Scott McInnis

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, my comments were directed at the death tax, and how that impacts the community. What is the death tax? We all know that the Federal government decided some time ago that there were wealthy families in this country, the Rockefellers, the Ford's, the Carnegies, and people like that. Back then there was kind of a rage, kind of a class warfare type of situation. We see it today. We see people in a country that, by the way, has as its model an opportunity for free enterprise, an opportunity to make something of oneself, if one wants, or an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of one's labor. Yet, when an individual, especially back at the beginning of this death tax, at that time, made something and had an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labor, there were people in our society who were jealous; who said, we ought to do something to punish people that have money. We ought to go after those Carnegies and those Fords and Kennedys, people like that. Let us go after them. So they came up with this concept called the death tax. It is a tax that is placed upon the family on the event of a death. It is interesting, back here in Washington, D.C., they look for any opportunity they can, any event that they can to call it a taxable event. Many years ago they said, hey, why not when someone dies? After all, they will not be around to object anymore. That will be a good opportunity to take a little money from somebody who worked and transfer it to a bureaucracy that did not, so let us go ahead and tax the death of an individual. I am going to go again into my comments about what it does to a community. I will give some firsthand examples, Mr. Speaker, of how it has impacted some small people; not the Carnegies, not the wealthiest people of this country, but some people out there, people that own a bulldozer and a backhoe and are trying to make it, a farmer, a rancher. What disturbed me after I made my comments the other night was the following night I heard these kinds of comments. Let me say, in this House, as Members know, 65 Democrats joined with the Republicans and we passed a bill to eliminate that death tax. Why? Because it is the most unjustified tax that we have in our system. The tax is simply there to punish, nothing more, simply there to punish. We cannot justify it. When we look at the basis of our tax system, there is no way that one can defend it other than, of course, saying that one wants to attack the wealthy. Do Members know what, we had 65 Democrats who agreed with the Republicans, so it was a bipartisan bill. But there are still two teams in this House Chamber. Members know that, we have two teams in this Chamber. One team, as far as I can recall from the vote, all of the Republicans and 65 of the Democrats, that team said that the death tax is inherently unfair. That team says there is no justification for the death tax. That is the team to get rid of the death tax. Then we have a team on the other side, and let us face it, it is the Democrats; not all of them. But the team, the second team is comprised of the Democrats who say, hey, wait a minute, we ought to have a death tax. In fact, that team is led by the President and the Vice President, who not only disagree with doing away with the death tax and have threatened to veto the bill which would eliminate the death tax, but they have the audacity, the administration, our president and our Vice President have the audacity this year in their budget to increase or propose an increase, an increase in the death tax of $9.5 billion. That is a lot of money. That is going to hurt a lot of people. But that is $9.5 billion more, $9.5 billion, not million but billion more that is going to come from all of the communities across the United States and be funneled right into Washington, D.C. simply as a result of a death, simply as a result of the death of these individuals. I do not think we ought to increase it. I do not think it ought to exist. Tonight my comments are primarily directed at that second team, that second team that thinks the death tax is justified. That second team made some comments. Let me repeat a couple of others. ``Oh, this death tax, eliminating it, it goes to the wealthiest families in America.'' Well, I have news for them. I want them on the second team, why do they not take a little time to get beyond the Potomac River and to come out. I will take them out to some farms, some ranches. I will show them in Colorado some small contractors, a contractor that has a bulldozer, a dump truck, a backhoe, and all of a sudden they fall into the classification of wealthy. I will show the Members people that just own simply homes in Colorado. For example, my district, which is the Third Congressional District, has seen strong economic growth. Our property values have gone up. I can show Members people who have a small business, maybe a little bookstore, and they own their home, and all of a sudden, to the second team they fall in that classification of wealthy. They fall in that classification that they think they are justified on taxing them simply because there has been a tragedy or death in their family. These people are not wealthy. Even if they were wealthy, what justification do they have to go out and tax the family simply because there has been a death? By the way, let us make it very clear, this property that is being taxed simply because there was a death in the family is property that has already been taxed. In some cases, it has been taxed and taxed and taxed. We do not have citizens out there who are being assessed the death tax because they did not pay taxes on the property that they left. This is property that has already been taxed. At a minimum, at a minimum, it is double taxation. Yet, the second team still has the gumption to stand up, it almost sounds like a positive word, so I still have to go back to my other word, the audacity to stand up and say, yes, but it is still justified. It is a good way to punish the wealthy. Besides, it only hurts the wealthy. We will talk about that in a moment, about what it does to a community. ``You know, we need the money in Washington.'' That is the next one. These are quotes from the Congressional Record: ``I think Democrats feel that we do not have to give Bill Gates and Ted Turner and Steve Forbes a massive multi-billion dollar tax cut to protect the family farmer in Texas or Gatesville or some small businessman in Texas.'' I have news for them, the second team, they can be assured that the Gateses and the Kennedys and the Turners and the Forbes and the wealthiest families in this country have got some of the finest lawyers in this country making sure that through the use of foundations and limited partnerships and other items, that they are not going to pay this tax. This is not about the Forbes, the Carnegies or the Fords or the Kennedys, this is about the families in America who have a small farm, or the families in America who have a small business, or the contractors who simply have, and this is all it takes, a backhoe, a bulldozer, and a dump truck, and all of a sudden this is the guy or gal we are talking about. These are not these big wealthy people, these are everyday people in communities outside of Washington, D.C. that they are about to continue to devastate if they meet an untimely death, or if they do not have the money to hire the legal counsel to go out there and protect their assets from their own government, who has already taxed them throughout their lives on this property, to protect them from their own government coming in and taking that property because a taxable event called a death took place. Let me make another quote, another quote given after I made my remarks the other night by, again, this second team. Remember, the first team has 65 Democrats and all the Republicans on it. They say, get rid of the death tax. The second team has, unfortunately, all Democrats who want to keep the death tax in place. Let me quote from that team: ``So, this business about being a farmer-driven issue, this being a small business-driven issue, that is fiction. That is bait and switch. They will hold out the farmer, they will hold out the small business owner. Believe me, repeal of the death tax is not about them at all.'' The heck it is not about them. Where do they come off that we stand up here and say we ought to get rid of it because it does impact farms in this country and ranches, yet they seem to say up here, hey, it is not about that at all. That is exactly what it is about. They need to leave the fine halls of this Capitol and go out to small-time America and look at the ranches, the farms, the small businesses. More than that, they need to look at the communities where this money is circulating. Look at the communities where these families are helping that community thrive economically, and look what happens when we tax upon a death. We do not tax the families in these communities and then keep the money in the local community. For example, if we have a death of an individual, let us say a contractor who owns a bulldozer, a backhoe, and a dump truck, and therefore is subject to the estate tax, and especially if we throw their home in there and if they own their own office. Let us say that contractor is in Denver, Colorado, and the contractor meets an untimely death, so the government swoops in to tax it. Do Members think the death tax that is imposed upon that estate, that that money, when it goes to the government, is kept in the community of Denver, Colorado? Of course, it is not. It is money taken out of Denver, Colorado, and transferred to the government in Washington, D.C. Do Members think for one moment that the government in Washington, D.C. says, Gosh, here is some money on property we have already taxed coming from Denver, Colorado; let us go ahead and send that money back to Denver, Colorado, so they can have better parks, light rail, or some other type of improvement to their community, because after all, these dollars came from that community? Of course, they do not say that in Washington, D.C. I go on: ``The first question we want to address is, are the Republican tax bills fiscally responsible?'' There are two key bills in front of us right now, two key bills that are going down to the President that will reduce taxes. Both of those bills are not justified in our tax system. One of them is called the marriage penalty. The second one is called the death tax. The second team over here that says, hey, they take a look at this and they say, are these tax bills reducing the tax, getting rid of the marriage penalty and getting rid of the death tax? Forget the question whether they are justified or not, but is it fiscally responsible to get rid of them? Guess what, second team, do they know what percentage of the surplus these two combined take up, what it will cost us of the surplus? That is right, 2 percent, 2 percent of our surplus. We are saying, team number one, again, which was 65 Democrats and the entire Republican body, we are saying that 2 percent of that surplus ought to go back to the taxpayers in the communities from whence it came because it got to us through a marriage penalty, after all, in a country which encourages marriage, a country which says, look, we not only encourage it, we think it is your responsibility to be married. We think it is a basic part of families. The death tax, here it is, taxing property that has already been taxed. Neither one of these are justified. But do Members think it is fiscally irresponsible because we take 2 percent, 2 percent of that surplus and we send it back to the taxpayers by saying to them, from now on, when you get married, you are not going to be penalized for it; and number two, your death is no longer classified as a taxable event. I go on, here. Again, I want to repeat the one statement that was said the other night: ``Some say,'' and that (some) is me, by the way, team number one, so let us just put the word, although the quote is ``some,'' let us put the word ``team number one'' in there. Team number one says we ought to pass these massive tax cuts because this is the people's money. Again, they are darn right it is the people's money. It is not their money. It is not my money. We simply manage the money. We have a responsibility to manage this money in a fiscal way, but not only just fiscally responsible, we have a moral obligation to say, is it justified to penalize somebody because they are married, is it justified to tax somebody because of the event of a death. Now, let me talk about something else, and, again, going back to this quote and this business about being farmer driven, small business driven, that is bait and switch. What a song and dance. That is simply a song and dance. Let us take a look at what happens in the community. I am actually going to give my colleagues some true examples of how it has impacted these communities. By the way, these examples are not going to come from the Carnegies or the Fords or the Kennedys or the wealthiest people of this country. These are going to come from Main Street America. These will be from Main Street America. Let us for a moment, before we go into these true-life stories, let us talk about something else. Number one, remember what I said. Here is Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., as I said earlier, when one takes a look at the map, one will notice there is Florida that comes over like that. We better centralize Washington a little more. But when we look at Washington, D.C., remember what I said earlier, Washington, D.C. is the only city in the country which, the larger the government becomes, the more prosperous Washington, D.C. becomes. Washington, D.C. has the largest percentage of any city in the country of people who work for the government. In Washington, D.C., many people's task, their job in Washington is to reach out with their fingers and gather as many tax dollars as possible and bring them to this city, bring it in from every direction in the country, bring that money to Washington, D.C. so Washington, D.C. turns around and can redistribute it on their terms, on their terms. Well, let us do not talk about what goes on in Washington, D.C. Let us talk about what goes on in this community out in Utah or this community down in Louisiana or this community up in Montana or this community over in Wyoming or Idaho or Oregon or Washington or California. Let us for a moment talk about community. Here is our community. Let us take two examples in our community. One of a very wealthy person. Let us go ahead and let us hit that nail on the head. Let us talk about an individual who, through the American dream, through the American free enterprise system, worked hard and became wealthy. Let us say, for example, it was a person that developed a better mouse trap or maybe they are the ones that invented the seat belt, and every car needs it, so they are very wealthy. Here is that very wealthy person. Now, team number two says that one ought to go after this wealthy person simply because of the fact that they are wealthy, no other reason, go after them on their death because they died with money in their hands. They say take that money and send it to Washington. Well, let us take a look at where that money is in our community, this is our community, before it is sucked out of our community and sent east to Washington, D.C. That money in that community, and there is one exception, if this very wealthy individual in that community takes that money and goes out in on his backyard or her backyard and digs a hole and buries it in the ground where it does not circulate in the community, then one has no benefit of that money being in the community. But in every other case, and, by the way, I know of no one who does that, but in every other case, that money in the community provides jobs. That money in the community goes to, not national, but community charities, maybe the local church, maybe help out the local school. That money in that community goes to the local bank; and that bank in turn loans out money to small business people or other people. Maybe they want to improve their house. Maybe they want a student loan. Maybe they want a new car. In other words, this money that this wealthy person has circulates in our community. But it circulates in our community. What happens when X up here, when he or she dies, and the Federal Government decides to impose a death tax? What happens is the Federal Government comes in and takes this money used for jobs, this money used for local charity, this money used as a tax basis or otherwise for schools, this money deposited in the local bank, and it takes that money, and it moves from here to Washington, D.C. Then the people in Washington, D.C. get to use it in their community or get to redisburse it as they see fit. Example number one. Now, let us talk about example number two in our community. In our community, we have somebody who is not wealthy, and I will give my colleagues a good example, a ranching family. Now, I come back to this quote given by team number two. So this business about being a farmer driven issue, as if it is not a farmer driven issue, about being a small business driven issue, as if it is not a small business driven issue, that is fiction. It is bait and switch. This is no bait and switch. Lock, stock and barrel, it is about small business. Lock, stock and barrel, it is about small farms. Lock, stock and barrel, it is about small ranches. Lock, stock and barrel, it is about our young people. It is about the American dream. As I said the other night with my comments, my wife and I, one of our goals in life, and we have sacrificed, we would like to have a boat. We really would like to have a boat at Lake Powell. We just bought a car the other day. We bought a used car. We would like to buy a new car. But do my colleagues know why? We are not a hardship case. I am not asking for that kind of sympathy. But we have made a conscious decision to try and put something aside for the next generation behind us so that they know they will have a college education, so that our grandchildren, we do not have grandchildren yet, but we hope to have grandchildren, that they will be able to have a college education. Maybe they will have enough money for a down payment on a home. Is that not the American dream? Is that not what it is about? The previous speaker to me who spoke prior to my speech spoke about the youth of America. Now, her topic was a little different, but, nonetheless, one can look at most of the speeches given on this House floor, and they talk about the young people. They talk about the hope of this great country and how the hope is fundamentally based on the young people. Why not give them an opportunity? Why not give them a head start? So it is about small business. It is about the dream and helping the next generation. It is not about the wealthiest people necessarily. One may have an, and the reason I keep coming back to this contractor, because, as cited in the Wall Street Journal, if one is a contractor who owns a bulldozer, a dump truck, and a backhoe, they are now subject to the estate taxation in this country because team number two considers them wealthy. So when one goes into a small community, and here is one's contractor, he has got the dump truck, he has got the backhoe, and he has got the bulldozer. Here is Joe Rancher over there. Now, Joe Rancher has some land. Let us say the land went from one family to the next. I can tell my colleagues my in-laws are ranchers in Meeker, Colorado. They take great pride in the fact that the land has been in the family, the same ranch, since the 1880s, 120 years that ranch. But this is the generation whereupon the biggest test will come because they do not have the money to pay off the people in Washington, D.C., the government, in the event of an untimely death in that family. So it is about that ranching family. So what happens? By the way, anybody that cares about the environment, this is also about the environment, because in our example here of the ranch, with property, do my colleagues know what happens to that family upon the untimely death? Now, remember, again, if they are very wealthy, they have got estate planning. They can probably protect it. But the middle class rancher, and I would venture to say most of the ranching communities and most of the agriculture-based communities and most of the small business people in this country are not wealthy enough to go out and hire an entire regime of attorneys and CPAs to help them avoid this tax. Take a look at what happens from an environmental point of view on this ranch. Do my colleagues know what is going to happen if there is a death there and they are subject to that estate tax? They are not going to be able to carry on the ranching operation. The only option they have, especially if they are in Colorado or Wyoming or one of these boom States like Utah or Arizona, their response is to go out there and divide this thing up into housing units, put the acres in there and put in housing subdivisions. That is what the government is forcing them to do, and this open space, not to say the least about the tradition of the ranch, goes up in a puff of tax. Now look at this small business person that has that contractor. That contractor needs his bulldozer or she needs her bulldozer. They need their backhoe, and they need their dump truck. So we have a death. They are subject to the death tax. What happens, they have to sell the dump truck. Do my colleagues think this business can operate now with a backhoe and a bulldozer, but no dump truck? Or let us say they sold the bulldozer. Do my colleagues think they can operate just with a backhoe and a dump truck after paying its penalty to the government? I am saying to team number two, this makes a difference. Let me move to a few, as I said, examples. I apologize to my colleagues here for reading. Most of my comments are not from written script at all, but these are written, and I want to be sure that I read them correctly. These are letters that we have gotten or statements we have taken. This is not fiction, by the way. This is not, as the second team calls it, bait and switch. This is about real-life America. This is about the people that live outside the Beltway of Washington, D.C. Let me begin with a story about Ray. Ray is deceased. He died earlier this year. He owned a service station on the corner. Ray had this service station for 27 years. For 27 years, other service stations were built on the other three corners. The intersection became busy. The roads forming that intersection were expanded to four lanes. So it was a good place for Ray's business. He had two service bays plus a car wash. He had some old pumps and old equipment. He cleared $70,000 a year, not wealthy, but he made a good living through his years and years of hard work. His wife she did the bookkeeping for the business. His grown son worked there. Eventually, the son and his family were going to take over the business. When Ray died, he had a $50,000 term insurance policy, $60,000 in municipal bonds, $174,000 in his retirement plan, and of course the service station. A few months after he died, unfortunately Ray's wife passed away. Upon the death of his parents, the son who was going to take over the business discovered that the land upon which the service station sat had appreciated over the years and was now worth $1.7 million. The service station and the equipment was worth about $158,000. He also learned that his father's retirement plan was funded on a before-tax basis. So not only would he have to pay the death taxes, but income taxes would be due on the retirement. The son was now in a situation that was very dismal, and he began looking for a way to pay the taxes on this estate. The son's conclusion was, if I can run this as well as my father or even better, I can make, maybe, $70,000 a year, but I am going to have to pay somebody to keep the books, because his mom kept the books before. Now he is going to have to pay somebody, so it is going to be a little tighter. He did not have a proven record so the only thing he could do was to borrow against the land and the equipment to pay the death taxes. However, when one looked at the revenue that came off the service station, it was not enough to service the interest on the loan that he had to take to pay off the government on property that had already been taxed. He has no choice but to sell the business. Here is a letter from Derek Roberts. ``My family has ranched in Northern Colorado for 125 years.'' 