Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, we need only use the same wage determiner as used in the Private sector, which is supply and demand. Only the market can accurately set wages that reflect reality.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, let me also just inform some of my colleagues of what is happening. In the State of Oklahoma, two wage analysts have been responsible for handling the data submitted to and generated by the Department of Labor for the 11-state region that includes Oklahoma. What has happened in Oklahoma? In mid August the U.S. Department of Labor faxed copies of 49 WD10s. This is the form that various people voluntarily submit to the Federal government. It was indicated that several of the projects were entirely bogus and virtually all of the submitted forms contained grossly inflated or otherwise inaccurate information. The end result: Taxpayers end up paying more for construction than they otherwise would have to. Among the bogus WD10 forms is a form indicating the use of seven asphalt lay-down machines and seven roller finishers for an Internal Revenue Service building in downtown Oklahoma City. In reality, the parking lot is very small, fewer than 30 total spaces, and is made of concrete, not asphalt. A bogus form intended solely to drive up the rates on the prevailing wage scale. Specifically in the case of the asphalt lay-down machine operators, the bogus wage and fringe benefits were 44 percent higher than the union collective bargaining agreement and 30 percent higher than the prevailing wage rate in existence at that time. A clearly fraudulent attempt to take money from the American taxpayers. At best, in 1995, the Davis-Bacon wage rates reflect a 7-year-old reality. The average prevailing wage study is 7 years old. At worst, they reflect a fraudulently manipulated wage well above market rates. We do not need to reform Davis-Bacon. It cannot be reformed. It cannot be fixed. It does not make sense in 1995. It did not make sense in 1931. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Michigan.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, this is one of the many areas that we have taken a look at. It is absolutely true that perhaps this was a problem 60 years ago. But today it is not a problem. Today what we actually need to be doing is updating American labor law to not only enable American corporations and American employees to be competing in 1995, but we need to be laying out and creating the framework that these individuals and these corporations are going to be successful and are going to be creating world class jobs in America in the year 2000 and the year 2010. Corporations and companies are participating in participative management. They are now doing it at their peril. Corporations in my district have been recognized consistently as being some of the best managed and the most innovative corporations in America. They have been recognized as some of the most innovative and some of the best world class corporations in the world because of this partnership that they have developed between employees and management. Mr. Chairman, when we go into these corporations, and we talk to management, they would like to do much more, their employees would like to do much more, but they are being constrained by the National Labor Relations Act. We need to make changes. This is a step forward, this is progress, this is going to help corporations and employees around the country.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If we go back to opening day, we were here for what, 12, 13, 14 hours, and it was a long time ago. But when I think back about my first term of office and how different this session of Congress has been, because some of these changes that we made on opening day, we did go through and we reduced the size of committee staffs by one-third, so we are downsizing Congress. We went to a process now that is very important as we work towards a balanced budget within seven years, and we said that we would go into truth-in- budgeting baseline reform. A third reform is even in this Congress, we had a historic first vote on term limits for all Members of Congress. What we were able to do on opening day is we were able to establish term limits for the Speaker, committee and subcommittee chairmen; we banned proxy voting, one of the reasons that so many of us are getting so much exercise this year, we are running back and forth between the House and various committees, making sure that we as Members are present and voting in committees, and we do not have chairmen there with a stack of paper saying how they believe Members should vote. We had sunshine rules concerning committee meetings. All of our committee meetings have been open to the public and the media. We have passed a supermajority regarding limitations, or the requirement for a supermajority on any future tax increases. More recently we have seen the result of one of those other reforms that we put in. We had the first comprehensive House audit, and I think we all recognize the disappointing results of that House audit, basically not getting a clean bill of health like private and public corporations around the country are required to get from their auditors, but basically telling us that we had significant work to do in this House to bring our standards of financial accounting up to what is expected in the private sector. Then the last significant reform that we had on opening day was the Congressional Accountability Act, where we went through and said that it was time to take many of the laws that applied to the rest of the country and apply those laws to Congress, so that we would get a better understanding of what is happening to small businesses, medium-sized businesses, individuals around the country, with the different laws that we have put in place and we have never lived under. So that is kind of a quick overview of the types of things we passed on opening day. In the last Congress, those would have been considered historic. In this Congress, they are now considered a footnote because we passed them all on the first day, and people are now saying, well, you did that on the first day, where are you moving to now? What is the next step?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The process we proposed 2 years ago, we came here 2 years ago with a smaller freshman class and with a different majority. And we recognized that we needed to put in place reforms. But we said, where do we get the pressure to really change and force Congress to act? How do we empower the American people? One of the things we see is a total disconnect. People at the grass roots level no longer feel like they can really influence Congress because of things like PAC's. We said, there are a number of States, Michigan being one, where through a thoughtful, deliberative initiative and referendum process, people at the grass roots level have been able to put in term limits, put in tax limitation, put in good government measures, because they had a legislature that was unwilling do it so we provided them at the State level a mechanism to have an influence on legislation that would change the way government was done in the State of Michigan. We said, why can we not provide that same opportunity? I think one of the things that we have a real opportunity to pass in this Congress is we have an unfinished agenda in the