Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Thank you. Let me just give a little bit of a brief introduction about what we want to accomplish this evening. This is an election year. We are in the middle of a lot of rhetoric flying around. Those of us in Congress who want to focus on the real problems are finding it very difficult to break through what we call the clutter, the clutter and the noise. As Members of the Republican majority, we have grown accustomed to being called mean-spirited, radical. We are accused of being against women, children, and the elderly. We are accused of not caring for the poor or for the environment. In the middle of all this rhetoric, what is really going on? Many of my constituents, many of the American people, seem to be very confused. We want to take this hour to really set the record straight on what we are trying to do in this Congress. We want to focus on what we believe is the core issue that is defining this battle in Washington, that has defined the battle, really, from January 1995 to the present point. Many have thrown around labels. Some have called us extremists. But let us cast aside the labels for a little while. Let us cast aside the accusations and other typical Washington political jargon, and let us get down to the bottom of the debate. What are we really trying to do here? What is the core of the debate? We can go back to the 1930's, the New Deal. Ever since the 1930's Congress has placed more and more of its faith in Washington, its bureaucracy, its bureaucrats, and in its money, in its programs, and in its services. As we have done that, we have moved much of the decisionmaking away from parents, individuals, entrepreneurs, small businesses. What we have done is we have created a myth that too many people have come to believe, the belief in the Washington bureaucrat: A belief in Washington money, a belief in Washington programs, and that Washington services can solve many, if not all, of this Nation's problems. This is really what all the fuss is about. Since becoming the majority in Congress, Republicans have been attacking the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems. We know that few Americans believe in Santa Clause. Even fewer believe in the tooth fairy. But here in Washington, everyone seems to believe in the magical bureaucrat: this magical persons who can solve everyone's problems. It is as though we believe that bureaucrats are magicians and that by spending tax money, taxpayers' money, your money on programs and services, what can they do? they can raise and educate children better than parents. They can build communities. They build communities and homes better than parents or better than Habitat For Humanity; that they are better at creating effective, income-generating jobs; that they are better than entrepreneurs and small businesses. It is time for us to confront this bureaucratic myth. Blind faith in the Washington bureaucracy is hurting America. It is hurting America, in I believe four specific ways. First, the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems has created a belief that success is defined by spending money, success is defined by spending money and creating programs, not by the results that those programs or those dollars generate. Second, the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems has created the substitution effect, where people have a disincentive to take personal responsibility for their future and for themselves, where they have a disincentive to take care of their children and to participate in their community, because someone from Washington is supposed to do that; in other words, because a Washington magical bureaucrat is going to solve the problem, I do not have to exercise personal responsibility to solve it myself. The third is the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems has caused Congress to legislate to the lowest common denominator, creating one-size-fits-all programs which lower the standards. The minimum wage fight, I think, is an excellent example. Here we are debating a minimum wage, the lowest common denominator, instead of talking about increasing wages for everyone, which is the highest common denominator. Instead of focusing on the ideal, we are willing to lower the standard for everyone. Finally, the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems has cost the American taxpayers trillions and trillions of dollars. If it were inexpensive to believe that magical bureaucrats actually exist, we could keep spending money on the myth, but it is costing us. It is costing us, the taxpayers and working American families, big bucks, too many bucks to continue down this path. The myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems produces harmful thinking, it costs too much, it is hurting America in many different ways, and it is not working. It is not a budgetary problem, it is a cultural problem: Magical bureaucrats substituting for parents, magical bureaucrats shoving everyone into one-size-fits-all programs, magical bureaucrats defining success by the dollars they spend, instead of the results they achieve, magical bureaucrats doing all this with trillions and trillions of dollars that working Americans pay every year in taxes. We will never restore fiscal and moral sanity to our Nation until we destroy this blind faith in Washington to solve our problems. Why is it so hard to balance the budget? Because Washington believes the myth, Washington