Lindsey Graham

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I would like to talk about what reconciliation means, what the appropriation bills mean because you hear these words a lot. What we need to do is be honest with people at home? If 80 percent of the public wants a balanced budget, there is one way to go about it. About two-thirds of the Federal budget is in entitlement spending. Welfare programs are entitlement programs. Medicare are entitlement programs, which means that the money gets burped out every year. There is not a whole lot of debate about what goes on. It automatically gets funded. If you did away with all discretionary spending, you would not be close to balancing the budget. So when you talk about reconciliation, you are talking about controlling the entitlements that are two-thirds of the budget. So maybe we could talk a minute about why we have gone to Medicare, why we have gone to welfare to make these programs more efficient, serve people better and save money because, if you want the Federal budget balanced, you have got to take a 1965 Medicare program, bring it up to 1995 standards. It has grown 11 percent. The private sector is at 3 and 4. You can actually serve people well without spending the amount of money we are spending up here, and you can balance the budget. If there is anybody out there who is not getting a student loan, call my office because it has got nothing to do with the $10 billion we saved.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I think the most complaints I get about welfare come from the recipients themselves. We have created a system somehow over the last 40 years that if recipients want to live together as man and wife under the same roof, they get punished because the income levels may go up a dollar too much and the dad or the mom have to live separate and apart to maintain their benefit package. If recipients want to work part-time, they are trying to get off of welfare and create a resume, a job portfolio, they go to work part-time and they make a dollar too much, they lose their Medicaid. The number one reason people stay on welfare is the Medicaid, the health insurance. We have created a system where recipients have to pick and choose between working. In Aiken, South Carolina, two weeks ago I went to a housing project to listen to people about the reforms that we are engaging in. There was a young woman on the front row who was going to college part-time. She had a young child. She was receiving AFDC. She was living in the public housing unit. She was very proud of the job she was doing working part-time. She told me she made $20 over the guidelines and they were going to take her house away and her Medicaid, so she quit her job. Never should she ever have to do that again. Our bill allows recipients to work part-time, get in the job market, and receive some benefits so they do not have to pick and choose. What we did in the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities with the WIC, Women Infants and Children's program, many States like South Carolina, we have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. We have a lot of low-weight babies born. We have a large population of nutritionally disadvantaged children. But categorical grants limit the way we you can use the money. We have school breakfast programs required by the Federal Government, but we do not have enough participation in many counties to justify the school breakfast. It would be nice to take that pot of money that was going to school breakfast where there was no need and move it over to help children where there is a need. That is exactly what we have done in this Congress. We have given the people at the local level more discretion to move money from one account to the other to help the target population. They have to report back to us that the target population is being served. It is good common sense. Categorical granting is wasteful. It is bureaucratic approach. What we have done in our block grant is look at a target population of nutritionally disadvantaged children, collapsed the money into one block grant, require reporting back from the State level, but allowing money to be used where it can best be used in South Carolina, because Georgia may be a different situation; Arizona may be different; it may be different in Ohio. Every State has different needs. We are allowing States to be more flexible, and to me that is the best thing to improve the quality.

Mr. GRAHAM. The only thing we done to a student participating in the student loan program is the 6-month grace period where we have forgiven the interest in the past, the interest will continue to run. You do not have to pay the interest if you cannot afford it, but it will run in that 6-month period. And when we look at all the loans out there, it adds up to $3.5 billion savings for the American taxpayer and no one student will be affected over $9 a month. If we have gotten to where students cannot afford to help $4, $5, $9 a month to help balance the budget and lower the interest rate 2 percent, we are hopelessly lost in this country. Two-thirds of the high school students go into the workforce. What about their families? I got a student loan and my sister got Pell Grants when my parents died. We paid the loans back. I am thankful for the Pell grants, but what we have done is put more money in the Pell grants, but we focused to the target population. We have reduced the income level so that we are really helping people that need it the most. We have stopped being everything to everybody. That is what has happened in the last 40 years. We are giving away government money faster than we could print it. The last $500 million savings comes in this fashion. Every parent in America can go and borrow money under the PLUS Program. What that does is if your child, because of your income, is ineligible for student loans, you can go to the Federal Government and borrow money for a college education yourself. We have increased the interest rates from 3.1 to 3.9 percent above the Treasury rate, which is still better than anything you can get on the open market. That saves $500 million. That will affect the average payment of a family $3. That is the $10.08 billion. Sixty percent of it came from the banking institutions and reducing the Department of Education. No one student will pay over $9 a month more. The average student will pay $4 a month more to save $3.5 billion to help balance the budget.

