Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Consistent with a ``C''.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman has answered that very eloquently. The bottom line is, we American people can spend our money better than bureaucrats in Washington can. Let American people keep more of their own savings. They will create jobs, more people go to work, less people are on public assistance. When less people are on public assistance, again, more people working and paying in, revenues do go up. I think Presidents Kennedy and Reagan have both proven that and I think we need to prove that again in this session of Congress.

Mr. KINGSTON. Is it not true that run by the Government the student loan program lost $1 billion, but run by the private sector it did not lose any of the money?

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for being with us tonight and for all of his hard work for the folks in Connecticut and all over the country.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will pause a minute to go back to why touch Medicare. It is the political equivalent of messing with dynamite with a lit fuse. Politically, you always take the path of least resistance. If you can avoid a controversial issue, you do. Why would we touch this lit dynamite on Medicare?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, that is why I think it is so important that we look, always look at the big picture. Mr. Speaker, there is an expression I heard. I wish I could attribute it, I cannot; a second time tonight that I cannot attribute a good quote, but it was that idealism is ignorance easy. So often people come to us and they have one side of an issue and they have the solution and it fits just perfectly on the bumper sticker. But our job as legislators is to sit there and listen to both sides of the issue. We realize we may be elected by 51 percent of the people, but we represent 100 percent of the people. In fact, we are represented from Connecticut, but not just to represent Connecticut. We all have to look out for the United States of America, and in doing so, in that framework, sometimes it is very difficult. But, Mr. Speaker, if we can balance that budget, interest rates, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, we can reduce interest rates. A 2-percent reduction of interest rates on a $75,000 home mortgage over a 30-year period of time saves American families $37,000. On a $15,000 car loan, it saves American families $900. On a student loan over a 10-year period of time of $11,000, it could save as much as $2,100. Balancing the budget is real. It is not an academic exercise. Balancing the budget is about people, it is not about numbers. I know that the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Mrs. Johnson] has been on the Committee on Ways and Means, and the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] being on the Committee on the Budget, we spend hours and hours crunching numbers and talking in strange jargon about CBO and OMB and most of these things that most of us do not understand and do not know that we want to. But we do know the old expression that when your intake exceeds your upkeep, then your input is going to be your downfall.

