Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield. What is interesting is, last September, I think it was September 15, 1995, it was on Larry King Live, the President said about the Republican welfare bill, I like it, it would end welfare as we know it. And that welfare bill passed the U.S. Senate, which certainly is not an activist conservative body. It passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 87 to 12. We had all the liberals voting for this one, and the President indicated he was going to sign it and he vetoed it. Vetoed that tough requirement for 20 hours a week work. Vetoed that tough requirement saying illegal aliens could not get taxpayer dollars. And vetoed that tough requirement saying that teenagers need to identify the dads so that they could participate in the uprearing of that baby financially, if nothing else. But you know what? I think it is probably our fault, and I will tell you why, Mr. Hayworth. When the President said I am going to end welfare as we know it, we were not listening. He said I am going to extend welfare as we know it. We missed the E-X-T. I think what he really meant was not end welfare but extend welfare. Because in the 3 years that his watch has taken place on Pennsylvania Avenue, all that we have seen is an extension of welfare, more folks who are able-bodied staying home than ever before. The poverty rate is up 2 percent higher than when Ronald Reagan was President, and we have now spent $5 trillion on welfare since 1965 and we are not bringing down the poverty rate.

Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to get back to the gentleman's statement and also Mr. BILBRAY's. He said the Washington bureaucracy is stupid and irresponsible. I do not think anybody paying taxes back home would disagree with that. It is also inefficient. What really happens, though, I know there are a lot of good people involved in government, elected and unelected. A lot of good folks are called bureaucrats. But you know what I think of having been around a lot of teenagers? I know a lot of teenagers who individually are fine folks, but when you get a pack of them in your living room or a pack of them in your kitchen, strange things happen and all those individual good people turn out to do some pretty stupid things as a pack. That is what happens in Washington. These folks need to go back home so they can continue to be good folks, because when they get together the association causes some real inefficient and irresponsible results.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KINGSTON. I do not want to jump in front of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] but on the point of regulation one of the bills that we have pending now is reauthorization of the Safe Drinking Water Act. One of the current regulations that water systems have to operate under requires small systems that use ground water to test for contaminants that are only found in surface water systems. So here we have EPA, taxpayer funded, requiring groundwater systems to do the same tests as surface water systems. Absolutely absurd. The same act also requires that EPA post new regulations for 25 contaminants each 3 years, whether the regulations are needed or not. It is just absurd. It goes under what you are saying, we do need regulation, but we do need common sense in the regulatory authority.

Mr. KINGSTON. I want to make sure the American people know this, because here we are talking about workers' safety and we are talking about the quality of the job done, allowing workers to keep more of their paycheck, and the President of the United States says it is not good enough to require able-bodied people on welfare to work 20 hours a week. The working men and women in Georgia and Arizona are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. They are in debt. They are barely getting by, and the President says I am not going to make people work 20 hours a week for their welfare benefit. Now, for crying out loud, here it is an election year and he is saying 20 hours a week is too much? I think that is absurd, and I think the people of Arizona are probably just as outraged as the people in Georgia are about it.

Mr. KINGSTON. A story of one of your freshmen colleagues really fits in there, and that is that of Sonny Bono, one of your better known freshmen. He tells the story of leaving Hollywood and going to Palm Springs to start a restaurant. He needed to make some changes in the building that he bought and so forth. So he went down to the city hall to get building permits, thinking that he was going to be creating jobs and additional tax revenues and all kinds of positive things for the area that they would say ``Mr. Bono, we are so happy to have you in here, we need entrepreneurs, employers. This is a great boost for our economy.'' Instead, he was given the runaround. ``Why do you need these permits? How have you chosen the contractor who is going to do the work?'' They started nickeling and diming him and micromanaging the project. He thought it was going to take 15 minutes. Six months later he still had not gotten his permits for his building, the renovation and building permits, from the city there.

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman from Florida had mentioned OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and for years this has been the group that was kind of the government watchdog on health and safety in the workplace. Certainly it came into being under the Nixon administration. It was a pro-worker law, but it was not an anti- business law either. It just had some common sense. And yet we are now in a situation where over 60 percent of the OSHA fines are for paperwork violations. You have to list such hazardous substances as that of the ink that you use in a Xerox machine. If you store that, you have to have a material safety and data sheet. And if you do not fill that out properly, you are fined. There have been cases of OSHA coming in and laying a heavy hand on small businesses and putting them in some cases almost out of business because of the financial crunch, litigation, and so forth. Yet in the agriculture side of our economy, there is the Soil Conservation Service which gives farmers technical assistance to prevent erosion, which is a pro- environment type agency, but giving technical assistance to farmers, which they need, a very good working relationship between soil conservation and farmers. And here you have the same type relationship between OSHA and businesses, only it is an antagonistic one. What we would like to do is have OSHA be more like Soil Conservation is to the farmer, helping the businesses make their worker environment safer, because one of the things I learned when I sold workers compensation insurance is that the price of the accident, a hundred dollars for stitching up somebody's thumb, is four times when you consider the time lost and the problems with worker morale and so forth. Businesses have every motivation in the world besides government to take care of their employees; if nothing else, just from the production standpoint.

