Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. And then let me ask the gentleman this question, are there non-American citizens participating in the sugar program, and are they getting paid to do that?

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask my colleague on the subject of imports, so not only are we subsidizing large, corporate American sugar growers, but we are also, if I hear the gentleman correct, subsidizing foreign sugar growers; is that correct?

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I share the Democrats' concern for some movement on campaign finance reform. As a Member of Congress, I have supported campaign finance reform, but to hear them talk about it is similar to hearing Al Capone talk about the need to crack down on organized crime. The hypocrisy is absurd. Let us talk about enforcement of the existing laws, Mr. Speaker, $3 million in foreign contributions have been returned by the Democrat National Committee. Where is their outrage? Where are they on this? They are not calling. The 158 fundraisers at the White House. The documents show that there have been over $300,000 to $400,000 raised at each fundraiser. Of course, they are calling them teas and coffees. I guess Starbucks would be so proud. Over $100,000 raised by the Vice President of the United States at a Buddhist temple where everyone is sworn to a vow of poverty. Where are the Democrats? Where is there righteous indignation there? The Vice President makes fundraising phone calls from Federal Government property. Where are the Democrats? Silent again. The Washington Post reports that John Huang tried to funnel $250,000 in illegal donations to the Democrat National Committee through an Asian American business group, and where are the Democrats? Where is their outrage? Nothing but silence. Let us continue. Pauline Kanchanalak. Now, I might be mispronouncing that name, Mr. Speaker. I am not as intimate with foreign donors as my Democrat friends are. But Pauline Kanchanalak gave $235,000 in foreign funds to the Democrat National Committee and they had to be returned. Now, we wanted, as Members of Congress, to subpoena her and ask her about this. She has fled the country. Where are the Democrats? Where is their outrage? Relatives of the Riady family, which of course owns the Lippo Bank, they gave $450,000 to the Democrat National Committee, which again had to be returned. By the way, did they pay interest on that? I mean because it could be a loan, I do not know. But they are no longer in the country either. Again, no subpoena, and again, I ask, where are the Democrats? Key figures have fled the country because of their activities. Charlie Trie gave $640,000 in suspicious checks to the President's legal defense fund. He has fled the country, cannot be subpoenaed. Where are the Democrats? Cuban drug dealers and Chinese arms merchants wined and dined at the White House. Where are the Democrats? Where is their outrage? Webster Hubbell given hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep apparently silent when he was under investigation by the independent counsel. Was this hush money? Mr. Speaker, where are the Democrats? Mr. Speaker, what I am interested in is although it sounds good and it is a great diversionary tactic for the Democrats to say we need campaign finance reform, why do the Democrats not join us on campaign law enforcement? Why do the Democrats not spend just a little bit of their energy having this same outrage at the folks over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue instead of this sideshow, instead of these diversionary tactics. Let us look ourselves in the mirror and say, we have some good laws on the books right now and why do we not enforce those?