125 years, Mr. Speaker. Think of how many generations in 125 years were on this farm. ``My sons are the sixth generation to work this land. We want to continue, but the'' Internal Revenue Service ``is forcing almost all ranchers and many farmers out of business. The problem is'' the death tax. ``The demand for our land is very high and 35-acre ranchettes are selling in this area for as high as'' several thousand dollars ``per acre. We want to keep it open space, but the U.S. government is making it impossible because we will have to pay 55 percent tax'', 55 percent, 55 cents on every dollar ``when my parents pass on.'' ``Ranchers are barely scraping by these days anyway, but since we want to save the ranch, we are in trouble. The family has been able to scrape up the estate taxes as each generation dies up to this point in time. This time, however, I think we're done for. Our only other option is to give the ranch to a nonprofit organization, and they all want that, but they won't guarantee they won't develop it. ``My dad's 90 years old, and we don't have much time to decide what to do. We are one of only two or three ranchers left around here. Most of the ranches have been subdivided. One of the last to go was a family that had been here as long as our family. When the old folks died, the kids borrowed money to pay the taxes. Pretty soon they had to start selling the cattle to pay the interest on the money that they borrowed to pay the taxes. When they ran out of cattle, their 18,000 acre ranch was foreclosed on, and now it's being developed. That family, by the way, now lives in a trailer near town, and the father is a highway foreman. ``If you want to stop sprawl, if you want to preserve ranching, you better ask the government to get off the backs of family farms and ranches.'' This letter is from Ron Edwards. ``Dear Representative, I'm writing to bring your attention to an issue of the utmost importance to me, my family, my employees and businesses: Elimination of the death tax. I urge you to support and pass death tax repeal legislation this year.'' Mr. Speaker, I would like Ron to know that we passed it out of the House, and the good news is that we passed it out of the Senate. Unfortunately, the President and the Vice President have vowed to veto that legislation. And, unfortunately, I have to report that in this House, while 65 Democrats and the Republicans supported the repeal of it, there is a team, team number two, that wants not only to keep it, but the administration is asking to increase it. ``We are celebrating 66 years in business.'' Sixty-six years in the same business. ``My grandfather Vic started with a fruit and vegetable stand in 1933 at our current location east of Fort Morgan, Colorado. The business grew into a grocery store and a lawn and garden center. My father Vic, Vic Junior, is 80 years old and, unfortunately, in poor health. ``No business can remain competitive in a tax regime that imposes rates as high as 55 percent upon the next generation that wants to take that business. Our tax laws should encourage,'' and this is probably the most important sentence that I have read in any letter, in any letter that has come to me about the death tax. This sentence written by Ron Edwards out of Fort Morgan, Colorado, is probably the most important, the most pertinent sentence to the death tax that I have, and let me read it. ``Our tax laws should encourage rather than discourage the continuation of these businesses.'' Let me repeat that. Our tax laws should encourage rather than discourage the continuation of these businesses. It is the American Dream to be able to pass from one generation to the next generation our mechanic shops or our ranches or our bulldozers or the family farm. And this gentleman right here, he is not a lawyer, he is not a politician, he is not a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., he is not a C.P.A. he simply says I am confused; should it not be the policy of the United States Government to encourage rather than discourage the continuation of these businesses. ``While being a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, I'm sure you already know the urgency for estate tax repeal is supported by the Joint Economic Committee study Economics of the Estate Tax. Family- owned businesses and their employees will continue to suffer until this unfair, unprotective and uneconomic tax is abolished. My wife Vicki and I are active in the party and look forward to working with you and your staff to enact some common sense legislation to preserve and promote our Nation's family-owned enterprises.'' Now, let me read some testimony. First of all, colleagues, let me say that I fully intend to address Social Security next week, but tonight it is so important to talk about this death tax, especially after hearing the comments made subsequent to my comments the other evening. So I will continue on, and let me briefly talk about an article out of the Aspen Times, Aspen, Colorado. ``There are a lot of tales to be told about the conversion of former ranches into luxury homes or golf courses throughout this valley. Sometimes it was a simple financial decision, a choice to take advantage of soaring development values in the face of plummeting cattle prices. But for other families, the passing of a parent meant the passing of a way of life.'' The passing of a parent meant the passing of a way of life. ``We've been around a long time,'' says this ranch owner Dwight. ``The family roots are dug deep along Capitol Creek Road in old Snowmass, and for nearly a century heritage and hard work,'' heritage and hard work, ``were enough to sustain those who lived on this ranch. But that all changed in 1976. ``Until Dwight's father's death, each generation presided over a working cattle ranch that was both the lifeblood and the livelihood of this clan. His later years were lean times, but the fate of the ranch was not at risk until the Internal Revenue Service and the government of the United States came to tax us because he died. ``The tax bill came to $750,000, and what it took to pay this bill was one-half of the ranch and the ability to take our cattle to migrate in the winter months and 10 years to pay the last installment.'' Just to pay those taxes on property that had already been taxed. ``What those taxes took was also something very vital, the ability of the next generation to support the family by working the land that had been in the family for so long. Dwight now works as a mechanic for the Roaring Fork School District, and then at night when he gets home he gets to work on what's left of the ranch. He doesn't mind the long hours he has to put in. What does get under his skin, however, is the memory of how an IRS agent overseeing his father's taxes either didn't recognize the devastation that was about to occur or didn't care. It was just pay us or we will seize everything. If anything's left over, you can keep it, but if you can't make ends meet on what's left, then you can hit the streets. ``Our family has no intention of selling the remaining acres, but we really don't know if our daughters are going to be able to continue to keep what is left intact. With only half the land to graze and the tough prices in the ranching community, the ranch itself is only making enough to cover the annual property taxes and our operating expenses. It is the day job at the school district as a mechanic that pays the doctor bills, the car insurance, the grocery bills and everything else. ``There's always hope that things will change before my daughters need to make any decisions about the ranch, but I wonder if people really think about the permanent changes that will occur when the ranch is sold, dividing it up, chopping up a ranch that will never again in the history of this country become a ranch. It will become a housing subdivision. ``There are some movements with hope in the right direction, trying to eliminate the death tax. But are they moving quickly enough?'' That's the thought of mainstream America out there. Let me read another quote, and I will just take a couple of key areas here. This was a statement given on the record. ``I have been a member of small business for more than 10 years. My family lives in the central part of Idaho. Our family's cattle ranch is outside of Mackay, Idaho. The ranch consists of 2,600 deeded acres. My youngest brother lives and manages the ranch with my brother. We all grew up alongside my father, mother and grandfather. We worked weekends, we worked holidays, we worked summers branding, moving, and riding the range, fixing fences. We didn't have a lot of material things, but we had our family and the land and the life-style that we loved. ``On October 5, 1993, my father was accidentally killed when his clothing got caught in the farm machinery. He was 71 and he was healthy. He worked dawn until dusk, and he loved the land and he loved his family. We were always a very close-knit family and the hub of our family was my father and the ranch. Even though my brother, my sister, and I don't live there anymore, we all go home, along with the grandchildren, to help with the seasonal work. We take as much time off as we can to go up and help the ranch. ``My father's death was the most devastating event that any of us have ever gone through. The second most devastating event was sitting down with our estate attorney after my father's death. I will never forget his words. `There is no way you can keep this place. Absolutely no way.' Still in shock from the accident, I said, how can this be? We own the land. We have no debt. We just lost our father and now we're going to lose the ranch? ``Our attorney proceeded to pencil out the death taxes that would be due after my mother's death and we all sat in total shock. It had taken my grandfather and his father their entire lifetimes to build up this ranch. And now we cannot continue on and the grandchildren will not have the land and the rich heritage that it provided. ``It has been 3\1/2\ years since my dad's accident, and we still don't know what we are going to do. We only know that we will not be able to keep the ranch unless something is done with the estate tax law now. ``The estimated estate tax on our family ranching assets is $3.3 million. We gross, not net, approximately $350,000 per year from the cattle. Without the land being paid for and tight operating costs, we would not be able to make money from the business. Currently what we are trying to do is sell off one of our spring ranges in order to buy a million-dollar life insurance policy for our mother.'' So they are going to have to sell a part of the ranch to buy a life insurance policy on their mother so that perhaps it can allow them to pay off one-third of the estate taxes and avoid a fire sale. ``My mother does not have a husband anymore. She worked hard all her life and gave up a lot of material things to make this ranch operate. Now unless this estate tax law is changed or abolished, she will have to leave her home, the home she loves and our family will not have a base from which to carry on. ``This same scenario is happening to a lot of ranchers in our valley.'' It is not just happening to the Fords and the Carnegies and the wealthiest people of this country. It is happening to a lot of people in this country. It is happening and impacting heritage. It is impacting a lot of small businesses and it is impacting the American dream to be able to do something for the next generation. Remember the statement that I made earlier? Why is it that this government discourages instead of encourages the continuation of these type of ranches or businesses? This letter goes on. Let me conclude the statement. ``I urge you to ask yourselves why does this tax exist? Is it worth the great harm it caused to my family and many others? If it is not worth the harm, then shouldn't the tax be eliminated? I hope you will remember our family when you consider this.'' Let me say in conclusion of these remarks this evening, do not think as you hear from team number two that is encouraging the continuation of the death tax, do not pay heed to the President and the Vice President's policy that says we should increase the estate tax, the death tax. What you should pay attention to are the 65 Democrats and the entire Republican body that says, This death tax is not fair. It is not justified. It is on property that has already been taxed. And it is devastating some of our communities for the simple reason that a death occurred. We are only taking 2 percent of the surplus to eliminate the marriage penalty and to eliminate the death tax. I urge every one of my colleagues, and I am telling you, 65 of the Democrats have already joined team number one. The Republicans are on team number one. I urge the balance of my colleagues, stand up and say no to this death tax. If you think, for example, it only happens to the wealthy, go home this weekend, go out to the small businesses and the farms and ask them. Just one final concluding remark, and, that is, remember the sentence in the letter I just read, and, that is, Mr. Speaker, should we not be encouraging rather than discouraging the continuation of these ranches and these small businesses? Of course we should. We have an obligation to do so.

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I am back for a nightside chat. I have three subjects which I would like to cover tonight. The first one is a sad situation that has occurred out in the State of Colorado, a very tragic situation. The second that I think is very important for us to discuss, a subject which I addressed just a couple of days ago but, which subsequent to my discussions, I have heard some comments on this House Floor that are, in my opinion, discouraging, comments that I think are off base, comments that I think are not based on reality, reality beyond the Potomac River, reality beyond this large city of government out here in the East. I want to address the death tax, once again. The third subject which I would like to address this evening based on the time that we have left is, of course, Social Security. Regarding the death tax and the Social Security issues, I hope that many of my colleagues will go out, when they go to their districts and talk, especially to their young constituents, because the Social Security challenge in this country is a challenge based on: can we deliver for the young people of this country. The question about death taxes is, when we have something from a generation, can a generation legitimately expect to work in their lifetime and be able to pass something on to the young generation behind them. So tonight's comments are really directed to the younger people of this country. In Memory of Fred Bitterman Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me cover a subject of which I stand forward with a very hurt heart. A friend of mine, a friend of the community of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, an officer of the Colorado State Patrol, a friend and a strong supporter and a leader of law enforcement in the State of Colorado, was tragically killed Tuesday. Captain Fred Bitterman, who was the commander of the Glenwood Springs Unit of the Colorado Springs State Patrol Unit, lost his life in a tragic accident. This was a man who was a good cop. Mr. Speaker, I used to be a police officer. I got to serve with the Colorado State Patrol. I was not a Colorado State patrolman, I was a city police officer, but I worked alongside the Colorado State Patrol. These guys and gals are professionals. They bring a great pride to our State, and the Colorado State Patrol in Colorado is seen as a very elite unit. Of course, to be seen and respected by the people and the citizens of Colorado as an elite unit, it means they have had good leadership, and at the very front of that good and strong leadership was this gentleman named Fred Bitterman. Mr. Speaker, Fred was 59 years old. He leaves behind six children and a number of grandchildren, and his wife, Kathy. I want my colleagues to know that these are the kind of people that make this country great. So it is with a great deal of sympathy that I acknowledge the fine service and the fine gentleman that this captain was. I also want to share with my colleagues that he not only enjoyed an excellent reputation in his profession of law enforcement, but he was known throughout our community as a good neighbor. Mr. Speaker, one can hardly beat a good neighbor. But probably more important than the professionalism in the field of law enforcement, probably more important than the recognition as a good neighbor, was the fact that he was a very strong family man, and each of those six children and those grandchildren and all of the family that he had and all of the friends that he knew and all of the people throughout these many, many years of service in the Colorado State Patrol that he helped at the scene of an accident or at the scene of a disturbance, or all the people that he comforted during their particular times of tragedy, this man will be sorely missed. It is that reputation which comes to the top. He was the cream that rose to the top. Captain, we are going to miss you. The Death Tax Mr. Speaker, I want to move to another subject now concerning the death tax. I have a few quotes here. Let me step back to two nights ago. Two nights ago, I had an opportunity to speak to my colleagues about the death tax and the impact that the death tax has on the communities across this country. Now, we should remember that Washington, D.C. is a very unique community. Washington, D.C. is the only city in this Nation where really, most of the city is dependent upon money coming from the outside into the government in Washington so that the city can thrive. This is a city that thrives on big government. This is a city that thrives on taxes. So understandably, the people, a lot of the people in Washington, D.C., in my opinion, enjoy the fact that these taxes head in their direction. A lot of people are dependent, their lifestyles, they know nothing but government, that is all they know. But Washington, D.C. is a unique community, and as I stressed in my comments the other day, there are a lot of communities outside of Washington, D.C. where the transfer of money from their community to the government city of Washington, D.C. works great pain on their communities. It is a sacrifice on those communities. By the way, we know that the money that comes to Washington, D.C. is not the money of the government of Washington, D.C.; it is the money of the people of whom this government represents in Washington, D.C. it is the people's money. And we have a fiduciary responsibility, colleagues, as elected official, as representatives, to make sure that we always understand those dollars belong to the people of this country. They do not belong to the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Now, why do I make these comments? What leads me to this? Mr. Speaker, what leads me to this is simply a statement that was made after I gave my comments the other day, and I quote from a Democrat, and I will get on this in a minute, but let me quote from an individual who happens to be a Democrat: ``Some say we ought to pass these massive tax cuts because this is the people's money.'' Well, that is exactly why we ought to have tax cuts back here, because we have now reached record surpluses. It is the people's money. We ought to keep that in mind. Now clearly, we have to have enough money to operate. The speech before me given by some Democrats about mental health, it has some legitimate points in it: our education, our military, our interstate commerce, our highways. Of course it costs taxpayer dollars. But do we have a right on any basis whatsoever to keep the excess money, or do we have an obligation to work with tax credits and tax refunds? Mr. Speaker, I would address the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) for just one moment. Mr. Speaker, I understand that the gentleman, too, lost a good friend from the State of Georgia. I want the gentleman to know that the people of the State of Colorado send their greatest sympathies. I know that the Senator was a fine friend of the gentleman's, and I want the gentleman to know that those of us in the West feel the gentleman's pain and pass on their sympathies. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder).

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and an honor to have this opportunity to pay tribute to Patricia A. Gabow, MD, for receiving the 2000 Dr. Nathan Davis Award presented by the American Medical Association. Dr. Gabow's work as CEO and Medical Director of Denver Health has earned her recognition as one of our nation's most committed proponents for the medically underserved and deserves the praise and recognition of this body. If ever there were a person who embodied the spirit and service of the medical profession, it is Dr. Gabow. Dr. Gabow received her medical degree for the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She began her medical career in Denver in 1973, when she joined the staff of Denver Health and Hospitals as Chief of the Renal Division. Throughout her medical career, Dr. Gabow has received worldwide recognition as an authority on renal disease, however it is her leadership in developing health care programs for Colorado's underserved that have made her worthy of this eminent award. Perhaps one of her most prestigious accomplishments was when Dr. Gabow assisted the Denver Health Medical Center overcome a $36 million deficit to expand their services to Medicaid patients, namely the underserved children of the community. This triumph nearly doubled the amount of Medicaid recipients served at a time when other health care facilities were struggling to assist other patients. Not only has Dr. Gabow helped foster strong care giving facilities, but she has also been influential in community health programs, AIDS prevention and treatment, and infectious disease control, just to name a few. As Dr. Gabow celebrates her award, Mr. Speaker, I salute her dedication to public service. My thanks to her on a job well done. Congratulations!

