J.D. Hayworth

Mr. HAYWORTH

Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, some things are totally predictable in this Chamber and nationwide. Just as the swallows return to Capistrano and the buzzards go back to Hinckley, so, too, does my good friend from New Jersey come to the well day after day with what I will diplomatically call deliberate disinformation, what the media has called Mediscare. Here we have it once again. We have gotten the same thing from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Again, the President says he want to end welfare as we know it. Well, perhaps the President and some of my friends on this side of the aisle need to have a little refresher course because, Mr. Speaker, we live in the United States of America, not the centralized bureaucracy of America. The first meaningful step toward genuine welfare reform is to give the States the true flexibility to solve problems, not with Washington having the States coming on bended knee to ask for waivers, not with a centralized bureaucracy. Mr. Speaker, it is time to replace the counterfeit compassion of Uncle Sam and big brother with a genuine compassion of local people solving local problems.

Mr. HAYWORTH

Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank the chairman for yielding time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct our conferees for three very simple policy reasons, and for three additional personal reasons. The major differences are these. Our plan of the new majority brings the deficit down. To change course, to embrace this big spending the other side is so enthralled with, would drive the deficit up. Second, our plan is real. The President and the guardians of the old order would need huge, unspecified cuts to finally deal with the deficit and eventually achieve balance. And, third, our plan begins to control the explosive growth in entitlements, saving those programs by controlling the growth, not by cuts but by growth control. Mr. Speaker, I said there are also three personal reasons and I wear them here on my lapel, Nicole, Hannah, and John Micah, my 3 children. I will not leave them saddled with a debt. It is immoral. Reject this motion. Embrace our budget. Embrace our future.

Mr. HAYWORTH

Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing legislation to convey 40 acres of U.S. Forest Service controlled land in Apache County, AZ, to the Alpine Elementary School District. This 40 acres is needed by the Alpine Elementary School District to construct school facilities and related playing fields. The U.S. Forest Service has the authority, under the Townsite Act of 1958, to sell this acreage to the school district because no private lands exist for purchase. The school district is very willing to purchase these lands, however, the prohibitive costs of $7,500 per acre prevents the district from buying the needed acreage. Eight-five percent of Apache County is federally controlled land. As a result, school districts rely heavily on proceeds from timber harvesting. Unfortunately, with the continued success of extreme preservationist efforts to halt all logging in most Western States, the Alpine Elementary School District's revenues have fallen sharply. Without this conveyance, they would not be able to afford to construct any facilities after acquiring the land. My legislation stipulates that the school district can only use this land for school facilities. In addition, the school district will bear the costs of performing a survey to determine the exact acreage and legal description of the property. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

