Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. And make turtles. I thank the gentlewoman for inviting me to join her tonight, and I appreciate everything she is doing.

Mr. KINGSTON. So how old is this kid?

Mr. KINGSTON. How about insects and bugs? South America, Ecuador; I always think you and I are from Georgia and Florida. We have our share of mosquitoes. What is it like down there?

Mr. KINGSTON. Now, when you find a place to sleep on the floor, do you have the same spot every night, or do you have to kind of push to find a dry warm area?

Mr. KINGSTON. Is there a medical doctor?

Mr. KINGSTON. So no linen. Do they take showers, and, if so, how often are they able to take showers?

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the importance of the budget agreement is that we are saying that America is no longer going to debate having a balanced budget. We are going to have a balanced budget. Now that we have answered that question, the next part of it is how are we going to get that. I think that is a legitimate debate: What is the role of government going to be; what are the roles of these bureaucracies; is the expenditure something that the private sector could do better? Is it something a nonprofit organization could do, or is it something that the government should do, but on a State or local level, or is it the domain of the Federal Government? These are all relevant questions as we fight to balance our budget. The vision of America is what the actual debate is about. It is not just a matter of liberals versus conservatives or urban versus rural, it is a matter of what is it that we think the Federal Government should be doing, should be offering. Should it be involved with your life to the Nth degree, or should it kind of stand back, and so forth. All this ties into the money debate. As we have it right now, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], and Mr. Domenici and Mr. Clinton and the various players in the House and Senate and the White House have agreed that we will balance the budget by 2002. We have agreed on a number. We have agreed on a downward slope toward it. The beneficiaries of this will be the American families. When the budget is balanced, interest rates, according to Alan Greenspan, will go down. When interest rates go down that means we will have less interest that we will have to pay on our home mortgages. A 2 percent interest rate on a $75,000 home mortgage could mean over a 30-year period of time that you pay $37,000 less; on a $15,000 car loan, it could mean that you are paying $900 less. On student loans, anything else you want to borrow, that would be a benefit to the American families. The other thing about the benefit of a balanced budget to the American family is it would give tax relief. Mr. Speaker, right now we are taxed higher than any generation of Americans in the history of our country. The average tax burden in America today is 38 percent. When you have a tax burden of 38 percent, if you look at this figure just roughly, a two-income family with a combined income of $55,000, one spouse is making $22,000, that means that that income is going to pay taxes. That means that that spouse is working for the Federal Government. We might not call it the Federal Government, we might call it a shoe store, we might call it the insurance agency, we might call it clerking at a law firm or working at a hospital, but the fact is that 100 percent of that income goes to pay taxes. That is higher than what the average Americans are paying for food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. It is an astronomical figure. In the 1950's the average American family was paying 5 percent Federal income tax. Today they are paying 24 percent Federal income tax. I am only talking about income tax, not all the other taxes combined. If we balance the budget, Americans can move toward tax relief and lower taxes. In the balanced budget agreement there is capital gains tax relief. The capital gains works like this. If you are an elderly couple and you bought your house 20 years ago, and the husband, let us say, because this is very common where I live, the husband is dead and the woman lives on Whitmarsh Island, or Wilmington Island, because we have a lot of waterfront property in the area that I represent in Savannah, the house they paid for in the 1970s, they paid $30,000, today it is worth $400,000. But she is living alone. She is on a fixed income of maybe $10,000, maybe $15,000 a year. If she sells that house, because she may need the money for long-term health care, or for medical reasons or whatever, if she sells that house she is taxed as if she makes $400,000 a year. Capital gains tax relief will help that widow. It will also give death tax relief. Death tax relief works this way, Mr. Speaker. If you have saved all your money and you have a good, frugal lifestyle, and you bought IBM stock in the 1960's, in the 1970's, and even the 1980s, and today the value of that stock has tripled, and you have foregone nice vacations or boats or fancy clothes because you are a saver, not many left in America but there are still a lot of them out there, but you have saved your money and now you want to sell that IBM stock or pass it on to your children, if you try to sell it you have a capital gains tax problem. If you try to pass it on to your children, you are limited to $10,000 per child per year. So generally what happens is our seniors, our savers, die. Then Uncle Sam makes his move. For the amount of money over $600,000, about 40 percent of it is going to go to Uncle Sam. That is not fair. You have paid taxes on the stock already when you purchased it, and if you have that stock you are not going to be able to pass it on to your