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, now we hear it from the administration that brought American school kids hepatitis strawberries. They now want to handle kids' health care. Let me see if this makes sense. I am a father of four children. I do not want the Government getting involved in my kids' health care if that is the way they are going to handle the school lunch program. It is absurd. Are we going to talk about campaign finance reform? Let us talk about the sweet deal for the Chinese leasing an American shipyard. What is the connection here? Let us talk about American security. Let us talk about the $235,000 in foreign funds given to the Democratic National Committee that had to be returned. Let us talk about Webster Hubbell and the money that was given to him when he resigned. Was it hush money or was it just a mere coincidence? Let us get into the Cuban drug dealers and the Chinese arms dealers who have been wined and dined at the White House. Is this the campaign finance reform we are talking about? I am curious. I join Democrats in trying to get to the root of this.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, today, April 15, brings terror across the land to all kinds of Americans who have spent hours and hours filling out their tax forms, Americans who want to pay their fair share, Americans who know April 15 is coming on, and yet, at the same time, are very frustrated by the fact that they cannot figure out what their tax forms are. A study showed that businesses have spent on an average each year 3.6 billion manhours a year filling out and complying with tax forms. American individuals spend 1.8 billion hours filling out tax forms. So in total, Mr. Speaker, we have approximately 3 million Americans working 40 hours a week, 12 months a year, just to comply with the IRS. Today the IRS has 200 tax forms, 400 forms that tell you how to fill out the 200 forms, and 111,000 IRS employees who do not know which forms are correct and which forms are not. Another study showed that last year on questions to IRS agents, over 8 million of the questioners were given wrong answers. It is time to change our tax system. We have, I think, a lot of good employees at the IRS, and yet in the same hand we have a system that is impossible for them to work with, a system that cannot be audited. Congress has sent in auditors to the IRS, and their books are not in good enough order for us to audit. Now, what would happen to the businesses back home if the IRS agents came to their door and said, ``We want to see your books,'' and they would say, ``Well, we cannot be audited, our books are in too much disarray''? Yet that is the standard that the IRS has. We have spent $4 billion on a tax automation system for the IRS, and they are no more automated now than they were 10 years ago when we started. Mr. Speaker, I believe that the time is right for us to vigorously engage in a debate on tax simplification or in a debate on a consumption tax. It is time for us to say that the current tax system is impossible, it is counterproductive. Businesses and individuals are spending too much time trying to avoid tax considerations, rather than just doing their daily chores. For example, if we have a widget company, the business of a widget company is to manufacture, produce, and sell widgets. It is not to avoid taxes and try to figure out IRS compliance. Yet that seems to be the custom these days. I had one constituent call me, Mr. Speaker. She had gotten a letter from the IRS saying that she had overpaid her taxes one year and was entitled to a $1,000 return. But in order to get the $1,000 return, she needed to send an additional copy of her tax return for that year. No big deal. Now, in this particular case, the woman did her tax form herself. She did not use an accountant. She did not have a Xerox machine at home. All she did was filled out her original form with ink, and then a copy of the original with pencil. So the only thing she had was a penciled copy of her tax form. But the IRS letter was pretty explicit. Just send in your old tax form and we will send you the $1,000 that you have overpaid in the past. She sent that in. Lo and behold, her next letter from the IRS, instead of saying here is your $1,000, the next letter from the IRS says, you are just now paying your taxes from 2 years ago, and inasmuch as you are, you owe a penalty plus all the taxes due that year. I got involved in it. We fought in a tug of war for a long time. Finally she ended up not getting the $1,000, not having to pay the taxes twice, but she did have to pay a penalty. The IRS brought the whole matter up. She was fine. Again, Mr. Speaker, it is just a matter of the system is too chaotic, too confused for IRS agents to fairly administer it themselves. So the time to debate a flat tax, and the Armey flat tax proposal is that you pay 20 percent, basically, of what you earn. The only deduction, I believe, that the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey] is proposing is for dependents, but no other deductions. You can fill out your tax form on a postcard. How many Americans sitting at home tonight wished they had that option? The other proposal I understand is for a consumption tax. It is a tax system that rewards savings and it taxes consumers when they spend money. I believe both these proposals are good. I believe both should vigorously be debated. I look forward to the debates. As far as I am concerned, the time has come. Let us get it done.