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is with great sadness that I wish to take this moment to recognize the remarkable life and significant achievements of one of Colorado's leading public servants, former Chief of the Colorado State Patrol, C. Wayne Keith. Sadly, Mr. Keith recently passed away. As family, friends, students and colleagues mourn his passing, I would like to honor this great American. For the better half of a decade Mr. Keith served well and faithfully in the Colorado State Patrol as Chief until his retirement. As a member of the State Patrol, his sense of humor was apparent. His daughter remembered that ``He always wanted to razz people just to make life more fun, he always wanted to help everyone and just make people laugh''. Even after his retirement Mr. Keith remained active in several organizations including the International Association for Chiefs of Police, the American Lung Association and Easter Seals. Even when Mr. Keith was ailing his spirit did not fail. His sister commented that ``the pranks did not stop just because he was sick.'' She said that ``they had these wires across the roof and he would tie strings to them and attach fake spiders, then when nurses would come in he would dangle it in front of them. They would get so scared and the pills would go flying. He thought it was fun''. Full of life, with so much to give, Mr. Keith was taken all too soon. But his memory will live on in all those he has touched. I am confident, Mr. Speaker, that in the face of this profound loss, the family, friends, and the Colorado community can take comfort in the knowledge that each is a better person for having known him. The people of the state of Colorado have lost a dedicated public servant and an outstanding citizen. He was a model of American ideals, embodying patriotism and service throughout his lifetime. For the life of service that he led will benefit Colorado for many generations to come.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is with profound sadness that I now rise to honor the life and memory of an outstanding person, former Colorado Lieutenant Governor Mr. Bob Knous. Sadly, Bob passed away May 15, 2000. As family and friends mourn his passing, I would like to pay tribute to this beloved husband, father to his children, and friend to all. He will be missed by many. Even so, his life was a remarkable one that is most deserving of both the recognition and praise of this body. Much of Bob's life was spent creating a political legacy in Colorado for the better half of two decades. He leaves a record that is essentially impossible to break today; he had the admirable notoriety of being elected as lieutenant Governor under both a Republican and a Democratic Governor. His son Bob Jr. once said that his dad ``exuded what Colorado is all about, we never left the state on vacation as kids because we were always campaigning. We went from Julesburg to Cortez to Rangley. I never went out of state until I was 18''. Bob was born in Ouray, Colorado, graduating from Montrose High School, active in many sports including basketball and baseball. He received both his bachelors and law degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Bob has exemplified outstanding service in other areas as well. He served as a naval flight instructor in World War II completing in excess of 3,500 hours of flight time. Bob has served many prestigious positions during his tenure, he served as a state senator in 1952 before he successfully served as lieutenant governor under two administrations. Former Colorado Governor John Love remembered their campaigns as ``always proper we were never enemies and we have stayed good friends ever since.'' His spirit and magnetism have been instrumental in his successes, Bob's brother recalled him as ``gritty even when he was sick, he'd get up and walk out of the hospital''. His dedication to others and to Colorado was unprecedented. He worked tirelessly for the people of Colorado for over two decades later retiring from politics in the early 70's. Mr. Knous leaves us all too soon. But his memory will live on in all those he has touched. I am confident, Mr. Speaker, that in the face of this profound loss, the family, friends, and the Colorado community can take comfort in the knowledge that each is a better person for having known him.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, the comments of the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood) were excellent. I appreciate that. I also this evening wish to pass on my condolences to the people of the State of Georgia and to the people throughout this country who knew Senator Coverdell who passed away earlier today. It is a sad moment back at the U.S. Capitol when there is a person who is really a gentleman and a scholar and a dignitary within his own ranks pass away. I know that the Senator has gone on to a finer life, as we all dream of, but his acknowledgments and his achievements while he was a United States Senator, while I had the opportunity to work with him as a House Member, are tremendous. He will not be forgotten. He will be long remembered in these chambers, and in his own chambers over on the Senate side. So for the Members and citizens of the State of Georgia and for all citizens of the United States, Georgia, your loss was our loss and we pass on our deepest sympathies. Mr. Speaker, this evening I want to talk again a little bit about Colorado. I want to talk about how a community has come together. A community of ranchers, a community of environmental people, a community of business leaders, a community of regular citizens, a community of water experts have come together as a team and tomorrow we are about to pass out of the Committee on Resources one of the most significant bills to come out for the State of Colorado in many years called the Colorado Canyons Bill. In order to set you up this evening so that you can properly follow me through this bill, which I think by the way is very interesting, I do not think you will be bored at all this evening, I first of all would like to just give a little preamble, as you might say, or some basic facts for you to consider. First of all, the bill covers an area in the Third Congressional District of the State of Colorado. That is the district that I represent here in the House of Representatives. The Third Congressional District of Colorado is well-known throughout the United States. It contains all or most all of the ski resorts in Colorado and has many communities known throughout the United States, communities like Aspen, Colorado, some of the world class skiing; communities like Telluride, Colorado, with some of the most beautiful mountain terrain you can find; Beaver Creek, Colorado; Vale, Colorado; Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Glenwood Springs, Colorado; Durango, Colorado; Grand Junction, Colorado, numerous ski areas and many of the constituents of my colleagues have probably rafted on the Colorado River, the Rhine Fork River, up in the Green River or on the White River or on the Blue River or in the Arkansas River. All of these rivers have something to do or originate, many of them originate, and certainly they all flow through, the Third Congressional District of Colorado. There is something else very unique about the State of Colorado and the Third Congressional District in that the eastern border, and I will show this on a map later on if we have an opportunity to get into multiple use, but on a map that I will show you later on from the eastern border, which simplified as a description, is basically a highway called the I-25 interstate from Wyoming to New Mexico. The Third District, by the way, is larger geographically than the State of Florida, but on that eastern border, clear to the Atlantic Ocean, there is very little Federal land ownership, but from the eastern border of this Third Congressional District to the Pacific Ocean there are huge amounts of Federal land ownership. As a result, when we deal with land issues in the West, we deal with much, much more with what is called public lands. In the East, you do not deal with the public lands near, not even close to the extent that we do in the West. It is simply because you do not have a lot of them in the East. So the circumstances in the East when it comes to public lands are different. In my opinion, a lot of understanding of the people in the East, and this is not, by the way, a criticism of the people of the East, it is simply kind of an educational basis to let you know that we have to spend a lot of time in the West trying to educate our colleagues in the East. There is something that you have to know about public lands, and public lands, if it has one positive, really positive thing about it, is any time action is taken it really requires much more of a team effort than if you are dealing just with private properties. Now in the Third Congressional District, it is unique in the State of Colorado as well because of its water resources. In the Third Congressional District of Colorado, we have 80 percent of the State's water resources. Outside the borders of the Third Congressional District in the State of Colorado, we have 80 percent of the population. So you can see that water is a constant, a constant asset that needs to be managed, a constant item of debate. Not only that, the Third Congressional District supplies water not only for the rest of the State of Colorado, but it also is a supplier of water for many, many States in the union and it also includes the country of Mexico. Now, water is important. Out in the West, it has been often said that the people in the East sometimes think it rains in the West like it does in the East. It does not. In the West, we are a very arid State. In the West, we really have, for the most part, as much water as we can possibly use for about 60 to 90 days. That is called the spring run- off, but after that run-off, in the West, if we do not have the capability to store the water we do not get the water. So water storage is a critical element of survival in the West, and water storage with Federal facilities or water storage on public lands is necessary, not because we randomly decided that we wanted to put it on government lands but because we have no choice. Most of the lands out there are owned by the Federal Government or the State government or the local government. For example, in the East, if you want to go and have a pipeline built or a highway built or you want to put a fence up, you go to your local city council for your planning and zoning or you go to your county or you go to your state. Most of the time, though, it is a local authority that you go to. In the West, in many, many cases, when we have to do something like that, we end up going to the Bureau of Land Management, to the U.S. Forest Service, to Washington, D.C. It is here many, many miles away that planning is done for the lands of which we live on out in the West. So it does require a team effort, and the Colorado Canyons Bill is a result of a concentrated good faith effort by many, many different people. So tonight my first subject is to kind of walk us all through the Colorado Canyons legislation, legislation which, as I mentioned previously, will be up in committee tomorrow; I am confident will pass with strong bipartisan, strong bipartisan support, and I would hope would be able to pass these chambers next week on suspension so that we can take it to the Senate where Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell has agreed to carry the bill throughout the Senate, and I think we will meet with the same type of success. So let us talk and begin our adventure with Colorado Canyons. Grand Junction, Colorado, located in the western part of the State of Colorado, a community of about 90,000, has a magnificent national monument adjacent to it. If you are a resident of Grand Junction, Colorado, you can actually access the national monument from anywhere in Grand Junction at the most in 15 minutes. For many people, you can access the national monument in less than 5 minutes. The painting that I have displayed to my left is a water color painting that hangs in my office that demonstrates just exactly what the Colorado National Monument looks like. It is magnificent, and if you have an opportunity to go to Colorado it is worth the trip to go to Grand Junction just to see the Colorado National Monument. Let me say, by the way, as kind of a little plug for the State of Colorado and the Third Congressional District, we have many national parks; the Colorado Rocky Mountain National Park. We have national monuments, the Great Sand Dunes National Monumental; the Mesa Verde National Park down in the southwestern corner; the Black Canyon National Park, a new national park over near Gunnison, Colorado. If you really want to see some beauty, go to Colorado, but on your way go see the Colorado National Monument. This is a good demonstration. The rock structures that you see in the national monument, I would guess that rock structure there is probably 300, 400 feet high, and the echoes that you can hear through the canyons and up on top appears an area that we call the Glade Park area. It is beautiful. Believe it or not, it looks like kind of a desert setting down here amongst these rocks, but as you get up on top on the mesa it is very, very heavily wooded with aspen trees and lots of water. It is beautiful up on top of the Glade Park. The Grand Mesa, by the way, is another area just opposite of it that you would also want to visit if you go to Grand Junction. Well, our key is that this national monument we in our local community take great pride in that national monument. We also have excellent community relationships with the Park Service who runs the national monument. We also have excellent community relationships with the Bureau of Land Management which manages the Federal land outside the boundaries of the park, and in some areas the U.S. Forest Service, of which we also have excellent community relationships with, in the West when the government, when the Federal Government, is on these public lands they find that most cooperation is reached, the highest level of cooperation is reached, when you take the time to sit down with the local people and listen to them and talk with them and live in their communities and live the kind of life they live. As you know throughout the history of this Nation, ever since the Homestead Act and the days of the early pioneers in those mountains, we have found that there is a high level of cooperation that can be reached. Generally when that cooperation begins to fall apart is when an outsider comes in and thinks they know best. Now in some cases some outsiders can come in and they have a positive contribution to make to our effort, and they want to participate and they are entitled to participate, but it is when we get somebody in there who thinks they know better, who does not understand the nature of living on public lands, who does not understand the impact of what public lands does to a community, both the positive impacts and the negative impacts. Well, the Colorado Canyons bill really began as a result of some people who wanted to take the Colorado National Monument, and I will put a poster up with that. This will give us a little better idea of the geography that we are talking about. Right here this would be Grand Junction, Colorado. Over in this area right here is the Colorado National Monument. Well, what had happened is that for some reason, and I am not sure why, but a group of people or one individual or a few individuals decided that what should happen is that the Secretary of Interior should expand the boundaries of the Colorado National Monument to take in, we are not sure exactly what the exact borders were but pretty much this entire area and expand the national monument. Now some of the justification for this theory of expansion was the fact that it would be better under Park management. This is all Federal land right in here. The white, by the way, is privately-held land. That to expand the monument into this area was necessary because the Bureau of Land Management perhaps was not capable of managing the land the way that it should be managed. Frankly, that was a bunch of hogwash. Some people say, well, the BLM and the Park Service they do not get along out there. We ought to put it all under Park Service oversight. That, too, was a bunch of hogwash. In fact, the border between the Colorado National Monument and the area in the yellow, in other words this area in purple and the area in the yellow here, that is perhaps the friendliest border between the Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management that exists in the country. We have great people out there with BLM and with Park Service and they have good cooperation. It is not necessary to expand that monument in my opinion. But not long ago, several months ago, the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, came to Grand Junction and announced that he would like to see the Colorado National Monument expanded. I felt that the Secretary listened to what people in the community had to say, he had an open forum, he was very receptive, to the best of my knowledge. Let me say that many of my colleagues know that my relationship with the Secretary of the Interior is, at times, rocky, but nonetheless I respect the fact that he came in person to Grand Junction, I respect the fact that he had a forum where people in the community could ask him, why do you want to expand this monument? What is broken out there that needs to be fixed? I appreciate the fact that the Secretary, in meetings with myself, in meetings with local people, community leaders, people that were just interested in the community, expressed a period of time that he would allow to go by before he actually implemented an expansion of that monument. In other words, what the Secretary said was, if you as a community can put together a better proposal than expansion of the monument, I will give you an opportunity to do that. You sell me on the proposal. You convince me that this proposal is better than what I am doing, and I do not have pride of authorship, the Secretary says. He says, I am willing to look at what you have to offer. That was a challenge that we accepted wholeheartedly. But we had a number of different issues to deal with, and let us go through a few of those issues. First of all, let me explain the geography. We already know from my earlier comments that the City of Grand Junction is here. We know that we have the Colorado National Monument up in this area. Let us start down here in these white areas. This is the Mesa of which I spoke. By the way, we have wonderful herds of elk up there, lots and lots and thousands of acres of Aspen trees. I mean it is a very lush type of setting. Very green, heavy snow in the winter, a wonderful place. But these white spots, this is the private property. Mr. Speaker, what is critical up here is that the majority of this property is owned currently by a handful of ranchers. These ranchers are not the kind of ranchers who we would call gentleman or gentlewoman ranchers who really are not ranchers, they just own the property and fly in on a private jet every once in a while to see the property; these are people who have worked those ranches, in some cases like the Gore family or the King family, who have been up there for generations. But the viability of their ranches as a result of the fluctuating cattle market is in question. The only way that these ranches can continue to operate as ranches, thus reserving the open space that all of us enjoy, that we want to preserve up on that Mesa; we do not want that to go into a housing subdivision or into a commercial retail shopping center. But in order to preserve it, these ranches have to continue to be viable as ranching operations. If they cannot continue their viability as ranching operations, the only logical option remaining is for them to subdivide the ranch into 35-acre ranchettes. By the way, it would be nice to own some land up in this area. It would be beautiful. A lot of people, they would not have any trouble, those ranchers would not have any trouble; in fact, they would probably have to put an auction up or have people draw out names of a hat to see who got to buy one of the 35-acre parcels up there on top of the Mesa. So when we entered the Colorado Canyon proposal, when we began to put this together, one of our primary goals was to protect the ranching community. Some of the people who are activists in the environmental community agreed with this. They understood our goal here is one, to preserve the character of the ranch; and two, to avoid putting in subdivisions and, instead, holding open space. But as we began to study the problem with the Warren Gore family, and Warren himself was very dedicated to this, he spent a lot of time with us, and I thank Warren when I see him back in Grand Junction on a regular basis. But I say to my colleagues, what we found when we began to study what was going on up here and how we keep these ranches viable, we discovered that a couple of the ranches have grazing permits in this wilderness study area, what we call the Black Ridge Canyon Wilderness Study Area. Now, what is a wilderness study area? A wilderness study area is an area that for all practical purposes is treated as if it is a wilderness, and a wilderness is the most restrictive designation that a government can give a piece of property. Mr. Speaker, just for a moment, let us talk about designations that the government can give to property. The government is a landowner. Imagine the government as the largest ranch owner in the United States and they have a fiduciary duty to manage that land, just like my colleagues would manage their own land as a rancher or as a homeowner, or if one owned any kind of property, they manage it. The government, obviously, wants to have a number of different options, a number of different management tools under which to manage this land, and they have many, many, many, many, many tools. They have national parks, national monument areas, special areas, wilderness and national conservation areas. There is area after area that allows flexibility, various elements of flexibility, allows various elements or input from the local community, allows various types of activities. For example, Lake Powell is managed much differently than a lake on top of the Flattop wilderness area. All of this range of management tools spans a spectrum. At this end of the spectrum, which thank goodness we do not have much of anymore, is just kind of a free-for- all, let anybody can go in and homestead or do anything they want on Federal land. Those days are long gone. But at this end of the spectrum, the one tool that is the most restrictive tool that should be used only with extreme caution is called the Wilderness. Wilderness designation, after it is put in place, no longer allows local input, takes no State input, takes no congressional input, with the one exception that Congress can overturn the wilderness area, which politically, obviously, would never happen, so it is the one tool out there that locks itself out of flexibility. It is locked forever politically and, in reality, it is locked in forever. Now, that is okay under appropriate circumstances. But while we study whether or not, because it is such a dramatic step to put land into this Wilderness designation, we study the area first, to make sure that we are making the right decision, because every one of my colleagues on this floor understands that once we put it into Wilderness, we will never take it out of Wilderness. So before we do it, we need to be sure we know what we are doing. It is kind of a fundamental, basic requirement. So what we do is we put it into what we call a study area. Let us study it. Let us look at all of the environmental factors, the ecosystems, what are the roads, et cetera, et cetera, before we put it into Wilderness. That is exactly what this area is right here, it is a Wilderness Study Area. In that Wilderness Study Area, now going back to my point about keeping these ranches viable so that we can keep this wide space as open space, which is what we desire to do in our community, in order to continue to allow these ranches to be viable, our group came to the conclusion that we have to protect these grazing permits. Now, many of us have heard through propaganda, frankly, that grazing is bad, and every cattle rancher out there is bad. That is about the most irresponsible statement I have ever heard. There are a lot of responsible ranching families and they have been there for a heck of a long time out there in Colorado, in Wyoming, in Utah and in the west, and there is a lot here in the east, farming and ranching families. I will tell my colleagues, 99 out of 100 times we will find that they are quality people. Frankly, they live the kind of life many of us dream of living. They are good, solid people and they have every right to exist. These grazing permits, these are permits that have been handled very responsibly. These are grazing permits of which the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the management of these permits, has no complaint. The relationship between the Bureau of Land Management and the Warren Gore family, or the Doug King family, or some of these other families, is an excellent relationship. In other words, we do not have anything broken up there. So the first thing that our community decided was, as a community, we can support the continuation of grazing in this Wilderness Study Area. So as a community, we want that as an element of the Colorado Canyon bill. Now, the next issue that we looked at, and again, taking a look here, what we have, this mark right here is the I-70 Interstate. This is the Utah-Colorado border. This is going to be very important, because as we can see, our Wilderness Study Area down here comes into Utah. So the other thing that the group wanted to decide was look, we need to correspond with our good neighbors to the west, the State of Utah. By the way, Utah is a great State, the second-best State I guess in the union, but I will say all kidding aside, we have an excellent delegation representing the State of Utah. So our community felt that we should communicate and work with the delegation out of Utah to see what we could do with this Wilderness Study Area. I will tell my colleagues, the cooperation from the Utah delegation has been excellent. And they have said, hey, we have an idea. We think we can incorporate this area into the Colorado Canyon bill, and they have done exactly that, with an alternative. So, once again, our community is able to seek and accept cooperation. This time, we cross State boundaries. Here, we cross the traditional boundary of private and public lands. Here we cross the boundary of State borders. Now, we go up here. This highway right here is Interstate 70. It is the highway which goes across the State of Colorado, now, remember, right here, against the Utah border. On this side of I-70 we have an area called Rabbit Valley. Once again, we need to focus on what is happening in Rabbit Valley. Rabbit Valley is not in the Wilderness Study Area, but Rabbit Valley has quickly become a very, very popular attraction for mountain bikers, for horseback riders, for people who want to go down to the river and fish, for people who want to hike, for people who want to observe wildlife, for people who just want to go out and have a picnic with their families. It has become a recreational area of many uses. I can tell my colleagues that most of the people out there, by far, have used the area responsibly. We have not had great abuses out here in the Rabbit Valley. However, we have had increased activity, and the activity is reaching the capacity, it has reached the point where we need some management. We need to coordinate the activity so that we do not overuse the land, so that we do not overcapacitate the land. Now, some people would say to us, the best way to do it is kick the users off the land. No more horseback rides, forget the mountain bike riding, which is probably the most popular use out here in Rabbit Valley; tell the hikers they cannot hike anymore; tell the families that want to have picnics not to come and have picnics anymore. These are public lands and we want them off the public lands. That is not a viable answer. The people in our community which, by the way, again included the environmental community, the business community, the chamber community, our county commissioners of Mesa County who have done an excellent