Ron Lewis

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is good for young men and women who need a loan to go to college. That's what the Ewing-Lewis amendment is about. I believe Members on both sides of the aisle agree that we need to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses and private citizens. Many regulations are too expensive, too burdensome and just plain silly. The Ewing-Lewis amendment would do away with such a regulation--a regulation that threatens the student loan program. Three years ago the Higher Education Amendments Act was passed. Just months ago, and 3 years later, the Office of the Inspector General came up with a gem: Every bank and credit union will have to conduct an independent, retroactive audit of their student loan program. It might sound like a decent idea. Unfortunately, the audits will cost between $3,000 and $14,000-- perhaps more. That's going to cause many of the smaller banks and credit unions in Kentucky's 2nd district--and all over the U.S.--to give up on student loans. A credit union in Bowling Green, Kentucky has reduced their loan portfolio from $3 million last year to $300,000 this year--yet they'll still have to fork over between $3,000 and $5,000 for each audit. This money is not in the credit union's budget--so other services will be affected. The Kentucky Credit Union League says many members are getting out of the student loan business altogether--they said this regulation is the last straw. Mr. Chairman, these are not huge, rich institutions. They're banks and credit unions made up of farmers, small business men and women, and middle-income folks. Banks and credit unions are already subject to four separate audits. The Ewing-Lewis amendment would exempt banks and credit unions with less than $5 million in student loans from this regulation--which takes effect this September 30th. Mr. Chairman, we need to make it easier for students to obtain college loans--and we need to encourage banks and credit unions to make these loans. This regulation is heading towards small banks and credit unions like a freight train--and it's going to derail the student loan program when young men and women need it most. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on Ewing-Lewis and say ``yes'' to allowing students to continue to seek college loans.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the following committees and their subcommittees be permitted to sit today while the House is meeting in the Committee of the Whole House under the 5-minute rule. The Committee on Banking and Financial Services, the Committee on Commerce, the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, the Committee on International Relations, the Committee on the Judiciary, the Committee on National Security, the Committee on Science, the Committee on Small Business, and the Permanent Committee on Intelligence. It is my understanding that the minority has been consulted and that there is no objection to these requests.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, as you are well aware, this is the week of the 30th anniversary of Medicare. Republicans are working hard to make sure Medicare is available over the next 30 years. We wish the President was doing the same. Instead, President Clinton is using the White House's resources and energies, not to mention taxpayers' dollars, to raid seniors' pension funds--not to save Medicare. By promoting economically targeted investments [ETI's], which take into consideration the investment's benefit to society rather than the financial benefit to the retiree, the Clinton administration is depriving seniors of the most profitable return from their pension fund. The Labor Department is supposed to protect your pension fund from being raided, not be the raider. And President Clinton is supposed to care about seniors, not shaft them.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is unrealistic, unnecessary and unfair. Mr. Chairman, this amendment prevents people who grow tobacco from taking part in the Federal Crop Insurance Program. But just last year congress passed a bill making the crop insurance program mandatory. Sounds like a catch-22 to me. The Durbin amendment will hurt small farmers the most. It's the family farmer who depends most on the advice and help of extension services. It is simply unfair to single out one crop and one type of farmer. Mr. Chairman, maybe some people think the tobacco farmer has an easy, lucrative life. I'd say those people have never watched folks work in a tobacco patch. I'll be happy to show them around Kentucky's second district. First the Clinton health plan, then the FDA, now the Durbin amendment. All for a crop using a few million dollars worth of assistance that brings in nearly 20 billion in taxes and trade surplus. 20 billion! I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the Durbin amendment, and call an end to the war on tobacco.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I do not know what we are talking about here when the other side is talking about cuts in Medicare. It seems to me that going from $4,800 per recipient per year to $6,700 is an increase. Mr. Speaker, unlike the liberals on the other side of the aisle, Republicans have heeded the warnings of the Medicare Trustees Report. That report concluded that immediate action is needed to save Medicare for future generations. Republicans are fully aware that millions of Americans rely on Medicare to help meet their health care needs. That is why it is called Medi-Care, because it provides care for our parents and grandparents. On the other hand, liberal Democrats want to exploit this issue. To them this is MediScare. They want to scare people into believing something that is not true. Their tactics are fear, and their goal is to divide the American people. Mr. Speaker, Medicare is too important a program to be allowed to go bankrupt. The American people must know that Republicans intend to protect and preserve Medicare. We will protect it for current and future beneficiaries, and we will not allow Medicare to become MediScare.