children because Uncle Sam is going to get his fair share. That is the death tax. You cannot escape taxes even when you die, in the United States of America. The final tax that is given in the balanced budget agreement, the tax relief is a $500 per child tax credit. That would help people who have small children. I have a couple of charts, but just to show this, Mr. Speaker, this chart says so much. Balancing the budget is good for America because it is good for American families. Balancing the budget is not about numbers, it is about people. It is about Dad and Mom and little Jane or little Bob and whoever else, because it is very important that we look after American families. When was the last time that the budget was balanced? In 1969, and Mr. Speaker, you were a young man back then, and so was I. In 1969 the Beatles had just released Abbey Road, Nixon began the SALT talks with the former Soviet Union, the Smothers Brothers and the Mod Squad were still on TV, and Apollo 11 had men on the moon in July, 1969. That was 1969. Pocket calculators were not even on the drawing board in those days, Mr. Speaker. Pocket calculators were not even a pipe dream back then. Computers were not. In 1969 probably not a school in the United States of America had a computer in it. Look at today. We have computers in just about every school. What does the balanced budget agreement have? It has these components, very important: The budget will be balanced by the year 2002; it will provide tax relief for American families, and we have talked about that; it will provide entitlement reform; it will save Medicare from bankruptcy. I have already talked about this date, the year 2002. You have to have a deadline on these things. We have talked a little bit about tax relief. Let me talk a little bit about entitlement reform. Entitlements take up about 50 percent of the entire budget. Entitlements are generally known as programs that are automatic. They benefit people. It includes anything from VA to Medicare to Medicaid, Social Security, all types of programs. But if that is where 50 percent of the budget is, or where the expenditures are, we have to know we get the best bang for the buck. We have a debate going on right now about WIC. WIC stands for women, infants, and children. It is a formula program. It is a program, a nutrition program, that everybody agrees on on a bipartisan basis, generally. Last year, as Members know, the Republican conference funded WIC at a full $3.7 billion. It passed on a bipartisan basis. Everybody was in favor of it. This year, on the emergency supplemental, Members of Congress decided that WIC needed a little bit more money. WIC has an escrow account of about $100 million, and that has not even been touched. But nonetheless, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, increased WIC funding by $38 million. What do some of the liberals do? They turn around and say, you have increased WIC, but not as much as we wanted you to. Therefore, you have cut. Follow me closely, Mr. Speaker. If we increase a program $38 million and people call it a cut, it is a new assault on truth in debate by the rhetorical terrorists of Congress. We are seeing this over and over again. When it comes to making difficult decisions that involve important programs for seniors, for children, for education or the environment, rhetorical terrorists in Congress parade out the person involved in the benefit and use them as a pawn to increase the size of Government and increase the size of bureaucracy. Never mind that in this case the USDA has told us that $38 million is sufficient for WIC, and that there is another escrow account, along with the $100 million, of about $40 million that is available. The numbers are already there. Yet, some Members of Congress want to use WIC as a political issue, and have misconstrued the debate one more time in Congress to increase funding, and therefore, most importantly, increase the bureaucracy. Twenty-five percent of WIC goes to the bureaucracy, Mr. Speaker. It is interesting that the liberals who are pushing this do not want to study the program. I am on the Committee on Appropriations, as the Speaker pro tempore is, and we have recommended, let us study it, because there is genuine concern about this. The concern even was brought up by Democrat Members, liberal members of the committee, about are these numbers real or not. We had said, let us study it. The same people who say the numbers are wrong refuse to sign off on a study of WIC. I say, if we are going to have entitlement reform, we have to have truth in debate. We have to agree that we can improve programs without being against children or being against the elderly or whatever. Remember, Mr. Speaker, last year on Medicare funding when the Republican Congress went from $190 to $270 billion, it was called a cut. When we went from $89 to $124 billion in Medicaid funding, it was called a cut. When we went from $26 to $40 billion in student loans, it was called a cut. If America wants a balanced budget, America has to be mature enough to say this is worth a truthful debate. We can have an honest disagreement and have studies that find better ways to get more money to the children back home. But I am worried about, Mr. Speaker, a friend of mine. I am going to call her Jane. She is a real person. She has two kids. She is a single mama. Sometimes she gets child support, and sometimes she does not. Our office has been involved in it; and having been involved in child support battles, it is real hard to get child support from somebody who does not want to give it. We have all kinds of deadbeat-dad laws in Georgia, and sometimes they work and sometimes they do not. Mr. Speaker, Jane is out there with two kids. She is not on