Joel Hefley

Mr. HEFLEY

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Tejeda] and the gentleman from California, [Mr. Fazio] for the way in which they have conducted themselves during this debate. I have tremendous empathy for the fight they are engaged in over there. Heck, I have the same problem. I do not want to see Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center closed, either. I think it is a mistake to do that. I have a little less empathy with the parade of people who have come up here who voted yesterday for an across-the-board cut in the Defense budget who are now crying because a base in their area is being affected. That seems a little disingenuous to me. This is not an easy process. I think sometimes this process does make wrong decisions. I think some of these decisions we will regret down the line when we have national emergencies. I know this is agonizing for communities across this country, and it is not easy for the various branches of the services who are going through this, and having to recommend closing things that we would really rather not, in many cases, because they do not think it makes good sense. I am very disappointed that the President of the United States injected Presidential politics into this process. I think that is very disappointing. This is not a perfect process, but it is the only process we have to get at this. We had not closed a base in this country since the 1970's until this process started. Congress did not have the ability to close bases. There are some bases that we do need to close. I reject the idea that to vote against this resolution is to vote against a strong national defense. It is this administration that is driving the depth at which we have to cut back on defense in this country. It is the most anti-Defense administration, I think, in the last 50 years, and that is what is driving the deep cuts that we have to make. With these deep cuts, we have to use every single Defense dollar we have the most effective way possible, so yes, we are having to give up some facilities that I wish we were not giving up. However, this is the process we have set up. This is the end of this round of base closure. I would encourage my colleagues to vote against this resolution, support the Base Closure Commission, and let us now move on to solidifying what we have with our defense structure across this country, and make sure that we have a strong defense with what we have left.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas]. (Mr. GEKAS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Montgomery]. (Mr. MONTGOMERY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Lucas].

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Chambliss]. (Mr. CHAMBLISS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts].

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. Fowler].

Mr. HEFLEY. I say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] I absolutely agree with him. It has no legal standing as far as we can determine. Our committee did consider this, and let me just quote from the committee report just a moment: In our judgment, the letter of the President of July 13, 1995, communicating his approval of the recommendations of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Committee, has no standing beyond certification. Public Law 101-510 does not provide for any such communication to contain assumptions about the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon]. (Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HEFLEY

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, tonight, in one of the greatest moments in baseball history, Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles will break Lou Gehrig's record for playing in the most consecutive games. I applaud his discipline, his dedication, his desire, and perhaps most importantly, his service as an outstanding role model for the youth of America. But, Mr. Speaker, I believe that Cal Ripken serves as a role model not only for millions of kids across the United States but also for the Members of this Congress. We too are on the verge of accomplishing great things. In the coming weeks we will have the opportunity to pass a budget that will finally begin to put America's fiscal house in order. I urge my colleagues to have the discipline, have the dedication, have the desire. Be a leader in this country. Pass a balanced budget.

Mr. HEFLEY

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, tonight at about 9 p.m. we are going to begin consideration of the telecommunications bill. It is a very important piece of legislation. It affects everybody in the United States, and will for years to come. We have been working on this piece of legislation for at least 10 years, I am told, and yet somebody has decided it must be out before we leave here the first of August. This bill passed by an overwhelming majority when it came out of committee, a bipartisan majority, and has been taken and rewritten in a back room by a handful of people, and we are going to begin debate on it tonight. Usually when something this important is rushed through in the dark of night, it is because someone does not want us to know what the real ramifications are. This is no way to do the people's business.

