C. Cox

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. The U.S. Department of Justice Office of inspector general has told us that the language in the bill would grant special rights to employees of the Department of State that are inconsistent with the practices of the rest of the Federal law enforcement community. It would place the State Department inspector general outside of standard Federal law enforcement policies and procedures. It would make it very, very difficult, and to quote the letter from the Department of Justice, it would significantly diminish the inspector general's office ability to hold individuals accountable for criminal wrongdoing. To put it quite simply, we are making it easier for the criminals if we pass this in a way that is inconsistent not only with what inspectors general do but what Federal law enforcement does, what criminal law enforcement does. These are rights that do not exist for anyone else but for us taxpaying citizens.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to correct an impression left by the previous speaker that even though the estimates in 1981 were that we would lose revenues, real life happened after those estimates. The estimates turned out to be wrong and revenues doubled during the 1980's as a result of the economic growth package enacted in 1981.

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Clinton-Congress budget proposal. But before I explain the reasons that compel me to oppose it, let me thank the members of the Committee for their hard work, and especially Chairman Kasich for the energy and effort he has expended in bringing this thorough work product to the floor for our consideration. It is not for lack of hard work, and good intentions, that this budget proposal falls short. The problem with this budget is that it will expand the federal government when we should be shrinking it. Under the Clinton-Congress budget proposal, federal spending will grow from $1.6 trillion in fiscal 1997 to nearly $1.9 trillion in 2002. That is a 16 percent increase. Next year, under the Clinton-Congress budget deal, our federal government will spend even more than President Clinton asked for in his own 1998 budget. The very first year under the budget deal, Washington will spend nearly a quarter trillion dollars more than it did in 1994, when the new Republican majority was elected to turn the tide. This continues an unbroken pattern of government growth that has been unstoppable through boom and bust, recession and recovery, since the 1960's. The accumulated result of that consistent expansion of the size and cost of the federal government has been nothing short of phenomenal. In 1974, when I was 21 years old and just graduated from college, the federal government spent $269 billion. Today, the Clinton-Congress budget proposes a federal government that is 700 percent larger than that. By the end of the Carter Administration, in fiscal 1981, the federal budget had more than doubled its spending. But Jimmy Carter's and Tip O'Neill's remarkably fat federal government--which cost over two-thirds of a trillion dollars--is as nothing compared to the one contemplated in this proposed budget. Just the add-ons, on top of present spending levels, in the Clinton-Congress budget deal will cost far more than two-thirds of a trillion dollars. Today, in 1997, I am a 44-year-old father with a wife and two kids. Our federal government is now nine times bigger than when I was in high school. Compared to just last year, federal spending in fiscal 1997 is up 4.9 percent--a higher rate of growth than any time in the last 5 years. Our current rate of spending growth is even faster than during each of the last 3 budget years of the old tax-and-spend Democratic Congresses. The Clinton-Congress budget is not historic. It is a continuation of a pattern of unabated government growth established during uninterrupted decades of Democratic Congresses. Consider the facts: GROWTH IN ANNUAL FEDERAL SPENDING--10-YEAR COMPARISON REFLECTING CLINTON-

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, for nearly 20 years the Chinese Government has sought to silence one of the great advocates of human freedom and democracy, Wei Jingsheng. Wei recently published a book. It is out today. Viking Press has produced it. It consists largely of his letters from prison, where he has spent so much of his adult life, where he is today, assembled by people who believe in human rights around the world. The publication of this book in America has today prompted the Communist Chinese Government to say that we, by publishing Wei's book, are interfering with the independence of China's judiciary. Wei Jingsheng is not a well man. He suffers from life-threatening heart disease. He has a neck problem that prevents him from lifting his head. All of this has developed as a result of the abysmal conditions that he faces in prison, where he was recently sentenced to another 14 years. He is due to be released in the year 2009, if he lives that long. I hope all of us in Congress will remember Wei Jingsheng, buy his book and read it, as we deliberate on the important questions of human freedom that are before us today.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, as Members know, 11 Members of the House and I traveled to Asia over the Easter recess. Among our stops was a very successful visit to the Republic of China on Taiwan. President Lee Tung Hui offered a typically warm welcome, and stressed the fact that Taiwan now lives under a fully free and democratic government. In fact, I would note that on May 20th President Lee will celebrate his first anniversary of his inauguration as Taiwan's first democratically elected President. In fact, I had the privilege to offer my congratulations to President Lee in person 1 month after that first free election in nearly 5,000 years of recorded Chinese history. I offer my congratulations to him on this first anniversary of the election and ask that his welcome to our delegation be reprinted in the Record: Honorable Speaker Gingrich, Honorable Representatives, Ladies and Gentlemen: Good morning. This is a very important moment. On behalf of the people and the government of the ROC on Taiwan, I would like to extend my heartiest welcome to all of you. Particularly, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to you for your decision to visit my country out of such a busy schedule on your Asia evaluation tour. The time of your stay is very short, but the most important thing is that you didn't forget this island ROC on Taiwan. It has at least two very significant meanings: First, the ROC on Taiwan is the best friend of the United States in the world and the symbol of American value system and idealism, Freedom and Democracy. Second, the island is geographically important for US military strategy in the West Pacific area, and particularly in North-East Asia. Domestically, the ROC on Taiwan is now considered a fully free country by the Freedom House based in New York City following our first direct popular presidential election in March 1996. In order to improve our competitiveness, we are now in the process of streamlining the government structure through constitutional reform and establishing an Asian Pacific Regional Operations Center here. Our mainland China policy remains unchanged. Eventual reunification of China under freedom, democracy, and social justice is still our future goal, but the fact remains: China is divided. We in the ROC on Taiwan would like to use the next thirty years to build an even more free, democratic and prosperous country, so that when the opportune time arises, we can hold talks of reunification with the other side on an equal footing. In the interest of time, I would like to listen to you; any questions put forward to me are welcome. As to the purposes of this trip, you already mentioned in the news conference on the 23rd of March. We have already prepared answers to those questions, and will provide the materials to you for your convenience. Thank you very much for your attention. Now, I would like to listen to your comments and advice.