Contract With America. We passed much of what we wanted to do with the Contract With America. We fell short on one major item in the House of Representatives. That is term limits. The Speaker of the House said that when we come back, if the Republicans are in the majority in the next Congress, the first legislative vote we will have in the next Congress is a revote of term limits. And I think an initiative process or a referendum process on term limits would be wonderful. Let the people, the candidates debate the pros and cons of term limits in the spring, summer and fall of 1996. Let them all go to the polls on the second Tuesday of November and advise us whether they think term limits is an appropriate piece of legislation. Take the results from that advisory referendum and in the first day that we are back in session in 1997, see if we cannot pass term limits and complete the agenda of this Congress. This Congress has not heeded the call of the American people. The American people want term limits. This Congress said no. Let us give the American people one more chance to instruct us and see if the next Congress cannot get the message. This is the process that we are looking at building yet during the next 15 months.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, we talked about things like ethical reform, what Members of Congress can do once they leave the institution; for instance, should they really be permitted to go work for foreign governments, taking the knowledge that they have gained here. Should they be permitted to come back and lobby Congress? We talked about pension reform: How lucrative should a retirement from Congress be?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the discussion this evening is focusing on PACs, but I think if we go back and we take a look at, just for a moment, at the larger objective and the larger picture that we talked about today, we evolved to political action committee funding, but we started off with a vision of where we wanted to be, taking into consideration what we did on opening day, the process that we have gone through this year, and what we hope to accomplish yet during the next 15 months of this Congress. Overall, where we want to move to is we want to move to an institution, a Congress, that the American people can feel good about, that they see that we have put in place a series of reforms, a series of change in procedures about how we go about doing our business that will reinforce to them that our primary interest, our only interest, is in doing what is good for the long term of this Nation, moving away from what I think a lot of people have perceived Congress has become and Congress people have become, which is focal points for special interest groups. That we are here, and we are about doing the people's business, and that what we are going to do is try to eliminate all of those things which detract us, or which move us from focusing on what is important, to focusing on special interest groups and no longer the good of the country. Political action committees are one of the primary things that do that. We also talked today about a series of things about ethical reforms.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes. I think there is another whole series of things that I think are going to provide a very fertile ground for us to explore, not only reforming this institution, but also reforming the size of Washington government and our relationship with the American people. The gentlewoman is well aware of some of the ideas that I have been pushing, such as the opportunity for the American people to recall Members of Congress in the Senate; the opportunity for them to have initiative and referendum, and those types of things, and I think we may hopefully also, as we put this package together, a comprehensive package of reform, of building trust in a relationship with the American people, we can have an exciting package of reforms that demonstrate that we are serious about changing the way that Washington, DC, does business, and we are serious about changing the way that Washington, DC, relates with people at the grassroots level. We are about change. We are about progress. We want to be about good Government.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] for yielding this time to me. This morning in the Committee on the Budget we had the opportunity to have what I thought would be a good dialog and debate about much of what has been going on here on the floor today, a discussion and a debate about what our policy agenda is on both sides of the aisle as the President and as the majority here in the House both strive to reach for a balanced budget. But then it became very, very clear that the two sides are playing with a different set of rules. The Republican plan scored under this Congressional Budget Office does within 7 years get to a balanced budget. The President's plan scored under the same rules, however, enables the president to have $200 billion more per year to spend. So, as we are talking about how are we going to achieve and what policies are we going to implement to achieve a balanced budget, we are finding that one side is playing with one hand tied behind their back. One side actually gets to a balanced budget, the other side can continue going around the country and can continue going around to special interest groups promising a whole set of programs and priorities and spending that really does not exist and that totals out to about $200 billion. We also find that the other side is really trying to perpetuate a program and a philosophy that over many years we know does not work, and this book here, ``Reviving the American Dream,'' written by Alice Rivlin, who is the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, she highlights the failed policies that in many cases we are finding are being debated in this bill. Here is what she said about education, and remember this person works for the President: Improving education will take bottom-up reform, Presidential speeches and photo opportunities, national testing and assessment, federally funded experimental schools. Even new grants spent in accordance with Federal guidelines can make only marginal contributions in fixing the schools. The popular Federal Head Start Program demonstrates that preschool education helps children from poor families cope better in school. The negative legacy of Head Start, however, is that States and communities have come to believe that the responsibilities for preschool education lie with Washington, not with them. Change would come more rapidly if concerned citizens, parents, and educators worked to improve their own preschools instead of lobbying Washington to allocate more funds for Head Start. Mr. Chairman, she goes on to say that top-down management by the Federal Government is unlikely to bring about needed change in education, skilled training, and other areas where reform is essential. She also goes on to state that when these programs and responsibility for these programs are moved from the Federal Government to the State government, we will see more action, more effectiveness, and better results. This is coming from the administration. All of what we are seeing here debated from the other side is a continuation of pushing policies and programs that we have had for too long and that we know do not work. Let us embrace the future, let us move to a balanced budget, and let us move to move decisionmaking where it is most appropriate.