Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the Busy Bee Restaurant closes for good on Sunday night. It marks the end of an incredible 33-year run for the Polish-American diner nestled like a robin's egg under the L tracks at 1546 N. Damen. The Busy Bee always held the promise of spring for old men from the Elm Park and Viceroy hotels. The Busy Bee was for the late Abbie Hoffman, who recommended its affordable menu for anti-war demonstrators; it was also for Mayor Harold Washington, who loved the diner's oxtail stew. The Busy Bee was for one-armed piano player Eddie Balchowsky, a friend of two-fisted running partner Nelson Algren. The Busy Bee was for Shakespeare District cops, particularly Officer William Jaconetti, who wrote the prose for the framed, weatherproof plaque that police and community members installed Thursday outside the restaurant. The Busy Bee was for everyone. The loss stings. Jaconetti became a Chicago cop in 1968, the year all the Busy Bee's windows were broken in West Side riots. In part, the plaque reads: ``The American Dream was fulfilled by many who came to the Wicker Park; Bucktown neighborhood for over 100 years. Arriving in the neighborhood in 1965 was Sophie Madej who purchased the Busy Bee Restaurant in 1972. Sophie, a married lady with four children, had come from Poland in 1951, worked at a Chicago packing house for 10 years, saved her money and bought the restaurant . . .'' For 33 years, Sophie served her customers pierogis, homemade spinach soup, meatloaf and stuffed green peppers, all seasoned with love and understanding. ``Sophie is the pioneer of this neighborhood,'' Jaconetti said. ``They talk about community policing? It starts at a multicultural place like this. We will miss her. At tough times, she was always here for the police. For every Bulls victory, for every demonstration, for the Rolling Stones concert (at the nearby Double Door) she stayed open so the police would have somewhere to go. We're all friends with these people. This didn't happen because it was a business. She did something special. She opened the doors to everyone.'' Sophie had put the restaurant on the market before. This time it made sense. Sophie turns 70 on July 5. She wants to retire and visit her homeland. In 1943, Sophie was moved to Germany under the Nazis' forced- labor laws. She met her husband, Henry, in 1946 (they divorced in 1985) in Germany, where they remained until 1951, when Catholic Charities gave the young couple $100 to sponsor their voyage to America. They arrived in the United States with the cash, two children and two suitcases. The new owner, Mitch Gerson, will close the Busy Bee, remodel it and upscale the 16 apartments above the restaurant. Sophie whispered, ``He has to do it that way. There's no way he can compete with this.'' There's no way Gerson's grand opening can compete with the Busy Bee's closing. Sunday will be just another day and nothing special will happen at 6 p.m. when Sophie closes the doors for the last time. The Busy Bee has been buzzing with adoration for the Madej family over the last two weeks. Sophie and three of her children, Elizabeth, 50, Hank, 47, and Bob, 46, have been working around the clock at the crowded diner, where in recent days there has been a half-hour wait to be seated. (Her fourth child, Chester, 44, works for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency in Boulder, Colo.) By noon on Thursday, the restaurant had run out of pierogis. Cops, friends and neighbors arrived, most of them taking pictures so they could hold onto the sense of community. Other people brought Sophie bouquets and flowers. ``I never knew people cared like this,'' Sophie said. ``Never. The first time I walked into the restaurant after I bought it, I asked myself and God if I could make it for a year or two. That was my biggest question. And this became my home. We've had all our family gatherings in the restaurant. But it's time to let go and move on.'' John Schacht sat across the counter from Sophie, listening to her talk like a doting son. Schacht, a painter-photographer, lives in a trailer in the woods of southwest Iowa. He took a train to Chicago so he could have one last meal at the Busy Bee. Schacht, 60, is a third- generation customer. When Sophie bought the restaurant, it was already called the Busy Bee--renamed from the Oak Room, its name when it was built in 1913. ``My dad would come before his shift as a bouncer at the Bucket O' Blood Saloon on North Avenue,'' Schacht said. ``The first time I came in here was 1946. The neighborhood has changed. Around 1972, I was walking home from Sophie's and walked right into crossfire with two street gangs. . . . I'm sad to see Sophie go, but I'm glad to see her retiring. She's been working for all the years I've known her.'' Sophie has seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. The hardest question to ask is why the restaurant couldn't stay in the family. ``That is tough,'' Bob Madej said. ``It's not an easy business. You're here 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I've been part of this since I was in high school, mopping floors with my brother. ``Maybe something could have been worked out a few years ago where one of the sons could have taken it over. But it didn't happen. And it's best now. There's no strings attached. We're all set. And Mom's happy. Now she'll have time to spend with the grandchildren and great- grandchildren. And that's important'' Bob, a district manager for Superior Coffee, paused and looked across the counter. ``I met my wife (Teresa) here,'' Bob said. ``I was working behind the counter when she walked in. Her sister was working in the kitchen. Maybe it won't be as emotional for my mom . . . But I have a lot of memories here, too.'' It's important for future Wicker Park residents to understand the memories within the walls of the restaurant. That is the purpose of the commemorative plaque. On Thursday, through an old white bullhorn, Jaconetti read the plaque honoring the Busy Bee. Sophie watched, her head bowed in humility. She cradled her 1-year-old great-grandson Anthony, who someday will hear stories about his grandmother's great restaurant. Her hard thumbs fidgeted nervously as Jaconetti reached the last sentence on the plaque. ``. . . She may be gone from the Busy Bee, but not from our memories and hearts.'' And honey-soaked tears fell from the eyes of a city's queen bee.