Gil Gutknecht

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, after that speech by our colleague from Ohio, I am somewhat hesitant to talk politically. But I do want to mention and remind people of what happened last week when we had the Labor-HHS bill. All of these arguments about who is taking money from Social Security, we have a letter from the Congressional Budget Office, they have letters, it is all based on what assumptions you give the Congressional Budget Office, you get different answers. Most people, their eyes start to glaze over because it is so arcane. The other issue that sometimes people do not understand when we talk about it back home is a motion to recommit, because that is kind of arcane, too. But it really is designed to protect our democratic experiment here. We have our plan, the majority offers its plan, and then the minority's rights are protected because they always have a right to recommit, to make a motion to recommit with instructions. Last week on the Labor-HHS bill when they had their chance to put their plan on the table, they could have said, ``We like your plan but we want to put more money into education.'' They did not do that. When they had their chance to say, ``We like your plan but we would have rearranged the priorities and we would have put more money into veterans benefits,'' they did not do that, either. Looking at the record, and it is a matter of public record, when they had their chance to reflect what their priorities were on the Labor-HHS bill, their motion to recommit with instructions included basically our bill except they included the full congressional pay raise. That is how political this business has become. I think my colleague from Ohio is exactly right. We are only a few billion dollars apart with the White House. Despite all of the political posturing that is going on right now, we have all agreed on some simple, basic facts. We are not going to close down the government, we are not going to raid Social Security, we are not going to raise taxes, everything else is negotiable. I think with a few hours' of good faith bargaining on the part of the White House and congressional leaders, we could have a bargain, we could have a deal, we could put this budget together for the good of the American people, for the good of everybody here, we could all be done by next Monday at probably midnight. I hope we can all get together and get that done.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to read some excerpts from a letter from Mr. George Halvorson who heads up one of the largest health groups in the Twin Cities of the State of Minnesota. He took out an ad recently and the headline is, ``Who buys prescription drugs at ten cents on the dollar?'' Let me read this, please, and this is a quote. ``The cost of prescription drugs varies to an amazing degree between countries. If you have a stomach ulcer and your doctor says you need to be on prilosec, you would probably pay about $99.95 for a 30-day supply in the Twin Cities. But if you were vacationing in Canada and decided to fill your prescription there, you would pay only $50.88. Or even better, if you were looking for a little warmer weather south of the border in Mexico, that same day 30-day supply would cost you only $17.50. That is for the same dose, made by the same manufacturer. ``When the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) was passed by Congress to allow free trade between us and our neighboring countries, HealthPartners decided to follow the lead of Minnesota Senior Federation and buy our drugs in Canada'', but the FDA is standing between them. Today I am going to introduce legislation to respond to this problem.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, just in summation, I would say that, really, the central questions are these: What are we going to do to guarantee our parents a more secure retirement, and what are we doing to make certain we leave our kids a legacy that we are proud of in terms of debt? I think the answer is we have to dramatically control, slow and control the rate of growth and Federal spending. If we do that, then everything else gets so much easier. The economy is stronger, interest rates are lower, everything gets better. We have made it clear, and if the President does not like our 1 percent plan or some of the other things, we have made it clear is simply this, we will not raise taxes. We will not raid the Social Security. We will not close down the Government. Everything else is negotiable. We are willing to meet the President more than halfway. We are not saying our plan is the only plan. But we are saying we are going to stop the raid on Social Security. We are not going to raise taxes. We are not going to close down the Government. Beyond that, we will negotiate in good faith, and everything else is on the table. Really, it is about what kind of a future we are going to leave to our kids.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. The point is, we have all of a sudden been confronted with some expenditures, whether it was in agriculture or other emergencies here in the United States, and people say, what about the Census? The Census is not an emergency. That is correct, but do Members know what, for some reason, and it was an honest mistake I believe on the parts of all the negotiators, when we negotiated the balanced budget agreement in 1997 with the White House, which in itself was an historic agreement, and I was there the day the President signed it, but for some reason we did not include that $4 billion in our future spending plans, so some way or another we have to figure out a way to pay for it. Whether we call it an emergency or take it in regular spending, it still amounts to total spending. What we have said is, we are going to limit total discretionary spending to about $592 billion. That is still a lot of money, and I am convinced in my bones that there is more than enough money in that budget to meet the legitimate needs of the Federal government and everybody who depends upon it. There is not enough room in there for all of this fraud and waste and some of the things Members have been talking about. But the point I want to make is we have made it more difficult on ourselves to balance the budget because we have lowered the bar with the social security trust fund. The President and some other factors have made it even more difficult because of Kosovo, because of Bosnia, because of emergencies, because of what is happening out in farm country. But you have got to hand it to our leadership. They have found a way, and in some respects using creative accounting, I will admit that, but they found a way to make room for all those needs and requirements to take care of the legitimate needs of our veterans, take care of the legitimate needs of educations, funding education at a higher level than the President asked for, funding veterans programs at $1.7 billion more than the President asked for, actually finding more money for defense, trying to squeeze other areas of the budget. Frankly, I am very, very proud of this budget; and I am very proud of this Congress, because we will have done something and hopefully started a new chapter for America that it will take many, many years to reverse. In fact, I hope it never goes back to the way it used to be.