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Rules Committee for yielding this time to me, and suggest to the Members that we have coming before us today the most sweeping change in ag policy that we have seen in 60 years. We make real reforms in ag policy to try to move agriculture in this country from a government-run supply control supply management program to more market orientation than we have seen again in 60 years. Now, we tried to bring this bill up about 3 weeks ago, and the gentleman who just spoke and preceded me, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer], did everything he could to prevent the bill from coming to the floor. Now the gentleman from Missouri and all of us understand in ag country the farmers and bankers need to understand what the program is going to be because the Government ag program died last September 30, and so it is of utmost urgency that we move this bill through this House. Now, the Committee on Rules, and working with Members from both sides of the aisle, have allowed some 15 or 16 amendments to be brought to the floor for debate. I believe there is ample time over the next 2 days to debate this fully and to represent all of the interests and concerns of all of the Members, and so I think that we have before us a good rule, and I would urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I am sure the President of the United States would like to make a downpayment toward balancing the budget just as much as you would and we would.

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, the Congress of the United States and the Government of the United States is not going to default on its debt, not now nor in the future. But if we are at some point going to increase the debt limit, which we are going to do the last week of February, we are going to make a downpayment for the future of our children and theirs. For 30 years politicians in this town have done the same thing, pile up the debt, pile up the debt, and imprison our children and theirs. So every child born in America today owes $19,000 as their share of the national debt. A child born this year will pay $187,000 over the course of their lifetime in taxes just to pay the interest on the national debt that their parents and their grandparents have left for them. That is unconscionable. What is the President of the United States asking? Raise the debt limit. Let us have more debt. The fact is, it is time to get serious about balancing the budget of the United States and saving the future for our kids and theirs. Oh, but no, we do not want to do that. The President says we can agree on the numbers, but we will save the policies until later: The same kind of Washington gimmicks, the same kind of smoke and mirrors that have been used in this town to say one thing and do something else, year after year after year. What we are saying on our side of the aisle is it is time to get serious. It is time for no more gimmicks, no more tricks. It is time to do the right thing to save the future for our kids and theirs, and we are going to do it. Now, in the meantime we want a downpayment on extending the debt limit of this country. We ought to make some generous effort in a bipartisan way to move us toward saving the future, and we ought to do it over the next couple of weeks so that when we get back here on the 26th, we can have a bill that can be agreed to.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, there has been an awful lot of talk about the credit of the United States of America. Over the last 15 years, the Congress of the United States has consistently used the statute to increase the debt limit to move their agenda, the congressional agenda, through the White House and into law. We have seen this over these past 15 years by Democrat Congresses. Over the last year, Republicans in Congress have felt pretty strongly about the need to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington, DC. We have accumulated some $5 trillion worth of debt that none of us in this room are ever really going to pay off. Our children and our grandchildren are going to pay that off. We are imprisoning our children and our grandchildren by our irresponsibility over the last 25 to 30 years. So now is the time to do something about it. The President of the United States wants us to give him a clean increase in the debt limit. He wants to put more debt on the backs of our children. What we are going to insist is that we make a down payment, a down payment on saving the future for our children and theirs, a down payment on moving us toward a plan to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington. Our friends on the other side and the White House are making this big issue about whether we are going to default. Well, there is going to be no default, not now, nor is there going to be any default in the future. We believe that the debt limit is being handled by the Treasury, probably not in a way that I would do it, but it is being handled. But I have to tell Members the frustration amongst Members on both sides of this Capitol about the refusal of the President of the United States to deal honestly with trying to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington is excessive. We sat through 6 weeks of meetings at the White House over trying to find some agreement on balancing the budget. I have got to tell Members, looking back over those last 6 weeks, nothing really happened other than we were diddled with. We were props for the cameras at the White House, because the President of the United States in fact made hardly no movement toward any honest effort to balance the budget. Oh, yes, the President wants to agree on