Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, a little over 2 years ago, on April 3, 1995, the Medicare trustees, who are appointed by President Clinton and other folks, but it is a bipartisan committee, they came out with their report, and the trustees' report 2 years ago said Medicare was going to be bankrupt, the Congress was under an obligation to move to protect and preserve and strengthen Medicare. At that time, the Congress passed two plans to protect, preserve, and strengthen Medicare on a bipartisan basis and increase funding per beneficiary from about $5,200 to $7,100. There was no cut. Unfortunately, politics being politics, this was demagogued and eventually vetoed by the President of the United States. The senior citizens of America deserve more. Today those same trustees will come out with yet another report, and it will say one more time that Medicare is going to go bankrupt in the year 2002. In 1995, when the report first came out, Medicare was losing $22 million a day. Today it is losing about $36 million a day. Our seniors, my grandmother, my mom, my dad, your grandmother, your mom and dad, they deserve more. It is time for us to work on a bipartisan basis to save Medicare, not just for the next election, but for the next generation.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. In fact, there is a candy cane company in Georgia who tells me that the biggest competitor is not in the candy cane business, the biggest competitor is the U.S. Government, who makes it so that they have to buy sugar at an inflated price, and because of that, Canadian candy cane manufacturers can come in there. And he can beat the Canadian candy cane manufacturer any day of the week on a one-on- one basis, but when the Government is also on the team of the Canadian folks, the American guy loses.

Mr. KINGSTON. I am glad to hear that. I thank the gentleman for being with us tonight in this special order.

Mr. KINGSTON. So are farmers, so are veterans and so are business people. Somehow, Washington does not get the message. Sometimes they get beat around up here, as you do, people come to the office, you have to vote, and you are darned if you do and darned if you do not on an issue. You go home and you realize that the guy in the morning who wakes up at the crack of dawn, who puts his lunch together and eats it out of a lunch pail, drives maybe 20 miles to work, and comes home late at night after putting in a full day, he is tired, his kids are there and his wife has had a full day at her job, they are not disappointed in the vote that we may have cast because they want a government that works. They just want good, commonsense policies, a balanced budget. They want an American dream they can pass on to their children and grandchildren, they want a good future that they can retire with a health care program that is there and a neighborhood that is safe. If they can have that, that is what they want. I think what they are asking from you and me as their representatives in Washington is just to do what is right, to do what is good for America. If you do that, do not worry about lobbyists and the big government crowd, and then the day is a good day. I go home and think about those folks, because often they do not write. Many times they do not have business cards, they do not have titles and so forth, but that is whose interests we really have to look out for. That is who we have to make more of a priority.

Mr. KINGSTON. Essentially, when we talk about Social Security, is what seniors are saying, is protect it from general highway appropriations, or AmeriCorps, or the NEA, or whatever the folks want to spend money on; just use the Social Security money only for Social Security. That is what seniors say. What the younger folks say is, put me in a private program; the existing program is not going to be there when I retire. So the great beauty of this Neumann budget is he calls it a Social Security preservation budget. I call it the grandma and the grandbabies' budget, because it looks at both spectrums of our population, the demographics, which I think is extremely important. Let me read the gentleman some statistics that were given to me by a man named Pete Davies of Sun City, AZ. It says, prior to 1929 it was a disgrace for an administration to run a deficit. Out of the 140 years between the year 1790 and 1929, there were 87 years in the history of the United States when there was a surplus, and that resulted in a reduction of whatever debt had been out there. There were four periods, from 1801 to 1811, 1922 to 1934, 1879 to 1892, and 1919 to 1929 where the Nation operated for a decade or more with a surplus every year, and that was considered a responsible government. The longest period prior to 1929 in which there was a deficit every year were the 8 years of 1857 to 1864, which included the Civil War. So there was a reason, a viable reason to have a deficit. Mr. Speaker, the longest period with a deficit without a war was the 5 years of 1846 to 1850. Then of course there was a deficit between 1930 and 1945, 16 years, but that was right after World War I and during World War II. But during this last period when we have had deficits since 1969, or actually since 1970, 1969 was the last time we had a balanced budget, we have not had a major war, certainly a civil war or of World War II proportions. So it is absolutely time that we got this under control and do what is responsible.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, here is a budget that has been proposed from the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann], one of the members of the committee. His budget excludes Social Security revenue and, as the gentleman knows, Mr. Speaker, Social Security is mixed in with the general budget. What his does is actually protect Social Security by putting it on a separate line and then, in addition to balancing the budget by the year 2002, one thing the Neumann budget has that I really think is very important, and I do not think this can be picked up by a camera, Mr. Speaker, but this is a schedule for balancing the budget and zeroing out the national debt. And in the Neumann budget, by the year 2023, my children and grandchildren, your children and grandchildren, can wake up and say the national debt is gone. The $6 trillion national debt, that generation of Americans, can live without having that dark cloud hanging over them.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask the gentleman, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] has been negotiating with the White House in good faith since January. And his analogy is, it is like selling a house to somebody. They say I like your floor plan, I like your shrubbery, I like your neighborhood, I like your price, but they keep coming and coming with everything but a contract. At this point, my colleague says it is time to fish or cut bait, and they are not doing that. So here is my question. Say the White House is up to its usual tricks and they will say one thing publicly but behind the scenes not agree to a budget. What do we do in the House? Can we go ahead without a budget and pass our appropriations bills and avoid a government shutdown, or does Clinton want to have another government shutdown?