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Committee on the Budget, what we are doing here, it is not only historic, it is very difficult. If it were easy to balance the budget, it would have been done 40 years ago. If it were easy to balance the budget without using social security, it would have been done a long time ago. But we have lowered the bar on ourselves and made it more difficult to balance the budget by, for the first time in 40 years, saying not only are we going to balance the budget using the old way of keeping score, we are going to change the way we keep score. That is the point the gentleman from Colorado was making. That is why it is so important, because once we change that in the minds of the American people and in the minds of the folks even here in Washington, that that now is off limits, all of a sudden we have changed the game for a long time to come. That is a very historic and important thing. But it made it more difficult. A couple of things that made it even more difficult, because sometimes we forget it, and the American people certainly forget this, and I think many of our friends on the left would like to forget this, but part of what made it so much more difficult is we have had so many ``emergencies'' in the last couple of years. It is not just about hurricanes and earthquakes and floods and droughts and pestilence and the other things that we have had for emergencies, but we have had an emergency in the farm community. It happened for a variety of reasons. I know some of our friends say, well, it was all freedom to farm. Freedom to farm had nothing to do with the fact that we have had three consecutive worldwide surpluses, and crop prices and commodity prices have dropped through the floor. We had to respond to that. That was an extra almost $9 billion. On top of that, we have been involved in something like 33 different military adventures over the last 7 years. One of them just in Kosovo and Bosnia has ultimately cost us $16 billion. That $16 billion was not accounted for in our original budget plans over the years. A lot of our friends are saying, well, but even with that we had to use some gimmicks. I do not like the term gimmicks, but there are some things in the budget I wish we did not have to do. I wish we were not talking about a 1 percent across-the-board cut, though I think we should do it. I wish we were not talking about advanced funding or forward funding. But the truth is the President put some of those things into his budget when he submitted it back in February.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I do not remember that he has.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I do not believe they are included in that as well.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Kingston, thank you for yielding and having this special order. I was listening in my office to this, and I really had to come over here for a couple of reasons. First of all, to just highlight how far we have come. Since I came to Congress in 1994, in fact, next Tuesday we are going to celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the elections of 1994, November 8. We are going to have a class reunion. I am the class president now of that class. I am happy to report virtually all the members are coming back. It is going to be a great reunion. But, because of that, I have been thinking a lot about what it was like in 1993 and 1994 when Washington believed that Washington had all the answers, whether it was talking about health care reform, we were going to have a government-run, State-run, Federal bureaucratized health care delivery system. And it was interesting, too, I need to make the point about that, when that was first introduced, it was supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. But then they started to get the facts and public opinion changed. We were talking then about larger and larger bureaucracies and more and more government spending, more and more government borrowing. Finally, the American people in November of 1994 said enough is enough, and they sent a whole new team of us, 73 Republican freshmen to Congress. They said, You know, we don't expect much from you, but at least balance the budget. We said, If you will elect us, we will balance the budget by the year 2002, in 7 years. And let us go back and remind ourselves and some of our colleagues of what other folks were saying then. The folks in the White House were saying you cannot balance the budget in 7 years. You might be able to do it in 10, maybe 8, but not 7. Well, then we went back and forth. But basically what we said is if you dramatically slow the rate of growth in Federal spending, if you begin to reform the entitlements, like welfare, that you can actually balance the budget and provide tax relief at the same time. I remember the argument that we had about tax relief. You probably remember it well, and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) was in Colorado, but you remember some of the arguments raised. They said if you lower the capital gains tax rate, you are going to deny government the tax revenue. This is the quote used over and over again: ``You are going to blow a hole in the deficit.'' Remember that? We lowered the capital gains tax rate; we lowered it 30 percent. On top of that, we said to every family in America, we are going to make it easier for you to raise your kids. We are going to give you a $500 per child tax credit, and that is now in effect, so that every family in America has more money to spend themselves, because we said that if you limit the growth in Federal spending and you allow families to keep more of what they earn, guess what? The economy will grow faster. And it has. As a result, we did not have to wait until 2002 to balance the budget. We actually balanced the budget last year. On top of that, we did it for the first time in 40 years without raiding the Social Security Trust Fund. That was a huge milestone. I know some are saying, Yeah, you balanced the budget. You didn't use Social Security, but what have you done for us lately? That is no small accomplishment. It was accomplished principally by dramatically slowing the rate of growth in government, by letting people keep more of what they earned, and allowing Americans to do what they do best, produce, consume, and create jobs. So the economy grew. That is a huge accomplishment. But sometimes, though, we as Republicans talk in terms of dollars and cents, percentages, debits and credits; and we start to sound like accountants. Balancing the budget without