Mr. KINGSTON. I am not sure I got it right anyhow, but the fact is, it gets down to this: If you bring in a dollar, you should never, ever spend more than a dollar. And we have since World War II been spending $1.59 on every dollar that we bring in. Now, that has not been the case in the last 3 years, but the fact is, you cannot go on forever defying gravity. The children in America need to live in a world where the budget is balanced and where Congress is not spending more money than we bring in.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask you this: We have been talking about balancing the budget. Is it consistent or inconsistent to talk about cutting taxes and balancing the budget?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to be with you tonight and discuss the many issues that are facing the 105th Congress. One of the things that we will be voting on very soon is the supplemental appropriations bill. That is a fancy word for a bill designed to send aid to the folks who have been victims of flooding in the Midwest. It also funds the continuation of troops in Bosnia. There are a lot of us who want to get our troops home from Bosnia. But at this point we still need to fund the ones that are there, and we need to have the debate about getting them home also. But the two purposes of this funding bill are emergency for the flood victims and emergency for Bosnia. Politics is politics, and we cannot pass a bill around here without something totally unrelated being attached to it. That is always going to be the case, and that is the case with this bill that we are considering. One of the nonemergency items which many people in this House have supported is increased funding for WIC, which is the Women, Infants and Children Program. It is a milk formula program, and the program does a lot of good. We have identified in our society that if we make sure that a pregnant woman has a proper diet, that the chances of the baby being born without medical complications is much greater; and, similarly, in the first couple of years of the life of the child, if the child is getting proper nutrition and proper diet, then the child experiences far fewer health care problems, which in terms of budget are more expensive. So it is an ounce of prevention. Now, the Democrats and some of the liberals in the media, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, are actually accusing us of cutting WIC. Now, I am on the Committee on Appropriations, Mr. Speaker, and I am thinking, what is going on? No one has even brought WIC up. Here is what the Democrats are saying. They, in this flood bill, want to increase WIC funding $78 million. In the spirit of compromise, the Republicans on the committee said, listen, we are not certain that this needs to be increased, but $38 million is a compromise, it cuts it in half. The Democrats still said we are cutting it. Now, again, how do we cut what we are increasing? It is the same mentality, Mr. Speaker, that we heard last year from the President and many, many of the liberal members of the Democratic Party in Washington, that when we increased Medicare funding from $190 to $270 billion, that was a cut. When we increased student loans from $26 to $41 billion, that was a cut. And when we increased the school lunch program 4.5 percent, that was a cut according to liberal mathematics. It is not the case in elementary school math classes all over the country, but somehow a lot of people got to Congress without ever taking math courses. Now, what the Democrats are obviously confused over, and I think very purposely in some cases playing games on, is that three points on WIC. I want to make sure Members realize, A, No. 1, there is a $100 million carryover from WIC. It is somewhat of an escrow account because we cannot estimate how many children and mothers will be participating in the program. But right now we are sitting on a $100 million escrow account. It is sitting there. It has not been depleted. It is unused. That is very, very important when we are talking about we have to do something in an emergency flood bill. That is A. B, welfare rolls have gone down 15 percent. Now, if we have 15 percent of the national population getting off public assistance, why is it that the President wants to increase a welfare program on an emergency flood bill? It does not make sense. We cannot brag about how well welfare reform is working on the one hand and then on the other hand increase welfare benefits. No. 3. The Democrat liberals who are pushing to increase WIC funding at this time are using 1994 census data. Now, 1994 was 2\1/2\ years ago, and here we have a situation where those are the numbers they are using. But, Mr. Speaker, if we look at 1995 census data, we see that it is being fully funded. Conveniently, the liberals who are pushing for this WIC increase are forgetting the fact that there is new census data available from 1995 which shows full participation. Mr. Speaker, I really wish in the U.S. Congress, and in the political arena, people would start talking truth and cut out the politics. What is happening here is the same old crowd who were scaring our grandmothers last year, scaring students, and scaring the school kids regarding their lunch programs, they are trying to work them up into a frenzy again, saying that Republicans are picking on little children and mammas, which is hardly the case. But just to remind my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, listen to some of the charges made by Members of Congress in the past. The gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Levin], Congressional Record of March 23, 1995: ``You are abusive in getting at abuse. You are harsh. You use a meat axe against handicapped children and their parents.'' I cannot believe that kind of extreme language. Here is another one: ``They want to make sure that our children, who need preventive health care, do not have, and they are looking to close the nursing homes.'' That was the gentlewoman from Texas, [Ms. Jackson- Lee], Congressional Record, May 9, 1996. Here is a quote from the President of the United States, Washington Times, February 25, 1995: ``What they'', meaning Republicans, ``what they want to do is make war on the kids of this country.'' Now, Mr. Speaker, this is ridiculous extremist talk designed to incite, maliciously to deceive. Here are some more. Leon