perpetuates the myth, and Washington works every day trying to convince American people that the myth is real. Why is it so hard to reform Medicare? Because Washington believes the myth and sells the myth. Why is it so hard to improve environmental laws? Because Washington believes the myth and perpetuates the myth. Why is it so hard to eliminate the Department of Education? Because Washington believes the myth and sells the myth each and every day that magical bureaucrats sitting at desks in Washington educate kids better than parents and better than teachers, and have more caring for local students than parents and local school boards. Why is it so hard to eliminate the Department of Housing? Because Washington believes the myth that magical bureaucrats sitting at desks in Washington build communities more effectively than local citizens or than organizations like Habitat for Humanity. We cannot continue down this path. With this introduction, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neuman].

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I would like to move on and talk briefly about what the gentleman introduced, which was the issue of education. I think when Senator Gramm actually got into a little bit of a debate with a bureaucrat from the Department of Education, who said that I think I know more about educating your kids and I care more about educating your kids than what you do, his retort was if you know so much about my kids, what are their names? I do not know that much about your kids was the answer. But you know, that is the other myth that we are fighting here, that Washington bureaucrats, that a Washington bureaucracy cares more about the education of our kids than what parents in local communities do. This myth is also hurting America. It creates the illusion that the magical Washington education bureaucrat can substitute, think about it, that the people in Washington can substitute for parents and local teachers. The myth again creates the illusion that spending equals results. The more dollars you spend, the better results you are going to have. And the myth leads to policy designed for the lowest common denominator. Let us take a look at each one of those. The myth creates the illusion that many Washington education bureaucrats substitute for parents and local teachers. The myth assumes that parents have not addressed the major issues their children face, assumes that parents do not have the will to make the sacrifices on behalf of their children, assumes that parents do not have the knowledge and the expertise to solve their children's educational problems. Therefore, the magical Washington bureaucrat must step forward, meet the social obligations that families, citizens, local schools and communities are ignoring. The reality is that Federal programs displace parents and local initiatives and solutions. They drive parents out of the process. I have gone back and talked to parents, I have talked to local school administrators, and what you find is that the schools that work best are the ones that have the open door policy, that say any time a parent wants to come into their kid's school, the doors are open. But what has happened is more programs come from Washington, more mandates come from Washington, the end result is that administrators at the local level are starting to look more toward Washington for their direction about what they should be doing in their schools rather than looking to the parent and the local community for what should be going on in their schools. Once that link between the local community and the local school is broken, education goes only one way, and that is down, because once the local community no longer trusts the local schools because they do not reflect the values, the priorities, of the local community, the school system is lost. The myth creates the illusion that spending equals results. Hey, if you are spending $1 billion on the Save the Kids Program, you must be saving kids, right? Otherwise why would you spend those kinds of dollars and why would you have a program with that kind of name on it? The myth says the problem is not with the programs themselves, but with the taxpayers. According to the myth, the taxpayers never cared enough to increase taxes and spend money on these programs when they had control at the local level, and Washington had to step into the process. The myth says that the people who want change, those of us saying this does not work and what is ``this,'' what we have created here in Washington by showing that we care, it is kind of like what my colleague from Kansas described in the housing and urban development. What we have created here in Washington is 760 programs. We really care, 760 programs. We care even more, because we have created 40 agencies, departments, or commissions, and boy, we really care because we are spending $120 billion. But what is the reality of all of this spending? The reality at HUD was that we were going to improve America. The reality of 40 commissions, 760 programs, is SAT scores are dropping. In 1994, 17- year-olds scored 11 points worse in math than 1970. Sixty-six percent of 17-years-olds do not read at a proficient levels and reading scores have consistently fallen since 1962. U.S. students scored worse in math than all other large countries except Spain. Finally, freshmen, think about it, 30 percent of all college freshmen, think about it, 30 percent of all college freshmen must take remedial education classes. In 1996, despite the poor results in educational achievement, many of us that are advocating this, for saying take these dollars, move it to the parents, move it to local school districts, to get involved with the kids, we are extremists. We do not care when we say the system is broke. The myth, the reality that Washington is trying to perpetuate, is not reality. The reality is a failed program. It is a myth that we care. The myth leads us to develop policies that are for the lowest common denominator. We are not driving for excellence in education. We are trying to design something for the lowest common denominator. There are lots of problems here in education.