John Campbell

Mr. CAMPBELL of California

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to see the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Obey, here, because this is an amendment that he suggested right here on the floor of the House on June 13, earlier this month. During debate that evening, which was the evening in which it was decided that we would make earmarks public and that they would be included in the bill, Mr. Obey said, ``I want to make clear, I hate the earmarking process. I absolutely detest it.'' Further on in his comments, the gentleman from Wisconsin said, ``And I am going to be very interested in seeing which Members vote for the amendment that I intend to attach to every appropriations bill which would call for a total elimination on earmarks. I want to see how many of you actually vote for it.'' Well, I want the chairman of the Appropriations Committee to know that I agree with his comments. In the previous bill that we had before this House yesterday, the Interior bill, this amendment did not show up. So I took it upon myself to offer this amendment, which the chairman of the Appropriations Committee had suggested that he was going to offer on every appropriations bill. So that is, in fact, the amendment that I have offered. What this amendment would do, Mr. Chairman, is it would strike all 148 earmarks that are currently in this bill from the bill, and thereby would save $33.71 million of taxpayer money. I hope that the chairman will support me in this effort. Obviously I am offering this amendment. I intend to vote for this amendment, and I hope the good chairman of the Appropriations Committee would join me in this offering and in voting for it as well. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I fully understand the gentleman's desire to close, and I am happy to do that. But I believe that he should at least state some of the reasons that he believes this earmark is justified so I can at least have the opportunity to rebut those before he closes. But I am perfectly willing to allow him to have the last word. I suppose I will anticipate, perhaps, what the gentleman is going to say. I understand that the gentleman from Illinois may suggest that the Ethics Committee has approved that his district employee be the executive director of this commission, and I would take him at his word and assume that is the case. I don't think that is the issue here. We are talking about over $200,000 of taxpayers' funds here, and I think the question at issue is whether or not that is an appropriate use of Federal funds and what these Federal funds are going to be used for. If he is suggesting, as some of these reports indicated, that these are going to be spent on minority and business development procurement opportunities for an airport that doesn't yet exist, my question would be how can you have hiring or whatever opportunities for an airport that doesn't exist yet and won't exist even if it were approved today for some number of years? Is the gentleman willing to say that there will be no further advertising, no further lobbying, no further expenditures of that sort?

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit funds in the bill from being used for the Wittenberg University East Asian Study Center. The committee report provides there will be $500,000 spent on this local project. Now, Wittenberg University is a private college. On all these earmark things that I am bringing up and that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) has brought up, it is not an issue of whether this is a good university, I am sure it is a great university; or whether this is a worthy, charitable endeavor, I am sure it is a worthy, charitable endeavor. It is a question of whether or not it is appropriate for taxpayers' funds. On the last amendment that I had talked about, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson) made a very eloquent report of why he believes there should be a third airport in Illinois. But that really wasn't the point, as to whether there should be a third. I am not qualified. I don't know whether there should be a third airport in Chicago or not. The point was, is it appropriate to use Federal taxpayer funds to fund an organization that you set up that is for the purpose of basically applying political pressure to create this airport when it doesn't exist. I think that is clearly not appropriate. In this case here, this is to be used ``for the development of an undergraduate interdisciplinary program in international business, with a focus on the field of experience in Asia.'' According to the Web site, this East Asian Studies Journal has existed for 27 years. This is the 27th consecutive annual edition of this particular publication. So this center, it would appear, has existed for 27 years in this university. Again, Mr. Chairman, this is actually a Lutheran university. I am on the board of advisors of a Lutheran university in my district. I think they do very fine things. I just don't think it is appropriate to use taxpayer money. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I will just say that the certification actually says the funding will be used for the establishment of a center. Perhaps that is in error.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. It says for the establishment of a center. Whether it is the establishment or the expansion, I just respectfully suggest that this is more in the nature of support for a university rather, than support for a project which has a Federal nexus and requires Federal tax dollars. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. I thank the gentlelady from Colorado. You know, we have heard a lot today from the majority party whenever we talk about this amendment, this bill, this spending, they want to bring up last year's bills, last year's spending. We acknowledge, last year's spending was too much. Last year's bills were too much. That's not what we're talking about. It's like the baseball team wanting to play last year's season again. Look what we did last year. Look what happened last year. No, we're in the middle of this year. We're in the middle of this season. It doesn't matter who won the World Series last year. It matters who's in first place this year. What matters is this year. How much are we going to spend this year? That's what we're voting on. How much are we going to increase the deficit this year? How much further are we going to raid the Social Security surplus this year? That's the question before us. And we think we ought to have the deficit increase a little less and that we should raid the Social Security surplus a little less and that we shouldn't set up a situation where you're going to raise taxes on all of the American people. The previous amendment, I showed a couple of charts. The previous amendment was to reduce spending by 1 percent. I tried to point out to the majority that it's like this. Here are 100 donkeys, something they can understand. If we reduce that by 1 percent, we have 99 donkeys. Not that big a difference in donkeys. And so we proposed an amendment last time, which the majority party defeated on voice vote, will undoubtedly defeat later, that said, let's just get by on 99 donkeys, money, instead of 100 donkeys, money. Well, they said they couldn't do it. So the gentlelady from Colorado offers an alternative, which is get by on 99\1/2\ donkeys. If I had a half donkey, I would stick it up there. You can pick whichever end of the donkey you want, but put another half a donkey on that chart. And so we're saying rather than 100 donkeys, get by with 99\1/2\. It's just saying if you have a million-dollar program, we said, well, get by on 999,000. They're saying, no. Okay. How about $999,500? If you have a $100 million program, we're saying can you get by on $99 million. They said, no. We're saying, okay, how about $99\1/2\ million. That's what this argument is about. Just asking for a half a percent, each government agency, each government program to deal with a half a percent less. People at home make these kinds of decisions with way bigger percentages than that all the time, Mr. Chairman. And if we do it, if we reduce it by 1 percent, we would save $30 billion if we did every program every year. If it's a half a percent, it's still $15 billion. That is real money, Mr. Chairman. Real money no matter how you cut it. And that is the way we can balance this budget without raising taxes. There, Mr. Chairman, is the big difference between the majority Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We're saying, get by on 99 donkeys or 99\1/2\ donkeys instead of 100. Tell government bureaucrats that we can balance this budget without raising taxes. They, however, want to give the bureaucrats 100 donkeys of spending every time and raise taxes on the American people to make up the difference. That's what we're talking about here. That's the difference in this debate. That's the difference between these parties. Mr. Chairman, I would urge all Members to vote to make government bureaucrats deal with a tiny bit less and let people save and keep their own money.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding. As I listened to the arguments, what arguments that are presented, from the majority Democrats, I hear some things that don't quite ring true. They talk a lot about their pay-as-you-go rules and that their great fiscal accomplishment of this Congress is that they are going to pay for spending as you go. Yet this bill increases spending by $1.2 billion, and it is not paid for. There is no $1.2 billion cut somewhere else. They are simply going to increase the deficit by $1.2 billion more because they have decided they want to spend it. They say that they are not raising taxes. But yet their budget increases spending every single year for 5 years and then miraculously says they are going to balance the budget. How do they do that? Because they did have in their budget the largest tax increase in American history. You just heard them recently just decry the former deficits. Oh, my gosh, Republicans drove up these deficits. And, in fact, we did. And we agree that that was not the right thing to do. So what is their response? Make the deficits bigger. Take the spending that we had while we were in charge and increase it by more. And then they have one other thing they continue to do which is to call something like this bill a ``cut.'' You heard the gentleman from Washington on the last proposal say that it was a devastating cut, when in fact all this does, as the gentleman from Georgia pointed out, is take what's already a 4.5 percent increase and reduce it. Now, what I want to do is, since they're having a hard time understanding this, I want to put this up graphically so that maybe they will understand better. Now, Mr. Chairman, here are 100 donkeys. I figured that donkeys were something that Democrats would be able to relate to. So we have 100 donkeys here. Imagine that this is 100 donkeys of spending. Here's what this bill will do. There, Mr. Chairman, are 99 donkeys; 100 donkeys here, 99 donkeys there. Probably having a hard time, I would imagine, Mr. Chairman, people in the gallery are probably having a hard time telling the difference. That's because there isn't much difference. That's