Gil Gutknecht

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. And the other point that our colleagues sometimes make is they say you are cutting Medicare to offer tax cuts to the rich. And I will tell you, that is one charge that absolutely makes me furious. But they know, we know, and I think everyone in this body knows that that is a separate trust fund and it is completely divorced from whatever happens on the other side of the budget. We cannot use changes in the Medicare system to fund a tax cut. That is absolutely false. And they know it is false because it is a trust fund, and nothing that we do on the other side of the budget can be used to alter the Medicare trust fund. And that really disturbs me when people say that because they absolutely know that that is not true.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Those are the gross dollars.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Please hold up that chart again. I do not think you can hold it up too many times.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield back, and this is where it began to ring home, when the various agencies started to report to us exactly what we were going to have to live by, and the Fair Labor Standards Act was one of them, I remember in our office I said, why can we not just say that obviously there are some weeks when the legislative business is so rigorous around here that our staff has to work 45, 50, even 60, perhaps even 75 hours. Why in some of these other weeks, can we not give them time off? And frankly, some of my staff said gee, we would love to have some time off to go shopping, or visit our family, or do some other things. And we came right up against the Fair Labor Standards Act that said you cannot do that. The beauty of the bill that we passed today, and hopefully the President will sign it, I do not know what the President is going to do. I understand there are certain special interest groups who want to block this legislation, but the beauty is that it gives not only us the opportunity to work with our employees, but it gives all Americans, all employers around the country, the same. And the beauty of the Congressional Accountability Act, and I told people, the point was not to punish Congress. The point was to sensitize Congress to what every employer around the United States has to deal with, whether it is an insurance agency or a large corporation, small business, whatever it happens to be. And once you begin to see how difficult it is for us to deal with it, then you realize how difficult it is for that three- person insurance agency, or that large independent company, whatever it happens to be. The point was not to punish us, the point was to sensitize us to how difficult it is to deal with. That was a very, very important role I appreciate all the work that you have done on the Shays Act, and making Congress live by the same laws, but one of the things that brought me down to the well, and you were showing in your charts, because I think there are still an awful lot of Americans who do not understand how much under the House-passed plan we are going to increase Medicare spending, a lot of people keep using the term ``Medicare cuts.'' As a matter of fact, we cannot require this by statute, but I would hope that responsible members of the press, every time they hear or quote someone from this body, or Washington, or the administration, or whomever, whenever they use the term ``Medicare cuts,'' I wish they would put ``from $4,800 to $7,100.'' Put that in parentheses: The Republican Medicare cuts from $4,800 to $7,100, whatever the numbers are, or from $5,000 to approximately $7,200. But the point is, no Americans really believe that when you increase spending from $4,800 to $7,100 over a 6-year period that that is a cut. But if we can do that, we can actually increase the life, make the Medicare trust fund solvent not only for this generation of Americans, but hopefully as we begin to make these reforms we can save the Medicare system for the next generation.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and it is almost like yesterday. In some respects it is like yesterday and in some respects it is like many, many years ago, when we stood on the floor of this House on the very first day of this 104th Congress and I was given the high honor of representing the freshmen and being the freshmen spokesman in leading the debate on the adoption of the rule for the Shays Act. A lot of people have forgotten how important that was, but I think that was a very, very important act. In it we said that Congress is now going to have to live by the same laws as everybody else. And the interesting thing is, outside of Washington, outside of the circle that we call Washington, DC, beyond the Potomac, that made perfect sense. But here in Washington, that was considered sort of a radical idea. Because for many, many years, we had developed this reputation here in Washington, particularly in Congress, that everybody else had to live by this set of rules, but Congress somehow would exempt itself from those same rules. And today we had a vote on a very important bill which allowed for employers and employees to negotiate and work together to say, would you like to have time and a half for overtime or would you like to have compensatory time? One of the reasons I think that bill passed today and one of the reasons it became an important bill is all of a sudden Congress had to live by the Fair Labor Standards Act. And some weeks our staff work 60 hours and some weeks we are on district work period and they do not have to work quite as many hours. So many of us thought why can we not give our staff some time off in months where the workload is a little lighter around here because we know there are going to be months when we have to work them even harder. So I was so pleased and honored and privileged to have been an important part of the debate on that very first bill. And frankly, and you know this, Representative Shays, that I became the first freshman in over 100 years to be invited to the first bill signing down at the White House. And my staff, I remember that day they thought it was a much bigger deal than I did. But I have had a chance to reflect on that and it was really a very historic moment to have a freshman for the first bill signing.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. John, and I am sorry I turned it over to the--John Joyce was the gentleman's name, an American hero. And if the gentleman----

