Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. One of the reasons why we said to the bureaucracies, look, you spend, say in the case of the Pentagon, $240 to $260 billion a Year. I think USDA, the agriculture folks, get about $64 billion a year. What we are saying to them is they have capable administrators, they can figure out where the waste is. We are not going to dictate it top down from our body saying these are the ones to cut. We expect they know where their waste is and they can ferret it out, and we get criticized for not being more specific where the money should come from. We are being flexible, because we believe that those who are closest to it know where the waste is.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, I want to bring this back to the perspective of American families. The gentleman has a family, and he and his wife have to do what Libby and I do, sit down at the kitchen table quite frequently and decide what they are going to cut out. Do we really need the new curtains this month? Maybe we can postpone buying the new mattress for the bed, and things like this; that if we can postpone a spending decision, we will. All we have asked the Washington bureaucrats to do is think like the American family. Here is $5, hard-earned money. The gentleman's money is as good as mine. He works hard to pay it, the American people work hard to pay it. All we are asking the bureaucrats is, take this $5 that you have gotten from hard-working Americans and find this, one nickel. Just get one nickel out of it. That is not hard to do. When we sit around at our kitchen table, it is not a nickel we are looking for. We have to cut out $2 or $3 from this $5, and it is not that hard to do. The administration this year proposed buying an island off of Hawaii for $30 million. What was the purpose? For duck breeding. The only problem was, only 10 ducks took them up on this honeymoon package offer, so there are 10 ducks who would use this facility for $30 million. Fortunately, Congress persuaded the administration to back off this, but this is an example of something that is absurd. What about the Pentagon? The Pentagon lost one $1 million rocket launcher. Now, talk about gun control, does it not bother this administration that we have lost a rocket launcher? I am not sure what can be done with a rocket launcher, but I do not know why you would lose one, and who would want to take it? What about an $850,000 tugboat that disappears? Where do you hide a tugboat? How do you lose a tugboat? Where can you put one? It is just ridiculous, the examples go on and on and on. All we are asking this administration to do is go back and cut out the waste, fraud, and abuse in the budget.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman to wait. I know that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), Speaker of the House, was here all weekend. Is the gentleman saying that the Republicans were the only people who stayed in town to protect Social Security?

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, when President Eisenhower signed a proclamation expanding the observance of Armistice Day to the commemoration of Veterans Day in 1954, he called for a day to `` * * * let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.'' Thursday is Veterans Day, and we owe it to the men and women who have served our nation in the Armed Forces to remember their sacrifices and to honor them for the freedoms they have guaranteed for us today. Since 1775: 41,882,000 Americans have served their nation through eleven major conflicts; 1,091,200 have died in service to our country; 18,968,000 veterans of America's wars live in our communities today; and another 30,638,000 living ex-service members or peacetime veterans are our neighbors. We must commemorate this day by remembering our veterans are our grandfathers, fathers, and brothers, uncles and aunts, or the guy next door. Most do not seek recognition for their sacrifices, but spend the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, remembering, reliving their experiences, and praying for their fallen comrades. Walter Olliff ``Ollie'' Moore is one of those veterans. Unpretentious. A resident of Millen, Georgia, he was the guy next door in 1949. Engaged to be married to Miss Jacklyn Miller, he entered the service at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. With war erupting in Korea in 1950, as a U.S. Army Infantryman he was transferred to the combat zone and assigned to Company D, 19th Infrantry Regiment. Ollie was wounded in action in November of that year. He recovered and returned to action on the front lines. He was captured by the enemy and was held captive as a Prisoner of War at Pyo Dong, Camp #5, in North Korea until September 1953. Corporal Moore returned home to Georgia in October 1953, married Jackie in February 1954, became a father to Walter Jr., and settled in as the guy next door. Ollie is one of 41,882,000 American Veterans who has sacrificed for our nation, one of 6,807,000 who served during the Korean conflict, one of 7,140 Americans known to have been held as a POW in Korea, one of 2,814 of those ex-POW's surviving today, and today one man in a community of over 273 million grateful Americans. We owe Ollie and the many Americans like him a debt of gratitude every day. On Thursday, we must all take a moment to pay homage to those who have contributed so much to the preservation of our nation. You do not have to go far to find a veteran; one may be in your family, a special friend, someone you pass on the street, or he or she may be the guy living next door.