Mr. GRAHAM. Absolutely. And let us get where the students become involved. The gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] hit it right on the head there. What we have done from the student aspect is that, from the time a student graduates until 6 months after he graduates, there is a grace period where we forgive the interest. What we have done is we have allowed the interest to run during that 6-month period and saved $3.5 billion for the American taxpayer. If an individual borrowed the most money there is to borrow for the longest period of time, his payment would be affected, at the most, $9. The average student will have to increase payments by an average of $4 per month, but it saves $3.5 billion to the American taxpayer.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I would like to compliment the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Gunderson] on putting this act together. This will revolutionize the way we do business in America, and unfortunately there is some case law out there that stands in the way of businesses being competitive in the 21st century. The Third District of South Carolina has transformed itself in the last 30 or 40 years from being a district dominated by the textile industry. When I was growing up, there was a paternalistic society where people were not asked to give their ideas. They were told what to do and when to be there and they were treated like children. Mr. Speaker, I have seen that industry itself change where now business leaders are looking at their employees as assets and they are asking them: How can we make our product better? They are talking to them about safety in the workplace and about benefit packages. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing in this bill that prevents people from organizing unions, if they want to. What we are trying to do is to make sure that when employees and employers want to, they can sit down and discuss how to run a business; how to make it better for the employer and better for the employee. Unless we pass this legislation, there is a legal ruling that will stand in the way of that from happening. If that cannot happen in the Third Congressional District of South Carolina, we are going to be left behind, because employees are assets that have good minds and good hearts. They want to give back to the company. They want to be asked how to do business. They want to be a part of the process. Mr. Speaker, as I go through my district touring plants, I am now shown the plant by team leaders. They take a lot of pride in what they do. There is dignity in the workplace. This is an absolute, essential piece of legislation to allow American businesses to grow. If we do not pass this, we are going to go back to the time when workers were treated like children and the only people who could talk were unions, and that is not fair.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. She believes in America now more than ever. She saw Strom Thurmond grow up. She said he was a nice young man. That was a great opportunity to see what is good about America. If anybody from the EPA wants to change the water in that area, they had better call me first, because the gentleman that sang the song at the end of the ceremony sang the same song at the 50th anniversary. Senator Thurmond laid the stone at the 50th anniversary when he was Governor, and his babysitter was at the same ceremony, so there is no problem about the water in my district, and they had better stay out of it.

Mr. GRAHAM. Now is the time to change it. By the time they inherit it, it is too late. We have the incentives all wrong. If you are a senior citizen and you make over $11,000, we start dipping into your benefits and punish you for staying in the work force. That is a crazy program. I would like every senior citizen in America that can work to keep working and pay taxes, Social Security taxes, for the rest of their live until they decide not to work; not have the Government punish you because you continue to work. Welfare, we have a system now where you have to pick between dependence and independence. If you are a mother with a couple of children, the main reason that you want to stay on welfare is for health insurance. If you get a part-time job and you make $1 too much, we take your Medicaid benefits away from you. If you want to live together as man and wife, we take your benefits away from you because you went over a magic threshold. I would like to see the Government help people help themselves. Do not have it all or nothing. Let us help you, and you work and help yourself, and as you go up the economic ladder we will reduce the benefit package but allow you to work and receive public assistance so you can be independent and feel good about yourself. The incentives in this system for the last 30 or 40 years have tried to keep people tied to it. The entrepreneurial spirit and independence is a threat to the Great Society because the whole reason it has existed is extracting votes from the American public, because they are tied to Government, and I want to change that incentive. I want your vote because I come up with good policies, not because you are dependent on me for a check.