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Let us talk about truth in budgeting. This country is $4.9 trillion in debt, rapidly moving to $5.5 trillion in debt. That is truth in budgeting. This is an effort by one group to grab dollars, to grab turf and to expand its power. What do we need in 1996? We need people to step up, to be part of the solution, not to walk away and be part of the problem. What is reality? This bill is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This bill represents the effort of one group to get into its lifeboat, its own small lifeboat. Some may call the special interest group or this group of special interests selfish. I do not know if it is selfish. I do know it is wrong. A number of groups agree, the National Taxpayers' Union, the Citizens Against Government Waste, the Concord Coalition, the Citizens for a Sound Economy. We do not need another entitlement. We do need a Congress willing to make tough decisions to protect future generations and to stand up to special interest groups.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his suggestion. We will pursue that.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Tonight I want to talk a little bit about actually building off the comments of my colleague about the need to downsize Government. I think we, as a Nation, have kind of become afflicted with what I call the myth of the magic bureaucrat. What is the magic bureaucrat, or what is the myth of the magic bureaucrat? The myth of the magic bureaucrat is the widely accepted belief that Government bureaucrats spending taxpayer money can solve all of our Nation's problems. More importantly, the description says that a magic bureaucrat is more able to spend our money more effectively than what the taxpayer can. Why is this a myth? The magic bureaucrat is a myth because it is popular and it is a widely held belief, but it is fundamentally untrue and unsustainable by objective reality. Who believes this myth? Mr. Speaker, I believe that the President and many other policy-makers in Washington believe this myth. What does a magic bureaucrat do? A magic bureaucrat creates illusions like David Copperfield and the great Houdini. Tonight we want to just talk about two of these great illusions that have been created by the magic bureaucrat. Mr. Speaker, we had hearings on one of these today at the oversight subcommittee. Bureaucrats at the corporation for national service, they are trying to convince the committee, they are trying to convince the American people, that a Federal corporation can do a better job of volunteerism and community service than actual volunteers in the community and actual nonprofit organizations that have been a heritage of this Nation for as long as we have been in existence. That is the myth, that they can do it better. The reality is they cannot do volunteerism, they cannot do community service. As a matter of fact, what we pointed out in the hearing today is they cannot even keep the books straight. A second myth is one that has been perpetuated or is being developed by the bureaucrats at the Department of Education, and that is that the Department of Education can do Federal loans or student loans more effectively than the private sector. We have a colleague here who would like to just describe that illusion for us.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. These are just 2 examples: The Corporation for National Service, the direct lending program. There are many more. Bureaucrats at the Commerce Department know another myth is that the bureaucrats at the Commerce Department know how to create high-skilled, high-paying jobs better than American entrepreneurs, that bureaucrats at the Department of Education know better than parents, and teachers, and local schools how to run a tutoring or mentoring program in their local community. The bottom line is who pays for these magic shows? It is the American people. It is you and I. How much have we spent? Trillions. The real question that the American people have to ask is can we afford any more of these shows. You be the judge. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting. The Secretary of education has moved this into the political arena and has identified the government shutdown, the weather as being reasons why they have this tremendous backlog. In reality, the reason for this backlog is last fall the department was late in developing the new forms. They had some severe computer start-up problems. The Secretary of Education had the authority, actually had the responsibility to keep the people working who worked on the student loan program during the government shutdown but decided not to have those people employed and to furlough them even though they are on permanent appropriations. As oversight chairman, we challenged that decision by the Secretary of Education. The OMB came back and instructed the Secretary of Education that their application of government rules and regulations was being applied inappropriately, that these people should be at work, and so now to come back and put the blame on Congress is totally inappropriate. I think the gentleman brings out another good point here because we had a hearing today. We had a hearing on the Corporation for National Service. The same thing that is going on with the student loan program is going on with the Corporation for National Service, the student loan program is mismanaged, mismanagement of financial resources. Corporation for National Service, $500 million per year of taxpayers' spending, the books for 1994, the books for 1995 are not auditable. This is not just student loans, this is a pattern of mismanagement of tax dollars throughout a number of different agencies through the Federal bureaucracy. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Just in closing, at the beginning of the year we got together and talked about what our vision was for our committee, where we wanted to drive the education agenda. We started out not with the bureaucracy, not with the dollars, not with the number of programs. We started out with the kids. We said, we know what works in schools. We know what works in educating kids. We need to empower kids. We need to empower parents to get involved in their kids' education. We need to take a look at whether the bureaucracy and the 40 Federal programs and the $120 billion, whether all that influence out of Washington is empowering parents, enabling students, or whether it is getting in the way. Are the programs getting in the way between parents and the local school board, so the school board looks more to Washington than they do to parents? We are focused on kids. We are focused on good education. We have the same goals in mind. We just have a different way of getting there.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I would tend to agree with the gentleman.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will further yield, I just want to add a couple of things. We really are talking about focusing on how do we make kids scholars, the quote from Christine Todd Whitman. You would think if we were focusing on making kids scholars we would go through those 760 programs and say, the problem is we just have too many programs focused on science, or too many focused on reading and math, and we ought to really just consolidate that. I will bet there are a lot of science programs there, a lot of reading, and a lot of math. That is what we want kids to excel in. Seven hundred and sixty programs. The number of programs for arts promotion and education, and arts are important, are 39. What I did not know is that the arts are more important than science. We only have 28 programs promoting science. But it is good, science is twice as important as reading, because for reading, we only have 14 programs. We know that reading is more important than math, because for math, out of 760 programs, we have all of 9 programs. So we have 28 for science, 14 for reading, 9 for math, 39 for the arts. There is one other little program in there that you ought to know. I guess it is not Monday night, but for those who have the TV's that you get the menu, and if you figure out how to use it, you can also put closed captioning on. Out of those 760 programs, there is an option that is provided to you by the Department of Education for closed captioning of ``Baywatch.'' So when you turn on ``Baywatch'' on whatever night it is on, you can go through your menu, and you push the button that allows you to watch it with the closed captioning on. It will say at the bottom, at the beginning of the program, ``Brought to you by funding through the Department of Education.'' So the reading scores are not what they ought to be, math is not what it ought to be, science is not what it ought to be. I am not even sure, they may even classify that as a reading program. Tell your kid to go watch ``Baywatch'' and turn on the captioning, and read the words going along on the bottom of the page.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, the Secretary of Education has said that the forms are not available because the Government shutdown. Is that correct?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Good idea, let's audit the books. I bet you had that done, Mr. Goodling, when you were on the school board. You had your books audited. But this a Fortune 500 company. So I called my stockbroker today, and I was going through a scenario with him, and I said, ``If you know of a Fortune 500 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange that had the auditors come in for their yearly audit,'' and, we are benchmarking against business excellence. Actually it is the business minimum. ``And the auditors came back and were going to announce publicly that the books and the financial systems were in such disarray that the auditors could not audit the books, what would happen?'' My stockbroker is trying to figure out what company this is. He says, ``Well, No. 1 is trading of that stock would be suspended immediately. When trading opened on it, the price of the stock would plummet, because shareholders, the brokers, the employees would have no idea of what the financial stability of that company would be. The CFO would be fired immediately. The