using Social Security is really about generational fairness, because what it is saying to our parents is you are going to have a more secure retirement. It is saying to working people like ourselves, middle age folks, baby-boomers, the people who are actually working right now, it means you are going to have a stronger economy. And it means to our kids that they can expect a brighter future. So it is not an accounting exercise; it is really about generational fairness. And that happened because we have slowed the rate of growth in government so that not only do we have the first balanced budget without using Social Security, here is another amazing statistic that most of our colleagues do not know, so I just assume that most Americans do not know it. But for the first time in my memory, I think in my adult lifetime, this year the Federal budget will grow at a slower rate than the average family budget. In some respects that is an even more important statistic, because we are finally allowing families to catch up. For too long the Federal Government was growing at 2, 3, sometimes almost 4 percent higher than the rate of the average family budget. They could never catch up. All they could do is pay more and more taxes. That is why more and more families had to have both Mom and Dad working so they had less time to spend with their kids. All of a sudden you had more social problems. So we have accomplished a great deal. What really got me excited when I listened to the gentlemen over there, when people say that we cannot find 1 percent of waste in the Federal bureaucracy, and we stepped up and we said, listen, Members of Congress, we have to lead by example, so we said, congressional pay raises should be on the table, as well. Nobody else's pay raise is on the table. I want people to understand that. Nobody's social security cost of living adjustment is on the table, nobody's veterans benefits, just congressional pay. But I think it was the right thing to do. We have to lead by example.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. All I am saying is, we will lead by example, regardless of what the White House may do. That has been the example all the way through. When we said you have to reform welfare, we sent them a bill. They vetoed it. We sent a second bill, they vetoed it again. The third time, public opinion and the pressure of the polls forced the President to sign the bill. As a result, we had welfare reform. As a result of that, we have got 50 percent fewer people on welfare today than we had just 4 years ago, 5 years ago. That is an amazing accomplishment. But back to the story of waste. It bothers me when people with a straight face can say that there is not 1 percent worth of waste in the Federal bureaucracy. Try explaining that to any farmer in America. They are tightening their belts to the tune of 10 percent, 15 percent, maybe 20 percent over what they were receiving just a few years ago for their crops, and so the idea that they cannot trim spending 1 percent really outside of the beltway is not even a funny joke. So I want to thank the gentleman for what he is doing, and I want to encourage the gentleman to continue to press this case in looking for ways that we can eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal budget. At the end of the day it is easy to forget in Washington, it is not our money. We are spending other people's money. They work very hard. It is easy to forget, and my colleague mentioned one of my favorite luncheon meats which we serve every Thursday here in the Capitol. I have gone there where they make that luncheon meat. I have watched those people work. They work very, very hard for their money. I think we owe it to them to make certain that we do not waste it. For too long that has been the standard here in Washington. We need to change that standard.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. You mentioned something about the waste and mismanagement, and you earlier talked about foreign aid. One of the most outrageous examples that we heard about in the last month or so was that there are reports, and I think fairly well documented reports now, that of the foreign aid and the IMF money that went to Russia we believe as much as 10 billion, that is with a ``B,'' billion dollars, has been looted by the former KGB agents who now run the Mafia in Russia. In fact, much of that money has been laundered through New York banks. In fact to make it more interesting, just a couple of weeks ago there was several people finally to at least some credit of this Justice Department, or at least some enterprising people working out in New York, that were actually indicted. So during the same week in which we now have growing confirmation that billions of dollars in foreign aid has been expropriated and looted in places like Russia, the President says, Well folks, we need another $4 billion in foreign aid. Now I want to come back to the point now. Our leadership has looked at several options of how we close the gap so that we make certain that we do not take a penny from Social Security, which I think everyone in this body wants to live by, and some of them say, Well, we don't like that plan. The answer simply is, well then let us hear your plan? What is your plan? Here is the question that the members of the working press in this city ought to be asking the people down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue every single day: What is your plan? You do not like the plan of the folks up on Capitol Hill? Fine, exercise a little bit of leadership. You help them and help America. You show us how we can balance the budget because it can be done. In fact, every American family knows this; and, Mr. Speaker, let me tell you a story. Every Sunday Americans sit around their kitchen tables and their coffee tables, and you know what they do? They clip coupons from the Sunday newspaper. Every Sunday Americans clip something like 80 million coupons from the Sunday paper, worth an average of 53 cents, and that is how American families balance their budget every week. Is it so much to ask for those families to say to us: listen, if it means cutting the Federal bureaucracy 1.3 percent, you should do it. Or if you want to take money from one department, and shift it and do a few other things, we do not care. But I think what the American people are saying, the ones who have finally realized that, yes, we have balanced the budget without using Social Security, once you finally accomplish that goal, do not go back. You finally have a chance to chart a new course because, and I want to close on this, Mr. Speaker, and then I will yield back to the gentleman from Arizona. But he also mentioned something very important, because we talk in terms of $1754 billion, and we talk about balancing the budget, and we talk in terms of numbers and percentages, and we begin to sound like accountants. But at the end of the day this is not just an