Mr. KINGSTON. The other thing is that if we want to help workers, we do want to have a safe work environment. Everybody, an employer, government employees, everybody will agree on that. But if we want to help the workers across America, the key thing we have to do is honor why they are working, and that is to make money and make a better society. Now, if we want to help those workers, let us let them keep more of their own paycheck. And the President has vetoed a $500 per child tax credit. He has vetoed an earned income tax credit that would have helped America's working poor. He has vetoed a balanced budget amendment which would have brought down interest rates so that they could borrow money less expensively for their cars, for their homes and so forth. But I think one of the things that really adds insult to the American workers is his veto of a bipartisan welfare reform bill, a welfare reform bill which would have only required people to work 20 hours a week. Now, I ask the gentleman from Arizona, is there anybody in Arizona who can provide for their families working 20 hours a week?

Mr. KINGSTON

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

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, with middle-class families paying 38 to 44 percent of family income in taxes, the claim that the era of big Government is over is utterly absurd. Think about it: 38 to 44 percent of middle-class family income goes to taxes. That means that the purpose of the second job in the household is to pay for taxes, which means you may think that your spouse is a computer operator or real estate agent or insurance agent or whatever, but the truth is your spouse is a government employee, working for the Government simply to pay taxes. It got worse in 1993, when the President increased the gas tax 4 cents a gallon, increased Social Security tax, and increased taxes on small business. The Republican plan tried to counter this with a $500 per child tax credit, an adoption tax credit, and a senior dependent tax credit. But the President vetoed that. Think about this: We have got a Democrat Party who is telling the American people, ``We are compassionate because we want you to get 90 cents more an hour, but we are against the $500 per child tax credit offered by the Republican Party.'' That is real compassion, comrades, real compassion.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentlewoman had mentioned also about some of the putting common sense into some of the environmental laws. One of the things that happened in California that we know of, Riverdale, California, the endangered kangaroo rat. Now, you know, my view is I do not want to lose a species. I am committed to the Endangered Species Act. Riverdale, CA had kangaroo rat, and the EPA would not let them cut fire breaks in the residential area because it would endanger the habitat of the kangaroo rat. So what happened? A fire came and it destroyed 30 homes. But in addition to that, it also destroyed 25,000 acres of kangaroo rat habitat. So we have got lose-lose policy for both the private property owner and the kangaroo rat. We see this kind of impracticality over and over again. In fact, I think it was in Arizona, may have been New Mexico, where the Boy Scout was lost last year in a wilderness area. They discovered him I think 48 hours later, and the Park Service would not let a helicopter land there because it was a motorized vehicle. And under the Wilderness Act, you cannot have any sort of motorized vehicle in the park area. So here is this kid 14 years old, 12 years old, I am not sure of the age, and he is hungry, he is starving, he has been sleeping on rocks, and the helicopter comes and it won't rescue him. You know, it is just out of balance. The other thing is, the decision to dig fire breaks in Riverdale, California, or to rescue a 14-year-old in a western State does not need to be made out of Washington by a Washington bureaucrat. I think that the Park Service people and the local county commissioners and the residents can probably figure it out, keep it in Federal guidelines. They can solve their own problem without Washington bureaucrats.

Mr. KINGSTON. Our friend Frank Luntz uses this illustration. Do you know that the State of Indiana does not participate in daylight savings time? They do not spring forward and fall backward.

Mr. KINGSTON. You two are exceptionally brilliant. Four hundred thirty-five Members, I can almost promise you that 90 percent of us do not know that. But don't you think that is relevant to the people in Arizona and Indiana, that they do not spring forward and fall backward on their time? And don't you think that would be relevant for a business doing commerce in either of those two States, or a visitor or a government? And isn't it ironic that I can vote, as can any other Member of Congress on things affecting the people of Arizona and Indiana, and not even know such a fundamental thing about their culture? And yet we do it routinely, just like you talked about with the Twelve Mile Lake. The bureaucrat in Washington can set the rule, having no idea that the lake is not 12 miles wide, simply that, and not knowing that it is just simply 12 miles from town. But they are experts on everything, and they are from the government and they are here to help and they are going to tell you how to run your town and your State.

Mr. KINGSTON. Now, one of the things I hear, and you mentioned earlier on the Superfund, is that Superfund is 15 years old. We have spent $25 billion on it and yet we have only cleaned up 12 percent of the national priority polluted sites.

Mr. KINGSTON. Over 15 years we have spent $25 billion on environmental cleanup and only cleaned up 12 percent of the sites.