rest of the executive team would be brought in front of the board of directors to explain how they got to this point and come up with a corrective action, not 60 days, not 90 days, but what are you going to do now?'' Well, what we are going to find later on this week is that for our $500 million corporation, the Corporation for National Service, the books are unauditable for 1994, and we are going to find and discover that for 1995 the auditing company has basically said, ``We do not think it is appropriate to invest any money in even taking a look at the books, because from what we have seen, they have not changed their procedures and they are still running on the same outdated models of what they are using in 1994.'' Think about it. Finally, when by broker said, ``Who is it,'' I said, ``It is the Corporation for National Service.'' His response was ``Oh. That is government.'' It is expected. That is why we are going to go through those 760 programs. We have got a $500 million program where the books cannot be audited. That is not Washington's money, that is the parents' money who decided to send it or were told they had to send their money to Washington, and not use it at home for their family and their own kids' education. We are entrusted with that money, and we cannot even meet the minimum standards for what a corporation is. And this is Government at its best. If this happened to a publicly held company, it would be the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Because it is Government, it is going to be a footnote on page 10, and it is going to be ``Oh, there they go again. This is what we expect.'' We have got to set a higher standard. We are going to go through those 760 programs, and we are going to see whether there are any more like this, and we are going to see whether they are effective, whether they are efficient, whether they are getting the kind of results we want, and whether they are even the Federal Government's role. We will still have the debate about whether AmeriCorps is appropriate or not. When they are using $500 million like this, they should not get one more dollar until they come back in front of us and convince us they have put in place the changes that are necessary. I do not think they have a chief financial officer right now that has an accounting or finance background.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I am sure you will. I was warned about what might happen with this program. Many of my colleagues were correct. The reason I am bringing this up is because it returns $1.25 and $1.50, is what the speakers before us talked about. Here is what was said about AmeriCorp that maybe helped me decide I should vote for it and give it a chance. In 1993, April 30, Bill Clinton said, ``We are going to set up a National Service Corporation that will run like a big venture capital outfit, not like a bureaucracy.'' President Bill Clinton, April 30, 1996: The National Service Corporation Act will establish an innovative entrepreneurial Corporation for National Service to offer Americans educational awards in return for vital service to our country. The corporation is designed to cut waste, promote excellence in government, encourage locally driven initiatives, and create flexibility. Here is what the new Chairman of the Corporation for National Service said in his confirmation hearings in October of 1995. ``At our corporation, we want to do what any business person would do, and that is make our product the best it can be.'' Sometimes we get critiqued for actually going and taking a look at these 760 programs. AmeriCorp is a good reason why we go and take a look. There was a press conference today and some reforms were announced on AmeriCorp. But there was one reform not announced today that I am very, very disappointed and upset about. Later on this week, we have gotten some preliminary documents and the President of the Corporation for National Service, Harris, sent us a letter telling us what this document is going to be. It is a requirement the Corporation for National Service, a $500 million corporation, which would put it into the Fortune 500, it has to have its books audited. Fairly reasonable. Buck, you are a business guy.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. In time, also just happens to be the largest funded program of those 760 programs. So for a program that is a half a billion dollars, we cannot keep the books. Whey you get to a program, the Federal family -- or Federal family education loans, $18 billion. I am not--you know, I do not think we have to audit those books. I would love to have an accounting firm take a look at those books. Mr. Speaker, if we cannot manage $500 million, these have to be a disaster. We have a clue. The books are probably bad, because they cannot even print the forms on time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, the Federal family education loans, I mean just printing the documents which were the things that were late, why it is not available, printing documents is not that tough. We talked a little bit about Americorps not meeting the minimum requirements to be auditable. FFEL, the Federal Family Education Loan Program where they cannot print the applications so that----