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if a schoolboy gives his favorite teacher an apple, she will probably take a small bite out of it, something like that, just modest. Now, if the taxpayer, his parents send the same apple in the form of tax dollars to the Federal Government, this is what they deem as their fair share, and that is the debate we are in today. What we are asking is that the Department of Education, just like all the other Federal agencies, get $5 and squeeze a nickel out of it. Now, I am a father of four. I have two teenagers and two who still love me. We have to sit around the kitchen table every night to come up with ways to save money. Mr. Speaker, if we can buy our gas for $1.07 a gallon, we go two more blocks so we do not have to pay $1.10. I do not buy new suits until they are on sale, and my colleagues might be thinking, well, I hope there is a sale coming up soon. I do not get a steak when I go out to eat; I get chicken, and we do not buy Special K unless we get the 35 cents off coupon. All we are asking of the Department of Education and all of the Federal bureaucracies in Washington is to find that little old nickel out of the $5 so that we can save Social Security.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, as I listen to the gentleman I remember my days as a volunteer for United Way. United Way, for every dollar someone contributes, it uses less than 10 cents for administration. Ninety cents on that dollar goes to the victim, the social service recipient, the person in need, 90 cents. I would love to see the Washington bureaucracy adopt the United Way standard, because if we did, then I think there would be enough money to do everything to keep everybody satisfied.

Mr. KINGSTON. My mother lives in Louisville, and I just wanted to make sure. I knew it was Albertson's. We have Piggly-Wiggly. If we want to buy the Special K cereal or we want to buy the Clusters, the kind of $3.50 a box stuff, we have to have the 75 cents, the 25 cents off coupons. Otherwise, we are going to get Piggly-Wiggly brand. Some of the Piggly-Wiggly brand is good but some just cannot quite compete with good old Kellogg's Corn Flakes, the best to you each morning. But we are not going to eat that unless we can save a quarter or 50 cents. We are not unusual. We are out there raising kids. That is just what we do. If we get our car washed, it is because we bought 8 gallons worth of gas. When we fill up our tank, it is when we have found the cheapest gas station on the block, the one that is $1.07 a gallon, not the one that is $1.15. I do not know who buys that premium unleaded stuff that is $1.27 a gallon. Somebody must, but it is not people I know. People I know do not buy suits unless they are on sale. They do not buy running shoes unless they are discontinued. They do not buy steak, they eat chicken. This is what American families go through every single day. If you want to go on a vacation, you save up your money and the dryer breaks, or you have to buy such exciting items as a new set of tires for your stationwagon. That is what America goes through daily, not just every now and then but every single day. What we are asking Washington to do just one time, for the sake of social security and for the sake of not having a tax increase, just find one measly little penny on every dollar they save so that we can protect and preserve social security, not for the next election but for the next generation.

Mr. KINGSTON. Target sells groceries, right? What is the gentleman's big grocery stores?

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, again, all we are asking Washington to do is to do what people back home do, come up with 1 cent on every dollar they spend. One cent in savings here means savings for retirement, for social security, not just for seniors today but for all generations. That is all it takes. I am on the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations, and if I eat a cheese pizza, it has been inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. But if I get a pepperoni pizza, it has to be inspected by the United States Department of Agriculture. I eat lots of pizza because I have four kids. It would appear to me that surely we could have the same inspector checking the pepperoni and the cheese pizza. I do not know if there is a different department for sardines, and knowing Washington there probably is, but it just goes on and on and on here, the potential savings that are resisted, and only in this town. In real America, every American does what we did yesterday. Sunday morning, Sunday mid-morning you go through Parade Magazine, you go through the local coupons in your local Piggly-Wiggly, and I guess, what does the gentleman have in Colorado, Target?

Mr. KINGSTON. Children are denied the good quality education, the quality education that they need. It is interesting that Mobil Oil Company cut their budget by 11 percent this year. AT&T cut their budget by $2 billion. Yet, when we go to bureaucracies in Washington and ask them to come up with 1 percent, they cannot find it. To me, if I was the President and my cabinet said that, I would say, look, you know what, this is not our money; of course, I know he thinks it is; but, you have got to find 1 percent. That is reasonable. Nobody in America cannot find one cent in a dollar they spend to come up with savings.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield further, Mr. Speaker, can the gentleman tell me this: If the IRS came to a business and found that business could not be audited, and they were having a dispute over accounting for tax dollars, what would the IRS do?

