Lindsey Graham

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. GRAHAM. Let us talk about the truth. The truth is that two-thirds of the Federal budget entails entitlement spending and interest element of the national debt. People probably do not realize this at home, but this year the interest payment on our national debt was almost $300 billion. We spent more money paying the interest than we did on the entire Department of Defense. If a child is born in America today, 1995, if nothing changes up here, during their lifetime they will pay $187,000 in Federal income taxes just to pay the interest element of the national debt. This is serious stuff. Bill Clinton has never submitted a serious budget to balance, to get our future generations out of that problem. Let us look at the budget that he did submit that still does not balance. In his budget, after 1996, Medicare premiums go up, and over a 7-year period they go up 89 percent. That is something he does not want to tell Americans about. We are being honest. What we are trying to do is slow the growth of Medicare. We are going to increase spending every year on Medicare two-and-a-half times the inflation rate. Every year we will increase spending, but we will slow it down from 11 percent to about 6 or 6.5 percent. We are being honest with America, he is not being honest with America.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield on that point.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I think this is a fair statement of what the American public is going to have to come to grips with and really see what we want in this country. Medicare, trust fund A, is funded by wage withholding from your children and your grandchildren. If it continues to grow at the rate that it is growing at 11 percent a year, we are going to have to do one of two things. Triple payroll taxes in the next 10 years on your children or grandchildren, and I think most senior citizens find that to be unacceptable. The other option is to increase spending on Medicare every year but at a slower rate. The President's plan saves 89 billion from slowed growth, but it does not affect part B. It does not have an institutional reform. What we do is we slow the growth down to about 6 percent, increasing spending every year, and create options for traditional Medicare that will allow senior citizens to be well taken care of and save money for future generations, because you cannot balance the budget until you reform entitlements. It is physically impossible. If you took away the entire discretionary budget, you could not get there. Under President Clinton's plan, he increases Medicare premiums every year. It is going to happen. But under our plan, it happens in a managed way with options that may save senior citizens money with a view of balancing the budget. There is a rhyme, a reason to what we are doing. We are serious; he is not. He wants to get reelected. I want to change America.

Mr. GRAHAM. The election year.

Mr. GRAHAM. So it is a $4 difference.