Mr. GUTKNECHT. But, nonetheless, I believe that words have meaning, that actions have consequences, and that ideas matter. In the long light of history, whether or not it was well reported beyond the dome of this Capitol building, I think the American people believe that Billy Graham was right. He recently came to Minneapolis and he spoke to I do not know how many hundreds of thousands of people, both directly and indirectly through television. Billy Graham is one who has the courage of his convictions. He, like the Pope, has been willing to stand up and say, this is right, this is wrong, and this should stop.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I am not nearly as pessimistic as the gentleman from California, because if we look at history, and it was sort of underscored when we talked about what happened with the Polish Pope who warned the Soviets, or when Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and he said that if the Soviets, if Mikhail Gorbachev meant what he said, then he should tear down this wall. I happen to believe that words have meaning, that ideas matter, and that actions have consequences. If you study history, every great movement, every great change in national attitudes has started with one person or a handful of people who had the courage to speak the truth. There is a book coming out that was written by all of us freshmen. One of the chapters is written by one of my colleagues from Indiana, John Hostettler. He wrote a chapter about a gentleman by the name of Maplethorpe who was a member of the British House of Commons in the late 18th and early 19th century in Great Britain. One of the things that Mr. Maplethorpe tried to do was to end the slave trade in Europe. Basically he said, ``This is morally wrong and it must stop.'' At first he was laughed out of the House of Commons. Particularly the elites of that particular point in history said that he was ridiculous, they demeaned him in every way they could, but Maplethorpe did not give up. Mr. Speaker, the one thing that we know is that facts are stubborn things and truth is an incredibly powerful weapon. The more we learn about this partial-birth abortion, the more we realize that the American people can see through this smoke screen, they know that it is wrong, they know that it is morally wrong, they know that it should stop, and if only a handful of us have the courage to say to the American people that partial-birth abortions are wrong and they should be stopped, and we have got to stop unraveling this moral fabric that has made this country the greatest country in the history of the world, then I think we can begin to roll back the clock, because facts are stubborn things. Truth is a powerful weapon. All we have to do is speak the truth. The gentleman quoted Billy Graham. It is a great quote, that this society is on the brink of destruction. It was barely reported in the next day's press.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. If you look at the story of history, it has been extraordinarily brave people who have had the courage to say, this is wrong and it must stop. And I think we have reached a point, particularly on the issue of partial birth abortions, where people of courage must stand and say, this is wrong and it must stop. And whether it is the gentleman from California, Robert K. Dornan, or the gentleman from Minnesota, Gil Gutknecht, or thousands and millions of Americans, saying to this Congress and to this Government that ``You've gone too far; that the moral fabric has frayed too far. We must take back our country. We must be a people of moral conscience. We must be a people of moral fiber,'' because we cannot survive. We have lots of problems, and a lot of them are economic. We talk about the budget and we talk about the deficit. But if we really boil them down, they really come down to this basic view of morality, and our responsibility not only to ourselves but our responsibility to our fellow human beings. As someone who came from my State, the late Senator Hubert Humphrey, one of the most famous quotes I remember from Hubert Humphrey was this. He said ``If you love your God, you must love his children.'' If we must love our children, we must love the smallest and the most innocent of them. We cannot stop all abortions. I will agree, this is a political environment, and we are a nation of laws and not of men. I cannot enforce my morality or my views on other people. But when you have 70 to 80 to 90 percent of the American people saying that partial birth abortion is wrong and it ought to be outlawed in the United States of America, then the Congress ought to respond. That is the bad news, that we have gone this far. The good news is this: That we are only a few votes away in the House and in the Senate of overriding this terrible veto. I think we are going to be given an opportunity, if not in the next week, then certainly when we come back after the August recess, to correct this wrong. I think if the American people, and I am not just talking about the Catholic people, I am talking about people of faith of every religion, and I am even talking about people who are not necessarily religious people, but who do have a very deep and abiding sense of fundamental morality, if they will send a clear message to the Congress and to this government here in Washington, I think we have a golden opportunity to reverse the course and begin to say that life is sacred, it is a gift from a power greater than that of any government, and there are some points where we can honestly say that we have gone too far. This certainly is one of them. I have a deep and abiding faith in the American people, as Ronald Reagan did. Ronald Reagan believed in the honesty and the integrity and the morality of the American people. If you give the people the truth, the Republic will be saved. That is what this debate is about. This is one point where I think we can made a difference. Frankly, as John Kennedy said, this is one point where we must.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. He looked them down. It was a moment in history that, again. I do not think most people realize, or it did not get the kind of publicity it needed. But it took an enormous amount of courage for the Holy Father to say to the Soviet empire that ``If you invade my motherland, I will be there to meet you.'' And I think in some respects, that, and the time that Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and he stood before the wall and he said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, if you mean what you say, then tear down this wall.''