Mr. GRAHAM. I think that truly is the spirit of the class. The bill is now due for 30 and 40 years of socialism. The bill has finally come due and it has come due on our watch. What are we going to do?

Mr. GRAHAM. A handful of committee chairmen and the power structure here. As a freshman, we have been beat on a little bit. We are not always right, but we want change to come about quickly. We want change to come about, and it would be real change. I have been in the State legislature, and I know that enthusiasm that you get with a new job. It is irreplaceable. After 12 years, I ran on 12-year term limits. At this pace I do not think I will last that long, but I guarantee that I will be part of the problem so that it will be good for this institution to have new people recycle through. In my district there are a lot of people that could be good Congressmen. I am certainly not the only one, and I would give them a chance to do it. But term limits was the only item in the Contract With America that was failed, and it was the only item that affected our political future. I hope and pray that people will not give up on this issue. We have an inclination in this body to still protect ourselves. There is no doubt in my mind if PAC reform gets to the floor for the House that campaign finance reform gets to the floor of the House. It will be a slam-dunk vote. People in this institution are afraid to vote against the mood of the times, but our problem is getting it out on the floor for a vote. When it comes out and sees the light of day, these reform measures are going to pass. Our leadership is very busy now trying to balance the budget and reform Medicare, but I hope they will listen to us. More importantly, I hope they will listen to people back home and get real reform that affects Members themselves on the floor so that we can profess to people finally that we are serious about not only changing the way the Government works but the way we serve in Government. If we can establish credibility at that level, then everything is possible. We can balance the budget. We can reform Medicare because we live by example, and I am optimistic that we are not too far away from that date happening. So folks at home need to take some encouragement. The debate has changed, and we are going to get the Government back on track sooner or later. I think it is going to be sooner.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, I felt good about the fact that the people did seem very sincere. And I would be the first to admit, I enjoy my time in Congress. I limited my own term, and I am going to live by that if the people allow me to come back. I am concerned about getting reelected but not at all costs. I would like to see this revolution through for several terms so that we can make sure that what we start today does not die next term. We need to sustain a majority with people of the right mind and right spirit. I would rather be beat than not to balance the budget. I would rather be beat than to walk away from the Medicare system that is going broke. I would rather be beat than not to fund the military adequately. There are certain things that mean more to me than my political career because I can see the future, and the future is at stake now. We are going to take one or two paths. We are going to deal with entitlement issues in this country in an honest way, or we are going to turn our back to them and worry about the reelection solely on the idea that, if you do not give the American people everything you perceive they want, they will not vote for you. What I perceive the American people wanting is honesty in government, to be honest with them about Medicare, to give reforms that are sincere, that are meaningful, and to get away from the rhetoric. I think the American people are our best ally. I am not afraid of them at all. I think we are way behind the power curve and they are way ahead of us.

Mr. GRAHAM. Well, experience is good in many areas, but in Government, the power centers are dominated by a few people. And literally, it has been true in Congress that if a handful of people did not like the idea, regardless of its merits, it could never see the light of day.

Mr. GRAHAM. I think a recent example of someone who has been up here for a very long time, term limits and arrogance go together. I think the public sees it as a way to control the arrogance for power. The average committee tenure for chairmen tenure in Congress was 26 years on average. Committee chairmen had held their jobs for 26 years. And I do not see those people losing their jobs unless you change the institution.

