Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) because as a father he is doing the right thing, as a representative from Colorado that has all the eyes on us. As my colleagues know, we are trying to put these puzzle pieces together, and I do think that exposure to this, excessive exposure to unnecessarily violent video games, certainly is something that we should talk about, and as my colleagues know, as a father of a 16, 13, 10 and 8 year old, I am glad that there are people like the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) who is bringing this out because frankly I do not know about all this, and we parents have to talk and see what our kids are up against and be more alert. And, as my colleague knows, what we do is we raise our antenna a little bit higher and a little bit different direction, and then we, as parents, as my colleagues know, are watching out. But I think the gentleman's action plan is a sound one, and we might want to look at that one more time, but to contact the Consumer Product Safety Commission, contact the video game manufacturers and makers, ask for a voluntary recall, contact the Video Game Magazine and ask them if they will pull all their advertising, notify the parent-teacher associations and other child advocacy groups, and my colleague said there are a lot of groups that have sprung up as a result of Littleton, and they should be looking at this, and then find others games that could desensitize children to violence. And I know the story of one little girl who was crying one time when she watched the evening news, and she did not get to watch much TV at home, and she said, ``You know, I know when there's a TV show where somebody is murdered that it is just a TV show, but this was the evening news, and, Daddy, there was a mommy who killed her little girl, and it was real life,'' and the little girl telling me the story was in tears because she had not been desensitized, and when you think about a mother killing her own daughter, it should bring tears to all of us. As my colleagues know, big and small, that this is a real situation, and so often we blend okay because it happens a lot on violent TV or on violent video. It desensitizes us to real life, but when you see somebody who has not been desensitized, how they react to life is totally different.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman from Colorado for that. I am a father of four children. Of course our kids like to play video games here and there. So I share your concern and I appreciate your raising this issue with the Members of Congress because it is something that, as you have said, does not necessarily take a new law but we need to raise the awareness about it. I wanted to ask you, when children buy these games or go into a video arcade where these games are offered as one of the choices, is there any kind of label, any kind of warning the way there is with explicit CD lyrics when you buy, that has the warning? Is there any kind of warning on these?

Mr. KINGSTON. Unfortunately for young children, high-risk victims and perpetrators of Columbine, Harris and Klebold, there is no reset button. Once you did it, it is forever.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, today is the first day of the rest of our life. Kind of an old 1960s pop culture saying that Jonathan Livingston Seagull was very proud of. If we look at this week, today is the first day of the rest of our taxpaying year to be tax free, because as of yesterday we start working for ourselves. We have paid off our debt as a serf for Uncle Sam and big government. We will all continue to pay lots of taxes here and there, but generally speaking we are through. From now on we get to keep our money. Think about the tax burden just in income tax. Today, the average American family pays 24 percent. In the 1970s, it was 16 percent. In the 1950s, it was 5 percent. Now, what does that mean? Everybody is busy. Everybody is busy as heck in the 1990s. I know, I have four kids, and all my friends are running around. It is nothing but a treadmill. Because of that, we do not have enough time as families to sit down and impart information to each other, to train our kids, to help them with their homework and bring them up with the good moral values we need to run a country. One of the by-products becomes tragedies such as what happened in Littleton. Families need to spend more time with each other, particularly with their children, and our tax burden prohibits it right now. We need to lower taxes.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask the gentleman something. You have been an active Member up here. Foreign nationalists, can they give to campaigns in the administration? I know they cannot give to Members of Congress. What is Mr. Chung saying is the problem with the law? As I see it, laws were broken. We do not need to revamp the campaign finance law, although there are certain things we can do, but for this particular situation, we do not need to revamp campaign laws, we just need to follow them. Or am I missing something?