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. We have just heard an impassioned defense of the unfettered ability of Congress to raise taxes and my colleague from Oregon has pointed out a number of people whose taxes he would like to raise. He apparently believes that the tax limitation amendment would inhibit his ability to raise taxes on the rich, on mining companies, on the long list that he just gave us, but that would be true only if he were not willing to give the middle class a break at the same time. The truth is that it is only if you want to raise everybody's taxes that this tax limitation amendment would get in your way. But if what you want to do is ease the burden on the middle class by closing loopholes somewhere, this amendment would not affect you at all. The question before us is in the aggregate, is it too easy for Congress to raise taxes? Should it be more difficult for Congress to raise taxes? I think it is fair to say that the position of most of the Members who have been speaking on the Democratic side is it is not too difficult to raise taxes and, the corollary, taxes presently are not too high. We should not make a constitutional amendment, moreover, they say, even if taxes were too high, because tinkering with the Constitution does violence to the memory of our Founding Fathers. First on this question of whether or not it is too easy. If it were not too easy and not too hard, then the history of tax increases and tax reductions would be on parity, we would have about as many increases as decreases. But that has not been the history. Taxes have moved up and down, but over time they have gone up and up and up and up. When the tax was first introduced, only 2 percent of the American people paid it. The top rate was 7 percent. In the 1950's, the average family paid Federal income taxes at a rate of 4.9 percent. Today that is 25 percent. In 1993, we had the largest tax increase in American history, and since 1993, just since 1993, in the 3 years subsequent, individual income taxes in America have gone up over 25 percent. In the last year, 1996 individual income taxes went up 11 percent, even though the economy grew only 2 percent. We cannot keep growing Federal taxes and the Government at a rate so far in excess of the economy which supports it. This second argument, that we cannot amend the Constitution even if it is too easy because the Founding Fathers, after all, had a different idea in mind, would be all fine except as has been pointed out, article 1, section 9 prohibited a tax of this kind, income tax, at all. So even a unanimous Congress, unanimous, would not be enough to impose income taxes at any level. It was the 16th amendment to the Constitution, not adopted until the 20th century, that gave us this problem, and it is perfectly appropriate for us to fix it with a constitutional amendment. In short, raising taxes should no longer be Washington's first resort. Government should not continue growing so much faster than the economy which supports it, and this tax limitation amendment should be adopted.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, the reason that we are here, of course, is that last month Mexican President Zedillo had a tough decision to make and he made it. The arrest of General Gutierrez at the same time makes it impossible for us today to say that Mexico has met the standard in our statute that would permit us to certify them as fully cooperating in the war on drugs. That is because, according to our own administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, General Gutierrez's damage, the damage that he did to ongoing operations in the United States and in Mexico, was so serious that it ranks with the damage caused to our international intelligence operations by admitted spy Aldrich Ames. The conditions in the law have not been met, and we cannot certify. And yet the President has already done so. There is some talk on the floor of the need for bipartisanship, but every Democrat and every Republican on the committee that sent this bill to the floor, even though there was unanimity, found himself or herself in direct opposition to the Clinton administration because the President and the administration have already certified Mexico even though all of us agree that is wrong. If, therefore, the committee bill is passed, we have this inexorable result. Not only will the Senate not take it up, and we know that our colleagues in the other body have told us that nothing will come of this if we pass it unamended, but the President will ignore it, and the committee itself put a waiver in it which if somehow this were to become law, the President would exercise. So after a lot of sound and fury and possibly injury to our bilateral relations with Mexico, we would have accomplished precisely nothing. But with this considered amendment, we have an opportunity to do significantly more than nothing. We have an opportunity to take the decertification process, itself a blunt instrument, and make it a more delicate one, one that will encourage both the United States and Mexico to redouble their efforts in the war on drugs. Our goal should be not simply to decertify Mexico as a partner in the war on drugs but in fact to fully certify them, to bring them to the point where they are in compliance and to bring the United States efforts up to par where we will not have to admit honestly to ourselves that drug use among adults has gone up every year in this country since 1992, the first sustained increase since the 1970s; where we will have to no longer admit to ourselves that marijuana use among teens is doubling. We and Mexico both have steps that we must take. By decertifying, as this amendment will do, because it leaves the committee bill intact in that respect, and staying that for 90 days during which time the administration of President Clinton and the administration of President Zedillo can work and take positive, constructive steps to satisfy our concerns that cause us now to say we cannot certify, we will have done far more, both in fighting the war on drugs and for improving our relations with Mexico. Our goal should not be in the end even to have Mexico as a fully certified partner in the drug war, but to have Mexico as a full partner in all matters, civil, societal, cultural, defense, and national security. They should be our close ally. Many people in Mexico intend for that indeed to be our relationship. The arrest of General Gutierrez and the exposure of all the damage he caused is the reason we are here today. Let us make sure that this is an opportunity for us to move forward and not a permanent setback.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and I thank the gentleman for co-authoring this legislation with me. We now have, as he knows, well over 100 sponsors, Democrats and Republicans, in this Congress to do what California did by an initiative of the people; that is, repeal death taxes, the taxes on after-tax life savings, at the end of a lifetime of hard work. A liberal, and I know he is a liberal because he describes himself as such in testimony before Congress, professor from the University of Southern California where I went to college said, as an unrequited liberal he was opposed to death taxes because they are so anti-liberal. He called them virtue taxes. If we think about it, it makes sense. We are familiar with the notion of a sin tax, taxing tobacco or taxing alcohol or taxing gambling. These are called sin taxes. But a virtue tax would be a levy by the government on virtuous behavior, such as saving, investing, working, avoiding conspicuous consumption and instead helping other people. That, however, is what the death tax is. It tells someone during her or his life that what they should really do if they can acquire any earnings from their work is consume it. Do not save it, do not invest it; use it up, use it up, but surely do not try and use it for the purpose of making your family better off. It is ironic, because what that does is act as a repealer on human nature. After you get done putting food on the table and clothes on your back and a roof over your head, as a human being the most powerful incentive that you have to continue working is to help those that you love. So Congress in its infinite wisdom came up with a tax on that virtuous behavior, on continued hard work even beyond what you need for yourself, on saving, on investment, on the avoidance of conspicuous consumption, and called it a death tax, for the reason that, I suppose, we could extract a third time from someone that we had already taxed on income during life, on capital gains during life, more money for the benefit of everyone else. That would be a great thing if it worked, but it does not, for two big reasons. First, it does not yield much revenue. Less than 1 percent of all of our Federal revenues is provided by death taxes, even though every American knows that there is an army of tax lawyers and tax accountants at work in the industry of avoiding this tax. The second thing is, to the extent it is paid at all, rich people are not the ones paying it. Rich people like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis can avoid this tax, as she did when she passed on