Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk tonight a little bit about the growing debate about the drug war and talk about some of the things that this Congress has done to combat the drug problem in America and the youth. I think there are two things that we need to keep in mind. One is the statistics, and the other is the recent salvo of the Clinton administration about tobacco. I, like you, have young children. I am concerned about my children smoking at early ages and I am concerned about the health problems of smoking and so forth. But why did Bill Clinton come out so strong now, on the eve of an election, against tobacco when he has had the Presidency for 4 years? Why suddenly? One of the suggestions that people have, and I think this is a legitimate, it goes back to when Bill Clinton was talking on national TV on MTV, the music television show which gets a huge audience of, say, 13 to 20-year-olds, I will watch it every now and then myself, it is good, it is not just those ages; they have some good programs; of course they have some other things that are pretty questionable. He was asked if given another chance to smoke marijuana, would he have inhaled; because, of course, Bill Clinton would have everyone in America believing that he never inhaled, which this particular President seems to be able to get away with a lot of things but he is famous for saying he did not inhale. But when asked by an MTV audience full of 13-, 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds, if you had it to do again would you have inhaled, to which a snickering, laughing Bill Clinton said, ``Sure. Sure, if I could. I tried before. Ha-ha.'' So here we are, he is running for the President of the United States and at that time, this was on June 12, 1992, he was clearly on his way to being the Democrat nominee, standing in front of 13-, 14-, 15-year- olds, makes a joke about it. So let us kind of say, well, that is what happened. Think about that as exhibit 1. Now play that scenario again, Mr. Candidate for President Clinton, if you had to do it again, would you have inhaled? ``You know, if I had to do it again, I never would have smoked marijuana. I never would have tried. It hurts your ambition, it hurts your grades, it hurts your abilities to do sports. It can be a steppingstone drug to other drugs. It could have psychological addiction. It is a bad thing. I tried it, it was rampant in the 1960's. Do not fall for it in the 1990's. We know so much more about it.'' Just think, Mr. Speaker, if you are a 14-year-old kid and you are sitting on the fence with half your friends smoking marijuana and the other half not smoking and you were sitting on the fence, in that audience, and you had the soon-to-be President of the United States tell you, sure, if I had another chance I would try it, versus, no way, hell no, it is bad for you, do not make my mistake, think which way you would go if you were that 14-year-old. Instead, what happens is we have a passive, I would say endorsement on drug use and drug culture. So what is the Clinton drug record? Here are some great statistics that have just come out. They are not great in the sense that they are optimistic by any stretch, but they have just come out. They are from a 1996, August, 1 month ago, report by the Household Survey on Drug Abuse, the Department of Human Services, which of course is controlled by the Clinton liberal Democrats. But it says that drug use among teenagers has exploded. From 1992 to 1995, overall drug use from 12- to 17-year-olds has gone up 78 percent. Marijuana use during the 1992 to 1995 period is up 105 percent. LSD, 103 percent increase. Cocaine, from 1994 to 1995, 166 percent increase. Think about that, Mr. Speaker. That is all during the Clinton administration, during the period of time when he was slashing interdiction, cutting funding for drug enforcement agents and sending these cynical messages to our children about what drug use means. I had a conversation with my 13-year-old the other day. We have a constant dialogue about this because already in her class, even though she goes to a very good school, I know most of the parents, most of the kids have gone to that same school all their life, they do not have a lot of transplants coming in and out of the system, it is a very stable environment, they already have one kid who was smoking marijuana in their class. If you want some more statistics, and this is something that as a parent of four kids I am very concerned about--this is from the Luntz Research Co.--by the time the average teenager reaches 17, 79 percent of the teenagers have friends who are regular drinkers, 60 percent of the teenagers can buy marijuana within 1 day, 62 percent of our teenagers under 17 have friends who use marijuana, 58 percent have been solicited to buy marijuana, 58 percent know someone who personally uses acid, cocaine or heroin, 43 percent know someone who has a personal drug problem, and 42 percent find marijuana easier to buy than either beer or cigarettes. I think that is very interesting. These statistics, Mr. Speaker, as you know, are of major concern. This past weekend, the Speaker was outraged when the President had the audacity to write a letter that blamed Congress for not fully funding his anti-drug program. We know what has happened. His sideshow with tobacco has not brought in the poll numbers that he expected, so he is going to come at the drug problem now head-on by blaming it on Congress. So here are some statistics on that that we want to talk about. Is Congress to blame? One of President Clinton's first acts as President was to slash the staff of the drug czar by 83 percent. He cut drug interdiction spending 25 percent below the Bush administration. And from 1992 to 1995, 227 agent positions were eliminated from the Drug Enforcement Agency. Let us talk about the Drug Enforcement Agency, Mr. Speaker. I believe the