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

Mr. KINGSTON. So here is a man named Johnny Chung, gives generously to the Democrat National Committee, is partially funded through the Chinese Communists, and he goes to the White House 50 times. And during this period of time we transfer approval of nuclear technology sales to China, we transfer that from the Department of Defense, which is very, very protective of national security to the Department of Commerce which is very, very pro-trade, not worried about security. And during that period of time China is not only buying nuclear technology knowledge, but they are also stealing it at Los Alamos. Meanwhile, Mr. Chung is running around in the White House.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I am very curious about this. I was participating in a debate earlier tonight where the director of the CIA, it was proposed, should resign because of the bombing in Belgrade of the Chinese Embassy, quickly looking for a scapegoat. Now, I hope that we are not going to be quickly looking for a scapegoat and put somebody's head on the chopping block too hastily as respects that. But it is interesting that that rumor, which may or may not have come from the administration, about let us fire the head of the CIA, we do not ever hear that about let us talk about Janet Reno. Because, as my colleague knows, the attorney general, Ms. Reno, did not go along with Louis Freeh's recommendation for a special prosecutor to look into the Chinese money laundering scandal and the things that Johnny Chung, the great Democrat donor, testified today for 5 hours before a committee on. And yet here we have the same attorney general who did not want to proceed with the investigation of Mr. Lee. Now, that is very curious to me. Because bombing the Embassy was tragic and a huge international mistake. Yet, at the same time, giving away our nuclear arsenal, the so-called W-88, which is the nuclear technology that can arm a Trident nuclear submarine, that is a huge matter. And why this administration and this attorney general drug their heels on taking disciplinary action or even investigating is beyond me. And I cannot see that. And we are already hearing from the folks up at the White House that, well, this started with the Reagan-Bush folks. Well, okay, everybody does it. We heard that before, ``everybody does it.'' And I am appalled. But I know this, that the Reagan-Bush team did not know of spying and did not have the reason to believe that apparently this administration did that this was going on and yet totally ignored it. Nothing was going on. And for months and months and months reports of what was going on in Los Alamos were apparently forwarded on or forwarded up the ladder and they were ignored time and time again.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, it is interesting that my colleague says that. Because we are both members of a communication team that looks at a lot of media numbers. The big three networks in percentage of news loss I think have gone from something like 60 percent of the market in 1990 to about 25 percent of the market now. Because Americans are turning on cable and they are watching Fox News, which did give gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 5-hour Johnny Chung, which this is an outrageous issue. Here is a person who gets money filtered to him through General Ji of the People's Liberation Army of Communist China. He gives $360,000 to the Democrat National Committee, which they admitted to and they returned. He has pled guilty, I think, of $20,000 of it, which has been nailed on him pretty solid. This is not casual stuff, and China is not some casual country out there. It is not like, they came from Luxembourg and we have got to watch those folks in luck Luxembourg. This is Communist China, not exactly strong American allies right now, particularly under this administration. But it is not covered. But what is interesting is that each year the network news loses more and more of its market share, and I think one reason is people are tired of filtered news. They enjoy C-SPAN. And I am sure many of the people watching tonight are channel suffering. They may be here 10 seconds, they might be here 5 minutes, and they are going to move on. But that is what Americans want in choice of television and choice of coverage right now. But this is a huge situation where we have an operative who visited the White House 50 different times and he was peddling influence. And not all the money that he got from Communist China went to the White House or the Democrat National Committee. I am not going to say that it did. Just like when I was in college and my dad had a little checking account for me and he would give me money for gas, some of that money found its way to beer. But I am saying it was the same account. The man had one account, and that money was dispersed to politicians. And 50 different visits to the White House. Let me ask you, you are on the Committee on Ways and Means, clearly one of the most powerful committees in the United States House of Representatives. How many times have you, as a member of that powerful committee, gone to the White House? Fifty, 60, 70 times? You have been up here 6 years. Eighty times? One hundred times? How many times have you been to the White House? I am not talking about meeting with the President, but I am talking about meeting with the administration as a key committee member during the passage of welfare reform, tax reductions, balancing the budget. Surely you have been there at least as many times as Johnny Chung.