some numbers but never agree on the policies that would actually get us there. He wanted to do the same thing the politicians from both sides of the aisle over the last 30 years have done to the American people, and that is to sell them out. We are not going to get into a debate with the President about balancing the budget unless it is real. We are not going to do to our children and theirs what has gone on in this town far too long. So if we are going to have a plan to balance the budget, it is going to be with real numbers, it is going to be with real policies that will move us toward actually balancing the budget. But the President has refused. Negotiations and discussions have stopped. So what we are going to do this year is that we are going to make attempts to get down payments on our plan to balance this budget. One such down payment will come as we bring the debt limit extension to the floor of the House the last week in February. The President has said that he needs a debt limit extension by March 1. The President will have a debt limit extension by March 1. There is no threat, let me repeat, no threat that this country will default on its debts now, nor is there any threat in the future that we will default on our debt. There is not going to be any default. But we are going to have a down payment on this debt limit. The Balanced Budget Down Payment Act that we passed last week to extend to the Government funding authority for those six departments or appropriation areas that had not been funded continued that process. We are seeing funding for these agencies reduced over what we spent last year. We are seeing grants by agencies, that have been agreed to by the House and Senate, not allowed to make new grants. If you look at that one-third of the budget which is discretionary spending, we expected to save about $23 billion this year. These are real dollars, less spending this year than what we spent in the last fiscal year, and if we continue on this course with continuing resolutions for the balance of this year, we expect to save $29 to $30 billion in real spending. This is a downpayment for our children's future, and it is the right thing for our kids and theirs.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 133) and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns on Tuesday, January 9, 1996, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Friday, January 12, 1996, unless the House sooner receives a message from the Senate transmitting its concurrence in House Concurrent Resolution 133, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, the headline in the Washington Post this morning is wrong. It says, ``House Republicans Derail Budget Talks.'' We should make it perfectly clear that the person who derailed the budget talks was Vice President Al Gore when he came out to the microphones at the White House the other night after the Speaker and the majority leader in the Senate met with the President, and he poisoned the well by mischaracterizing the agreements that were made at the White House. We are intent on balancing the budget, and we are intent on doing it now. We can give our children and our grandchildren the greatest Christmas present that anyone could ever leave to the next generation, and that is a balanced budget which means saving the American dream for our children and theirs. We are going to do it, and we are going to do it now.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing wrong with this bill. It went through the House and the Senate in a bipartisan way. And during the whole process, we worked with the SEC, we worked with the administration, and we had an agreed-upon bill. All the sudden, at the eleventh hour, the President decides to veto it. Everybody in this Chamber knows what this is. This is nothing more than raw politics. The President, having a few of his friends over for dinner and deciding, ``Well, I really do not want to tell those trial lawyers, no. I really do not want to stand up and do the right thing for the American people.'' Mr. Speaker, it is very simple. It is time to send the President a message that we are not going to negotiate this way. This is the same thing we have been going through with the budget for the last several months. All we get is idle talk, idle talk, but we never get serious negotiations. Mr. Speaker, we had serious negotiations on this bill. We came to an agreement, and the fact is we ought to override it and we ought to do it today.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, let me remind my colleagues of the fact there was an election in November 1994 when the American people decided to make a great change in this Congress. For the first time in 40 years they decided to put Republicans in charge of both Houses of Congress. Over this past year we have kept our word to the American people. The central promise that we made to them is that we would balance the budget in 7 years using honest numbers. And all year we have done that by increasing the amount of money for Medicare, increasing the amount of money for Medicaid, increasing the amount of money for student loans. Mr. Speaker, during the last shutdown of the Government, the President decided that he would finally agree with us; that we would balance the budget in 7 years using honest numbers. But over the last 29 days, the President has not kept his word. He has done nothing to further the commitment that he made to the American people that he would balance the budget in 7 years. Now, the long and short of this is that we are going to keep our word to the American people. We are going to do what we promised we would do. It is time for the President to keep his promise.