job, our city council of the City of Grand Junction, our 2 elected State representatives, our State Senator, all of these people in the community have come together to make this thing work, and we have decided as a group, hey, let us protect these uses. How do we begin to manage the land? How do we make sure we have not overcapacitated? So we decided, let us put in what is called a National Conservation Area, which allows us to protect the land, but at the same time preserves the multiple use concept, the right for multiple uses, many uses on the land. By the way, in Colorado and in the west, whenever one enters a forest or Federal lands in the west, when I grew up, for example, you are now entering the White River National Forest, a land of many uses. So by community cooperation, by the designation of a National Conservation Area in our Colorado Canyon bill, we were able to preserve or put this as a National Conservation Area, so it would include all of this area, not just north of I-70, but south of it as well, to the river. The river. Let us talk about Colorado water. The district, the third congressional district, as I mentioned, 80 percent of the State's water comes out of there. This is an area, this district, that part of the Colorado, that district is an area of immense water resources. Mr. Speaker, water is very sensitive. It has been said that the lifeblood in Colorado is not blood, it is water, and there have been many battles fought over water in Colorado and in the west. And here water is a critical element because this is the last few miles of the Colorado River, called the Mighty River, before it crosses the State boundary. It is a critical water resource for the people of the State of Colorado. Colorado, by the way, just for my colleagues' interest, is the only State in the Continental United States where all of our water flows out. We have no free-flowing water that comes into Colorado for our use. So water is a high sensitivity of which we must observe. So, of course, with the committee, we decide what should we do about the water. Now, water is a critical resource, and as far as I was concerned, when we put this Colorado Canyons bill together, the water was simply nonnegotiable. It is my duty, as a representative of the State of Colorado, to stand, as long as I stand, on behalf of water in Colorado. Water is a critical element, as I said earlier. It all goes out. We have no water that comes in. And, frankly, a lot of the States where my colleagues reside would like to get their hands on that Colorado water. It is a wonderful resource. So we have an obligation to protect that water. But here we have the Colorado River going right to the center, so to speak, right through the center of the area that we want to encompass in the Colorado Canyons bill. What do we do about it? We brought the community together. We brought in experts. We called people like my good friend, and one of the leading experts of water in Colorado, Chris Treese of the Colorado Water Conservancy District; we called Greg Walcher, the former head of Club 20, who now heads the Department of Natural Resources for the State of Colorado; we called Tim Pollard of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources; and we asked the governor of the State of Colorado, Governor Bill Owens, who has long been a strong supporter of water in Colorado and a strong supporter of the western slope, to come in and as a team give us water expertise. Because, frankly, what we had was, we had some people in the environmental community who wanted to include the Colorado River in either the wilderness area or in the national conservation area. And, on the other hand, we had myself, and I said, no, the water is simply nonnegotiable. We will not allow this Colorado River to go into a wilderness area and be overlapped by a wilderness area or be overlapped by a national conservation area for one simple reason: We do not understand what the unintended consequences of putting this river, especially the last 15 miles before it crosses the State border, we do not understand what the future consequences of that will be. And when we deal with water in Colorado, we do not put some kind of imposition on water or some kind of legislation dealing with water unless we have a pretty darn clear understanding of what the consequences of that designation will be, because water is too valuable. So we brought in the experts. I sat down with the Secretary of Interior, and he was very good. We had good sessions. We had good negotiations with the Department of the Interior. And the result was just like the result that we had with the grazing permits up here on top and the ranchers; just like the result we had with the users of the Rabbit Valley. We were able to reach a consensus and we kept the Colorado River out. Now, the Department of the Interior did not have any intention of trying to secure through some covert action water rights. I took them on their word. But what they did not want is they did not want development along the river shores. They did not want a coal mine down here, for example. They did not want somebody setting up some kind of an excavation gravel pit here on the river for some reason. And we agreed with them on that. It is not my intent to have any kind of use like that on those river banks. For those of my colleagues who will ever get the opportunity, and it is really not just an opportunity, it is a privilege, to go down that river on a raft, they will see why it is certainly not an appropriate spot for any kind of development like that. So we were able to come together. We met my fundamental requirement, and that is that the Colorado River was nonnegotiable; that the Colorado water belonged to the people of the State of Colorado, and that the Colorado water should be preserved in the future for the people of the State of Colorado. We met that requirement and at the same time we met the Interior Department and Bruce Babbitt's requirement or desire that we not have mining exploration or any type of development along that line on the river banks. So we were able to come to a resolution on the river. What was happening was the package was coming together, and this was in a very short period of time. We also had a number of other people; Stan Broome, with Club 20, who came in and helped us put it together at the end. We had, of course, the city councils. As I mentioned, the city councils of Grand Junction and Fruita came in. Fruita has their reservoir over here. Fruita has a pipeline that brings out water up here off the Glade Park area down to their community. Fruita would be about right over here in this area. And they came together and cooperated with us. Palisade; Clifton. We had a very unified effort out there in Colorado. We had the Auberts, the Albert ranch out here, they came in and helped us with some of the other issues. This negotiation went back and forth with the Department of the Interior. And I can tell my colleagues that we also had lots of cooperation from not only just the Utah delegation but also the Colorado delegation. And when this bill went for its first hearing in front of the Natural Resources Committee, we had the chairman, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Hansen), who bent over backwards to help us out. And the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon), whose district borders, who said why not go ahead and amend it so we can put together something on the Utah side. They care about that area on the Utah side. That delegation wanted the kind of protection that we could do. So what do we do now with this wilderness study area? That is the final segment. How do we put this bill together by addressing the wilderness study area? Once again, we bring our community together. Once again we brought people like Jeff Widen out of Durango, Colorado, who I think is one of the most balanced, level-headed environmental activists in the State, and we sat down and said how can we do this. What conclusion did we come to? We came to a conclusion that said let us put it into wilderness. We have studied this area; we know this area has many of the characteristics of wilderness, so let us go ahead and put it into wilderness. And not only that, the State of Utah, the delegation from Utah, who on many occasions unfairly, just like us in Colorado, are unfairly attacked by some people who claim to own the entire environmental agenda, these people are the ones who stepped forward and said let us go ahead, this probably would make sense, let us convert this wilderness study area right here in Utah and let us keep it molded together and let us convert this to a wilderness area. We have a package. We have got a package. We have got a package that makes sense, and that package will be heard tomorrow, and that package will pass the U.S. House of Representatives and it will pass with bipartisan support. It will pass with strong support from the Colorado delegation. The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) is a sponsor on the bill. The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall), Democrat on the other side, has worked with us. He and his staff have worked with my staff. And by the way, my staff has done yeomen's work on this bill. They have worked together to make this thing come together. Other colleagues in the delegation, the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer), have all come together to put this together, to mold it and to have a bill that is going to work. And it will pass the Senate as well. I want my colleagues to know that this is how in the west, when we have public lands, this is how we ought to work as a team. This is how a community ought to be able to offer some input. We have had a couple of colleagues on the House floor here, for example, who have gone out and asked for a wilderness corridor all the way from Canada to Mexico. And with due respect to my colleagues, I am not sure they have ever been up there. I am not sure they understand the consequences. We have another group of people out in Colorado who went out, the National Wildlife Federation, they had secret meetings and they went out and decided, well let us take the northwestern part of the third Congressional District of Colorado, and let us go ahead and go to the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Babbitt, and let us have him expand the monument up there. Who cares about community input; we do not need community input. And they did not seek any community input. And, guess what. The proposal they have come up with is faulty. Why? Because they did not do what our community in western Colorado did. They did not build their bill based on a community coalition, on community effort, on community input. We brought in the wildlife experts. And, by the way, the division of wildlife helped us a great deal out here in this area right here, the light purple area there. We brought in our county commissioners. We brought in our elected officials. We brought in our leading citizens in our community. We brought in regular citizens who did not hold offices. We brought in our ranchers. We brought in our rafters, and our mountain bikers, our horseback riders, and we brought in our hikers and families. And it works. So my message tonight really is twofold: Number one, let the local communities out in the west work on solving these problems. Listen to the input of the people who live the life of the west. Listen to them when making decisions back here in Washington, D.C. regarding public lands. They have something to say. Listen to them. Let people in the west be a major part of the decision of how we manage lands in the west. And, number two, for those groups that decide that they know better, for those people who think they should avoid community involvement, for those people who want to make an end run around and put designations on the people of the west without input, without guidance from people in the west, they are making a big mistake and they are making a mistake that, even dealing in good faith, has consequences which they cannot imagine. We cannot allow that to happen. This is the way, in my opinion, to proceed in the west. Just like the Colorado Canyons bill, this is how we succeed. This is how we build a bipartisan effort. And this will succeed. Now, on the subject of the Colorado Canyons bill, for those of my colleagues that are interested, we are going to have it in committee tomorrow. I have talked with our majority leader, who also has been very cooperative, obviously the leader of the House has, about putting it on suspension. We should have it next week on the House floor. So for those of my colleagues who are interested, they are welcome to attend the committee meeting. In my final few minutes, leaving the Colorado Canyons bill and leaving the area and the subject of the designations in the northwestern part of the State, let me talk and kind of go into a little more detail about some points I referenced earlier, and that is the difference between the western United States and the eastern United States. And the best way to do that is to show my colleagues that there is a dramatic difference, as demonstrated by this map. Take a close look at this map of the United States. We can see that there is a distinct difference out here. This is all colored in the west. And right here, as I point out, this is the State of Colorado, at the end of the pointer. This is the line, roughly the line of the third Congressional District. That is the district I represent, which, as I mentioned earlier, geographically is larger than the entire State of Florida. And you will note from our eastern boundary clear to the Atlantic Ocean, all of this land out here, very little Federal ownership. You can see it is represented here. We have a little heavier in the Appalachians. We have the Everglades down here, some up here in the northeast. But, basically, some of these States are very, very sparse as far as any government lands. But now look at the border and come West and you will see the huge amounts of government land. Most of the public lands in this country are not diversified around the country. In fact, they are a conglomerate in the Western States. And so, when people in the East talk about public lands, we in the West urge them to take a very careful look at what the life is like. Many of our communities, if you have ever been to Aspen, if you have ever been to Vale, if you have ever been to Grand Junction, if you have been to Salt Lake, if you have ever been to Wyoming, you are surrounded by public land. Now, how did that happen? What is the history of public lands? It is really quite simple. In the early days of the country when we were trying to settle, remember, our country basically existed over here on the eastern coast in those colonial days and early days of the 1800s up to about 1840, that is primarily right in there. And then our country began to make land acquisitions. But back then, in the early days, having a deed to a piece of property did not matter much. What really mattered was possession of the property. That is where, for example, the saying ``possession is nine-tenths of the law'' that is where that saying came from. We needed to possess this property and somehow our leaders in Washington, D.C., needed to encourage the people who lived in relative comfort here on the eastern coast, they needed to encourage these citizens to help us settle the West to help us get possession of these States. And what is the best way to encourage people to move out of the comfort of their homes into the West, where, by the way, your average life span was probably 30 years or so, to give them land. The American dream is to own your own piece of property. Every American dreams of owning a home. Americans back then, 98 percent of our population was in the farming or agricultural community. They dreamed of having a ranch or a farm of their own. And so the Government said, hey, the way to get people to move from the eastern coast into these new lands that we have so we possess them so another country does not take them from us is to give them land, called the Homestead Act, called homestaking. What was that all about? They go out and they work the land and they get 160 acres. But guess what happened? Once they hit this area right here where you see the big blocks, they discovered out here in Kansas or even in eastern Colorado or Ohio or Mississippi or Missouri or Louisiana, some of these other States, 160 acres can support a family. But when they hit the Rocky Mountains, they found out 160 acres does not even feed a cow. So they went back to their think tank in Washington, D.C., and said, hey, our attempt to settle the West works very or pretty well until we get out here. What to we do? Somebody came uprise the idea, well, instead of giving them a homestead of 160 acres or 320, let us give them the equivalent of, say, 3,000 acres. The people thought about it and they said, that is too much politically. We cannot give 3,000 acres to every citizen that goes out in the Rocky Mountains. So then came up the idea, hey, as a formality, why do we not, the Government in Washington, D.C., instead of having to give away so much land to support just one family, why do we not as a formality just continue to hold the title to the land and allow the people to use the land. That is where the birth of what is called multiple use came. Multiple use means it is a land of many uses. And our lands out here have many uses. We have uses on environment, we have uses of ranching, farming. All of our highways come under federal lands. Our waters is stored upon, it comes across or originates on federal lands. As I said, our cellular telephones, the towers, most of those are located on public lands. When we go through the mountains and you see those lights up on the top of the mountain, the radio tower, that is how we get our communication. All of our trucks, our traffic, our cattle, We use the public lands. We have a responsibility to use them in a responsible fashion. It is a duty of ours. And I think overall we have exercised it pretty well. Now, there is a heavy propaganda effect by people who feel no pain, they feel no pain if they do not live in the public lands to kick us off the public lands or to restrict the multiple use or to convince the people out here who are not acquainted with the federal lands that those of us who live in the federal lands are abusing the federal lands, that we are clear-cutting all the forests, that we are putting up coal mines, that our ski areas are abusive, that our mountain bikers have ridden too many trails, that our horses are creating too much disturbance to the wildlife, that our rafters have taken over the rivers and demolished the ecosystem of the rivers. It is not true. Clearly, we have advanced use. Clearly there are more people who are enjoying the outdoors of the Rocky Mountains than ever before in our history. Obviously, we have to manage it and we have to manage it with the preservation of land in mind. But we also have to manage it without a built-in anti-human bias. The concept of multiple use is absolutely essential for the survival of the people in the Rocky Mountains in the West. If you take away that concept of multiple use in the West, you will devastate, and that is not an overestimation, I am not exaggerating here, you take away the concept of multiple use, you do what some of these more radical environmental organizations want to do, for example, the National Sierra Club wants to drain Lake Powell, which has more shoreline than the entire Pacific West Coast, now they have announced they want to drain Flaming Gorge, you allow some of these organizations, which, ironically, are all located up here in the East, you allow them to pursue their aggressive agenda of eliminating and pushing people off these public lands and look at what you are doing to about half of the country. It is easy if you do not live in these public lands, if you live out here somewhere, it is easy for you to say because you feel no pain, it is easy, my colleagues, for you to agree with policies that, for example, have broad sweeps of taking people off the lands and designating areas that are not allowed or have a built-in anti-human bias to it. What I urge my colleagues tonight and the reason I bring up multiple use is the same reason I bring up water. In the West it is essential for our survival. In the East you have got to figure out how to get rid of your water. In the West we have got to figure out how to preserve it, how to conserve it, how to store it. Water storage is critical. Out in the West, if we are not allowed to use the public lands and use them with the responsibility of being diligent in our use, of making sure that we observe the rules of preservation but being able, nonetheless, to still use them is absolutely essentially for our preservation here in the West. And so, my colleagues, before you cast a vote dealing with issues in the West, try and get a feeling of our pain, try and understand what the consequences, or even more dangerously, what the unintended consequences of your action will be for the people of the West. Remember, the United States does not start here on the eastern border of the Third Congressional District and run to the Atlantic Ocean. The United States is one country and we have an obligation in the West to understand the problems and the issues of people in the East. And the people in the East we feel have an obligation to understand the issues in the West, which include the water issues, which include the concept of multiple use, which include the concept of involving a community from the very basic level up before you draft legislation expanding a monument like we have done on the Colorado canyons. As a team, we can move this country continually in a positive direction. And as a team, the East and the West can mold together. But it will only mold together, my colleagues, if those of you in the East have a good understanding of our lives and what are necessary to preserve our lives in the West.

Mr. McINNIS. I yield to the gentleman from Guam.

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to talk about a number of subjects but before I do, first of all, I want to address the preceding speaker, the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood). I thought his comments were excellent. I would like to note that my father, who now lives in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, fought off Guam when he was 18 or 19 years old, and we are proud of him for that. Three times a week, I guess, they would fly off to bomb Japan. He is one who I wish I would have known the gentleman was making his comments this evening. I would have had my father tune in. He would have enjoyed the gentleman's comments.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is at this time that I would like to pay tribute to Milt Kanzaki for his dedicated service during World War II with the U.S. Army. Milt's bravery and courage during the war deserve the recognition and praise of this body. Milt fought with the renowned 442nd Regimental Combat Team during his participation in the war. The 442nd was an exemplary regiment composed of Nisei (Japanese-American citizens) that were drafted into service after their families had been wrongfully placed into Japanese relocation camps. Even in the face of this blatant transgression by the American government, these soldiers discarded any ill will toward America and fought with a go for broke demeanor, becoming one of the most decorated units in American military history. Milt was drafted into service during 1944 and joined the 442nd the following year. During his time in the war, Milt fought in the Northern Apennines-Po Valley campaign as well as the melee at Mount Belvedere. In was during these infamous battles that Milt earned himself a combat infantry badge, one of 18,143 decorations that were awarded to the 442nd. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and honor to salute Milt and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. His story and that of the 442nd is truly heroic and deserves this body's recognition. Milt, thank you for your dedicated service to America. We are all very proud of you!

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I have just come back from the district, and I spent my entire weekend traveling throughout the district. Interestingly, the subject that came up time and time again were the death taxes. So this evening I am going to talk a little about taxes. I think it is a good forum for us to discuss really four basic taxes, and so I am going to address those with my colleagues here this evening. The first, of course, is the death tax. I will go into some detail about what that exactly encompasses and why it is so punitive on the citizens of this country; why it is an unjust tax; why there is no justification for the death tax in our tax system; what it does to open space and to the preservation of open space in districts such as mine, the Third Congressional District of the State of Colorado. Then I will move on and talk about the capital gains tax reduction that the Republicans put into place and what capital gains means as far as creation of capital and why it is critical for the economic well- being of our country. From there, I will move on to talk a little about the marriage penalty. To the best of my knowledge, only in the United States of America, only in the United States of America do we tax couples because they are married. This, by the way, is the leading country in the world which advocates family. We advocate marriage. We want people to get together and tie that bond, the very basic entity of the family foundation which has made this country great. But Uncle Sam comes along, not to be left out of the game, and puts a tax on it. We will talk a little about that. Finally, I also want to talk about our homes. Every homeowner, every one of our constituents, colleagues, who are homeowners out there in this fine country of ours, we need to talk about what happens when they sell that home for a profit; what used to happen and what now happens as a result of the Republican leadership. And, frankly, that was a bipartisan vote, but it is a Republican bill; and we will discuss what it did to those homeowners and how it helps homeowners in this country. It has some bearing for every one of my colleagues in this Chamber because the majority of our constituents own homes. And in these good economic times, a lot of our constituents have the opportunity to sell their homes; or if they sell their home, they will sell it for a profit. But first of all let us begin with the tax that I think is without justification, a tax which was initiated as a vendetta, as a way to get even with the wealthy families, the families who met success in America: the Fords, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers. Back then the feeling was, how dare those people make that much money; we have to figure out a way, without working for it, to take the wealth from them and transfer it to us, the Government, in Washington, D.C. What better approach than to put a tax on them on the day they die. The day that person dies, Uncle Sam will be at the door, right behind the mortician, except that Uncle Sam gets to collect before the mortician, by the way, on the death tax. So we will talk a little about what this death tax means; how it impacts things in the environment, like open space in Colorado; how it devastates families who were brought up and who lived the American Dream; how everyone's dream, those my age, is to leave something for the generation behind them, and how that dream has been dashed; what the impact is for the generation ahead of me that wanted to leave something for this generation to get kind of a head start, how it has been demolished in many cases; and what the impact is of death tax transferring, spinning money right out of the community to be transferred, without work, without value, simply transferred from our local community to the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. under the death tax. One of the best articles I have read is out of a newspaper which I read on a regular basis, the Wall Street Journal. Excellent editorials, by the way, colleagues. I would urge all my colleagues to read those. It was interesting to me that the TV talk host, Oprah Winfrey, is quoted as saying, ``I think it is irritating that once I die 55 percent of my money goes to the government of the United States.'' Why is that irritating? Because that individual may have already paid nearly 50 percent. What Oprah is referring