Mr. KINGSTON. It is interesting as we look at these things. I want to talk to the gentleman about the budget. When he says the taxpayers are paying, one of the things that they have to pay for is the administration of this ridiculous program. Another thing taxpayers are paying for is AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps takes kids who are volunteering and pays them. Now it is interesting. The President has this volunteer summit going on this week in Washington. And Americans are great volunteers. I believe the statistic that I read, 90 million Americans volunteer 4 hours a week each and every week, and that includes people who make and bill out $4 or $5 an hour to people would bill out $300 or $400 an hour. Everyone likes to volunteer in America and participate, and it is one of the great things about our country. Yet, the President's main program has been to take young children and start paying them to do what their older brothers and sisters and parents have been volunteering to do. Now the cost for that and the President's justification is that it is an idea to get them interested in participating; it helps them with student loans and so forth. And yet, the cost per student is $26,000, Mr. Speaker, for volunteers; and the student only gets $1,500 of that. Where is the difference? The bureaucracy. Once again, we have a program that is doing nothing but growing the bureaucracy. So the Congress goes Republican, the Republicans go in there and say, let us audit AmeriCorps and see how it is that the program that pays volunteers $1,500 costs $26,000 per volunteer. We found, after ordering this audit, that the books were in such bad shape that they could not be audited. Our budget is full of ridiculous and archaic things like that. As the President stands in the well of the House of Representatives and says, the era of big government is over with, in fact, his budget insists on increasing the size of big government. Let me show the gentleman this chart, Mr. Speaker. This is the Clinton budget which he says will reduce spending and balance the budget by the year 2002. In fact, in the year 2002, the Clinton budget proposal has a $69 billion deficit. Now, if we say an increase in Medicare is a cut, maybe we can call a $69 billion deficit an even budget, I don't know, a zero balance. But it is not true. Here is what is even worse than that, 98 percent of the deficit reduction in the Clinton budget comes within the last 2 years. That is the equivalent of me saying I am going to lose 30 pounds over the next 10 months, and not losing anything for the first 9 months and then that last month go on a starvation diet, like anybody thinks I am going to make the goal. It does not even happen. Then, in the year 1998, which is a year away, it increases the deficit by $24 billion compared to not even passing his budget. Clearly, Mr. Speaker, we cannot be playing games like this. The time has come to balance the budget. My friend, Michael Quido, who is an evangelist, I do not know if the gentleman gets him in Florida or not, tells the story about a frog that got caught in the road, got caught in a pothole in the road. People in Florida have all of these sink holes, so they can identify with this. The frog gets caught, his buddy frog comes over there and tries to pull him out. He pulls and pulls and pulls and cannot get the frog out of the pothole. So his buddy says: I will try to come back to get you tomorrow. Just hang in there. So he goes back home and has dinner, a couple of flies and grub worms with the family. The next thing you know, the frog that was in the road caught in the pothole comes through the door. He said, how did you get out of the pothole? We tried and tried and tried and we could not get you out of the pothole. How did you get out? He said: When you were trying I just wanted to get out because I knew I needed to get out. But after you left a truck was coming, and I had to get out. Now, that is the position of the U.S. Congress right now. We are stuck in the pothole. We would like to balance the budget, but in reality, we can go home and tell everybody it is somebody else's problem. We can portray ourselves as a solution and say that we really cannot do it now, but we are trying, and we can talk this good game. The fact is, we cannot defy gravity much longer, Mr. Speaker. It is time to admit a truck is coming down the road to smash all of us politically, nationally, economically. It is time to balance the budget, and it is time to quit fooling around about it. I know the gentleman from Florida has worked very hard as a member of the Committee on the Budget to try to come up with some programs that the Clinton administration will agree to eliminate and that we can move toward balancing the budget. I know the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] has worked very hard with the White House since January trying to negotiate. Are my colleagues getting anywhere?