because it isn't a big cut, it isn't a big reduction. If you have a million-dollar program, all we're asking is for that program to get by on $90,000. If it's $100 million, we're asking them to get by on a mere $99 million. If it's a billion-dollar program, do you think that some government agencies can squeak by on $990 million rather than a billion? But here's the big point: It doesn't look like a lot of difference in donkeys, but if we do that, if we spend the 99 instead of 100 on every single government program, we save $30 billion. That is real money. And this is how you save it: a little bit at a time. Ask a million-dollar program to get by on $990,000, ask a billion-dollar program to get by on 1 percent less. And when you do that with every single program in government, you save $30 billion a year. That, Mr. Chairman, is how we can get to a balanced budget without not only the largest tax increase in American history, without raising taxes on the hardworking people in America at all simply by asking government day by day, get by on 1 percent less. I think we can do it. I think we should vote for this amendment.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What this amendment proposes to do is basically to strike $150,000 of an earmark that is in the bill to provide equipment for the anadromous fish research in Falls Turner, Massachusetts. Now, again, I did look up, even though I didn't look up the pronunciation, I did look up enough to know that anadromous fish spend their lives in salt water but migrate to fresh water to reproduce, like salmon. And I'm sure that studying their habits, or whatever this is going to study, is a worthy, I'm going to presume, at least, that it is a worthy intellectual exercise and that perhaps it has value for researchers or people studying fish or whatever it is. And again, like in the last amendment that I offered, that is not my point in proposing that we not use tax dollars to fund this. But my point instead is with limited tax dollars, limited to $3 trillion, but limited nonetheless, of Federal tax dollars, with a deficit that we have that all of these appropriations bills will increase, not decrease, with the fact that we are still raiding Social Security surplus, is buying equipment for this study in this place something that should command $150,000 of taxpayers' money? Again, as I mentioned before, I have heard Members on the other side of the aisle constantly refer to their PAYGO as how they are attempting to be fiscally responsible. But yet this bill increases spending by 4.5 percent over last year. There is no PAYGO there. There is no other appropriations bill that is reduced by 4.5 percent to save this money. There are no structural reforms in the entitlement programs, which we all know are scheduled for disaster, to save this money. So this $150,000 is not just an amorphous $150,000 in a gigantic budget that means nothing. It is a real $150,000 that is using taxpayers' money but will increase the deficit and further raid the Social Security surplus by $150,000. So the question before the body is not whether this research is interesting, or even whether it is useful to some people. But the question is, is it worth increasing the deficit by $150,000 to fund this? Is this sort of research the sort of thing the Federal Government should be involved in? If we are involved in this, why are we not involved in many, many other forms of research that are going on in my district or the district of every other Member who is here? The reason is because we can't afford to do that. So I would respectfully suggest that we strike this money. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote. The Acting Chairman. Pursuant to clause 6 of rule XVIII, further proceedings on the amendment offered by the gentleman from California will be postponed.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Reclaiming my time, I guess perhaps Silvio Conte might have said this same thing, but in 1822, President James Monroe said that Federal money should be limited to ``great national works only, since if it were unlimited, it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil.'' Mr. Chairman, I would ask for support of this amendment.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I may continue, then. I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from West Virginia. And I frankly don't dispute or have any basis upon which to dispute anything the gentleman said, but that wasn't my point. My point was that it is not appropriate to use Federal funds for this sort of thing, regardless of how great the local community may find this to be a local need. The Federal tax dollars cannot support every little local project, every local need, every historic building everywhere that we need. To close, I would like to quote, if I could, Mr. Chairman, Thomas Jefferson, just to let people know that this is not a new issue. And he said, ``Have you considered all the consequences of our proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to Members of Congress and their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of post office revenues, but other revenues will soon be called into their aid. And it will be a scene of eternal scramble among the Members as to who can get the most money wasted in their State. And they will always get the most who are the meanest.'' Thomas Jefferson is right. I would ask you to support this amendment.