to is that the money being taxed upon that person's death, if that estate qualifies, is property upon which that individual may have already paid taxes on. It is not money that was put away in some little chuckhole somewhere and not had taxes paid on it. It is money, in many cases, that has been taxed not only once, but twice and sometimes three times. Let me go on with her quote: ``When you leave a house or money to people, then they're taxed at 55 percent. So you've got to leave them enough so once they're taxed they still have some money.'' When we talk about taxes in a country, we have to look around the world. It is, after all, America that is the symbol of free enterprise. It is the dream in America that a person can start out and if they can figure out a better mousetrap, a better way of doing things, a product that will benefit the people, give value to the people, then that person is rewarded the fruits of their labor. That is the American concept. Look at other countries. Look at some of the countries that have the reputations for high taxes in this world. Look at Switzerland. Not only Switzerland, but look at Germany, or look at Belgium. Even their death taxes are lower than the United States. Only one country that I can find in research, as cited by the Wall Street Journal article, Japan, has a higher rate than the United States. Now, as my colleagues know, the administration, the President and the Vice President, as a team, are prepared to veto the elimination of the death tax. The U.S. House, by a bipartisan vote, meaning Democrats and Republicans, supported the Republican bill to eliminate the death tax. The Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, adopted the Senate bill, the Republican Senate bill, to eliminate the death tax. Yet this bipartisan effort will be vetoed in the next few days by the President and Vice President team. A lot of us hoped, however, that they would just leave it alone. When we started this year, we were surprised when we got the President and Vice President's budget, which not only of course does not call for elimination of the death tax, it increases the death tax, and increases it by $9.5 billion. Today we are sending them a bill that will finally allow equity in regards to this, to eliminate it; but the President and the Vice President see fit to veto it. Now, some of my colleagues or their constituents out there may say, well, that does not impact me, the death tax is only for the wealthy. Interesting statistic I saw the other day. The American Association of General Contractors pointed out that a contractor, somebody who wants to go out and dig some dirt, who purchases the three basic tools necessary to move dirt, a bulldozer, a dump truck and a front-end loader, that contractor in America that buys a front-end loader, a bulldozer and a dump truck, their estate is now in the status that it will be faced with the death tax upon their death. Look, colleagues, this does not just apply to the wealthiest of Americans, this applies to a lot of Americans; and it applies to Americans who do not necessarily have high cash flow. This contractor who has a bulldozer, a dump truck, and a backhoe may have no cash flow, or their business is just breaking even, and upon the death of this contractor, the Federal Government comes in and they will crush that business because the only way that estate can pay that estate tax is to sell the bulldozer or sell the dump truck or sell the front- end loader. Now, how, as a contractor, when the business needs those three basic pieces of equipment, how can the business be operated with just two of the three? It cannot. The same thing applies to ranchers and farmers, in particular, in rural America. My State, for example: Colorado, the district I represent, the Third Congressional District of Colorado, geographically larger than the State of Florida, essentially all the mountains of Colorado. Do my colleagues understand what is happening to our ranching community out there because of this death tax? I wish the President's policy wonks and the Vice President's policy wonks would come out to Colorado and see what they are doing to open space. They are forcing it to go into 35-acre ranchettes because the family, who is part of a ranching operation, does not have heavy cash flow. In some cases, not even positive cash flow. When the head of the family passes away and the estate is activated for the death tax, what choice do they have? It is like the contractor who has to sell one of the three or maybe two of the three pieces of equipment. It demolishes it. The contractor's business is gone. And that is what is happening to ranches in Colorado. Yet our President and Vice President decided that it was appropriate not only to have a death tax imposed upon all of us but to increase the death tax this year in their budget by $9.5 billion. Let us go on with this article. I think it is very interesting. ``Then there are casualties,'' speaking about the death tax, again from the Wall Street Journal, July 29, 1999, ``then there are casualties in small business, particularly family businesses. Hardest hit are owners of asset-rich enterprises and areas like farming or timber that, while growing, may not throw off much cash. In theory, again, the law provides a break for these families. However, the reality is that prohibitive estate taxes force the heirs to dismantle their legacy to pay the taxes on it.'' That is what is happening to Colorado ranches. That is what is happening to ranches all around this country. Let me tell you, the very wealthiest people in this country are the ones that can afford the legions of attorneys and accountants to figure out how to preserve that, but the middle class in America who does not have the money to acquire the attorneys and the CPAs for the protection of that estate are suffering. Why should they suffer? It is one thing, we all have a tax burden. The citizens of this country acknowledge and know that we have to pay our fair share in taxes and the people who acquire these estates under the umbrella of the American dream they know they have to pay taxes and they pay them as they acquire their property. But then at the end, for the United States Government to step in through the door of death and say now that you have died it has become a taxable event, we all know what are taxable events. If you buy something at the store, you pay, it is a taxable event. If you buy a car, it is taxed, it is a taxable event. You get a license plate, it is a taxable event. But the U.S. Government and the President and Vice President think that the policy should be that when you die, it is an event so remarkable that it should be taxed, so remarkable that it should be taxed, regardless of the impacts of what that tax does. I have heard and I have read some editorials lately, not many, most of the editorials I read support doing away with the death tax, but I read a couple that say, hey, what are you talking about? All you are doing is hitting the rich people. How wrong those people are. Interestingly, one of those articles I saw in the Wall Street Journal, and it was not an editorial but it was a guest comment; and I thought to myself, I wonder if the author of that article had ever been outside of the boundaries of the Potomac River to the farmlands and to the ranchlands and to the small businesses in America and asked those people what is it going to be like when mom or dad dies and you have got to pay estate taxes? What kind of impact does it have on your community? Let us talk about that for a minute. What happens to the community? Some people as they write in these editorials think that the only impact is upon the family with whom the death occurred. My gosh, they need to open their eyes, my colleagues, because it goes much further than just the family that has the death. I will give my colleagues an example. In my district, I had a friend of mine who lived the American dream, who went out with soil in his hand and worked it and worked hard; and he was rewarded through life. He figured out a better mousetrap. He figured out how to build a better road. He knew how to work harder. He knew how to count his pennies. And, as a result, he got the fruits of his labor. Do you know what he did with the fruits of his labor, the money that he made? He made some money. Do you know what he did with it? He invested it in the community. He underwrote 75 percent of the local Episcopal church budget, 75 percent of it, every year. You could go to my buddy Joe and he would write the check. The United Way, the Cancer Society, the Lung Society, M.S., high school yearbook, you name it, Joe helped provide in that community. And it was money that Joe made but he kept in the community and it circulated. Joe also gave people jobs. He hired people to work in his construction company. He hired people to help him on his land. And those people then took their money home to their families in that community. That money was important to that community. And what happened when Joe died? Guess who comes in from Washington, D.C., as if they reserved a private jet just to fly into this small community in Colorado to go and smile over the deceased because it is a taxable event. They came into that community and they hit his estate, when you combine it with capital gains at a rate in excess of 80 percent, 80 cents on every dollar, and by the way, every dollar that had already been taxed at the time it was accumulated, any interest or investment or return since then was taxed, 80 percent on every dollar. Do you know what happened to the 57 percent of the local Episcopal church budget that was underwritten? Gone overnight. Do you know what happened to your major contributions, to your charities and the community, the United Way, the Cancer Society, Lung Society? Gone overnight. Do you know what happened to jobs in that community that were there as a result of the investments that he made in that community? Gone overnight. And yet our President and our Vice President are willing to stand down there and veto the elimination of this unjustified death tax. It is not fair. I have a wonderful little niece. She is 2 years old. She has a way of crossing her arms and looking you in the eye and she says, ``it's not fair.'' That is exactly what is happening here. How can you justify in any regard other than the fact that you want to be vindictive against people who have been successful in our society, how can you justify a taxable event upon their death? How can you look at the surviving members of their family or how can we look at the young people, look at the 20-some-year-olds in this country who are out there working 60 and 70 hours a week, who have the energy that we all my age remember well, the opportunity to be something, the opportunity to make it your own way, you want it your way, make it your way, the American free enterprise system, only to know that your goal, and it was a goal I have had ever since my wife and I had our first child, it was a mutual goal, and that is we dedicated ourselves a certain portion of the hard-earned money that we made, and we are not wealthy, but the hard-earned money we made we dedicated a portion of that because we wanted the next generation to maybe have a home or maybe our son and daughter who wants to be a contractor and go out and buy those three basic pieces of equipment, a backhoe, a dump truck and a bulldozer. Whoever dreamed when we were young and those were the days, whoever dreamed when those were the days that it would be the United States Government that, upon your death, would call it a taxable event and come in and take away the dreams that you and your spouse have had for a long time, take away the prosperity that a community enjoys? Where does that money go? It spends right out of your community, right out of your family, right out of your estate. It spends East where and it comes to Washington, D.C., to be redistributed by the Government. Is it fair? Of course it is not fair. Let me go on. I am particularly addressing right now ethnic minority groups. It is worth noting that a good share of those people who are vulnerable are owned by two groups whom high tax leftists claim to protect, women and minorities. A survey of black-owned businesses by Kenneshaw State College in Georgia found six in ten firms by women and minorities, six in ten firms reported that the estate tax makes the survival of their business after the current generation significantly more difficult or impossible. Close to a third of those people said their heirs would have to sell their businesses just to pay the taxes. Let me read a few letters that I have gotten in my office that are right on point when we talk about the impact that happens by this Government upon its own people. Colleagues, it is happening to our constituents simply because they die and simply because they have lived the American dream and they have had success. Now, look, if you want to be vindictive, if you are against people being successful, then I guess you are satisfied with this death tax. And apparently that is perhaps the policy of the White House, because they are going to veto a bipartisan bill, Democrat and Republican. Although it is a Republican bill, the Democrats voted for it, some of them; and in the Senate Republican bill, some Democrats voted for it. The President still chooses to veto it. This gentleman is named Mr. Roberts. ``My family has ranched in northern Colorado for 125 years. My sons are the sixth generation to work this land. We want to continue, but the Internal Revenue Service is forcing almost all ranchers and many farmers out of business. The problem is the death tax. The demand for our land is very high, and 35- acre ranchettes are selling in this area for as high as $4,500 per acre. We have many thousands of acres. We want to keep it as open space, but the United States Government is making it impossible because we will have to pay 55 percent of the valuation of that acreage upon my parents' death. ``Ranchers are barrel scrapping by these days, anyway. But since we want to save the ranch, we are in trouble. The family has been able to scrape up the death taxes as each generation dies up to now. This time I think we're done for. Our only other option is to give the ranch to a nonprofit organization. And they all want it. ``My dad is 90. We don't have much time left. We are one of only two or three ranchers left around this area. Most ranches have been subdivided. One of the last to go was a family that had been there as long as ours. When the old folks died, the kids borrowed money to pay the taxes. Soon they had to start selling cattle to pay the interest. When they ran out of cattle, their ranch was foreclosed on and is now being developed. The family now lives in a trailer near town, and the father works as a highway flagman. ``If you want to stop sprawl, you better ask the U.S. Government to get off the backs of family farms and ranches.'' The next letter, Ron Edwards: ``Dear Representative McInnis, I'm writing to bring to your attention an issue of utmost importance to me and my family, employees, and the businesses: elimination of the death tax. I urge you to support and pass the death tax repeal legislation this year. Family-owned businesses need relief from those death taxes now. We are celebrating 66 years in business.'' Now, that is the American dream. That is the American dream, Mr. Speaker, 66 years in business. Six generations in this letter, six generations on the same ranch. Do my colleagues want to be a part of the team that ruins those six generations? Do they want to be a part of the team that comes in here after 66 years of business? Let me continue. ``My grandfather, Vic Edwards, started with a fruit and vegetable farm in 1933 at our location in Colorado. The business grew into a grocery store and then a lawn and garden center. My father, Vic Edwards, is 80 years old, and he is in poor health. No business can remain competitive in a tax regime that imposes rates as high as 55 percent upon the death of the owner. Our tax law should encourage rather than discourage the perpetuation of these businesses.'' Let me repeat that. Our tax laws, Mr. Speaker, should encourage the continuity of these businesses, not discourage the continuity. This guy works in his family grocery store and that is what he is telling us, Mr. Speaker. He is saying we should encourage the continuity of these businesses, encourage them to go on, not destroy it. If you support that death tax, you are going to destroy a lot of these family businesses. Leonard Harris, first-generation owner of a food center in Chicago, Illinois. His store is one of less than 20 African-American-owned supermarket companies in the United States. Mr. Harris has said, my focus has been putting my earnings back into grow the business. For this reason, cash resources to pay the Federal death taxes based on the valuation, the way valuation is made, would force my family to sell the store in order to pay the IRS within 9 months of my death. Our yearly earnings would not cover the payment of this tax. I should know. I started my career as a certified public accountant. So here is an African American, first generation in business, taking the cash flow, the profits out of that business, putting it back into the business to create more business, to create capital, to create jobs, to create an economic solid block in a community. Now he is saying, ``Look, it isn't going to go beyond one generation if this government continues to put the death tax on us.'' Rich Newman, Sr. Our company was founded in 1917 by Rich Newman's father and uncle and currently operates 33 grocery stores in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa and provides jobs for 3,000 people. 3,000 people. When Rich's father passed away suddenly in 1969, the family was faced with a death tax of several hundred thousand dollars which by law was due within several months. The Newman family had to use all of the resources from the sale of the company's wholesale operations to pay the death tax bill. These proceeds could have been put to a better use by being reinvested in retail stores and new jobs. The sale of the wholesale side of the business provided the funds to pay the estate taxes. Now Mr. Newman, to preserve what is left of the business, has estimated over the years he has spent in excess of $600,000 just on accountants and CPAs to help him figure out how to pass that business on to the next generation without the death tax. Brookhart Building Centers in Grand Junction and Montrose, Colorado. Those are two thriving communities in my district out in Colorado. Last September the Brookhart Building Centers had to be sold in order to avoid paying the death tax. The owner said that it was the hardest decision the family had made in 52 years of business. And it was a decision that was not brought on by their failure because maybe they did not work hard enough. The decision to sell was not brought on because they did not have a good product to sell. It was not brought on because they could not service the community. It was not brought on by dissatisfaction of consumers. It was brought on by the Federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. which decided that they are going to tax this family upon the death and they are going to break that business apart. Watt said the current death taxes forced his father to make the sale prior to his father's death in order to protect our family. Can you believe that? We have a constituent, colleagues, talking about in order to protect our family from the government, in order to protect our family from a death tax, from a taxable event which was put in in the early 1900s just as a vindictive tool to get at the Rockefellers and the Carnegies, in order to protect our family and our employees. Remember what I said about the community impact? To protect our employees, too, and our community from a forced liquidation upon the death of the father and the wife, Betty, the best thing now would be to sell the company. And it was sold. Let me conclude with one other article and then we will move on to some other taxes. But listen to this. I do not like reading from scripts. But this is an important one. I hope you have the patience to listen to this. I think it is very moving. I think it shows you exactly how punishing, how punitive the death tax is and how unfair and how unjustified they are and how the President and the Vice President of this country with their policy can not only veto the bill, bipartisan bill to get rid of it, the President and the Vice President have actually proposed raising the death tax by 9.5 billion in their budget they proposed. This came out of the Aspen Times. There are lots of tales to be told about the conversion of former ranches into luxury homes or golf courses throughout the valley. Sometimes it was a simple financial decision, a choice to take advantage of soaring development values in the face of plummeting cattle prices, but for other families the passing of a parent meant the passing of a way of life. Listen to that sentence, colleagues. But for other families, the simple death of a parent meant the death of a way of life. The death of a parent meant the death of a way of life for the whole family. We have been around a long time, said Dwight. The family roots are dug deep along Capital Creek Road in Old Snow Mass and for nearly a century, heritage and hard work were enough to sustain those who lived on our 13-acre stretch of land. But it all changed. Until Dwight's father's death, each generation, each generation in that 100 years, presided over a working cattle ranch which was both the lifeblood and the livelihood of the clan, the Monron clan. His later years were lean times for Dwight's father but the fate of this ranch was not at risk until the government came around to collect its due on the death of Dwight. The tax bill came to $750,000. And what it took to pay the bill was this. We had to sell half the ranch, the ability of the Monron cattle to migrate in the winter months in 10 years, until we were able to pay our final last installment. What those taxes took was also something very vital, the ability of the next generation to support their family by working the land that had been theirs for such a long, long time. So the government came in and not only took the money but they took away the future ability of this family to continue ranching operations. It is just like the contractor. If you come in and you have the three pieces of equipment, the bulldozer, the dump truck and the backhoe and you take one of those pieces of equipment away, you can no longer function as a construction operation. What those taxes have done to our family is exactly that. Now one of our heirs works full time as a mechanic, the son, works full time as a mechanic for the school district and then works on the ranch when he gets home at night. He doesn't mind the long hours he has to put in. What does get under his skin is the memory of how IRS agents overseeing his father's taxes either didn't recognize the devastation that was about to occur or didn't care. It was just pay us or we'll seize everything. If anything's left over, you can keep it, or if you can't make ends meet on what's left, you can hit the streets. He has no intention of selling the remaining 640 acres but he wonders if his daughters will be willing to go through what he has gone through just to keep the ranch intact. With only half of the land to graze and falling beef prices, the ranch itself is only making enough to cover its operating costs and annual property taxes. It is the day job at the school district that pays the doctor bills, the car insurance, the grocery bills and everything else. There has always been hope that things will change before his daughters have to make decisions. But he wonders if people really think about the permanent changes that take place when the ranch is sold. It's not just a loss to the family, it is a loss to the community. It is a loss to the people who work on that ranch. There are some movements in the right direction but are they moving quickly enough? Because once our land is sold to developers, it is gone forever. It will never again have the integrity of a ranch. That is what your estate, those death taxes are doing. Some of you out there, colleagues, who are supporters of the death tax and claim to be guardians of the environment, well, you are not doing it in rural America because in rural America you are costing us, you are forcing us to develop those communities. By now you should have drawn the conclusion, I hope, that the death tax is fundamentally flawed. There is no basis for it. There is no justification for it. The only reason really it came about were two reasons: One, vindictively to settle a score with the wealthy people. It was jealousy in my opinion that drove it. And, two, the government as usual looks for an easy way to take money without earning it and transfer it to somebody else who did not work for it. Remember that every time you give a dollar to somebody that is not working, you are taking it from somebody who is. Every debit has a credit, every credit has a debit. That is exactly what we are doing with this death tax. We ought to, every one of us to the person in these chambers, ought to stand up to the President and the Vice President of this country and say, sign the bill to eliminate the death tax, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President. Quit standing by and letting our small businesses, our family ranches and our family farms be destroyed. Quit standing by, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, with this policy and letting our communities, our minority communities who are now finally getting the opportunity, the fair opportunities that should have been given to them a long time ago only to find out now that the very government which espouses its push for affirmative action and equality and so on and on forth is the very one who steps in on the day of death and says, come here, we want the money, we want the money to transfer. Let us move on to another tax I want to visit with you about. This one you will feel good about. It is a big break if you own a home. There are a lot of young people out here today. Our country now has homeowners that I think probably are the youngest age in the history of our country, or certainly in recent years. I mean people in their 20's, early 20's are able to buy a home, and economically it is probably the largest investment most of those families will make during their lifetime. Let me show you what happened in the past if you sold that home for a profit. We will just take a couple of examples here. Let us say as an individual you have bought a home for $100,000 and over time you sold the home, let us say 10 years later you sold the home for $350,000. So your profit, and this applies to every homeowner in the country, your profit if you own a home was $250,000 and you were taxed on $250,000, although you could defer the tax by rolling it over into a home of greater or higher value or if you were over, I think, 62, you got a once-in-a-lifetime exemption I think of $125,000. We felt that this was punitive. Let me say to you, I am not up here to get in a partisan battle. But the Democrats, frankly, you could have gotten rid of that death tax a long time ago, and you could have done something when you held control for 40 something years on these home taxes. But I am proud to say you joined us, you joined the Republicans in doing away with this tax. In my opinion, this tax break on the profit of your home when you sold it is probably the biggest tax break that you have seen in our tax structure, I would guess in the last 15 years. How so? We changed the law completely. It is the Republicans' position that, sure we need to have taxes, we do not disagree with taxes. But we believe we are under a fiduciary duty to take the taxes that are necessary to give you the functions that you demand. But beyond that, we think you should have the tax back. The money in your pocket works a lot more effectively than the money back here. Take, for example, if you won the lottery and you won $2 million, do you think for one minute, any one of my colleagues out here, that you would take that $2 million and send it to the government in Washington, D.C. to invest? Of course you would not. Or even to distribute. Of course you would not. If you wanted to give it to the poor people, would you send your money to Washington to be distributed to the poor people? Of course not. Because of the inefficiencies. This is one of the inefficiencies we