public assistance. She is not on WIC. She is not on food stamps. She is not on public housing. Yet, she is paying over and over again for people who are not on public assistance, many who have the financial ability or physical ability to get off of it. She is paying for 25-year-old men who are able-bodied to be on welfare, while she is out busting her tail working 40 and 50 hours a week at her job to come home and to cook and to sew and to do the dishes and to wash the clothes and drive the car pools. That woman deserves better than what we are giving her, Mr. Speaker. She is getting abused by the big government crowds who favor bureaucrats over people, and it is time that we change it. So I think on so many of these programs we do have to take a look and find out how we can make the program better. We should be able to do that without crying foul from either side. Let me show a Medicare chart. In the balanced budget agreement, the 5-year Medicare spending does go up. This is the balanced budget agreement. Medicare is approximately level. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, we are going to be hearing over and over again that balancing the budget will cut Medicare. Do my colleagues know why we are going to hear that? Because it is easy to hoodwink America's seniors. We have people who only have Medicare and Social Security. It is easy to scare them. It is not fair. It is not right. But we have a lot of people who are willing to do that in the U.S. Congress. Mr. Speaker, I think again, when it comes to seniors, when it comes to the elderly, we owe them truth, but we also owe them good government. And if we can reform Medicare and keep it from going bankrupt by strengthening it and preserving it and protecting it, not for the next election, but for the next generation, then we have served the elderly well. I am going to touch base on about one more thing, Mr. Speaker, if I could find my chart; and that is one other program that we need to take a very, very close look at, and that is AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps is the program that, at minimum, changes the definition from volunteer, volunteer meaning somebody who works who does something for free, to being a volunteer as somebody who gets paid from a government bureaucracy. AmeriCorps is President Clinton's domestic Peace Corps. Now who could argue with that? It sounds great, right? Well, consider this. When the President started AmeriCorps in 1993, he said we are only going to give it seed money; this is not going to become a bureaucracy; this is going to become a lean mean venture capital type outfit. Well, here we are 3 years later, 4 years later. AmeriCorps is $400 million a year. AmeriCorps spends $1.7 million a year on PR, public relations, so that they can get people to write Members of Congress and say keep this important program going. AmeriCorps volunteers costs taxpayers anywhere from $26,000 to $31,000 per child per year. And the child is a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old and they get $1,500. Sometimes they get uniforms. Uniforms cost anywhere from about $150 to as high as a thousand dollars. It is pure waste. There was one case in Texas along the border that the program issued a $2.8 million grant, and the director of that program received an $85,000 a year salary. Again, Mr. Speaker, what a volunteer. They have cars. They have expense accounts. They go out for lunch on the taxpayers. It is absolutely ridiculous. So Congress says, let us audit AmeriCorps. We cannot do it. The books are too messed up. There are too many different disjointed records. It is in shambles. And AmeriCorps could not be audited. It is time, Mr. Speaker, that we tell the truth that, look, this program is not working. I have one other story. A friend of mine is volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, and he is a good friend of mine. He does lots of volunteer work for churches, for other churches, for other causes. He is volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, as he always has. And AmeriCorps sends their crew out there, their paid volunteers, to go work side-by-side with the regular, the real volunteers. And he says half the kids are over there listening to the radio talking back and forth, smoking cigarettes, goofing off and playing. And here we have got part-time volunteers, executives that make $200,000 or $300,000 a year. And they are working their tail off. And over here sitting on the floor is a 17-year-old getting paid and he will not even work while he is getting paid. That is a horrible message because what my friend told me, the Habitat for Humanity real volunteer, he said: I have about had it, and I am not going to go out there and work my tail off while some kid is getting paid for it. He refuses to. That is the type of program that we have to deal with, Mr. Speaker, and we ought to be able to say: You know, America, we cannot afford to do everything for everybody all the time as we have been doing. It is time to balance the budget. I close with this, definition of a trillion. We are $5 trillion in debt. If we pulled $65 million in train cars, $65 million per boxcar, how long would the train have to be to have $1 trillion in it? It would have to be 240 miles long. Mr. Speaker, we have got a debt right now of over $5 trillion. It is time to balance the budget and do something for America's children, America's family, and America's future.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I missed rollcall No. 120 due to airplane mechanical problems. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I missed rollcall No. 119, due to airplane mechanical problems. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.'' personal explanation