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman from Massachusetts' reasoned defense of this. We are just going to have to disagree. He said in part of his comments that this is something which is of great interest to commercial fishermen and sports fishermen, so it begs the question of, is that what we are in the business of doing with Federal tax dollars, in increasing the deficit, et cetera, in order to provide research and information for sports fishermen and commercial fishermen? I happen to think we are not. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time, except for 15 seconds, to my friend the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is dealing with an earmark for $140,000 for the Wetzel County Courthouse in New Martinsville, West Virginia. Now, Mr. Chairman, I actually looked up on a Web site to see the Wetzel County Courthouse, and it is a building that was built sometime between 1900 and 1902, and it looks like a very fine historic building. I actually am personally into historic preservation. I personally support, through charitable contributions, the preservation of various historic buildings around California, actually, and around the Nation. I believe that we ought to keep our historic buildings and keep them up and appreciate them and treasure that history that we, as a fairly young country, are just beginning to build. So that's not why I am proposing to strike this earmark from this bill. It's not that this isn't a historic building; it clearly is. It's not that perhaps it requires some renovation; I don't know, but perhaps it does. But the question is, is this really the sort of thing upon which we should be spending our scarce Federal tax dollars? Let me point out again that this is a county courthouse. It's not a Federal courthouse; it is a county courthouse in West Virginia. Now, I'm sure that there are taxes, property taxes, whatever, in that county, and perhaps those tax dollars, if the local magistrates felt it was appropriate, could be used for this, or perhaps city dollars in that city or that area, or perhaps State dollars, or perhaps charitable dollars, a preservation society is set up or becomes set up, or whatever, to support this courthouse. But it just seems completely inappropriate to me, Mr. Chairman, that we are spending scarce Federal dollars on this sort of thing. Now, I have a county courthouse in my county; it was built around the same time. It's old also. I'm sure we could use $140,000 for it. I'm sure we could use $140,000 for any number of county courthouses that are old and historic across this country. Are we going to fund them all? Is it the Federal taxpayers' responsibility to restore them all or to make some contribution to them all? I really don't think so. And it's not, as I say, that perhaps this isn't a need, but I just don't think it's appropriate to spend Federal tax dollars on this sort of very local objective and local project that has no Federal nexus. Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle spent a lot of time the last few days talking about PAYGO. But one of the things to point out is that this bill is not subject, the entire bill basically, all of the spending in the budget is not subject to PAYGO because there is a 4.5 percent increase in total spending in this appropriations bill that we're debating tonight. And there is no offset for that 4.5 percent. There is no other spending that is reduced by 4.5 percent. So every dollar we spend on this bill tonight is a dollar that adds to the deficit. Every single dollar contributes to further raiding the Social Security surplus. So the question is, is this $140,000 that we believe we should increase the Federal deficit by $140,000 for this courthouse, should we raid the Social Security surplus by an additional $140,000 for this courthouse, or should we not spend the taxpayers' money on something like this local project? Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina. Mr. Chairman, let's be clear what we are doing here: we are not cutting anything. We are proposing to do less of an increase in this bill than what has been proposed by the majority party. Just to illustrate, as I have done before, what I will do again, because I keep hearing talk about cuts: one equals one; two is more than one, even if you want three. This bill, what we have proposed is to have two, is to spend more than the one that was spent before, to spend two. There are some people who would like to spend three. We think that's too much. We think that we have a deficit. We think that we have seen the majority party propose to increase taxes by however much money they happen to spend. We think they should spend less. We think government should spend less so that the taxpayers can keep more of their own money that they earned. Mr. Chairman, we can get this budget under control. We can get this deficit under control without cutting spending and without raising taxes, if we just control how much we increase the spending by. Instead of increasing it by 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 percent, 9, over 9 percent, which overall has been proposed in this budget, if, instead, we only increase it by 6, not a bad increase, but just increase it by 6, and we do that year after year, we will eliminate this deficit without digging more into the taxpayers' pockets, because we already dig into their pockets too much. So that's what this whole debate, that's what the amendment of the gentleman from South Carolina is about, just controlling the growth of spending to something that is reasonable but manageable and will enable people to keep their own money and this government to return to a fiscal responsibility position without deficits.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I believe that I clearly said, ``Mr. Chairman, people who see this may wonder.''