Mr. KINGSTON. Exactly how much money is the gentleman talking about that is unauditable?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me tell the gentleman another story from back in the district, Camden County, Georgia, a Southeast Georgia county that borders the St. Mary's River just North of Jacksonville, Florida. A lady down there, she was not a teacher, she was with the local Board of Education and she had just returned from Athens, Georgia, where the University of Georgia is located, from an anti- hugging seminar. Now, that was not the name of it, but that is what they called it. What she had to attend was a conference put on by the national Department of Education in Athens, Georgia, for all of the teachers in the 165 school districts of the State of Georgia on not being alone with children. They told her, they said do not ever touch a child. Okay, a lot of sexual harassment going on, we can understand the good intentions here. They said, do not be alone with the child and do not ever express any kind of affection. So now she has to go back and tell all the teachers in Camden county not to hug, not to touch, not to be alone with children. Just think about this a minute. If you are a C student and you did not get the quadratic formula the first time around, you cannot go after school and see Ms. Jones because she has to have a witness for that 20 minutes that you are with her that she did not try anything on you. And if you are a little, say, a 6-year-old or 7-year-old and you have some problems with the mechanics of relieving yourself in the boys' or girls' room, sometimes you might need a teacher assistant. You cannot do that any more without a witness, because the National Department of Education knows best for the children in Camden County. She said, but you know what the real tragedy is? Camden County is the home of Kings Bay Naval Base, lots of young moms and dads, lots of parents of very small children who are away for 6 months at a time. She said, these little kids have a lot going on in their lives. They need a hug a lot more than they need an A, and if we want to help children, we need to get the bureaucracy in Washington off the backs of the teachers in Camden County so that they can do what they know best locally. And they are going to use good judgment. They do not need the bureaucracy of Washington, D.C. to stick their nose in their business. I know they are doing it in, Colorado; but it is just that same Washington-knows-best culture, let us spend money because the money well, as the President said, ``it is not their money.'' I guess the President is a very wealthy guy. But it certainly, as he says, it is not their money. I would agree with him, it is certainly not the Government's money on any level; it is the taxpayers' and the hard-earned workers' money that we are spending here, and that is why we should be very careful on how we spend it.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, there is a great story about a teacher, and we all had these institutional teachers that everybody loved and feared, but respected and learned a lot from. This 30-year veteran of the school system in Gray, Georgia, a tiny little town outside of Macon, she was teaching, and this new up-start from the Department of Education, probably on the 6th floor up there, third office down to the right, a very important person with cell phones and laptop computers, decided she was going to go down to Gray, Georgia, and grace the good teacher with some of her wisdom. Now, this young lady, who is a fine person, I am sure, but she had never taught kids. So she goes down to the teacher and says, you know, after 30 years of teaching, you have been teaching kids on the right- hand side of the chalkboard, and do you know that the left side of the brain learns faster than the right side, and so what you need to do is switch and put everything over on the right side of the chalkboard, or the left side of the chalkboard, because that is really where you can improve your education, teaching. This is a lady who has been teaching for 30 years, listening to a 25-year-old bureaucrat from Washington, D.C. who had never put one hour in a classroom. This was a lady, a veteran teacher that you and I talk about and our cousins talk about and our friends talk about and we still remember what she taught us about Hemingway and Thoreau and Chaucer. But the good old Department of Education, because they love children. It is odd to me how a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., as smart as they are, and as much love as they have in their hearts can love kids down in Gray, Georgia, and teach them better than the people in Gray, but also better than the people in New York City or California or Colorado. I mean, these are very interesting, brilliant people. The gentleman was talking about waste. There was an interview this weekend on a television show with John Stossel and Barbara Walters, and what the Clinton person was saying, well, the Republicans want to slash class size. And Mr. Stossel, who is a neutral journalist says, oh, come on. Local districts pay for education. Is there no fat in the Education Department? In five years, Federal education funding has increased 20 percent. There are now 4,000 workers in Washington, D.C., attending conferences, making phone calls, and not teaching. Are they really necessary? Or how about the $400,000 appropriated to build a Doctor Seuss statue. Is that really necessary? He goes on and on and on. It is not just the Department of Education. The Department of Interior, the Department of Defense, the Department of Family Services. Everything has waste in it, and the only thing we have asked these bureaucracies in Washington to do is cut out one penny on the dollar so that we will not have to spend Social Security money. We want to be able to spend it.