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, it is wrong for taxpayers to be forced to pay for Federal employees' abortions, but that is just what is happening today. The work of the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Lightfoot], the chairman, on H.R. 2020 will change that, and it is about time. Few would disagree that abortion is one of the most divisive issues in our Nation. So why do the people of this country, many of whom believe abortion is wrong, have to help pay for a Federal employee to have an abortion? The Lightfoot language would not apply when the mother's life is in danger. It would simply keep taxpayers from subsidizing abortion on demand for Federal employees. Abortion advocates will call this a radical idea. I suggest that the only radical part of this debate is the current system, where people who believe life is sacred and are forced to subsidize the death of innocent children.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Duncan amendment. Mr. Chairman, the FDA is having a terrible time just taking care of its business. Drugs and lifesaving devices take longer to be approved than they did 30 years ago. I think it is time to support taxpayers for a change. You know, people have died because they could not outwait the FDA. Now we have before us a $65 million appropriation for a new FDA campus. Even more frightening, the latest estimate for the consolidation of this fine agency has risen from $388 million to more than $800 million. The FDA has already added two dozen new buildings since 1987. Its budget has risen about $600 million to nearly $800 million. My colleagues have supplied plenty of other details about this agency run amok. There are plenty of them. Mr. Chairman, the size, cost, and intrusiveness of big government is finally beginning to shrink. People will soon be able to keep more of their own money. Now is not the time to reward an incompetent, arrogant, agency with a brandnew 500-acre campus.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, we have a choice in this House. We can preserve, protect, and improve Medicare--or we can watch it go bankrupt--as President Clinton's Cabinet has warned will happen--in less than 7 years. These are facts. Doesn't sound like much of a choice, does it? But liberal Democrats are going to try anything possible to frighten our senior citizens into believing Republicans want to cut Medicare. Meanwhile, the G-O-P plan calls for increasing each Medicare patient's annual spending from $4,800 to $6,700 per year by 2002. I'm a graduate of the Kentucky public school system--and back home that's not a cut, that's an increase. I encourage our friends on the left to offer more ideas and fewer scare tactics. We can preserve, protect and improve Medicare. The people in the real world, the private sector, have improved their health care system these past few years. I'd say we ought to try and do the same.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of hot air from the liberal Democrats about Medicare. But when they talk about Medicare what they really mean is medi-scare. They don't really want to save Medicare from bankruptcy. All they want to do is scare people into voting for their party. For Democrats it is perfectly acceptable to let Medicare go bankrupt--just as long as they have a political issue it doesn't matter what the truth is. And the truth is that Medicare will be broke in 7 years if we don't take serious action right now. Republicans have not walked away from this issue. Unfortunately for the American people, liberal Democrats have used Medicare for their twisted scare tactics. You see, liberals can not win elections with the force of their superior ideas. The only strategy that works for liberals is fear and disinformation. But the American people are smarter than liberals would believe. They will not buy the scare tactics and they will not allow Medicare to go bankrupt. Mr. Speaker, later this month Medicare will turn 30 years old. The Medicare Trustees Board reports that unless something is done quickly, Medicare will not survive another 7 years. Republicans have responded to this warning. We are committed to protecting and preserving Medicare so that it can observe many more anniversaries. It would be wrong to just ignore the warnings of those in charge of Medicare. But, that is exactly what the Democrats are doing. They ignore the advice of leaders in their own party. Three of Bill Clinton's cabinet secretaries are on the Medicare Trustees Board, and yet the liberal Democrats here in the House act as if they do not exist. By their silence, liberal Democrats are admitting they would rather see Medicare go bankrupt. The difference here, Mr. Speaker, is that Republicans want to save Medicare, Democrats do not want to do anything.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Chabot amendment.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. As you said, with local, State and Federal taxes, the average family is paying 40 percent of their income into taxes. And that can increase, with the hidden taxes, up to around 50 percent or more. Thirty-eight percent of our gross domestic product is consumed by government. And the one common theme that I heard all through my campaign and through my visits back home to the district has always been, government is too big. The American people feel the burden of too much government, too many taxes. And if we would have seen the Clinton health care plan go through last year, it would have pushed us over 50 percent of our gross domestic product that would be used by the Government. That would have put us into the socialism category. We have to start moving in the other direction. We have to reduce the taxes, give the families their money back. So many times money that comes into the Federal Treasury is talked about as the Government's money.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Yes.