saw in the government. So what we did is we put in a tax bill. Let us take the same example. The individual, again, buys the house for $100,000, again sells the home for $350,000, realizing a profit of $250,000. Under our bill, which became law, it is the law today, this is not a hope, it is not a dream we are hoping for, it is here. The Republican tax break passed. Your taxes today, zero. The amount you were taxed on before, $250,000. What we have said today, and everyone out there who owns a home, listen up, colleagues. Any of you that own a home now under our tax law as a result of that Republican bill, and I am proud of it, I am proud as a Republican to say we did this, now as a result of that, you get to take the first $250,000 of net profit, not gross profit, of net profit from the sale of your home per person. So, remember, most homes are owned by individuals. In those cases, it is $500,000, the $250,000 per person doubled, $500,000, we get to take the first $500,000 of our net profit. I said net income, I meant net profit, I stand corrected, of your net profit; and we get to put it into your pocket taxfree. That is great. Mr. Speaker, that is a tremendous tax benefit that many, many people in this country do not realize; but, colleagues, every time we go back to our districts, we should tell homeowners, which are most of the people that we represent, we should tell them what an opportunity now exists out there for them. They are not going to be penalized when they sell their home at a profit up to $500,000. The benefit of what we did in this bill is it is renewable every 2 years. If we have a colleague outside of maybe Vail or Aspen, Colorado, where we have really escalating profits, or the Hamptons, most people are not going to make that kind of money every 2 years, there is maybe an exception here and there; but the reality of it is, this is a blue collar working family, middle income, lower income tax break of significant portions. I am very proud of that. Mr. Speaker, keep that in mind, any of my colleagues, any of our constituents that we hear, they are saying we are selling our home or we are getting ready to move or we may have some constituents that say to us, we are getting ready to buy a new house; and in a lot of those cases, they are also selling their old house. We ought to take just a moment and explain to our constituents what a great tax benefit they have ahead of them. In fact, they do not have to roll it over. It goes straight to their pocket. By the way, unless our constituent takes that money and digs a hole and puts it in the ground, that is the only exception, unless that happens, the money then will regurgitate in the community; they will take their money; they will put it in the bank. The bank will loan it out or they will take their money and build a bigger and better house, so we will have contractors and workers going. That money circulates. The beauty of this tax break, the big beauty of this tax break is it keeps the money in your community; that is one of my issues with the death taxes. The death tax, taxing death as an event takes the money from your local community and moves it east to Washington, D.C. This took money from your local community and moved it from your community east to Washington, D.C. This law that we have passed and if the President and Vice President will sign the repeal of the death tax, it will keep money in your community. It will be money that will be used for our local charities, not for the national ones. It will be money that will keep local people employed. It is money in your community. It spends in your community. It is worth it. Marriage Penalty Let me talk for a moment about something else, the marriage penalty. Can we believe it? I mean, can we really believe it that in the United States a country that prides itself upon encouragement of family, that talks about the great foundation, accurately talks about the great foundation of our country is family, and yet this government always is looking for a taxable event, always trying to figure out how to put another tax on us. They figured out well, we take them on death. Guess what else, there is another ceremony. Mr. Speaker, I think they look at ceremonies. There is a ceremony called a wedding. Let us go ahead and put a tax on a marriage. That certainly is a good way to espouse family relations; that certainly is a good way to encourage people to be married and living as a family unit. Our government actually penalizes people for being married. They tax them for being married. We have had a long time to change that. It has not changed. Again, I stand proud as a Republican. One of our priorities was to eliminate not just the death tax, not just give a break on the sale of your home, which is now a law, but also to go out to those people that are being taxed as a result of being married and say this is a mistake in policy. We are not above ourselves to admit that Washington sometime back made a mistake. Washington should have never taxed the marriages. Washington should not have a death tax. The House tax was excessive. Let us get rid of the marriage tax. I was surprised that we would have opposition to that. I was also surprised that we had no votes on the repeal for the death tax. Frankly, I was shocked that the President not only did not oppose eliminating the death tax, but also proposed a $9 billion increase. We actually had people on this floor back to the marriage tax who opposed it who said we ought to be penalized. Mr. Speaker, remember, here we are, we are penalized at death, and now when we get married on that great day. We have a bill working its way through. We have a bill which will take the eraser to the death tax, that will be in front of the President in the next 3 or 4 days. He has promised to veto it, unfortunately. I hope we all remember the President's and the Vice President's policy is to support the death tax. We also have another bill making its way down to the White House, and that is to eliminate the marriage penalty. We want to get rid of the marriage penalty. Now, the President also has promised to veto on that; although, in the last few weeks the President and Vice President said let us make a deal, kind of like the movie show, ``Let Us Make a Deal,'' we go ahead and support a brand new massive spending program for prescription care in this country. It is a massive obligation of taxpayer dollars, billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we will be fair and eliminate the marriage tax penalty. No deal; no bargain. The marriage penalty is a tax that is not justified. It should not be there. The same way with the death tax; no deal. It is not right. It is not fair. It is not justified. Stand up, Washington, D.C., and have enough gumption to say these things are not good tax policy. It does not work out in theory, and it does not work out in reality. I would urge the President and the Vice President to change their policy. I would urge the Vice President and the President to repeal, to get rid of the death tax, join Republicans, by the way, Democrats, join Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives and then in the United States Senate to get rid of the death tax. Join Republicans on the Republican bill, Democrats in both the House and Senate to get rid of the marriage penalty. I say to the President and the Vice President that the President down there has an opportunity to change it; do not play let us make a deal. On its face, standing alone the marriage penalty is fundamentally flawed, and obviously the death tax is unfair. Capital Gains Taxation Let me, with my remaining time, speak about another issue, and that is called capital gains taxation. Now, capital gains taxation really used to be a description that we applied to the wealthy people who had lots of investments. Those were the ones that made the so-called capital gains. Guess what has happened? The small, little things happened in the last few years with the economic boom; a lot of people in America are now facing capital gains. There are mutual funds. There are retirement funds, the sale of their land or the sale of investments. Investments in this country are not restricted to the upper class or to the wealthy. And more than ever in the history of our country, the middle class and even the lower-income class are now making investments, monetary investments. Mr. Speaker, we felt that in order to encourage this, that is what creates capital, not taxation, taxation does not create capital. Taxation is simply a transfer from your pocket to the Government's pocket. What creates capital is us out there plowing a field or making a product or delivering a service, but we felt the encouragement out there was being disassembled by a punitive tax called the capital gains tax. That tax was at 28 percent. Mr. Speaker, 28 cents on every dollar, 28 cents out of every dollar that we made on the sale of an investment went east to Washington, D.C.; that is right where it went. We felt that tax was too punitive. We felt the tax should be eliminated. If we eliminate the tax, what happens to the 28 cents? The 28 cents, it does not go to Washington, D.C. No, it stays in your community. It stays at home where it is going to be invested, where it is going to create jobs. We had to have negotiations on this. The President would not agree with us, the President and the Vice President. They would not go with our bill of no capital gains, and we had to have their signature or enough votes to override the veto which we did not have. So we made a compromise. We at least have gotten this far. We dropped the 28 cents to 20 cents. Mr. Speaker, that does not sound like a lot, but wait until we sell our investment and the tax, the IRS comes knocking on your door, all of a sudden 8 cents on the dollar savings, it adds up. It makes a difference. Now, our goal is not to be satisfied with the 20-cent capital gains, because capital gains, the taxation itself simply is not a creation of wealth, it is a transfer of wealth. Again, it moves the money from our community to Washington, D.C. Our idea, and we will not stop until we get to this point, our idea is eliminate the capital gains taxation, so when we make money on our investment we send zero dollars to D.C.; we keep all of the money, all of it, 100 percent of it in our community to invest in new projects. I will give my colleagues an idea. There is a farming family in New Castle, Colorado, a good, good, family. I was out visiting them not long ago, actually, about 3 or 4 years ago. I remember to this day what the father said. He said, You see those fields, Scott. He said they are not being worked, they are being wasted. He said, by all rights, there should be a young couple, a couple that has just gotten married, 23, 24 years old, a kid or two, and they want to work the land. There should be a young couple working on that land up there. He said, But because of the capital gains taxation and the government, because of the taxing policy of the government, I cannot afford to sell it. So as a result, that land sits empty, and that young couple will never have the opportunity that my wife and I had many years ago when the ranching generation or farming generation ahead of us allowed us to go up and work the field, allowed us to have our turn with our hand in the soil. It makes a difference. Let me wrap up this evening with the time that I have remaining telling my colleagues why I talked about taxes. I am so focused on what is good at the local level, at the community level. Our Federal Government is important, and we have to finance the Federal Government to operate. But we have seen over the years a vast expansion of what the Federal Government is expected to do in our lives. We have seen a dramatic dilution of individual responsibility; and more than that, we have seen a focus shifting government from the local level to the Federal level and a lot of that follows tax dollars. I think that the best government is the government at the communitywide level, at the State level. Obviously, we need to have that Federal Government; but our real focus of power in this country should be at the local level, not the Federal level. In order to do that, we need to come up with policy that encourages money to stay in the community, that encourages money that stays in the community to create capital, not take the capital from the community in a transfer transaction and send it to Washington, D.C. for redistribution, because the dollar that goes out of our community, one, is a transfer, it is not a creation. The dollar that goes out of our community will never come back to our community as a dollar; some of it is necessary. We need a national defense. We need a national commerce system. We need a national highway system. We need a commitment to education. We need a commitment to certain health care with closely defined parameters; but we also need to recognize that taxes, if they are unfair, are punitive or if they are in the excess, then we ought to have enough courage to stand up to the American people. By the way, it is not an act of courage. It is a fiduciary responsibility of all of us in these Chambers to stand up and say, hey, we collected too many tax dollars. We are overcharging our constituents. It is a fiduciary duty of us to stand up and say, is it right, colleagues, for us to tax people because they are married? It is a fiduciary responsibility on our part to stand up and say, is it really a taxable event because somebody dies and they leave property that has been taxed and taxed already? Is that a taxable event? It is a fiduciary responsibility of ours to stand up and say, gosh, does the 28 percent capital gains rate really make sense? Does it really encourage American free enterprise? Does it encourage those young people, those couples just starting out, individuals starting out in their early twenties, does it really encourage them to be prosperous? Remember, when our people in this country are prosperous, our country as a whole is prosperous. If our local communities are prosperous, then our States are prosperous. When our States are prosperous, the Federal government is. It makes sense to keep those dollars in the community. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members tomorrow to pick up a phone and call the President and the Vice President and say to them, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, they need to listen to the American people. Let us get rid of this death tax. Death should not be a taxable event. Hang up the phone, pick it back up and call them back, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, it is not fair to tax people in this country for being married. Regardless of the ramifications to the dollars coming in, it is fundamentally not fair to tax on death and it is fundamentally not fair to tax on marriage. It is a big difference. We have an obligation to be fair to the people we represent. I hope all Members take me up on that challenge and make every attempt they can to persuade the President and the Vice President to change their policies and not veto our bipartisan effort to eliminate the marriage penalty, and to not veto our bipartisan effort to get rid of the death tax.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and an honor to have this opportunity to pay tribute to State Patrol Trooper Bruce Berry for his dedicated service to the Colorado State Patrol for 29 years as he celebrates his retirement. Officer Berry has been the embodiment of service, support and sacrifice during his time with the Colorado State Patrol. He clearly deserves the praise and recognition of this body as he and his fellow troopers celebrate his retirement. Officer Berry distinguished himself through his exceptional leadership and service during his career with the Colorado State Patrol. During his career, Officer Berry issued 564,000 speeding tickets, logged 620,000 miles, and covered 5,500 accidents. In 1997, Officer Berry earned the Governor's Local Hero Award for warning children of the possible implications of getting in a car with an intoxicated person. Officer Berry always made helping children one of his first priorities. In fact, Officer Berry was one of the first troopers with the Colorado State Patrol to begin arresting adults on suspicion of child abuse. After retirement, Officer Berry intends to spend his time fishing and with his grandchildren. Officer Berry also has plans to attend Colorado Mountain College, where he is an instructor of law enforcement driving training, in further pursuit of his bachelor's degree in police science. As Officer Berry celebrates his retirement, Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you and congratulations on behalf of the United States Congress. In every sense, Officer Berry is the embodiment of all the best in law enforcement and deserves the praise and admiration of us all. My thanks to him for a job well done.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, It is with profound sadness that I now rise to honor the life and memory of an outstanding American, my friend Patricia Krongard. Sadly, Pat succumbed to lung disease earlier this month after a prolonged medical battle. As family and friends mourn her passing, I would like to pay tribute to this beloved wife, mother and friend. She was a great American who will be missed by many. Even so, her life was a remarkable one that is most deserving of both the recognition and praise of this body. Since her birth in 1940, Pat has been a fixture of the Baltimore community. Along with her husband Buzzy Krongard, Pat gave generously of her time and energies to the Baltimore community. Her service included founding the Mounted Patrol Foundation to support the mounted patrol of the Baltimore Police Department, organizing the Peabody Institute's spring time fair, serving on the Advisory Board of the State Juvenile Service Administration, and finally, working right up until the time of her death to create a Board of Visitors for the University of Maryland Hospital for Children. These, it turns out, are only a few of the many causes that Pat devoted herself to during her accomplished life. Still, each point to the underlying generosity that marked the life of this humanitarian. In addition to her distinguished service to the Baltimore community, Pat was also a renowned photographer. Pat traveled around the world, from Afghanistan, Nepal, Russia and China, taking striking pictures of foreign places and people. According to a beautifully written obituary that recently ran in the Baltimore Sun, Pat's photographs ``reflected a sympathetic curiosity, with a portfolio of portraits of law enforcement officers across the country and artists around the world.'' Many of her photographs were displayed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In addition, Pat worked closely by my side on the campaign trail on many occasions over the years, shooting an assortment of photographs of me and my family. In every case, her work was the highest quality. Pat's photographic skills brought her great distinction and were rightly a source of pride. While her accomplishments as a photographer and humanitarian are many, Pat's lasting legacy rests in her family. Pat was the mother of two--Alexander Lion Krongard, Randall Harris Krongard and Timothy Lion Krongard--and the proud grandmother of two more. In her sons and grandchildren, Pat's love and generosity will endure. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, Pat was a beautiful human being who lived an accomplished life. Although friends and family are profoundly saddened by her premature passing, each can take solace in the wonderful life that she led. I know I speak for everyone who knew Pat well when I say she will be greatly missed.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, to begin this evening, as my colleagues know, many of us have been delayed due to transportation difficulties with the airlines out there. Some of my constituents were surprised to learn that Congressmen, in fact, also have their bags lost, that Congressmen also are delayed on these flights. So tonight I thought I would show my colleagues a pretty clear demonstration, since they may see it as I speak, of exactly what happens to a Congressman who loses his baggage. If my colleagues will look down, they will see my dress socks. Obviously, the real socks are in the suitcase and somewhere the suitcase is out there in that system. In all seriousness about that, in the last 8 years, in serving in the United States Congress, I have had very good air service across this country. As many of my colleagues know, we are very, very dependent in all walks of life in this country, we are very, very dependent on our service from one State to the next State or across the country. I am telling the Members, in the last 3 months the air service in this country has deteriorated significantly. I have not, with the major airline that I fly, I have not, to the best of my knowledge, had an on- time arrival in 3 months. That has not happened, that kind of record has not happened in 8 years. I am not going to speak about transportation this evening any more than I am doing right now other than to point out that this problem is getting worse. Once in a while the airlines can blame it on weather, once in a while the airlines can blame it on mechanics, but the fact is that there is a deterioration of service, and it is incumbent upon the executives of these airlines to fix the problem, because our country is too dependent upon it. The taxpayers in this country provide a lot of dollars for airports. The passengers in this country provide a lot of dollars in their taxes that are put on there, passenger taxes at airports to help supplement our airline service. We deserve more, in my opinion. It was with some interest last week that I saw news stories about what I guess they call air rage. There is no place for anyone on an airplane to take out their frustrations, in my opinion, on a stewardess or someone else on the airplane. But I do want Members to know that there should be some understanding of some of the frustration being felt by these passengers across the country. I was at Denver International Airport today and there was a lady there who had been stuck for 2 days at that airport. So as we talk about airplane rage or some of these other things, remember what is happening to the passengers in this country. We deserve more from some of these airlines. That is not all of the airlines. Obviously, some of them are performing well. I think it is time we pay very close attention, Mr. Speaker, to those ratings that come out every month or so talking about which of these airlines are having a tough time with service and which of the airlines want to merge, and come to us and ask us for more dollars for airports and things. I think we have every justification to stand out and say, ``Hey, why do you not improve your service? There are a lot of people paying taxes out there for better service.'' In Denver, for example, we have one dominant airline. We have some of the highest business rates in the United States. We should expect premium service. I should add again that for many, many years I have received premium service out of Denver, but something has happened in the last 3 months. It is going to damage our economy here before too long. Toll Roads in the State of Colorado Let me go on. I want to talk about several other things this evening. First, I want to talk about the proposition of toll roads in the State of Colorado. I want to move from there. I have noticed several editorials in the last few days about estate taxes, actual editorials. In fact, it sounds to me like the Democrats, who have for years and years supported the death tax, and in fact, this year the Clinton administration in their budget proposes an increase, an increase in the death tax, these editorials sound like they are writing for that portion or that section of the Democratic Party that supports these death taxes. They act as if we owe the government these death taxes. I am going to talk about the death taxes for a few minutes after I finish talking about the toll roads, and then I will spend a few minutes on social security and talk about the plan that we as Congressmen have for our retirement, although we are also on social security; the plan that Vice President Gore voted for, the plan that Vice President Gore, under his policies, under his procedures, supported. We will talk a little about social security. We will talk about the problems with social security. We will talk about, look, do we do what the Vice President has proposed, although he has recently changed his mind, and that is kind of, do not touch it? Of course we are afraid to touch it, but if we do not do something about it, that system is going to break. It is going to fall out of the air. The engines are going to start coughing and that plane is going to fall out of the air. We have to keep social security firm. The way to do it in my opinion is take some bold moves. Frankly, those bold moves have been proposed by George W. Bush, the Governor of the State of Texas. I want to talk about these policies. I am not here tonight to get into partisan politics, but clearly there is a big distinction when it comes to social security between the Governor of the State of Texas and the Vice President. We have every right to stand on this floor and debate what those differences are. I would venture to say that by the end of the debate, the majority of my friends on the Democratic side will join us on the Republican side saying, hey, let us take a bold move. Let us do something with social security. Let us save social security. I would also venture to say that the majority of my colleagues on the Democratic side need to wake up, in my opinion. I do not say that in a derogatory fashion, but be aware, probably, is a better word, be aware of the fact that this death tax is hurting a lot of people in this country. Their policy of the death tax in this country should be changed. We will get into that. Let us first of all talk about the newest proposition in the State of Colorado by some elitists, in my opinion. That is, gosh, Colorado is a popular spot. Mr. Speaker, I represent the Third Congressional District of the State of Colorado. That district is one of the largest districts in the United States. It is also the highest district in the United States. Basically, it is all of western Colorado, here to my left. If we talk about the mountains, and for those not familiar with western and eastern Colorado, the easy way to think about my district is basically all of the mountains, and then I do go some in eastern Colorado. The Third Congressional District is geographically larger than the State of Florida. Although there are six congressional districts in Colorado, the Third Congressional District only has a little less than 20 percent of the population. Eighty plus percent of the population lives outside the Third District. But do Members know what? That 80 percent of the population to a large extent enjoys going into the mountains of Colorado. A lot of us who grew up in Colorado, a lot of us who spent time in Colorado, know what those mountains mean to us. For generation after generation after generation of my families in Colorado, the mountains are what kept them in Colorado. The people of Colorado love their mountains. The people of Colorado are entitled to see their mountains. The people of Colorado are entitled to enjoy those mountains. But last week we had a new proposal from some bureaucrat, quite frankly, saying, you know, we have too much traffic on I-70. For those who do not know what I-70 is in Colorado, they all know Interstate 70, but where it lies, it virtually cuts the State in half. The mountains go about like this. What this bureaucrat has come up with is to say, well, let us go ahead because I-70 is so heavily traveled, especially out of the major cities, and we have another interstate called I-25, here, so we have a lot of traffic coming out of these cities, the metropolitan population areas, into the Third Congressional District to enjoy those mountains. By the way, the highways in the Third Congressional District, they were not paid for by people in the Third Congressional District. Those are taxes to build those highways that were paid for by everybody in the State of Colorado and visitors to the State of Colorado. In fact, our Governor, who personally I have known for a number of years and who I think has done the most outstanding job of a Governor in many, many years, was able to forge through in his first few days and months of office