accounting exercise. It really is a very, very important exercise in democracy; and what it is about, and I mentioned earlier that I was born in 1951. You know the interesting thing is there were more kids born in 1951 than any other year. We are the peak of the baby boomers, and I am fortunate. Both of my parents are still living. They are both on Social Security; they are both on Medicare. And I have three kids, and the oldest two of them now are basically on their own, sort of on their own. But this is all about generational fairness because on one hand in terms of making certain that every penny of Social Security only goes for Social Security, on one hand what we are doing is we are saying to our parents we are going to make certain that you have a more secure retirement, and I think we need to do that. But by balancing the budget without using Social Security we are also saying to all the baby boomers and working Americans that we are going to have a stronger economy because we are going to have lower interest rates. In a stronger economy a rising tide lifts all boats, but on the other end of that generational fairness what we are really saying to our kids is we are going to guarantee that you will have a chance at the American dream and a better standard of living. So it is about securing a brighter future for our kids on one hand, it is about a more prosperous, stronger economic future for the people who are working currently, and it is also about securing a brighter retirement for our parents. So this is not just an accounting exercise, this is about generational fairness; and now that we finally reached the promised land, we must not turn back, and the message is clear to the American people, to our colleagues and to the people at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. We will not raise taxes. We will not raid Social Security. We will not let the President shut down the government unilaterally. We are going to do everything we can to stop him. But everything else is negotiable. We want to be reasonable. We want to be flexible. We are willing to work within those perameters. If the President will join us, we can have a budget agreement by the end of this week, we can all go home next week, and frankly the American people will be better off. Thanks so much for taking this time, and thanks for letting me join you.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, so what we have said unanimously everybody in the House said we are not going to raise taxes to balance the budget. That is unanimous. Everybody said that, Republicans, Democrats. And we have one independent. He voted no, as well. All of us said we are not going to raise taxes. Now, I think there is almost unanimous feeling here in the House, we are not going to raid Social Security. All right, once we have decided that and we have taken those two things off the table, we come back to the last conclusion. At some point we are going to have to make some adjustments, we are going to have to do an across-the-board cut, or we are going to have to do whatever it takes to make certain that we live with $1754 billion. Okay? Now, that is where we are. We are not going to raid Social Security. We already decided unanimously we are not going to raise taxes. So, Mr. President, please work with us. If one message should be coming from the Congress down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, please sit down and work with us. We want to work this out and we are not going to let you shut down the Government. There is absolutely no need this year for a Government shutdown. Almost half the bills have now have been signed by the President. There are only a couple of them left outstanding that I think where there are serious differences of opinion. And that is part of the process. We should have differences of opinion. The President has some priorities. The Senate has some priorities. I have some priorities. You have some priorities. At the end the day, you work those out. Those can all be worked out. But you have to first agree how big the pie is going to be and how big the parameters of the debate are. We are not going to raid Social Security. We are not going to raise taxes. We not going to let the President shut down the Government if we can at all stop it. Everything else is negotiable.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to come back to something my colleague talked about in terms of one of the things that frustrated me about some of the comments of our friends on the left. They are saying, well, yes, sure, the Republicans are balancing the budget; but they are going to use some gimmicks. Well, in truth, I wish we did not have to do that. But let me explain some of the things we are thinking about doing. One is a 1.29 percent cut across the board in only discretionary spending. In other words, it will not affect Social Security, will not affect Medicare, will not affect the entitlement side of the budget, only in discretionary spending, 1.29 percent. Now, I know some of our friends say that, no, these agencies cannot absorb a 1.29 percent across-the-board cut in their agencies. But let me just tell them this. I represent a lot of farmers. Now, when we tell them that a Federal agency cannot tighten its belt slightly over 1 percent, they do not even laugh because they are tightening their belts to the tune of 20, 30, and even 40 percent. So, I mean, do not tell me that the Federal agencies do not have 1 percent worth of fat in their budgets. That is outrageous. So that is one of the gimmicks they do not like. Another thing that we are thinking about doing is moving back one pay day, I think from the 30th of the month to the first of the month, to move us into the next fiscal year. Now, do I wish we were not going to do that? Absolutely. But if the choice is between those two things and stealing from Social Security, that is not even a close call. But let me explain and what makes me so angry about this and what we have been up against in the last several years. The gentleman mentioned military adventures. This administration has sent troops to more places in this world in the last 7 years than the last five Presidents put together. In fact, the little adventure in the Balkans, in Bosnia and Kosovo have already cost us over $16 billion. Now, historians also have to judge whether or not it has been worth it. But let us at least be honest with ourselves and compare that little adventure with what happened in the Gulf. Former President Bush went to all of our allies and said, listen, we have got a problem with Saddam Hussein. It is a big problem. It is a world problem; and if he is allowed to take over Kuwait and the oil fields, he is going to be even a bigger problem for everybody in the world. So we went to our Japanese allies and said, if you cannot send troops, will you send cash? And they did. And he went to some of our other allies around the world and they all ponied up. And at