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman has pointed out why America is now divided on this war effort. In Desert Storm, as my colleague knows, preceding the January bombing, we had a 6 month build-up of the military called Desert Shield, and we got our allies on board, and we got the American people on board, and that was not done in this case, and we went in there, as you and I have heard rumors from the Pentagon, expecting a two or three day campaign, and yet there was warning that it was going to be prolonged, that we could not achieve the objectives without ground forces, but we also understood that people within the White House thought it was going to be a two or three day campaign, and lo and behold, here we are now with 45th, 46th day; I am not certain. But we have not clearly articulated to the American people and the administration has not what the peril is, and it is just this vague, well, humanitarian assistance and economic stability of Europe. But the interesting thing I think right now is that there is this overture of if you quit bombing, we will have a peace talk, and I think most Americans right now are actually on the side of, okay, let us stop bombing and let us get talking again and see what happens. Now there are critics who say once you stop bombing you cannot start again because the NATO alliance might not stick together. Well, I do not think that is that big of a deal based on what they have been contributing. I think what we need to do is to get back to the peace table and start talking. Remember, we did not even start boycotting Yugoslavia for trade until 2 weeks ago. We should have done that a year ago, even earlier than that, because this has been going on since really 1989, 1990 and 1991 when the Republic of Yugoslavia started breaking out. Slovenia pulled out, and then Croatia and Bosnia. None of this stuff has been surprising. Again, the bombing of the Chinese embassy, why did the most powerful military alliance in the world not know that they were bombing an embassy? Mistakes happen in war, and I am certainly not going to say that is the biggest problem we have right now but that one they should have known. Was it the fault of the CIA or is that just a neat little package that we are going to put a scapegoat on? Or is it just this chain of NATO command where we have too many cooks in the broth? Is this a war by committee? That is, I think, one of our big problems that we are not even discussing.

Mr. KINGSTON. And if they decide that they cannot pick up their fair share of the military action, let them weigh in on the humanitarian assistance. Can you imagine 750,000 refugees outside of the country, and tonight I saw statistics that said there are 600,000 inside the country. Now, as my colleagues know, the numbers are fluid so we are never 100 percent sure, but these are people who have left their homes with nothing, no time to pack, no money, no food, no clothing, no transportation, and if they are lucky enough to return, then their house may be destroyed, the roads and transportation will be destroyed, the hospital will be destroyed, their food system, the distribution system, so we are going to need medicine, food, shelter. We are going to be committed to this humanitarian part of the war for a long, long time, and let us hope that our NATO allies, their European brothers and sisters, are going to be on the front line of that because that is going to cost us a lot of money for many, many years. Can my colleague imagine the rebuilding that we will be involved in?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, it was interesting. Yesterday I went to an Air Force base, and I am not sure if I should say the name so I will not, but they told me that last year they had 11 fighter jets that sat basically on the tarmac because they needed spare parts, and they sat there, and, as my colleague knows, it is a tragic waste of millions of dollars worth of equipment. They finally got the spare parts, and now they are up and running because last year, as my colleague knows and he supported some money for spare parts; very simple, you just have to do that in the world; but, as my colleagues know, the other bad part was the morale. As my colleagues know, here we have these trained pilots who say, look, you know I work hard, it is very competitive to get where I am, and I got here, and now you will not let me fly these jets because you do not even spend the money on the spare parts. I am out of here. I can find a better job in the private sector. Will not be what I wanted, will not be the excitement and the thrill of flying a jet, but there is no reason. And so also in the bill that my colleague supported last week was money for more spare parts for tanks and equipment, and, as my colleagues know, maybe it is a little mundane, a little boring, to have to spend money responsibly on things like spare parts, but we have to have it. As my colleagues know, these planes go from Georgia to the Middle East. They get sand in the engine. They have to be down for two or three days while they clean everything to make sure that the sand is out of there because it grinds it down. Then they go to another region that has completely different elements, and they have to keep up with their equipment. But when we are spending millions and millions of dollars on it, it is well worth it. But the equipment is nothing compared to the soldiers and the soldiers. My colleague mentioned deployments. I believe the rough numbers are that from World War II until 1989 there were 11 United States deployments of Armed Services, 11 from World War II until 1989, and since 1989 there have been 33, and this administration with its very peculiar relationship with the military or its view of the military seems to deploy them at the drop of a hat, and, as my colleagues know, we have fought putting Americans under command of U.N. generals. We want our American soldiers under the commands of Americans. As we get more into this strange period of when we have a defensive coalition like NATO that is acting offensively, when we are involved in a civil war where there is no clarified American peril, and you know there is an American peril if you back into the argument of whether economic stability in Europe is at stake. I am not 100 percent sure that it is, but let us say you buy that. Then why out of 19 NATO countries is America picking up anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the cost of this war?