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. We have had the great society in place for 30 years, the welfare system. There has been $5 trillion spent. There are more people in poverty now than when that started. Five trillion dollars down the drain and more people on welfare, more people that are--well, let's look at the statistics. The highest crime rate in the world, more teenage pregnancies, more poverty. I mean, it hasn't worked. And you are exactly right. The help is to be temporary, not an ongoing thing, and let's look at our debt. We are $5 trillion in debt. We spent $5 trillion in 30 years to try to solve the poverty problem.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. I just wanted to say, it is a new day when this Congress is talking about tax cuts, talking about tax reform. When we look back over the history of this Congress for the last 40 years, it has been tax-and-spend and big growth in government. I just want to go back for a second and go back to the capital gains tax and give an example. I talked to a farmer that was really thrilled about the possibility of a capital gains tax cut because he told me-- and this, if the liberals want to call him rich, I do not think he would agree with them--because he told me he would like to sell his farm. He is an elderly gentleman. He wants to retire. He would like to sell his farm and retire, but if he sells his farm, by the time he pays the taxes, the capital gains tax, and by the time he pays the debt on it, then he has nothing. This is not my idea of a wealthy person. To hear the rhetoric from the other side about tax breaks for the wealthy, when I am in my district, I am seeing people that need tax breaks.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. It is the family's money, it is the worker out there that produces products, that puts in the time and the hours. It is their money, and we need to give it back to them. I think sometimes the liberals think that when we give tax breaks, tax cuts, that that money just stops somewhere out there, that it never goes any further. In fact, it goes out into the economy and it is spent and it is used and it produces, and it allows the money to grow. We have seen that many times before. President Kennedy, in his administration, he cut taxes and we saw an increase in revenue into the Federal Treasury. Ronald Reagan, he cut taxes; we saw an increase in the Federal Treasury. There are many examples in State government where taxes were cut and there would be an increase in the Federal Treasury. Because people use that money to better their own circumstances a lot better than some bureaucrat here in Washington can do.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. I would like to just emphasize the scariest thing about the Medicare situation is that the liberals seem to want to just put their head in the sand and say there is no problem and trying to scare senior citizens by saying that we are going to cut Medicare, that we are going to cut it and give the money to the wealthy, which is the furthest thing from the truth. The truth is, as has been mentioned here tonight, that the President's advisory group, the task force on Medicare, has said that Medicare will be broke by the year 2002 and that next year it will start to go on that downward slide, that downward path to bankruptcy. So we are being responsible and we are going to save Medicare. We are going to protect it. We are going to make sure that it is going to be secure and that we are going to make it strong for the senior citizens that are coming on in the years ahead. As I said, the scariest thing is for our friends on the other side of the aisle, the liberals, talking about the conservatives, there are those that really know that we have to do something and are involved in that. But some of the things that we heard tonight, that Medicare is not in trouble, that we can go on the way that we are going and there will be no problem, the fact is, it is going broke. And we are responsible and we are going to do something about it. And even the President, the other night, after denying it for quite some time, in his budget plan said that we needed to do something about Medicare. I am glad to see that he is willing to admit it now. If we can work together, then we can save it, we can protect it and we can strengthen it and provide for our senior citizens. Again, there are no cuts. We are going to be moving from $4,800 to $6,700 per beneficiary by the year 2002. That is an increase in anyone's book. We have to slow the growth. Same thing with the budget. We are going to be spending more money over the next 7 years. We are slowing the growth so that we can reach a balanced budget and have a strong financial future for our children and our grandchildren. It is important. We have to start now. We cannot wait 7 years. We have to do it now. And the American people, the people in my district, I have 23 counties, and I have been through all those counties. And the people are telling me, you are doing the right thing. Keep on going; do not let up. We want to see a balanced budget; we want to see a strong future for our children. And I just wanted to mention something else. We keep hearing that we, the Republicans, are trying to take money from the poor and give to the wealthy. We are giving, we are trying to give to the family a $500 tax credit, and we are trying to provide a capital gains tax cut so that we can infuse into the economy a tremendous amount of money that is going to help everyone and is going to allow for job growth. It is going to allow for a stronger economy. It is going to allow actually for more money to be coming into our Federal Treasury. It will help us balance the budget.