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for giving us this opportunity. I have got good news, bad news, and some more good news. The good news is there are a lot of people around the country that recognize we have this difficulty, and on the chart up there we are focusing too much on the dollars spent. We are focusing too much on the Washington Bureaucracy and not spending enough time talking about students and teachers. Christy Todd Whitman, the Governor of New Jersey, in her State of the State Address, identified the problem that my colleague from California was talking about: We must stop chasing dollars and start creating scholars. We found that in the hearings that we have done in Chicago and Milwaukee and around the country, one goes into a successful school and says, ``What is making your school work? How come your kids are scoring better than the national average?'' They don't come back and say, ``It is this program, it is title I out of Washington that has really made the difference.'' They said, ``We have got even parents involved in the schools, and these are some of the toughest neighborhoods in Chicago. We have parents involved in the school. We have liberated teachers and principals to create special programs for special needs.'' You started talking to them about Washington programs, and they started talking about the bureaucracy. Even Secretary of Labor Reich, I think one of the staunchest defenders of the status quo here in Washington, said we must stop throwing money at education and training programs that do not work. There is a realization that focusing on the bureaucracy and dollars is not where we should be, and we need to start talking about what is going to help kids, parents, and help the kids become scholars. In my role as chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, I get the opportunity to identify some of the ancedotal things that we find. The gentleman from California [Mr. McKeon] identified the 9-pound document for title IV. I was going to multiply 9 pounds times 6,500, and it is in the tons of documents. That is why we need these big buildings. Mr. Speaker, one of the other anecdotal things we found in the drug free schools, somebody had spent $1,000 preparing all of the paperwork and writing the applications and filling out the grant requests. By golly, we went out and helped them. They got a grant for $13. Now, it is kind of like somewhere in this process. Another example, and this does not directly relate to education, but this was in the Wall Street Journal today. A document roughly this size, nine pages, two-sided, actually this one is one-sided, it is nine pages, two-sided document, 1994, President's State of the Union speech. This is how Washington defines an emergency. It was 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon and the Labor Department said, ``We need to have these available to hand out before or after the President's State of the Union speech. It is so critical. We cannot do it in black and white. We better do it in color.'' They avoided all the Government regulations we have put in place about how to purchase and these things. We have a Government Printing Office. They went to Kinko's. I don't know if I can give advertisements, but it is in here, in the document. They went to Kinko's and said, ``Can you print this for us?'' Being the entrepreneurs they were, they said sure, but we are going to have two people working overnight to create these documents. So they said, ``This is an emergency. This 9-page document is an emergency and has to be ready. It is called the Middle Class Bill of Rights. It has to be ready tomorrow morning.'' The Government Printing Office could have printed it in 24 hours. Kinko's could do it in 12. Kinko's did it for the grand total of, 1,500 documents, they did it for the price of $21.33 apiece, $32,000. The Government Printing Office could have done it for $500. Now, I am not sure who is educating who here, but when you take the average family income for the American family today and you define a 9- page document as being an emergency, and you are willing to spend one family's entire income for the year to get that document out in 12 hours faster, I am not sure that we know best here in Washington. The bottomline on this bill is we do have a great chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, the gentleman from California [Mr. Thomas]. I am surrounded by Californians tonight. We had to approve that bill. He came back, and I have got to give him credit, he said, ``No, you went outside the rules. This does not meet my definition for an emergency. We are not going to pay it.'' The problem is right now Kinko's has not received their funding. But it was $32,000, or $21 a document, versus 33 cents. If I can have a couple of more minutes, because there was a lot of discussion about a program that, if I do not say it, my three colleagues will remind me very quickly that I voted for in 1993.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, here is what the Secretary of Labor said this morning on C-SPAN. ``This debate is not being driven by economic issues.'' I now know why the Secretary works for the Government. Everybody in the real world knows that a $4.9 trillion debt, that $200 billion deficits and that deficits as far out as the eye can see, those are economic issues. The Secretary then goes on to moan that Federal workers cannot volunteer, at the same time his department has been shutting down Salvation Army bell ringers. Let us have some consistency. Mr. Secretary, get out of the Washington puzzle palace into the real world. It will give you a better perspective on the issues and the solutions that we need to be making in America today.