Tim Hutchinson

Mr. HUTCHINSON

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my distinguished colleague that the press of business in the last Congress should not have prevented this important issue from coming up. I think we have certainly learned in the 104th Congress what the press of business is all about, and our votes on Monday, our votes on Friday, our late night hours. And this legislation, which we will be taking up today, has indeed had years of study, months of work, and has many people in this Congress involved in the drafting of this legislation for its inclusion in the Contract With America. Since the rule itself has come into question in this debate, for the first time in history H.R. 4 puts in the Federal statutes a financial incentive which will discourage both illegitimacy and abortion. Out of wedlock births of 32 percent. Thirty-two percent of the babies born in America are born out of wedlock, six times as large as 1965, when the welfare state really was created. Real welfare reform must change the system to encourage marriage and family, not illegitimacy. The Stark amendment was not placed in order, and I think for good reason, because it would have been that which would have pulled out the strong illegitimacy provisions included in H.R. 4. It is not simply conservative Republicans who are recognizing the need in welfare reform to address the systemic problems, the fundamental problems in the welfare system. Bill Moyers, former press secretary to Lyndon Baines Johnson, in many ways the architect of the modern welfare state, recently, and I think the Record needs to have this included, recently said this. He said: While reporting for a documentary on welfare, I interviewed a 32-year-old grandmother whose 16-year-old daughter had a two-year-old child and was expecting a second baby by yet a different man. Three generations on welfare, no help from any father, and they described it as normal, the only life they knew or expected. This is one tragedy of welfare. When men are left off the hook, the world of the single mother begins to appear natural and inevitable. Moyers continues: I thought at the time, and still do, that it is right to help children born into such circumstances, but wrong to let the cycle go on repeating itself. And I imagined it would take shock treatment to stop it, something like announcing that on a given day, 5 years hence, after a massive publicity campaign so everyone would be forewarned, there would be no more cash payments to unwed teenagers or to women on welfare who already have one child. Moyers said: If this sounds heartless, dependency can be heartless, too. And unfair to others. Welfare benefits now go to almost 4 million mothers who have almost 10 million children. All of us know young women who would like to have children but don't because they are single and earn too little from their jobs to afford a child alone. It doesn't seem fair that they should be paying for someone else to have children when they feel unable to have one. Then Moyers concludes his comments by saying, this former press secretary for a Democratic President, the architect of the modern welfare state, he said: The Republicans have been challenging us to think about such things. It would be a shame if they have to water down the challenge. Their reforms may be flawed but not as flawed as welfare itself. That is what H.R. 4 does. For the first time we end the entitlement nature of welfare. For the first time, real meaningful work requirements are included. For the first time, we are able to control the growth in welfare spending. But most fundamentally and most essentially, for the first time we begin to deal with the social problem of out-of-wedlock births. I support the majority leader's motion. I support the rule.

Mr. HUTCHINSON

Mr. HUTCHINSON. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. HUTCHINSON

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by our distinguished chairman of the Veterans' Affairs and Rules Committees to reinstate funding for six needed VA outpatient clinics, along with funds to help defray the VA's backlog of essential medical equipment purchases. For years, Chairman Stump has been working diligently to reform VA's current eligibility system. Part of that approach, which has the strong backing of the VA and veterans' service organizations, is to place a priority on outpatient care. Too many veterans are eligible for care only on an inpatient basis, when their ailment may only require outpatient care. This must change, and we have been taking positive steps to see that VA outpatient services become the wave of the future. Financially, it makes sense to shift to outpatient care, just as the private sector is now doing. It is clear that these funds must be restored. In order to offset the cost of these projects, money will be taken from AmeriCorps. Two years ago, when we debated the merits of the AmeriCorps Program, I stood in this well in strong support of another Stump amendment, this one to set the educational benefits of the Montgomery GI bill. I believed that if the national service plan offered benefits equal to or in excess of the GI bill, military recruitment would suffer. Well, the amendment failed and military recruitment has indeed been hurt. Last year, for example, the Marine Corps missed its recruitment goal for the first time since before 1980. I believe that can be directly tied to AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps targets the same population group as the armed services, yet it offers education benefits at no charge, a well-paid Government job, and no danger of being placed in a combat situation. I think many young Americans are choosing paid volunteer work over the military, and that is a shame. We have an opportunity to rectify this situation by taking funds from this unneeded program and redirecting them to those who truly need and deserve this money, our Nation's veterans. I urge all my colleagues to support the Stump-Solomon amendment and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUTCHINSON

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, here is a list of good reasons why the line-item veto must be passed: A $58 million bailout of George Steinbrenner's shipbuilding company; $15 million for never-authorized courthouses which were opposed by the Federal judges whom they were built for; $11.5 million to upgrade a powerplant for the soon-to-be-closed Philadelphia Naval Shipyard; and $35 million to eradicate screwworms in Mexico. It is time to end the spending sprees and get off the pork-barrel merry-go-round. The American people are watching and they are demanding greater accountability in the budget process. We should pass the line- item veto with the same bipartisan majorities that the unfunded mandates and the balanced budget amendment had. Mr. Speaker, the line-item veto is a no-brainer. We need it; the American people want it. And we should act now to restore sanity and accountability to Federal spending.

Mr. HUTCHINSON

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Barton balanced budget amendment. Mr. Chairman, I remind my colleagues of a few facts: In the last 30 years, the Federal Government has balanced its budget exactly one time, 1969. The national debt amounts to $13,000 per person in this country, and the interest payments now amount to over $800 per person per year. But opponents say we do not need an amendment, just let Congress make the spending cuts. Well, most proposals or spending cuts are like the magician's trick of sawing in half the lady in the box. There is a great deal of hoopla, there is a great deal of fanfare, and then something appears to be cut. But when it is all over, nothing much has changed. That is why we need a balanced budget amendment, to discipline our own profligate spending habits. And we need to have the supermajority requirement, the tax limitation proposal. We have it in the State of Arkansas, where I am from, and it works in Arkansas and it will work here. Mr. Chairman, deficit spending is stealing. It is stealing from our children and it is stealing from our grandchildren, and it must stop.