Jim Kolbe

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Just very quickly, Mr. Chairman, the previous speaker talked about the education of homeless children. What she is talking about is a program that funds an Office of Coordinator of Education for Homeless Children and Youth in the State educational agency. And in the functions of the Office of Coordinator, page after page of State plans, local education agency requirements. There is not one bit of program for homeless kids in here. It is a bureaucracy. It is a State agency, it is a coordinator. There are no programs in here.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Franks], a distinguished member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, the previous speaker talked about the cuts in education. Let's be very clear what we are preserving here. We are preserving the title I basic grants for disadvantaged students, the impact aid for ``A'' students, the special education, the vocational rehabilitation, the Pell grants, the historically black colleges grants, the campus basic aid, and then we are creating 5 new block grants. So let's just be clear what we are preserving here. The issue about libraries. One percent of funding for libraries comes from the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. [[Page H5123]] Walker], the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Science and vice chairman of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, we are coming toward the close of this debate on general debate on the budget tonight, and I think it is time for us to just bring it back and do a little bit of focusing. We have had a lot of things said about various things. But I think a very clear, fundamental, philosophical difference has been demonstrated here tonight, and what I hear over and over again is from the Democratic side of the aisle, that the tax dollars the people pay belong to the Government. They are the Government's. They are this Congress' to use, to decide how they should be dispensed, about how they should be disbursed, about how people should use, what services people get. I think Republicans have a different philosophy. The tax dollars belong to the people. I am reminded again of what I said earlier this evening, that guy down at the UPS office, at their distribution center, who said, ``Please go back there and tell them it's my money they're spending,'' and I think that is something we need to keep in mind. Mr. Chairman, we believe that the taxes belong to the people and that we should take only what is essential, only what is essential for the services that people must have, and we should leave the rest with Americans. Most of all, Mr. Chairman, we should leave them with a balanced budget because what we have been doing for a generation and more, for my generation and more, is we have been borrowing from our children and from our grandchildren. We have been borrowing from the future to pay for the kind of spending, the spending desires, that we have, but we are not willing to pay for today. So, Mr. Chairman, we say, ``Don't take the taxes of people, and don't spend from the next generation. Balance the budget.'' That, my colleagues, is what we have here tonight. At the end of 7 years we have a budget that will be zero in deficit, and we have not seen that for a long time, since 1969. That is a long time since we have had a balanced budget, and I think it is high time that this Congress got its act together and balanced that budget, not for us, but for the future generations, for the future generations who will have to bear this increasingly heavy burden because we cannot control our appetite for spending. Yes, the principles of this budget are relatively simple, the details are very difficult, and I will acknowledge that, and I will acknowledge that we will have differences over where that ought to be, but we ought to be willing to agree that we should get to a balanced budget, and what we do not have here tonight is any proposal coming from the Democratic leadership that gets us to a balanced budget. We do not have any proposal from the President of the United States to get us to a balanced budget. Much as that quiz said, and he said at the beginning of his term of office that he would do, that he would have a plan for a 5-year balanced budget; we do not see it.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. During the course of the debate this evening, we have heard from several speakers who talked about how we are going to make it impossible for people to go to school because we are going to cut off the in-school interest subsidy. That has been raised on several occasions. Well, I think it is just worth noting here what we are talking about in terms of both the additional cost that a student will incur as a result of this interest subsidy not being given to them during the time they are in school versus how much that individual can expect to earn as a result of getting a college education. Now, the chart that you have here shows these two figures. This is on average the amount, total amount, that a student will pay in addition, because we are simply saying you are not going to pay the interest while you are in school, we are just going to add it on and you will pay it when you graduate from school, and that will add a total, over the course of paying off that loan, on average $2,562. Some will pay more, some will pay less, but that is the average figure that they will pay. Over the course of a loan, it works out to somewhere around $35 to $40 a month, maybe a Big Mac a day or something like that, during the course of the month, not even that much, actually, on a Big Mac. Here is what the student is going to earn as a result, additional; this is the added earnings that a college student can expect in the course of their lifetime by having a college degree, a 4-year, a bachelors degree, $525,000. Do I think that it is unfair to ask the college student