Mr. KINGSTON. The interesting thing about the sugar program is that changes in compromises transitioning the sugar program to a free market program and protecting whatever very small farmers are out there. But as was said, most of the bulk of it, the benefits go to the large corporate farmers anyhow, but giving the programs the benefit of the doubt, compromises were offered. They were all rejected. The Miller-Schumer bill, which the gentleman has introduced, actually eliminates the programs and takes the American consumer out from the shackles of a Government cartel.

Mr. KINGSTON. Even though we can get it for about half that price.

Mr. KINGSTON. Is it not true that we import 100 percent or 99 percent of our tea, which is true, we do not grow tea domestically? Many people have said we have to preserve the American supplier because we cannot be dependent. But I think the reality is the dependency is overseas to those markets to make sure that America continues to buy their sugar. So to say that there is going to be a sugar shortage because of the change in the sugar domestic policy is ridiculous because we never had a tea shortage, or at least none in recent memory that I can recall.

Mr. KINGSTON. Because the Government is the reason that land is higher, and yet the Government is going to pay the higher cost, which it costs.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for discussing what he is up to in the homeownership conference, because another thing that will bring about homeownership, as much as anything else, is balancing the budget, and we are going to be talking about that, because, as the gentleman knows, Alan Greenspan has said that balancing the budget could reduce interest rates on home mortgages as much as 2 percent, and that would be significant towards everybody participating in the American dream. There are a lot of quirky things that we are trying to bring common sense policy to. One of them is in the subject of sugar, and, Mr. Speaker, we are not going to get back to the Hershey's bipartisan hugs and kisses dialogue when we talk about sugar. But the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Miller] has a program that eliminates the sugar program. So I wanted to yield to him and ask him what is the sugar program and why should we eliminate it?

Mr. KINGSTON. It is too bad that in Washington you can always demagog out of fear and you can get reelected through race-baiting or scaring seniors or saying that children are going to be starved on the streets. It is an old tactic. Last year, before the gentleman was here, Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Committee, offered $1 million to any Democrat or any person who could show where Medicare was being cut in the bill. Now do you not know the pressure that partisans were under to try to prove that the Republicans were, in fact, cutting Medicare? I mean they would have loved to collect that million dollars because in addition to being millionaires, they could have been heroes, huge heroes. Not one person was able to do that. Medicare was not cut. Yet unfortunately, in Washington we have a few demagogs who like to scare seniors and so forth, but the gentleman has raised a good point. Per recipient, it went from approximately 5,200 to about 7,100, and we are going to continue to work, and the doors are wide open in the discussions and the dialogs and the committee rooms. Democrats and Republicans, come on in, let us do what is responsible. Tomorrow we will get the report, and we are going to have to continue addressing this. One of the things we need in Medicare policy is common sense. One of the things that we have tried since we have become the majority of Congress is bring common sense, Republican, American ideas to the streets of America. Common sense is at a premium in Washington. It is just such a scarcity. But the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Jack Metcalf] is one of the Members who has been working very, very hard in the Housing Opportunity Caucus to make homeownership and that part of the American dream real to millions of more Americans than have houses right now. So I am proud to yield to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Metcalf].

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask the gentleman, it costs the American consumers the difference in the world price versus the domestic price, but does it cost you in taxes?

Mr. KINGSTON. And the Seminoles, but the Gators, you are really pushing it even in the name of grandma.

Mr. KINGSTON. Were their any Gators in the room? I am a Georgia Bulldog.

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, it is interesting. You mentioned that a friend of mine sells bandages to Medicare suppliers, and it is kind of a cross between the regular bandage and a gauze bandage, and it is more sophisticated than an ordinary bandage but is no big deal. He says that they can be made for $3. Under Medicare you can legally bill up to $29 on there. So he comes to a town meeting, and he and I make a big deal about this bandage, and I show it up, and, you know, of course it is the kind of poster child you look for; you know, public officials and so forth. And so I showed it. The only time he has ever been audited by the Federal Government was after he put this, after he basically blew the whistle on this crazy bandage. And it is the same thing, only the government would come up with such weird rules and regulations and then appear to be a little bit punitive when somebody blows the whistle on it, and I hope that it works out.

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, the gentleman who has worked so hard on it, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Miller] do you believe you had mentioned that the President is a lot closer now? It is not an election year, we do not hear the demagoguery. Are we in the United States Congress going to put our seniors first this year, get a bill passed in the House and Senate and signed by the President?