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to start off by just kind of rebutting my distinguished colleague. The Wall Street Journal is a great newspaper, but, tell me, have my colleagues ever read a newspaper that does not sometimes get it wrong; does not stretch the truth? Here is a report from the Congressional Budget Office. Now, I know the good folks at the Wall Street Journal know everything there is about Congress and spending and so forth, but these people are actually hired to do this job, they are the ones who are in the room. CBO stands for Congressional Budget Office, and they have certified that the Republican budget does not raid the Social Security Trust Fund, as have the Democrat budgets for the past 40 years. Here is what it says: Projected on-budget surplus under the congressional scoring, the way it is done, $1 billion, and this is as of October 27, 1999. Now, it is real odd to me that people who have been voting against every single appropriations bill because they do not spend enough money are now coming in here in the 11th hour and trying to rewrite the rules. Where was this fiscal austerity back during the September and October debates? All we heard from the liberal side of the aisle was, ``You don't spend enough money, so we are going to vote no.'' Well, hello, where does the money come from? Social Security. We have held the line on it, we have passed the appropriation bills, 13 of them on Republican votes, because we could not get our Democrat colleagues to join us because it did not spend enough money for them. Yes, there have been a few defectors, and we appreciate them, but we started this year taking the President on. He said from the well of the House let us spend 40 percent, actually I think it was 38 percent, of the Social Security surplus on a whole line of new entitlement programs. But the Republicans' key goal is to not spend the Social Security surplus. That is a quote. That is a direct quote from the White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, and that was as of October 20. Now, that is coming from the folks who do not exactly like Republicans down on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We are not going to spend the Social Security surplus. Now, what have we proposed doing? We have proposed reducing the size of the government budget. For every $1 we have asked the bureaucracies in Washington to cut out a penny, and they can do it. Here is an example of one place they could do it. Now, we have heard there is absolutely no waste, but this is the President's trip to Africa. He went on a number of trips this year. He went to China and spent $18.8 million, took 500 people; went to Chile, spent $10.5 million; went to Africa and spent $42.8 million, and took 1300 of his dearest and closest Federal Government friends. Now, there were other people. This does not include Secret Service or Peace Corps, this only includes Federal Government employees. Now, under our radical budget, the President next year would say 13 of those friends will have to stay home. One example would be the mayor of Denver. The mayor of Denver goes to Africa with the President. Why? Is Colorado so important to our African policy? If so, why not let the good people of Denver pass a hat and pay his freight? Thirteen hundred people went to Africa for $42.8 million. There is not a Member of this House who would say that was a wise expenditure of money, and there is not a member of this White House who would say he could not cut some of that out. Or what about the $3 million ducks in Hawaii? The U.S. Department of Interior bought an island off of Hawaii for $30 million. The purpose was so ducks could breed on it. The only problem was only 10 ducks took advantage of this new honeymoon package. So what we have are ducks, $3 million each, over there having a big time. Now, we need to find a Hugh Hefner kind of duck who can promote this thing a little bit and maybe we can get it down to $1 million or $2 million a duck. I think back in South Georgia we would probably call this a waste of money, and I suspect the folks would in Kansas, New York, and all over the place. What is this really about? This is about trying to get Washington on line with the American people, the people who drive an extra two blocks to fill up their tank for $1.07 a gallon instead of $1.15 a gallon; the people who do not buy a new suit until the clothes are on sale; the people who go out to eat when they have a coupon and order chicken instead of steak; and the people who do not buy any running shoes unless they are the discontinued brand or marked down 50 percent; and the parents who raise their kids to turn off the light when they leave a room, and do not run the water when they brush their teeth. We are saying to Washington that they should live their lives like the American people. If we can, we can find a lot more than a penny on a dollar and we can save Social Security.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen from New York and California, and I want to say this is a bipartisan problem. We do thank the gentleman from California for trying to correct some of the problems with the BBA, but, on the other hand, it creates a new problem with the indirect medical education reimbursements and it changes the formula to base it on a national average per residence, which in some areas causes great losses of money.