that is going to earn $525,000 to pay when they graduate that $2,562 additional interest rather than saying to the person who is out there, the young mother or the single parent who is working, scraping to keep her kids, take care of clothes, feed her kids, to the individual, is it fair to say that the student should be subsidized and that it should be paid for by the mother who is out there working, by the factory worker who is out there trying to keep his family together, by the senior citizen who is out there scraping to pay their taxes so that this individual who is not going to pay this while they are in school but is going to pay it out of their future earnings, do we think it is unfair that they should pay that amount against the $525,000 additional earnings that they are going to have because they have a college degree? I do not think so. And I do not think the American people think that. It is curious the people over on the other side on the one hand want to give them a subsidy while they are in school so they can make lots of money, and then they want to tax them to death as soon as they finish college so they can be taxed to death, get them into those higher brackets and make them pay more. Well, it is fair they should pay this subsidy after they graduate, because they are going to have higher earnings.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1590, and I commend the chairman, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Archer] and the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from California [Mr. Thomas] for their foresight in soliciting the views of the Medicare trustees on how we should address this problem. We have heard from at least a couple of speakers on the other side a very cute phrase, ``It is a trust fund, not a slush fund.'' The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, the trustees have said their trust fund, our trust fund, the seniors' trust fund, is going broke. It is bankrupt. They will not legally be able to make any payments out of it if we do not do something to fix it. In fact, they said very clearly in their report, ``Medicare program is clearly unsustainable in its present form.'' And they said, ``We strongly recommend the crisis presented by the financial condition of the Medicare trust funds be urgently addressed on a comprehensive basis.'' They are the fiduciary trustees. They are in a position to know something about the problems. They are in a position to make recommendations. I think it is ironic that the detractors of this legislation argue that it is a political gimmick. Nobody argues it is going bankrupt. We cannot ignore it. We have to do something. We need to act now. The Congress has a historic opportunity to do something about it. The trustees are in a position to help us, tell us what to do about it, make those recommendations. We should solicit their advice. Does it not make sense to hear from the experts, the fiduciary experts responsible for this trust fund? We should vote ``yes'' on H.R. 1590.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 660, the Housing for Older Persons Act. This legislation will at long last put to rest a burdensome bureaucratic requirement that senior's housing communities provide significant facilities and services for senior care in order to meet the Fair Housing Amendment Act's adult-only housing test. I, along with every Member of this body, have heard from literally hundreds of seniors who fear their community will no longer be able to qualify as a senior's community. Every attempt at clarification by the Department of Housing and Urban Development of what is meant by significant facilities has led to even greater confusion. The most recent set of regulations issued in March are a nightmare. HUD has decided that in order to qualify as seniors housing, critical services such as tai-chi and bowling trips must be provided. Clearly, it is time we acknowledge that the Congress erred during the 1988 expansion of the Fair Housing Act when it mandated that seniors communities provide significant facilities. James Bovard put it best when he wrote in the March 20 edition of the Wall Street Journal: ``We don't need Federal bingo mandates for our senior citizens. The real issue in this controversy is how much power politicians and bureaucrats should have to forcibly veto Americans' freedom of association.'' I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 660.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, a lot of things have been said here on the floor today. It reminds me of a bloodhound who is sent out after a convict out there but somebody gave him the wrong piece of clothing. So we are chasing up the wrong tree, we are going after the wrong thing here. What we have heard is not what this amendment is about. It is very simple, as the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton] explained just a few minutes ago. It is a good amendment. It says if an individual is getting food stamps now and under a court order to pay child support and he has not gone to court to get a delay because he cannot afford to make the payments under the court order, not having done that, no delay from the court, if he is not making payments, he should not be getting food stamps. The taxpayers should not afford to. They have not done that. They are under an order from the court, they are supposed to be making payments, they should not be getting food stamps. The rest of the taxpayers should not be subsidizing them. They are supposed to be making child support payments to support their kids. That is what this says. They do not get the food stamps if they are not current in their child support payments. It is as simple as that. It clearly fills a loophole, fills a gap in the bill. Something should be done. I do not know why all the discussion about other things.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. I think we skipped a step. parliamentary inquiries