her estate to her already wealthy heirs with a state-of-the-art trust. Most of that tax liability is thereby foregone. Peter O'Malley, who many Americans who live outside of California have now come to know as the owner of the Dodgers, at age 59 decided that he had an estate planning problem. The Dodgers were a family owned business. They are a local franchise and a local asset for us in southern California. We certainly do not want it busted up. But the O'Malley family, and Peter O'Malley specifically, looked at the problems that would be faced for that family owned business if he were to die and he had not liquidated or sold the Dodgers and passed them on to some corporate owner. So with the death tax at 55 percent, somebody like Peter O'Malley has a pretty big incentive to convert that tax liability into a capital gains tax liability by selling the team while he is still alive, and then taking those liquid assets and putting them in the form of a trust or whatever, the fancy tax lawyers and accountants come up with to avoid the tax at death, as wealthy people are wont to do. Rich people do not pay it, and it does not provide any revenues. It does not work. It fails the test of empiricism, but what it does do is change behavior all over America. Even worse than that, it busts up small businesses; not, typically, Peter O'Malley's Dodgers. They will not be busted up by the estate tax on Peter O'Malley's death, although they might be moved out of L.A. as a by-product of the death tax. But family farms, ranches, small businesses run by people who are cash- poor, who have trouble meeting the payroll on a weekly basis, will get busted up. Seven out of 10 family businesses, 7 out of 10 small businesses in America do not survive the death of the founder. In 9 out of 10 cases it is because of death taxes. What happens is that if you own something that is an ongoing businesses, the death tax is applied not to your income, not to your wealth, not to your cash or liquid assets, but to the property, and the only way to satisfy that tax is to sell the property in order to create a liquid asset, since the Government will not accept your business in exchange for the tax liability. They want cash. You have got to liquidate the business. You have to bust it up. And what happens? The job creating potential of that business is destroyed so no new people will be employed there. But worse yet, the people who did work there lose their jobs. And what is their rate of tax? It is not even the 55 percent, which is a confiscatory rate for a tax on after-tax life savings. It is 100 percent. They pay a 100-percent tax because their entire income has been wiped out. They have just lost their jobs. This is what is happening to family businesses, to small businesses, to ranches, farms across America. It is responsible for the loss of both new job opportunities and existing jobs. The White House Conference on Small Business, whose conferees were appointed by President Bill Clinton, made repeal of death taxes, not moderation of death taxes, not reform of death taxes, but repeal of death taxes their No. 4 priority out of over 50 legislative proposals to help small business in America. This is how great a concern this issue is to small business. We talk a lot about tax simplification. Do you know how many pages of the Internal Revenue Code are cluttered up with the death tax alone? Eighty-two pages of legalese that no American can possibly understand without the help of a fancy tax lawyer and tax accountant. That is just the Code itself. Then there are several hundreds of pages of tax regulations interpreting those 82 pages that, again, you have got to have paid professionals to interpret and understand. So what happens is that while the Government does not get the revenue from the tax, as I said, less than 1 percent of our Federal revenues comes from this source, tax lawyers are getting some money. Tax accountants are getting some money. There are a lot of trusts and avoidance techniques that are set up that people are investing in. All of it is make work. No economic product as a result of all this. It is an insipid, wasteful and, I daresay, immoral system. I will close with this point and yield back to the gentleman by explaining why I go so far as to say this is immoral. I mentioned the reasons that this is a virtue tax, that it directly discriminates against savings, work, investment, the avoidance of conspicuous consumption, so on, but it is even worse than that. It goes further than that in the injury that it inflicts on Americans. I was talking to a city council representative in one of the cities that I represent. It is a part-time city council. And in his real life, in his working life, outside of politics, he is an estate planner and a tax lawyer. He told me that in a recent day, just before I had spoken with him, he had spent the afternoon with one of his clients on his client's deathbed as that man was passing away. And in the hours that he spent with him, he had him sign documents. This was at a time when his wife and his children, his family would have loved to be with him and spend their last moments with him while he was spending his last day on Earth. But instead he was with a lawyer signing documents. This lawyer said to me, this city councilman who also represented his neighbors on the city council, that none of the papers that he had his client sign had any economic effect. There was really no real life consequence to any of these things except this: that if you signed the papers, you did not owe the tax and if you failed to sign the papers, your family would lose the life savings that you had put together so that they could keep on going. So the man signed the papers, was deprived of those final moments with his family. The Government got no money. The tax lawyer got paid and the tax lawyer came to his Congressman and complained, this is not what Government should do to American citizens in their final moments on Earth. It is an immoral tax besides being a failed exercise in collecting revenue. I mentioned, less than 1 percent of the revenues are provided by death taxes. Sixty-five cents of every dollar collected are consumed either in administrative costs by the IRS or compliance costs by Americans who are seeking to avoid their tax liability through legal means, hiring tax lawyers and accountants and so on, who are hiring tax lawyers and tax accountants to help them fill out the paperwork so they can pay the death taxes that the Government is not getting appreciable revenue from in the first place. This is a miserable idea to have on the books. It is a failed exercise. Whatever good intention there may have been behind putting it on the books in the first place, we now have nearly a century of experience with it. It deserves to die. The death tax deserves to die, and we should repeal it. And that is why I am so happy to see so many Members here on the floor fighting for that effort.

Mr. COX of California. Like so many things, and I thank the gentleman for yielding, these taxes were born of good intentions. Like so many government programs, they started out as simple things and grew into complexity and, in fact, inefficient complexity, so much so that they fail utterly in achieving the intended purpose. Capital gains is a perfect example. As recently as 1978, capital gains taxes were even higher than they are now. And in 1978 there was a bipartisan effort to reduce that rate of tax on capital gains. Because back then, in 1978, people knew if we called it capital gains, the country might not understand what we were talking about. They understood it for what it really was, a penalty tax on savings and investment. On a bipartisan basis, I remember the gentleman from California, my Senator, Alan Cranston, my Democratic Senator, fought very hard to reduce that penalty tax on savings and investment because it was depriving people of the opportunity to work. It was killing jobs, to put it quite simply. So we reduced the rate of tax in 1978 from a very punitive nearly 50 percent down to 28 percent. And the truth is that, although all the government revenue estimators predicted that we would lose money, because after all we made the rate of tax lower, the next year, what happened? The Treasury of the United States collected more money in so- called capital gains taxes, it is actually a penalty tax on savings and investment, than they had the year before. And the same thing happened the next year and the next year. It was $9 billion that the government got in 1978. They were getting $11 billion from that tax at a lower rate of 28 percent in 1980.

Mr. COX of California. Fifty-five percent, actually.