Mr. KINGSTON. You know, though, I hear this in our town meetings on Medicare with seniors all the time is that the fraud and abuse, the sloppiness in billing is just unbelievable. My dad has diabetes, and he has macular degeneration, so he is legally blind. You know, diabetics have to check their blood sugar level all the time, and so in the condominium complex that he lives in Athens, GA the seniors all kind of help each other out. So one of his things is he gives advice to lots of his neighbors, and he says over and over again somebody goes to the doctor, the hospital, on Medicare for a head cold, they are billed for x-rays or whatever, it is just. And you do not know. There is another story of a woman just outside of Brunswick, GA, who instead of going to have stitches removed in Brunswick, the ambulance drove her to Jacksonville because it is legal under Medicare, and the Jacksonville trip allowed the ambulance company to charge $1,200 whereas, had they just gone to Brunswick, it would have only been $200 or $300. So legally they can be very, very aggressive on their delivery service just to get the higher amount. You never see that in the private sector. That was one of the reasons that health care inflation skyrocketed in the 1980's, but in the private sector, companies started getting aggressive about it and they brought that down. Now the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Schaffer] is here, and I know he is a freshman. He has already expressed interest in working on Medicare, and he has been waiting for tomorrow and the trustees' report, too.

Mr. KINGSTON. What the gentleman is saying is it is our jobs working with the Medicare trustees on a bipartisan basis to act like fiduciaries and protect and preserve Medicare not just for the next election, not just for the term of our tenure in public office but for the next generations, so that it will be there tomorrow. As I understand the gentleman, the private sector health care inflation has been flat largely because the private sector has gotten out there and looked at different types of delivery systems, different alternatives. In our Medicare plan, we had some options for seniors. If you want to stay in traditional Medicare, you may, it is no problem if you want to just continue. In fact, if you do not elect to take an option you are automatically enrolled in traditional Medicare. But if you want a managed care plan, because as the gentleman has pointed out, it could give you free prescription drugs as part of the monthly premium. If you want a medical savings account, which is a deductible type plan, you could take that. At one time I know we talked about enrolling in the Federal employee health care plan or something like that, very close to it. Another option I remember was if you are, say, a retiree of General Motors and as part of your job description, your perk, if you will, was to be covered under health care the rest of your life, you could just elect that and not participate in any kind of Government-offered health care. In giving seniors these choices, which are the same choices, Mr. Speaker, that everybody has in America today and frankly I think I would like to upgrade my mother from a 1964 Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan. I do not expect her to drive the same 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne that we had, actually a Ford Falcon, so why should she be confined by the same health care policy? Let us let seniors get the benefits of the 1990s. But by offering those things, we can bring down medical inflation as respects Medicare and not cut Medicare one dime. In fact, I remember last year, and the gentleman can correct me, but approximately the numbers were $190 billion, increased to $270 billion, which is not a cut even if you do live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. KINGSTON. Would the gentleman care to describe those briefly?

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, it is a jobs issue, but also as part of it, there are some inefficiencies in there and one of the results of that inefficiency is that Medicare inflation has been around 11 percent. Regular medical inflation has been in the 4 to 6 percent range, depending on the year and so forth. Would the gentleman care to comment on that?

Mr. KINGSTON. Before he leaves the Chamber, I want to say to the gentleman from California that many, many Members and in fact I am sure most Members of this Chamber agree with him in his comments about Representative, the Honorable Bob Dornan, because he was such a viable part of this body for many years. He is an extremely dedicated patriotic American of great intellect and energy, and I hope that the years are as good to me as they have been to Bob Dornan in terms of getting the job done. Mr. Speaker, tonight is the eve of the trustees report on Medicare. Each year the trustees who are appointed, three of them by the President of the United States, give a state of affairs on Medicare, how it is doing, how much money it is bringing in, how many people are participating, what works and what does not work. We all remember on April 3, 1995, when those Clinton-appointed Medicare trustees gave us the very sad news that Medicare was going broke and if we did not act and act quickly to protect and preserve Medicare, that it would not be there for our grandparents and for future generations. I think what the Republican Party has tried to do since April 1995 is work to solve Medicare on a bipartisan basis, because, Mr. Speaker, my mother and dad depend on it. My great grandmother depends on it. My wife depends on it. My wife's grandmother depends on it. It is something we believe deeply as Americans that we need to protect and preserve. I have tonight joining me in this special order the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Miller], who has led that fight. The gentleman from Florida [Mr. Miller] has, and he may have the need to correct me, more seniors in his district than any other district in the United States of America. It is not only very personal with him, but it is certainly political. So he has had to do everything he can to help it. I am going to yield the floor to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Miller], but before I do I want to also say that I have the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Metcalf] with us, who is part of the freshman class in the 104th Congress who also has worked very closely and very energetically to protect Medicare. The gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] is welcome to join us if he chooses to. Let me yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Miller]. Tomorrow we get the report. What is it going to tell us?

Mr. KINGSTON. Is the gentleman meaning to tell me that Ford Motor Co. or IBM or Wal-Mart, their health care has not been going up as much as Government-run health care?