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, let us take a look at the record. Let us take a look at the judge who has had supervision of the consent decree for the last 9 years, since 1989. How does he feel about the Teamsters and Teamster leadership in 1998? Here is what he said to the Teamster lawyers in court on Tuesday: ``I believe it is time for the good members of this Union to rise up in revolt. This Union has been run by a small group for their own benefit. I want to hear what the membership thinks. It is time for the good members to rise up and revolt against the self-serving, little men in charge.'' To the attorney, ``You don't really speak for the Union. You speak for a small minority,'' Edelstein told Weich. ``I can understand the wrath of Congress. They don't trust the Teamsters because of the Union's history of squandering taxpayer money. I'm going to get to the root of this evil. And if you don't have Sever here by noon, I will send the marshals for him.'' The same type of stonewalling that this union leadership is imposing in New York in the Federal court is the same pattern of stonewalling that they are doing to this congressional committee, and the shame of it is we have funded this union and we have spent approximately $20 million and this is their thank you to the American taxpayer.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding this time to me. I would like to just insert for the Record a July 23, 1998, letter from Anthony Sutin, who is the Acting Assistant Attorney General, who highlights in his letter that we have not jeopardized investigations. As a matter of fact, his quote: We appreciate the subcommittee's cooperation in accommodating our law enforcement interests in the conduct of this oversight investigation. We have consistently made sure in our efforts that we do not jeopardize what is going on in the courts, and we are complementing that effort, not jeopardizing that effort. We have been very, very conscious, and I think the gentleman from Wisconsin knows that because he has been in some of the discussions whenever there has been a conflict or when the Southern District has raised a concern. I think the one time they raised a concern we actually sat down with the minority and talked about that and jointly reached a decision that we would not proceed along that direction. The letter in its entirety is as follows: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legislative Affairs, Washington, DC, July 23, 1998. Hon. Peter Hoekstra, Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Education and the Workforce, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Chairman: This responds to your letter, dated July 15, 1998, regarding the Subcommittee's oversight investigation about the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and, particularly, the Committee's subpoena to the Department for tapes relating to our on-going law enforcement action regarding IBT. As you know, the tapes were produced late on July 9, 1998, after service of the subpoena earlier on that date. We appreciate the Subcommittee's cooperation in accommodating our law enforcement interests in the conduct of this oversight investigation. We also would like to resolve the apparent misunderstanding about the Department's actions in response to the subpoena. The Department undertook substantial efforts to assess our interests in this matter, which is consistent with our usual processes in response to congressional subpoenas. It is our long-standing practice to consider Department interests, such as law enforcement and individual privacy, among others, as well as a congressional committee's needs in responding to requests for information, including subpoenas. While the process in this instance included consultation with the United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, the Department's response to the Subcommittee was neither dictated nor delayed by that Office. Indeed, the Department's same day response to the subpoena could not have occurred without the significant efforts of that Office. It also should be noted that the United States Attorney obtained the tapes for law enforcement purposes and to facilitate the Committee's access by producing copies of them, and certainly not to thwart the Committee's access to them in any way. Because the IBT was to receive a complete copy of the tapes, production of the tapes to the United States Attorney and the Federal Bureau of Investigation could not possibly relieve the IBT of any obligation to respond to the Subcommittee's subpoena. Congressional subpoenas are taken very seriously by the Department in every instance and we recognize a committee's authority to issue compulsory process when required in the exercise of its legitimate oversight functions. In some cases, subpoenas represent a collision