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, later on today I would like to give my colleague from Iowa transcripts of the hearing. ACGME was there. They testified. We were glad to have them there.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, let us be clear about what is going on here. We are moving from the status quo. Ob-gyns were never required to perform abortions. This is pro-life. Do we not think there are enough abortions already? Here is why we are doing it. The ACLU says, abortion mandatory training would be a major step so that we can substantially have a greater number of programs teaching abortions. The New England Journal of Medicine talks about this conscience clause. Residents who wish to opt out of abortion training should be required to explain why in a way that satisfies stringent and explicit criteria. This is not an easy way to opt out. The Guttmacher Institute says, yes, let us move this, and with mandatory training, we can make this a core service around the country in every hospital. Mr. Chairman, is that what we want? The Catholic Health Association says, and I agree, these program requirements are unacceptable. The intent is to expand access to induced abortion. We had hearings on this in my subcommittee. Not once did the ACGME bring up women's health. Not once were they talking about providing women's health care. They are talking about expanding the access to abortion. All I can say is it is ironic that at this point, people that are pro-choice now are saying to residents, you must, you must perform one of the most reprehensible and revolting medical procedures in this country today. Mr. Chairman, what a point that we are moving to. I strongly urge opposition to the Ganske amendment.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Ballenger] for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Pelosi amendment to strike the OSHA ergonomic provision, the provision on the 10(j) injunctions, and the provision regarding the processing of salting charges by the NLRB. We have talked about these issues in our Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities. We concur with the work that has gone on here in the Committee on Appropriations. These provisions included in the bill simply are statements by the Committee on Appropriations that these are areas which are not a priority for the expenditure of resources. Mr. Chairman, we are in a time of making difficult choices. The ergonomic provision would prevent OSHA from issuing an overly expensive regulation as indicated by the draft proposal already issued. When there are other demands on OSHA, we should focus OSHA's limited resources on reducing fatalities and workplace accidents rather than on developing regulations to protect workers from repetitive injuries and other ergonomic hazards, regulations which will cost jobs, create paperwork, and will not work. What we need to do in the area of repetitive-motion injuries is use common sense and not look for a bureaucratic paperwork maze to solve our problems. The provision on 10(j) injunctions requires the Board to pursue injunctive relief to be guided by uniform standard in determining when injunctive relief would be appropriate. It would also allow parties impacted by injunctive relief a opportunity, an opportunity to present their cases to the Board to open up the process. These seem to me to be matters of simple fairness and due process. The provision on salting merely requires the NLRB to suspend processing of charges until the Supreme Court has made a determination of whether or not these employees are covered under the National Labor Relations Act. It does not make sense for the NLRB to expend resources in an area where it might ultimately be determined that the NLRB has no jurisdiction.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight I come to reflect on the first months of this what in many ways may be an historic Congress. We have done what many people have said we could not do. Early in this year we met our commitments by passing many of the elements, but completing the Contract With America. We met our commitment of considering and voting on all of this legislation within 100 days. We actually did it within 93 days. After we completed the Contract With America, we completed another historic activity which many people in America said we could not do, and that is we passed a House budget resolution which puts us on a 7- year glide path to a balanced budget. We then went on and did an additional thing that people said will never happen. We worked through our differences with the Senate and we passed a conference budget resolution that both the House and the Senate passed which again put us on a glide path, a 7-year glide path, to a balanced budget. We are now completing this week or have already completed something else that people said we probably would not get done. We have passed 10 appropriations bills through the House of Representatives, 10 appropriations bills that match or are under the spending caps that were contained in our budget resolution. As we finish this week, we will probably complete two additional bills, so by the time we go on our recess, we will have completed 12 out of the 13 appropriations bills within the budget guidelines and the budget caps that were outlined in the conference budget resolution. The interesting thing with this, as we have gone through this process, today in the Washington Times this report comes out. Three of four Americans distrust Government, the most in polling history. According to this, this came out of a joint survey by Democrat and Republican pollsters. This I think reflects an unfinished agenda that I hope that this Congress will take up during the fall and the winter of 1995 and the winter of 1996. We have a responsibility to make this Government, to make this House, to make this town, more responsive to the American people, to bring back the interconnectiveness between the wishes, the desires of what the American people want and what we do here in Washington. One of the primary reasons for this significant distrust of the American people is that so often what people and politicians say in their campaign ring hollow once they come to Washington. Last week I introduced a series of bills that I call my Voters Bill of Rights, a series of legislative initiatives that will, I think, lay the framework, create the foundation, for I think renewing American citizenship. I have written some thoughts about why I think this is needed, why I think it is important, and why I think that these initiatives will help deal with this problem of 75 percent of the American people not trusting what we do here in Washington. The reason is that Washington has to start recognizing that the world is changing. There are forces at work in our society, in technology, in education, in business, and in health. They are moving us into an area of public policy which the current centralized bureaucracy, this current centralized Government in Washington, is incapable of addressing effectively. The challenges we face in the coming years, whether it is Social Security, Medicare, taxation, health care, the Federal debt, if they are left unresolved, will undermine the legitimacy of our constitutional government. Our outdated systems in Washington I think