Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman is correct. If we realize the scope of this disaster, of a tremendously expensive debt, and then we look at the benefits of balancing the budget, to give specifics on what the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is saying, that on a 30-year home mortgage the average interest rate will drop 2.7 percent, and on a 30- year mortgage of $50,000 that means a family will save over $1,000 annually or $32,000 over the life of a loan. Car loans will drop 2 percent, which means on a $15,000 car the average family budget would save about $900 during the life of the loan. Sending children to college, the same thing. But the other thing, though, that is very important is that businesses will expand, jobs will be created and economic opportunity and prosperity will follow.

Mr. KINGSTON. If we have established that it is disastrous to leave the debt out there, we have established there are great benefits to balancing the budget, then what is the problem? Because Speaker after Speaker from both sides of the aisle have come to the well today and said we support a balanced budget and certainly the President does. Let me read some quotes, though, make sure that we are talking about the same President, June 4, 1992 on Larry King Live, President Clinton speaking: ``I would present a 5-year plan to balance the budget.'' Then on his ``Putting People First'' campaign brochure: ``Our plan will cut the deficit in half within 4 years and assure that it continues to fall each year after that.'' May 19, 1995, Bill Clinton, New Hampshire, radio interview: ``I think it can be done. Well, it can, first of all it can be done in 7 years.'' Later on that day, also in New Hampshire: ``I think it can be done in less than 10 years. I think we can get there by a date certain.'' That was in May. October 1995: ``Well, I think we could reach it in 7 years. I think we could reach it in 8 years. I think we could reach it in 9 years.'' The reason why I say that is not to ridicule the President. Good Lord, everyone in Congress, everyone in America says things and changes his or her mind from time to time. In this case he did it over the same interview, in a 20-minute period, but even then some people are entitled to change their mind. But here is what George Will said, and this is his column but it was in the Savannah Morning News. It says, ``Clearly the President does not want a balanced budget any more than he wants to end welfare as we know it. So he is vetoing Republican plans that would balance the budget more slowly than he as a candidate promised to.'' Then he goes on to say, ``He said 5 years, they say 7 years, and he probably will, it will depend on who talks to him last, and he'll veto it,'' and he will probably, George Will is saying, he is probably going to veto our welfare reform, which we will talk about welfare reform in a minute, but there is a welfare bill on the President's desk right now and we hopefully will get his signature on it. But what I wanted to point out is that it is time now to have a balanced budget on the table. You two are freshmen and you have been called radicals, and yet it is interesting to me that as candidates you had a written outline of a campaign plan, as did President Clinton. As newly elected freshmen, you followed the plan, unlike newly elected President Clinton. And then you did the plan and got criticized for it, and the criticism is coming from people who did not follow their own campaign speeches to balance the budget. So you have been here a year, you said you were going to do something, you did it, and now you are saying, ``I have done it, now come on, the rest of you all,'' but we are not seeing it. It is very frustrating to the process. Again, I am not trying to get into this big partisan thing. But it is so hard to negotiate when there is not a counterproposal on the table. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield on that point because I am glad you brought up some of the specific program differences. Because one of the things that we are not debating here is what are the differences between the Democrats' plan, or lack of plan to some degree, and the Republican plan. One of the big differences that we hear is that the Republican budget cuts Medicare. As the gentleman just pointed out, and let me get him to repeat those figures.

Mr. KINGSTON. It is interesting that the gentleman would bring that up, because here is a December 6, $1 million check and an offer made by the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour. What he said is if any Democrat can prove the rhetoric that Republicans are cutting Medicare, I have got a $1 million check waiting for you one block away from here at the Republican National Committee, just come show us where Medicare is being cut. Although the rhetoric has not stopped, nobody has collected $1 million. Just think about it, if you were a Democrat, if you could prove that Medicare was being cut, you would be such a hero and getting the million dollars to boot, but nobody has come to claim that check, which is almost a month old now.

Mr. KINGSTON. If I could reclaim, and I will yield back to you, I am glad to hear that because, you know, so much of the jousting, and both sides can admit some guilt here, is totally based on fantasy and what sounds good on a 30-second sound bite rather than what is real.

Mr. KINGSTON. I think one thing that is interesting, as we talk taxes, two things about the administration, first, as a candidate the President promised a middle-class tax cut. That was part of his platform. That was one of the main planks of his platform as a candidate in 1992. Speaking in Houston, TX, October 17, the President said, ``Many people are still mad about the 1993 budget,'' and they think he raised taxes too much. Now I quote, ``It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too,'' the President said. So, you know, here we have a candidate who said he was going to give a middle-class tax cut; then we have a President who 2 months ago said, ``I think that I raised taxes too much.''