of interests between the executive and legislative branches. Such a collision often can be mitigated through informal discussions designed to accommodate the needs of both branches, predicated upon an appropriate sense of comity between them. This also permits their representatives to scrutinize carefully the interests and needs of both branches so that satisfactory agreements can be reached. We regret that this particular subpoena did not permit us an opportunity to pursue such informal discussions; indeed, as far as we are aware, forthwith subpoenas are unprecedented in our relationship with Congress. Based upon our subsequent conversations with counsel, we look forward to working with the Subcommittee productively as this inquiry proceeds and hope that the misunderstandings of this experience can be avoided in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like additional information about this or any other matter. Sincerely, L. Anthony Sutin, Acting Assistant Attorney General.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I would just like a copy as soon as they ever get delivered to the House.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding time. Just to clarify some of the remarks from my colleague who sits on the subcommittee. ``Close to impairing an investigation.'' Give me a break. We went through negotiations and discussions with the Southern District in New York. We never came close to impairing an investigation. We went through that process. We went through that process with them in a very diligent way and never even came close to impairing that investigation. Talking about these amateurs that are going to interrogate witnesses. The minority knows very well the kind of people that we need to have interviews and discussions with. What are we taking a look at? We are taking a look at very technical information. Where did $150 million of net worth from the Teamsters go over a period of 5 years? Rank-and-file Teamsters would like to know. We would like to know. How did they launder $1 million? How did they manipulate pension funds? We have got a specialist who was hired to do exactly that. It is a forensic auditor. We want a forensic auditor to go through it in detail. The forensic auditor and the staff needs to go through piles and piles of data, very technical data so that we can move forward. We had a hearing where the IBT and Grant Thornton and the auditors brought in their people. They would not allow us to talk to them before the hearing. They came in and they had wonderful answers. ``Oh, you were interested in that kind of information? Boy, you really ought to talk to so and so. I can't answer that question.'' The end result is they delay and they set back our progress at getting to this kind of information.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, is it a rule of the House that documents that are to be entered in the record should be in the House?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I thank the gentleman for leading the effort on this change to the rules. Let us just go through the process. In 1989, the IBT, because of massive influence by organized crime, was put under a consent decree with the Justice Department. In 1996, they held an election. In the summer of 1997, there were severe questions about the validity of that election. I stood up and said, do not certify that election until all the objections have been investigated. The minority did not participate. Shortly after that, the election was overturned. It was an election that cost the American taxpayer $20 million, was administered by an election officer under a consent decree at the same time that an independent review board was looking at the Teamsters. There, maybe, would be some questions about how, with all this oversight, could we not even run a fair election. But, no, the other side does not believe that that is an important question to ask. Shortly after that, in August of 1997, the election was overturned. At that point in time, I suggested that the winner of that election, the now disqualified president, maybe, should resign or remove himself from office. Some on the other side thought that that was a radical step, a witch-hunt. On Monday of this week, the independent review board removed that official, Mr. Carey, from the Teamsters for life. Early in 1998, one of the new improvements that was put in place was to make sure that the Teamsters were acting in the best interest of their members. Why? Because we had exposed that their net worth had decreased from $157 million to $700,000. Why? Because we had identified that, perhaps, there had been pension fraud. Why? Because there had been three people who had plead guilty to laundering a million dollars of Teamsters rank and file money through the process back to benefit Mr. Carey. This independent financial auditor, what did we find out? We found out that he was not much more than a bookkeeper. Very qualified, but not empowered to do the kind of work that needed to be done. It only cost the rank and file Teamsters around $60,000 a month, I believe. What else do we know? What would we like to know? Have you heard reports that documents are being shredded at the IBT headquarters on a recent weekend? That was this past weekend. We have been informed that two IBT employees wearing green uniforms delivered an industry size shredder to the office of the IBT communications director, Matt Witt, during the week of July 13, 1998, and that the noise of the shredder operating in that office could be heard on Saturday, July 18, when Mr. Witt was in the building. There is no corruption going