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I had much the same dialogue with a very good friend of mine back in Michigan. We were talking about head Start and said, you are taking money away from some of the neediest kids. I thought, well, I will come back, and I talked with the staff and said, give me the numbers on Head Start. We have gone through this earlier this year. We felt good about what we did. But some people have heard some things. Let me revisit the Head Start Program. Got the numbers and, kind of like 1989, we were spending $1.2 billion, $1.2 billion is a lot of money. I worked for a Fortune 500 company for 15 years. We tried to get to be a billion dollar company. They finally hit it this last year, and 5000 families depend on this company. It is a lot of money. But in 1989, $1.2 billion. Now 1995, we are spending $3.5 billion. So this program had tripled, almost tripled in the amount of dollars that were being spent. I think the chairman is an expert on this, but one of the things that has happened is, you would think that the number of kids being served by the program might have at least doubled or tripled just like the dollars, but the number of kids served has only gone up by 40 percent. Some of the studies that we have gotten back have said parts of this program are working. Some of it is not working, perhaps, or is not working quite as well as what we need. I think we did a very good thing. We basically stabilized the growth. We cut it by, what, by about 3 percent this year. So we are still spending 3.4 billion, and we said, this program has grown very, very quickly over the last number of years. We are getting mixed kinds of feedback. Let us step back and assess the program, see what is working, see what is not. Let us make sure that we do not just dump a lot of money on it. I think people too often, they have pealed the onion back. Just throwing dollars at these programs does not mean that they are accomplishing the goals that we have set out. I think that is the same thing that the gentleman was bringing out in his point.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. And I believe that it is not like our tax revenues are going to go down--I mean and let us see. We have got $175 billion deficit or a $160 billion deficit, and this year we spent $1.5 trillion, so our tax revenues must have been about $1.325 trillion, a lot. But $1.3 trillion rounding. In 7 years, we are going to have a balanced budget, we are going to do the positive kinds of tax reforms that you are talking about, and what is our revenue going to be? It will be $1.85 trillion. Tax revenues are going to go up, and they are going to go up significantly over the next 7 years even though we have made these tax reforms, so it is not like we are sitting here on a diet saying, ``Oh, boy, we're not going to be getting as much money in.'' We are going to be getting a lot more money and we are going to be getting almost $500 billion more per year into Washington in taxes in 7 years than what we are collecting this year. Some tax cut.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, we are working on this project to define or redefine the role of the Education Department in the future, and I think, as the staff, the committee has gone through that number you quoted, $27 billion in spending on education outside of the Education Department. I believe that the staff has come up with a number that says that number is closer to $80 to $100 billion. But that is the problem. We do not know where all of this money is which may be job security for me, but I think there is a role for oversight, significant oversight, and you know we have had some--we have had some very good hearings in trying to track down that kind of money, having the kind of expertise that my colleague from California and the enthusiasm that he brings for this issue I think means that we are going to have a good opportunity to manage our growth and significantly increase our effectiveness as we go through what is a more difficult process than I believe it has to be of trying to balance the budget.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think it is all of our vision. I am glad my colleague, the gentleman from California, brought up the District of Columbia. I think it is our vision that when educators from around the country come to Washington, they stop coming here trying to get their piece of the pie, their piece of the dollars, and they come here so they can learn about the District that we have some oversight on and say, ``Here is a district that we can learn from.'' Our vision is to have a school district that is turning out well- trained, well-educated kids, that is the envy of other school districts around the country, so they come here not for money but they come to learn from the school district we have in Washington here. We do not know whether those reforms are going to work, but we recognize that we have to do something, and we think these are constructive approaches that we can experiment with, that hopefully will make things better, and again, we will do the normal thing. We will build off of those things that work and eliminate those things that do not, but we are going to keep plugging at this. I thank the chairman for having this special order. I think we have been able to dispel some myths tonight and hopefully educate and share some knowledge with people.