Panetta, White House Budget Director, USA Today, February 23, 1995: ``What they are trying to do is literally take meals away from kids. The Republicans are trying to run over our kids.'' Here is another quote. There are so many of them, Mr. Speaker, I do not know which ones to pull out. ``It is the most callous, cold-hearted and mean-spirited attack on this country's children I have ever seen in my life.'' Representative Collins, Congressional Record March 21, 1995. Here is a good one. The Vice President of the United States. I guess this is--well, I think the Vice President has his own problems at this point, but here is what the Vice President suggested: ``Republicans are genetically defective.'' This is a pretty serious thing. Frankly, it is a little sick and I hesitate to bring it up. This is a quote. Vice President Al Gore, October 30, 1994: ``Ollie North is banking on the fact that he can raise enough money from the extreme right wing, the extra chromosome right wing, to defeat Senator Robb.'' Oh man, what dignity coming from the Vice President of the United States. Here is another one, March 23, 1995. Representative Green, Congressional Record: ``We are talking about stopping children from having a hot lunch.'' Here is another one. The gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro], May 9, 1996: ``And they are sincere in wanting to do harm to working men and women in this country.'' Here is a great one. Mr. Miller, Congressional Record, August 3, 1995: ``It is a glorious day if you are a fascist. It is a glorious day.'' Here is another one, the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Rush, Congressional Record, October 3, 1995: ``The bloodsuckers in this Congress are lead by Count Dracula.'' One more. Senator Leahy, Congressional Record, February 24, 1995: ``This assault on America's children will be stopped.'' Mr. Speaker, this is the kind of extreme garbage we have to hear on the floor of the House. And it is one thing for the Speaker and myself, as a Member of the Congress, to have to listen to such charges, because, after all, it is somewhat what our job is about, but to go out to school kids, to go out to the elderly, to go out to the moms and dads and say this kind of thing, I cannot imagine. I could not do that, Mr. Speaker. Certainly there are times when I get furious with the other side. I know the Speaker feels the same way. But I do not remember ever saying that a Member of the other side was going to use a meat cleaver on kids or wanting to put harm on American working men and women. What kind of low level has public debate in America sunk to when people are allowed to use such extreme rhetoric and get away with it? Mr. Speaker, this is not a matter of winning a debate, this is a matter of public decency. We are the leaders in this country. We should act at a higher standard than mud wrestlers at the local bar. And yet this is what some of the Members of Congress seem to think is the right tactic. Well, Mr. Speaker, we are not cutting WIC. And if my colleagues listen to the cries about cuts in the past, we can see it is the same old game. Here is what has happened. When we passed welfare reform, and in doing so we scaled back a number of programs, we also increased the funding in other programs such as child care, such as parent support, tracking down deadbeat dads. And now, because these programs have been reformed, many people are getting off welfare. But many of the poverty brokers in government circles are doing everything they can to try to get around these reforms. They are saying, ``Oh, well, now we have a politically target rich environment for going after new programs and trying to raise the government involvement in folks' lives.'' Right about when they are about to get independent, the government poverty broker bureaucrats are rushing back in there and saying, ``Wait a minute, I found some gray area in this law. You do not have to get independent, even if you are a 25-year-old able-bodied male.'' I am sick and tired of single women in my district with two kids, working a job, raising children and paying taxes and having to come home after a 60-hour week and supporting some 25-year-old male who is too lazy to work. It is time that we say to folks that they have got to get to work. Some of them just got to get out of the wagon and help pull it. I think it is very, very important. Mr. Speaker, we went a long way in the last Congress to change a lot of things. Welfare reform was only part of it. But, in addition, we passed the line item veto so that the President of the United States could zap fat out of the budget. We passed security reform litigation. We passed a tough gift ban. We passed lobbyist registration, the first time in 50 years. We passed products liability reform. We ended farm subsidies and gave farmers the freedom to farm so that they would have more flexibility in deciding which crops to plant and when to plant them. We passed the Paperwork Reduction Act so that businesses that do commerce with the Federal Government would not have to fight so much red-tape. We stopped the practice of unfunded mandates, and this is the practice of the Federal Government saying to the local county commissions that they have to provide certain services, that they have to increase the taxes in their county to pay for it because the Federal Government is not going to help them. In other words, we were micromanaging counties all over the United States right here out of Washington, DC. We cut congressional staff by one-third. We reduced our own operating budget by $67 million. And for the first time in history, we passed the Shays Act, which put the U.S. Congress under the same workplace laws as the private sector. These were all very, very important reforms. And, in addition, the debate now, Mr. Speaker, is not whether we should balance the budget but how to balance the budget. We have been working on balancing the budget and making some progress, but we are doing that without cutting important programs such as Medicare. I have with me the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays], who has been a leader in protecting and preserving Medicare, and I would now yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. KINGSTON. The first election to get into it was up to them because automatically they would be reenrolled in traditional Medicare.