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank the gentleman. I just want to close this, and I know that he is going to have an hour to talk about some other issues that are important to us and the American people. But I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about the partial-birth abortion issue, because I think it is one point where the American people can begin to turn the clock back, that they can begin to recover the lost moral ground that we have already seen. We have heard some of the quotes from Billy Graham, we have heard some of the quotes from our Founding Fathers. We have talked a little bit about Robert Maplethorpe and what he did in Great Britain in terms of recovering the fumble of slavery and beginning to return Great Britain to a much more morally oriented society. As a result, the British are a much more moral and better society because of that. I think the news that Bill Bennett may well be the vice presidential nominee of the Republican party is very good news, because I have known Bill Bennett for a number of years. He is one person who has probably the strongest sense of truth and morality and character of any human being that I have met. He is an intellectual. He is a Ph.D., I believe from Harvard, and perhaps Congressman Dornan can correct me, but he is an intellectual as well as being someone who is well grounded in basic American values. I would hope that the American people would not lose faith, would not lose hope in this American system that we have, that we can somehow recover this fumble. As I said earlier to Congressman Dornan, we are only a handful of votes away from overriding the veto of this grisly procedure we call partial-birth abortions. I think if the American people join forces, if they send one loud, clear, demanding signal to the American Congress, that somehow we can find the votes to override that veto and once and for all begin to send a message that there are points beyond which the American people simply will not retreat.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that further consideration of the veto message on the bill, H.R. 743, be postponed until Wednesday, July 31, 1996.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I would like to pursue the discussion that my freshman colleague from Washington [Mr. White] has been talking about. His daughter Emily reminds me a lot of my daughter Emily, who is now 16 years old, and we are having driving lessons. But I want to talk about children in America as well, and I want to talk about the welfare system and what we are doing to children. Is there anything more cruel to children than consigning them to a lifetime of poverty and dependency? Cannot we do better than the welfare system we have in place now? Almost everyone agrees that the welfare system has failed. It needs to be replaced. That is why I am encouraged that the House and the Senate have passed welfare reform legislation in the last couple of weeks on a bipartisan basis. This legislation will soon go to the President for his signature. The war on poverty was begun in the mid-1960's with good intentions. President Lyndon Johnson and others argued that America needed to provide a nationwide safety net to catch those who had fallen on hard time. Some have said that the safety net has become a hammock, but that is not quite fair. In some respects it is more like a gill net, trapping and inflicting damage upon generations of Americans, and one does not have to look far to see its victims. Out inner cities have become war zones. Out-of-wedlock births have quadrupled in the last 30 years, spawning a generation of fatherless young men and women perpetuating a cycle of illegitimacy, violence, dependency, and despair. Most Americans now see that the basic flaw with our war on poverty is that it has created a culture of entitlement to benefits through a Washington-dictated, one-size-fits-all system. It set up the wrong kinds of incentives, paying people not to work and penalizing them if they do. It hurts the very people it was designed to help. We are literally killing people with kindness. Almost no one disagrees that we need fundamental change in our welfare policy. The administration boasts that it has approved a record number of waivers of Federal regulations to allow States to experiment with welfare reform. But that just shows how excessively bureaucratic and tangled the current system is. For example, the President went out to Wisconsin and he praised the Wisconsin Works welfare reform plan, but the United States Department of Health and Human Services has not yet approved the waivers that would let the plan go forward. Any reform plan must emphasize work and personal responsibility. The House-passed welfare reform plan will greatly increase States' abilities to design their own solutions aimed at moving people from dependency to work. It combines four Federal poverty programs, including Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the WIC nutrition program and child care, into block grants that give States flexibility to use scarce resources more efficiently. The House bill limits able- bodied adults to 2 years of assistance without work. With a lifetime maximum