on at the Teamsters. These people are acting in the best interest of the rank and file. They are acting in the best interest of the taxpayers since we have paid for this. Sorry. Wrong. What did Mr. Edelstein say, the judge who has been watching these people for 9 years? He believes it is time for the good members of this union to rise up and revolt. Rather than aggressively going after and exercising our responsibilities, the minority says, no, let us not go too fast. This is a witch-hunt. This is protecting the rank and file interest of the Teamsters. The nice thing about this investigation is that rank and file Teamsters are rising up in revolt, and they are sending us documents. They are sending us complaints because many of them believe that the only people who have been acting in their best interests is this subcommittee, because we have been focused on rank and file, and we are not focused on the people in the marble palace over here who are not a rightfully elected leadership, but who are all part of a failed leadership, and they are all part of a discredited election. We are not indebted to the people who write the political action committee checks out of that building to people in this building. It is time for us to move forward. It is time for us to take a look at why all of this that has been put in place on the Teamsters, all this government intervention is not working the way that it should be. Staff deposition authority, there are all kinds of protections built into the rules of our committee. The witnesses will be protected. They will be accompanied by counsel. The counsel will have the opportunity to review all transcripts. The minority will be advised 3 days before any staff depositions are taken. This power is needed because, even though Mr. Severs came in and said I will do everything that I can to help move this investigation forward as quickly as possible, what does that mean that he does? It does not mean that he voluntarily sends people to interview with our staff prior to a hearing. He says, I will only let people come if it is in a formal hearing setting. No, I am not going to help you go through these piles of documents to find out where $157 million went. I am not going to help you find out how we laundered a million dollars. As a matter of fact, he is not helping us. He is not even helping his own rank and file. When we ask Mr. Severs, what investigation do you have going on? He said, I am not doing anything. Three people have plead guilty. His former bosses has been expelled from the union. This leadership is doing absolutely nothing. It is time for Congress to continue and let this committee move forward with its work.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, if they have asked for unanimous consent, should I not have access to those documents when they are inserted?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, have they been delivered?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have inquired, and the documents are not available.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, if the document has been inserted for the record, should the Clerk or someone have the document?

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, last Friday, July 24, 1998, is a day that none of us will ever forget for many reasons, but mostly for the heroism displayed by Officer Jacob J. Chestnut and Special Agent John M. Gibson. Mere words cannot express our gratitude for their actions, our grief for their fates or our sorrow for their families. To the families of Officer Chestnut and Special Agent Gibson, we offer our most heartfelt condolences and pray that God provides comfort and assurance to you in your time of need. When the House of Representatives is in session, we enter this building many times a day. Usually, we offer a nod or an off-hand comment to the officers at the entrance and they respond in kind. Sometimes, we are in a rush or preoccupied and may not say anything. But it must be made clear that we appreciate the work these officers do. So, to all of the officers of the Capitol Police force, all I can say is ``Thank You.'' It's only a two-word phrase, but it means so much. You are not taken for granted. Our prayers are with you and for your continued safety.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. The question today before us is not only the question of life or death for thousands of partially born children in our country, but it is also a question of who we are as a people. What kind of people are we? What kind of people are we when we are so unwilling to defend the smallest, most helpless and vulnerable among us? Partial-birth abortion is a sick, gruesome procedure. It is a violation of the most basic of human rights. It is a violation of the right to the gift of life. We shudder when we see brutality in warring nations, we shudder when he hear stories of genocide and ethnic cleansing, we shudder when we see pain and torture and death around the world. But do we shudder when we consider the reality of partial-birth abortion? Do we shudder to think that here in the United States this is a legal procedure? The President has acted out of a cold disregard for human life. His veto is a shameful act and it is unacceptable.