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I know the term ``confused Democrat'' is a little bit redundant, but here we go again with WIC, demagoguing it. From the crowd that told our seniors that a $190 billion base in Medicare increased to $270 billion was a cut. From the group that said moving from $26 billion to $41 billion on student loans was a cut. From the group that said a 4\1/2\-percent increase in the School Lunch Program was a cut. They are now saying that full funding of WIC is a cut. We have in the WIC escrow account $100 million that is unused right now. In the supplemental appropriations bill, we have increased WIC funding $38 million. What is the problem in this House? Is integrity such a scarcity that we cannot have an honest dialog without calling everything a cut, without saying we are going to starve children? Let us have a little bit of truth and respect in this body, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, let me ask the sportscaster here. The 1969 World Series, New York Mets?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we have about a minute each to wrap up.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox], the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pappas] and the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth] and I close with this, I want to submit it for the Record also, an op-ed from the Washington Times by Tod Lindberg. He says: My rule of political progress goes something like this: First you lock in everything you can get; then you denounce it as grossly inadequate. If you get the order wrong, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good, and in an unholy alliance with the bad, the perfect crushes the good every time. Therefore, I like the budget deal. Can I imagine a better one? Very easily; but I have no particular reason to think that my musings are going to be enacted by Congress and signed by the President. In short, the deal is the only game in town. What it leads us to, Mr. Speaker, is a smaller government, lower spending, lower taxes and a balanced budget and that, Mr. Speaker, is a very good start. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the editorial to which I referred: [From the Washington Times, May 7, 1997] The Art of the Balanced Budget Deal (By Tod Lindberg) My rule of political progress (which is not original to me) goes something like this: First, you lock in everything you can get; then you denounce it as grossly inadequate. If you get the order wrong, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good--and in an unholy alliance with the bad, the perfect crushes the good every time. Therefore, I like the budget deal. Can I imagine a better one? Very easily; but I have no particular reason to think my musings are going to be enacted by Congress and signed by the president into law any time soon. The deal is the only game in town. The budget deal before us would: 1) balance the budget by 2002; 2) do so while cutting taxes. The past four years have seen a huge shift in the terms of the fiscal debate in this country: from whether to increase taxes or not in order to reduce the deficit en route to a balanced budget (the animating principle of the disastrous 1990 budget deal and President Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction package, which passed Congress without a single Republican vote), to whether to cut taxes or not while balancing the budget--two points the president is now prepared to support. This deal codifies the latter two in law; to me, this is progress. I'll leave the liberal arguments against the deal to the other side. But here are some notes on some of the conservative arguments against it. It allows discretionary spending to grow. So it does, and that is not desirable. But there are now caps, and the caps prevent domestic spending growth from even keeping pace with inflation. That means real declines over time. The spending caps become floors. They may; the task of fiscally conservative members of Congress will be to keep making the case that these caps are too high--against liberals who will say they are too low. But the conservatives would have had to make exactly the same case in the absence of this deal, too. The reforms in Medicare are just price controls. Actually, so's the current system; nothing new there. We still need Medical Savings Accounts in Medicare and elsewhere. But surely there are some savings that can be extracted from the current system short of MSAs. Now we will see. The deal doesn't reform Medicaid significantly. True; but this is a GOP problem as well as a Democratic problem. Governors from both parties hated the per-head caps that were under discussion. Medicaid needs reform no less (but no more) than it did before the deal. The tax cut is small. Yep. But it's a tax cut, one that will apparently include a reduction in the capital gains rate from its current level (which is where it was when Jimmy Carter left office). The per-child tax credit, though not meaningful in terms of promoting economic growth, will mean a lot to the middle-income families who qualify for it. As for Mr. Clinton's favored college tuition tax credits, they are merely foolish, not dangerous. And none of the other tax cuts happens without his signature. It enshrines government in its current bloated size and scope. Some folks seem to think that this is the end of politics for the duration of the agreement. That's simply wrong. The problem is that Republicans weren't able to articulate their thoughts on the size and scope of government in a fashion that voters found so compelling they were willing to turn over both the legislative and executive branches to the GOP. Conservatives will not be hindered in making that case by an agreement that says government will live within its means while cutting taxes. It's ``balanced-budget liberalism.'' I don't think there is such a thing as balanced-budget liberalism. If the budget is balanced, liberalism has mutated into a less virulent species--by moving to the right. I think that merely shifts the center to the right, which is to the advantage of conservatives. It relied on a $225 billion cash infusion thanks to new revenue estimates. Less than people think. Of that $225, about $108 billion went toward inserting (tougher) CBO revenue projections. That's not spending. About $20 billion of it went toward avoiding a legislative fix of the consumer price index, leaving a smaller fix possible under current law in the hands of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (I'd like to see CPI fixed altogether, but in the context of tax relief). About $10 billion went to keep from fixing Medicaid, and (yippee) we get $7 billion more in transportation. Bike paths for everybody! That leaves $80 billion--a nice insurance policy. Defense is getting cut too much. Yes. But the sentiment to increase it is not yet there. Proponents will need to make the case more urgently. Mr. Clinton will be weaker, and the deal terms will be better, as the scandals unfold in the summer. Oh, promise me. Anyway, if that's true, Republicans ought to take the occasion then to stuff something down his throat he hasn't swallowed here. MSAs, maybe? Birth of an entitlement: KiddieCare. Yes, that's quite bad. No point in pretending otherwise. Question: If there is no deal, can it be stopped? And does it really trump a balanced budget with tax cuts? Perfect? Hardly. Progress? Definitely. After all, Rome wasn't burned in a day.