Mr. GRAHAM. Let us put it in perspective. The reason he is giving and preaching is that he wants to take care of American senior citizens, and in the process of saying that he intends very soon to go into your Social Security trust fund and borrow the money out of that fund to fund his spending habits. If we did that in the private sector, you would go to jail. He is trying to tell you that I am saving you from a premium increase when his own budget after the election year has a 10- percent premium increase in over a 7-year period. There is $4 difference between what our plan does and what his plan does. He is trying to sell you a bill of goods. Beware of Bill Clinton, senior citizens.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I just want to add here one point, too: Not only does he want to spend more, but now he wants to go to a source. Listen to what he wants to do to make sure that he cannot spend more because we are putting pressure on him. What Bob Walker said is true. For all those that are listening out there today, the President is intending to go for the Social Security trust fund, money for your retirement, money for my retirement, borrow money out of that fund to feed his spending habits, and that is what he is going to do, and we are trying to stop him. Please do not let him do that. If we were in private business, and we borrowed money from our pension plans to run our businesses, we would go to jail. That needs to stop.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I am intrigued by what the gentleman is saying to the point where I came over here to join him. I just want to say this, I know people have heard a lot. On a good day, it is very difficult to deal with the issues in Congress because they are so huge. We have a $4.9 trillion national debt. If any political figure tells you that it will be easy to come to a balanced budget, I do not think they are being honest with you, because this is hard work, but it has to be done with a certain sense of genuineness. Let us talk about something you mentioned a few minutes ago about the President as a campaigner. I know you value and I know that John values our personal integrity when we deal with our constituents. Bill Clinton, the campaigner, said that ``I will submit to the Congress a 5- year balanced budget.'' He said that on ``Larry King Live.'' As a candidate, he wanted to balance the budget in 5 years, because he knew even in 1992, that was an important issue to the American public. I have never seen that document. That document does not exist. When he was on television trying to get elected, he said something that he thought would sound good that would help him get votes, but he did not mean it. I can guarantee you, if you think it is difficult to balance the budget in 7 years, it would be very difficult to balance it in 5 years. It is going to be difficult, no matter what. But he made a statement that ``I am going to balance the budget in 5 years,'' never followed through with it, never sat down in a room to try to figure out the numbers, to make it a reality. He said it just because he thought it would sound good. What happened when he got to be President? A couple of things happened. In November 1994, not one single Republican incumbent lost. There was a sweeping change in this country. I was the first Republican elected in my district in 120 years. My Republican freshman class consists of 73 very, very good, dedicated people that ran on the same issues. We have taken our campaign literature and made overlays. The theme of it was ``Bring back responsibility and control of Washington, DC's financial matters.'' That election sent a signal to Bill Clinton, and the polls were at 80, 82 percent that we want to balance the budget. In response to that event, 2\1/2\ years after he has been President, he finally submits a balanced budget plan that is 10 years. The problem with a 10-year balanced budget plan is a couple things. One, it does not balance after 10 years. You have $209 billion in deficits. But let me just show you how bad this plan was. He submitted it to the House, and the Democratic leadership was so embarrassed by it they would not even offer it for a vote in the House as a substitute. Bob Dole submitted it to the Senate for a vote, and you know how many votes it got? Zero. He has never, ever genuinely thought of a way to balance the budget in 5 years or 10 years. Now he is saying maybe 9, 8, 7. The only way we are going to get Bill Clinton to balance the budget is to make him. The only way to balance the budget is to affect entitlement spending. You do not have to cut, slow the growth down, pass the savings on to future generations, reform Medicare so it will be preserved for senior citizens, options that work, that work in the private sector. We are doing all those things, but it takes two to tango up here. We have a guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that will say whatever he needs to say at the moment to get reelected, and that is not why we got elected. That behavior is going to stop.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, along the vein of the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan], I am a Congressman from South Carolina, and I am so glad to hear this put to a rest. This is a funny town where rumors can start without any basis. I think that was something that needed to be said. I congratulate the gentleman for saying it, because the gentleman from South Carolina, Floyd Spence, has been a great Member of Congress, he has been a good chairman, and serves his country well. The reason I really want to share a few minutes with those that are listening tonight is that I live in the Third Congressional District, and the Savannah River site is the largest DOE industrial facility in the chain. I have been told that, and I believe that to be correct. We have lost about 8,900 people due to layoffs in the last few years where we are trying to downsize the [[Page H 12072]] Department of Energy, make it more efficient, get better use of taxpayer dollars. Then to wake up and read the newspaper and find that the Department of Energy chief, Ms. Hazel O'Leary, Cabinet member, has taken $43,500 of public money to go out and investigate the media, rate newspapers, rate reporters, try to coerce those who give bad stories, in her opinion, to give better stories, that is at least two, maybe three jobs at the Savannah River site. Along with the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] who made this amendment, can you imagine what would happen to a Member of Congress if they did such a thing? They should lose their job, and so should Ms. O'Leary. This is really an offensive event. It was one of many events that show there is no leadership over in the Department of Energy. I think it is a good example of what happens when an agency continues to grow with no clear mission or well-defined purpose. All of a sudden, it is more important what people think of you than what you are actually doing. I would just like to let everyone know that I find it highly inappropriate for the Department of Energy chief to take $43,500 of hard-earned public money and try to recreate her image at a time when we are downsizing the Department and we are making hard decisions throughout the land. The problem with the Department of Energy is not an image problem, it is a substance problem. We need to have a well- defined, clearly-defined energy policy. We need to clean these sites up instead of talking about it. We need to get on and develop our national defense needs, like tritium production, which is within the venue of the Department of Energy.

Mr. GRAHAM. If I may, Mr. Speaker, the article to which we are referring has a unique comment in it. A DOE official responded concerning the spending of $43,500 to go out and investigate media outlets and reporters who report on the Department of Energy, favorable or unfavorable ratings, and made the comment: A reporter's unfavorable rating meant we weren't getting our message across, that we needed to work on this person a little. To me, that is a statement beyond belief, that again, if I as a Member of Congress took taxpayer money entrusted to my care to go out and work on somebody to make me look better, I should lose my job.

Mr. GRAHAM. I gladly yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. GRAHAM. I am glad to yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. If the gentleman will yield, would you agree with me that it is part of an overall trend in this administration that we are going to make every hard decision by polls?