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to make a personal note here. I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains, and I remember the little one-lane roads, the dusty dirt roads, the lack of utilities, the small one-room schools. I remember how it was. If you go into eastern Kentucky where I came from today, you will see a tremendous improvement. We still have a way to go. But now there are nice highways, nice schools, utilities reaching into the homes, paved highways. I remember my grandmother, you had to go about 3 or 4 miles up a hollow on dirt roads. And when it was raining, you could not get there. And I remember when she was very ill, we were concerned if she was going to be able to [[Page H 6865]] get out of that hollow to make it to the hospital. Today, you can drive all the way to where her home was at. It did make a big difference, but there are still things that need to be done. There has been a cut, 50 percent, but we need to continue this program. It is working, one of the few Federal programs that does work, but the reason it does work is because of the community input into it. I urge defeat of the Klug amendment.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to the DeLauro amendment, which would keep the military in the business of sanctioning the taking of innocent life. Under the Reagan and Bush administrations, the U.S. military's fine medical personnel stationed overseas did not double as abortionists. When Bill Clinton became President, that commonsense and family- friendly [[Page H6003]] policy was canceled by Executive order. So much for making abortions rare. Mr. Chairman, I believe with all my heart that abortion is wrong in every sense--unless the mother's life is threatened by her pregnancy. A Navy commander who heads a surgical department said recently that he could not oversee an operating room that delivered babies in one room and killed them in the next. Mr. Chairman, we should not put military doctors, who sacrifice many productive and lucrative years to serve our country, in this position. Abortion is one of the issues that divide this Nation the most. People on both sides feel passionately about their position. But I believe it is wrong and destructive to use the military as a wedge to divide the country further. The fact is, our doctors and staff are overworked now, and their facilities overcrowded. Military medical personnel are there to keep soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines--and their families--alive and well. They did not join the military to advance a liberal social agenda. Mr. Chairman, the President's Executive order was wrong--and we have a chance to correct his mistake. The military sometimes has to take a life in the defense of our country. They should not have to take the life of an innocent baby. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the DeLauro amendment.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I have yet to hear more than a handful of Democrats praise the President's budget sequel. I believe 10 years is too long to balance the budget--especially after he promised to do it in 5. His budget does give future Congresses, like those in the past, more chances to overspend again. It does give little of the tax relief the House budget does. And it does add several hundred billion dollars to our overwhelming national debt. Still, you would think that more of our colleagues on the left would give the President credit for moving toward saving our children's future. But come to think of it, the President did not do other liberals much of a favor. He just undercut all the people we have heard cry wolf about Republican budgets. Mr. Speaker, the Clinton budget sequel is too little, too late--and too expensive. Still, I am surprised his own party has not given him a little credit for showing a little concern about balancing the budget.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, it has come to my attention that some politicians are only concerned about being considered relevant rather than being relevant. According to Webster's dictionary, relevant is having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand. Relevant is improving the standard of living for our children. That means ridding ourselves of deficits. Relevant is having significant and demonstrable bearing on the deficits that are mortgaging our childrens' futures. That means balancing the budget. Relevant is having significant and demonstrable bearing on the impending bankruptcy of Medicare. That means fixing the problem now. Relevant is having significant and demonstrable bearing on the spiralling cost of entitlement. That means controlling the growth in the programs, such as Medicaid. Relevant is having significant and demonstrable bearing on the bloated Federal bureaucracy intruding in the average citizens life. That means eliminate entire agencies and departments. Relevant is doing what is right by our seniors and our children.

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, on May 10, 1995, I attended the funeral for the wife of my esteemed colleague, Mr. Hal Rogers. Consequently, I was not available to vote on a number of measures pertaining to H.R. 961, the Clean Water Act. Had I been available, I would have cast the following votes: Rollcall No.: Vote 311.............................................................Yes 312..............................................................No 313..............................................................No 314..............................................................No

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor an American hero who disappeared 30 years ago. Charles Shelton was an Owensboro, KY native who was shot down over Laos April 29, 1965--his 33d birthday. His Air Force plane crash-landed, and he even made radio contact with friendly forces before being captured. Several reports describe Colonel Shelton's escape and recapture--as well as other sightings--well into the 1980's. Last year, after his children petitioned the Pentagon, Colonel Shelton's status was changed to presumed dead. He was the last American POW of the Vietnam war. Last year Charles Shelton was eulogized at the grave site of his wife, Mariam, in Arlington National Cemetery. Saturday, his friends and family began work on a memorial on the lawn of the Daviess County Courthouse. It is a fitting honor for an American hero. I rise today to remind my colleagues and the American people of the bravery of Charles Shelton--and to ask that the sacrifices of the Shelton family and so many others not be forgotten.