Mr. KINGSTON. The distinguished Speaker pro tempore from Maryland sitting there might not like it, but I think it is important for my colleagues to realize how far back in time we are talking about. I will give you an example. My dad was a tight-fisted college professor and, raising 4 kids, did not want to spend a lot of money on a car for the teenagers. He bought a 1971 Ford Maverick in 1971. The sticker price on that car, as my colleagues may remember, was $1,995. That is what you could get a Ford Maverick for in 1971. That was a long, long time ago. Driving that Maverick down the road, you could fill up the tank at 25 to 28 cents a gallon. I think it is important for everyone to realize how far back in time we are going since the budget was balanced. Neal Armstrong was walking on the Moon that year. But let me ask this, let us move ahead. We have had budget deals. We had lots of them during the Reagan administration. We had the Bush administration's budget deal. We had one with Clinton. This one is different in that it has so much of the savings and tax cuts now. The benefits are now. I have said to the folks back home that New Year's Day, actually January 2 every year, we promise we are going to lose weight. We say, okay, now is the time and we make that New Year's resolution and we feel real good about it. But then come February there is a wedding, and come March there is something. March, of course, in Savannah we have St. Patrick's Day. Everybody is going to resume festive activities then. But as the year goes on, you get a little bit further away from your New Year's resolution and you are not losing that weight. I think that it is important for us to realize that, as significant as that decision is, the resolution on May 2 to go on a diet once and for all to balance the budget, it still is going to take discipline. We do not just celebrate and go home. That is one thing the four of us have learned as relative newcomers to Congress is that this is the first step. The Speaker and the leaders have all acknowledged that this budget agreement is significant, but do not go home. You have to watch the process and you have to push because there is going to be a lot of discipline and there will be lot of times down the road where the special interest groups come to us in June, in July, in August during the appropriations cycle and say, just a little bit more here, another billion here, another billion there, a new entitlement; and we are going to have to have the discipline to say, no, we cannot do that.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my friend from Michigan that he still will see me in the gym bright and early in the morning, and I hope I will see both of the gentlemen because they have been a little sluggish lately. Mr. Speaker, I have with me the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pappas] and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox]. We wanted to talk about the budget agreement that took place on May 2, last Friday. We think it is very important, very, very significant. Unlike other budget agreements, this agreement was hammered out on a bipartisan basis, and instead of having the promises now and the spending reductions later, it has the promises now and the spending reductions now. The bill basically does five things which I think are truly significant. First, it balances the budget by 2002. Second, it provides tax relief for middle-class families now, not 5 years from now, not in 2002, but it does it now, in recognition that middle-class families need a tax cut and that tax cuts can, in fact, promote growth, which is one of the easiest ways to reduce the deficit. Third, this bill addresses the Medicare problems and solves Medicare's immediate concerns for the next 10 years. Fourth, it has major entitlement reform which, as the Speaker knows, is about 51 percent of our entire annual expenditures. Then No. 5, it includes funding for many, many of our important domestic programs such as transportation, housing, and education. I think if you look at this budget, Mr. Speaker, it is certainly not perfect, but it is a very significant step in the right direction. I believe that we have a great opportunity, an opportunity which is at hand in this Congress to get something done with it. Mr. Speaker, with those introductory remarks, let me yield to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pappas] who is a freshman and came here with the idealism that all of us come here and, I think, most of us never lose, but Mr. Pappas is from the private sector. He is a businessman, he is a family man; he knows the importance of balancing your budget and what it means to American middle-class families.