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

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me say this to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin), the previous speaker, it is not about inside Washington accounting mumbo jumbo, it is about grandmother's retirement check, and I am going to do everything I can as a Republican to protect it. Now, I do know this, that in January, the President of the United States said let us preserve only 60 percent of the Social Security surplus. The Republican position has been, let us preserve 100 percent. Let us balance the budget, not through spending Social Security on non- Social Security means, but let us do it by just good old-fashioned belt tightening. Now, imagine some little roly-poly fat kid at the banquet table on his third piece of apple pie saying I want more. All we are saying is, look, we want you to slim it down, push back 1 cent on the dollar, tighten that belt just a little bit, about a half a notch. Then if you will do that, we do not have to get even close to Social Security money. That is what the Republican Party is trying to get the Democrats to do. I hope that they will join us.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman from Arizona holds up the penny. I have got a dollar here. All we are saying is find a penny. You know about clipping that 50 cents off on the Special-K or the corn flakes made by Kellogg's versus buying the house brand which always is cheaper but not always up to the taste quality. It is not just a matter of having to do it, it is also a matter of wanting to do it, because it is stupid not to. That is the way Americans buy things. We are a country of hardworking, middle-class people. If we can buy gas for $1.12 a gallon, we are going to drive two blocks past the $1.15 a gallon station because we can save the three cents per gallon. If we can buy our clothes cheaper when they are on sale, we are going to wait until the suits go on sale before we buy one. If we go to a restaurant, and I know the gentlemen here are both fathers. When was the last time you bought steak? You always are buying chicken and the first thing your eyes go to in the restaurant is the right side of the menu where the prices are, and then you work your way back to what the food items are you can buy for that price. For the people who have to decide between buying a new piece of furniture or a new dress or probably not buying either because the dryer breaks or you need a new set of tires on your car, or if you are a runner, buying jogging shoes when they are discontinued because they have been marked down 50 percent, if you go to Wal-Mart every Saturday or Sunday to buy anything from shampoo to cleaning fluid for your car or anything else, this is what we are saying, this is all we are talking about, finding that one penny on the dollar. All over America, it is easy to do, from Maine to Miami to San Francisco. But somehow in this little 50-mile radius of an area of Washington, D.C., and not even that, really just maybe about a five- mile radius in the inner city here of government, it is impossible.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, we are all about the same age, born in the 1950s, raised in the 1960s. Just describing my home, and I know the gentleman from Texas, he may not know this, but I was actually born in Brazos County, Texas, and the gentleman from Arizona and I found out today we have cotton and a lot of other crops in common, and the folks back home live in a world totally different from the spending other people's money philosophy of Washington, D.C. I was raised in Athens, Georgia, on Plum Nelly Road, plumb out of the city and nelly in the county. In that house, 215 Plum Nelly Road, Ann and Al Kingston did not let children leave the room with the light on. If you left the light on, dad would let you know you were wasting money. We did not pay the power company extra money by leaving a light on in an unoccupied room. If you left the water on when you were brushing your teeth, not after you finished brushing but during the act of brushing your teeth, you were also called to the mat for a little dialogue, and sometimes that dialogue was not always verbal. Now, you washed your own car. My little sister Jean who had two older sisters, she did not know there were such things as new clothes until she got to be a teenager and was on a clothing allowance. She wore hand-me-downs. That is just the way we were raised. I will never forget walking to the Beachwood Shopping Center from my house with Jimbo Ray, we would pick up Coca-Cola bottles on the way because they were 2 and 3 cent return bottles. We were frugal but it was not because we were poor, it was just that was the culture. You did not waste money. That is the way people did in Arizona and Texas and California and all over. And somehow they come to Washington and forget that whole value system. It is bizarre. Because I know lots of good people in government, Democrats and Republicans. Yet one of the absurd things, the Pentagon lost two $850,000 tugboats. They lost one $1 million missile launcher. Now, I ask my colleagues, has anybody seen the missile launcher? Who has got it? Come on, fess up. Somebody has got to have it. It just goes on and on and on. A contractor for the Pentagon paid $714 for an electric bell that was only worth $46. It is absurd. We pay $8.5 million to 26,000 dead people for food stamps. Hey, why do we not start paying the money to live people, and we might have less of a need for health care if we start feeding live people. But can you imagine $8.5 million worth of food stamps to dead people? It is unbelievable. And it only happens in Washington, D.C. It does not happen in large businesses, it does not happen in small businesses, it does not happen in Georgia, it does not happen in Arizona, it does not happen in Texas, it does not happen with my family, with your family, with my neighbor's family down the street and turn the corner and go up one, it does not happen in that household, but here in Washington, D.C., it is the rule and not the exception.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, I think it is important to say that this is not the President alone, this is the Vice President. Indeed, Mr. Gore's entire proposed budget spends all of the surplus that you are talking about. It goes right through the operating surplus and then goes right into the Social Security surplus. So, you know, this is not a problem that necessarily ends with the Clinton administration should the baton be passed on to the Vice President, because the vice president is very much in favor of spending the surplus.