of 5 years of benefits, States could still grant hardship exceptions to 20 percent of their case load. It requires people that bring immigrants into our country to live up to their sponsorship support commitments instead of passing them off to the taxpayers. And speaking of living up to their responsibilities, it also creates a nationwide tracking system for enforcing child support payments from deadbeat dads. It only makes common sense to require people to develop habits for working to support themselves. Work is more than the way you earn a living. It helps to define your very life. The great majority of Americans do it every day. This is common sense. It is a consensus about both the need and the direction we should take in terms of welfare reform and has moved us to a truly historic opportunity to replace the faulty foundation of the welfare state. The Senate bill, which passed on a bipartisan basis of 74 to 24, had almost all of the Republicans supporting it and over half of the Democrats. The House and Senate are resolving differences between the two bills, and we are hopeful that we can have a bill on the President's desk for his signature early in August. The President promised to end welfare as we know it but has vetoes two previous welfare reform bills. We have accommodated his objections by separating Medicaid reform from the welfare reform. Now it is time to seize the opportunity to replace the welfare system with work, to replace dependency with responsibility. We are not simply trying to save money here, we are trying to save people, especially kids, from a lifetime of poverty. Carpe diem, Mr. President. Seize the day.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer my support for the amendment offered by the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Deutsch]. This national training initiative is a good next step in our continuing efforts to protect communities all across our Nation. Dealing responsibly and effectively with cases of missing and exploited children is an immense undertaking, and we here in Congress should strive to assist our law enforcement officials to the best of our abilities. Whether we offer guidelines for community notification systems, Federal tracking plans, or now Federal training programs, our end goal is always public protection. But a coordinated and professional response by law enforcement officials from all over the country will help ensure quick and decisive action if such horrific cases occur. I am proud to support the inception of the Jimmy Ryce Law Enforcement Training Act, along with the dedicated personnel of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [NCMEC]; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, National Crime Information Center [NCIC]; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit [CASKU]; Morgan P. Hardiman Task Force on Missing and Exploited Children; and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention [OJJDP]. This is a good effort to wage a collective fight against some of the worst criminals in our country. I look forward to seeing this training program established.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hostettler]. (Mr. HOSTETTLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 28.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, as one of my favorite presidents observed, well, here we go again. This is the 1.9 percent across-the-board reduction. Just to set the stage again so Members understand how this amendment came about, we were rightly criticized by some of our friends on the other side of the aisle when we passed the joint budget resolution conference committee report, in which we increased discretionary spending by about $4.1 billion more than the House-passed version of this budget resolution. Passing a balanced budget, ultimately balancing the people's books, is not some mean-spirited, green eye-shaded accounting exercise. It really is about preserving the American dream for our children. Balancing the budget is not something that we do next year or we do 2 years from now or we do 3 years from now or 6 years from now. It is what we do every day on every appropriation bill that makes the difference, and that is why in good faith I am offering this amendment. This is not some slap at the Committee on Appropriations or our own leadership. I think the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Rogers] has done an excellent job with his appropriations subcommittee. I think all the appropriations subcommittees have done an excellent job. But we are going to increase discretionary spending in this cycle by about $4.1 billion more than the House originally agreed to. And the way we can recover that $4.1 billion is by offering a 1.9 percent reduction across-the-board on all the remaining appropriation bills. So to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Rogers] and others, I just want to say that I think you have done a good job, but I think this is a perfecting amendment to help the House recover its fumble. I would hope that Members would join me in support of this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Coburn]. (Mr. COBURN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Sanford].