total number of employees at the Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA as it is called often, I believe it is around 6,800 people. How many people do we have working for the IRS? One hundred eleven thousand employees. So we have got 111,000 employees who are going to breathe down the necks of middle-class tax-paying Americans to make sure that they fill out their taxes right. But in terms of cracking down on drug thugs, we only have about 6,800 people and 227 of them have had their jobs eliminated under President Clinton. Drug prosecution. What is going on over at the Attorney General's office? They are in on that, too. Drug prosecution has dropped 12 percent during Clinton's first 2 years as President. And we remember one of his key top advisers and Cabinet members had a son who was involved and arrested for drug usage and maybe drug sales, I am not sure; I know drug usage, and at the time she said, as a good mother should say, she thought he had done no wrong; I guess a good mother should say, I am still behind my son, I love him, even though he has done wrong; but I would say in true Clinton administration fashion; blamed it on society. That is the kind of people that we seem to have surrounding the President. The recent book that came out by Gary Aldrich who was a top FBI adviser over at the White House, the name of the book is ``Unlimited Access,'' it is an FBI agent who is no longer with the administration but who was there during the key periods of time in the administration, he talks about the big difference between, say, Bush applicants and Clinton applicants. And I am not going to say that this book is gospel, I am not going to say that all of this has been verified. Frankly, some of it has, some of it has not. I will say this; that if Anita Hill said anything that was truth, then this book is gospel compared to Anita Hill, but I am not going to get into opinions too much, just read a little bit of it here. That a minority of Bush applicants, and this is on page 112 of the book, experimented and admitted to inhaling illegal drugs. They were very sorry. They said, yes, I smoked marijuana once or twice, I was in college, everybody was doing it, so I stopped, I stopped using marijuana after I left college. I am ashamed that I ever did it, but it was stupid and I am sorry agents like you were risking your lives fighting drug traffickers and I did not have the guts to stand up to peer pressure. What Mr. Aldrich does in his book, he contrasts this to Clinton staffers. Remember, this guy was there at the time. He said, by contrast, Clinton staffers, older or younger, make no apology for their illegal drug use, which was much more extensive, with heavy drugs like cocaine, crack, LSD. Many were actually in your face about it, using the FBI interview to try to debate me, me being Gary Aldrich, on the merits of making drugs legal. That sets a tone of this White House having certainly, I am not going to say a drug culture, but certainly a different view of drugs entirely than society; because I think society as a whole recognizes the danger of drugs, recognizes that it is not a positive thing, that society as a whole does not want to legalize marijuana, which again was one of the Clinton Cabinet and adviser things that they brought up. Here is another quote, again Mr. Aldrich says incidents like these, and it is talking about an incident of somebody who had had some marijuana and polygraph problems, but the word had trickled down that the Clinton staff system was rigged and there were some paperwork problems, that they would blur over people's drug use or whatever like that. This book goes into great detail about it. It also talks about the drug czar and some of the Cabinet members. Originally the drug czar was not the gentleman who is drug czar now, who is a fine gentleman and doing a very good job over there. I am glad to see that Clinton has recognized that, and I am sorry to see it is in the 11th hour of his administration. But, you know, getting back to what the Gingrich-Clinton discussion was about over the weekend, I think it is good to hear what the Speaker said in his letter back to Clinton. Clinton wrote that Congress has not come up with $640 million in appropriations or his request to spend more money on drugs in the safe and drug free school program. I am a member of appropriations, as you are, Mr. Speaker. I have never been lobbied by anybody except for the new drug czar about increasing spending for drug interdiction, enforcement, or convictions. I have not had anybody from the administration contact me as an appropriations member and say this is what we need. I have had some other agencies do that, but they were not acting from the administration. The Speaker wrote back: It is an outrage to watch you, to the President, to watch you, the President, joke about your own drug use. You have eliminated 83 percent of the drug czar's office after being sworn in, and you stood by while your Surgeon General called for drug legalization and your Attorney General testified against mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers. He also contended that Clinton tried to cut antidrug efforts by law enforcement agencies, appointed Federal judges who are easy on drug dealers. Mr. Speaker, let me talk about that. Typical Clinton-appointed judge: This was a case where a woman pulled up into a high crime district in New York City. She hops out of her car. Four men come out of the dark alleyway and put two duffel bags into the trunk of the car. When that happened, law enforcement personnel closed in on her. The people ran. The police caught them. They arrested them, took them to court. In court, the liberal Clinton-appointed judge threw out the bags of cocaine, which was in the duffel bags, full of, I think, 80 pounds of cocaine in each duffel bag, threw that out as evidence. He said in that neighborhood running from the