the end of the day, the war in the Gulf cost us almost nothing. It cost the taxpayers of the United States almost nothing. Compare that to what has happened in Kosovo. I will never forget we had a meeting when I first came here with the German foreign minister and the whole thing in Bosnia was starting to boil up, and I remember what the foreign minister told us. He said, at the end of the day, this is a European problem, and it should be solved by the Europeans. And I said, amen. But it was not long before it was obvious that the Europeans could not solve it. But do you know what at least they could do, because the economy of the European Union is now bigger than the economy of the United States, and yet we are supposed to carry 90 percent of the burden of the war in the Balkans? There is something wrong with that policy. I am not sure if there was even an attempt by this administration to go in and say, listen, we will help to solve the military problem there, we will provide the technology, we will provide the aircraft, we will provide the smart bombs, we will provide what it takes. But it would be nice if you guys would help provide some of the cash. But they did not. So what happened was the American taxpayers and Congress had to go out and help find the money, $16 billion. Well, we have done some juggling and we have taken from here and we have taken from that and we reshuffled the numbers. Because we always kept our eye on the ball. The idea is to reduce the rate of growth in Federal spending to allow the American people to keep more of what they earned and let the economy grow and everything will take care of itself. That is what we have done. But the President, as my colleague from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) says, has not really been there to help us solve some of these problems. Now, we need his help right now. We have made it very clear that we want to work with the White House, but we said certain things are off the table. Last week we had a vote on taxes because the President said, at least behind closed doors, well, part of the problem could be solved if we just raised some taxes and some fees and raised cigarette taxes; and there was a proposal from the White House. It said, you know, in the budget message here are some taxes and fees you could raise. So last week the Congressional leaders brought it to a vote. And how many votes did it get?

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, it comes down to a very simple point, Americans know how to spend their money a lot smarter than we know how to spend it on their behalf. They get a full dollar's worth of value for every dollar they spend. We do not. We know that, and there has been study after study to show that. But we have made all this progress and a lot of people still do not believe it. I go out to my town hall meetings, and when I start talking about the fact that we finally have balanced the budget without using Social Security, I can almost feel the skepticism in their eyes. At one of my town hall meetings I said, ``You know what, I understand why you would not believe this.'' For 40 years, the American people have, in effect, been misled about what government can do and that borrowing is good and all of that. And they almost now believe that deficit spending at the Federal level is preordained; that it has to happen. So it will take some time before the American people start to really realize we are serious about balancing the budget; that we have balanced the budget without using Social Security, and, like crossing the Rubicon, we are not going to go back. We have made it very clear to our friends on the left here in Congress and to the people down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that we are not going to go back and raid Social Security. We are not going to balance the budget by raising taxes. And I might just add, we should make it very clear to the President that we are not going to let him shut down the government either. None of that has to happen. There is more than enough money in this budget. I think at the end of the day we will end up spending about $754 billion. The Congressional Budget Office has said, if we limit the total Federal spending to $1754 billion, we will balance the budget without taking a penny of Social Security and we will not have to raise taxes, and we will not have to shut down the government.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and the gentlewoman for joining us tonight to talk about our budget priorities. The gentleman from Arizona knows as well as I do what it was like coming here in the class of 1994. We were looking at, as my colleague will recall, the Congressional Budget Office told us in the spring of that year, when the President submitted his first budget in 1995 for us as Members of Congress, they told us that we could expect to see $250 billion deficits well into the next century. And that was under the President's proposal. And basically what we said, as new Members of Congress, was that that was not acceptable; the idea that the Federal Government had to continue to spend more money than it took in, especially in good years. Now, we might understand, maybe we could make an excuse once in a while if there was a serious recession or a depression or a war, but in times of peace and prosperity, we just could not accept the idea that the Federal Government should continue to borrow more than it takes in year after year after year. And the scary result of this, and this is where it gets down to what the gentleman was talking about in terms of what is going to happen to the kids, it really meant that if we continued to borrow $250 billion, what the Congressional Budget Office and others said was that if Congress did not get serious about finally balancing the budget, what was going to happen was we were going to virtually guaranty our kids were going to have a lower standard of living. In fact, they told us that by the time our kids that are in junior high and high school today, by the time they reached my age, and I was born in 1951, they were going to be paying a tax rate of between 75 and 80 percent just to pay the interest on the national debt. Now, think about that. We were literally guaranteeing that our kids were going to have a much lower standard of living, because they would not have been able to buy a car, they would not be able to buy a house, because the tax system was going to take virtually everything they earned just to pay the interest on the national debt. We had reached a point where we had not begun to slow down this spending machine. And I want to talk a little about what we did as a member of the Committee on the Budget. And, frankly, we as Republicans are not very good sometimes for taking credit for what we have accomplished, but a lot of things have changed in this city. One of the most important was that there was sort of an assumption around this city that every year