Mr. KINGSTON. I want to talk about some of the unbridled spending after the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. KINGSTON. I think it is important also to point out that in our budget process, not only do we repeal that 1993 tax increase on Social Security, but we also increase the earnings limitation. As the gentleman knows, senior citizens are only allowed to make a certain amount of money at the age of 62. This increases that threshold from $11,000 to $30,000 over a 7-year period of time so seniors can remain working, productive, and not be penalized on their Social Security that is also in the budget. We mentioned spending. I wanted to make this point on spending. One of the programs that the President has said he is prepared to go to the mat for is his AmeriCorps Program. I know there are a lot of good things that happen through AmeriCorps. But here is a Savannah Morning News article, an editorial, about the volunteers. It says that the volunteers working for AmeriCorps are making approximately $18 an hour. It says that the program is already bigger than Peace Corps ever was, just in its first year of operation. It has become a costly Great Society program that relies too much on government and not enough on society to solve its own problems. The General Accounting Office, which is nonpartisan, reports that the average participant in AmeriCorps is supported by $25,000 in Federal, State and local taxes. That is more than private sector jobs. It talks about some of the good things that they do, feeding the hungry, helping the elderly and so forth. And then this article says but those AmeriCorps volunteers are paid only about $9,000 for their $1,700 of community work, with approximately $1,500 of that going to college expenses. The rest of the $25,000 goes to the bureaucracy. This is the President's idea of efficient and effective spending? Going to the volunteer himself is $7,500, and the balance, well, minus the college tuition, is going to the bureaucrats. That is what we need to change in Washington. If it is a good program, certainly the President should want to try to reform it and change it.

Mr. KINGSTON. That is exactly right. Here is another example of a good program that went bad, the Earned Income Tax Credit. Now, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the idea was to get people off of public assistance. But since they would not be making as much in the private sector immediately as they were when they were on welfare basically, then you give them a tax credit so they would have extra money for housing and food and insurance, and so forth. I think that is very noble, and Ronald Reagan supported it, and Tom Petri, who is one of our best members of our conference, has been a champion of that in the past. But in 1993 that program was expanded, and expanded rapidly, and here is what some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are doing to capitalize on the fact this is basically free money. This is an actual mailing that went out to constituents of a Member of Congress. Listen to this. Put some money in your pocket. The Earned Income Tax Credit. You may be eligible for as much as $2,258 tax credit. See details on back. Come clean. Your money. Did you work in `94? What is ironic about this is you don't even have to work now under the Clinton changes, you can prefile and get your money advanced before you actually do the work. It says you are eligible if this and that. `'Even if you do not owe income tax, you can get EIC. Want more information?'' Call another toll-free number, the IRS. I have deleted the Member's picture for decorum purposes, but it has a picture of the Member of Congress. It has his address, and it has his office number, and so forth. So obviously what Members of Congress are doing with the Earned Income Tax Credit are not doing this as a champion of the poor. This is a paid brochure. It is a public money giveaway. The bottom line here is not to help the poor; the bottom line is to keep people in Congress and keep the poor dependent on them. ``Hey, you want your check? Send me back to Congress.'' That is totally wrong and totally against the spirit of what a public assistance program is.

Mr. KINGSTON. Here is another example of a program gone amuck. This was sent to me by Mr. E.R. Lott of Folkston, GA. It is a copy of a letter to the editor by Brenton Bradbury in Jacksonville to the Florida Times Union. It said, An expensively dressed woman came into my office a few days ago to rent a house I had advertised in the paper. I took a chance and rented the house to her, despite her bad credit, because her income was good. She paid the month's rent and a security deposit, a total of $1,130 in cash. What makes this situation remarkable is that this household's very substantial income, expected to exceed $46,000 this year, is derived entirely from the Government and welfare programs. This 36-year-old mother of four teenage children also has her elderly disabled mother living with her. One of the teenagers is retarded, one is pregnant. When I added up the various income amounts listed in the rental application, I was astounded, then angry. I telephoned the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services and learned it is all perfectly legal. Their monthly income includes two welfare checks totaling $1,510, an Aid to Families with Dependent Children check for $214, food stamps worth $440, a Housing and Urban Development housing check for $550, Medicaid benefits worth $550 a month, and a projected $426 per month from AFDC when the daughter's new baby arrives. He goes on to say that, ``In addition, they will have a housekeeper come in twice a week at a cost of $242 a month that is paid for by the government.'' It goes on and on and on. But it says their household income is $46,784.08, and it is all legal. Then Mr. Bradbury concludes, ``Ever wonder where your tax dollars are going? This is out of control. This is something that is scary.'' Now, I know we could make the case and others will make the case that this women deserves every penny of it, and perhaps she needs or the baby needs some of this money. But $46,000 a year? Basically by taking advantage of government programs? This is the real world, this is a real world case. Any Member of this House who wants a copy of that article, I will be glad to send it to them. But this is where your money is going. This is why we are trying to reform government. We are trying to do this not maliciously. We are saying, you know, you can help people, but you do not have to give it all away to do it.