police is logical and rational behavior because police in that neighborhood are oppressive. That was the Clinton-appointed judge who was supposed to be protecting our children on our streets from drug thugs and traffickers and pushers. That is the kind of mentality we have here. It is just two different perceptions of the problem. The letter from Mr. Gingrich goes on, and I think it is a good one, but he points to a lot of facts. This year, Republicans in Congress will provide $173 million for the Drug Enforcement Agency. That is $20 million more than the President had requested. The Republican Congress is increasing funding for INS, $542 million, including 400 more Border Patrol agents. That, Mr. Speaker, is the Immigration Service. As we know, one of the big problems we have with drug trafficking is people coming over the borders from out of the country bringing in drugs. If we can crack down on illegal immigration, we are also cracking down on drug trafficking. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note that 22 percent of the prison population in our Federal penal system are illegal aliens, and 80 percent of them are in jail for violent offenses, and many, many related to drugs. Republicans are also providing $914 million in the defense budget for drug interdiction and counter drug activities. I met with a gentleman today who represents a group who is trying to support new funding for an airplane for Customs. This airplane has a special kind of radar that can be used to detect drug dealers. As you probably know, Mr. Speaker, most drugs right now are the ones south of the border and are coming from Peru or Bolivia. They are manufactured there, and then they are brought to Colombia, where the lab is. Then from Colombia they are flown to a ship or flown to another country and dropped off, either with a quick landing, or sometimes they have to just drop the stuff and keep going. This drug interdiction plan would track drug planes and tell the people on the ground where they are going to, and so forth, because right now, of course, the drug planes are flying without flight plans, without running lights and so forth, and they are very hard to detect. Drug interdiction planes would be a great help in fighting that. We are spending $13 million more than President Clinton requested for intelligence efforts against drug cartels, and $9.5 more for interdictions on the southwest border. We have increased funding to fight drugs in high crime neighborhoods by $10 million. Now, we have a philosophical disagreement on some of the spending for the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, because some of that was frankly getting wasted. But there is a lot of good that came from it, because this was a Reagan program. It was part of the Nancy Reagan just say no program. One of the things that is interesting about Nancy Reagan's program, Mr. Speaker, is that as the liberal Washington elite snickered at it because it was just too simple, it is interesting that up until 1992, drug usage for every drug except for heroin fell up until 1992. Then you get a new President, you get a new tone, a new drug philosophy, and what happens? Drug usage is right back up. So this is something that we have got to keep fighting on. It is something where marijuana is more deadly now than it was when we were teenagers. There are chemicals and so forth that are mixed into it. It is not the same plant that parents say, ``Well, I smoked a little marijuana. It will not hurt my 15 year old.'' It might, because it is a different drug, and it is a different age in terms of drugs. So I think that when you look at the statistics that the Luntz Corp. put out, we have got to be very, very concerned. With that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to move on to a couple of the other things that are of great concern in terms of this Congress, some of the reforms that we have done. This Congress has made a lot of changes. The reforms we have put in are all commonsense based. We have given the President the line-item veto. That will be effective in January. We have applied the same laws to Congress that the private sector has to live under. That goes for OSHA, EPA, regulatory departments of all natures that have to govern us. This was a Republican initiative. We have cut the budget of Congress by $67 million. We have eliminated 28 committees and subcommittees, and reduced our own staff by approximately one-third. We have banned most gifts to Members of Congress. There was a time, as you know, when the Congressmen could do anything, travel anywhere, and collect honorariums. That is not the case anymore. We have reduced the franking privileges, that is the free mail we get. In my office, and I know in yours, Mr. Speaker, we keep it down, because it is running for reelection on the taxpayers' expense. We have put term limits on committee chairs and top congressional leaders. We have done that because we think that that will put new blood and new energy into the committee system, instead of some old bull who has been sitting there for 25 years, and maybe he is contributing, maybe he is not. Somebody else comes along who has more energy and perhaps more intellect, he has only been there 6 years. Let him have a shot at it. That is something we think is very important. We have moved in terms of reducing the amount of Government. We have tried our best to dismantle some of the bureaucracy, not all of it, but some of the duplications and so forth. We have reduced the paperwork in the Federal agencies. One of the things that I have always been amazed at as I go down in the basement of the Rayburn Building across the hall is there are rolls and rolls of paper, some of them as tall as I am, and it is just paper we will use in our Government Printing Office for all our documents and so forth. I would venture to say, many of them get processed, printed, and thrown