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the provision to the en bloc technical amendment which would strike section 801, because, as the chairman of the Committee on the Budget suggested, it eliminates what, I think, is an unnecessary degree of confusion which surrounds this section. As I listened to this, I think those that are watching this or listening to this debate, they are probably very unclear about what it is all about, and the answer is they are going to continue to be unclear, because this is kind of an esoteric debate. It may not be it is drafting errors, but the intent of what we have had all along in the budget resolution and in the welfare reform and in the tax cut has been clear. It is ridiculous, as one of the speakers suggested, to suggest this is, the bill, is for one purpose or another bill may be for another purpose. Our purpose in this whole thing is to reduce taxes, to pay for those reductions in taxes, and to drive toward a balanced budget, and that is what we are doing with the change in this legislation. Let me see if I can explain it a little bit. Under the existing budgetary rules, the savings for entitlement spending can be used for an increase in some other entitlement, or it can be used to pay for a tax cut, but not for anything else. Our intent with the original language in section 801 was to reserve the discretionary spending reductions to pay for the tax cuts, by precluding these savings from being used for any other purpose. The language we used apparently, apparently created some confusion about how this would be accomplished. For this reason, we have asked that the language be stricken. When the restrictive language is taken out, the entitlement savings in this bill will go onto the pay-go scorecard just as they would with any other legislation which changes the level of entitlement spending. Now these savings are then going to be combined with the savings from other entitlement program reductions, the savings from reducing the discretionary spending caps, and the loss of revenues from the tax cuts. If the revenue losses are not offset by the spending reductions, there is going to be a sequestration that is required by the Budget Act. Either way, the original language or the amendment, spending reductions will be used to offset tax cuts, and any spending cuts in excess of the tax cuts will be used for deficit reduction. We should vote for this amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KOLBE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I listened to the gentleman, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget's explanation here, and I am reminded, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, ``A rose is a rose is a rose.'' Well, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. A dollar saved is what I think I hear the gentleman saying, a dollar saved, whether it comes from discretionary spending or entitlement savings, a dollar saved is a dollar saved. A dollar spent is a dollar spent, whether it goes to tax increases or increase entitlements or increased discretionary spending, it is a dollar spent. What we are going to do is take the savings from the budget savings in the Budget Committee and the entitlement savings we are going to have here, and we are going to pay for the tax cut and we are going to have real, real deficit reduction.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support and thank the gentleman the chairman of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services for the outstanding work that he has done on this. I rise in support of this resolution of inquiry. We should know the facts, we should get the information. We can make policy only when we have good information in front of us and this should be a necessary step. But there has been a lot of I think loose facts thrown around on this floor, a lot of misinformation in the last few days on this subject, and I would like to just concentrate my remarks on one area tonight rather than talking specifically about the loan guarantees or the package that has been negotiated, the suggestions of the connection between what we are doing here or what has happened in Mexico and that of free trade itself or the North American Free-Trade Agreement. The peso crisis in Mexico was caused by bad monetary policy in that country, not by free trade, not by NAFTA. Mexico has been running a trade deficit for a number of years. Trade deficits do not cause a currency to fall in value. Mexico could finance a trade deficit just as we have been financing a trade deficit for 20 years now, because foreign investment continues to flow into the country in order to finance it. Unfortunately, what happened in 1994 was a series of three political crises, boom, boom, boom, which hit Mexico, and caused the problem, combined with the rise of interest rates in this country which caused investment to stop flowing into Mexico, to start flowing out. the difficult choice for the Mexican Central Bank would have been to contract the Mexican money supply to reflect the fall in investment. However, that would have caused a recession, a big recession during an election year. I am sure it is not unknown to Members of this body that we, or the administration, have jawboned the Fed from time to time to try to hold down interest rates in an election year. There is more independence perhaps for our Fed than there is for the Central Bank in Mexico though it now has constitutional guarantees of independence, but in any event for political reasons, they did not bring down the interest rates. They should have. The answer to the problem in Mexico is that they should depoliticize the monetary policy as they have their trade policy.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. The Committee on Natural Resources is not on the list that I read.

Mr. KOLBE. I am sorry; the Committee on the Judiciary, and which other committee?

Mr. KOLBE. That is correct.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman seeking to understand which committees are included in the request? Is that correct?

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the following committees and their subcommittees be permitted to sit tomorrow while the House is meeting in the Committee of the Whole House under the 5- minute rule: Committee on Agriculture, Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Committee on Commerce, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Committee on the Judiciary, Committee on Science, Committee on Small Business, and Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. It is my understanding that the minority has been consulted and that there are no objections to these requests.

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

Mr. KOLBE. Tomorrow under the 5-minute rule.

Mr. KOLBE. Yes, we can provide that to the gentleman, or I can read it to the gentleman again if he prefers.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I will revise my unanimous consent request. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the following committees and their subcommittees be permitted to sit tomorrow while the House is meeting in the Committee of the Whole House under the 5-minute rule: Committee on Agriculture, Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Committee on Commerce, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Committee on Science, Committee on Small Business, and Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comment.

Mr. KOLBE. Tomorrow, Friday, that is correct.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that titles V, VI and section 4003 of H.R. 9, the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, be rereferred to the Committee on Small Business as an additional committee of jurisdiction.