Mr. KINGSTON. Joe Willie Namath.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Fox.

Mr. KINGSTON. I did not know you were that old. I was just in junior high at the time. Mr. Speaker, we have been joined by the gentleman, the only gentleman on the floor who represents a district outside of the eastern time zone, and so his folks are probably just finishing up dinner out in Arizona. But we have with us the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth] who the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pappas] may know is a former football player himself and a sports newscaster.

Mr. KINGSTON. Was it 1970 that they came back?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that we talk about this. If we think about the interest that we are spending right now, as the gentleman knows, the second largest expenditure in our national budget each year is interest on the $5.1 trillion national debt. Now, we are not paying down the principal, we are only paying the interest. That interest costs a little over $600 per person. Middle class families, a family of four, is paying about $2,400 a year in taxes simply on the interest; $2400 a year would pay for several months' mortgage payments. It would pay for lots and lots of groceries, depending on how many kids one has. If one has teenagers one could probably count on it getting through the week or something like that. But it would pay for a nice vacation, it would pay for a secondhand car, or at least a good portion of it, and that would just be if one could get rid of that one item on the budget. Now, what this is going to do is this is not going to pay off the debt, but what it will do is say that the debt is not going to get bigger so that interest portion will not get bigger and bigger every single year. We still have lots of unfinished work, but what this does is it gives us a fighting chance, gives our children a fighting chance on that $5.1 trillion debt. One of the definitions that I have read lately on $1 trillion is, if we had $65 million in a boxcar, how long would the train have to be with boxcars full of $65 million in order to equal to $1 trillion. If my colleagues want to guess, 240 miles long to get to $1 trillion, and our debt is $5 trillion. Every single school kid that gets on the steps of the Capitol or that we see in the rotunda is going to have to pay off that debt during their lifetime. It is the equivalent of taking our children out to eat, having a big meal and passing them the tab on the way out the door. It is not fair. Mr. Speaker, this balanced budget agreement gives our children a fighting chance against that massive debt. So I think it is a step in the right direction, and it is the initial step.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, it was $187,000 in the 104th Congress, the other gentleman will know.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I believe that the gentleman is correct in that we are going to move in that direction. I think we are going to find lots of ways to kind of creatively get out of the bureaucratic entanglement that so many of our communities have gotten into, and so many of these I would say disappointments which the government has caused to local economies and people and so forth. The gentleman had mentioned some of the savings to the middle class through college education opportunities and so forth. One of the very practical and I hope immediate measures is this $500 per child tax credit that is in the budget. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] mentioned it earlier. It is something that American middle-class families need. We talk so often about let us do something for the children. Why do we not just let the parents keep more of the money that they are earning and let them do that for the children? If you have a family of two, that is $1,000 a year that you can spend for groceries, for clothes, for textbooks, for whatever your child's needs are. That is something for the American middle class that is overdue to them.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the junior high school that I went to in Athens, GA, had strict discipline. Students were taught to respect each other, to respect teachers, and to respect the institution. The high school, however, that I went to had a different view of discipline, that is to say, a very spotty record, if any, on it. When I was in 10th grade, a student pulled a gun on another one in a basketball game I was playing in, and then another time a student was shot on the campus. When I was in high school, I had a group of students jump on me and beat me up. Without discipline, students somewhat behaved in a bad fashion. Currently today teenagers account for the largest portion of all violent crime in America. Offenders under the age of 18 commit more than one-fifth of all violent crime. If this trend continues, we will have a 31 percent increase in juvenile offenders by the year 2010. H.R. 3 addresses this. It tries to make our school yards and our streets safer from juvenile offenders. I hope that my colleagues will support me in supporting it.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. We thank the gentlewoman for joining us, and we thank the gentlewoman on behalf of all Americans, particularly seniors, for all that you are doing to help protect and preserve Medicare. Mr. Shays, if the gentleman is going to stay, I wanted to touch base a little bit on some of these tax issues.