Mr. KINGSTON. Also, what our program does is lets States have some flexibility. I was in Savannah talking to a caseworker a month ago, and he said, you know, I could use some flexibility. If you combine the WIC program with AFDC, I will have some money and more latitude to help the people who need it, and you can get rid of some bureaucrats and I can do my job better. I believe we need to have State flexibility, and that is what the block granting is all about. The other thing our program does is says if you are able to work, you have to work. If you are disabled, you have 435 Members of Congress who want to help you out. But if you can work, we believe it is time. Remember, again, we have a $4 trillion debt, almost 5, and again, we are spending $50,000 per second as a Federal Government already. It is time to get these things under control. Now, another program that the President does not want to reform, does not want to give an inch on, is the student loan program. I have a September 24 article written by Joseph Perkins, which also was in the Savannah Morning News. He talks about the White House, President Clinton's visit to Southern Illinois University. He talked to student leaders at a round-table. There was press there, his PR press, which we know is the network news, surrounding him to show this real live thing. But what Mr. Perkins says, unfortunately, the White House carefully screened all the students who were let in the room so the only people who got to talk to the President were the ones who were in complete agreement. He said there was one guy, a 24-year-old William Karrow, president of Southern Illinois Graduate Student Council, who had the audacity to suggest that maybe the President was picturing a distorted picture, and the White House bounced him out of the room and he was asked to leave the room. So on the evening news, the President got the kind of coverage he was looking for, carefully selected adoring students promising that he would fight to protect their loans from the GOP. Now, here is what Mr. Perkins says about the Republican plan. Student loans will actually increase 50 percent over the next 7 years. They will go from $24 to $36 billion. Now, in addition to that, Mr. Perkins goes on to point out that Pell grants have increased to the highest level, and he alks about the TRIO Program and the supplemental education opportunity grants going to $583 million, the TRIO Program, which is flat and goes strictly to basically disadvantaged students, $463 million. This is what is happening with student loans. The Republican Party is not trying to rip the guts out of student loans, but the President will not even admit that there are problems with it. For example, as you know, the direct loan program lost $1.5 billion last year. We are just trying to correct it and make it more efficient. But at the same time, we are trying to increase student loans 50 percent.

Mr. KINGSTON. But, you know, a speaker earlier tonight, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] raised a very good point, and his point was that this is a profound debate. I agree with him. This is a profound debate, because we are talking about two different visions of government. Now, the gentleman from South Carolina earlier tonight talked about ancient civilizations that had fallen because of financial problems, and so forth. But the other thing that they have fallen, or the other consequence has actually been war, civil wars, internal strifes, coups, assassinations, and so forth. I am proud we are not doing that in America. But when I draw that parallel, I am not totally off the farm here, because we are talking about a fundamental change in government. We are talking about shifting power from one group, basically a group in Washington who wants to handle and control everything, to another group outside of Washington, and those people are your neighbors, your associates at work, the folks at the grocery store, people that you see on the city streets. They are regular, normal people. And what we want to do is go back to a time in America where those folks control their own destiny, their own towns, their own communities and make their own decisions. I think there is an exciting opportunity out there to let, for example, the counties, and I represent 22 counties in the First District of Georgia, and I know the gentleman has multiple counties in South Carolina, to let our own counties control our own poverty, our own health care, our own ways of doing business. Does that mean that Government will be gone at $12 trillion over the next 7 years? There is no way. The Federal Government is not going away, but the Federal Government is taking a step back and saying, hey, maybe there is a lot of brilliance back home. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. KINGSTON. That is right, and when the gentleman thinks about, well, the Government is getting out of this, there are 163 different job training programs. Now, if we cut 25 of them out or 20 of them out, the headline would be Republican party cuts out 20 job training programs. They will not say there are 143 of them still around. And yet, in addition, there are a lot of State programs and even local programs. The EPA. We are getting a lot of criticism now for cutting EPA, and we have not passed that bill. These things are being negotiated. But recently I had the opportunity to talk to the National Association of State EPA counterparts. I do not know the exact name of their organization, but these were folks who were basically State EPA directors, and I thought, man, I am walking into a lion's den, but here is what I found. No. 1, I found capable, intelligent, bright people, people who were close to the polluted river, close to the smokestack that was putting the dirty air in the atmosphere, and they were very much on top of the situation. They had a lot more hands-on experience than people in Washington. No. 2, what I found is that they were not afraid of the EPA stepping back, because 20 years ago, or over 20 years ago now, when the EPA was started, their organizations were not in existence, and they have grown over 20 years. There is a lot that has come forward in the States in terms of environmental cleanup, in terms of health care, and in terms of poverty and so forth. So just because the Federal Government is withdrawing its horns every so slightly in certain areas, it does not mean that there is not a presence of pollution enforcement or helping poverty programs or public assistance benefits and so forth. And yet that is what we are charged with over and over again. It is an absolute distortion of what really is going on here.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to answer the question with something practical, not necessarily philosophical, but strategically important, and that is when we had the November shutdown, the 6-day shutdown, you will remember we had a continuing resolution passed that reopened the Government for a 3-week period of time, at which time, by December 15, the President of the United States was to have submitted a 7-year balanced budget, which he did not on December 15. So what has happened is there are a lot of Members who feel somewhat, ``burned once, and it is your fault; burned twice, it is my fault.'' I am not going to be burned twice. That is their concern. What would be different now? The President did not do it then. It was a public agreement to do a Congressional Budget Office 7-year balanced budget, which he did not submit. The other thing I wanted to say is that we are arguing numbers here. We think we should spend $12 trillion over the next 7 years, and the President wants to spend $13 trillion over the next 7 years. But beyond that we are also arguing policy. We have to have some policy changes. For example, give our senior citizens more choices to preserve and protect their Medicare program by allowing, for example, a medical savings account, which takes a change in the tax law. If you do not have that tied into the balanced budget, then, unfortunately, this President is not going to do that. He is not going to sign that and give our seniors a choice. So there is a policy reason, and then there is a strategic reason along with the reasons that Mr. Campbell had pointed out.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time once again, I would say to my learned colleague, who has more experience at this than I do, that I am not certain how this impacts discharge petitions, and I assume the discharge petitions he is referring to are ones that affect the continuing resolution. Am I correct on that?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentleman, no, this is the 5th.