Mr. COX of California. You might have to call a significant part of it the inflation tax because, just like with death taxes, there is no rule that says you have to be successful in order to have to pay it. The capital gains tax, or what I prefer to call the penalty tax on savings and investment, might also be called the inflation tax because, as we all know, we have inflation in this country and over time it adds up a great bit. If you buy a piece of land, you buy an asset, you start a small business, just to use an obvious example of a corner grocery store, although we do not have too many of those, partly for this reason, in America, but let us say you have got a corner grocery store. And so you buy the store. The Tax Code says that is a capital asset. If you paid $10,000 for it 20 years ago, with inflation, what is that worth today? I do not have my calculator, but anyone can figure out it is not 10 grand anymore. If you sell the grocery store for less money than you paid for it in the first place, the nominal selling price, because of inflation, is going to be more than you paid for it and you are going to be taxed on the difference. So even though in real life you lost money, you are not a rich person, they are going to start requiring you to pay tax on that sales price. The truth is that because we have not indexed for inflation a property tax, you do not have to make money, you can be losing money and still owe a significant tax. It can be a tax that wipes out any hope that you have of even surviving, particularly if that was your life savings, particularly if that is your only asset in life. To take someone's entire life earnings, their entire life's work and tax it all in one accounting period as if it is just income from a job, particularly when they paid income tax on it all through their life, is not only double taxation but it is punitive and it is an inflation tax, QED.

Mr. COX of California. If the gentleman will yield, it is very important to stress this point. It is the one that my colleague from Arizona just made a moment ago. This is not a tax on estates as in mansions or what have you. Imagine, for example, a real-life example of a tree farm. Let us imagine that the land that underlies the tree farm is worth $3 million. But let us imagine that this tree farm, as it currently exists, has been very carefully husbanded by, as is true in this case of the Mississippi tree farmer, the grandson of slaves, who has gotten not only his family but a whole lot of the people in the area employed there. And then let us imagine that this man is getting on in his years, and he is beside himself because he cannot think of any fancy estate planning technique that will keep that tree farm alive. When he dies, he is looking death in the eyes now because he is on in years, he knows that his family, his sons and what he considers to be his extended family, the people who work on that farm, are going to lose their opportunity to run it, the thing that he built up throughout his life, because they are going to have to liquidate it, sell it, put it on the auction block in order to pay the tax man, and there will be no more tree farm. Do you know what is going to happen to that land? It is going to be developed. It is going to be subdivided, it is going to be purchased by somebody who is going to put houses on it, a shopping center, a strip mall or whatever it takes commercially to take advantage of the fact that after capital gains taxes, after death taxes and so on, this has some economic viability. So somebody who buys this property is going to want to make money on it, because that is life, and we now have, with death taxes, an additional casualty. Not just Mr. Thigpen, the name of the man in this real life example, and his family and the people who work there who pay 100 percent tax when they lose their jobs, not just the loss to society of this tree farm, which has won environmental awards, not just the fact that the whole business is going to be wiped out, not just the unfairness of it all, but environmental destruction on top of it, improper stewardship of our natural resources, because the Government is so ham fisted and foolish about the way it collects revenue.

Mr. COX of California. That is precisely what happened. Capital gains realization, and we have the data on that as well as we do on revenues, skyrocketed. So what happened in 1981? We passed the Economic Recovery Tax Act and reduced that rate of tax still further, all the way down to 20 percent from an initial high rate of 48 percent. And once again the government revenue estimators said if we reduce the rate of tax on capital gains of course we will get less taxes. And they ignored 3 years of history when they said that. But we then found in 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, all the way to 1986 that revenues went up and up and up, from that basic $9 billion at the high rate of 48 percent, to $50 billion at a rate of 20 percent. And why did it stop in 1986? The gentleman asked how we got here from there. Because Congress decided this had been such a successful experiment moving the rates down, they wondered what would happen empirically if we raised them, and they raised the rate of tax on capital gains back up again. Revenues fell off to $33 billion from $50 billion in 1 year. And as of now, as we debate here tonight, the Internal Revenue Service's most recent data are that we still have not got back up to the level of capital gains revenues to the Treasury of the United States that we had in 1986, 10 years later. That is how we got there from here, with the best of intentions. And our Government revenue estimators, even now in 1997, are telling this Congress that if we reduce the rate of tax on capital gains, the Government will lose revenues. Where have we heard that before? If we did not like all the empirical evidence from America, we could look at Mexico and other countries that have had this same experience and we could find that, as my colleague points out, there is more economic activity stimulated. When we have a more moderate rate of tax, the Treasury makes out better. So if we are worried about education, the environment, transportation, national defense, national security, anything that we would expect our national Government to do, we would have more resources to do it by plucking the goose more gently. But these punitive high rates of tax on savings and investment are killing the country, killing job creation. Ultimately, the rich do not pay because the rich have salted away enough already. The people that pay are the ones who pay with their jobs. If we have a death tax that literally causes the business, their place of employment to be busted up, of course they lose their jobs. Of course they pay a 100-percent rate of tax. Of course they are the ones bearing the entire burden on their shoulders. I wanted to make one more point and yield back. We have talked about how we are punishing success with the death tax. We are also not just punishing people of modest means, we are punishing people who can barely scrape by, because there is nothing in the death tax that says you have to be making money. What the death tax says is even though individuals paid property taxes on their assets throughout the lifetime of their business, year in and year out, even though they paid income taxes, we do not care if they have any net income in this business, we will take a look at their balance sheet and see what assets they have, and we will force them to liquidate them and pay taxes on their net asset value. So let us say that an individual is, as farmers like to call themselves often, cash poor and land rich. The only way an individual could have any money is to sell off the whole farm. That is what the Government wants them to do. That is what they want that family to do. They want the family farm to suffer. Bust it up, sell it, corporatize it, get rid of it, as long as the Government gets its death taxes. The only people that are unlucky enough to be in this position are the folks who are cash poor because they could not hire the tax lawyers, the fancy accountants to do the tax avoidance trusts that all the rich do to avoid paying this tax, which is why less than 1 percent of our Federal revenues come from this. Even then this is the most inefficient way that the Government could imagine to collect tax because, guess what? We do not know what this is worth. We do not know what the property is worth. If it has been a family business for a long time, they have not been selling it back and forth, it is not a marketable asset. And if they are busting up the business, it is no longer a going concern, so what is this asset worth all by itself? So the family, the heirs, the people who are trying to carry on that business, but cannot, have to get in a lawsuit with the IRS. And how often does this happen? Right now, as we debate here tonight, there are 10,000 active lawsuits over the question of valuing the estate under the death tax. That eats up all the money that the Federal Government might have gotten out of it because we have to argue for years in court about what the thing is worth. It is a hideous example of government run amok. Perhaps with the best of intentions it was put on the books in the first place, but it does not work and the death tax deserves to die.