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker spoke about what is wrong. What is wrong is to lie to the American people and say something is a cut when it is not a cut. The Republican Medicare proposal last year increased Medicare funding $190 billion to $270 billion. That is not a cut. Now, if my colleagues on the other side say it is a cut, either they have a huge math disorder or they are a liar, period. I certainly would hope that we have a math disorder on the other side that maybe we can reach out through one of the 706 social programs sponsored by the Department of Education and help those who failed in mathematics to understand. They are getting paid $134,000 a year to serve in the U.S. Congress. They ought to be able to know an increase from a decrease, and then they ought to have the forthrightness to be truthful about it. Mr. Speaker, the situation is this: The American people are overtaxed; Medicare has gone broke; we have a proposal to fix it. They are separate issues. Balancing the budget is a separate issue. The Speaker offered the President a balanced budget without tax cuts. The President is the one who has rejected it, not the Speaker. We are trying to work with the other side. We are not trying to fight them.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I am really disturbed about these Democrats. Apparently they are taking their paychecks and they are not working. What is it with my colleagues? My friends on the other side of the aisle all should be out having town meetings, visiting with constituents, visiting plants, talking to people, doing casework. If my colleagues are ashamed of the fact that they are not working, do not blame it on Newt Gingrich, go home and resign. There is lots to be done. I realize that there is frustration that we are not up here passing more laws, more power, more for bureaucracy, more control over small businesses. I know what it is my colleagues on the other side of the aisle consider great fun, and that is growing the size of government. Mr. Speaker, the folks back home think it is a good day's work when government does not get bigger and bigger every single day, every single year. Mr. Speaker, the IRS, just take them alone. The IRS right now is up to 111,000 employees. Americans spend over $1.8 billion man-hours a year just filling out their IRS income tax forms. Businesses spend $3.6 billion complying with their paperwork. That is too much government, too much bureaucracy. Mr. Speaker, passing more laws and increasing the size of government is not the key to utopia, much to the disappointment of some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I drove over to Cousin Artie and Rebecca's house to pick up my daughter Anne, who had walked to their house after ballet. Anne's first cousin and best friend is Arabella Hadwin. And Arabella came out; she was wearing an Indian costume. Kind of leather. Actually, fake leather with frills on it. It had Pocahontas's picture on it. So I said to 6-year-old Arabella, ``Arabella, do you know today is Pocahontas's wedding day?'' She looked at me, and I could tell in that little 6-year-old mind she was thinking, and she said, ``She's dead.'' And I said, ``Well, you're right, Pocahontas is dead, but this is the day that she got married on a long, long time ago, many years ago.'' Then Arabella said, ``Oh, you mean she got married on Monday?'' And I said, ``Well, no, she really got married on April 7.'' But it is funny how kids interpret things when we talk to them. You never quite know when they are listening or how they are listening and so forth. But I enjoy talking to children, I enjoy talking to small kids and to seniors in high school and college kids and so forth. One of the things I often ask small kids in schools, ``How many of you have an allowance?'' Inevitably half the class has an allowance. ``What do you make?'' Two or three dollars a week. Some of them make $5. Some of them are well-heeled, I guess, they make $10 a week. I said, ``Let me ask you this. You make $10 a week, how much do you spend?'' And they always kind of giggle, ``Well, I spend a little bit of it but my dad and mom like me to save some so I don't spend all of it.'' ``Let me ask you this. You make $2 a week; do you ever spend $2.10?'' They look at me like I am crazy. ``Do you ever spend $2.25?'' ``No.'' ``Do you ever spend $2.50?'' At this point they know I am crazy, and they are wondering what the heck is this guy talking about. I say, I am your Member of the U.S. Congress. Did you know that the U.S. Congress also has an allowance? We call it tax revenue, and we get a certain amount a year; sometimes it is about $1.3 trillion. But do you know what we do? We grownups, we professional men and women who are paid to represent you and spend your money, we spend more of that allowance than we make. You send us $1.3 trillion and we spend $1.5 trillion. It seems to be the case, Democrats or Republicans, we overspend. These kids cannot believe it. These kids, who have such innocent faces and such belief in mom and dad and the United States of America look at me in disbelief. Why would you spend more money than you bring in? Why would you spend more than your allowance? How can you spend that? And then we talk about the national debt and it is a very real problem. It is not something that, well, this is an amusing story to talk about my niece Arabella. This is truth. This is