Steve Chabot

Mr. CHABOT

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California [Mr. Doolittle].

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher].

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Lewis]. (Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Tate].

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. I agree with the gentlewoman that the arts and the humanities are very important. I agree that they certainly have a place. The argument here, the real question is, should it be Federal tax dollars, $100 million in 1 year of Federal tax dollars to go to the National Endowment for the Humanities? I think not. The National Taxpayers Union, the Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for a Sound Economy and Americans for Tax Reform, all strongly support this amendment to defund the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, I would agree with the gentleman that many of these programs do matter. My argument is very simple. Despite the fact they matter. My argument is very simple. Despite the fact they matter, they should be paid for with private dollars, basically through philanthropy, not through Federal tax dollars. If we are serious about balancing this budget, these are the types of programs that we are going to have to take a very close look at. The Federal Government just cannot afford to go on paying for these types of programs, however nice they might be. If we are going to balance the budget, these are the types of programs that we have to cut

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher].

Mr. CHABOT

Mr. CHABOT. That is right. And just to clarify as far as voting for the measure, we voted for the measure to cut, not to fund the program.

Mr. CHABOT. I realize that our time is drawing to a close and I just want to thank Don Manzullo from Illinois and Walter Jones from North Carolina and Ron Lewis from the great State of Kentucky for this colloquy here this evening. I think it has been very helpful for all of us and hopefully very insightful to those that happen to be watching this evening.

Mr. CHABOT. I do agree, and as a matter of fact, as the gentleman from North Carolina understands completely, much of the money is block granted to the States. Some of the most creative programs that we have had in the area of welfare has come at the State level, at some of the governors--my governor in Ohio, Governor George Voinovich, has been a leader in welfare reform, and what they are trying to do is to wean people off, to break that mind-set where people just assume that the Government supports people on welfare basically from cradle to grave. People need to realize that it is basically their own responsibility, people are responsible for their own lives, and if they depend upon the Government, both they and their children are going to have, over their life-span, a much less standard of living than they will if they work for themselves.

Mr. CHABOT. I will yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. CHABOT. Because they see a check comes from the Government every month and just assume that is the way people get by, the Government sends a check every month, and it just doesn't work that way. And you know, the thing that is unfair also is where does that money come from that is going to the welfare recipients? It is coming oftentime from hard-working, middle-class people, oftentime through both the mom and the dad in the home. Both have to work, just as you said before, Don, to pay their taxes. And where are a lot of those taxes going? Unfortunately, to failed programs like the welfare system in this country.

Mr. CHABOT. And I think that the people that are ultimately the victims of this welfare trap is those children.

Mr. CHABOT. It is. [[Page H 6912]]

Mr. CHABOT. I will yield.

Mr. CHABOT. You know, I have to mention one other area that I wanted to touch on because it is something that I keep hearing back in my district, and that is the fact that one area that I think we really have wasted a lot of money, at least previous Congresses have wasted a lot of money, is in the area of welfare payments where much of the money that has been spent has been counterproductive. You know, the area of welfare was something where it was supposed to be temporary help for the truly needy, and this was something back during the depression, back during the 1930's when it started. It had the best of intentions, to really help people who needed that help. Unfortunately, over the past 60 years, far too often, rather than temporary help, it has become a permanent way of life. And I have had a number of people that have said we did the right thing here in the House when we did what President Clinton said he wanted to do back when he ran for President, and that is change welfare as we know it, and that is what the Republicans in the House did. Now, the Senate is working on that piece of legislation and hopefully they will be acting upon that soon. But I just think that the way welfare has been run in this country for the past 60 years has wasted billions and billions and billions of dollars and much of it has encouraged people unfortunately to stay on welfare and not get off. People that are on welfare, I believe very strongly, ought to work for their welfare check and they ought to be in jobs programs, in education programs so that they can get off welfare, and welfare should be temporary. It shouldn't be something permanent. We have got third and fourth generation of people who basically just assume that that is how you get by, that people just get welfare every year. We got kids that grow up in homes all over this country that never see an adult in the home go to work, and so that is an example of a program that truly needs to be changed. And it is funny, I was in three senior citizens homes last week in one day talking with seniors and I was hearing that from an awful lot of seniors. One thing they really objected to was the fact that there were so many people taking advantage of the welfare system.

Mr. CHABOT. Like the gentleman says, that is only the interest. The scary part about this whole thing of debt and how large it has gotten, that interest on the debt within a couple of years, we are going to be paying more just on the interest on that debt than we are for our entire military expenditures. Just think of that, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Pentagon, all those things, you can imagine all the ships we have, all the soldiers, all the planes, et cetera, how much that costs. The spending on the interest on the debt will be more than the whole military. I mean, that is just a mind-boggling figure. We have got to do something about it.