Mr. COX of California. In the Internal Revenue Code, 82 pages.

Mr. COX of California. If I might just interject, one of the reasons you see some Californians out here on the floor is that California repealed our death tax by the initiative of the people, and every time you hear somebody say class warfare, you know only some small segment of the population will go for repealing death taxes, do not believe it. The most populous State in the Union repealed our death taxes by an initiative of the people, and we can do it in the people's House.

Mr. COX of California. Of course. Be happy to yield to my colleague.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join with my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois, and with my other colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives, in recognizing Lithuanian Independence Day this Sunday. Lithuanian independence, of course, is not something that the people of Lithuania and the people of the free world won from the Soviet Union. It is something that Lithuania declared for itself 79 years ago, in 1918. What Lithuania did in my lifetime, and something in which I am proud to have participated, was to reassert successfully that independence, to do so at a time when the Soviet Union was not so vulnerable as looking back in history it might appear to us it was. At the end of the 21st century, it now must appear obvious to everyone that the Soviet Union was inevitably going to collapse of its own weight. But the Red army was very strong in the 1980's, and the Black Berets were very strong and intimidating in the 1980's. The truth is that even under those policies of glasnost and perestroika, that Mikhail Gorbachev advanced with such public relations flare throughout the rest of the world, the boot of the Red army was heavy and brutal indeed. I traveled to Lithuania just after what now is known by history as Bloody Sunday, and the Black Berets murdered so many Lithuanians who were working toward reestablishment of their independence that we will celebrate once again on Sunday. The truth is that the free people, now the free people of Lithuania-- and Freedom House has just rated Lithuania as a free nation objectively, using the standards they used to measure relative freedom throughout the world--the free people of Lithuania did something far more than establish their own independence, their own civil rights, their own civil liberties, their own human rights and personal liberties. They did something for all of us. They helped tip the balance at that very, very key moment in history against communism, against the Soviet Empire; and Lithuania, more than any other people, is responsible for helping topple the Soviet Empire. Lithuania was part of that empire, unwillingly, of course. It was a captive nation. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have enjoyed a special neighborly bond over a period of many, many years. This Sunday, on Lithuanian Independence Day, there will be hoisted in Vilnius not just the standard of the Lithuanian nation, but also its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Estonia, to show Baltic solidarity. Lithuania wants very much to hasten its integration, its reintegration, into the community of Europe. As my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Shimkus] has so properly pointed out, that should include Europe's security arrangements, and it should include NATO. He and I and many of our colleagues in this body, Democrats and Republicans, have been urging that this 1999 date be accelerated, that we not prolong a process that should be taking place much more quickly, and that Hungary and Poland and the Czech Republic, for starters, be admitted to NATO on a much more rapid timetable, and that the Baltics very soon afterward be admitted as well. Thinking back to the key events that led to the reassertion of Lithuania's independence, it is remarkable more than anything else to me to think of who was the unlikely general that led that battle against the Red army. The most inspiring image for me is that of a piano teacher, a piano teacher at the Conservatory of Music in Vilnius. His name is Doctor, because he is that, of course, by his educational training, Vytautus Landsbergis. Vytautus Landsbergis headed up Sajudis, fighting for human rights, fighting for freedom, fighting for democracy, well before the successful reestablishment of Lithuanian independence. I had a chance early on, after I got elected to Congress in 1989, to work with him in that fight. I had a chance to be with him on election night when he was elected President of Lithuania. It was a very, very inspiring thing. But it was not very easy for me to get into Lithuania, because I and the handful of congressional colleagues, that attempted to travel to Lithuania with me as observers of this election, were kept out by the Soviet Union. This was not some casual bureaucratic dismissal of the travel plans of some Members of Congress, this was a decision taken at the highest level by Edward Shevardnadze, who is the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, and by the Supreme Soviet, which voted to keep us out. We were held in East Berlin for a prolonged period, until finally, around midnight on election night, we were able to get in, and President-elect Landsbergis and all of the Sajudis leaders who were with him met us on the tarmac in the middle of the night, and we embraced. It was very, very emotional. It was a thrill for the reason that I mentioned earlier, not just because there had been a free election in Lithuania, and because the people finally had spoken after so many years of being made slaves by their Communist overlords, but because here was the official commencement of the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The rest of the world started to awaken to the fact that the Soviet Union was finished on that night. It has not been easy for Lithuania in the wake of that very emotional success. Lithuania has had to work hard to reestablish the rule of law and the fundamentals of free enterprise that make human prosperity possible. They have been doing a good job of it, but they can do a better job, and in future elections I think we will see the forces of democracy and the forces of free enterprise doing even better. Integration into NATO, in my view, is a way to institutionalize that movement. It is very important for us to keep raising that point, because in 1997, that is one of the significant ways that our foreign policy and the foreign policy of Europe and the foreign policy of the Baltics intersect. I will just remark to my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois, how proud I am to be here with a member of Lithuanian ancestry, direct Lithuanian ancestry, because it has been my privilege to be made an honorary Lithuanian. I have not done this by birth. But I am so proud of the associations that I have with Lithuanian-Americans and the people in Lithuania that I have met on my multiple trips there. I want to thank the gentleman very much, and offer my good wishes to him as he continues to be a leader on this subject in the Congress.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. I appreciate the remarks of the ranking member. As the sponsor of this legislation, I am pleased we are here at the conclusion of the 104th Congress to see this measure enacted into law. There is not much question that the metric system is a superior alternative to the other random measures that have been employed throughout the ages. In particular, it is the superior system in the world today. The question before us is not whether the metric system is a good idea or whether Congress in 1975 was wise to put us on an inextricable path toward metrification, but, rather, whether we can inject some common sense into the enterprise. We have to ask ourselves what is good about the metric system to begin with. Probably the best thing about it is that it permits the addition, multiplication, subtraction, division, with ease, of fractions. The metric system is not new. In fact, the Mohenjo-Daro civilization on the Indus River about 5,000 years ago used the decimal system. The Scotsman, John Napier, who pioneered the use of the decimal point so that we could show fractions to the right-hand side and whole numbers to the left, lived at the turn of the 16th century. There is nothing new about this at all. What is new is that we are finding increasingly better ways to use tiny measures. It is routine now for us to measure in angstroms. We have to ask ourselves whether or not the Congress should pass a law outlawing the use of fractions, when after all, the great attraction of the decimal system is we can use with great facility fractions. That, unfortunately, is at least what the administration had been doing up until we introduced this measure. Specifically, they said that using the metric system in America means you cannot use fractions, you have to use whole numbers, and it was an edict, a fiat, a