Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I do not remember anyone yielding.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I see we have the distinguished president and chairman of the ``theme team,'' the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke], and the distinguished freshman gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Graham] and then we have the guy from Arizona that shows up regardless.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman.

Mr. KINGSTON. So, Mr. Speaker, if we are building the case, then, we need to balance the budget, the gentleman mentioned a minute ago about the interest. Alan Greenspan, before I think a Senate committee and I believe a House committee as well, said that if we balanced the budget, because the Federal Government would not have to borrow as much, then, as a big fish in the lending marketplace, it would ease up the drive to increase interest rates to the private sector and the interest rates would actually fall 1 to 2 percent. If that is the case, then the American taxpayers, who are paying monthly car installments, mortgages each month on their home, credit card, or whatever else they are borrowing on, their interest rates will in turn go down, will they not?

Mr. KINGSTON. The total budget of Minnesota, plus the total budget of Georgia, we spend their annual budgets, combined together, just on interest on the debt. All that money that could be going to health care, that could be going to Medicare, that could be going to education, or, best of all, back to the taxpayers. But it is going straight to the creditors.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the same for Georgia, it is about 10, a little over $10 billion a year. So each month we spend on interest, the budget of Minnesota plus the----

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, is it not true that if a baby is born this year, in fact, I have one, little Walker Watson, who is my nephew, he was born in April. Now, I understand his share of the national debt, should he live 75 years, which I am hopeful that he will and beyond that, he will owe $187,000 on the national debt in his lifetime, just interest. Just interest. Not paying down the principal but just interest. And we also know that the interest on the national debt is almost $20 billion a month. Does the gentleman happen to know offhand what the budget of Minnesota is? The annual budget.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to a conversation that the gentleman from Minnesota and I had earlier today, and that is the basic premise of this whole bill, which is balancing the budget, and why should we balance the budget?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me interject quickly. Many of these cuts are real cuts. Others are just slowing down of the increase and still others are consolidating programs.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, happy Halloween. What I wanted to talk about tonight, and I am joined by the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] and some others perhaps later, this reconciliation process, this huge budget, this huge bill that we have been hearing so much about in the House and why it is so important. It is a massive bill, it is an important bill. It is right that all eyes of the Nation should be watching this particular piece of legislation. It is the bill that calls for a billion dollar budget, calls for Medicare reform, reforms that say protect and preserve Medicare. It changes the way we do our Medicaid allocation. It has welfare reform in it, it has medical savings accounts and a tax cut for the hardworking middle class America. It is a very important bill, and it is one that we all have a horse in the race on, and so I wanted to talk about that a little bit tonight. Let me yield the floor to Mr. Gutknecht. He has been a valuable part of this as a freshman Member of this House. He knows that it was the freshman class who put the majority agenda forward, starting with the Contract With America, 10 items, 9 of which have passed the House, and then went to work on the 13 appropriations bills, even after the other body voted to end the balanced budget amendment, working on the 13 appropriations bills, saying that it is clear that the American people want a balanced budget. That is what your freshman class ran on and that is what you followed through on, was a balanced budget. So let me yield the floor to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht].

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Last week, the President said he went too high, and he is now on record saying he raised taxes too much. So, you know, hopefully we have got an ally.

Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to say one other thing about this. You know, we have this frank privilege, the franking privilege, which is a fancy way of saying Members of Congress get free postage by signing their name where the stamp would be. Not long ago I saw a flier that was a franked mailing of one of our colleagues, and it looked like a lottery. It looked like Readers' Digest sweepstakes. It said in bold print, ``The government has some of your money. Call us. Come get your check now.'' I looked it over. I mean it really looked like a Readers' Digest sweepstake. What the Member of Congress, with taxpayers' dollars, was sending out was a franked piece saying, ``Come get your earned income tax credit. Come get it right now. It is free money''. And it was franked to every single person in his district.

Mr. KINGSTON. Give money to the people, they buy more; when they do, goods and services, demand goes up, small businesses have to expand, jobs are created, more revenue goes in. So, frankly, if I was a dictator and did not care about the people, I would have a low tax rate just to keep the economy going.

Mr. KINGSTON. So why would you want to give away that? You know, hey, you see me; you are giving out money. I mean, of course, it would not be my money, and it certainly would not be money of a Member of Congress. They way this was, is, ``I am going to get you your money.'' And you talk about appealing to the basest instincts of people. It was just a horrifying flier. But to think that that was sent out at taxpayers' money just is disgusting.

Mr. KINGSTON. I want the gentleman to do one thing, define earned income tax credit, because I know there are a lot of people like myself unfamiliar with this.

Mr. KINGSTON. That is right. There is so much in this reconciliation package that will bring us towards business prosperity and the creation of new jobs. This is the first time I believe in 25 years that we have had a balanced budget to vote on on the floor of the House; and it is something that President Clinton, June 4th, 1992, pledged to the American people on Larry King Live that he would have a balanced budget, a 5-year plan, when he was president. So we clearly have bipartisan support on it. Now, I understand that the President has somewhat backed off of that promise, and he is not the first member of either party to do so. Now is the time for everybody to come to the table and say, if you are interested in a balanced budget, if you are interested in turning this thing around, now, probably the month of November, is maybe one of the most critical months in terms of legislative history in our country in the last 100 years.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate that. I wanted to follow the train of thought of the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] on this capital gains tax. I represent an area that is a big growth area and, actually, a lot of waterfront property. I represent the entire coast of Georgia. One of the things that I found is that you have a lot of people who moved out toward the coast 30 years ago to escape the city or just to kind of get closer to the marshes and the ocean and so forth. And now they are empty-nesters, in many cases widows living in those houses now that maybe in the 1950s they paid $25,000 for, probably a lot less than that, actually. Now they are worth $500,000. But that widow who is out there on a fixed income cannot sell it, because she would be taxed as if she was making $500,000 a year. So when we talk about the capital gains tax cut and reduction, who is it going to help? It is going to help a whole lot of people like that widow on the fixed income. And, certainly, in terms of job creation, the numbers are incredible in terms of people investing money and turning around. I do not know what it is about this administration that they seem to have a class war fetish: If you are rich, if you are successful, if you have done something, if you live the American dream, you are horrible as far as the crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue goes. I wish I had that Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, Colonel Sanders entrepreneurial genius. I love it. The fact is, we all do not have it. However, think about all of the people who have gotten jobs because those entrepreneurs put the dream, put the money, put the material, put the product together and made a heck of a lot of people happy through the use of those products. Yet the administration cannot get enough of rich bashing and class warfare.