away, still unread. Just kind of skipping around a little bit, we have eliminated over 270 unnecessary Federal programs. The number of bureaucrats was reduced in 29 of the 39 major government offices. Defense spending was reduced as a result of congressional initiatives. We have to be very careful on defense spending because it costs so much to train somebody to drive a tank or fly an airplane, and that is someone's son or daughter in that expensive equipment, and we want them to have the best equipment that is available. Also, you never know how many fronts there may be a problem on, the Middle East, Bosnia, Korea. We have to be ready in America. We cut spending last year by $45 billion. We reformed welfare and changed welfare to a program that is work-based, and we have put the caseworkers back home closer to the decisionmaking process, rather than having a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all. But, you know the thing that worries me the most, Mr. Speaker, is you are working harder and harder and getting nowhere for it. Are you worried that your children are not going to be able to have the lifestyle that you enjoy? Are you worried that your children are not going to be able to enjoy the American dream? Has big government, high taxes, and excess of regulations and deficit spending, has it stolen or diminished the American dream? I think that it has. What this Congress has tried to do is work for commonsense reforms. We have tried to balance the budget in a fair way. We have tried to put sanity back into our tax system, with such things as eliminating the marriage tax penalty. We have tried to make government more responsive and operate like a household budget, rather than like some kind of Santa Claus fantasy that we can just tap into some instant money machine somewhere, and the money just keeps flowing and flowing and flowing. We have tried to do this, because balancing the budget is about people. You know, an individual today owes about $18,000 on the national debt. That means a couple working to pay their mortgage is having to pay a higher mortgage rate because the interest rates are higher because the budget is not balanced. That means a professional woman pursuing a career, leasing a car, has to pay higher payments, on buying that car, has to pay higher interest rates on that, or the small business person. It also means that a small baby, like my nephew, Walker Watson, will have to pay over $200,000 in interest over his lifetime just on the national debt above and beyond State, local, and Federal taxes. Balancing the budget is not about numbers, it is about people. It is not just about people, it is about a future of children in the American dream. I think we can change the system. I think we can restore sanity to Washington, Mr. Speaker. We have got to do it in a bipartisan way, we have got to do it in a fair way, and we have got to do it outside of Washington. We have got to go home, every weekend, and constantly talk to the American people about this process, because it is something that affects all of us.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent from rollcall votes Nos. 402, 403, 404, 405, and 406 because of a mandatory evacuation in my hometown of Savannah, GA, due to Hurricane Fran's approach to the Georgia coastline. If I had been present I would have voted ``yes'' on all five of these votes.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, aren't election year politics fun? Here yesterday President Clinton, following Bob Dole's lead, agreed to sign the Republican welfare bill. And then following Clinton, who was following Dole, 68 Democrats changed their vote from less than a month ago to pass this bill on an overwhelming bipartisan basis. Then, in the paper today Clinton is going to support the Hastert- Kassebaum Republican health care bill. Right under that, President Clinton is going to support the Republican clean drinking water bill. Add these to the fact that this party and this Congress has passed the line-item veto, securities reform litigation, a telecommunications bill, Social Security earnings limitation increase, lobbyist reform, a gift ban and the dissolving of 28 different committees and subcommittees. This Republican Party has made in this Congress a significant change in moving the country in the direction of less government. Thank goodness for election year politics.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, can my colleagues see the absurdity of this Congress and this Nation having a debate such as this: (Here, Member spoke in French.) That is French in my own attempt. In Italian we could say: (Here, Member spoke in Italian.) And I will try it in Japanese, Mr. Speaker: (Here, Member spoke in Japanese.) The interpretation is one language is important for our country. Now we can sit here and say and tell our children that it is not important to have one, but it is absolutely absurd. Nations need a common language. My uncle was a Hungarian immigrant. He spoke eight different languages. He was run out of Hungary by Nazi Germany. But he did not come to America to say, ``You need to start speaking Hungarian.'' He said, ``I'm going to start speaking English.'' He kept his Hungarian. And my cousin Clare, who was born in Spain, knew some Hungarian, today she knows Spanish. My sister Jean knows Italian. I minored in French. My colleagues would not believe it by the way my pronunciation was just then. But the point is we have to have a common language in our country. This is not mean-spirited, this is not malicious. It is absurd for people who cannot come up with an intellectual argument to come back to that same old line: mean-spiritedness. This is common sense. So, Mr. Speaker, as we would say in Japan: (Here, Member spoke in Japanese.) In French: (Here, Member spoke in French.) In Italian: (Here, Member spoke in Italian.) Down home we say, ``We'll see you all later.''