new case, that fractions should be outlawed in American manufacturing. Let me give you an example. In Wilmington, MA, a company named Lightolier that manufactured light fixtures, has done so for 70 years, employing about 200 people, was told they had to use round numbers if they wanted to sell light fixtures to the Federal Government for Federal buildings. This was no small thing, because they would have had to buy all new equipment. They would have had to retool in their entire factory. The general manager of the plant told the local newspaper they could not do this without spending at least $5 million. This is a company with 200 workers. We cannot retool, he lamented, and if somebody else does, we are at a disadvantage. During the past year, Lightolier sales have fallen due to their inability to participate in Federal projects, forcing them to lay off 35 workers. Now, the taxpayer is not any better off for this, because the cost of the projects goes up 15 to 20 percent. Many examples: Kansas City, MO, the courthouse was estimated to cost $117 million. Fortunately for the American taxpayer, the Clinton administration was forced to drop their hard metric requirement, let people use decimal fractions, and the revised cost of the project turned out to be $97 million, or a savings of about $20 million. That is what this bill is all about. I am very, very pleased our colleagues on the Senate side, as well as our colleagues here, the minority and majority working together, have come up with a bill that is acceptable to everyone that will put us on the path of common sense. We ought to, as we try to serve the interests of the American people, remember that there is a limit to what Government can do. When Arabic numerals were introduced into Europe, it was not because a Government passed a law saying you cannot use Roman numerals anymore, and, by the way, there are always advantages to Arabic numerals, they add up to columns and are much superior. It was because merchants of the time found it worked a lot better. That is what is happening in commerce in America around the world right now. The Federal Government's job should be to facilitate that. What we have seen here is an example, if I may say so, of stupidity, or at least a preference for complex error to simple truth. The advantage of the metric system is its ability to work in fractions. We should not outlaw fractions, we should welcome them. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for the work on this bill, particularly the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker]. This is a measure that originally came up on Corrections Day for obvious reasons. I am pleased as we adjourn this Congress momentarily, that this will be part of our finished work.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I, too, want to congratulate the chairman not only for reporting this vitally important legislation but also for what he has done throughout the last 2 years of this remarkably productive Congress. He has been a beacon of wisdom, judgment, and expertise on the subject of foreign affairs. I wanted to thank him personally for the leadership that he has provided to the United States during this period. The bill before us, House Concurrent Resolution 51, will promote two very good ideas in the relationship between Russia and Western Europe and, frankly, the United States and the rest of the world. The first is that it will demilitarize a region that is not even contiguous to Russia but in which Russia maintains more than twice as many troops as does the United States and all of Europe. That is Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad, as has been discussed here amply, is nudged between, nestled between Lithuania, Poland, Belarus. It is not reachable from Russia without crossing the air space or the territory of some other country. Necessarily without the permission of Lithuania, particularly when Russia used to be the Soviet Union, the troop crossings took place massively, disruptively in ways that caused a great deal of friction. It is important for Baltic peace, stability, and security that Kaliningrad be demilitarized. It is also important for the relationship of Russia, Europe, and the United States because this is a potential hot spot. This is where NATO and Russia might unfortunately accidentally meet in the future. It ought not to happen. This is a flash point of conflict that we can see in advance, that we ought to deal with it just now. Russia did not create this problem. Russia is now a nation friendly to the United States. Russia inherited this problem, and as a sign of good faith Russia ought to neutralize this situation as quickly as possible. The second good idea embedded in this resolution is that the area of Kaliningrad will be made a free trade zone, making this area centrally located at the intersection of the Baltics, of Western and Eastern Europe and Russia, making this area economically vital, a bridge from Russia to Europe and from Europe into Russia. In 1995, Boris Yelstin signed a decree creating a 10-year free ecomonic zone in Kaliningrad. Customs duty exemptions are maintained in this area as a result. There is a 5-year cap on tax rates at 16 percent. This compares favorably even to Hong Kong, where the rate is 17 percent. Before Kaliningrad can become another economic Hong Kong, the region has to undergo a massive environmental cleanup. As a result of the Soviet military occupation and presence in this area for so long a period of time, Kaliningrad became the major polluter of the Baltic Sea. This, too, must be attended to. Kaliningrad must be cleaned up. The key elements of the resolution before us are the following: First, the need for Kaliningrad's demilitarization; second, the need for environmental cleanup; third, the development of Kaliningrad as a commercial bridge between Europe and Asia; and, finally, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia's right autonomously, independently, without coercion to join whatever military alliance they wish. It happens that that is NATO. They have the right to request NATO membership. This resolution is strongly supported by a number of groups who have communicated with us in the Congress, not the least of whom are committees representing all the Baltic nations. I personally have met with the presidents of each of the Baltic countries in recent weeks to discuss this. I know that if Russia takes these forward-looking steps, it will very much improve the prospects for even better relations between the United States and Russia. For that reason, I have written this resolution, introduced it, moved it through the committee, and am happy to have it here before us on the floor today. By sending this message, not just to Russia but to the people of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, all of Europe, Congress will help reduce the possibility of military conflict between Russia and NATO, between Russia and its neighbors and bolster the progress of freedom in the Baltics and in Russia. I urge an aye vote in favor of the resolution. Mr. Speaker, I include the following for the Record: Joint Baltic American National Committee, Inc., Rockville, MD, September 13, 1996. Hon. Benjamin Gilman, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Representative Gilman: The Joint Baltic American National Committee, Inc. (JBANC) appreciates your efforts to facilitate NATO expansion and hopes for your support for Congressman Christopher Cox's Concurrent Resolution no. 51, regarding Kaliningrad. JBANC is concerned about the security and territorial integrity of the Baltic countries. We support the Baltic states membership in NATO. The demilitarization of Russian forces, environmental restoration, and development of a free trade zone in the Kaliningrad region will help create stability in the entire Baltic area. Baltic regional security is in the U.S. national interest. A recent study by the Commission on America's National Interests places the Baltic states in the ``extremely important interest'' category. It states that a U.S. policy priority is to prevent Russia from reabsorbing the Baltic states. Your efforts to help restore security in the Baltic region will be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Vello Ederma, Chairman.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me the time. I am sorry that we are back on the floor with this bill. This is the third time that the House of Representatives will vote to pass this bill. The last time we did so with 411 votes. There are only 435 Members that work here and some of them could not make the vote. There is no question but that the people's House wishes to see this legislation enacted into law. Quite frankly, there is not really any objection to it from the other body. But for 2 years now, we have waited and waited and waited, and at the present time there are two of our colleagues in the other body who have a hold on this bill. It has been taken hostage for other reasons and so on.

