Ander Crenshaw

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, as an original cosponsor of H.R. 8, I rise in strong support of this full repeal of the estate tax. It has been discouraging, Mr. Speaker, to see this debate degenerate into a sort of class warfare. This is not about rich and poor. It is not about whether rich people deserve a tax break. It is not even about who pays the most in taxes. It is about fairness, plain and simple. It is just unfair that any one should pay a 55-percent tax on their business, their home, or their farm. It is still more unfair that this enormous burden be placed on families just at the moment a loved one passes on. There is no time for bereavement, no time for grief. The taxman comes to the door of the funeral home and, as my local paper sees it, steals the pennies off a dead man's eyes. We ought to be able to pass along more than just memories to our children. We work a lifetime to build a home, a business, a legacy that we can leave for our children. With the death tax, our children are forced to sell a part of that inheritance just to be able to afford the other part. And, Mr. Speaker, inheritance should not be a dirty word. This is not for the wealthy few, as some would have us believe. According to the Treasury Department, 45,000 families paid estate taxes in 1999, and it is estimated that twice as many sold off their legacy before they died so that their families would not be saddled with this burden. That is just too much time and effort put into keeping our family businesses in the family. I have spoken to many constituents who own small businesses in my district and want their children to carry on those enterprises in the future. These are the mom and pop shops that form the backbone of Main Street, America. What right have we to stand in their way with this unfair tax? I urge my colleagues to support these businesses and to vote for this bill. Today, we will once and for all fully repeal the death tax.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this important legislation to repeal the marriage penalty and provide greater relief through the child tax credit. And, I want to thank my friend from Illinois, Jerry Weller, for holding steadfast to this legislation, and Speaker Hastert for standing firmly on the side of the American family by bringing this bill to the floor today. As I travel around Florida's fourth district, I speak to a lot of couples who are concerned about how much they pay in taxes, in particular for the unfair marriage penalty. In fact, nearly 57,000 couples in my district pay an average of $1,400 more per year than if they were filing their taxes as single people. A lot of attention is paid to the young couples--just married and trying to start a family--and the hardship they suffer as a result of the marriage penalty. But, I met a wonderful couple in my district last year, a widow and widower, both in their sixties, that had made a conscious decision not to marry because they were very aware of the effect it would have on their limited retirement incomes. It's just commonsense to let these people marry without concern about how their wallets would be impacted. These couples were so pleased when Congress passed relief for married couples. And, they were outraged when President Clinton vetoed this fair legislation. That's why I am proud to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 6, which will finally give these married couples the relief they deserve. This bill not only puts married couples back on equal footing with single taxpayers by expanding the 15 percent tax bracket and doubling the standard deduction, but also doubles the child tax credit. The bill helps all families keep a little bit more of their hard-earned money in their households. With passage of this legislation, the House is letting the average family of four keep $1,600 to pay their own bills and debts, save for a rainy day, or send their kids to the little league, ballet lessons, and tutors that they want to be able to afford. It seems the least we can do to let these families keep the dollars they earn. They've done with a little less when dollars were short in their households, due in part to the fact that they overpaid in taxes to the government. It's time we put America's families first and pay back some of the money these families have overpaid to the government. With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of things wrong with this Progressive budget, but probably the most important thing that is wrong with it is the way it slashes defense spending. I happen to believe that the number one responsibility of the Federal Government is to protect American lives, and the only way you keep America safe is you keep America strong. This budget moves in the wrong direction. In the last 8 years, we watched our military get hollowed out, reduced by 40 percent; and, yet, deployment has increased almost 400 percent. We sent our troops gallivanting all over the world; and, today, the young men and women in uniform are worried about the direction that we are going to take. I would say this budget as it is slashes defense spending. It does not recognize the world as it is today. The Cold War is over, yes, but we still face nuclear proliferation, non-State terrorists groups, world criminal elements with tentacles all over the world, and I think we have to recognize that. We have to make America strong again, and that is what our budget does. It increases defense spending almost 5 percent. It adds $5.6 billion to begin to increase the pay of our military, give them better housing, give them health care benefits. Already, you can see the morale is boosted among our troops. Mr. Chairman, our budget spends $2.6 billion on research and development. It is a down payment for what we need to spend in the future. The President believes, and I believe, that we ought to have a top-to-bottom review, so that our defense strategy will drive our defense spending and not the other way around. It is a time of transition, a time of testing, and we do not want to go out and spend money on technology that might not work or be available. And once this top-to-bottom review is finished, once our President and our military leaders know the direction we want to take and have a clear vision, I am confident he will come back to this Congress, ask for our help, and we will give him the necessary resources. Let us not go backwards and continue to hollow our military; let us move forward and make America strong again.