Mr. CAMPBELL of California

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas. I want to make a last couple of comments relative to the comments made by the gentleman from Massachusetts. A lot of what the gentleman from Massachusetts said I agree with. I think we differ in three basic areas. One is that the gentleman from Massachusetts believes this program has been effective. My involvement with it in California and things that I have seen statistically here say otherwise. Certainly the administration agrees this program has not been a cost-effective program. Second is talking about how this thing might save money here. But where does this money come from? It is $245 million. This money does not come from the sky. It does not come from the air. It comes from taxpayers. And the question is not does it save anybody any money or anybody anything; is it cost effective in what it does? And I think the answer is ``no.'' The third comment I would like to make is that the gentleman pointed out a number of programs in this bill which have all been increased in this proposed bill. That is fine, but I guess I would ask this: Are there no programs here which are not effective? Are there no programs that deserve some reduction in spending or perhaps even elimination? Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life is a government program, and I believe we are seeing with programs like this that those words Ronald Reagan made some time ago ring true.

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Mr Chairman, one of the last speakers on the other side of the aisle mentioned that he wasn't quite sure why we kept talking about taxes and tax increases, because inevitably if you head toward the balanced budget, that is what all spending turns into: it turns into taxes. In fact, the Democratic budget, which, to the majority party's credit, is heading toward a balanced budget in 5 years, as were I believe virtually all of the budgets that were presented this year, but it does so by saying, in its own terms, that they will raise taxes as much as they need to at the end of that 5 years in order to achieve a balanced budget. So when we are talking today about things that are increasing in spending, this isn't something that is abstract. This isn't $20 million here, $40 million here, $100 billion there of just sort of faceless, nameless money. That is money in figures that are so large that most people, Mr. Chairman, have a hard time even comprehending how much that is and how it can relate to the things that we are doing. But it makes it a little more down-to-earth, brings it a little more home, when you look at each one of these, which is the way we should look at them, Mr. Chairman, each one of these spending increases on each program, on each bill, on each thing here, and realize that every dollar of increase there is a dollar that the majority party wants to go get out of the pockets of taxpayers at home. That is what we are really talking about. That is why, Mr. Chairman, I propose this amendment. Now, this amendment refers to just one of the many, many projects and many, many programs in this appropriations bill. This one is something that deals with weatherization assistance, and the bill that is before us proposes to increase weatherization assistance spending by 20 percent over last year. Now, what is interesting is that in the President's budget, which this amendment proposes to reduce the spending to, the President has actually proposed to reduce this to almost half. Why is that? Because in something that is called energy efficiency and renewable energy, this program is actually not at all efficient. I actually had some personal experience with this program, not personal in the sense that I was dealing with the program from a recipient standpoint, but when I was in the State legislature with this program in California. By the time that you deal with the Federal bureaucracy and then you get the money to the State and there is the State bureaucracy, and then you put this money out, very little of this money was actually going to anything toward the goal that was accomplished. And what is interesting is it is also creating a subsidy for something that already pays for itself. The reason people weatherize their homes or seal leaks and so forth or cracks in windows and doors is because it saves you money on your energy bill over time. So this is a program that has been shown to be inefficient, has been shown to not be effective, that subsidizes something that doesn't need subsidization, and which in this bill is proposed to increase by 20 percent. Now, the President's budget proposed to reduce this. It is one of those things on that list of programs that a number of people have that are saying these are some of the most inefficient programs in the Federal Government today, and this is one of them that certainly should be reduced or perhaps eliminated. But instead, this bill proposes to increase it by nearly $40 million. And, again, $40 million, I guess sometimes this is the difference between government and not government. When things don't work in government, it seems that there is always a group of people saying the reason they are not working is because they don't have enough money, and we need to spend more money on them. Whereas, normally in the real world, Mr. Chairman, when something isn't working, that is when people take money from it, make it become more efficient, or not fund it anymore if it is not working. So, Mr. Chairman, this amendment, just this one area of this one Department, proposes to reduce this to the President's proposed budget.