Mr. COX of California. I do not mean to characterize the action, Mr. Speaker, only to describe it. The reason that we are here is that we want to make sure that this bill has every chance of passage during the 104th Congress, and so the bill that we are taking up is only slightly different than the one that we passed last time. The difference is the change that has been made in the other body. The bill that we are bringing up here is thus identical to the bill that has already been reported out of the committee completely favorably in the other body. If, therefore, we vote to pass this legislation, it remains only for the other body to take a vote and the bill will go directly to the President. This is a serious subject. Helium is, of course, a scarce resource. It occurs naturally as a byproduct of natural gas. We know that at least in that form it occurs in finite quantities. We have to, therefore, make sure that we conserve it. Currently under Federal Government management, we are losing to the atmosphere a great deal of helium. Each year it escapes because we do not store and transport it properly. Furthermore, the Federal Government is in the business still of marketing helium. What this bill will do is get the Federal Government out of the marketing and refining business and leave that to the private sector where, incidentally, 90 percent of the world's helium supply already comes from. The Federal Government is no longer needed for this purpose. I say no longer because there was a time, back in the 1920's, when we first came up with the idea for the Federal Government to be in this business. When there was a legitimate purpose for national security reasons, the Federal Government got into the helium business to make sure we had a captive and constant source of supply to field a fleet of blimps in time of war. That time has passed. We do not any longer need helium to field blimps in time of war. Instead, we need helium for magnetic resonance imaging, we need helium for undersea welding and untold other uses that science, not Government, is best equipped to deal with. Instead of relying on the Federal Government to operate a commercial industry of this source, we should rely on the private sector on which we rely for all other minerals, strategic or otherwise, in our commerce and in our national defense. There is a legitimate question about how best to conserve helium in the future and one of the changes, the only change from our House bill that made its way into this bill in the Senate, is that we will have the National Academy of Science conduct a formal inquiry into this aspect of the helium question. But it is no longer, as my colleague on the other side of the aisle just pointed out, it is no longer a partisan question whether we should have the national helium reserve. We ought not to. Incidentally, it loses money. It is wasteful. Its debt to the taxpayers is now $1.4 billion. It has been unable to pay back the debt to the taxpayers on a constant basis as was contemplated in 1960, when the taxpayers loaned the Government commercial enterprise a whole lot of money. By turning ownership and management of this over to the private sector, we can recapture the taxpayers' investment. One final point. That is that some are concerned that because helium is important, we should not in any way change the way we presently are doing business in the Federal Government. Physicists in particular understand the fundamental law of conservation of matter. When title to this helium changes from government to private sector, the helium will not go away. It will still be there. In fact, it will be there for many, many, decades, in fact well into the next century to come. I think it is vitally important that we end this poster child of Government waste once and for all. I congratulate my colleagues for their patience and tolerance for bringing this bill up for what will probably be another unanimous vote for the third time this session. It is what our form of government is all about.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. For which he then takes credit. But he hardly ever breaks his word this fast. I mean this is so fast, it is blinding. Days ago, he sent a letter up here and said all you need to do is take the Gallegly amendment out, and that is great. And we have got a copy of that letter. But of course the President now, today, has broken his word, and the consequences could not be more grave. We are talking about shutting down the----

Mr. COX of California. I just want to underscore what my colleague has said. The President obviously does not feel California is paying when it comes to illegal immigration. He is the cause of it. By gutting the immigration bill or attempting to do so after it has already gone through House-Senate negotiations, after it has passed by a bipartisan record majority here in the House of Representatives, after the Gallegly amendment was dropped at his request, to now say he wants to carve the bill up and take out Proposition 187, the guts of it; that is, prohibition on welfare for illegal aliens, prohibition on social security for illegal aliens, a prohibition on SSI benefits, on food stamps, on AFDC for illegal aliens, a prohibition on free housing, taxpayer supported for illegal aliens, a prohibition on cash assistance for illegal aliens, a prohibition on subsidies including contracts and grants and loans and licenses for illegal aliens; that is what he wants to take out of the bill. He wants illegal aliens to get all of these things. I think we in California understand this much. If you pass a law and you expect it to be obeyed, then there needs to be a penalty. The penalty in the case of breaking our immigration laws is deportation. That is, we are supposed to send you home. But the Clinton administration, which, we want to remind ourselves, controls the Justice Department and the INS, is not deporting illegal aliens. They are funding ways to give them taxpayer-supported benefits in reward for breaking our laws. And never has it been more clear than in this instance today when the President said: I am willing to shut down the Government. Even though you have given me a spending bill that includes billions of dollars more that I asked for in House and Senate levels, I have one more request, and that is that you take out the ban on welfare benefits for illegal aliens, that you take out the ban on social security benefits for illegal aliens, that you take out the ban on SSI benefits, food stamps, housing, cash assistance, and so on for illegal aliens, because I care so much about giving taxpayer-supported benefits to people who have broken our immigration laws that I am willing to sacrifice the good of the whole Nation. I think that sends a very terrible message to this Congress, to the Democrats and Republicans who worked so hard on this bill, and to the American people, and particularly the Californians, Texans, Arizonans, people in New Mexico, all the border States, who are so hard hit by the illegal immigration problem, and I would certainly thank my colleague from Indiana for bringing this to the attention of the full House of Representatives. Mr. BURTON on Indiana. I thank all my colleagues from California. Every taxpayer in America ought to be concerned about this. And with that, I yield to my colleague, Mr. Bilbray from California.