Mr. KINGSTON. One of the things I wanted to point out to you when you talk about a country of 1.2, 1.4 billion people, their army is 3 million strong right now. Now they are downsizing it to a skeletal 2 million people, but this is a huge army. They have just recently purchased 50 Russian SU-27 fighters and are building about 100 more. They have plans to install 650 short range missiles on China's coastline. This is an army that is being reorganized but it is on the move. But perhaps one of the best things they got in terms of stolen secrets were these so-called legacy codes. I am going to read from a Wall Street Journal article today: According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the most valuable data comes in the form of legacy codes. These are computer programs used by scientists at the two U.S. weapons labs to model how a newly configured weapon might work based on digital records of hundreds of U.S. tests that are built into the codes. It can take 5 years for a beginning U.S. weapons scientist to master the codes even with support from veteran bomber designers. Discovering just when China may have obtained these codes may be one of the keys to determine how fast it could develop its arsenal. So it is these legacy codes that are just as important as the W-88. The W-88 as we have pointed out earlier, that is the nuclear design for the nuclear submarine stuff. They also got the W-56, W-57, and I think it was W-72 and W-78 and W-87. These are all our nuclear warhead secrets, the drafts and the designs and the plans. As one of the Pentagon officials said, ``They basically have all the secrets in our nuclear arsenal right now.'' The only question remains is how much, how far they are along in applying this information. It is scary.

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, let me ask you this. So you are one of the 435 Members of Congress and you have never been invited to the White House for anything but a social occasion, but let me ask you this. Surely the Democrat members, let us get partisan here, the Democrat members have probably been there 50 or 60 times. You know a lot of your Democrat colleagues on the Committee on Ways and Means. Estimate how many times they have been over there.

Mr. KINGSTON. I want to clarify two things. Number one, what the Cox report is; and the Cox report is the bipartisan commission report, special appointed committee by Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to look into this scandal of Chinese money influencing the American election system and taking nuclear secrets from America. Now, that is point number one, that is what the Cox report is, but, number two, it was passed unanimously by the committee, Democrats and Republicans, 100 percent passed it. Now it is at the White House waiting to get their approval to declassify some of the information, and the White House is dragging. What you are saying is, if the White House persists on dragging, then it is likely the Democrats and Republicans at large in the House of Representatives will vote to get this thing out on the floor and so that we can address these problems. That is where there is some real hypocrisy by this administration. They are saying, number one, well, all administrations have had spying at Los Alamos, in the nuclear labs. And then they are saying, but we are the only ones to deal with it. That is not quite true, but if you were dealing with it, you would put the Cox report out so we could all say, what is going on? Do we need more money here? Do we need more involvement here? Do we need this nuclear secrets czar which Energy Secretary Richardson has promoted now? To me, I do not know if we do or we do not. If the Attorney General is not going to enforce the law, maybe we do need a nuke czar. I do not know. But let us put the Cox Commission report on the table and look at it, because we are united that the Communist Chinese were trying to influence the election. We are united in the knowledge that the Chinese communists were trying to get our nuclear secrets. We are not pointing fingers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We are pointing fingers at Beijing right now. I think that is a very significant and unifying factor. Right now China is certainly unified against America. They are burning flags. They are rioting. They are protesting. They are doing everything they can. They are having bigger protests than Tiananmen Square. The Ambassador, Mr. Sasser, cannot even leave the American embassy over in China right now. They are on the streets. They are demonstrating. As you know, it is morning there right now and the three journalists who were killed in the embassy, their bodies are returning to China today as we speak, and the Chinese people are all unified against America. What is worse than that, they are unified with Russia against America. China has become a player now in Kosovo. So our Chinese problems are just beginning. We need to go ahead and get beyond the Cox report and figure out what we should do.