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, for 40 years, Jim Mills has served the Middletown area through his local reporting and editorial writing at the Middletown Journal. Jim began his career at the Journal in 1995 starting off as a reporter covering local government. In 1957, he was appointed Sunday editor and moved to city editor in 1960. From 1972 until 1981 Jim was the managing editor of the paper. Ultimately, in 1981, he headed the newsroom and retained the title managing editor. Jim and Middletown, OH have seen many important news stories over the last four decades. Some of the local highlights include the growth and restructuring of Armco to its present organization as AK Steel, creation of the City Centre Mall, and redevelopment of the downtown area, State championships for area high schools, and the change Middletown and its business community have undergone. Jim and the Middletown Journal staff were always conscientious to bring the local angle to national news items ranging from the John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy assassinations, the Vietnam war, the Iranian hostage crisis, Desert Storm, and the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. Jim has received several awards for his dedication and continuous service. Among them are an award from the Associated Press Society of Ohio for exemplary service to the news-gathering business and his assistance to the Xenia Daily Gazette publish and report the news when its' offices were destroyed in a 1974 tornado. For coverage of the devastation the Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize. During the past four decades, Jim has worked with hundreds of reporters and local officials. They join me in saluting Jim for his work and wishing him the best in his retirement.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, for 40 years, Jim Mills has served the Middletown area through his local reporting and editorial writing at the Middletown Journal. Jim began his career at the Journal in 1955 starting off as a reporter covering local government. In 1957, he was appointed Sunday editor and moved to city editor in 1960. From 1972 until 1981 Jim was the managing editor of the paper. Ultimately, in 1981, he headed the newsroom and retained the title managing editor. Jim and Middletown, OH, have seen many important news stories over the last four decades. Some of the local highlights include the growth and restructuring of Armco to its present organization as AK Steel, creation of the City Centre Mall and redevelopment of the downtown area, state championships for area high schools, and the change Middletown and its business community have undergone. Jim and the Middletown Journal staff were always conscientious to bring the local angle to national news items ranging from the John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy assassinations, the Vietnam War, the Iranian hostage crisis, Desert Storm, and the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Jim has received several awards for his dedication and continuous service. Among them are an award from the Associated Press Society of Ohio for exemplary service to news-gathering business and his assistance to the Xenia Daily Gazette publish and report the news when its offices were destroyed in a 1974 tornado. For coverage of the devastation the Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize. During the past four decades, Jim has worked with hundreds of reporters and local officials. The join me in saluting Jim for his work and wishing him the best in his retirement.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I respond to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that 4 weeks ago today the President signed a law, a law that said he would work with the Congress of the United States to enact a balanced budget over the next 7 years using the CBO. For 4 weeks the President of the United States and his minions at the White House, have done nothing, nothing to meet the commitment that they made to the American people and the commitment they made to this Congress. Mr. Speaker, how long are we going to wait? for 30 years when things got tough in this town, we did the same thing. We blinked and we sold out the American people and our children and our grandchildren are going to get the opportunity to pay for the fact that this Congress, over the last 30 years, refused to meet its fiscal responsibility, its fiduciary responsibility to the American people by balancing the budget. What we are saying in this Congress this year is that we are not going to do it again. We are going to keep our word to the American people who elected us last November on a commitment that we, for the first time in 30 years, would do our job and balance the budget. Mr. Speaker, we have laid our plan on the table. All the specifics are there. All the numbers are there. All the policy is there to balance the budget over the next 7 years. When is the President going to tell us what he would like to do? When is the President going to tell us what he does not like about our bill? The fact is the President wants to spend more money, but he will not tell us how much more he wants to spend over the next 7 years. The President, unfortunately, has gone back to his roots, back to his roots of being a liberal. He wants Government as it is. He is considering the next election and, frankly, we are sitting up here thinking about the next generation. Mr. Speaker, this is a crisis, I will admit, and no one wants to put Federal employees through what they are going through. It is unfair to them. But quite frankly, what has gone on here for 30 years is unfair to our children and our grandchildren and it has to stop.