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the chairman for yielding. I would like to just reference some of the comments from my colleague from California. Not only is going from 298 and increasing by $12 billion, not only is that not catastrophic, not only is that not devastating, I believe that--and my principal can correct me, perhaps--I believe that in 99 percent of the country, every place but Washington, when you go from 298 and you go up by $12 billion, I believe every place else in the country that is not a cut. I believe that that is an increase. It is the same thing for a number of other programs. If I could just then talk a little bit about the bigger picture because also, in addition to serving on the Education and Economic Opportunity Committee, I also serve on the Budget Committee, and just frame it a little bit because I think as the chairman has laid out so effectively, we are increasing spending on a number of different programs. People ask, ``Well, now can that be? You guys are cutting the budget in Washington.'' In reality we are just slowing the growth. We are slowing the growth for a very, very important reason. I think that is why last week, Friday, so many of us were disappointed, because in the middle of November we thought we had reached an agreement with the President. We thought that we had reached an agreement that said he was going to submit to us a plan to balance the budget, a plan to balance the budget within 7 years, and that he would use Congressional Budget Office numbers. So that we then could take our plan to balance the budget, compare it to his plan to balance the budget, and we could get off of this debate about whether balancing the budget was important or not, but that we would all agree and then we could actually get into the policy differences. That did not happen. Last week, Friday, the President, we were expecting his plan. He did present a plan. The disappointing thing with the plan is that that plan never got to zero. I think the best estimate said that in year 7 there would still be a $75 billion deficit, and the number could be higher than that. It just did not reach zero. Actually, when I was back in my district a couple of weeks ago and talking to some of my constituents, they said, ``Pete, we are really disappointed. Ever since you got to Washington, you forgot the word surplus.'' When you were in the private sector, working for a publicly held corporation, a Fortune 500 company, the expectation from your shareholders, from your employees, was that you would deliver a profit. Now that the gentleman has gotten to Washington, he thinks that getting to zero is good enough. It is kind of like, yes, you are right, we ought to be talking about a surplus because what we are really trying to do here in this bigger picture, in a positive and constructive way, is we are trying to, I think, preserve the future for our kids, provide them with the educational opportunities, the educational reforms, the education spending that can create a positive educational environment for our kids but from an economic standpoint can do the right things, that says we are going to gradually move to balancing the budget and hopefully after that getting to a surplus so that we can start paying back the debt because what we are doing today is we are saddling onto our kids $4.9 trillion, close to $5 trillion worth of debt. A kid born in my district today, in the gentleman's district, anywhere in this country is going to pay in their lifetime $187,000 of interest on the debt if we do not change the way that we do our spending programs. They will face effective tax rates of 82 percent. Most of these are discretionary programs, correct, the discretionary part of the budget. What happens to these programs in the year 2012 when the only money that we have coming in for tax revenues, it is only available for entitlement programs? What happens to a lot of these programs?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. They are going to be gone.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding time to me. Twenty-eight days ago, this Congress reached an historic agreement with the President, really a contract, submit a plan to balance the budget, a plan that would balance the budget within 7 years, a plan that would balance the budget using Congressional Budget Office numbers. Over the next 2 hours, you will hear a lot of debate and discussion on the President's plan. We will then have a referendum. We will have a vote on the President's best effort to balance the budget, an effort which disappointingly still has at least a $75 billion deficit in the year 2002. The President's plan does not reach balance. We will have to decide as a Congress whether this plan is good enough, whether this plan is good enough for this Congress at this time. But more importantly, we will have to decide whether this plan is a plan that is good enough for our kids. Is it good enough for the next generation? I do not think this plan meets that test. This House can do better. This House must do better. We must do significantly better than the President's plan. I think over the last 28 to 30 days it has become increasingly clear that, as we wage this historic battle, this House of Representatives must take the lead in restoring fiscal sanity to this country. This is an historic battle. This House has to lead this effort. The vote will happen in 2 hours. Vote no on the President's plan, and let us continue working on a real plan that reaches balance.