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I would certainly be remiss in my duty if I did not brag on and recognize four of our First District of Georgia heroes that led the safety efforts in last Saturday's early morning Centennial Park explosion in the Olympics in Atlanta. The gentlemen that I want to recognize are Mr. Ted Riner, Mr. Tommy Sisson, and Mr. David Averitt. These are all State troopers who lived in Statesboro, GA, who were on detail at the Centennial Park in Atlanta. I also wanted to recognize Mr. Tom Davis, who married a Statesboro girl, who is the daughter of my friends, Bobby and Floyd Naxton, in Statesboro. Tom was the GVI agent in charge of Centennial Park. If you can visualize the scene a little bit, in fact last Monday, Libby, my wife and I were at an Olympic medal ceremony in Savannah, and it was very similar to the scene that had happened on Saturday, just a few days before. The Spinners were playing, a great popular group, everybody was dancing, everybody was having a good time, folks were celebrating the Olympics from all over America, from all over the world, and so forth. I was thinking, this is what the scene was like Saturday morning early, at 1:20 a.m., when the bomb exploded. As we know, Mr. Davis was among the very first to know of the bomb, and immediately he began evacuating the area. Mr. Riner, Mr. Sisson, and Mr. Averitt all were key players. There were only 9 people evacuating about 150 partiers. Some of these partiers had been drinking, some of them were tired, some of them did not want to be interrupted in their partying, and yet these brave men very calmly but very firmly led these 150 people, this group, out of the way of danger, and when the bomb went off, only two people were fatally wounded, which, of course, were two too many. However, you can only think of how many people would have died if it had not been for the efforts of these four men and the five others who were with them. The interesting part, being true Americans, true officers who will do their duty and act without question when the time of emergency comes, they laughed later when they were told that they were heroes. They said, why are we heroes? We were just doing our jobs. Then they talked about being wounded, as all three of them were. Mr. Davis was not wounded, but the three of them were, the three others were. They said that even as they were being told to lie still and being taken to the hospital, their first concern was, how many people were injured, and what about each other? They all, Riner, Sisson, and Averitt, had known each other. They know Pam, David's wife, and they were all very fond, and that was their first concern each one of them had, for the other person and for the public in general. Mr. Speaker, as long as America has men like this, people like this from all over the country, heroes that come from everyday walks of life, our country will continue to be a great Nation. I am proud to say that I know some of these guys vicariously. I certainly know of them very well and know their families, and I am very, very proud of them. Just think what it would have been like, how much more tragic the explosion in Centennial Park would have been, if it had not been for their fast and immediate action. So I salute them, and I know all 435 Members of Congress join me in this salutation: Job well done, gentlemen.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. You have made a very good point. For 11 straight years, until 1992, illegal drug use fell in all categories of drugs except, for some reason, heroin, but everything else had fallen. Now, since 1992, when a lot of these drug education programs and a lot of the interdiction programs and enforcement programs were cut, under the Clinton administration drug use has gone back up to the extent now that, just to give some numbers, marijuana use among teenagers has dropped, excuse me, has since 1992 increased 137 percent amongst 12- and 13-year-olds. Now, for 14- to 15-year-olds there has been a 200 percent increase. Of the graduating class of 1995, statistically half of the will have experienced some sort of illegal drug, and a drug like LSD which we really had not been talking about at all in recent years is now back strong on the streets and LSD use has increased 62 percent since 1992. One of the things that we have been fighting is the fact that the President had slashed the funding for the Office of National Drug Control Policy by 80 percent. I am on the Treasury-Post Office Committee. We are doing everything we can to work with General McCaffrey, the new drug czar, to restore much of this funding and do everything we can, but along with government funding there are some other things that we can do to fight drugs. And I do believe in these interdiction programs. I do believe in local policing in States like Georgia where, for example, the police opened up a satellite station in the middle of one of the biggest housing projects, where they had the high drug use and they had crime and teenage dropout and teenage pregnancy problems. As a result of them doing that, the children got to know the police officers. The families came out of the house and the streets got to be safe. And in Statesboro, GA, in that high crime area, drug use has dropped. That is the sort of thing that we are trying to encourage with our budget is local policies to fight drugs.

Mr. KINGSTON. I have a friend of mine named Ted Fox, and Ted says this is what Congress' basic mentality is, that it is the three of us right here. We are walking down the street together, and one had more money than the other two. The other two could vote to take your money, and it would be morally fine and justified. That is exactly, that is the whole left-wing premise: It is okay to steal, as long as you vote it as law in Congress. That is their whole mentality. I want to yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Radanovich] because he has been involved in so many of these good changes we have done. First, I want to say this, the idea behind class warfare is a loser. You are just bashing people. The other day we had a leading Democrat say in the Congressional Record, and I will give you both and anybody else interested a copy of this, that the employer-employee relationship is similar to the jailer and prisoner relationship or the slave and the master relationship. That was from a leading Democrat, in one of the pro-family debates we were having. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Radanovich].