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Republican budget. It is sensible, it is responsible, and it is fair. I think my colleagues have done a great job of pointing out the underlying foundation of this budget. Number one, it pays down the national debt. That is good for everybody, for our children, our grandchildren. It gives tax relief to working Americans. It allows them to keep more of what they earn, and that is important. When we look at Social Security and Medicare, it preserves those programs for our senior citizens and their kids and their grandkids as well, and it improves education by putting more money and giving more local control and flexibility. Finally, as a new Member who comes from a district that is largely military oriented, I am proud to say that this budget begins to make America strong again. It begins to rebuild our forces which have been hollowed out for the last 8 years. It is a good budget. It is a sound budget, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Madam Chairman, my colleagues have talked about the foundations of this budget, paying down the national debt, letting the taxpayers keep more of what they earn, preserving Social Security and preserving Medicare, and improving education. But as a member of the Committee on Armed Services and a new Member from a district that is largely military oriented, I want to address what this budget does in terms of the military because for the last 8 years, our young men and women in the military have watched as the military has been hollowed out. It has been underfunded and overdeployed. Madam Chairman, I have talked to so many of those young people, and I decided that I would like to go to Congress to help rebuild our military and make America strong again; and that is exactly what this budget does. It adds almost 5 percent of new money to military spending, $5.6 billion for increase pay, for better housing, for health care for our military men and women. It adds $2.6 billion of new money for research and development. And that is important. That is a down payment on what is to come because our President has said that he believes, and I believe with all my heart, that we ought to let defense strategy drive defense spending and not the other way around. The President has ordered a top-to-bottom review of our military to decide what is the role of the military. What is our vision. It is a time of testing. It is a time of transition, and there is no sense spending money on technology that we are never going to use. Madam Chairman, once that review has taken place and our President and our leaders of the military have a clear vision of where they want this country to go, then I am confident that we in this Congress will give them the necessary resources that they need. And so it is on that note that I ask for support for this resolution.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of two important bills under consideration today, both of which are important to maintaining our commitment to our nation's veterans. The first, the Veterans' Opportunities Act makes great strides in improving the benefits we provide to veterans. Whether they are for disability or housing or education or burial, these benefits are but a small token of the gratitude that we owe them for their service to our nation. H.R. 801 runs the gamut of these programs, addressing inadequacies in pensions and transitional programs, education and work- study programs, and burial and funeral allowances. By maintaining good benefits, Mr. Speaker, we also help our armed services to recruit and retain the very best. We must never forget that for all the expensive weaponry and high-tech gadgetry, the men and women who wear the uniforms are the backbone of our military. In that respect, perhaps the most important provision of this bill is one that makes retroactive an increase in the maximum annuity available to servicemembers' families through the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI). Though this increase was signed into law on November 1, 2000, the effective date of this increase is not until April 1, 2001. Regrettably, for many of our servicemembers and families--most notably, the 21 National Guard members killed in a plane crash earlier this month, the 17 sailors killed in the terrorist bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and personnel lost in training accidents in Hawaii and Kuwait--this is too late. For all these reasons, I urge my colleague to support H.R. 801. But, I also rise in strong support, Mr. Speaker, of the second veterans' bill on the floor today, the Veterans' Hospital Emergency Repair Act. The Veterans' Health Administration operates the largest federal health care delivery system in the country with 172 medical centers, 409 domiciliaries, 132 nursing homes, and 829 outpatient clinics. In 1999, these providers treated 3.6 million veterans. Just as our veterans have been aging, so too has the infrastructure this grateful nation established to care for them. So many of the hospitals and facilities to which these veterans must go for care are simply unsafe or clearly distressed. We must not sacrifice the health and welfare of our veterans in such facilities. The Veterans' Hospital Emergency Repair Act would complement an ongoing review within the Veterans' Health Administration, the Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES). To borrow a phrase from the President's address to Congress last month: Our veterans health vision should drive our veterans health budget. Congress made an informed decision in its last session to move the veterans' health system into the 21st century by enacting the Veterans' Millennium Health Care and Benefits Act. CARES, is a realistic way to determine how we move from the old system of medicine that revolved around hospital-based care to the new which relies upon outpatient and community-based care without sacrificing quality and without sinking dollars into infrastructure that we can reasonably expect to fall by the wayside. H.R. 811 can help to make that happen. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Veterans' Committee Chairman Chris Smith and Ranking Member, Lane Evans, for their leadership in moving both H.R. 801 and H.R. 811 to the floor so quickly. I urge my colleagues to support both these bills.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Tornado Shelters Act, H.R. 247, which makes a modest change in the use of existing federal block grant money that will help localities all across the Nation build tornado shelters in manufactured housing communities. Just last week, a tornado hit a small community in my district, Yulee, FL. Though the tornado was by all accounts a weak one, officially registering an F-0, it reminded all of us in northeast Florida just how vulnerable we are to these sort of natural disasters. This mild tornado shattered 91 double-paned classroom windows, pulled a portable classroom off its concrete block piers, and damaged roof vents and computers with rain and mud at the local elementary school. In addition, it tore a 12-by-12 foot section of roof from a local church. In a nearby county, where an F-1 tornado hit a few hours earlier, similar property damage was done to vehicles, buildings, and homes, including mobile homes. The people of Yulee were relatively fortunate--the damage was primarily to crops and property and no lives were lost. But, even that kind of damage can be devastating to the individuals affected. It takes a lot to rebuild your home and life after a disaster hits. This bill merely remedies a quirk in the law. Community Development Block Grant money can now be used to construct storm shelters in low- to-moderate income housing communities and apartment buildings, but it cannot be used to build a shelter in a mobile home park. It makes no new appropriations and removes no current authority. It merely gives communities more flexibility in using existing funds. Thus, I rise in support of this commonsense legislation and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Madam Speaker, I rise today to support House Concurrent Resolution 47 and express my condolences to the 21 families that lost loved ones in the Florida Army National Guard aircraft crash of March 3, 2001. Every day, the men and women of the Armed Forces put their lives ont he line to protect the freedoms we enjoy in the United States. A vital part of our Nation's protection comes from the personnel of our National Guard personnel. The mission of our National Guard force has increased over recent years in order to take on continued deployments and training missions throughout the world and here at home. The 21 individuals lost in this tragic crash were training in Florida to be prepared for whatever mission this nation asked them to undertake. They will be remembered as tireless workers and positive examples to their families and communities. Many communities and organizations have been touched by this loss, but our Nation has felt the largest loss. This resolution allows Congress to honor the commitment and sacrifice given to this nation by the 21 military personnel lost on March 3d. This accident will be felt for years to come as both the 203d Red Horse of the Virginia Air National Guard and the 1-171st Aviation Battalion of the Florida Army National Guard attempt to replace their fallen colleagues. Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that we honor these guardsmen today.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for the privilege to travel with him. As a freshman, as the gentleman points out, it was remarkable to me to know and understand first-hand some of the problems in that region, and as a new member of the Committee on Armed Services, I think it is going to be even more valuable. I would just like to make a couple of observations that really hit home to me, particularly in Russia. It was a grueling trip, with 40 meetings in six cities and 23 meetings in Moscow, but I came away with such a unique understanding of that region of the world. I think there is no better way, if we are going to develop a lasting peace, than for people to talk to people and get to know and understand each other. But as I observed from just a political standpoint, it was so encouraging to me to see that Russia is moving in the right direction. They have opened their society. There is freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. They are establishing a rule of law. But I think it was particularly important for us to be there at that time, because as crises occur, there is always that chance that we can move forward and become more open, or move backwards and become oppressive and regressive. I was encouraged to see things moving in the right direction from a political standpoint. The rule of law seems to be taking place. Property rights are being established. We were instrumental in trying to encourage the use of mortgages as people borrow money to try to own their own property. From an economic standpoint, I was particularly pleased to see that last year their economy grew about 7 percent, investment was up 15 to 17 percent, so that is all encouraging. I think that has a lot to do with the political stability that is coming into play. But as the gentleman and I know, how important that economic engine becomes. I was astounded to learn that while the economy is growing, it is relatively small by world standards, in the neighborhood of $30 billion, when that is half of what