a new program to fund additional taxes to build these highways. We have grown in popularity. We do have a lot heavier traffic on the I-70 corridor. It used to be when I was in the State House of Representatives the only time we had heavy traffic on I-70 was on Friday afternoon, traffic up to the ski areas, and on Sunday afternoon, traffic back from the ski areas. Now almost every day of the week we have traffic on I-70. So what happens? We have a highway that is being utilized very heavily, so we are trying to figure out solutions for it. Maybe there are ways, other routes that we can use. What are the solutions? I could not believe my ears last week. We had a bureaucrat that came out and said, hey, not for any other congressional district in the State of Colorado, just the congressional district that the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) represents, let us put a toll booth right on the highway. Let us bring the troll in. We have taxed the people to build the highway, now let us tax them to keep them off the highway. Most are familiar obviously with toll booths, Mr. Speaker. My guess would be their experience with toll booths has been we set up a toll booth to collect money because it is the truest form of ``the user pays.'' The person who benefits from the highway is the one who travels on the highway and is the one who pays the tolls. This toll booth being proposed by a bureaucrat is not a toll booth to raise money for construction of highways, it is a toll booth to impose a penalty upon people who want to come visit the Colorado mountains. It is a price to be put on, and if people can meet it, if they are wealthy enough, they get to go to the mountains. If they are a poor working guy out there or gal who does not have that kind of money, they do not get to go to the mountains. It is a new toll. We have a new troll in Colorado. It is not fair. Fundamentally it is not fair. Let us talk a little about it. What kind of rate do Members think they would have to charge in that toll booth to keep people from visiting their mountains, $1? We are not going to stop anybody for $1, by charging a dollar in the toll booth, and the reason is we do not want them to go onto the highways, we want to slow down what we call congestion traffic. Would it be $5? That is not going to slow it down. What about $20? Maybe a little. But $30 or $40, yes, we will then begin to slow the traffic down on I-70 going into the Colorado mountains, $30 or $40 or $50 at the toll booth. We will begin to take the congestion off that highway. Do Members know who they are impacting or where the unfairness of this is? They are not impacting the person who drives the Mercedes, or in fact the person even in my economic bracket. I could afford to pay for it. But the people we are impacting are the people who live out here who work 40, 50, 60 hours a week, can barely get by, and they take their families to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, to the Hot Springs pool for family recreation, or they take them to the Sunlight Ski Area in Glenwood Springs, or to Powderhorn in Grand Junction, or they run them up to Breckenridge when there is a special rate for skiing. There are a lot of families in Colorado that are not wealthy, Mr. Speaker. There are a lot of families in Colorado where both the man and woman are both working to make ends meet. A lot of those families that are not wealthy, where both parents have to work to make ends meet, enjoy the mountains just like somebody who has a lot of money enjoys the mountains. It goes the other way, too, by the way. My guess would be, although I have not had a personal conversation with this individual who proposed this, my guess would be that he also wants to collect a toll going the other direction. So when the people in rural Colorado, and I can tell the Members, a lot of children in rural Colorado have never been in an airplane. They have never been higher than maybe a four- or five-story building. Right now in probably 98, and this is hard to believe, in 98 or 96 percent of the State, maybe, 96 percent of the State of Colorado, there is one escalator, one escalator. So one of the beautiful areas of Colorado, one of the areas of major attractions, is Denver. Denver has the Broncos, it has the Rockies, the Children's Museum, the fish aquarium, it has the hockey team, it has Elitch Gardens, a lot of different things; Denver University. There are lots of things that the people in the mountains like to go to the city. Now all of a sudden we have somebody out there trying to get momentum claiming that it is good for the environment to go ahead and tax the people that were taxed to build the road, tax them to keep them off the roads. They never even mentioned in this proposal what kind of impact it is going to have on that blue collar worker, that blue collar labor who does not make a lot of money, and 30 or 40 bucks out of their pocket means a lot. It hurts. If these people really want to cut down on congestion through a toll road, they are not going to do it with $1, with $5. They are going to have to do it with $30, $40, $50. All of a sudden we have discovered a troll sitting on the tollgate to my district, to the district that I am privileged to represent. We have made a determination in Colorado that if people want to go see the mountains of Colorado, if they want to enjoy those 14,000 foot majestic packs, and I have by far more 14,000 foot peaks than other people in the country, I have 54 or so, if people want to go out and enjoy that, they can as long as they are part of the wealthy status, as long as they have the money to pay the toll. When they go up to the troll, if they have 40 or 30 bucks, throw it in the box. Fortunately, we have a Governor in the State of Colorado who in my opinion is not going to stand for that kind of thing. Fortunately, we have a Governor in the State of Colorado who has stood up and put together a good highway improvement program. He has put those taxpayer dollars into construction. I think there is some legitimate argument, by the way, for a toll booth if in fact that money is going to improve that road. I can remember growing up, and my father used to show us all the time, the kids, he and my mom had six kids. My parents now live in Glenwood Springs, they are great, great wonderful people. I remember when I was young and mom and dad pointed out the Denver Bolder Turnpike, the only toll booth in the State of Colorado. My dad and my mom always used to tell us, you know what is good about this? They are going to take this down, the government promised us, they are going to take it down the day they pay for the improvements on the Denver Bolder Turnpike. Do you know what the government did back then? The day that those improvements were paid off, the toll booths came down. Now, that is fair, and people back then accepted the Denver Boulder Turnpike toll booth, because they knew that money was to improve the highway. It was not put there as a punishment as this is being proposed to do. It was not put there to raise money off the Denver Boulder Turnpike and to transfer to other people programs, it was put there to improve that turnpike. My, my, my how things have changed over time. Now they want to put a toll booth up there, this recommendation, to penalize you for using the very roads that those taxpayers put in place, to penalize you especially if you are lower middle income or lower income, to penalize you from going up and enjoying the mountains that give you the pride of the State of Colorado. Colorado is known to my colleagues throughout this floor. You know Colorado. Some of you may know it for the Broncos. Some of you may know it for the Rockies. But, realistically, you know it because of those Rocky Mountains. We have a fundamental right as citizens of the State of Colorado to enjoy our mountains, without having to pay a toll at a government toll booth to keep congestion off that highway, a toll booth that allows only the wealthy to go by. If you do not have that cash, that $30, $40, $50, and that is exactly what it is going to take to stop that congestion or at least slow it down, then you are out of luck. It is wrong. And I am not going to drop this issue. I have written Chairman Dan Stuart on their input. I said thank you for the opportunity to comment on the scoping phase of the I-70 environmental impact statement. I am writing to notify your commission and the Federal Highway Administration that I adamantly, adamantly oppose the use of tolls or any other so-called congested pricing levies aimed at discouraging Coloradans from traveling along I-70 in Western Colorado. Again, how interesting that the only toll booth they are suggesting is right there on the gateway to the Third Congressional District. I have been told by officials that the use of congestion tolls is but one of the many possible remedies being considered. Even so, I strongly urge the traffic planners charged with drafting this EIS to dismiss out of hand the idea of congestion toll roads based clearly on the lack of merit and the discrimination that it exercises against the people who do not make that kind of money, and they are being kept out of the mountains for which they have a lot of pride. They are citizens of Colorado or visitors to Colorado. There are a whole range of sound and reasonable solutions I write about in this letter that are available. But erecting a toll gate to and from Western Colorado, erecting a toll gate to get in and out of my congressional district is wrong. It is wrong because it is being put there for a punitive nature to punish people who want to go into the mountains, because some ivy league person has thought gosh how cars are evil. Highways are evil. Congestion is evil. Of course, who likes congestion? We all like to have some great method of transportation that does not have congestion. For you to go out and penalize us in Western Colorado by putting a toll gate both coming in and out of my district, it is not going to be accepted. Forget it. That is not in the letter, I thought I would just ad-lib a little there. But erecting that kind of gate is unacceptable. While the use of tolls may be appropriate in certain circumstances, it would be unfair to impose a congestion toll for no reason other than to discourage travel by taxpayers who paid for the roads in the first place. Colorado taxpayers have paid more than their fair share for construction and maintenance of these roads. A new congestion toll without a corresponding improvement in the quality of the interstate would seem punitive. Well, you get the point. I am not too excited about this proposal. I have not had an opportunity to talk with the particular bureaucrat that is out there proposing it. But I will tell you before it catches on, before you try and go out there and try and dress it up so it looks real pretty, you better understand and I think strengthen our voice that is going to oppose this. I want to commend the governor of the State of Colorado, that governor understands that there are lots of approaches that we can use to resolve this problem, that governor understands highways. And I would hope that my message rings throughout the entire bureaucracy including the Federal Highway Administration. Do not put toll booths on this highway simply for the purpose of punishing people who want to go up there, not for construction, but to punish them because they want to visit the Colorado mountains. Death Taxes Let me move to another subject, death taxes. Colleagues we know what death taxes are. You work all your life. You accumulate. I will give you an example, my wife and I. My wife and I did not start with any money. We just started saving early on. I will tell you we did not have boats or nice cars. I mean we have used cars which were nice for us, and nothing against somebody who wants to have a boat, I think it is great. In fact, if I had the money, I would buy those, that is extra. But in our mind, my wife and I in our life, one of our goals was to have something that when we went on, when we passed away and we could pass on to our children so they could have a little head start for their life so maybe they could afford a down payment on a home, so maybe the family ranch that is in my wife's family, that maybe her portion of the ranch could be enjoyed by the next generation following us, that maybe some of the other things that we have worked so hard to accomplish and we have toiled, just like many, many other young couples in our country are doing now, we did that a few years ago. There are a lot of young people out in the country today, a lot of young people by the way, Democrats, in business. It is not all that bad, business. A lot of small business people, a lot of farmers and ranchers, a lot of young people getting into these professions and they, too, share the goal that my wife and I shared that my mother and father, my wife's mother and father shared and that is, look, we do not want to spoil the generation behind us, but let us do something for the generation, let us try and jump start them, let us give them a little head start. Now, when you accumulate like that, you do not accumulate taxfree, with the exception of some IRAs, and those are taxed, but basically as my colleagues know, you do not accumulate this property tax free, you pay taxes on it. When you earn it, you are taxed on it, and you take what is left after the taxes and you put it into an account or you make some kind of an investment for the future. We are not talking here about money that here you earn it, we are not talking about money that goes over here 100 percent, it does not happen. What happens here is the taxman comes in and he cuts his chunk here. He gets his chunk right here. So when it gets over here, your fund for the future has already been taxed. So you begin to accumulate this property, with the goal, as my wife and I had, that at some point in the future you would be able to pass on in the next generation in our particular case maybe a piece of ground, maybe a business, maybe a portion of a ranch out there in Colorado. I keep referring to Colorado because ranching is an important industry, and the death taxes, Democrats, by the way you ought to pay attention to this, the death taxes have had a significant impact on our ranching community out in Colorado. They have been very punitive, very punishing. So we get to this point and guess what happens? The government has not had enough. What the government does when you are young, there are teachers and in school they teach you to go out in America and capitalism, go out and the harder you work, the chances are, the harder you work, the more successes you will have, and that you have an opportunity to accumulate, you can buy your own home in the United States. In America, you can own a ranch. In America if you work hard enough, you can do things, you can accomplish. Who would ever think that the government that preaches that at our young ages and tells our young people that the opportunities are no greater anywhere in the world but America, who would ever think that very government is flying over you like a vulture on the day you die to come in here and take property that has already been taxed and, in some cases, take out between 50 and 70 percent of that and move it to the government. Now, what do death taxes do? Let us talk about a couple editorials. I read an editorial over the weekend, maybe it was in the Wall Street Journal or in the Denver Post. Anyway, I read this editorial. I think it was Broder, whatever his name is, the gentleman's name, and he talks about this estate, and he sounds like it is only fair for the government to come out and take money from you upon your death, even though you have already paid taxes on it. They talk about as if it is a windfall for a family. Take my wife's family, for example, they have been on the same ranch in Colorado since 1850. The writer of this particular article seems to think it is a windfall, if that family is able to pass that ranch on to the next generation, my wife's generation and then the generation after my wife, to that generation as if it is a windfall. Then they always like to jump. Democrats you had 40 years to do something about this death tax. Some of you have come over on it and I appreciate that. I noticed lately in the last couple of weeks the Democrat leadership, because they have now sensed that their policy of increasing the death tax, which is exactly what the Clinton administration has proposed to do in their budget is not selling well with the American people. The American people are saying, wait a minute, it does not make sense to us. We have already paid taxes. Why should punish us upon our death with another tax? Some of you sense that. And the leadership over on the Democrat side has sensed that and now they have come up with the bill to help get rid of the death tax. I am glad you have acknowledged that there is a problem. I am glad after time after time after time you fought us on trying to eliminate or at least give some relief under the death tax that your leadership, the Democratic leadership policy has now begun to shift towards our side to say, you know, something maybe it is not fair when somebody dies that the vultures of the government go down and pick apart the property that has already been picked apart with taxes. Nobody complains about the initial taxation if it is fair. Where the complaint comes in is how much more do you want, how much more do you think you can take out of this family ranch before you make that ranch collapse from an economic point of view? Let us talk about what happens in an estate tax. Remember even if the wealthy and, oh, do they love that, do the editors and do some of the Democrats opposing this do they love to talk about the wealthy people of this country. This is a tax against the wealthy. In fact, it was designed in part as a punitive tax against the Carnegies and the Rockefellers and the Fords and people like that around the turn of the last century. Do they love to go out after rich people? They love to create class warfare in this country. Let me tell you what happens even with a rich person in a community. I am going to give you a good example. A small town in Colorado, population maybe 9,000 people. I am not going to identify the person, other than to say let us call the gentleman Joe. Joe and his wife, Mary, these people are my parents' age, so they are in their 70s. They started out in this small town of Colorado. Joe started out as a bean counter, as a bookkeeper for a construction company. I am telling you these names are made up, but the story is true. Mary was a homemaker, so they both worked real hard, she took care of the kids and Joe worked hard. From day 1, he worked 6\1/2\ days a week. He sacrificed a lot of time away from his kids, and his wife sacrificed a lot of her time to make up for the time he was away from the kids. And over time he moved from being the bookkeeper in the construction company to have an opportunity to buy into it. This is a small town construction company, population 9,000. Then pretty soon he was able to save a little money here, save a little money there, and he was able to invest and start with some of his neighbors a local bank. What did Joe do with the money? Joe did not take the money that he accumulated in his community, he did not take it out in his backyard and dig a hole and put the money in the ground. He used the money in the community. He bought buildings in the community. He employed people in the community. He gave significant contributions to almost every charity in the community. He helped a school on their funding drives. In other words, he was a strong economic factor. I should speak about both of them, both of them contributed to this in their own way. That couple was an economic mainstay of this small community in the state of Colorado. What happens? Unfortunately, Mary passes away. My friend is a good guy, and his wife was very bright. But they did not go out and hire attorneys to try and evade taxes with the government. And so what happened when Mary died, the estate, her share of the estate went to Joe. Joe decided to liquidate the construction company, sell it, decided to sell the bank. He did and he got hit with a capital gains tax. That is fair enough. At that point in time, it was at least 28 percent, at least 28 percent on the sale of it. Then unfortunately my friend Joe, who was an economic mainstay with his wife in this community, what happened to him is he got terminal cancer. Four, five months later, he passed away. The government then came into this community. They forced that family to liquidate the buildings they had to come up with the money to pay an effective tax on that estate, when one puts in the capital gains, an effective tax of I think around 82 percent of 50 years of hard work in this community, 82 percent when combined with the capital gains. The government came in. Now, true, they were wealthy. By standards, they were wealthy. They had worked in this community. They earned every darn dime of it through hard work. It did not fall out of the sky for them. The government certainly did not give it to them. They taxed it all along. What happened as a result of this? So much to the local contributions to the local church. That money now goes to Washington, D.C. Instead of that money being circulated in their own community where it had been circulated for 50 years, it now is going to be transferred to Washington, D.C., because the Federal Government says we are entitled upon one's death to transfer that money from one's local community to our big city. So there goes the local contributions and the charities. Let me tell my colleagues, the church there, the church that he went to, 80 percent of their budget was donated by this individual. It was a pretty good sized church. It had several hundred members in it; 80 percent of it was funded by that individual. When that church, when the elders of the church went to speak to the family about continuing these contributions, the family said we do not have the money anymore. The money has been transferred to Washington, D.C. So much for any more jobs being generated by that money. So much for deposits being put into savings accounts and the local banks where local people could then go borrow the money to set out on their dreams or to buy a car or to pay for improvements of their house or maybe to buy a house. All of these different things, money was sucked out of that community. I remember Ross Perot talking about the sucking sound or something of Mexico. If my colleagues want to see where the real sound is, take a look at where the death tax where it takes that money. If one lives in Kansas and one dies in Kansas and one is hit with a death tax, that money does not stay in Kansas. That Federal death tax goes to Washington. If one dies in Florida and one gets hit with the death tax, that money does not stay in one's community in Florida, it goes to Washington. If one dies in California and Washington and Wyoming and Colorado and Utah and Idaho, wherever one dies, one's money does not stay in one's community to continue to circulate in one's community; it is sent to Washington, D.C. How many of my colleagues out there think that money is being well spent in Washington, and how many of my colleagues out there think one darn dime makes its way back to that little community in Colorado? These death taxes are fundamentally unfair. They are unjustified. It is perhaps, despite what some of these people are writing in their editorials, it is perhaps the most unjustified tax in our system. How does one justify taxing somebody upon their death simply because they have accumulated property upon which they have already paid taxes, simply upon which they have accumulated property by hard work, by following the American principles of free enterprise, by following the American principles of capitalism, by going out there and following their own dream in America; and when they get to that point in hopes of helping the next generation, they lose it. Now, let us talk about something else that is impacted by these estate taxes, something that some of us may not even think about. Let us talk about open space. In Colorado, again, I am awful proud of that State, and I am proud of my district. It is a wonderful, beautiful district. I think it is probably one of the most beautiful. The gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) and I could compete, but by gosh we are both up there in the top. Our open space is what makes it beautiful. We have tremendous, tremendous land in these States. But do my colleagues know what is happening? Take for example a typical family ranch. Now, some people will tell us, well, one has a large ranch out there and a ranching family, and the estate has a value over the amount of the government decides to tax, I mean the amount that puts it eligible for this death tax. What one ought to do, ranchers, go out and buy life insurance. That is what life insurance is for. If one is prudent and responsible to the next generation, one is going to go out and buy life insurance to save that ranch. Well, do my colleagues know what, it is pretty obvious to me that people that make that kind of proposal have not ever tried to look very closely at the economics of ranching. One may have some land, but one does not get into ranching for money. One does not make enough money. Most ranchers out there do not make enough money to pay the premiums on the life insurance. So that is not a practical, realistic thing. Well, what happens is, if one has a ranch, let us say a couple thousand acres, let us say in the Glenwood Springs Valley, so Glenwood Springs, Colorado, so one has high property values or higher property values, and, unfortunately, one and one's wife or one's wife and one pass away, do my colleagues know what happens to that property if one does not have the cash to pay off the government, if one's family does not have the cash to pay it off? I will tell my colleagues what happens. The family has got to sell the ranch. Where is the value of a ranch in Colorado near Glenwood Springs? Is it in cattle ranching? Is it in sheep ranching? Is it in hay production? No. It is not in that economy. The value of it is one goes into that ranch, and one puts it in little tiny 35-acre parcels. One takes that beautiful open space, and one turns it into a 35-acre multihome, multiwealth subdivision. So pretty soon these open spaces that one enjoys by the government that stands up here and preaches about the value of open space, and they themselves force one to dissect that land so one can pay them off upon the death of one's parents or upon one's death; one makes arrangements to have it split up like that. These are some of the unintended consequences that decades of this death tax have had in our country. The time has come, and I can tell my colleagues I stand with a great deal of pride to see the governor of the State of Texas, one of his policies, if he becomes the President, and he has made it clear, and the reason I bring this up is I want to bring the Democrats to action. I want the Democrats to stand up and say me, too, because we want to get rid of this estate tax. The governor of the State of Texas said he is going after that estate tax if he becomes President. Now, one can contrast that to the policies of the current administration. Remember what the current administration has proposed this year and in their budget. It is in the budget. It is not me just making this up. It is in their budget, the Democrats. It is in their budget. That is to increase the death taxes by $9.5 billion, not just keep it the same, but increase it. I am telling my colleagues, fundamentally the American people will not support the proposal to raise the death taxes in this country. Every one of my colleagues on the Democratic side ought to take issue with the President and the Democrats' policy of trying to raise those estate taxes. Those death taxes are not right. They know they are not right. Their gut tells them it is not right to do that. It is not right to go to somebody who is living the American dream who has worked 50 or 60 years, or even if they worked 10 years, to go out and say on the property one has already paid taxes on, we are going to tax it again. We do not care what it does to the next generation. We do not care how the next generation pays for it. We do not know what kind of dreams have been squashed by the fact that those vultures are flying over one's death bed. The government does not care about what happens to the next generation that one has worked all one's