Mr. COX of California. I thank the gentleman from Indiana. I certainly want to join in the comments of my colleague from California. We are here tonight addressing the House of Representatives on an issue that could not be of greater importance to every one in this country. That is whether or not we can come to agreement on a funding bill for the whole Federal Government. After that is accomplished, obviously we will have an election. We will see if we have a new President. But for the meantime we are trying to work in a bipartisan cooperation to fund the Federal Government's operations. The leadership of this Congress, the other body and the House, have both said under no circumstances will we tolerate a repeat of what happened last year. We will not shut down the Federal Government and, as a consequence, the leadership in the other body and in this House of Representatives have been asked by the President of the United States and acceded to his request to add billions of dollars, specifically $6.5 billion to our spending bills that was not approved by the House, was not approved by the Senate, complete add on, complete derogation of our interest in fiscal responsibility and balancing the budget and so on. But in order to get the President to sign our spending bill, we added all the billions and billions that he said he had to have in addition to what Congress wanted, every single penny. An agreement today was reached on that. And after agreement was reached on that, what happened? The President of the United States through his legislative counsel told the leadership of this Congress, ``We are not going to sign the big piece of spending that you added billions to at our request, even though it contains all the money we have asked for, unless in addition,'' and this is the first time they have spoken these words or made this demand or placed this ultimatum, ``unless in addition you reopen the illegal immigration bill and make a whole lot of changes.'' Specifically they said, ``You have to drop title V of the bill.'' They did not say they did not like paragraph 6 or line 1 or 2. They wanted title V, the whole title, out of the bill. They want it dropped. Let us ask ourselves, what does title 5 do? This bill has been already been negotiated by the House and the Senate. The conference is over. We voted it out of here with a huge historic bipartisan majority. The President knew that. The President had his opportunity while the conference was on, and said he wanted the Gallegly amendment out, and it was dropped. Now after the vote, after we are finished, the President says take title 5 out of the bill. Title 5 prohibits illegal aliens from receiving public assistance. It is the guts of the bill. The President of the United States is saying, ``I am going to shut down the Federal Government, even though you have given me all the spending, billions more than you passed in the House and Senate than I asked for, I am going to shut down the Federal Government unless I get my way, and we can start giving public assistance to illegal aliens because that is what I want to do.'' There is no way to describe this other than Bill Clinton's war on California because California, as my colleague Mr. Gallegly pointed out, is home to over half of all the illegal aliens in America. Title V does not just make sure that public assistance does not go to illegal aliens, it does more, and this also the president wants dropped from the bill. It prohibits illegal aliens from receiving Social Security benefits. Now one of the things that we know illegal aliens do not do because they live somewhere else, whether it be in Europe, or Asia, or Australia, or Canada, or wherever they are coming from, we know one thing for certain: they are not paying into our Social Security system. But Mr. Clinton wants to delete the portion of this very very sound illegal immigration bill that prohibits illegal aliens from getting Social Security benefits. What else does title V do? What else does he want dropped from the bill after it was passed by a historic bipartisan margin in this House of 305 to 123? The President wants to drop the provision that says that--now listen carefully to this because it is a shocker, that the President would be in favor of this kind of public benefit to illegal aliens, people who have broken the law here in this country. He wants to drop the part of the bill that says that when somebody comes from Thailand, when somebody comes from Russia, when somebody comes from, you name it, it is a big world, into your State, they will not get in-State tuition benefits at your State college. Now if I move from California to Indiana, I am not going to get in- State benefits because I am from California, but illegal aliens, unless we pass this bill, are going to get in-State tuition. Title V says illegal aliens are not eligible for in-State tuition at public colleges, universities, technical and vocational schools. Well, my friends, the President wants this dropped from the bill. In other words, he wants them to get it. What else does title V do? It imposes stiff penalties on people who forge immigration documents. My colleague, Mr. Gallegly, held up his fake ID card, which is so easy to get in America. We need tough penalties. That is why Democrats and Republicans got together and passed this historic legislation, the House and Senate agreed on it, the White House commented, said they were agreeable. And now, after we passed the bill here in the House and it has been agreed to in the House and the Senate, the President says drop that provision. He wants to drop all of title V and take it out. And Mr. Hilleary says, ``If you don't drop title V, you're going to be in indefinitely, all next week. Try and get your bill up in the Senate, and try and get it out, because our Democrats are going to filibuster it,'' and so on. Well, colleagues, the President may want to shut down the Government to get his way in gutting the illegal immigration bill, and I hasten to add, I know that we all are aware of this, that the Gallegly provision is not what we are talking about. That was dropped before we voted on it. The President asked to have it out; it is out. We all agreed this was a fine bill and we wanted to get it passed. Now the President is saying he wants to carve it up still more. Obviously, the President is not interested in California's major social problem of illegal immigration. Obviously, this President does not act in good faith. He has broken his word. Today, when asked by the press, ``Will you sign the immigration bill?'' he said, ``I can't talk about that because we're going to negotiate it.'' Some of us here in Congress said, ``How do you negotiate a bill that has already been negotiated, that is already through conference?'' In fact, the conference report has already been voted on. There is only one way. He is not talking about vetoing the bill. He is negotiating it by blackmailing us with a Government shutdown. He will not sign the Government funding bill, which includes the billions more that he asked for, unless we drop title V. That, as my colleague from California just stated, is the only thing you cannot do in a legislative process. When you give your word, you keep it. Now Bill Clinton has broken his word on many things, but usually it takes a little longer. Usually he promises as a candidate he is going to give you a middle class tax cut and then breaks his word a few years later with the largest tax increase in American history. Usually he says he is going to end welfare as we know it and then goes through a whole Congress with a Democrat majority, majority of his party, and does not even bring up a bill before you figure out what is going on, and it takes a Republican Congress to give you welfare reform.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. This is one of the reasons why I am here on the floor this evening, because as senior associate counsel to the President myself in the White House counsel's office, I could not be more familiar with the distinguished history of the White House counsel's office and its authentic purpose. The reason that the White House counsel has a five-decade history of serving Presidents from both parties is that its mission is to protect the President and the Presidency from illegal acts or from any kind of trouble arising during his course or her course, should we have a woman President one of these days, of administration during the course of office. It is for the President's official activities, not for his tax returns, his personal tax returns, and certainly not for his private investments, and certainly not for the criminal investigation or prosecution of his friends and cronies from Arkansas or even elsewhere in the administration. But that is exactly what this White House counsel's office has been doing. I will tell you, when I worked in the White House counsel's office in a previous administration, we did not look at the President's tax returns. That was done at the President's personal expense by the President's own private law firm. But in this White House counsel's office, Vince Foster at the time of his death was actually working on the Whitewater partnership tax return. That is what he was doing in the West Wing of the White House at Government expense. It is a perversion and abuse of that function, and it is obviously all the more poignant when one reads this very long memo called the task list of some 39 separate scandals identified by the Clinton administration, all being handled in that White House counsel's office.