reality. When Members of Congress go out and they try to be the big mom or dad spending all the money, expanding social programs, talking about we need this for the United States of America, they are not spending their own money, they are spending little children's money. I see today in the gallery some children. Guess whose tab they will be picking up in the future? Our debt, Mr. Speaker, right now is $5.1 trillion. Let me give the definition of $1 trillion. Shaq, the famous basketball player, Shaquille O'Neal, makes $30 million a year. Do you know how many years he would have to play to make $1 trillion? Thirty-three thousand years, just to make $1 trillion. Another definition. If you have a boxcar full of thousands of dollar bills crammed to the top, you have $65 million in the boxcar. Do you know how long the train would have to be, Mr. Speaker, to get to $1 trillion? The train, with boxcars of $65 million each, would have to be 240 miles long to get to $1 trillion. And we, the big spenders in Congress, have left a debt, are looking at a debt right now of $5.1 trillion. Yet the sad thing is we still have deficit spending. We still are spending more of our allowance money than we bring in. The children of America will be picking up this money. It will take years and years to pay down this debt. But the first step is to balance the budget. We have not had a balanced budget since 1969, which, as you remember, was when Woodstock was the big thing and everybody wanted to get out of Vietnam and Richard Nixon was President and the ``Mod Squad'' was on TV. That is how long it has been, Mr. Speaker. The time is now to stop this. This Congress, this year, let us pass a balanced budget and get on to save the United States of America for our children.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, a couple of years ago I made the difficult decision to fly home a little bit early from Washington to return to Savannah, GA, to see my 5-year-old's kindergarten graduation. I got on what can only be described as the flight from hell. I left Washington, flew to Atlanta, and then usually it is about a 30-minute flight to Savannah. We went to Augusta, could not get into Savannah, we ended up trying to get into Jacksonville, could not get into Jacksonville, went to Tampa, spent the night, and the next day went back to Atlanta, then tried again to get into Savannah. We could not. As a consequence of all this hopping around and so forth and the weather, I missed my son's school event. It broke my heart. But do Members know what? As a Federal employee, at least I had the option of going home to see his play. In the private sector today, the Federal Government laws deny employees that option. They cannot take off work to go see somebody, to take them to the doctor or go see a school play or something. But with this new legislation we are passing today, employees for the first time in the private sector will be able to work extra and take comptime off. They can go ahead and work the 40-hour workweek, and then take time off needed for those very important and irreplaceable family functions. I hope we can pass comp time today.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. We have an example in Savannah, GA, which I mentioned to Mr. Hoekstra about, of a weight lifting coach named Michael Cone who actually had been an Olympic weight lifter, and he went to work in the school, worked in the school system for 10 years, and under his jurisdiction was the Presidential Fitness Program, and we all took the Presidential Fitness Program when we were growing up, and, as he described it very accurately, you go to the class and you say: All right kids, everybody come up here and do a pullup. Well, children really cannot do pull-ups. There are a few who can, but the majority of kids cannot. So what happens? One kid goes up and cannot do a pullup. The other 29 in the class say we are not trying because they know not trying is better than failure. And so you got one kid who has been humiliated, and 29 say we are not going to touch that ball. And what happened is the Presidential Fitness Program has become somewhat humiliating to some kids. It has also become cumbersome in terms of testing the children, and the results do not lead to anything. And so what Mr. Cone did in Savannah, GA, he went in with a local hospital and got them to underwrite and say: Why don't we prepare a physical fitness program for kids, a measurement so that each child could do something of the test? And let's don't throw in an 11-year-old who is 140 pounds with an 11-year-old who is 90 pounds because physically they are not equal. Why have their measurement tested the same way? Let's do it by weight more than age and so forth; just some practical commonsense approaches. As a result of Mr. Cone working with the local hospitals, they now had an ongoing physical measurement program for kids all over Chatham County where they can find out if these kids have any physical problems, if they changed from the year before. If they are overweight they can make recommendations and so forth. But the best part is it is less extensive than the Federal program and it goes a lot quicker. They can test it in about a third of the time that the Presidential Fitness Training Program does, and again it is an example of local initiative. But you know Mr. Cone told me the unbelievable part is he had to fight the bureaucracy to get this thing approved and get it running.