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I think I cannot say anything that would add or detract from what the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hostettler] just said. This debate is simply about 1.9 percent of discretionary spending on this bill. This bill increases spending over last year over $1 billion. We are talking about reducing that increase by $466 million. This debate again is not about 1.9 percent, it is about keeping the faith and keeping our word to our children. This is really about whether or not we have the courage to do the difficult things. As my colleague said earlier, this is about whether different programs are adequately funded, and certainly that is true. But there is no limit to how much money we can spend on all of these very valuable programs. We can go through this debate on each and every bill, and we can make an argument for spending in every single category. I am not saying the money is being wasted, but what I am saying is if we continue to pile debt upon debt on our children, sooner or later they are going to reach a point at which they cannot exist. They cannot make their house payments. We are denying them the quality of life, the standard of living that we have enjoyed. If we forget everything I say, remember this: Every single dollar of personal income taxes collected west of the Mississippi River now goes to pay the interest on the national debt. And the tragedy is every year that line is moving further west. When are we going to draw the line? When are we going to say enough is enough? Because realistically, ladies and gentleman, if we cannot cut $4.1 billion in extra spending this year, then how in the world can we face our children and say but we will cut $47 billion in just 3 years. I admire what the appropriations committees have done. I admire what the chairman has done. I admire what this subcommittee has done. But the truth of the matter is we are not doing what we said we were going to do. We are allowing spending to go up. I am offering the body a chance to recover that fumble. I would hope that we could finally, once said for all, get a majority vote on this important amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the hour is late and we have had plenty of debate. This is the ninth time that I have offered this same amendment. This is a 1.9 percent across-the-board reduction. Again, just for the benefit of those who may be keeping score at home, what we are really trying to do is recover the $4.1 billion which we increased in spending above and beyond what this House said we were going to spend, causing a spike in the proposed deficit for next year. Mr. Chairman, I am again offering this amendment in good faith. Even though I know that the chairman, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Myers] and his subcommittee have done an excellent job in controlling spending, I really believe if we are serious about balancing the budget we have got to find a way to recover that $4.1 billion. Otherwise, I am afraid we cannot face our kids in good conscience and say that in 3 years we will be able to save $47 billion. Mr. Chairman, I do not have that much to say about this amendment other than that it would ultimately reduce total expenditures in this bill by about $376 million. We would still be spending $19.4 billion. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, essentially we are talking about two pennies, two pennies out of every dollar allocated to Federal spending that can keep us from increasing this deficit. Is it too much to expect Washington to live within its means? Is it extreme to expect Washington to balance the people's budget? Millions of hard-working American families are forced to balance their budgets every month. We are talking about balancing the budget in 7 years. We are talking about cutting domestic discretionary spending by 1.9 percent, simply 1.9 percent, so that we can get back on that path that we said we would stay on. We promised that we would go on a diet but now we are saying, well, we are going to have one more milkshake. I do respect what the committees have done, as the chairman says, and I believe he is speaking in good faith that we have cut this budget down to the bone, but frankly, Mr. Chairman, we are going to have to cut even further as we go along toward that 2002 goal. So if we are down to the bone now, how will we ever possibly balance the people's books? This is not about a mean-spirited accounting exercise. I am not trying to demagogue this issue. What I am really saying on behalf of the children of America is that we have got to make the tough choices, we have got to eliminate more of the waste in the Federal Government, we have got to cut Federal spending. Otherwise, we will ensure that our kids are going to enjoy a lower standard of living than we enjoyed.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, today's long-overdue passage of H.R. 1627, the Food Quality Protection Act, is further evidence that this Congress not only talks about regulatory reform, but acts on it. Food processors and farmers in my district want to preserve the safety of our Nation's food supply. They also recognize that our technology has outgrown the regulatory demands of the Delaney Clause. For decades, they have urged Congress to update this law. I am pleased that today we have. I hope passage of H.R. 1627 will allow the House to move forward in passing another reform bill that enjoys bipartisan support--H.R. 3338, the Antimicrobial Pesticide Registration Reform Act. This bill allows for a separate regulatory definition for antimicrobial pesticides. Under current conditions, the EPA treats antimicrobials--substances like bleaches and cleansers that limit the growth of microogranisms--like more traditional pesticides, even though their uses differ significantly. This has caused unreasonable and unnecessary delays in getting improved products to market. I urge the House to continue to demonstrate its commitment to commonsense regulatory reform by acting on H.R. 3338.