Mr. GRAHAM. If the gentleman would yield, the $43,500, to put it into perspective, the average income in my district is $13,000 per capita. A family is about $25,000, $26,000. Like I said, that is a lot of money and you should treat that money seriously. The bottom line of the story is when she was presented with the data, she said, ``Well, that's a little too confusing. I don't think that's going to help us.'' What will help the DOE is to come up with a rational energy policy, to deregulate the cumbersome process of cleaning these sites up and getting on with the job. The message that she is not getting is that there is a limited pot of money to do the Nation's business with. You cannot always fly first class, you cannot always make the papers say what you want them to say. Part of a democracy is that when you engage in the public sector, in the public debate, you are going to be called on the carpet at times. She has been called on the carpet because she has no vision, she has no message. The administration has no vision or message. They assume that we can make enough money to make every problem go away. Two papers that were rated in this survey and investigation are in my district, the Augusta Chronicle and Aiken Standard. Like I say, the largest employer in South Carolina is the Savannah River site Department of Energy facility. I admire those two papers for taking the Secretary to task. Sometimes that is risky because they do control our future to a great extent. They are asking to build a technology in our district that is experimental in nature, that is twice as expensive of known technology to make tritium, and I along with other Congressmen and Senators in South Carolina and Georgia are saying, ``Don't buy us off. You're not going to build something in our district that's wasteful just because it is coming into our district.'' That is the message that needs to be said in the country. Quite frankly, she just does not get it. The President does not get it. She needs to lose her job.

Mr. GRAHAM. If the gentleman would yield for a second, to put this in context, a Department of Energy spokesperson when asked about the $43,500 expenditure and the investigation said, according to the news article, a reporter's unfavorable rating meant we were not getting our message across, that we needed to work on this person a little. What is the message?

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would also like to congratulate the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt] leading up the effort to abolish the Department of Energy. Mr. Speaker, let me tell you what perspective I bring to this issue. I am from the Third District of South Carolina, and the Savannah River site is in my district. I have been told it is the largest DOE industrial facility in the chain. At one time, there were over 20,000 employees at the site. In the last 3 years we have had 8,900 people leave the site because we are trying to downsize the agency, trying to balance the budget. That means that every Congressperson up here will have some pain in their district, and that is what it is going to take to balance the budget, and we are trying to be fair about it. We are trying to shrink the Government, make it more efficient. Instead of spending millions and billions and getting nothing for it, we want to get some results. We want to change cost plus contracts to performance contracts, and I will have to give Ms. O'Leary some credit. She has brought about some of those changes. But in a time when people in my district are losing their jobs, when we are worried about the image of a Cabinet officer to the point that we are going to spend $43,500, I do not know about where you come from, but that is still a lot of money. That is somebody's salary, probably two people's salary for an entire year, money spent to go out and survey the media, rate reporters to improve her image at a time when people are having to lose their jobs, having to seek another way of making a living, having to retire early, to me that is very offensive. It is poor leadership. The reason the articles have been bad concerning the Department of Energy, one, it is a Department that should not exist. It cannot find its niche. There is no justification for a huge Federal bureaucracy to manage these issues, and we have spent millions and billions over the years to remediate the environment, and we are no closer than we were 5 or 10 years ago. The national defense needs are suffering. One issue that is very important to me is the production of tritium. Tritium is a gas that is essential to develop a thermonuclear weapon. We are quickly running out of our supply of tritium. This Department of Energy does not have a plan to develop a tritium source. We have made tritium at South Carolina at the Savannah River site for the last 40 years. We now need to get back in the business, and I cannot get Hazel O'Leary or anybody at DOE to get serious about weapons production to maintain a nuclear deterrent force. The commercial spent fuel is overflowing in this country. Go to any powerplant in this country. They are having a huge problem with commercial spent fuel, because we will not live up to our end of the bargain to open Yucca Mountain up, and the DOE is dragging their feet. I am tired of it, and I want new leadership, want leadership that is not worried about their image but is worried about the country's problems, not worried about how they fly an airplane but worried about people, to deliver a quality product to the American people. I think any Member of Congress that took $10 out of their account at taxpayers' expense to try to improve their image should lose their job, and she should lose her job.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue yielding, we have not even warmed up yet, $5 billion of the $10 billion came from the banking institutions. I will readily admit that the guaranteed loan program in this country needs to be reworked. It was a deal negotiated by our brethren on the other side who built the Great Society. Listen to this. Under the guaranteed loan program, the Federal Government was reimbursing 100 percent of any default prior to this Congress. Excuse me, two Congresses ago. Now it was at 98. We have come into 95. We have doubled the amount of risk that the private sector has in the student loan program. Do the other gentleman think they would spend much time on a defaulted loan if they knew somebody was to pay them 100 percent of the default? We have doubled the amount of risk that banks have, we have doubled the amount of money we charge for them to participate in the student loan program. We have $5 billion by renegotiating a deal for the American taxpayer with the banking institution. Sixty percent of the savings came away from reducing government and renegotiating a bad deal with the banking world that our brethren on the other side negotiated.