Mr. KINGSTON. This is what we are paid and elected to do and that is to act in a responsible manner and as the report indicated the other day, I believe, Medicare today is losing $36 million each and every day.

Mr. KINGSTON. Who said it was going bankrupt? I want to make sure. Let us go back to April 3, 1995, the Medicare trustees report.

Mr. KINGSTON. In fact, if the gentleman would yield, as I recall the numbers, we went from $89 billion to over $140 billion for health care for the poor, or Medicaid.

Mr. KINGSTON. But what would happen is for seniors who were in good health and decided they could take whatever smaller bills that were manageable, they would pay that out of that escrow account, keeping half of whatever they saved.

Mr. KINGSTON. Tax-free. Yet they would be covered for the million- dollar claim.

Mr. KINGSTON. The only thing about Medicare that is dynamite is when it is misconstrued intentionally for political gain. I have never seen people who just maliciously go out there and lie to the American seniors. I think it is an insult to the generation who fought for freedom and liberty in World War II and my dad and your dad and moms. I just think it is totally sick for people to go out and lie to grandparents, but that is what happened, and Medicare, being Medicare, politics being politics, that is probably going to happen again.

Mr. KINGSTON. That is exactly right. I do not think it is always fraud. I think a lot of it is just sloppiness and negligence. There is a story, I am sorry I cannot cite the person but she received a bill for an autopsy, went to a doctor and said, ``I never had an autopsy,'' and they said, ``Yes, you did. Here is the bill.'' She said, ``No, I did not have an autopsy. It's me, I'm alive.'' They said, ``Okay. Well, you had an MRI.'' She said, ``No, I did not have an MRI.'' They said, ``Well, you had a mastectomy.'' ``No, I've never had a mastectomy, either. I know with certainty that none of the above were received.''

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will wait one second before he does that. What we need to do is we need to have a contest for the most ridiculous and absurd Medicare story, and let us all go out there and find those crazy stories. I just think it is so ridiculous, that this system is so broken that live people are being billed for autopsies, men are being billed for women-only type procedures. We need to change it and we need to protect and preserve it. I am going give the gentleman the pleasure of introducing his colleague from Connecticut, the leader on the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. KINGSTON. It certainly would have paid for some of the medical expenses out of pocket.

Mr. KINGSTON. Now if the gentlewoman would yield for 10 seconds, $26 billion in fraud in Medicare and Medicaid together. That is twice the annual budget of the entire State of Georgia. I am not sure what your budget is in Connecticut, but you can run the State of Georgia tax-free for 2 years just on what the Medicare and Medicaid fraud is.

Mr. KINGSTON. We will protect Medicare not just for the next election but for the next generation, and so that not only will your mom and dad and grandparents be able to use it, but you and I will be able to use it, and our children and their children. I think that is very important. I think this is all part of commonsense government. We need common sense in public policy, we need common sense in spending, and we need common sense in health care policy, and one of the issues that we have thought--we hope we are on the eve of a breakthrough in the budget. The gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] had mentioned earlier tonight, as a distinguished member of the Committee on the Budget, that negotiations have been going on since January on the budget to try to craft a bipartisan agreement so that we can save the fiscal character of our Government for the generations to come, long after the three of us have left Congress. Let me yield to [Mr. Shays] as a member.

Mr. KINGSTON

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

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, it appears that the Democrats are confused again. There is nothing unusual there. But on the WIC program, I do not know if they have read the bill. Had they read the bill, they would know that WIC is fully funded at $3.7 billion, a historic all time high for WIC, funded by the Republican majority in Congress. I will send them a copy of the bill if they want it. Where their confusion lies is that they are using 1994 census records when they say that WIC is not fully funded. At least in my part of the country, it is 1997. We do not have 1996 records but we do have 1995 records, and they confirm that WIC is fully funded. Democrats, there is no reason, even for political purposes, to use 1994 records. Second, there is a $100 million carryover of unused WIC funds right now, $100 million in unused funds sitting in reserve for WIC. Third, the President of the United States has said welfare is down 15 percent. If welfare is down, why do Democrats insist on an emergency basis on increasing welfare funding? Again, Mr. Speaker, the Democrats are confused. What else is new?