the State of Florida is. So they have a long way to go, but they are moving in the right direction. Finally, as we visited, it was encouraging to me to see from a security standpoint that they are taking steps in the right direction: reducing their military, dealing with us in ways to solve their biological and chemical weapons problem. I guess the jury is still out on that. But the message we took is when we talk about national missile defense, we want to work together; they are no longer our enemy, that the Cold War is over. Yet, it is still not a safe place to live. There are rogue nations, there is nuclear proliferation. I hope they will continue the dialogue with us that we began so we can work together for a long and lasting peace. Again, I say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), I want to thank him as a freshman here for that incredible opportunity to begin to understand and now to work as a member of the Committee on Armed Services to try to make this a safer place for everyone.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, one week ago, the Nation watched stunned as one of its favorite sons, Dale Earnhardt, died in a tragic accident at the Daytona 500. Representing a small portion of the city that hosts the famous Daytona 500, I have witnessed the coming of age of racing, as it spread from rural America to the suburbs to the cities. Daytona Beach entertains more than 8 million visitors every year, and no small number of them comes to the city to see the most famous NASCAR speedway. While racing has only recently mushroomed in popularity, bringing new and vibrant personalities into everyday lives, Dale Earnhardt has been legendary in racing circles for more than 25 years. He was a pioneer in a pastime that has become as much a part of popular culture today as baseball. I had the pleasure of meeting Dale Earnhardt when I served as Grand Marshall for the Pepsi 400 in 1994. Though known as the Intimidator, I found him to be easy-going and warm. Before the race, he took the time to show my daughters and me all the fun, behind-the-scenes secrets of racing. And, afterward, when he had won the race and had even collapsed from heat and exhaustion, he put me immediately at ease with his friendly sense of humor. Racing fans have watched Dale Earnhardt nurture his family before their eyes, passing his love of racing along to his son, Dale, Jr., who now carries on his father's legacy. His skill on the racetrack and his easy-going charm will be sorely missed. His family is in our thoughts and prayers.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, today, I am proud to join my colleagues in strong support of the Social Security and Medicare Lockbox Act. We have a surplus of $5.6 trillion. And, $2.9 trillion of that surplus is money that people expect to be there for them when they apply for their Social Security and Medicare benefits. For the past several years, Congress has locked these trust fund surpluses away through sound fiscal management, despite the absence of a passed lockbox bill. But the American public understands that passage of actual lockbox legislation is a solemn pledge between the Congress and the people that we will not touch those surpluses. And, we should make that pledge to our constituents. Given the strength of the non-trust fund surplus--$2.7 trillion--we can well afford to do this and still meet the other needs of our constituents--providing them with much needed tax relief, paying down the debt, and reinvesting in important priorities like defense and education. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to pass H.R. 2 with a strong bipartisan vote.

Mr. CRENSHAW

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing Project Exile: The Safe Streets and Neighborhoods Act, which passed the House overwhelmingly last year. In the last several years, many states, including Virginia, have dramatically reduced the level of gun crime in their communities by implementing programs that ensure mandatory prison time for criminals who use guns during the commission of a violent crime. This approach enforces the laws already on the books, and it ensures a minimum prison sentence of at least five years for convicted violators. In states and communities around the country where aggressive prosecution of gun crimes has been coupled with tough prison sentences, violent crime has decreased. This program is based upon the remarkably successful experience of the joint federal, state, and local effort in Richmond, Virginia, which witnessed an amazing 40% reduction in its homicide rate since their program's inception in 1997. Following this model, Project Exile provides $100 million in federal resources over five years as an incentive for states to implement such programs. It will also defray the costs associated with tougher enforcement against gun-toting criminals. Project Exile encourages the enforcement of existing laws and helps communities mobilize to get the word out on the street that gun violence won't be tolerated. The Act provides funds for strengthening the state criminal justice system in a variety of ways, such as: hiring and training more judges, prosecutors, and probation officers; increasing prison capacity; and, creating public awareness campaigns regarding tougher prison sentences for criminals who use guns. Project Exile gives local prosecutors, law enforcement agencies, and the courts the flexibility and the resources needed to get gun-wielding criminals out of our neighborhoods and off our streets. Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful this bill will move swiftly from our halls to the President's desk and become law. I urge my colleagues to support Project Exile: The Safe Streets and Neighborhoods Act.