Mr. KINGSTON. Yes, they are, because under the liberal Washington definition of rich, that means you hold a job and you pay taxes. You know another thing: marriage tax penalty. Two people living together doing everything that a married couple does pay less taxes than if they go down to the chapel and get a ring around their finger. That is absurd. Marriage is the key foundation block of the family in America, and here the first thing we do right off the bat is tell a couple: Hey, it is cheaper to live together than it is to get married.

Mr. KINGSTON. I am. But before we leave that, I do want to get one other thing on taxes. There was a big discussion about the Clinton tax increase went to balancing the budget 1993, when Clinton passed the largest tax increase in the history of America, $245 billion. That money did not go into deficit reduction. That money went into more Federal Government. Now, you know, the thinking that Americans do not deserve tax relief right after the President just passed such a huge tax credit--what the Republican Party was trying to do was basically say we want to give you back some of the money that the President took from you in 1993, and one of those was a $500 per child tax credit. So, working person, and I love to tell the story about John Johnson who works for UPS, U-P-S, in my district, and he said to me: You know, I make pretty good money. I do a lot of overtime. I worked hard. My wife is a school teacher, and between the two of us we do OK. But we have got three kids. And at the end of the month we are not able to go down to Florida or go up to Atlanta and see a Braves game or do some of the nice things because we have got to buy a new set of tires, a new dryer. We have got to spend money on groceries, and so forth, and we cannot get ahead. And this is a real story. Now, with the $500 per child tax credit, he and his wife could have had $1,500 in their pocket that they could have spent any way they wanted to. And I think they know how to do it a heck of a lot better than Washington bureaucrats.

Mr. KINGSTON. Now to give my colleagues an idea of the Federal Government Washington command control bureaucracy view on taxes versus drugs, when we talked about earlier 13- and 14-year-olds using marijuana higher than ever before, I think, in history, but it is up anywhere from 137 to 200 percent depending on what age group in that 12-to-14 range, here is what we have fighting drugs. Now this chart, I hope you can see it. The DEA has 6,700 employees, and that is to fight drugs. The Border Patrol, immigration folks, 5,800 employees. So that is what we have got. You know, we will just round this up and say about 13,000 employees for fighting drugs and illegal immigration. For the IRS we have 111,000 employees. Now, of those 111,000 employees, for every 3,000 citizens of America there is one criminal investigator. So what we are saying is, no, we cannot fight drugs, we cannot fight illegal immigration, but we can audit you, and we can make sure that you are paying your taxes, and people should pay their taxes, and IRS should be able to collect it. But it shows a disproportionate value rendered when you have 110,000 IRS employees versus 13,000 Border Patrol and drug enforcement.

Mr. KINGSTON. Well now, actually your direct tax burden--you work from January 1 to May 7, and then the indirect tax in regulatory burden, you go on to July 3d.

Mr. KINGSTON. One hundred eighteen.

Mr. KINGSTON. Our compassion does not rule out common sense, and we have to just put a little bit more common sense in it. Just as we have said, we are going to address this illegal immigration, this English- first issue. This Congress is going to move in that direction. The other thing that we all mention is $26 billion is the direct cost of illegal immigration. There are other indirect costs, but that tax strain is further adding to the third issue that we wanted to discuss. That is the fact that this Congress, this Republican agenda, wants to have for our middle class citizens lower taxes, higher wages and more free time. I am going to show you some of the statistics on taxes, but right now we know that the average middle class family is paying 38 percent of the total household income in taxes, which basically means the second income earner is working for the government. That is just, you know, what is happening. Right now we all work until May 7 to have the tax- free independence. So from January 1 to May 7 every year, people are working just to pay the IRS and State and local taxes. Now, if you add on the cost of government regulations and other taxes, you are going until July 3d for Independence Day. Now people will say, well, what are you talking about? Let me show you this chart. This is a gas pump. On $1.20 for a gallon of gas--fortunately I am paying a little bit less in Georgia, but I know the folks in Maryland, they all are paying more than $1.20. But on a $1.20 gallon of gas, 56 cents goes to taxes, and that includes--I am just going to read: FICA tax, corporate income tax, individual tax, capital gains tax, customs, ad valorem taxes, State taxes, corporate income, unemployment taxes, motor fuel taxes, excise taxes, used oil disposal taxes, business property taxes, pipeline throughput taxes. It is ridiculous. When people buy 10 gallons worth of gas, they are paying $5.60. They do not even think about taxes on top of what has already been taken out of their paycheck. Now let us talk about a bottle of beer, 43 cents on a dollar bottle-- well a little over a dollar, but 43 cents on a bottle of beer goes to taxes, basically the same kind of thing. On a loaf of bread there are 118 different taxes that you and I and our families pay when we go to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread. Hidden in the cost of that bread are 118 different taxes. That is why the middle class families are working their tails off. The harder they work, the less time they have because the more taxes they have to pay, and we do not have that family fellowship that we so desperately need to impart values to our next generation.