Mr. KINGSTON. That was $42.8. The gentleman from Texas has a chart on what we are talking about here, just to show the absurdity of this, 1,300 employees who went.

Mr. KINGSTON. Five hundred people went to China. I do not know why we need five hundred advisors. These are Federal employees, and there are also private citizens who go who allegedly pay back the money. I called the General Accounting Office, the accountability people in Washington, and I said, how many of the private citizens paid back their money? They said, well, you would have to ask the State Department. The State Department would have to get it from the White House, and we will never find out the answer to that. If we look at the chart here, tell me, 13 of those people could not have stayed home? That is all we are talking about, 1 percent, 13 of them have to stay home. I would say the mayor of Denver, I know Colorado is very important to our African policy, but if it is the case, why cannot the people in Colorado pay for the mayor of Denver to go on this junket? That is not even the expensive part. When Vice President Gore and President Clinton travel, the expensive part is the promises they make. In 1993, they promised $1 billion to Russia. In 1999, they urged the International Monetary Fund to release $4.5 billion in aid to Russia, one of the most corrupt countries in the world right now, and $400 million promised to the Ukraine, and then another $5 billion through the International Monetary Fund, and $1.8 billion to close Chernobyl, another $2 billion promised in 1995 by Clinton to Poland. He promised $260 million to South Africa. He promised them $650 million, and do they not have the largest diamond reserves in the world, and we are going to pay $650 million for infrastructure development? To Costa Rica he promised $2.2 billion to extend the Caribbean Basin initiative, which the gentleman and I both know has absolutely decimated the textile industry in the Southeast United States, basically taken all of our jobs out of South Carolina and Georgia and put them in the Caribbean. He promised $360 billion to train soldiers in Bosnia, even though we have already spent $12 billion in the Balkans. It just goes on and on and on. When the President travels, yes, it is expensive for his entourage, but it is even more expensive to hear what he promises to people.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, I am on the spending end on that particular Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs, with the foreign aid bill. If we follow the Clinton travel thing, $42.8 million, taking 1,300 Federal employees to Africa, and $8.8 million to go into China, and $10.5 million to go into Chile.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, in Washington there are a couple of things that are misunderstood, mostly by the liberals, that the government does not have money. Big shock, the government does not have money. It is the American people's money. It is hard-working America whose money is talked about as if it is theirs. The money goes into two pots. One is for general spending and another pot, there are a lot of trust funds but the major two, the other pot is for Social Security. In the general fund pot, we are out. Yet we have heard today speaker after speaker say we need more spending for this, we need more spending for that. Indeed, most of the liberals voted against the appropriations bills because they did not spend enough money. Well, my question is, if we are out of money in this pot and we have a lot of money in this pot, is that where we are going to get it? Because that is Social Security. If we are not going to take it from this trust fund, then we must want to increase taxes. Wait a minute. Two weeks ago the other side joined Republicans and voted 419-to-0 against the Clinton tax proposals. The only way to do this, to make our budget, is to cut one cent out of the dollar. I hope the Democrats will join us on that.