Mr. GRAHAM. One thing we agree on is that the system needs to be changed. The gentlewoman has done a good job bringing the debate on the floor for the House tonight and throughout the Congress. Let me say why PAC contributions have gone up in my opinion. We tried to reform giving in the past, and this was a loophole that we limited individual donations, so PACS were formed. They have replaced individual giving, corporate giving. We said corporations could not give in their own name so they created political action committees that will allow you to give in the same manner that you were before when corporations were giving directly. When it comes time to evaluate whether we have done things differently in this Congress, I would like people at home to think about what the debates are now. The debate now is how much do we reduce Government, how much do we cut spending, how much do we deregulate, how quickly do we reform Medicare, how quickly do we balance the budget. I can tell you that 6 months ago that was not the debate in this country. So there has been a substantive change in the way we are looking at national issues. I think our class had a lot to do with it. There are people that have been fighting for a long time in this institution to bring better Government about. But the whole debate has changed. I am proud to be a part of the new debate. The only group of people that I know that has serious doubts about the merits of term limits at the national level happen to reside here. When you go out in my district, it is not a real serious debate as to whether or not you need term limits. There are people that genuinely believe that term limits is something that we should not do. Certainly not going to cure every Government ill, but the vast majority of Americans, 70 to 80 percent of them, believe it is time to experiment with our Government and try a new form of serving in Congress, make it an opportunity to serve your citizens and come back home.

Mr. GRAHAM. I came from a State in South Carolina where 16 to 18 people in the State legislature went to jail for taking bribes on their votes, for taking gifts illegally. We have the strongest ethics law in the country in South Carolina. You cannot take anything of value from a lobbyist. We were able to operate State government, I think, better. If the American people could vote by television or some other device on these issues, it would be a slamdunk. It would be a slamdunk if this body had the opportunity to vote on campaign reform. So the message has to be: Call your Congressman, tell him that you are insistent that a vote come about. We will have another vote on term limits, and I honestly believe that the American public is going to demand that this issue be resolved in favor of national term limits; that those people who consistently oppose term limits are going to lose their job through the democratic process. The public has an agenda of its own. I think we have embraced that agenda in the Contract With America, but we have a lot more to do. Medicare to me is kind of a defining moment in this Congress. I believe this about Medicare: that if you take more money out of the system than you are putting in on average per couple, that the system is going to be subsidizing you. The number they tell me that is accurate is that the average American senior citizen couple takes out $10,000 more than they put in the system, which means their children and their grandchildren are paying the difference. What we are trying to do up here is to even the playing field, reform a system that most of us believe does not work. The sicker you get in Medicare, the more money the doctor and the hospital gets. The incentives are all wrong. There is no opportunity to get reimbursed for preventive medicine, so we are going to create a system that has different incentives behind it and prevents the future generations from going bankrupt from subsidizing the system that really does not provide quality of medicine in an efficient manner. That is what the Medicare debate is about. I think senior citizens in this country are going to step up to the plate and help us solve the problem. They won World War II, most of them lived through the Great Depression, they have seen the Great Society grow and interrupt their individual freedom. Can you imagine being a senior citizen in America and your sole source of income is Social Security, which the Government has its fingers in, and the only way you can get health service is through Government-sponsored health care? Who wants to be in that boat? You surely do not want that for your children and grandchildren. That is no place to be. We are trying to change that dynamic.

Mr. GRAHAM. I will be there cheering it on.

Mr. GRAHAM. I am going to go and jog with Senator Thurmond here in a second. The only thing that will keep us from not passing campaign reform will be the lack of an opportunity to vote on it, because if it gets on the House floor it is going to pass, because nobody wants to face the wrath of the American people on this issue. So I really do believe the leadership is going to give us that opportunity the first part of next year and that when it gets on this floor, you are going to see some amazing votes.

Mr. GRAHAM. When you think things are not going so well, go home. I have been home every weekend but two. I went home and met with Senator Thurmond. He is 93 and he can run circles around me. He is for term limits. He said 12 more years and he is getting out. They say, ``How can you support Senator Thurmond and be for term limits?'' I said the problem is not whether Senator Thurmond goes or Ted Kennedy goes, it is the institution. I am looking at institutional changes. There is no use picking on one person. The thing that is great about this job is I got to go to the 100th anniversary of Saluda County, and I met a woman who used to babysit Strom Thurmond. She is 103. She said, ``I want you to go to the old folks home with me, because they need cheering up.'' She goes every Sunday and pushes people around in a wheelchair. She has a lot of spirit.