need to be completely rethought. I believe that the Voters Bill of Rights will do that. It is interesting to note that today more Americans between the ages of 18 and 40 believe in UFO's than believe in Social Security, or that Social Security will be there for them when they retire. They believe that we are wasting their money, and they feel helpless to act. This national survey again said reasons that people listed for distrusting government include 93 percent believe that Washington is wasting their money. They feel helpless to act. Poor voter participation rates in recent elections reveal a deep lack of connectiveness between the American people and those who govern them. Elections have become more a battle of sound bites than a substantive debate about the issues facing our country. Again, the survey indicates that 88 percent of the American people believe that politicians will say whatever it will take to get them elected, and do whatever they want once they are elected. We have to change that relationship and that process. Because when it comes right down to it, the bond between our citizens and their Government in Washington has been damaged because elected officials are unresponsive to critical issues. Issues and parties have less effect on voters' decisions. Personalities, money and narrow interests have far too great an impact. Through deliberate tactics and fudged by special interests, politicians personalize their appeal to voters. What they do is they avoid controversial or decisive issues. While this may win elections--I do not think it may win elections, I think it does win elections--the result is that politicians elected on such personality-centered campaigns believe the way to govern is to avoid responding to these issue agendas, but merely presenting a pleasing personality and satisfying the parochial needs of individuals and narrow interests is the best way to govern. I think we should be very concerned about this direction and about this crisis of confidence. If unchecked, declining confidence will destroy the credibility of our national institutions so much that governing sensibly will become nearly impossible. I think some people would say that we have already reached that point. The most important question for those concerned with these problems is how to restore confidence in our republican form of government. That is republican with a small r. Policy making at the national level is really a two-step process. First we develop an issue agenda, and then these issues which make it on the agenda are debated and they are hopefully settled. Elections should allow voters to set the agenda as candidates courting their votes debate the relative importance of the issues and their positions on them. In casting their vote for a particular candidate, voters choose both what issues they want debated and whom they most trust to resolve them. That is how it should work. But I do not think elections work that way anymore. Individual Members of Congress have devoted their staff and financial resources to doing individualistic favors and avoiding positions on broader national issues. The personalization of campaigning means that the agenda settling functions of elections has been short-circuited, left almost exclusively in the domain of Washington centered interests, rather than the broad national interests. What I am saying here is that what we should have is we should have the national electorate setting the issue agenda for Washington, but because elections have become centered on personalities, these personalities get elected to Washington and they then set the agenda here. I think a major corrective step would be to restore the connection between national elections and national issues. Unfortunately, one cannot rely only on individual candidates to do so, since the current campaign strategies are so effective. That is focusing on personalities rather than issues. So we have to do some other approaches. I think allowing the voters to use the Voters Bill of Rights to help set national priorities would be an effective way to restore that connection. The ideas contained in the Voters Bill of Rights would reconnect issues to Congressional elections without violating the basic form of the Constitution or the founders' views of the proper role of Government. The Constitution is a mix of elements forming our representative democracy, a form of government in which people freely choose their decision makers, but do not make the decisions themselves. We are and should remain a republic. We do not want to go to a pure democracy. The founders rightly feared the momentary passions of even the limited property owning male and fairly well-educated electorate of their time. For them democracy meant rule by the demos, or mob. They evolved a situation to be avoided for its tendency to trample minority rights. Madison believed a republican form of government would refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interests of their country, whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary and partial considerations. In large measure the main constitutional elements of separation of government, separation of powers, federalism and bicameralism, are all designed to allow time for the passions of the masses to cool, hopefully turning dangerous impulses into more reasoned effective change. Madison is usually considered one of the more levelheaded founders of this country. His critic of the direct democracy is sound and broadly admired. His optimism, however, about--and when is the last time we heard people described Congress this way--full of wisdom, patriotism and love of justice, love of justice of elected representatives, seems, in light of current events, naive and anachronistic. The brace against the mob rule written by the founders in the Constitution should not be lightly dismissed. There are, on the other hand, constitutional elements to promote the Democratic impulse. These include wide suffrage, short election terms for the House of Representatives, and the required origin of all money bills in the House. Constitutional amendments have been added, they include the expansion of the right to vote and to make the Senate directly elected. Remember, the Senate used to be appointed. Guaranteed participation rights to excluded groups preserved and promoted individual freedoms. Extra constitutional development, such as the rise of mass political parties and the expansion of offices filled by elections, have further enhanced the voice of all the people. Sadly, these changes to broaden participation have not improve our Government or are not effective in dealing with some of the problems that we face today. The changes clearly have made elected officials more responsive to the immediate opinion of individual voters, yet major issues remain unresolved. Individual citizens have more opportunities to participate in political debate but see little substance in what is being debated. Institutional developments and campaign change made Members of Congress almost invulnerable to mass public judgment, while at the same time empowered them to manipulate the opinions of isolated constituencies and individuals. Representatives cultivated individuals through case work, narrow constituencies by targeted mail and political action committees resolutions. The power to appease constituents on an almost individual basis has empowered Representatives