Mr. KINGSTON. And with the Federal presence, guidance, and oversight, but not necessarily Washington bureaucratic micromanagement. Now, I think probably the biggest failure of the Washington bureaucracy to manage a problem is local poverty control. You know, the folks on welfare in Savannah, GA, have to do what the bureaucrats tell them to do in Washington, and it is the same bureaucrats telling your folks in California what to do, and the people in California in Mrs. Seastrand's district have to do what the folks in Arizona in your district do, and you have one Washington bureaucracy command controlling poverty. As a result, since 1964 we have spent $5 trillion on poverty. The poverty rate then was 14 percent, and the poverty rate now is 14 percent. It has not worked. We need local control and flexibility. You know what? I cannot solve Mrs. Seastrand's poverty problem, and I cannot solve Mr. Hayworth's, and maybe I cannot solve mine. But you know what? I can do a heck of a lot better job on mine than I can on yours. Just give me the tools and I think I can do it. That is one reason why you want State block grants. Cut out the poverty brokers and put the control in the hands of the local people.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let us talk about some of these basically Republican solutions, but they are anti-Washington bureaucrat solutions, some of the things that I think that we have been trying to work for: more choice in medicare, a balance in environmental policy, more local control in education, more State flexibility in poverty and welfare programs. Thinking of the Medicare policy, here we have in April last year, a Clinton trustee saying Medicare is going bankrupt and in two years, it will be out of money. Well, they missed that by 11 months. In February for the first time in the history, Medicare ran out of money. So we went in there, said okay, people want traditional Medicare, we understand that. But if our seniors want options, like physician service plans, and if they want to join a managed care plan or take an individual medical savings account, let us give them those options, and by offering the options we can reduce the growth from 11 percent each year in Medicare to 4 percent and head away from the insolvency and the bankruptcy. We can save, protect and preserve Medicare and increase spending per recipient from $4,800 to $7,100 at the same time. Mr. Speaker, a key component of that, as you two know, is cracking down on fraud and abuse. I have with me a Derma-Gran bandage, which a friend of mine in business has sent to me. He said this bandage actually cost 94 cents to produce. It is sold to health care providers for $6. And Medicare, on this 94-cent $6 purchase, gets $36.44 with it. Now, your mother is paying for that and your father is paying for that, and it is going at the price of their health care, a diagnosis or something down the road. My friend's math on it, he just pointed out to me, that does not sound like that much of a problem, does it? But the fact is potentially, listen to this. Potentially 20,000 nursing home patients each day use this. That would mean this is costing American taxpayers at that $36 rate $21 million per month or, $262 million in nothing but waste and almost fraud but certainly abuse in Medicare. And this is what we were trying to resolve, and this is what the President vetoed, cracking down on these. Again, we are just giving seniors choices and protections that we need for the program.

Mr. KINGSTON. Before yielding to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth], I want to make one final point. None of that money was raised in your district. It all came out of Washington, DC from special interest groups.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask the gentleman about this Beck decision. Are you telling me that a paper mill worker in my district who is prolife, antigun control, and anti-NAFTA has his money, his dues going to, say, President Clinton's reelection campaign, and he does not have a say-so in it, the union employee does not know his money is being used for those causes, even though they may be things that he does not stand for?

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. KINGSTON. Yes. HAYWORTH. First of all, Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his membership and his actions as part of the Gang of Seven, and I point out now there is a gang of 73 and a new majority, and the gentleman from North Carolina is quite right. For in the midst of this talk of reform comes one legitimate question that the gentleman from North Carolina touched on, Mr. Speaker. If this newfound embracing of reform by the liberals in this House were so genuine, where was it during their long years of domination of this institution, their complicity with the forces of big government and the forces that would always use the same tired equation, the answer of tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend. Where was that commitment? And make no mistake. If we retreat, Mr. Speaker, one can imagine a new liberal majority coming to this institutions, having learned its lesson in what through misleading claims and the politics of fear and the complicity of many liberals in the journalistic endeavors might wish to take place here, they would turn on this institution and that notion of reform in a heartbeat. Their notion of reform would be as the actions taken by ancient Rome against the Carthaginians. They would move metaphorically to lace the soil with lime to ensure that the full honest flour of reform would never take root again in this Chamber for the foreseeable future, and to return to an iron grip with rules completely out of proportion, a majority that would border on tyranny. In short, the same type of tyrannical majority we saw in this institution at the tail end of those 40 years of one- party domination.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me conclude with this. Last week a teacher in Darien, Georgia told me that in an 8-hour day she spends two to three hours filling our paperwork, about 50 percent of it is for the Federal Government. That is 10 to 15 hours a week that is not spent teaching Johnny how to read, write, and do arithmetic. She can teach her children better than the bureaucrats who are making her fill out the paperwork in Washington. What we are asking with that and all these other examples, let the local people do what they know how to do best and let the Washington bureaucrats stop the micromanagement, return freedom to the people and increase personal responsibility along the way. I thank Mrs. Seastrand of California and Mr. Hayworth of Arizona for being with me tonight.

Mr. KINGSTON. Did you know that Indiana did not? I did not know that of Arizona. Did you know that?

Mr. KINGSTON

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