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I would encourage my colleagues to read the report that we issued last year: A Creative and Generous America, The Healthy State of the Arts in America. Because the arts in America are healthy. What is failing is the continued failure of the National Endowment for the Arts. It is not a broad-based program. The NEA has failed in its primary mission to make that happen. More than one-third of NEA funds go to six cities, and one-third of all congressional districts fail to get any direct funding. That means one-third of America does not even see the NEA. In short, the NEA makes up a minuscule portion of arts support in America. There is no credible evidence that the NEA has had anything to do with the recent growth and explosion in the arts. It is a failed small agency. And before my colleagues say how well it works, just a year ago 63 percent of NEA grantees could not reconcile their project costs, 79 percent had inadequate documentation of personnel costs, and 53 percent had failed to engage independent auditors. This agency needs to be overhauled if not eliminated.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, today I rise in support of the Coburn amendment. Last month myself and 14 of my colleagues sent a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. We did that because we wanted to take issue with a report that they publicized. In that report, they described the abortion drug RU-486 as ``safe.'' This report is being cited as a landmark study by the advocates of RU- 486 as proof of the safety and the effectiveness of the drug. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, that is a bizarre conclusion, given the facts. The authors reported that RU-486 ``. . . has been reported to be a teratogenic in humans.'' What does that mean? In plain English, it means the drug causes developmental malformations, or birth defects. Unfortunately, the authors mention this almost as an afterthought. Given the possibility that this two-drug hit in RU-486 may cause birth defects unless drug-induced abortion occurs, the authors secured a commitment, they secured a commitment from all the participants to submit to a surgical abortion in the event the drugs fail. The authors apparently sought to preempt the possibility of a participant having second thoughts after the administration of the drug, and their unborn child eventually being born with a skull deformity or some other birth defect. There were 106 women who were administered the drugs, but they were not included in the final assessment phase of the study. The authors do not know, they do not know, whether any of these women who were administered the drug changed their minds and decided to carry their child to full term. The authors do not know whether a child or a number of children were born with a developmental malformation due to the administration of the drug, even though they stated that such a possibility may exist. The authors claim that the two-drug regimen is effective in terminating pregnancies. This is a very selective choice of words, because what these drugs do is they are designed to kill human life. We are disappointed with the authors' insensitivity to the drug's full impact. At least 2,121 unborn children died because of the drugs administered during this study. The fact that this two-drug regimen was able to kill innocent human lives is nothing to celebrate. We recognize the authors' intent in maintaining a narrow focus in their study, but when at least 4,242 people are involved in an experiment involving life or death, it would seem only appropriate that those executing the experiment assess the impact of the drugs on all of the study's participants, both the born and the unborn. For these reasons, it is entirely inappropriate for the FDA to grant final approval for RU-486. For those reasons, it is also totally appropriate for my colleagues to support the Coburn amendment.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The company I used to work for, it was always the fifth year of our annual plan, we would be a billion-dollar company. They finally reached it a couple of years after I left there. But a billion- dollar company makes the Fortune 500 list. There are probably about 270, 280 on the Fortune 500 list. A billion-dollar company employs, at least in the industry that I was in, employs somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 to 6, 7,000 people, not counting the people who distributed the products, not counting the people who supplied to our company. A billion dollars is a big number.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As an introduction to I think where you are headed and what you want to talk about is a GAO report. Just to give a little bit of background, I think you know that we have been working on a project which we call the American Worker at a Crossroads. It parallels an activity that we have which is Education at a Crossroads. For the last 6 to 8 months, we have had a special group of people taking a look at what is going on in the American workplace and taking a look at the appropriateness of American labor law. Another thing that we asked the staff to do is we said, ``Take a look at our spending in the Labor Department.'' The Labor Department gets about 29 to $30 billion a year, of which about $12 billion is discretionary, meaning that you and I every year have to vote on where that money is going to be spent and approve it on an annual basis. The staff got together. They met with the different departments within the Labor Department. They had staff interviews. They went to a number of different agencies to get a handle on where this $12 billion goes. After a period of time we were reviewing this, and they said, ``Pete, we've got a problem. We've taken a look at the $12 billion of spending, we've met with the Labor Department, we've talked to a lot of different people, and we can only account for about 75 to 80 percent. Nobody can tell us where 100 percent of this money goes.'' It is kind of like, ``Whoa.'' This is 3 to $4 billion a year that nobody really knows where it goes. This is not talking about effectiveness or efficiency or anything like that. ``They just cannot tell us, Mr. Hoekstra, this money goes to this department for this agency to do this thing, and these are the people who receive the money.'' So we said, ``Let's call the General Accounting Office.'' We called the General Accounting Office. They came over, because I thought maybe I got the wrong staff. I mean, how can you not know where 3 or $4 billion goes?