Mr. KINGSTON. That is absolutely correct.

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, let me give some numbers on that: 1996 taxpayers will spend $26 billion to provide welfare benefits to noncitizens which includes 11 billion in Medicaid benefits, which is basically free insurance, health care, free health care; 4.4 billion in Supplemental Security Income, which is up, incidentally, 825 percent. Now remember we are just talking about noncitizens. There is 2.9 billion in food stamps; 2.3 billion in Aid to Families with Dependent Children; 3.89 billion in housing cash assistance and other subsidies. And that is from a Harvard University study; that is not exactly, you know, a conservative group up there. But this is putting an additional tax strain on American middle class taxpayers. I believe we need to strengthen our border patrols. We need to crack down on deportation of criminals aliens. We need to have sponsorship, legally binding; so if you want to bring your family member or whoever in, fine, but you need to be responsible for that person to make sure he or she is independent of government benefits. We also need to protect American jobs. There are a lot of American jobs that have been displaced. Then finally tomorrow this House will vote on English-first as a language. I believe we have enough votes to pass it. I think the President is probably going to veto it, but I am not discouraged because the liberal Governor of Georgia vetoed it two or three times himself. Finally this year, because of election year pressures, he signed it. As we saw today with welfare, our President is very sensitive to election year pressures, and maybe we can get his attention on it.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to go on to the next topic that Mr. Weldon and I wanted to bring up, the subject of illegal immigration. First, let me recognize Mr. Bob Ehrlich of Maryland, who is here with us tonight. Before I yield to the gentleman, let me throw out some statistics on how bad the illegal immigration problem is, because most Americans know that we have a lot of illegal aliens in America but they do not know how extensive the problem is. There are an estimated 4.5 million illegal aliens in America now, that is about the size of the State of Indiana; 300,000 new illegal aliens come each year and so the problem is getting bigger and bigger. In many cases, they are using false documents to get American welfare benefits, American jobs and so forth, and it is displacing people and putting a further tax drain on us. One of the huge tax drains is in the Federal penal system where right now approximately 22 percent of the prisoners in the Federal penitentiaries are illegal aliens, and about 80 percent of them are violent offenders which are the most expensive to incarcerate. We have a lot of direct and indirect costs because of the strain of illegal aliens, but one of them is now that school systems must offer not just bilingual education but multi-lingual education. In Seattle, for example, there are 75 different languages spoken in the school system; in Los Angeles, 80; 100 in Chicago. Now, we are all sons and daughters of immigrants, most of us sons and daughters of legal immigrants. But what they did when they came to America is they learned American culture and they learned English as our common language. They did not turn their back on the home country great traditions. Savannah, GA, where I live, has ethnic celebrations all through the year, because we have a strong ethnic heritage. We want to keep that in mind and celebrate it. I know where I was raised, not in Savannah but in Athens, GA, a lot of Cuban families came after Castro took over and in most of their homes they spoke Spanish. But their children were raised in the school systems where they learned English. Now those children are in very good jobs because they were not trained to be special. They were trained-- well, I take that back. They were trained to be special because all Americans are special. But now our school systems have all these ridiculous requirements. I have heard that the voting ballot in California is in seven different languages. Can you imagine voting but not knowing English? I yield to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Ehrlich].

Mr. KINGSTON. If you will remember the biblical story about the tower of Babel, the story is that the villagers decided to build a tower to heaven. And the Lord did not want that done and, as a preemptive measure, gave them all different languages. And then they could not work together, and they broke up and they started all the other nations. I am not saying that we cannot work with each other when we speak different languages, but the fact is, it is interesting that thousands and thousands of years ago, in a Bible story we all learned as children, the way to break up a nation was to have different languages. I believe, to say it in a positive light, the way to unify America further is having one common language. Today there are 320 languages spoken in the United States of America.