to ignore larger issues and placed the blame for inaction on the institution. Thus today we have a far more responsive government than ever, but its officials are far better able to evade responsibility for inaction and gridlock. We have not been dealing with the tough issues. This Congress has seen its vote on term limits, has seen its vote on a balanced budget amendment and a line-item veto. The voters bill of rights, however, I think fundamentally empowers citizens to have a more direct impact on this town. Now, let us talk a little bit about what we have as part of this voters bill of rights. What are we proposing in a series of legislative initiatives that will deal with this problem of 75 percent of the American people still being cynical about Washington? I think what we need to do is open up the process, invite them in, invite the grassroots population in, not to make decisions but to help set the agenda for what we work on here in Washington. The voters bill of rights is our first step and perhaps the only step that realistically has a chance of passing in this Congress. I will have to be honest with the speaker. Most of these ideas are not very widely accepted in Washington, not very widely accepted in this House. We have not been here long. But as I go through the list of ideas, I think you will be able to understand why these ideas resonate at the grassroots level and want to be buried and hidden once we get here in Washington. The first one, I think, is a fairly harmless suggestion, an experiment that I think we could pass in this Congress and actually have in place in 1996, November of 1996. It is called the national advisory referendum. It is H.R. 2115 and H.R. 2116. What is a national advisory referendum? Many of our States have binding referenda, but this is an advisory referendum. It allows for a national vote during the November 1996 general elections on issues such as term limits, tax reform and tax limitation. Specifically, what this means is that if this legislation passed next summer, early next fall, we would have a debate on these three national issues. On election day in November of 1996, citizens would go in, they would go into their place, their voting booth, vote for President. They would vote for perhaps a Senator. They would vote for their Congress person. Then they would see this funny little box in the corner, advice to Congress or to Washington, three questions. The three questions should be or will be: Should Congress approve a constitutional amendment to limit the terms of Representatives and Senators? Yes and no. Remember, this would have been, these questions would be well defined before, so voters would recognize what the questions were. I bet they would want to know where the people they were voting for stood on these issues. Should Congress approve a constitutional amendment to limit the terms of Representatives and Senators? Second question, remember these are advisory: Should Congress approve a law to replace the current income tax system with a flat tax? Yes or no. The third question: Should Congress approve a constitutional amendment to require a popular vote by the American people for any future income tax increases? Three simple questions, helping to frame the debate for the next Congress, term limits, tax reform and a reform or vote empowerment on tax increases. These are nonbinding issues. So the process then becomes one of debate these issues, advise Congress, the next election, probably elect people that are consistent with your views on these issues. We would come back in the 105th Congress, and we would have feedback from the American people on these three issues so that we could seriously debate, discuss and hopefully deal with these three issues early in the next session of Congress. So the agenda that we would be working on here in Washington would be consistent with the agenda and the direction that the American people had set, but the direction we would be going in or the final details of how these would be worked out would be left up to this House, to our companion House and to the President. The second piece of legislation that we have introduced would be very fitting as a follow through on this. It is House Joint Resolution 105. Here is where we move from the doable to the desirable, but unlikely in this Congress. It is called recall. What this does, it allows voters to circulate petitions calling for the recall of Senators and/or Representatives. If a sufficient number of petitions are selected and certified, a recall election shall be held. If a majority choose to recall the elected official, a new election is called to fill the vacancy. Would that not be a wonderful process, if we could get both of these done, where you would have a debate, an advisory referendum, Congress would act, and then perhaps some constituents along the process might feel the need for a recall. One of the things that we have heard so much about in the last few months is people that said we are in favor of term limits. We are in favor of a balanced budget. We are in favor of a balanced budget amendment. That is what they campaigned on. That is what they promised their voters. They came here, they had the opportunity to vote. And what did they do? They did what 88 percent of the American people believed that politicians do. They did and they said what will get them elected, and then they will do whatever they do or whatever they want once they are elected. So the two elements that we discussed so far in this voters bill of rights, empowering the American citizenship, or national advisory referendum, connected with that is the opportunity for recall. The third item that we have as part of this process goes to election day. How many times have not people gone into the voting booth and said, I am really not pleased with any of the choices here, but the only choice that I have is to either vote for the people on this list or not vote in that category at all. Well, we are proposing that they have another choice. The choice that they have would be the candidates who have gone through the normal process to get their names on the ballot, then a little box that is on their automatically. Again, not an idea that is well liked here in Washington, it is called none of the above. A little box there, you can vote for Mr. X, Mrs. Y, Ms. So-and-so, or none of the above. What happens if you go through this process and at the end of the election day the votes are tabulated and counted and none of the above wins? It is a clear signal that the people have been dissatisfied with the choices that they were given by the major parties or independent people who worked to get on the ballot. And it says, none of these people meet our criteria, so we voted for none of the above. We would like a new election. None of the people that ran in this initial election are eligible for the second election. So none of the above, the third element in our voters bill of rights. The last two pieces of legislation that we have introduced, again, significantly empower voters to help set the agenda here in Washington. Actually allowing for voters to add in binding referenda so that they can actually help us and pass legislation through the referenda process, and the last piece of legislation is a national citizens initiative amendment process to actually enable, there are two ways to start a constitutional amendment now, through