Mr. KINGSTON

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

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House tonight. I want to speak about the budget. Before I do so, I want to speak about the big bust over there at the Department of Justice. I am referring, of course, to finally, on Thursday, April 24, I am getting this out of the Savannah Morning News, that the Florida couple, who illegally recorded a conversation of Members of Congress and then passed it on to other Members of Congress finally got, finally pleaded guilty to Federal charges, which is, they actually had already said that they were guilty, Mr. Speaker, back in January, but our good old Department of Justice, who has been very busy with all kinds of other things, just now decided to lower the boom and deal with the Martins. I will read a little bit of that article: A Florida couple agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to Federal criminal charges of intercepting a cellular phone call between House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders last December. Identical one-count criminal informations were filed in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Florida against John and Alice Martin of Fort White, Florida. The Martins signed agreements with prosecutors to plead guilty and those were filed in court along with the charges. The Martins admitted in the agreements that they intentionally intercepted the telephone conversation and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department's continuing investigation of the case. Justice officials, who requested anonymity* * * * That is interesting, Mr. Speaker, because I guess when they were interviewed on the phone they were not on the cellular phone or anonymity would be irrelevant, would it not, but they said the investigation is continuing on how a transcript of the conversation ended up in the New York Times and later the Atlanta Journal- Constitution and Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. I wonder, Mr. Speaker, how did the Martins get that tape from Florida, from their car, which they were just innocently driving along, how did they get that tape to the Atlanta Constitution and the New York Times? It does make one wonder, does it not? But good old Justice Department, I guarantee you, they will crack this case probably in 10 years. No, maybe in 5 years, because these people said they will cooperate. So I am very optimistic about our Justice Department and, who knows, maybe they got some consultants from the FBI telling them how not to botch an investigation. But never mind that, Mr. Speaker. Let me speak tonight on the budget, because that is a very, very big matter and one that affects all of our children, all of our present generations and future generations. I have, and I wish I could tell you who gave this to me, but it is a document entitled Seven Reasons to Balance the Budget. The annual budget is $1.6 trillion. The Government spends about $4.4 billion a day, about $183 million an hour, $3 million a minute, or $50,736 every second. Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that in the time that I have been at the microphone that the Government has already spent probably about $250,000 just in terms of our $1.6 trillion annual budget. Now, if the spending patterns do not change, anyone born after 1993 will have a lifetime tax rate of 84 percent. This is compared with those born in 1940, who will have a lifetime tax average of 31 percent. That means that during the period of time that you are alive, if you were born in 1940, you will pay about 31 percent total taxes. But our children, the babies of today, the kids in nursery schools and kindergartens, right now will pay about 84 percent. I think that is so important, Mr. Speaker, because as the President talks about let us do something for children, I would say, let us start by not shackling them with an 84 percent tax burden. Reason No. 3, every dollar of taxes raised since World War II, Congress has spent over $1.59 of it. So for every dollar paid in taxes since World War II, on an average, we in Washington have spent $1.59. Reason No. 4, it takes nearly 9 American families to support one Federal bureaucrat in Washington, DC, executive branch staff members cost an average of $52,000 a year, while an average family pays $6,100 in taxes. So that is good math and good to think about. Reason No. 5, in 1994, every American paid an average of $800 in taxes just to service interest on the national debt. Now, I think this is real important, Mr. Speaker, because people do not understand that when you pay taxes, some of your tax dollars go just to pay the bondholders, those who hold the notes on the national debt. So let us say $800 per person, multiply that times 4. The average family of four, average family is, therefore, paying over $3,000 in interest each year on the national debt. That is $3,000. That probably would pay for 3 or 4 months of groceries. It would probably pay for 6 months of car payments. It would pay for maybe a half a year at a State college or university. Three thousand dollars would even pay for 3 or 4 months of home mortgage. That is a lot of money. Yet the American taxpayers are paying that in interest on the national debt. Reason No. 6, a child born today will pay $187,000 over his or her lifetime just in interest on the national debt. Reason No. 7, in the year 2000, the national debt is projected to be $6.8 trillion. That is $26,000 or $104,000 for a family of four. Mr. Speaker, it is past time to get very, very serious on balancing the budget and paying down the debt. Now, we have some plans. There is a Republican plan that is going on, and we have