Federal spending would go up by 2, or 3, or maybe even 4 times whatever the inflation rate was. I can remember when the Federal budget was growing at 8, 9, 10 percent. Well, we changed that. And what we did is we dramatically slowed the rate of growth in Federal spending. In fact, I think one of the most amazing statistics is this, and I will repeat it so our colleagues who may be watching in their offices do not miss this point. This year, for the first-time I think in my adult lifetime, not only have we now balanced the budget in fiscal year 1999, without taking money from Social Security, which I think is an amazing accomplishment, because that has not happened since Dwight Eisenhower was President and Elvis was getting out of the Army, 40 years ago, that is the first time that has happened, but an even more amazing statistic is that this year the Federal budget is going to grow at slightly more than 3 percent. That is an amazing thing. But what is even more amazing is when we realize that the average family budget this year will grow by about 3\1/2\ percent. So, again, for the first time I think in my adult lifetime we have created a situation where the average family budget is growing at a faster rate than the Federal budget. And that is part of the reason that the budget is balanced today. Because I think people on Main Street and Wall Street began to realize that this Congress is serious about reforming welfare, of downsizing some of the Federal programs, of limiting the growth in total Federal spending, of limiting entitlements, and all of a sudden they said, if these guys are serious, real interest rates are coming down, and they did. And they said, if they are really serious and real interest rates come down, it means that more families will be able to afford a house, and a car, and maybe a dishwasher and other things, and the economy will be stronger. And it last has been. As a result, we have had revenues coming in. In fact, the gentleman may remember, as a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, when we talked about let us lower the capital gains tax rate by 30 percent. Let us take it from the maximum rate of 28 to 20 percent. Oh, some off friends on the left said that if we did that, that that was a tax cut for the rich and we would deprive the Federal government of all of this revenue. It is a tax cut for the rich, they said, which will blow a hole in the budget. That was their term. Does the gentleman remember that and what happened?

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and would like to engage him in a colloquy on the important subject of railroad mitigation. As the gentleman well knows in my district, the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad has proposed a $1.4 billion upgrade of its current line which will transform the railroad from a sleepy, couple-of-trains- a-day to a modern, high-speed, busy railroad. Needless to say, many of my constituents are concerned about what this means to them. The West probably would not have been opened without the help of railroads. Many of our first towns were built to provide water and coal to the early trains. Some railroads do not serve the communities they travel through today. They are only interested in the cargo traffic moving between major cities. There are benefits to large regional and national railroads. Americans enjoy cheaper products, quicker delivery from coast to coast and much more. In dealing with the railroads, communities must build safety crossings, viaducts and more. These things cost a lot of money. A simple railroad crossing with gates for a two-lane road costs about $150,000. Minnesota, my State, receives $4.5 million from the Federal Government for railroad mitigation. That is enough for 30 crossings. The DM&E will have 300 crossings in Minnesota alone. Because the Federal railroad mitigation account is underfunded, many mitigation projects are funded by the local taxpayers, even though those taxpayers will receive minimal benefit from the railroad. This is not right. A strong economy rides on a good transportation system which must include modern railroads. However, if our national policy is such that it promotes railroads at the expense of our local folks, then problems will arise. I hope the gentleman will agree that the American people would support helping out communities negatively affected by railroads which does not really help the community. As a matter of fact, the Federal Government should help these communities. I believe the gentleman's committee and the subcommittee chaired by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) will be holding hearings on this topic, and I would appreciate if he could examine some particular concerns that I have. And, if possible, I would appreciate the opportunity to testify about the specific problems communities in my district are facing.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank my colleague from Minnesota who does such a good job for us on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. This is a major issue, and frankly I think Rochester is one example; but it really is an example that we are going to be facing around the rest of the country. We certainly need railroads. We need to upgraded many of the railroads that are out there, but I think it has got to be taken into account in terms of our overall transportation strategy and what level of support the Federal Government should provide. The one thing I think we should all agree, and that is that local taxpayers should not be held responsible to pay enormous costs for a new railroad upgrade from which they get very little benefit, and I think there is a big public policy question here, the issue of the Mayo Clinic is certainly a big one as well, and I want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota in joining with me to work with local communities to help solve these problems.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Madam Speaker, I want to share with my colleagues and those who are watching in their offices some incredibly good news that appeared yesterday in many newspapers around the country, USA Today, many of the national newspapers. I know the St. Paul Pioneer Press back in my State carried the story, but it is incredibly good news, and I would like to read just the first paragraph or so. It says something symbolically enormous may have happened today. The Congressional Budget Office announced that the government may have balanced the budget in fiscal year 1999. Now that is the one we just completed October 1 without spending Social Security money. It goes on to say, if so, it would be the first time that that has happened since 1960 when Dwight Eisenhower was President, gentlemen sported fedoras, and women wore fox stoles. Madam Speaker, this is incredibly good news for all generations. In fact, there were some other things that happened. To put this in perspective, the last time the Federal