Mr. HEFLEY

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with you this morning a story of a friend of mine named Tom. Tom owns a ranch north of Colorado Springs. A few weeks ago, he was on his way from the ranch to his place of business, and as he got out toward the road, he found--I have forgotten the exact number--but it seems like it was a dozen barrels, 50 gallon drums, some of which were turned over, some of which had spilled liquid onto the ground. Others had liquid in those barrels. And his initial reaction was to go back to the house, get the tractor and the forklift and lift those barrels up and take them back to the house and decide what to do with them. Then he thought again and said, no, we ought to do the right thing about this. We ought to call somebody in charge and have them come and take a look at what we have got here. Do not know what it is. We ought to take a look at it. So he called the officials, and within 2 hours, every agency known to man was out there, practically, some in moon suits. There were ambulances. There were fire departments. There were sheriff's deputies. There were highway patrolmen. Everybody you could imagine was out there on Tom's property, and they were trying to figure out what it was and what to do with it and how it got there. And in the course of all this activity, someone happened to mention to Tom, we do not know what it is, but the way, if there has to be a cleanup, you have to pay for it. Tom says, ``What do you mean I have to pay for it? I am the victim. Someone dumped this on my property. What do you mean I have to pay for it?'' They said, ``Oh, yes, that is the law. You have to pay for it.'' He said, ``Aren't you going to investigate? Aren't you going to find out who dumped this on my property?'' Well, maybe we will find that out. Maybe we will not. So he did his own investigation, and he discovered the name on one of the barrels of a local oil and gas company. He went to the local oil and gas company. He discovered that they had sold the barrels sometime around Christmastime to a salvage company. He went to the salvage company. He discovered that the salvage company had sold it to a soldier who was getting ready to be mustered out at Fort Carson. He discovered from a little more investigation that there was a practice of buying barrels, getting a U-Haul trailer, filling the barrels with water, driving the U-Haul trailer up onto a scale, getting a weight slip, and then taking the weight slip to the Government, because the Government will pay you for that last move when you leave the fort. So it was a fraud on the Government that was being perpetrated. The scale happened to be half, three-quarters of a mile from Tom's ranch. So he weighed the barrels and brought them and dumped them on Tom's property. It was water that was in the barrels, but it cost him about $1,500, if I remember correctly, to find out through the analysis that it was water, and they said initially that it could have cost him up to $22,000, maybe even more, depending on what was in those barrels. So with a little work and common sense, Tom had solved his mystery. He had saved himself $22,000 or more and proven himself a better and more conscientious investigator than the Government agencies charged with dealing with the hazardous waste. All of this was due to a Federal law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. In those States which have not adopted statutes dealing with the cleanup of hazardous waste, RCRA says the cleanup costs fall to the owner of the property where the waste was found, and this is called corrective action. Now, Tom, the victim, admits that he could have, if he had had to, paid for the cleanup. But he wonders, what if those barrels had been dumped on the property of an elderly couple getting by on a fixed income? Tom may have been able to handle the cost. The elderly couple might have bankrupted as a result of it. Friends, this is a dumb law. This is an unjust law. This is a law that punishes the victim. It is the kind of law that sets neighbor against neighbor and makes people question whether we have any idea what we are doing here in Washington. It seems only fair that, in these cases, some efforts should be made to find the polluter and make them pay instead of dumping the bill on the property owner; and, frankly, if the dumper cannot be found, maybe this is a Government responsibility for us to pay for the cleanup. To do otherwise is to undermine the quick cleanup of these kinds of problems. Our Nation's environmental laws are based upon the idea that people want a clean environment and are willing to make certain sacrifices to see that that happens. To do that, you have got to give people some assurance they are not going to be punished for doing the right thing. My friend, Tom, could have just simply taken those barrels back to the barn and never said anything about it. He wanted to do what was right. He could have been punished severely for doing what was right. Given what he has been through, do you think he is ever going to do it this way again? We must change this kind of nonsensical law.

Mr. HEFLEY

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, HUD's fiscal year 1996 budget is being cut by over 25 percent, and we are eliminating 36 individual programs, which I commend, but, amazingly, the appropriation for HUD's administration and management is receiving only a 1 percent cut. We are cutting the substance, but we are keeping the bureaucracy, and to me this makes no sense. How can we justify this to the American taxpayer? My amendment simply asks that HUD's administrative portion of its budget take the same cuts as everything else in the budget, 25 percent. The Secretary has suggested a plan to reduce HUD's administrative staff from 11,000 to 7,500 employees by the year 2000. But, Mr. Chairman, that is 2 years and 7,500 employees too late. HUD's budget has grown by 400 percent over the last 15 years. Its bureaucracy is in lockstep with that figure. We finally are in a position to eliminate the cornerstone of the welfare state. Throughout the year's appropriation process, amendments to cut further funding from such things as the NEA, CPB, and ICC have been defeated. Members have argued they should not be crippled further. The argument does not hold in this case, because there is no definite plan to abolish this department. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr. Royce].

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht].

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds, the remainder of my time. Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that is endorsed by the Council on Citizens Against Government Waste. What we are talking about is just cutting approximately $113 million from the administrative accounts of HUD to correspond with the 25 percent we cut on the program side of HUD. Now, what I would like to see us do is put HUD on a glide path to extinction. I would like this to be one of the departments that we do away with down the line. I think by cutting it 25 percent on both sides this time, in 4 years, if we follow that path, we will be out of business. I urge support of the amendment.

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

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback].

Mr. HEFLEY

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, the American people are hearing a lot these days from the liberal Democrats. The have heard terms ``tax cuts from the rich'' and ``mean spirited,'' and all the usual class warfare terminology. But there is something the American people will not hear from the liberal Democrats. The American people will not hear the liberals talk about the report from the President's Medicare trustees. They will not hear quotes from this report saying that ``concerted action must be taken promptly to address'' the critical problems with Medicare. There is something else the Democrats will not be talking about. They will not be talking about the millions of Americans who would be left out in the cold if Medicare were to go bankrupt. They will not talk about the seniors who would be unable to meet their health care needs. Mr. Speaker, the liberals should acknowledge this report and work with Republicans to save Medicare.

Mr. HEFLEY

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just respond to some of the things that have been said. The budget that we passed here the other day, the balanced budget by 2002, assumed that we would get rid of the EDA. That was a part of the assumption that was built into that budget and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] eloquently made that point. It did not assume, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Shuster] said, that we would get rid of the EDA but we would change its name to something else. What does that do for the $348 million if you move it from this pocket to that pocket? I guess we can go home and we can brag to our constituents, We got rid of the EDA. You wanted us to get rid of that. We got rid of the EDA, and it's gone. But then it is over here doing something else. That does not save the money. That does not get us down the road to the time when we will have a balanced budget in the year 2002. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the Allard amendment to eliminate the Technology Administration. The Technology Administration is a redundant bureaucracy that is tasked with overseeing other departments. The elimination of this office will not harm other programs under the Department of Commerce jurisdiction, and some contend it may even cause other functions to perform better. In our efforts to downsize government, it is important for us to eliminate all layers of unnecessary bureaucracy. In my opinion the Technology Administration fits that category and I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss].

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.