been negotiating, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], chairman of the Committee on the Budget, has been negotiating on this for really since January, trying to get somewhere with the President. There is the President's plan. The President's plan has a few flaws in it. I will hold this up, Mr. Speaker. I think everybody can see it. What is wrong with the Clinton plan to balance the budget? Well, for one thing, in the year 2002, it does not balance the budget. It has a deficit of $69 billion. So, A, what is wrong with the President's plan? It does not balance the budget. B, what else is wrong with it? Ninety-eight percent of the deficit reduction is in the last 2 years. Mr. Speaker, I am not the first one to say it, many people have said it, but that is the equivalent of saying you are going to go on a diet to lose 30 pounds over 6 months, but you are not going to lose any weight the first 5 months. You are going to take it all off in the 6th month. It just does not work. Washington has never followed through on promises made very far in the future. Under the Bush tax deal, as you will recall, in the 1990's, which was, I think, actually probably what did the Bush administration in, the plan was to raise taxes now and cut spending later. Well, Members of Congress were pretty eager to raise taxes, but when it came time to do the spending cuts, where was Congress? They said, well, that agreement was not made by us. It was made by a previous Congress, and we will not follow through on it. No. 3, letter C, whatever way you want to do it, what is wrong with the Clinton budget? It increases the 1998 deficit by $24 billion compared to doing nothing. So in other words, Mr. Speaker, if we do not do anything at all in terms of passing a budget, we are better off than we are under the Clinton proposal. So I think the Clinton proposal should not be seriously considered. Now, that will not mean that the media will not seriously consider it, because anything that comes out of Pennsylvania Avenue they accept as truth and absolute so they will be talking about how good it is and how sensible it is. They will cleverly overlook these three facts that I have gone over here tonight. But let us put it in perspective. Balancing the budget is a moral imperative, not an accounting exercise. Balancing the budget is about your children; it is about my children. Mr. Speaker, I think you have small children. I have a 6-year-old; I have an 8-year-old. I would love to leave Washington one day saying they are going to have a better future with less debt because Members came to Washington during the 105th Congress with the idea of cutting the budget and reducing the size of Washington. We chose children over bureaucrats. We chose home town America over Washington, DC. Now, the President opposed the balanced budget amendment. Okay. Philosophical difference. He did not want the balanced budget amendment. I can understand. We have the right to disagree here. But that being the case, as he stood on the floor of the House and said, you do not need a balanced budget amendment to balance the budget, he was correct on that. But he needed one, because he has yet to produce a balanced budget. One of the other things, though, that this thing points out is, this about families. Let me give you some more numbers, Mr. Speaker. If we have a balanced budget, interest rates will drop. If interest rates drop as much as 2 percent, that means that on a 5-year family car loan at 9.75 percent interest, $15,000 car, that average family would save $900. In terms of a college education loan, if a college student borrows $11,000 at 8 percent, it will save $217 in interest. In terms of a 30-year home mortgage, if it drops 2 percent, over a 30-year period of time on a $75,000 house, Americans would save $37,000 in interest and payments. For a 6-month $350,000 farm operating loan at 10 percent, it would save about $17,000. These are real numbers, Mr. Speaker, and these are things that will help Americans. But I want to throw out one more interesting statistic about the national debt. A 1-day increase in the national debt of $2.2 billion is enough to buy McDonald's Big Mac extra value meals for every person in the United States and every person in Mexico. Now, I do not know if we should recommend that to everybody in the country, but the fact is that is a heck of a lot of hamburgers, Mr. Speaker, and yet another way to look at it. I do not see balancing the budget as partisan politics. It is about good government and it is about our children. It is about dreams and aspirations of future generations of Americans. It is about the fact that year after year the American dream gets eroded by a large runaway bureaucracy that comes up with more rules and more micromanagement in order to justify their own existence. I think the questions are these: Is the Federal Government too big? Does it spend too much? Who can spend money the best, the folks back home or the bureaucrats in Washington? Are we getting our money's worth out of Washington right now? Are we getting our money's worth of tax dollars? If we had a choice, would we purchase this government? Could we tell a friend about it? Is it fair for the government to take over one-third of our hard-earned income each year? I do not think it is fair, Mr. Speaker. I think it is time right now to get spending under control and try to bring sanity back to Washington. There are a lot of other topics that I want to talk about, Mr. Speaker, but I think what I may do is just end tonight on the budget, because I want to focus just on the importance of it. There is a budget right now, introduced by our colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Mark