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

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, first, I want to go over a resolution which has raised the eyebrows of a number of our colleagues here that the House leadership filed with the Committee on Rules today. It has been described as a resolution which will allow the House to go on vacation or recess until the 23d of January, and I wanted to make the point to my colleagues, because I think there is genuine concern about this, that that is not what the resolution does. It says that the Speaker may declare a recess subject to the call of the Chair on January 5 through Tuesday, January 9; and then the Speaker may declare a recess subject to the call of the Chair from January 9 to January 12, and it goes on from January 12 to January 16, and from the 16th through the 19th, but it does not call for a recess. It gives the Speaker the power to make the call on that, and I wanted to assure my colleagues----

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, is not it true that the Republicans would have the next hour, should we want to do that?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes; 1 minute for the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Deutsch] and 1 minute for our side.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me just say that the President has been in office over 2 years now and he has not submitted a balanced budget. To the gentleman from Illinois, I was here when the President passed his budget in 1993 with much fanfare about seriously attacking the deficit, but since then he has not been back in the debate. We need a balanced budget. If he will submit a balanced budget, I believe we can resolve this. But more importantly, if we can get some Members on your side to join us in passing some of these appropriations bills, we can reopen the Government. I am not a hard-liner about let us keep the Government closed, let us hold these folks as hostages. But it disappoints me when I hear you all need to reopen the Government. It was your President who vetoed the bills.

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman has been a true gentleman from Kentucky. He has not said a word in 20 minutes.

Mr. KINGSTON. I did want to respond to two things. Number one, we only need about 30 Democrats to reopen the government, because we can get some of these vetoes overridden and we can pass some more appropriations bills. So we hope that we can pick up those votes so you all will allow us to reopen the government. Just as much as basically you want to do it your way, we want to do it our way. But I do think that reasonable people can prevail, reasonable thought can prevail. But I wanted to get back, you mentioned what would our forefathers do. I think, number one, they would pray, and I know that it is politically incorrect to say that, but if we look at the example of Benjamin Franklin and the Constitutional Convention, I think it was significant that authors in history wrote down his speech about let us pray, because we are obviously at a deadlock. We are not doing that as an institution. We know that. Number two, I think they would look at the example of their mother country, England, which was a country of revolutions and counterrevolutions for over 1,000 years, going back to the Roman Empire, and particularly 1650, right after the English civil war, where they beheaded King Charles and Oliver Cromwell and the military ran the government and kept dismissing parliament after parliament over and over again. I think if our forefathers were here, seeing those examples, knowing those examples, what they would do is they would say wait a minute, you are telling me you are $4.9 trillion in debt, you are telling me you pay $20 billion a month interest? You are telling me you have a man who serves in the White House who promised to balance the budget and since he has served, we have paid $480 billion in new interest on the debt? And you are quibbling about 1 more month? For crying out loud, let us go in there with a machete and start cutting and slashing. What is this crazy stuff about a 7-year balanced budget? Can you people not do it in 1 year or 2 years?

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentlewoman would yield.