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman in your newsletter, and I am attributing everything to you that I am plagiarizing here, but you pointed out in Washington, DC, a 57-year-old grandmother who started a program called Children of Mine, and the program in Washington, DC, provides hot meals, homework help, tutoring, computer instruction, Bible study, and a safe place for at-risk children to play, go to after school, to know that they are safe and have security and so forth. And the interesting thing is as this woman, Miss Hannah Hawkins, has turned around the lives of so many children since--well, I am not sure she started it in 1970 or how long she has been doing it, but not one dime comes from the Federal Government. And you are finding all kinds of programs similar to this Children of Mine.

Mr. KINGSTON. I am certain it was when Jimmy Carter was President, and so let us just say thereabouts. But what is interesting, during that same period of time that we have had this absolute explosion in programs, which has also taken away the flexibility and freedom for the teacher to teach in her or his own classroom, what has also happened is the SAT scores have fallen from approximately 937 to about 910 points, if not more than that, and the interesting thing as you know, the SAT scores have been recalibrated, and 900 in 1975 would equal about a thousand today. So in reality the SAT scores have fallen more than 30 points, but to probably about a hundred despite all of this Federal Government help to States which has proven not to be help but hindrance.

Mr. KINGSTON. You know, it is interesting during this period of time, and I generally attribute most of it since the conception of the Department of Education in Washington, and the gentleman may know the exact year. I believe it was 1978; but was it not 1978?

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, I have heard, and Georgia has a lot of poultry processing and poultry processing is very water intensive and you have to keep the area very, very clean for the USDA inspectors. You have to have it clean. But then the Occupational Safety and Health Administration comes in and they say the place is too wet. So you clean it enough to process the food and then it gets too dangerous for the workers and you have two Federal agencies once again responding to the same problem that many times they are creating.

Mr. KINGSTON. Here is another interesting statistic. From 1954 to 1994, the number of words in the section of the IRS code relating just to income taxes, not all the other taxes but just to income taxes went from less than 200,000 to over 800,000. In 1994, businesses across America spent more than 3.6 billion hours preparing their tax returns, and individuals spent more than 1.8 billion hours preparing their tax returns. Looking at it this way, that approximates to 3 million people working full-time 12 months a year just to comply with the Tax Code. You talk about wasted energy and wasted manpower. That is absolutely ridiculous. We have got to move toward a simplified tax system. I do not know if the answer is the flat tax, but we have got to give it serious debate, and we have got to do it very soon.

Mr. KINGSTON. What I am concerned about is what about hamster owners? Why do they not have to have the same regulations? And what about people with goldfish, should they not be required to change the water? And Mynah birds. Do you know anybody with a Mynah bird? They are filthy. In this era when the end of big government has come, it just seems amazing to me that we are so inconsistent with administering the pet policy. And when I say us, let us make sure that the folks understand, this is not the U.S. Congress, these are the unelected bureaucracies who never have to have town meetings, never have to have their name on the ballot and never have to answer constituent mail. They are the ones making these rules.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I want to reinforce what the gentleman from Michigan was saying, because there is often, I would say, a Washington, big government bias toward the government running something as opposed to the nonprofit private sector doing it. It is similar to the accusation of saying, ``Well, I have the Boy Scouts and they do a good job, but if you want to win a war, you send in the U.S. Army.'' That is not an accurate comparison when we are talking about charity and the private sector. In 1995, Americans donated $147 billion to charity, to churches, to museums, to just private causes of all nature, and that does not count the casseroles, the cakes, the soft costs that happen when a neighbor is sick or someone has died and people step forward in that good old American way, as we have done for over 200 years. So we have a hard cost of $147 billion in direct donations to charity. In addition to that, we have 90 million Americans donating 4 hours each and every week to charity. Now, if we do the math on that, we will find we have donated each year about $19 billion manhours, each year, running T-ball, running the hospice, running the United Way, running all kinds of church institutions and faith-based charities that the gentleman has already mentioned. If we do the math on 19 billion manhours times $10 an hour, some of it will be worth less, some of it, though, far more, and we will find $190 billion that would be donated through hours. If we add the two of those together, America is not new at handling problems, at having volunteers go out and doing all sorts of things. Yet there is this Washington bias that unless there is a government program and unless there is legislation, unless there is law, that it cannot happen. There is just no way it can go without the blessing of Congress. So I certainly think that the budget that deemphasizes command control problem solving out of Washington, returning it back to the streets of America, I think, is absolutely the right direction to move to.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, one of the great parts about this job is that we do get lots of students come and visiting our offices and I am always inspired. It is interesting that there are a lot of folks who are down on students, but I look at the kids who are in our classes today and I feel very, very optimistic. But often, it is because of their own effort or their parents more than it is because of the education system. We were talking about preparing kids for the future. One of the realities that children of today will face a lot more than our generation is that they will be competing directly against German, Japanese, British, Canadian children and so forth. The question is, are we preparing them best? Of the 760 different Federal education programs, it is interesting to note that there are 14 programs that deal with reading, but 39 deal with art. There are 11 that deal with mathematics, but 27 that deal with environment. Now, I think it is important to know about art and it is important to know about environment, but when you are talking about competing in a global economy, you better know your math and you better know how to read. But because the Federal Government passes things based on politics and emotion far more than logic, it is a lot more popular to vote for art and environmental programs rather than math and reading because they are somewhat lackluster. But are we cheating our children when we do that? I think we are. We have to prepare them for the global marketplace.