Neumann, and it takes Social Security out of the formula. Two important things I would say the Neumann budget does. Number one, it takes Social Security out of it. People do not realize this right now, but Social Security has a $65 billion surplus. That money is thrown into the pot with the rest of the general spending, the rest of the budget, and it makes the deficit look smaller than it is. The Neumann budget says, no, sir, that $65 billion is stand-alone, it goes only in the Social Security trust fund, it goes only for Social Security purposes, and it should not be used for deficit reduction and general spending. That is one thing the Neumann budget does and I think that is very important for our grandparents and other folks on Social Security. The second thing it does, which is equally important for those of us fathers, is it pays off the national debt by the year 2023. So a child born today, at 25, 26 years old, they will live in America without a national debt. If we can do that, the jobs that will be created are incredible. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I had a list of some of these benefits that I may submit for the Record, Mr. Speaker. But I believe that we can achieve a balanced budget. I believe that we can pay down the national debt. I believe, again, it is a moral imperative. It is not a matter of common sense only but a matter of survival and doing what is right for our children. With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues and friends here in Washington to vote for a balanced budget, work for the balanced budget amendment, make some tough decisions in terms of government spending reductions, and let us walk out of here with our heads held high, not worrying about the next election but only concerned about the next generation. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the article to which I earlier referred. Florida Couple To Plead Guilty to Taping GOP Leaders' Cell Phone Call (By Michael J. Sniffen) Washington.--A Florida couple agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to federal criminal charges of intercepting a cellular telephone call between House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders last December. Identical one-count criminal information were filed in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Fla., against John and Alice Martin of Fort White, Fla. The Martins signed agreements with prosecutors to plead guilty and those were filed in court along with the charges. The Martins admitted in the agreements that they intentionally intercepted the telephone conversation and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department's continuing investigation of the case. Justice officials, who requested anonymity, said the investigation is continuing here into how a transcript of the conversation ended up in The New York Times, and later in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. The call--between Gingrich, House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, Rep. Bill Paxon of New York and others--took place last Dec. 21 as the House ethics committee was about to announce a settlement of its investigation of complaints against Gingrich. The publication of the text set off an uproar on Capitol Hill. Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the ethics committee, said the call breached Gingrich's agreement with the committee that the Speaker would not orchestrate a response to his ethical wrongdoing. Republicans said the transcript, to the contrary, showed that Gingrich was following the agreement and they demanded an investigation of the call's interception. The Martins each face a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine with no prison term. The government made no promises on what sentence it might recommend. Alice Martin, reached at her home in Fort White, Fla, refused to comment Wednesday evening and referred questions to the couple's attorney. ``I can't say anything about that,'' she said. Boehner said the Martins ``should not be patsies in this, set up to take the fall for more politically influential people.'' Anyone ``who knowingly accepted the tape and passed it along to the press is also guilty,'' said Boehner, who when the call was intercepted was in Florida taking part in the conversation on a cellular telephone. The Martins said they gave the tape to McDermott. In the ensuing furor over the tape's contents and its disclosure, which also could be a crime, McDermott removed himself from the ethics panel's investigation of Gingrich. A Republican also stepped aside to keep the panel at an even party balance. ``The Martins were charged with the most serious violation possible based on the applicable federal law and the circumstances surrounding the interception of the telephone call,'' said Charles R. Wilson, U.S. attorney for the middle district of Florida. ``If the Martins are ever convicted of an illegal interception again, they would face a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine or both.'' Because it was a first offense and because the interception was of the radio portion of a cellular call; and because there was no evidence that it was done for commercial or private financial gain or for an illegal purpose such as aiding in blackmail, the offense is classified as an infraction, the Justice Department said. John and Alice Martin heard the conversation on the Radio Shack scanner in their car while on a Christmas shopping trip. Once they realized the conversation they were picking up was of Gingrich discussing the Republican response to his admitted ethics violations, they recorded it on a hand-held machine. They said it struck them as historic.