Mr. KINGSTON

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

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, 15 years ago a childhood friend of mine from Athens, Georgia, Ross Fox, moved out to Denver to start his career and raise his family. Yesterday, as I heard, as did millions of other Americans, about the tragedy that went on in Littleton, I thought immediately of Ross and 17-year-old Richard Fox and 15-year-old David Fox. I did not know if they went to Columbine or not, so I called Ross. His wife Paloma answered the phone and said they did not go there, that Ross wanted to talk to me. Ross, who is a successful stockbroker out there, had come home earlier to hug his children and to meet them in the driveway as they went rushing out to see their dad and embrace. They did not go to Columbine, but their friends did. As recently as Sunday, David had been playing basketball with kids from Columbine. As I called them last night, they did not know if their friends were victims or survivors. The sadness, the confusion, the overwhelming frustration and anguish, was just too much for them. As we talked on the phone last night, I think both of us had tears in our eyes. We do not know the easy solutions, the quick answers. The tendency in society is to rush out and say we need to change this law or pass this bill, or maybe get this off TV. We do not really know what would be the one panacea that would end this sort of strange, bizarre, peculiar, repugnant type behavior and incidents. One thing we do know: Right now this country is united with the families of the victims; that they have our sympathy and they have our prayers. As the Speaker called for prayer today, we ask other Americans to pray, and perhaps we should remember that unlike high school kids throughout the country, at least this institution can openly say a prayer for them.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I stand in strong support of this measure. I am certainly glad we are doing it in the bipartisan fashion that we are. We often describe Rosa Parks as a civil rights hero, and as noble as civil rights heroes are, sometimes we forget that they are, in a larger sense, American heroes belonging to all of us. In fact, she is a true American hero, an American hero who has had an impact on all of us simply by one act of not leaving her seat. In doing so, she exploded into society a concept of full participation into the American institutions, so that not just people would be sitting next to each other on buses, but riding the same cabs, sitting in the same restaurants, and perhaps, most importantly, so children would be sitting next to children in schools. I know. I entered the school system in Athens, Georgia, in 1962 in an all-white school system. We had white schools and we had black schools. Then when I was in fifth grade, Talmadge Vernell Wilson, the one black child, was in our class. There were four classes, four fifth grade classes, with a black child in each class. There were still white and black schools, but we were integrated. Yet by the time I graduated from high school in 1973, there were no more black schools and no more white schools. That became ancient history because of the brave determination of people like Rosa Parks. She broke the barriers, and led the way for other boycotts and other icebreakers who would go in and bravely stand up, speak out, sit down, or whatever it took to bring the changes that needed to be made in the 1950s, 1960, and 1970s. In ancient Rome the tradition of the Cincinnatus, the citizen hero soldier who stood up, who left his plow, fought the war, and then went back to being a citizen, that is what Rosa Parks was, a civilian, a citizen, a nonprofessional who happened to put what was right above her own needs. As Robert Frost said in his poem, the Road Less Traveled, by not taking the road popular but taking the road less traveled, it made all the difference. By doing the brave thing, the uncomfortable thing, the thing that probably millions wanted to do but perhaps were scared or had reasons not to do, Rosa Parks did, and Mr. Speaker, that made all the difference.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we have had a lot of talk today about the President's budget. I have got to say it has got more phony numbers than their census sampling scheme, more misery than the Chinese money laundering scandal. Here is the basic difference between the Republican budget and the Democrat budget. Republican budget saves more money for Social Security. I think even a Democrat would admit that 100 percent is more than 62 percent. We want to preserve 100 percent of Social Security. Democrats want to preserve 62 percent. On Medicare, we want to protect Medicare. The President's budget cuts $9 billion from Medicare. Here is what I will say to any of my Democrat colleagues or anybody who is interested. I will send my colleagues the budget. I am going straight off the fact sheet here. I will send the budget to anybody who wants to debate that. It is probably not right to just accuse it without backing it up. I will back it up. Our budget enforces the balanced budget agreement which we had signed with the President 2 years ago. The President's budget reneges on a promise, well nothing unusual about that for this administration, but $30 billion over that. Then, finally, we have a middle class tax cut, whereas the President calls for a tax increase. Three fundamental differences; two approaches to government.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, obviously, my friend from the other side of the aisle has confused St. Patrick's Day with April fools when he talks about the Republican budget. Let me talk to my colleagues. There is philosophical and mathematical differences between the way the Republicans and Democrats use numbers. It is best illustrated by this story. One of the Democrats' leading budget hawks went to go buy some worms. He was going fishing. He walked up to the bait store and said, ``How much are your worms?'' The guy said, ``You can have all you want for $1.'' So the Democrat said, ``I will take $2 worth.'' That is the problem. We almost need national testing when it comes to truth in budgeting with the Democrats. Let us go through this little quiz on Social Security: Republicans want to preserve 100 percent; Democrats 62 percent. Fill in the blanks: Which is greater, 62 percent or 100 percent? True or false, 62 percent does not equal 100 percent. True or false, 38 percent will be spent on non-Social Security items under the President's budget. This is true. The President wants to preserve 62 percent, Republicans want to preserve 100 percent of the Social Security balance. We believe that it is worth fighting for our grandparents to do the right thing and not spend their money on pork.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, we have had a good debate. There has been honest disagreement. There has been a high degree of sincerity and integrity in the debate, but I rise in strong support of the Fowler-Danner bipartisan substitute amendment. I think to not do so is a recipe for resentment and not reconciliation, and at this time we need reconciliation. Three things I would like my colleagues to keep in mind as we vote. Number one, to deploy troops without a clear exit strategy is potentially disastrous. My good friend, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), had talked about Vietnam. If we go back in history and see the very early days of Vietnam, there was clearly no exit strategy; exactly what we have in front of us today. Number two, the administration has been vague, at best, about the cost of this operation. As an appropriator we spent two or three hours today debating a billion dollar disaster bill for Honduras. In that, we struggled to find money. The budget is tight. We do not have the budget just to spend money anyplace we want to. We have already spent in this administration $10 billion in the Balkans, and there seems to be no end in sight of our current commitment. Number three, as we all know, the military readiness question is a big one. Our military simply does not have the personnel to go every place that there is a problem. We talk about quality of life for our service men and women. When they are deployed every single weekend of their lives, they are going to get out of the armed services, and that is why we are losing so many good, professional soldiers right now. I strongly urge my colleagues to support the Fowler-Danner amendment.