Mr. HAYWORTH

Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, this evening we have heard my colleagues talk about the tax trap, the tax trap which has enmeshed so many Americans who fall victim to this simple observation which history and simple mathematics would bear out: The harder you work and the more you succeed, the more Washington and the Washington bureaucracy takes from you. I realize this is deadly serious business, Mr. Speaker, because we are talking about real people with real concerns and the genuine future of this Nation at stake. And not to make light of this, but to bear it out in one of its forms, I am reminded of the Walt Disney production, ``The Parent Trap,'' because the tax trap for our citizens is all too often a parent trap. This is what I mean. So often now, across the width and breadth of this country parents, both parents, in a household are working oft-times not because of choice but because of trying to move their family beyond this tax trap. Quite often a spouse goes to work simply to try and satisfy the tax bite; simply to try to lift the family out of this hole created by more and more taxation, and the incessant need of this bureaucracy to ask for more and more money from average Americans. My colleague from Pennsylvania articulated it, talked about the largest tax increase in American history given to this Nation by people who used to sit in the majority in this very room along with a President who said on the campaign trail that middle-class America needed tax relief, and yet turned around not 100 days into his term and gave us the largest tax increase in American history. Now, Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of playground taunts, we have heard a lot of name calling. The word extreme has been bandied about, and dare I say in extreme fashion. Well, Mr. Speaker, it is fair to ask this question. For those who would throw out the word extreme with such ease, what is so wrong about asking Washington to live within its means? What is so wrong about demanding that Washington not spend so extravagantly as to sacrifice our children's future? And is it fair, Mr. Speaker, to punish working families who are playing by the rules and trying to provide for their family's future? The good news is that this new majority in Congress, working with a lot of folks, quite candidly, on the other side of the aisle who are willing to own up to these problems, trying to move past partisan bickering, together we have fashioned a constructive way to deal with these problems, to balance our Federal budget, to roll back the tax bite and try to eliminate the tax trap; to try to save health care and Medicare for future generations without bankrupting the generations who must pay for it. That is the mission we face, and, again, we would ask the President of the United States to join with us in a constructive program for the future. It is a tragedy, Mr. Speaker, that our President and his term of office thus far has been defined not by accomplishments. Indeed, now, Mr. Speaker, the question is not what can the President accomplish, but, said, Mr. Speaker, the question has become, especially in the wake of recent revelations, how can this President explain it away this time? What rhetorical device, what language can he use, what verbal contortions can be brought to bear to avoid the problem and escape the responsibility? Mr. Speaker, the American people deserve us to act responsibly, to save this Nation for today's seniors and for our children.

Mr. HAYWORTH

Mr. HAYWORTH. I cannot pause or hesitate to say as an Eagle Scout, and I search out my card here in my pocket, as an Eagle Scout, I am happy to take that challenge. Goodness knows I need the walk for my own physical fitness. But having just participated in the Grand Canyon Council Scout-a-rama at Papago Peaks, I am happy to do that. I trust during our time in San Diego this summer we might have an opportunity to involve some of the youth groups in San Diego to see what is transpiring in your city and again to reinforce this notion that we trust the American people, and it is not so much a case of being hostile toward Government but instead embracing that Jeffersonian ideal of a limited but effective Government, not as a partner, not as a mechanism to be reinvented, but simply as the fabric of our constitutional Republic that enables us and empowers us to provide for the common defense and in the classical true sense, to promote the general welfare of everyone. That is the challenge we confront as we face the next century, whether arm in arm with the Boy Scouts or other members of every generation in this country, to work together to trust one another, to understand it is our people who lead us and our Government which exists to help empower people, rather than partner with them or simply be reinvented to grow ever larger, to grow ever more intrusive, and to require ever more of the hard-earned money the people of the United States of America richly earn and richly deserve.

Mr. HAYWORTH. You far eclipse me my friend, in other endeavors.

Mr. HAYWORTH. Well, it bring to mind really the definition of politics, I suppose, here in the late 20th century, at least as practiced by our campaigner in chief. I would have to say it is politics at its most cynical, the mission being, accept credit for those things you have absolutely nothing to do with and divert the blame for those projects and those objects, I might add, that cause problems that you literally may have your fingerprints all over. That has come to define politics here in the late 20th century as practiced by our friend at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman would yield for a question, since when does an official of this Government change policy for the protection and the edification of the citizens of this country to please representatives of a foreign government? Where on Earth and why in this Nation has that taken root? What is the explanation or the rationale for this?

Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I would say, in fairness, I am glad that our friend, General McCaffrey, has been given charge of the war on drugs, but that does not excuse the fact that this administration has basically been AWOL in that war for the first 2\1/2\ years, almost 3 years of its time in office. So again, it is a case of too little, too late; or a type of ``me too-ism'' that smacks of electioneering, that smacks of opportunism, rather than a genuine quest to make the changes the gentleman from Georgia mentioned are so necessary. It is borne out in other figures in the President's budget. Oh, sure, there are modest increases, for example, for the Drug Enforcement Agency, for the number of employees; for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for the Border Patrol. But yet, but yet, the glaring problem is this: that more and more money is put away so that upwards of 115,000 people in Bill Clinton's budget would be employed in the Internal Revenue Service; easily, what, three times the number of people, or close to that, employed with the INS or the Border Patrol. So the message in fact is this: We may not have time to fight the war on drugs, we may not have the ability to protect the sanctity of our borders, but, by golly, we have the time to come and audit you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and your tax returns, because we fundamentally do not trust you; and these other problems, well, sure they are problems, but you see a lot in the priorities expressed in that budget with reference to the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, what is especially important, I think of the single moms in the Sixth District of Arizona, and imagine if they had for their 3 children $1,500 to save, spend, and invest as they see fit for those children, to spend that money on those children, to save that money for those children, instead of surrendering that money to Washington. It is especially galling that we have had a President who campaigned, and people talk about political strategies, and, oh, members of that reelection team looking at the Ronald Reagan strategy of 1984. Nonsense. This is the same strategy utilized by the President in 1992. It is, simply stated, this: Talk like Ronald Reagan, govern like Michael Dukakis. Always talk right, govern left. This same President who said that the middle class deserved tax relief gave itself the largest tax increase in American history. This same President who said end welfare as we know it, has vetoed, not once but twice, the very welfare reform he purports in a general sense to champion. This same President who said as a candidate in 1992 that he would balance the budget in 5 years, even when given a grace period of an extra 2 years, if you will, still uses curious mathematics and said, as pointed out by the gentleman from California, even in the same breath with yet another Reaganesque utterance: The era of big government is over, but here are three more programs. Here is more and more spending in Washington, DC. Here is more and more power vested in Washington, and here is the preservation of the status quo, even amidst the language of change. There is, as I said earlier this evening, Mr. Speaker, a credibility canyon to go along with the Clinton crunch.

Mr. HAYWORTH. I just want to make sure because the gentleman was sitting close to me, and I heard in this well in that very unmistakable twang of Arkansas speech that the era of big government was over, and yet again I would ask the gentleman from Georgia to offer those figures, provided by the gentleman who stood here and told us the era of big government is over; what is that again?

Mr. HAYWORTH. And it goes a bit further than that, if the gentleman would yield. It goes to this question: Not just allowing the American people to do so because realistically the power resides with the American people. Our system of government, our constitutional republic, provides that the power that many of us believe comes from a higher authority is bestowed on the people. The people in turn bestow it on the government. So it is not the government's domain to, quote unquote, allow the people this opportunity. Instead it is their fundamental right to pursue treatments they believe can help them, and it is their fundamental right, and I dare say as we stand poised at the dawn of the next century, we should restore the basic element of trust that we who are honored to serve in government through the consent of the governed trust the people to make decisions. And again as I have said many times, I believe what crystallizes the debate when we get past the playground talks, when we get past the scare tactics, when we get past the deliberate disinformation, what characterizes this debate on almost every question of import is this: Do you trust the American people, or are you so cynical or disdainful of the American people that you place your trust in a centralized bureaucracy in Washington? I trust the American people, and I believe the people trust themselves, and we work to empower the people.

Mr. HAYWORTH. And is it not amazing that for most commercial transactions, when any American citizen wants to go into a major retailer or any store, a grocery store, and wants to pay for the items purchased with a check, that that shopper must produce two forms of identification, quite often, and with the manipulation and the usurpation of rights under motor voter, we are setting up a scenario in which noncitizens will not be required to show any proof of citizenship to have the right to vote in elections that determine the future of the United States of America. How cynical, how corrupting. What an insult to those hard-working, honest immigrants who come here who apply for citizenship, who want to be American citizens more than anything else in the world, who want to contribute something to this country, who want to have a better future for themselves and their families, and whose very citizenship is being cheapened by these cynical actions designed to perpetuate a cynical welfare state and to return to power those who seek power by any means necessary.

Mr. HAYWORTH. It is stunning. Give us an update on the California situation.

Mr. HAYWORTH. It is just interesting, because in other States, I could be corrected by my friend from California, that is very interesting. Legal services wanted to step in for illegal immigrants. Illegal aliens here in this country without a passport, without due process to come into the country and remain, sued for the right of a driver's license. And yet in other States, I believe California has been courageous in this regard, because so many States have processed motor voter where all one needs to register to vote is to apply for a driver's license.