action in the Congress, action by the States, the third way we are saying now is to actually enable the voters to start the amendment process to the Constitution, not the complete process, but a third way of beginning the amendment process. Just think if we had had that process in place today, I have a high degree of certainty that we would have passed term limits. We would have passed the balanced budget. We would have passed a line-item veto. Those things would have been part of our Constitution. They would have stopped a Congress that many people think has acted irresponsibly over the last number of years by spending more than what it takes in. The American people knew that, but Congress, as many believe, was unwilling to act. What this whole voters bill of rights does is it makes the American people fuller and more complete partners with us in governing this country. It does not move us to a democracy. It just makes us, in an information age, it makes them more complete partners with us in the process so that we will not be reading anymore headlines like this that say, ``75 percent cynicism rate suggests a third party.'' The answer is not a third party. The third party will suffer from many of the same problems that the current process has. We need to change the process to enable people to more completely feel engaged in the process of funning this country. The current model says Washington knows best, that knowledge flows from Washington to the people. This new model says, not says, actually demonstrates that the people know best and that the people should be allowed to speak in a more direct fashion to help set the agenda in Washington. They do not make the final decisions. That is the job of this House, of this Congress, working together with the President, to make the final decisions on how we implement what we do, how we will do it. But it is a way to more fully engage the American people. The voters bill of rights proposals will help citizens set the agenda in Washington without changing the essential nature of the way decisions are made. The advisory referenda proposals are a modest means to induce congressional action. It is a half step, but I think it is the only step that this Congress is willing to take. If such a process bears fruit, the constitutional amendments I have proposed might prove unnecessary, but I think the experiment is worth going through. More likely, however, the more forceful mechanism, the joint resolution proposals, that is, the advisory referenda, none of the above, recall, are necessary to redirect Congress' attention back to the interests of the people. These items are outlined to give people an ability to enact laws through an initiative process, without disrupting the structure of our representative form of government. The petition requirements, the supermajority, limitations built in this ensure that the genuine and unique characteristics of our form of government do not change. This is a way to create partnership, not to change the core values of how we run this government. The voters bill of rights preserves many of the advantages of our current system, preserving our representative form of government, protecting minorities, preventing hasty decisions, fostering compromise and conciliation. New benefits they bring include the potential to stimulate the dangerously flagging public participation in civic affairs. Why do not people come to elections? They feel disconnected. They do not believe what politicians say. And they do not trust us when we get here. This process, where they are more actively engaged, this will hopefully get them to come back out and participate in our electoral process. Elections would once again be about both issues and candidates, not just candidates, about both issues and candidates. That is what we need to do. Voters would go to the polls confident that they are sending a signal to Congress on which issues they want addressed. Candidates would be more likely to take positions on ballot issues. I do not think they would be more likely to. I think voters would require them to take positions. And they would be less able to go into office based merely on name recognition and slick campaign styles or slogans. The underlying contemporary malaise, alienation, and cynicism toward politics is all too apparent today. Unchanneled into productive expressions of citizens control, it is likely to erupt in ways far more dangerous to our constitutional principles and longstanding political traditions such as political parties. We need to address these issues. We can no longer sit on the sidelines with 75 percent of the American people cynical about what we do here in Washington. This Congress boldly acted when we said, we are listening to the American people, we know and we hear that you want us to deal with the deficit. We are doing that, and I congratulate this Congress on doing it. But now we have to deal with this cynicism and this contempt that people hold for this Congress. Mr. Speaker, a Voter's Bill of Rights provides a framework to begin that discussion. It provides a framework, and actually it provides, I think, some legislative initiatives that we can pass and we can begin on the road to this citizen involvement. A further benefit of the Voters' Bill of Rights is to provide national leadership for the legislature. Such leadership has been far too absent from the congressional power structure. A national initiative, either of the advisory referendum type, or the more powerful legislative proposal, would provide a national publicly- developed agenda of issues of which Congress would be forced to grapple with in its next session of Congress. Congress would be transformed from an assemblage of parochial agents to a body forcing the debate and defending the public good. What a wonderful change that would be. Other attempts at more lightened debate like more Oxford-style debate are puny and hollow. They do not require resolution of any issues. They may make the House more entertaining, more fun to watch. We are not in the entertainment business, we are into education and resolving public policy date. Forced debate on say term limits would guarantee an open an educational debate on an issue otherwise inadequately considered. The Voters' Bill of Rights provides us, I think, with the framework, with the foundation, to build on what I think is a record of success of this Congress. We have dealt with the budget, we have dealt with the contract, we have dealt with appropriations bills. Now is the time that we start doing the people's agenda, engaging in a full partnership with them, providing them with a light at the end of the tunnel that says, Washington is open. We want you to provide us with more direct feedback, more direct contact, and as a result of that new cooperation, that new dialogue, we are going to be a more responsive and a more effective body, so that you, once again, can be proud of the process here in Washington, and I think the result will be, you will also be prouder of the product that we produce here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, the Voters' Bill of Rights is a step forward, a step to frame the debate and the discussion on how we can empower the American people, and how we can renew American citizenship.