Mr. KINGSTON. That is right. This is a debate that is an American debate. Everybody needs to be involved in this. It might be a little more exciting right now to be watching that baseball game that is being played in Cleveland, but this is something that is going to keep everything afloat. I wanted to switch gears a minute to welfare, because so much of H.R. 4 is still in this budget, and it is the welfare reform plan. As you know, we have 4 basic goals with welfare reform--discouraging teenage pregnancy, a work requirement so that those who have the ability are required to work, State flexibility, because we may do it different than you guys do it in Minnesota and in California and in Pennsylvania, Georgia may want to do something a little bit differently; and then the fourth and final component of welfare reform is no benefits to illegal aliens. The gentleman from California I see is on the floor. He knows there were 37,000 babies born in Los Angeles County, CA last year whose mothers were not American citizens but as soon as they were born, they had dual citizenship and were entitled to $620 a month in California welfare benefits. We want to help the folks who are here, the needy, but if you are not an American, what we want to do is give you immediate medical attention, then get you home, because we do not want somebody who is just coming here for the benefits. I have a welfare case that actually I became familiar with yesterday that I am watching closely. This is a typical case of the things that are out there. I am not going to say which city this is in, I am not going to say the name of the family, but this is a real situation, two girls living with a surrogate father. The father is actually the common-law husband of their biological mother. The biological mother is addicted to crack and not living at home anymore. She only comes by occasionally to steal things. One occasion, when the common-law lover did not give her money, she threw potash in [[Page H 10708]] his eyes and blinded him, so he is not on disability. The two girls are on disability, or SSI because their biological father was killed when they were toddlers. They also have a brother who is in jail right now, he is 20 years old, sentenced for 7 years on a number of charges. He is from the same biological mother but has a different biological father, but that father was killed when the boy was 1 year old. One of the girls is 18. She is in 10th grade. The other girl is 15. She is in 8th grade. The 18-year-old 10th grader, which is the year she should be graduating from high school, as you know, has a 2-month-old baby. Why do we need flexibility in welfare? Because the case that I have just given you is absolutely true, not embellished a bit. If you got confused, it took me a long time to realize it, but that welfare caseworker is trying to help these folks become independent, give them hope for tomorrow. He may need a little more flexibility than people in Washington, DC, are saying that he can have. We want to give them that flexibility. More importantly, the bureaucrat in Washington who is telling the caseworker in Georgia what to do is commanding a salary and not a small salary but a large salary. I want the bureaucrat in Washington to lose his job and give that money back here so that we can get these folks in the socioeconomic mainstream. They are going to need a lot of help, some psychological help, some medical attention, some extra tutoring in school. This is a bigger problem than these kids and this family can get out of by themselves. We need to have the compassion to help them. Yet, most importantly, that caseworker has to have the flexibility to do what works to get these folks independent

Mr. KINGSTON. I want to make one point, also. I am on the Washington, DC, oversight on the appropriations side. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Wolf] and the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis], the chairman, have offered kind of a cleanup Laurelwood, the Laurelwood Prison, which I understand that when people go to Laurelwood Prison that most of them have already been there. Absolutely no one comes out rehabilitated. What is seems to do is be a criminal think tank rather than any sort of positive rehabilitation facility. While we are looking at things in Washington, DC, that is one more example of things that we have just got to change to make this Congress make a difference.

Mr. KINGSTON. Did you tell him he did not have to take the $1,000 and buy more food and clothing? He could send it to the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me speak to that for a second. Is the gentleman aware on the earned income tax credit you can prefile before you have actually earned the money?

Mr. KINGSTON. In January you can get the tax credit on work you have not done. Then if you do not do the work, as I understand it, there is no mechanism for collecting that money.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, let me say this: After the Reagan tax cuts in 1982, the revenues were $500 billion. At the end of 10 years, they were over $1 trillion, with 18 million new jobs.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, not since Mother's Day have Democrat mommas across America gotten so much attention. But what are Democrats' sons and daughters telling them? It is a nostalgic piece of Chicken Little, ``The Sky Is Falling.'' Yes, with creativity of Steven Spielberg, they are story-telling. They should remember this one: Two mothers, two women were fighting over the same baby. The wise King Solomon pulled out a sword and said, ``Cut the child in half.'' One would-be mother said, ``Fine.'' The other one said, ``No, never.'' Love is stronger. Love of a parent deserves love of a child. What a different bill we would have today if the Democrats would follow the example of love. The love of a Mother Theresa rather than the terror of a Stephen King. If the Democrats criticism energy were spent coming to the table rather than launching grenades at those who sit at the table, what a better bill we would have. It is time to put love of parents and love of seniors above love of politics and partisanship. Mr. Speaker, let us do the right think to do: Reform, protect, and preserve Medicare.