Mr. HAYWORTH. Actually, all told, Government spending at all levels in the so-called war on poverty is now in excess of our national debt, $5 trillion.

Mr. HAYWORTH. Would you please repeat that? I want to make sure that I understand what you just said and I think you owe it to the people nationwide who watch us tonight and to the Speaker in the chair, could you please repeat this letter?

Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I think the observation to make to the good people of New Jersey is the gentleman from New Jersey, who fails to understand that, it is not so much that he is a product of New Jersey's system of education as much as he has adopted the old math, I will call it, the old math of the Washington bureaucracy, where a reduction in an anticipated increase is called a cut. Only in this city does that transpire.

Mr. HAYWORTH. Again, it begs the question, with all due respect, if it is good enough for the nation of Israel, is it not good enough, should we not be prudent enough to provide the same sort of missile defense for the people of the United States of America?

Mr. HAYWORTH. Well, I thank my good friend from Georgia. It is simply this, Mr. Speaker. I believe those watching this debate tonight in the United States of America need to take a very clear-eyed, sober-minded approach to providing for our common defense and to understand that we are vulnerable to intercontinental ballistic missile attack. This is not scare tactics. This is something, believe me, we wish were otherwise, but we need to take steps today to ensure that we provide for the common defense and that we do not always look to that legitimate role of the Federal Government, providing for that defense, as the place where all the job cuts and the reductions come to reinvent government as some would state it. With that, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding to me.

Mr. HAYWORTH

Mr. HAYWORTH. Indeed, we should point out, as the gentleman from California is well aware with his knowledge of international policy, of foreign defense spending, that this President has committed to help Israel construct a defense mechanism, to put in place a defense mechanism against ICBM attack which begs the question, with all due respect to the nation of Israel, if it is important for that nation, is it not also important for the country which the President took the oath of office to support, uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, should not this country also have that missile defense?

Mr. HAYWORTH. I just think this is a vital point to bring up, and I thank the gentleman from California in bringing it up. In all candor, Mr. Speaker, I thank the Secretary of Defense for being equally candid to tell us that today we are vulnerable to a missile attack from anyone anywhere in the world, a rogue nation, a leader gone mad, one of the folks or one of the nations which we would feel would be our conventional adversary, if you will. We are unprepared. I would simply remark that Mark Twain said it first and said it best. ``History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.'' And here we have a parallel in our history where we need to be warned not to scare people but to alert people to a threat to our common defense, and one that we have the technology to solve if we but bring the willpower to solve it. And the executive branch, quite frankly, this administration, as custodian of our foreign policy and as custodian of our defense policy has been lackluster at best. Indeed, I recall a breakfast sponsored by my good friend from California during our transition, before I ever took the oath of office in this House, when I asked Dr. Perry what was the rationale for this Government even thinking of supplying nuclear reactors to the outlaw nation of North Korea. And the secretary replied to me, oh, you need a better briefing on that. No briefing necessary to know that it is not in the interest of the United States of America to supply any nuclear reactor to an outlaw nation like North Korea. It defies common sense, it defies logic and it is part of the ill-advised circumstance foisted upon the American people who, unfortunately heretofore, have been unaware of the danger in which we find ourselves if we fail to provide for the common defense. My friend from California is absolutely right, and before the American people, Mr. Speaker, jump to a conclusion that we are talking about some sort of boondoggle in the billions upon billions of dollars, I would yield again to my friend from California to talk about some interesting estimates that we have received in reference to building a system that is leaner and keener with new technologies. What are the estimates we have now?

Mr. HAYWORTH. Gladly.

Mr HAYWORTH

Mr HAYWORTH. I think the point is very well taken. My friend from California.

Mr. HAYWORTH

Mr. HAYWORTH. Glad to yield to my good friend from Georgia.