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, today we have the opportunity to explain to my colleagues some legislation that we introduced earlier today. It builds on legislation which we introduced in the last Congress. It is called the Hoekstra-Hutchinson Voice on Term Limits. It is the Term Limits Act of 1995. What this legislation does, it provides for a nonbinding national advisory referendum on congressional term limits during the November 1996 general election. As this legislation moves through the House and the Senate, this legislation would provide the first time in the history of this country where the American people would actually have the opportunity to advise Congress on a particular issue. As the Members of this body are well aware, we had a vote earlier this year on term limits. While we did win a majority, we did not receive the necessary number of votes to move this legislation through the House and to the Senate and move it to the American people and to the States for its confirmation as an amendment to the Constitution. What we are proposing with this legislation is enhancing the process and allowing the American people the opportunity to influence this Congress. The process would work in this way: During the spring, summer, and early fall of 1996, we would envision a national debate on the pros and cons of term limits. Then in November of 1996, on every ballot across this country, there would be a very simple question: Should Congress approve a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that a Member of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate can serve in their office? Yes or no? As the results from this national referendum would be tabulated and reported, the next Congress would come back in January of 1997. A commitment has been made that as Republicans would still maintain the majority in the House, that the first piece of legislation that we would consider would be another vote on term limits. So we would see an opportunity to have a national debate, a national referendum, and then a vote on term limits. Really, what we are talking about is what I think this institution needs, is we need more direct input from the American people advising and influencing and providing an opportunity to set the agenda here in Washington. It is an experimental process. It is an experimental process providing an opportunity to enable the American people to set the agenda, help set the agenda in Washington and more clearly advise this House on the type of direction that we should take. This piece of legislation is part of a broader package of bills that I introduced today which also includes the opportunity for Members or for citizens to recall Members of the House and of the Senate, providing for the inclusion of ``none of the above'' on ballots around the country, and also providing legislation to provide binding initiative and referendum. The bill that I am talking about today, the National Voice on Term Limits, is only an advisory referendum. It is an experiment in improving democracy, and I am excited to begin this process and to move this legislation through the House of Representatives.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to inform my colleagues that tomorrow I will be introducing a series of pieces of legislation that I think will get us back onto some of the agenda items that we need to address this fall. We have had a very successful year beginning early in the year with the Contract With America, moving on now through a process of going through 13 appropriations bills. But I believe the legislation that I am going to be introducing tomorrow, at least parts of them, are going to require serious consideration this fall. What I do is I call them the Voters' Bill of Rights. Because really, what we are doing with these pieces of legislation is we are empowering American citizens to help set the agenda in Washington, and to hold their Members more accountable for their actions in the House and in the Senate. Specifically, the three pieces of legislation include three items, the first of which is the national voice on term limits. As many of you know, we had a vote on term limits earlier this year. We had a majority. We failed to get the required number because it was a constitution amendment. I think it is now time to nationalize the debate, to have a national debate during the spring, the summer and the fall of 1996, and then we are going to have a unique experience if this legislation passes. We are going to have the opportunity to have every American citizen in this country to vote and express their preference on what they would like congress to do with term limits. That would happen in November of 1996. Then, as the Speaker of the House has committed, if Republicans are still in control of the House in 1997, January 1997, a vote on term limits would be the first vote that we will have on our legislative agenda in January 1997. So what a beautiful process. We will have a national debate. We will have a national advisory referendum, and then we will have instructed Congress how to vote, and then in January 1997, we will have that vote on term limits, which I am sure will get us over the hump and move us to actually completing the work, or completing the work in Washington on term limits so that we can then move it to the States. The second piece of legislation that I am going to be introducing tomorrow is the opportunity for citizens in their districts to recall Members of the House and Members of the Senate. Currently, if, during their term of office, the Member in the House or the Senate loses the trust or the confidence of the people of their district, there is no mechanism by which the Member or the citizens of that district can hold their Member accountable. Recall is an extreme measure. The hurdles that we have in our legislation will make it very difficult to recall a Member of the House or of the Senate, but it provides that opportunity where the trust between the Member and the citizenry has been broken, for the citizens to go through a petitioning process and to call for the recall of their Member of the House or of the Senate. It moves accountability and the ability to hold a Member accountable during a term of office back to the people, another element of our Voters' Bill of Rights. The third element of our Voter Bill of Rights, and there are a couple of others, but the only other one that I want to highlight this evening, it is something that I saw for the first time 3 years ago, and I kind of chuckled the first time I saw it, but then I actually figured out how it worked. What this calls for is FOR the States in the election process to list the individuals who have qualified through a petitioning process, or have qualified through a primary process. So it lists the names of the individuals who have qualified to be on the ballot in a November national election or House election or a Senate election. It has the names on there, and then it is going to add another interesting little category. It is going to add the category: None of the above. We call it NOTA, None of The Above. So often we hear our citizens saying, we are not really satisfied with the choices that we have. In this new process, they can vote for the individuals that are listed or they can vote for none of the above. If none of the above receives the majority of the votes, a new election will be held, and the individuals that were on the original ballot will not be eligible for this second election.