Mr. GRAHAM. We did in the House. The Senate has a version, and they need to come together and get a version signed into law. Speaker Gingrich has made a commitment to try to do that by the end of the year. Those types of reforms serve the country well, because you need the line item veto even if Republicans are in charge, because there is a habit up here of spending money to get reelected, and I would like to have somebody sitting over the shoulder, regardless of the party, saying, ``That is not good for the country, even though it may be good for your district.'' The balanced budget amendment, if I write a bad check as a private citizen I go to jail. If I write a bad check as a politician, I get reelected. I do not trust any party enough not to have institutional control.

Mr. GRAHAM. I want to give it to President Clinton now, and I think we have sat on that issue far too long. It is time to act.

Mr. GRAHAM. The thing that amazes me about our class is that when we first got together at the very first part of Congress, I did kind of an informal poll. I think our campaign literature was absolutely the same. Whether you were in the deep South or in Washington or in Minnesota, you had the same view of what the problems were in this country; that you wanted a balanced budget amendment, and I want a balanced budget amendment in the Constitution to protect the public even from the Republican Party. I want term limits not just for Democrats, but for anybody that wants to serve. I want to give the President of the United States the line item veto. I am very disappointed----

Mr. GRAHAM. It is not all bad.

Mr. GRAHAM. You were a write-in candidate?

Mr. GRAHAM. That is right.

Mr. GRAHAM. That is right. It excites me. I live in a district where the average per capita income is less than $14,000. I did not run on a campaign promising them more benefits from the Federal Government, an increase in the minimum wage. I ran on a platform of getting the Government out of your life, decentralizing the role of the Federal Government, giving you choices to raise and educate your children, giving you an opportunity to start your own business and succeed or fail based on your own merits, deregulating the society so we can be competitive internationally, and I won by 60 percent, by people who have traditionally been written off by the Republican Party. I think that is a shortcoming of our party. We are truly the hope of the future. The entrepreneurial spirit lies with this new generation of politicians. Let us bring it back to life. The thing about democracy is that you give people opportunities, and when you have an opportunity, you can blow it and you can fail. We have to be willing in this country to allow people to take chances and fail, and understand that that is just the nature of competition.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Chairman, we are very close to passing what I think is the best bipartisan effort in Congress. I am really excited about what we have been able to do in the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities and work together to come up with a good product. One of the concerns I have had all along in the block granting program is that when we start the block grant, we do not tear down those things that work well. We know the problem areas. We made bipartisan effort to solve the problem areas. One thing I have been concerned about the whole time is vocational rehabilitation. This is a group of people that really we need to stand up for and make sure that they are protected. Let me tell you what we have done in this bill to make sure that voc rehab is protected. One, we did not cut any of the funding. The other three areas of the block grant had a 20-percent reduction in funding. Voc rehab stayed the same. The manager's amendment that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling] was talking about creates a system that would allow the Governor in the State to have an alternative program that, in effect, would allow the system in the State to continue as it is if it is delivering a quality product in the eyes of those people that are receiving it in the State, and the Governor responsible, for administering the services in the State. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gene Green, has been very good to work with. We are very close to getting an amendment that will allow this bill to go through in a bipartisan fashion. If we need some input from the State legislature, I am certainly open to that. Let us not turn back now. Most of the money does come from the Federal Government in the voc rehab area. There is a matching component that will not be changed by this bill on the States' behalf, but most of this money does come from the national Government. I think all of us, if we are honest with ourselves, will admit that voc rehab can be reformed. But the manager's amendment, I think, makes great strides to give local control and local authority to fashion programs that deliver the best services to the disabled in each and every State. One provision that I would like to point out of the alternative program, it requires the Governor to appoint to the board individuals with disabilities who are not State officials or employees, and they shall constitute a majority of the board that the Governor or the legislature, in conjunction with the Governor, will create. I think this is the right way to go. We cannot solve everybody's problems, but let us not get the bill off track because of this. I think we can work through the voc rehab problems.