Government actually balanced the budget without using the Social Security trust funds, Elvis was just getting out of the army and going back to recording. The television show Bonanza was just going on the air. Apples sold for 18 cents a pound. The French company introduced the Renault Dalphine to the American market for about $1,400 per automobile. The minimum wage was $1, and some may even remember that Bill Mazerowski hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth to power the Pittsburgh Pirates to a world series win over the New York Yankees. I might add, and this is what really got my attention, the last time that the Congress and the Federal Government balanced the budget without using Social Security Trust Fund money, the last time that happened was 11 years before Congressman Paul Ryan was born. That really puts this into perspective. This has been a long time. In fact, I would like to say that we have been wandering in the wilderness of growing deficits for 40 years and finally, we have crossed the River Jordan, and I hope that we will not turn back. Let me just show my colleagues another chart. This is what the Congressional Budget Office told us when I came here just five years ago in 1995. I was elected in 1994. But what they were saying was that in 1994, the Congress borrowed $57 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund, and then it went to $69 billion and then to $73 billion and then to $78 billion, and they were projecting that had the Congress had not gotten serious about controlling the growth in Federal spending and actually balancing the budget, they were projecting by this year we would be borrowing at least $90 billion from the Social Security trust fund. Again I say, this is good news. Now, we are in a great budget debate right now with the White House in terms of whether or not we are going to continue on this path. Are we going to balance the budget? Are we going to steal from Social Security? Are we going to raise taxes? In order to get what we think needs to be done in terms of balancing the budget without using Social Security, we really only have three choices. We can raise taxes, and of course the President was out today saying that we need to raise taxes. In fact, he is proposing a tax on cigarettes. Now, I am not a fan of cigarettes, I do not smoke cigarettes, I wish no one smoked cigarettes. But the truth of the matter is that when we raise taxes on cigarettes, it is a very regressive tax. We know who ends up paying those taxes. It generally is people who can least afford to pay additional taxes. The second option is to steal from Social Security. We have said that is not acceptable. The Democrats here in Congress have said that is not acceptable, and the White House has said that that is not acceptable. But that really leaves us with only one choice and that is to cut spending. We think that the fairest thing would be to cut spending across the board, all departments throughout the Federal bureaucracy. Some people say, well, that cannot be done. We cannot make the Federal Government tighten its belt by one notch. Well, I think those of my colleagues who represent farm districts know that farmers are tightening their belts by not one notch, but by perhaps 10 or 15 notches. So asking the Federal bureaucracy to tighten its belt one notch we believe is fair, is responsible, it is doable, and I think anybody outside of the beltway would agree that there is more than enough fat in the Federal budget to tighten it one percent across the board to make certain that we balance the budget without raising taxes and without raiding the Social Security Trust Fund. I also want to mention a couple of other things. The President is very quick to spend our money, whether it is in Kosovo or Bosnia or in other places around the world. A couple of days ago, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) told us that already his estimates were that the efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo have cost us nearly $16 billion. Now, we did not budget for that. We have had to find other ways to pay for those special expenditures. But balancing the budget without raising taxes and without raiding the Social Security Trust Fund is going to become more and more difficult if the President continues to run a 911 service without the help from our allies. I would remind all of my colleagues that when President Bush led us into the Gulf War, he got our allies to help pay for it. As a matter of fact, under some of the accounting that I have seen that actually, the net cost to the taxpayers in the United States of the Gulf War was virtually nothing. So Madam Speaker, I just want to reiterate what great news this is, that for the time, we have balanced the budget in fiscal year 1999 without using the Social Security Trust Fund, and I want to say that it is great news for all generations of Americans: for senior citizens, for baby boomers, and more importantly, for a brighter future for our kids. I hope we stay the course. Let us not raid the Social Security Trust Fund.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, Will Rogers used to say, ``All I know is what I read in the newspapers.'' There was another commentator who used to start his news cast every night by saying, ``This is good news tonight.'' Mr. Speaker, there is good news tonight, perhaps the best news that we have had on the economy and the budget in a long, long time. There it is on page A18 of the New York Times. In fact, it appeared in newspapers all over the country today. Let me read the first two paragraphs. ``Something symbolically enormous may have happened today: the Congressional Budget Office announced that the Government may have balanced the budget in fiscal year 1999'', that is the one we just finished, ``without spending Social Security money. ``If so, it would be the first time that has happened since 1960, when Dwight Eisenhower was President, gentlemen sported felt fedoras and women wore fox stoles.'' Mr. Speaker, this is truly great news. It is great news for all generations. What this really means, it means a more secure retirement for our parents. It means a much stronger economy for baby boomers and folks who are working. But, most importantly, it means a brighter future for our kids. This is just a blow up of that article that appears in the New York Times, but it is written all over. It is a great story. I want to come back to something and show my colleagues where we were just a few years ago. Because I think to understand the importance and the significance of this, we sort of have to look at where we were. This is what the Congressional Budget Office was predicting just a few years ago with what was going to be happening in terms of the Social Security deficit projections. We were looking, in 1999, at a deficit of $90 billion. We were going in the wrong direction. So the American people said enough is enough. We have got to change course. So