Mr. GRAHAM. If the gentleman would yield, I will go over the $10.08 billion in savings we achieved in the student loan program, because I am on the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities. It goes back to the student lunch program. That was the biggest lie in this Congress. We put more money in the lunch program, the federally funded lunch program, than the President did, but we got accused of cutting. The student loan savings entail the following: We save $1.2 billion of the $10 billion from doing away with direct lending. Direct lending is the best opportunity to recreate the great society that I have seen since we have been in Congress. Direct lending has the Federal Government borrowing the money, allowing the Department of Education to lend it out and become bankers. The opportunity for the Department of Education to grow under direct lending is unbelievably large. We are in debt. We are having to borrow money we do not have and lend it to replace private capital. We save $1.2 billion by reducing the bureaucracy of the Department of Education by getting rid of direct lending.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I tell my colleagues that I come from a very quiet polite district, and if my friends want me to talk, I will be glad to.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, direct lending is a Bill Clinton program that is trying to replace private sector capital. There are literally hundreds of banks in America that provide money that the Federal Government guarantees to provide access to student loans. Bill Clinton wants to get rid of the guaranteed loan program and replace it with direct lending, where the Federal Government becomes the bank. They have to borrow the money to replace the capital in the private sector. And the bankers will be people who run the Department of Education. I do not know about my colleagues, but if I was to start a bank, I would not go to the Department of Education to hire people to run the bank.

Mr. GRAHAM. I remember when we first got together as a class, I did a survey, I think it was in Baltimore. Would you be in favor of abolishing the following departments, and the four that you named are about 85-percent agreement on those issues. Our class as a whole drank the same water, from South Carolina to Maine to California to all over this country. We could have taken our campaign literature and I think made overlays. It was remarkable to me how much consensus there was among 73 people from different parts of the country who viewed the problems in Washington, DC, very similar. Most of us have limited our own terms. Over half of us have never been in politics. When we add our class with your class, there is about 100 votes in this institution to really change the way you define compassion. To me compassion is not how much money you can spend or how many agencies you create in Washington. At the end of the day, how many people have you helped? If that is the standard, we have done pretty poor with this model of government.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I have options as a Congressman to choose from several health care plans. Senior citizens deserve the same thing. My aunt and uncle would have saved over $6,000 in a 3-year period if they had an option of creating this plan. You can spend less money from Washington, DC and still provide a quality of life better than it exists today if you use good business sense, and that is what has been missing, and we are going to use good business sense.

Mr. GRAHAM. I am glad you mentioned that. My aunt and uncle worked in the textile industry all their life. social Security is their chief source of income. They have a paper route where they make about $500 a month in addition to that. Medicare is their chief medical service. If they had the medical savings account option available to them, they would have saved over $6,000 in the last 3 years because of this. They pay $46 and a dime out of their check to go to part B premiums. That is what senior citizens pay for part B, the doctor portion of Medicare. They pay $120-something a month; excuse me, $220 a month, total for Medicare supplement policy. They have never in the last 3 years spent over $500 for doctor or hospital bills. They have been lucky, they have been healthy. Under the savings account plan they would not have paid the $46.10, they would not have to have the supplement policy. The Federal Government would have provided a sum of money around $5,000. They would have bought a $10,000 deductible catastrophic illness policy. There would have been some money left over in the account for their routine medical needs. That $220 a month they would not have to spend. In their case they would save $6,600 over the last 3 years if they had had that option.