Mr. CHABOT. That is an excellent question. I do not think there is any way that we would be seriously considering this at all. Perhaps people might talk secretly in the hallways about it in the old days, but we certainly would not be talking about it on the floor of Congress. Just think of that concept, eliminating the IRS, income taxes, altogether, and substituting something else that would be much more simple, many would argue fair, or really the chance of having a flat tax. The fact that we are talking about these things now, I think, is pretty unprecedented in this House. I think it is very encouraging, because I think the system that we have got now is just a mess. Just think of the number of hours that the average American spends filling out their tax forms and sweating about it or paying somebody else, whether it be H&R Block or whatever, paying somebody else to do them for them. It is just a mess and something we are going to have to change. We are all going to have to give a lot of thought to this and talk to the people back home to see what they think is the best plan, but I think we do really need to change what we have got now.

Mr. CHABOT. Speaking of taxes, I am sure, as I am sure all three of you gentlemen have had town meetings, back in my community I have spoken before a lot of different groups, and one thing that comes up time and time again is how confusing it is when people have to fill out their income taxes, how really the whole system is kind of a mess and needs to be changed. To kind of give the folks that may be watching C-SPAN a heads-up on what is happening here in Congress, there seems to be two schools of thought that I see up here right now about how we ought to change the tax law. One has been proposed by Congressman Dick Armey who is the majority leader here. Most people have probably heard of it, and that is the flat tax. Congressman Armey has suggested that rather than have a whole lot of deductions and the confusing tax forms that we all have to fill out every year, that we just have a straight flat tax of 17 percent or thereabouts, which would certainly simplify the system. Many, many people in my district think that is a good idea. In fact, back in Cincinnati, we have two principal newspapers, the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati Post. There are some others, but those are the two major papers. The Cincinnati Enquirer a while back had people give their opinions about the flat tax, and it was overwhelming that people basically liked the idea that they could fill out their tax on basically a postcard and send it in. The other concept is what Congressman Bill Archer, who is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is pushing, and that is to basically eliminate the IRS altogether, eliminate income taxes altogether and substitute some sort of consumption tax, like a sales tax. So no income taxes at all; a sales tax in its place. Both of those ideas, it may be some years as we deal with these two issues, but I have a feeling that there is going to be a momentum built up here in the Congress to support one plan or the other. So those that might be watching this at home now, I would like them to really follow these issues and be thinking about this in talking with their Member of Congress to let them know what they think about these plans. I think both plans are very interesting. I [[Page H 6910]] think both would be better than what we have now. But I can't really predict which one is going to win out.

Mr. CHABOT. That is right. I think again, something that the gentleman touched on that is important, is that we are working for all Americans, whether they be poor, whether they be middle class, whether they be better off, and I think what we have to be careful of is that many of the liberals are trying to divide people, to put them into certain categories. That is why we keep hearing over and over again, the Republicans just want to cut spending on poor people or seniors or whatever to give tax cuts to the wealthy. That is just not true. As we said before, the tax cuts, 75 percent of the tax cuts go to middle-class people. We should not be dividing Americans, we should not be scaring senior citizens. All Americans are going to have to work together in order to solve the problems that we have.

Mr. CHABOT. I will be happy to yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. CHABOT. From what I am hearing here from all three of my colleagues, it sounds like the people, even though our districts may be a little bit different, they are all four in different states, the people are I think essentially giving us the same message. They are saying the same thing; that is, to move forward with what you are doing, do not stop. Do not look back, just keep moving forward. I think the people of this country are ahead of this Congress. I think we need to keep following that direction. That direction is to balance this budget, again, not by raising taxes but by cutting spending. That is what we have to keep doing. Again, when you look at the taxes, the average American family is sending 25 percent of their taxes here to Washington. But when you add it to the State and local and all those taxes, it is 40 to 50 percent of the average American family's money goes in taxes. And that means the lifestyle that they have and that their children have is not as good as it should be. You have many fathers and many mothers that are working. They want to give the best life, the best education to their kids they possibly can. But they have to give too much of their money to the Government. That is what we have to turn around. The good thing is, we can reduce the level of taxes, we can do that and we can still balance this budget. And the liberal folks on the other side of the aisle said it could not be done. They said that, you cannot balance the budget and cut taxes at the same time. We have proven that it can be done. We passed a budget resolution just a couple of weeks ago which balances the budget by the year 2002 and cuts taxes. And most of those tax cuts go to middle-class Americans. They do not go to the wealthiest people in this country, although we have heard it time and time again, from the liberals on the other side of the aisle. Seventy-five percent of the tax cuts go to people who make less than $75,000 a year. I think that is important, because that is really what we are about. We are for relieving the overburdened taxpayers of this country and balancing this budget so their children can have a better standard of living than they did. I think that is what all Americans want.

Mr. CHABOT. Yes.

Mr. CHABOT. I will certainly yield to the gentleman from Kentucky, Ron Lewis.