Mr. KINGSTON. I want to conclude this section of our five-part discussion with this comment. Two other things we want to do with drugs is to have severe penalties, pressure; if you are pushing drugs to school kids on basketball courts or playgrounds, you go to jail. You stay in jail. We need to have that. Then finally for the addicts, why not have a 24-hour a day hotline that says if a drug addict says I am ready to kill myself, I have hit bottom, I want to bounce back up, give a 24-hour hotline that we will get you help the next day, we will get you help on the spot, because once an individual has made up his or her mind to kick the habit, then they are the easiest to cure. We are going to talk again about in a second on illegal immigration, but in the meantime let me yield to the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules, Mr. Solomon.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk tonight about a different vision of America, a vision that we are not really seeing from the Washington bureaucracy, but one that this Congress is trying to form and trying to achieve and move our Nation towards. We have asked ourselves some fundamental questions: What kind of America do we want? Do we want an America where illegal drug use is up? Do we want an America where taxes are up and wages are down? Do we want an America where welfare traps families and despairs generation after generation? And do we want an America where illegal immigration is up? And do we want one where a White House has more scandals than Hollywood has disaster films? Look at that vision of America. That is somehow what many of the Washington bureaucrats see and administer today. Think about another kind of America. Would we like one that has stronger and safer families through a real fight against crime and illegal drugs? Do we want an America where there are more opportunities through lower taxes, higher wages, better jobs and more free time? Do we want an American where illegal immigration is down and English is truly our common and unifying language? Do we want an America where welfare is replaced by work? And do we want an America where the White House is the moral leader of the country, not just the political issues. These are the things that we are going to talk about tonight, and I have with me our esteemed colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Curt Weldon. Mr. Weldon, if you have any comments, let me yield to you.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg], the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Tate], the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray], the gentleman from California [Mr. Radanovich], the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon], and the Gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Ehrlich] for participating in this special order.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me reclaim the time just to remind everybody we have about 4 minutes left. So if each of you want to have a closing statement of 1 minute each.

Mr. KINGSTON. Before going to the fifth topic, I want to make it very abundantly clear for the record that we would not be in a position of having a welfare bill today if not for the action of the freshman class and the leadership of the 4 of you and many of your colleagues, because I can say this having come the previous term. We all talked about welfare, we never could get a bill on the floor of the House. You have been persistent. I would like to say also, I do not think there is anything extreme about saying able-bodied people who can work would be required to work, and I do not think there is anything extreme about getting people out of the poverty trap, and I do not think there is anything extreme about saying to noncitizens, you cannot have our welfare benefits if that is the reason you have come into the country. I know your class has caught lots of criticism, but this victory today belongs to your class. I think that is very important.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we now have with us another freshman, the gentleman from Washington, Mr. Randy Tate, and I will attribute him to the State of Washington, rightly or wrongly. I know it is west of the Mississippi.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding. It is interesting we have heard from the Democrats a number reasons why they are not going to support this bill today. One of their reasons was they have not had time to look at it. I am a relatively new Member of Congress. I have been here 4 years. We have been debating welfare for 4 years. I know that for a fact. I have been here. If they have not read the bill by now and have not been following the debate, that is not the fault of the Republican Congress. The second reason they say that is that welfare does not cost that much. If you add in all the Federal Government welfare programs, the cost is $345 billion, which is ore than we spend on defense. I am not sure what they consider money if $345 billion is not. We spent $5 trillion since LBJ's Great Society programs, and that is enough money. That is more than we spent on World War II. The final reason they are saying is that it is cruel to children. Nothing is more cruel than having a welfare system that traps children in poverty, that makes children and families break up, that makes them live in housing projects where the dad cannot be at home, where there is high drug use, where there are teenage dropout rates and teenage drug abuse. I do not see why they think that is compassion. Our program sends $4 billion more on child care than the Democrat proposal. And that is using their frame of thinking that is more compassion than what they have. Welfare reform is family friendly. Welfare should not be a life style. It should be something that society gives people a temporary helping hand, not a permanent handout, not a hammock forever to swing in but a temporary safety net so that people can get back into the socioeconomic mainstream and enjoy the American dream just like the rest of us.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, last Friday I was on my way to Atlanta, and I was told to go see Tom Davis who was the FBI agent in charge of Centennial Park because his father-in-law, Floyd Thaxton, works for us in our State's Bureau office. Well, needless to say something dramatically changed in the early hours of the morning, and I was unable to see Mr. Davis, who was one of the heroes and was injured by the bomb, but led the successful evacuation of many, many people. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Davis is a hero to us. In his honor, I have to refute some of the things that are going on on this terrorism discussion today. I have the vote list on the terrorism bill, and many of the speakers today from the Democratic side voted against the only terrorism bill we had. To my knowledge, none of them offered amendments. There may have been a few, but it is kind of interesting to hear these people talking about we need a terrorist bill by the end of the week, and yet they had their chance. For a year and a half we debated this, and most of them did not offer amendments. Just about all of them voted no. I have a copy of the vote list, it is kind of interesting, it is almost rollcall, from the people we have been hearing from. We have to work on a bipartisan basis. We want to continue working with the President. We want to solve this problem. We owe it to the Tom Davises of the world.