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think the gentleman is exactly right. When we have taken a look at the Education Department and when we have taken a look at the Labor Department, they cannot find or tell us where all the money went, and then we come back and we ask them specifically on program-by-program, give us some indication as to whether we are achieving the kind of results, the kind of effectiveness that we would like to have, and there are no benchmarks. We cannot go in and say this is what we are trying to do and these are the kinds of results that we are getting, so that the money we are actually spending is actually making a difference. So you are identifying, I think, some pretty scary stuff, because you are again identifying, we could not know where the money is going, so that is almost an immediate savings that you could identify that says if we do not know where the money is going, we cannot be getting a whole lot of results for it. Then the second thing is you can overlay that even when we know where the money is being spent, we do not know the kind of results that we are getting. So if you put that in the context of the Labor Department, we do not know where 25 percent of the money goes, and for 75 percent we do not know whether we are getting the kind of results we want to have. In education we are spending $100 billion a year. We know that a good portion of that money stays with bureaucrats and bureaucracies, so that we know that that is not helping kids. And then you take a look the money that is actually filtering down with the strings that are attached to it. And, again, it may be a barrier to a local school, a teacher doing what they feel they need to do in their classroom, because the money comes and tells them what to do. So, again, we do not have an idea as to how effective those dollars are.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, we are doing some of the same types of things in the whole area of education. You start with a resolution, kind of like what you said, there will be consequences. In the education area we set a goal. We said that as a Republican Conference, or as a House, we passed a resolution here saying we want 95 cents of every education dollar to reach the classroom. Tomorrow in committee, we are going to be working on a dollars-to- the-classroom piece of legislation, which is going to take a number of programs and put them into opportunity grants so that the dollars now flow to the classroom, flow to the child, rather than flowing through bureaucracy. So we are making progress in moving along, in getting at these issues. So it is not just an issue of hey, look, it is broke. It is broke. We are working at constructively going after these problems, identifying why they have come up, how we can fix them, and now we are going through the legislative process of actually making a difference and changing the way things work in Washington.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, even with the small tax cuts we did last year, the family that the gentleman talked about earlier, it is $2,300 per year that they are going to save. It is $2,300 after taxes.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, what we are talking about here is putting accountability into government. I will give you an example. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) and I came here in 1993, and one of the first pieces of legislation that came out of the committee that I serve on was called Education and Labor, was the Corporation for National Service, AmeriCorp, a brand new agency. In 1995, I got responsibility for oversight for the Corporation for National Service. A brand new agency. It filtered in a couple of smaller agencies. In 1997 we did oversight. Because the President promised us this organization would be set up like the best in the private sector, I voted for this bill. 1997, none of their books were auditable, meaning that you could not take in an outside auditor and say that the money that came in from the American people and went to the Corporation for National Service was spent the way that it was intended to be spent. They could not tell us where the money went. It also set aside money for the scholarships that these kids earn for college. That was not auditable. It did not have integrity. What is the response you get? If you say we want to put accountability in, it is like you are against AmeriCorp. It is kind of like, no, we want to know where the American taxpayer money went. We are doing what you had to do in the private sector, what I had to do in the private sector; we had to put accountability into our organizations, and we had to put integrity into the financial structure, because if you do not have accountability and if you do not have integrity, you are out of business. And in Washington, these programs just run on forever.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman has just said it, not as much for Washington.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is right.