what we did is we began to gradually reduce the growth in Federal spending. We have cut the rate of growth in Federal spending by more than half. As a result, today, we not only have a balanced budget ahead of schedule, but we believe, for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was President, we actually have a balanced budget without stealing from Social Security. Now that we have crossed this Rubicon, I think we have to make it clear that we are not going to turn back. If we are going to do that, I think we have really only several alternatives. One thing, of course, we can always do is raise taxes. There are more than enough of our friends on the left who believe that that is really the answer in terms of balancing our budget long-term. The second, of course, is we could turn our backs on Social Security. We can begin to steal from Social Security again. We believe that is the wrong course. The only other real alternative we have in terms of balancing the budget and saving Social Security would be to cut spending. Now, in the next couple of days, we are probably going to be faced with that simple choice: Are we going to raise taxes? Are we going to steal from Social Security? Are we going to cut spending? I happen to believe that the third option is the only one that the American people will accept. I also happen to believe that the fairest way to cut that spending would be across the board. Our leadership and people on the Committee on Appropriations are working on a plan whereby we would cut spending 1 percent across the board. I think that is the fairest thing to do. I think that is what the American people want us to do. As I say, after wandering in the wilderness of deficit spending, of enormous deficits, including borrowing from Social Security for 40 years, we have finally crossed the River Jordan. Now that we have, we have it within our power to make certain and make it clear to future generations that we are not going back.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 2559. I, too, want to congratulate the leadership and the staff for all the work that went into this bill. It does not go as far as I would like to see us go in terms of the area of revenue protection. H.R. 2559 marks a major step toward the kind of revenue protection program that I believe will be necessary to provide our farmers with a shock absorber, a shock absorber against the vagaries of weather and volatile commodity prices. The past couple of years demonstrate now more than ever that our farmers need more affordable protection in times of declining prices and natural disasters. Without these changes, we are likely to face the prospect of even more costly and more unbudgeted ad hoc annual disaster programs. Putting aside the emergency assistance package that is being prepared, the RMA estimates that $1.8 billion will be paid this year to farmers who have suffered major crop losses. Even with lower commodity prices, these payments, I am told, parallel a 17 percent jump in crop insurance protection for farmers, from $28 billion in 1998 to a projected $33 billion in 1999. Let us not lose sight of the fact that we can save precious dollars tomorrow by a smart investment today. I urge my colleagues to support these much-needed reforms. Support the Agriculture Risk Protection Act.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is just about basic fairness. If everyone has to play by the same rules and the rules are known upfront, business practices will change, and everyone will play by the rules. The problem with the system as it is today, we have one set of rules for the for-profits and another set of rules for co-ops. I do not know of any other game in America, baseball, football, pick the game, where some of the participants play by one set of rules and other participants play by a different set of rules. I think that is just unfair. I do not care who is right or who is wrong. What I am just simply saying is that this is wrong, and I have to say to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Baldacci), I do not know how anyone can go back to their constituents and say last year the federal milk marketing order price that should have been received was $15.61 on average; but if milk was sold to a co-op, it was only $14.89. I do not know how that is explained. I cannot explain that. The same is true in Texas. I would say to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), last year the average Texas milk producer should have received $15.37; but because of a different set of rules, they received an average of only $14.72. That is a difference of 65 cents per hundred-weight. Now, that may not seem like much to those of us here in Washington, D.C.; but I will say if someone is out there milking 60 cows and getting up every day 365 days a year, 65 cents on average over an entire year is a lot of money, and that is the difference. It gets even worse. In some parts of the country, the difference is as much as $1.07 per hundred-weight of milk. Now, maybe people can go home and explain that. Maybe we can go home and say well, I know you are getting less for your milk than you should be under the milk marketing order system, but maybe one day you will get even, maybe one day you will get fair.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green).

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, we are not talking about the difference between Texas and the upper Midwest. That is the big issue. We are talking about what the milk marketing order price is supposed to be in Texas as opposed to what actually farmers got in their mailbox. The gentleman from Maine (Mr. Baldacci) made the comment, well, we are talking about small, farmer-owned co-ops. I just want to disabuse people of that notion. We are talking about very large co-ops. We are talking about co-ops with 40,000 plus members, co-ops that have assets of billions and billions of dollars. So we are not talking about small little creameries operating in the Midwest, we are talking about big businesses, and they are not paying the farmers the price that they are supposed to. Mr. Chairman, the co-ops today control 82 percent of all of the milk processed in America today. This is not small business, this is big business. This is really about fairness. It is about truth. It is about truth in milk marketing; and if we really believe in the milk marketing order system, I cannot understand why one could not vote for this amendment to make certain that every farmer, whether one lives in Texas or Maine or Minnesota, whether one sells their milk to a for-profit processor or whether one sells their milk to a co-op, one is going to get at least the minimum milk marketing order price. It is basic fairness. It is saying the rules are going to be the same and that everybody is going to play by the same set of rules. Mr. Chairman, I hope people will support this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Minge).