Mr. KINGSTON. One of the things that is interesting in one of the statistics your committee came out with is that 30 percent of the American students entering higher education, entering colleges and universities have to take remedial courses. I believe one of the reasons that they have to take remedial courses is because this bureaucracy that we are throwing on local school systems makes teachers spend far more time in paperwork than they should be and far less time helping students, because when they are filling out paperwork they cannot help that marginal student who needs just a little extra help in math that day. I mean a C student, C-plus student who might come up to a B or B-plus or an A, but instead moves in the opposite direction because the teachers are not there any more. So what does the President do? He says we need tutors, so let us go in with these $20,000 a year volunteers from AmeriCorps to solve this problem. It is absolutely absurd. We do not need more Federal programs, we need less, and more flexibility for the teachers; we need less paperwork for them.

Mr. KINGSTON. On that subject, I am fascinated with the hard work the gentleman has done in his subcommittee because you have certainly been all over the country. One of the stories the gentleman came out with is that the Federal Government has a kitty litter policy. Perhaps the Federal Government should have a manure policy, for obvious reasons, but kitty litter seems to be stretching it a little bit. As I understand it, it had to do with the housing, a HUD program that you gentlemen unearthed, and I have it with me. I am cheating a little bit on the gentleman from Michigan, but I am a fan of your newsletter, as I told you earlier today. Section 5.350 part 2 of the HUD manual of the Federal----

Mr. KINGSTON. This is none other from the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary Henry Cisneros, created rules regarding pet ownership by the elderly and disabled in public housing. It says under section 5.350: In the case of cats and other pets using litter boxes, the pet rules may require the pet owner to change the litter but not more than twice each week; may require pet owners to separate pet waste from litter, but not more than once a day; and may prescribe methods for the disposal of pet waste and used litter. I am so glad that the Federal Government is finally addressing the kitty litter problem. We have got a $5.1 trillion debt, and we are getting into the kitty litter business.

Mr. KINGSTON. I know the gentleman has done a lot of study on the U.S. Department of Education, how big it is, but before we get to that I want to mention another bureaucracy that has 111,000 employees, and that is the IRS. Listen to this story that was from an article written by Dan Gifford in Insight magazine, April 29, 1996: A man's brother was killed in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The IRS demanded that he pay $64 million to them because they had guessed that he had received about $11 million in a settlement. They wanted $64 million from the guy because they had guessed he had received $11 million, and the fact was that he had never received one dime for the settlement at the time the IRS wanted it. Another story said there was a 10-year-old girl, the daughter of a man, and the IRS claimed he owed $1,000 in taxes, $600 paper route savings since she had a little paper route, $600 in her savings were seized by the IRS. This is a 10-year-old girl. I have an 11-year-old son. This is somebody who rides bicycles. So the IRS seizes $600 in a paper route savings and would not give it back to her until her father paid the $1,000 on taxes that he owed. It is just absurd. It is a bureaucracy out of control and out of touch.