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I could not help but watch this special order when the gentleman started about 30 minutes ago, and remembering my commitment that I would come down and join if he started before 11:00.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes, the next 5 or 6 months will be tough. We have a lot of work to do, even though we now have a budget document. There are issues that you and I will disagree on. I think the exciting thing about the process that we have gone through in the last 6 months, and that we look forward to in the next 6 months, is that we have a large group of Members who do have their sights on the same vision: Creating a better America; understanding the things that we need to do to get there; understanding the many different strategies. Differing on some of the projects, but recognizing that an ability to dialogue, an ability to work together in a partnership, both on this side of the aisle, across the aisle, to the Senate, hopefully to the President, back to grassroots America. That through that dialogue and through that partnership, and only through that dialogue and only through that partnership, will we reach the type of solutions that get us to our objective and get us there in a very positive and constructive way. So we are going to have to work through lots of differences on projects, but we recognize that we have to work through those differences. We have to reach agreement. And that as we reach agreement, we, together, will reach the goals and the missions that we have outlined. So I think it is going to be a tough 5 or 6 months. It is going to be a very satisfying 5 or 6 months, because at the end we will have made a difference. We have been working at it for a long period of time. And we are going to take some gigantic steps in 1995 and then we have 6 more years of work to do to make sure that we get to that zero, because we have to stay disciplined for that time. I thank the gentleman for sharing this time with me.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think of much of what we do in Michigan would work in Connecticut. We will export our solutions over to you.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I know that as I went back for a whole series of town meetings in April when the school lunch debate was at its peak, you kind of go back and say, ``Wow, I am really going to be prepared to address the issue, because I am going to get a lot of questions on it.'' It was very surprising, because even as I think much of the media had not covered the debate very accurately, it came up, and people understood the issue, and they understood it a lot better than what I thought they might. They had gone through the clutter and taken a look at what was really going on. The gentleman brought up his daughter. I had people actually coming to me and saying, ``Can you explain to me exactly why the Federal Government is even doing a school lunch program?'' We have moved a significant distance away from, ``Whoa, you are cutting these programs out.'' But the gentleman is absolutely right. We are going to spend a lot of time over the next 6 months because the process now is the authorization bills, the appropriations bills, that put a real life into this budget document. Because those are the bills that now actually carry out the budget document. Those are the ones that change our policies. They change our priorities. They focus dollars where we want them focused. They change the way that we actually start doing business. [[Page H 6394]] And I think as you said earlier, they start changing the way that America works so that we can use these dollars in a much more constructive way. We have recognized the problems that ineffective Washington spending has reaped on this country. The symptoms are here in Washington. They are around in our urban centers around the country. They are in our smaller communities, our rural communities. We are going to go after those problems and we are going to move accountability and responsibility to where change can be affected most efficiently and most quickly, which is at the local level.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is win-win. All of a sudden we come to the floor and we see people on TV, and it is the sky is falling, and you know, this is my second term, so this is my third year here, and you are kind of looking around and saying, ``Whoa, what's happening to us here, we are giving them more money, we have gotten rid of this, and there are people that are going out and saying we are eliminating the program.'' Then you take a look at it and you say, ``There are even people printing this as fact.'' It has taken a while, but there are other ways to get information out, and the truth eventually comes out, and the truth has come out on that program.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. My committee. I can only say I think our committee let our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle down, because when we went through this, we had discussions about where are we taking the school lunch program. We said, No. 1, we are going to reform it, we are going to take the program from Washington and we are going to move the program to the States and the local school districts, so we are going to get Washington out of the way and out of this program. Why are people in Washington monitoring what kids are eating in Holland, MI, or Zeeland, MI, or anywhere in the country. It is a bureaucracy that does not need to be there. So let us get rid of the bureaucracy, which will do a couple of things. It will free up more money for buying food and actually getting food to kids, and very different from all of the other block grants, this is one where we then went through and we said OK, we are going to increase spending. Other block grants, Governors have come back to us and said if you get rid of all of the rules and regulations, all of the red tape, we can deliver the same level of service at 90 percent of the dollars, 95 percent of the dollars, and we said well in school lunch, it is too risky, we want to make sure that these kids are fed. We are going to give them a 4\1/2\ percent increase for each of the next 5 years. So we thought fine, we have gotten rid of the red tape, the rules and regulations, the bureaucracy. They are getting more money. This cannot be controversial.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I am well aware of what went on with school lunch. It came out of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. So we are significantly going to grow. We are expecting that we are going to have reform, so we are going to be able to deliver the same if not better health care to our seniors than what we are getting today. So we have an opportunity to go through programs, yes, we are going to have to downsize and eliminate some programs. We are going to have an opportunity to go after waste, fraud and abuse more aggressively, but as we take those savings some of those will go toward deficit reduction, others of those dollars will go towards programs we have identified as having a high priority, and we are still going to be getting increased revenue. So we are going to be spending more money in 7 years than what we are today, and all we have to do is now manage ourselves and discipline ourselves over the next 7 years and we will get to a place where we wanted to be for a long period of time.