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, Republicans continue to work on what we call the BEST agenda: B for balancing the budget and paying down the debt, E for excellence in education, S for saving social security and Medicare, and T for lowering taxes on the middle class working families in America. Let me talk a little bit about E for education. When I was in 11th grade back at Clark Central High School in Athens, Georgia, I had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Musik. Now Mrs. Musik was tough. You could not split an infinitive, you could not dangle a participle in her class. She expected you to learn grammar. She expected you to read Emerson and Thoreau. But she was the master. When she went in there, she did not have to answer to the Board of Education in Atlanta or the folks in Washington, the bureaucrats who want to run the classroom today. She was in charge. That is what we want in the Republican Party, local control of education: letting the teacher run the classroom, not the Washington bureaucrats.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, yesterday the Democrats had a little love fest over in the Rotunda to talk about their agenda, and I was interested in this. I like to watch Democrats. After all, they are very interesting people when we really study them. And of course so much of their agenda they have co-opted from the Republicans. Our best agenda, for example, balancing the budget, paying down the debt, excellence in education, ``S'' for saving Social Security, ``T'' for lowering taxes. The Republican's best agenda; that is what the Democrats are using. But then they could not stop there. They had to put in something for the whacky fringe left element of their policy, spending 38 percent of the Social Security dollars. That is right. They are bragging, hey, we are going to save only 62 percent of Social Security, using 32 percent for non-Social Security items. The whacky fringe left also is pushing busting the budget caps. Of course, the President, he did give has word, but so much for that. Then federalizing public education. I am sorry that the school districts in their areas did not do the responsible things and build school buildings, but I do not want the Federal Government coming into my district and telling us how to build, how to educate our children. Mr. Speaker, we do not need Washington bureaucrats; we need local control of education.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the Republican Party is working very diligently and very intensely with the Senate to try to protect social security. We have a lot of concerns about the President's proposal, which only protects or earmarks 62 percent of the social security trust fund dollars for social security. Many of us believe that we should put 100 percent of social security dollars into social security and not spend it on any other program; not for roads, not for bridges, not for congressional salaries, not for anything else. We hope that we can get the President to come around to our way of thinking. We also feel that we need to pay down the debt. We have a debt of $5.4 trillion. Which costs the American families, on an average for a family of four, about $2,000 dollars a year. That is $2,000 for a college tuition, for house payments, for a nice vacation, for a car, whatever the need of the family is. Now it just goes to interest on the debt. It does not even pay down the principal. These are things we think the President's budget ignores. We want to put it on the table. We are working in that direction. I hope that the President will decide to join us.