Mr. KINGSTON. Was it good reading?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me just say, I appreciate the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Michigan for letting me join them this evening, and I do agree with the title of the gentleman from Michigan's newsletter. We have two missions here, one of a command-control bureaucratic government where Washington experts tell the whole world how to run their lives, how to run education, and how to run their businesses and families and so forth, or we have a government that is smaller and based on common sense. The gentleman has an excellent newsletter, and if the gentleman would, could we get his Net page number and so forth.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, in honor of his dedication to preserving Irish culture, tradition, and history, Monsignor Bourke has been named grand marshal of the 173d St. Patrick's Day Parade in Savannah, GA. The parade is the cornerstone of one of the largest St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the Nation and is a fitting tribute for a man who has given so much to preserve the heritage of his native land and equally as much to the advancement of the country and city he now calls home. Hibernian Society of Savannah, GA ``Irishmen, inclined as they are by nature to good fellowship and charity, should not forget, in a foreign land, the duties they owe to themselves, their national character, and their distressed countrymen. These obligations are the more important to Irishmen, because, during the long period of their oppression, Irishmen have been useful to themselves, their country, and their brethren, only in proportion to their exercise of those generous, charitable and sterling traits with which it has pleased God to distinguish them among the people of the earth. Every motive, too, presses itself upon the heart of each true Irishman to foster more particularly unfortunate because her destiny has been unmerited, and therefore the more entitled to the tender consideration of her own sons, and of the good, the generous and the enlightened of other nationalities.'' ``Driven from unhappy Erin by unrelenting tyranny, afflicted and persecuted Irishmen seek an asylum in this favored republic, endeavoring to find, under the auspices of its liberal institutions, the only consolations that can remain to exiles thrust out of a beloved home by want and oppression. To these it becomes the duty of their more fortunate brethren settled in this free country, and enjoying the benefits of its hospitality, to reach out the hand of friendship, to tender the aid of a delicate charity, and to offer any other assistance which fraternal, manly and kindly feelings may inspire.'' The above two paragraphs comprise the Preamble of the Hibernian Society of Savannah which was adopted at a meeting held on March 17, 1812. The Hibernian Society of Savannah, celebrating its 185th Anniversary on March 17, 1997, would like to give special recognition to Monsignor Daniel J. Bourke who is the Grand Marshal of the 173rd St. Patrick's Day Parade in Savannah. Monsignor Bourke was born in Birr, Offaly County, Ireland on September 28, 1909. He was ordained to the priesthood at All Hallows Missionary Seminary in Dublin on June 23, 1934, for the Diocese of Savannah. He has given 63 years of dedicated service to the area of South Georgia and continues to service the needs of the people in Savannah even though he is retired and resides at Blessed Sacrament Church. Monsignor Bourke has held numerous positions within the Diocese of Savannah during his tenure of service. He was named a Domestic Prelate on March 20, 1959 and Prothonotary Apostolic on October 11, 1966. He has been associated with the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women since its introduction to the diocese in 1938, serving as parish, deanery and diocesan moderator. At present he is the Honorary Diocesan Moderator. From the time of his arrival in Savannah in September, 1936, he has been closely identified with the Irish element. While Irish to the backbone, he is proud to have been for fifty years a citizen of the United States of America. He has lived in Georgia since 1934, and over thirty- three of those years in Savannah. He has participated in nearly every parade since his return to Savannah in 1970. He thanks God that he is a Savannahian and in his letter to the citizens of Savannah upon his selection as Grand Marshal he wrote the following words: ``We of Irish birth or lineage honor this day in the memory of St. Patrick who brought the Catholic faith to Ireland so long ago.'' We honor our forebears who have, in spite of centuries long persecutions, remained faithful to the teachings of St. Patrick. We renew our allegiance to these United States of America, where our people sought and found a harbor of refuge, a land, ``Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom's day.''