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, for more than 13 months there has been an orchestrated campaign to demonize the Speaker. I think that this campaign that has gone on to try to destroy him is unfortunate. Of the 65 specific allegations that were made in the complaints to the Committee on Ethics about the Speaker, all were technically dismissed or fully dismissed except one. Of that one, there has been a special investigator brought in to work with the subcommittee to look at that one narrow little charge, which a former IRS commissioner has already suggested to both the Speaker and others is no violation whatsoever. Mr. Speaker, I think all of us have an obligation to ourselves and an obligation to this institution to be honest and to be forthright and to make sure that the integrity of the institution is maintained. The politicization of the Committee on Ethics over this last year I think is unfortunate, because these issues have been resolved by five Democrats and five Republicans working together, and together we can all continue to work to solve the Nation's problems.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I support the amendment offered by Representative Bill Clinger to put an end to the lobbying activities of executive branch employees. Too much of the information the executive branch distributes is designed not to educate or inform but to generate public opposition or support for matters before Congress. Currently, there is a law on the books to prohibit such political lobbying activity. However, the statute is so vague, no one has ever been held accountable. The Clinger amendment clarifies the existing law to make sure that Federal employees are administering Federal programs and assisting the American people rather than spending their time involved in partisan politics. Executive branch officials such as the President, Vice President, and officials approved by the Senate are exempted, but other public servants involved in the day-to-day operations of this Nation would be prohibited from playing politics with taxpayer money. I have witnessed first-hand this irresponsible and inappropriate behavior by Ohio employees of the Department of Agriculture [USDA]. Ohio State directors of USDA programs issued a press release making outrageous claims mimicking the shrill, partisan attacks we have heard from full time politicians in Washington. The antics of these employees, at taxpayer expense, degrade the term ``public servants.'' These politically appointed bureaucrats with the USDA should have been spending their time and our tax dollars helping Ohio's farmers instead of attacking for partisan gain efforts to balance the budget. No administration, Democrat or Republican, should be allowed to use publicly paid employees to further blatantly partisan and political agendas. I urge my colleagues to support the Clinger amendment.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Good morning to all my colleagues on this great Saturday morning, and I see the debate about balancing the budget continues to go on. Yesterday, I think that the House and the Senate both proved to the American people that we can, in fact, balance the budget in 7 years. We did it. We brought the documents here, we laid them out, we had a great debate, and they passed on both Houses. This issue over CBO numbers and OMB numbers, this is not just about numbers, it is about the fact that the President wants to spend $875 billion more over the next 7 years than what we want to spend. Mr. Speaker, if we can balance the budget in 7 years, which we proved yesterday, it is all about whether we are going to spend more of our children's inheritance, whether we are going to snatch more of the American dream away from our children, or whether we are going to stick to real numbers, certified by CBO; or whether we are going to do the same thing the politicians in this town have done for 30 years. And that is, just kind of mush the numbers together, make them work, and sell out our children. We are not going to do that.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, we have heard about CR's and debt limits, all of this minutia, and we all know this is not what this fight is about. It is about whether we are going to leave for our children and theirs a better future than what our parents left for us. Each succeeding generation in America has left for its children and its grandchildren a brighter future for them, and what are we leaving for our children? Five trillion dollars' worth of debt. That is what we are doing. We have heard every excuse in the world why we cannot balance the budget for 30 years. We have heard every Washington gimmick used why we cannot do it. The time is now. We are going to balance the budget to save the future for my girls, my two teenage girls, and every kid of America.

Mr. BOEHNER

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, do you see this? This is a piggy bank. Not a normal piggy bank that we would expect most American children to have. This is a piggy bank the American children are going to need to have to fill with $187,000 over their lifetime. It is going to be for their share of the interest on the national debt if we do not balance the budget soon. We are imprisoning our children, and theirs, by continuing to pile more and more debt on their backs. What we want to do for our children, and for their children, is to leave them the American dream, not the American debt. Mr. Speaker, the President offers no plan. The President offers no leadership It is unfortunate that the President has left nothing but our choice to bring this Government to a halt to save the future for our children.