life to provide a little something for. They do not care about whether or not those people get that money. They want that money transferred to Washington, D.C. Now, tonight I know a lot of us have children who are now young couples. They are just now getting into the work force, couples that are worried about Social Security; couples that are worried about what they can save, and they have their dreams. Oh, to be that age again, to just dream about, oh, when we buy our first home, when we really get to go buy a brand-new car, when we get to have our children and our family, and then we can begin to think about, well, maybe we can put some money aside so they can have a college education, and maybe we can put some money aside so that, if something happens to us, they will be able to carry on the family business or the family ranch, or maybe they will have other money to give them a little head start. If only they knew, if only these young people in this country knew what this policy, and, frankly, Democrats, they know they supported it, they have increased, they are proposing to increase it this year, they ought to join us. Because if these young people knew how this government operated with this death tax, they would be darn mad about it, very mad, very upset. I do not blame them a bit. So I am asking my Democratic colleagues, and I am asking them to support a change in the policy of the Clinton-Gore administration, although Gore is very clear about his position on this. Let us do something about those death taxes. Social Security Well, enough with the estate taxes, enough for the toll road in Colorado that I talked to my colleagues about. Now I want to talk about something else. First of all, let me tell my colleagues, if they are age, say, 48, if they are 48 years or older, they do not even have to worry about what I am going to talk about because they are well taken care of. I can tell my colleagues that the principles of the plan that I am going to talk about have primarily been pushed or advocated by the governor of the State of Texas, George W. Bush. Very clearly one of his principles is the people, currently the older people of our society, 48 and above somewhere in that area, they do not have to worry about it. What am I talking about? I am talking about Social Security. Social Security. Let us talk about that program a little tonight. First of all, and again, as I said, if one is 48 years old, I am about there, if one is my age or above, there is plenty of money in Social Security. On a cash basis, Social Security has a surplus. On an actuarial basis, which means once Social Security pays the obligations that it has made under the benefits of that program, Social Security is bankrupt. But for us to reach that bankrupt status, it is going to take 30 years. So that in my age bracket and above, we will not get to that point probably, or not many of us will get to the point where we really have to worry about the bankruptcy of Social Security. But I think it is incumbent upon those of us who do not have to worry about it for us that we sit down and start doing some planning and worrying about it for the next generation. For the kids that are, the young men and women the age of my children, they should, and are now paying into the system. They are providing for us. We have an obligation to the young generation. Frankly, that is exactly what the governor of the State of Texas has said, George W. Bush. We have an obligation under his policies to provide some planning so that we do not hand to the next generation a bankrupt Social Security program. Now, let us talk about the current problem. We will talk about some of the problems that we have in Social Security. But first of all, for any of those who think they can defend the Social Security system and the management of it right now, let me ask them a question, or just think about this for a minute. If one went down to the local convenience store and one bought a lotto ticket, paid 10 bucks, one bought a lotto ticket, and let us say one won the lotto and one won $10 million, wow, great, $10 million. Would anybody in these Chambers take one's $10 million or even $10,000 of that $10 million and send it to the Social Security Administration to invest it in the Social Security program for a return on one's dollars? There is not any one in this Chamber that would even send $1 to Social Security voluntarily to invest on one's behalf. Why? Because over the last few years I will give one an example, if a young couple today putting into Social Security system, in other words, the young couple the age of my children, they can expect for the dollars that they are, that are taken out of their check and invested in the Social Security program, they can expect a return of 1.23 percent, 1 percent, a little over. Well, 1\1/4\ percent is the kind of return that they can expect with their investment today. That is assuming that no more benefits are increased. That is assuming that the number going into the system stays the same, 1.23 percent. I would defy anyone on this floor to go out there and show me a savings account anywhere in the country that pays 1.25 percent. Just show me one savings account that only pays that. I mean, even the most conservative savings account in the country pays 2 or 3 or 4 points above that. It is a lousy return. It is a system that needs a fix. Let me tell my colleagues, the system is not broke entirely because of incompetence. There are several factors that have contributed to putting Social Security into the problem it is in today. One of them is pretty good news for all of us. That is that, over the years since Social Security was first put into place in about 1935, over the years, the life-span has increased dramatically. When Social Security was first put in, they did not expect that kind of jump in the increase in life-span. Unfortunately, as the life-span has increased, the premiums have not increased along with it. So now we have people who we maybe thought were going to be in the system for 10 years who are now in the system for 15 or 20 years. That is a problem. Number two, the people that have put into the system, because of inflation, medical inflation and increased benefits and so on, the people that are now drawing Social Security, that are currently drawing a check out of Social Security, those people, during their lifetime, will pull out an average of $118,000 more than they put into the system. So the people today drawing out will pull out an average of $118,000 more than they put in. A system cannot be run economically when it allows participants to pull out more money than they put into the system. That is another problem that we have. And finally, let me comment about the workers. This is an interesting statistic. When Social Security was first put into place, we had 42 people working for every person that was retired. The reason I am taking the time to write this is because it is so important. There were 42 people that were working for every person that was retired. Today that number is 3 people working for every person retired. And within the very near future, say 10 or 15 years, we will have 2 people for every person retired. My colleagues, those numbers spell trouble. We need to pay attention to the system. We need to do something to try to change the direction of this ship. Well, let me tell my colleagues, for government employees, for us in these Chambers, for the Congressmen, we realized that we did not want to totally depend on Social Security for retirement so we developed our own plan here called the Thrift Savings Plan. And it is not just for Congressmen, by the way, it applies to government employees, 2.5 million employees. It is a program of choice. They are not forced into it. It is called the Thrift Savings Plan. What the government did is they had to take care of these 2.5 million employees, so they allowed them to have a program of choice and every month those employees can take up to 10 percent of their pay and the government matches the first 5 percent. So they can put in 10 percent and then the government matches the first 5 percent, and they can invest it in one of three different programs. One is a program which has high risk, but it also has high return. And this is the stock market. I think last year it was 28 percent return or a 20 percent return. Or, by choice, they can take a program that has a lower return but lower risk, or a program that is guaranteed by the government which has the lowest return but also the lowest risk, which by the way still exceeds greatly the 1.23 percent return we get in Social Security. Now, that all sounds confusing, but suffice it to say the government has a program called the Thrift Savings Plan for 2.5 million employees to provide them with an option in Social Security, providing them with choice in investment. For example, if an individual makes lousy choices, here they only have 10 percent. Only 10 percent. The rest of the retirement there is no choice about where it goes. It is guaranteed payment. So no one can ever lose everything they have. It cannot happen under this system. Well, what happened. Do my colleagues know who supported that, to my colleagues on the Democratic side? The vice president supported that. In fact, I have a quote somewhere, but the vice president was a cosponsor of the Thrift Savings Plan. He was a cosponsor. So what the Governor of the State of Texas and what many of us have said to do is to apply that somewhat toward Social Security. Let us allow the people, especially the young people in this country, the young people who are just getting started and who want to have more of a choice, a more sophisticated investment return, let us give them a choice. Let us give them an opportunity not to put all of their Social Security money into a stock market; we are not going to do that, but let us allow them to have choice up to 2 percent. Take 2 percent of their paycheck, 2 percent, and remember for the Federal Government employees are allowed to take 10 percent, but allow people on Social Security under this proposal to take 2 percent and let them invest. Let them try their hand in the market. Historically, no matter what investment we look at, historically every investment out there in the stock market and the bond markets, and here I am talking as a whole, does better than 1.23 percent, which is what Social Security now pays. Now, why would that program cause the kind of uproar that has been created in the last few months? Is it because the person pushing it the hardest is running for president? That has something to do with it. But what it really is, it frightens the status quo. That is what really is happening. What scares Washington, what makes bureaucrats shiver in their knees, is the fact that someone comes into this town and has a bold proposal, who wants to move off the status quo and wants to take charge. Someone who has enough guts to stand and say, hey, I am going to lead, I am going to take us into some positive territory, so either move with me or stand aside. The minute the system, the bureaucracy of the Social Security or any government bureaucracy is challenged, watch out. Because, as my colleagues know, they will turn on you and try to tear you apart from every angle they can. And how interesting it is that that is exactly what is happening with the Governor of the State of Texas and his proposal to fix Social Security. He ought to receive a pat on the back from everybody in this Chamber. We ought to go up and say thanks for being bold enough to propose something with seriousness and be ready to charge forward with a change to Social Security. We should also thank him for being smart enough not to throw it all out; not to put it all at risk; and, most importantly under this proposal, he allows choice. If a person in Social Security does not want to invest in any of those choices, they do not have to. If a government employee does not want to participate in the Thrift Savings Plan, they do not have to. It is a program of choice and it is a program, which, in my opinion, is the most viable option we have out there today to move Social Security out of the red into the black on an actuarial basis. That is the beauty of this thing. Now, I know that since that proposal was made, first of all, after the Governor of the State of Texas advocated it, we had a lot of fire come from frankly the administration's policy and the vice president. But then, all of a sudden, the pollsters went out there and they came back with poll results that said the American people wanted to see us shore up Social Security; that the American people were willing to look at choice; the American people are willing to take reasonable, reasonable, risk, well, then all of a sudden the administration starts to change their policy. So now they have come up with a plan. That is good. Let us take these plans, let us put them together and let us save Social Security for the future. Let me wrap it up. My colleagues have been very patient with me this evening. I appreciate the opportunity to address my colleagues. I talked about toll roads, toll roads being proposed in the State of Colorado simply to punish people for being on the road. Not to build new highways, but to simply institute what I believe is congestive pricing. There is too much congestion, too much traffic on the road, let us take the people who built the roads with their taxes and let us tax them off the road. It is unacceptable. Unacceptable as far as I am concerned, especially considering the fact they are putting the toll gate at the entrance of the Third Congressional District of the State of Colorado. Secondly, I talked about the death taxes and how unfair that tax upon a person's death is. Whether an individual is wealthy or whether they have a ranch or whatever, think about the consequences of penalizing somebody upon their death. It is an unjustified tax. It is a tax we should eliminate. I hope we will not let these editorial writers in some of these papers convince us that it is a good way to attack the rich, that it is a good way to get a vendetta going among people who have taken the American Dream and lived it and accomplished it. And, finally, as my colleagues know, I just wrapped up on Social Security. Let us take a plan that is a bold plan. Not a risky plan, not a risky plan for this next generation, but let us do something, let us make the next generation have something better than we have. After all, the American Dream is to make sure that the people, the generation and the children beyond us, live a better life than the best life we have ever lived. And we can do it if we just stick together.

Mr. McINNIS

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

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is with profound sadness that I now rise to honor the life and memory of an outstanding person, my friend Irene Woodfin. Sadly, Irene passed away July 8, 2000 in her own home. As family and friends mourn her passing, I would like to pay tribute to this beloved wife to her husband, mother to her children, and friend to all. She will be missed by many. Even so, her life was a remarkable one that is most deserving of both the recognition and praise of this body. Much of Irene's life was spent educating and helping others. Irene graduated from Greeley Colorado State Teacher's College (UNC) in 1927. After her distinguished teaching career, Irene retired from teaching in 1971. Irene was also very involved in community organizations and events throughout her life. Some of the groups she belonged to included being a member of Delta Kappa Gamma (Xi Chapter), American Association of University Women (AAUW), and always an active participant in her local church choir. Irene's love of making music and crafts brought her great distinction and were rightly a source of pride. While her involvement in education and community are to be remembered, Irene's lasting legacy rests in her family. Irene is survived by her husband of 69 years, Dick Woodfin. Irene was the mother to three, grandmother to eight, great-grandmother to 17, and great- great-grandmother to 4. She also had 11 step-grand-children. In her children, grandchildren, and their offspring, Irene's love and generosity will endure. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, Irene was a person who lived an accomplished life. Although friends and family are profoundly saddened by her passing, each can take solace in the wonderful life that she led. I know I speak for everyone who knew Irene well when I say she will be greatly missed.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor and profound sadness that I now rise to pay tribute to the life of Aspen, Colorado's great civic patriarch, Dr. George ``Howard'' Hardy III. After living a remarkably accomplished life, sadly, Dr. Hardy passed away while mountain biking in the four corners area. But even as we mourn his passing, everyone who knew Howard should take comfort in the truly incredible life he led. Since the 1970's, few can claim a place in the Aspen community as lofty as Howard. His accomplishments and contributions, Mr. Speaker, were many. Howard was a well liked Dentist in the Aspen community. George Kauffman, a close friend of Howard's, said that: ``Howard was a fixture in the community, and a core member of what makes Aspen special.'' Howard, an Ohio native, received his undergraduate and doctoral degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. After completion of his education, Howard used his acquired skills to serve his country in the Army as a captain and a Doctor. Following his service, Howard established a private practice in Aspen, Colorado. Patients still remember Howard's office as a heartwarming place, recalling Howard's wonderful sense of humor and his love of practical jokes. One of Howard's colleagues, Dr. David Swersky, remembered the office as ``joke central, people came into the office just to tell us some jokes, because they knew Howard was always game.'' Howard's compassion was easy to distinguish before a procedure. David said that ``Howard would always start a procedure with a joke. He was very caring about his patients.'' He was not only a Doctor, but a friend to his patients. His relationships with his colleagues were also special, David said that ``We had a very special relationship, I'm not only losing a partner. I'm losing a brother.'' It is with this, Mr. Speaker, that I say thank you and good-bye to this great American who will long serve as an inspiration to us all. We will all miss him greatly.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to honor a man that has devoted his career to protecting the health of people in the great State of Colorado, Tom Messenger. After 30 years of service to the citizens of Colorado, Tom is set to retire this week, bringing to a close what has been a truly distinguished career. As his family, friends and colleagues celebrate Tom's retirement, I would like to pay tribute to his substantial efforts to improve the quality of life for all Coloradans. His career is eminently deserving of both the praise and thanks of this body. Tom began his tenure as an environmental health advocate in 1970. He first started as a sanitarian for the Tri-County District Health Department and, after earning a masters degree, started a career at the Colorado Health Department. Early in his career, Tom demonstrated both the integrity and the skill needed to conduct a responsible, responsive and successful food safety program. His ambition and ability gave rise to his rapid ascension through the ranks of the Department. In 1980, Tom became the Department of Consumer Protection Assistant Director, holding that position until 1988. After a brief stint as the Department's budget director, Tom later returned to the Consumer Protection Division, serving as its appointed Director until today. Tom has spent twenty seven years with the Department and his efforts to protect Colorado's health have been considerable. He has been the catalyst in bringing state, local and federal governments together toward mutually agreeable health policies. Throughout his career, Tom has been highly effective in bringing these often divergent entities together to address emerging health issues. In recent times, Tom has made a parade of bold breakthroughs in the Department, including providing the leadership at the state level to help ensure the successful introduction of a state retail food law, and coordinating a proactive action plan with the state dairy industry to address issues of antibiotic residues. Although these accomplishments only scratch the surface of what Tom has achieved, they both are indicative of the type of success that he has repeatedly encountered in his time working for the State of Colorado. It is with this, Mr. Speaker, that I would like to pay tribute to Mr. Messenger and his efforts to make his community, state and nation a better and healthier place to live. His dedication and know-how have distinguished him greatly. The citizens of Colorado owe Tom a debt of gratitude and I wish him well during his retirement. Your family, friends and colleagues are proud of you, Tom, and we all are thankful for your dedicated service over the past three decades.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I ask that we take a moment to celebrate and remember the life of a great man, Chet Shields. In doing so, I would also like to remember this individual who has exemplified the notion of public service and civic duty. Mr. Shields passed away after battling with Parkinson's disease. Mr. Shields was devoted to the environment and to his family. He had a prestigious career spanning three decades working for the Forest Service. Mr. Shields was born in Olathe, Colorado in 1928 and was part of the first graduating class at Smiley Junior High. Mr. Shields was active in many areas. He spent two years at Fort Lewis College before and after serving his country in World War II. Mr. Shields was always interested in forestry and acted on that interest by earning a bachelor's and master's degree in forestry from Colorado A & M. He also received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard in 1957. Mr. Shields was married in 1948 to his lovely wife Ruth, who has also shared his love for the environment. During his prestigious career with the forest service, he and his wife were stationed in Taos, Penasco and Mountainair, New Mexico, Happy Jack, Arizona, and Durango, Colorado. He served as deputy chief in the Forest Service's Washington D.C. office for 13 years, later he and his wife later retired to Durango Colorado in 1978. Although technically retired, he and his wife never lost their work ethic, as they both volunteered on the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service's archeology site surveys. It is with this, Mr. Speaker, that I would like to remember Mr. Shields and his efforts to make his community a better place to live. His dedication and know-how have distinguished him greatly. The citizens of Colorado owe Chet a debt of gratitude and we will all miss him dearly.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is a personal privilege to honor Louie D. Carleo, an outstanding member of the Pueblo business community. Louie was recipient of the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce Charles W. Crews Business Leader of the Year award. Louie was recognized for his tireless efforts to redevelop the Downtown Pueblo area, making it a beautiful vibrant metropolis. Louie's achievements in the business world are equally notable. He is a past chairman of the chamber of commerce, an active member of the Pueblo Economic Development Corporation, and the proprietor of Commercial Builders, Sound Venture Realty and LDC Properties. This award publicly notes Louie's commitment to Pueblo as well as his deep commitment to the State of Colorado, its people and its future. Louie is not only an outstanding member of the Pueblo business community, he has been an active leader in the American Red Cross, YMCA, Junior Achievement, and Posada. In addition, Louie was also the recipient of the Sam Walton Outstanding business leader of the year award for Pueblo, Colorado. The people of Colorado have every right to be proud of Mr. Carleo. On behalf of the people of Colorado, I thank you, Louie, for your service.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and an honor to have this opportunity to pay tribute to one of the Navy's most well-loved and admired skippers, Commander Jack Scorby, as he celebrates his Change- Of-Command. Commander Scorby has been the embodiment of service, success and sacrifice during his time as the Commanding Officer of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron TWO. He clearly deserves the praise and recognition of this body as he, his officers and squadron celebrate his Change-Of-Command. If ever there were a person who embodied the spirit and values that make America great, it is Commander Jack Scorby. The Commander has distinguished himself by his exceptional leadership and service to his country as the Commanding Officer of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron TWO from July 1999 to July 2000. The Commander was responsible for the overseas-based reconnaissance squadron comprised of over 450 sailors and 8 aircraft. His squadron was placed on the tip of the spear, providing continuous deployed reconnaissance support to all our U.S. assets. In fact, his area of responsibility covered half the world. Under his leadership, the VQ-2 flew over 4000 flight hours from sites supporting multiple operations. These include combat flights during Operations Allied Force and Northern Watch, as well as numerous flights during Operations Joint Guardian, Deliberate Forge and Joint Forge. Commander Scorby not only prepared the squadron to be ready to fly the next generation of reconnaissance planes, but also the Commander's forward-thinking game plan put the VQ-2 well-ahead of the power curve, ensuring no interruptions to the nation's reconnaissance support. As a result of his compassionate and people-oriented leadership, the VQ-2 enlisted retention rate during his tour was 20% above the Navy standard and advancement was one of the highest, at 41%. The VQ-2 also received the top three awards that a command can receive during his command tour. They include: the Battle ``E'' for overall command excellence, the Golden Wrench Award for maintenance excellence and the Safety ``S'' for safety excellence. Perhaps one of the most telling effects about the Commander's leadership is how well-respected he is by his squadron; officers and enlisted personnel alike. At the squadron Christmas dinner, all-hands spontaneously gave him a standing ovation that lasted over 5 minutes. As Commander Scorby celebrates his Change of Command, Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you and congratulations on behalf of the United States Congress. In every sense, Commander Scorby is a great American who deserves the praise and admiration of us all. The Commander is one of the nation's best and an officer we can all be proud of. My thanks to him for a job well done.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is with profound sadness that I now rise to honor the life and memory of an outstanding American, my friend Patricia Krongard. Sadly, Pat succumbed to lung disease earlier this month after a prolonged medical battle. As family and friends mourn her passing, I would like to pay tribute to this beloved wife, mother and friend. She was a great American who will be missed by many. Even so, her life was a remarkable one that is most deserving of both the recognition and praise of this body. Since her birth in 1940, Pat has been a fixture of the Baltimore community. Along with her late husband Buzzy Krongard--who amongst other things once served as a counselor to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency--Pat gave generously of her time and energies to the Baltimore community. Her service included founding the Mounted Patrol Foundation to support the mounted patrol of the Baltimore Police Department, organizing the Peabody Institute's springtime fair, serving on the Advisory Board of the State Juvenile Service Administration, and finally, working right up until the time of her death to create a Board of Visitors for the University of Maryland Hospital for Children. These, it turns out, are only a few of the many causes that Pat devoted herself to during her accomplished life. Still, each point to the underlying generosity that marked the life of this humanitarian. In addition to her distinguished service to the Baltimore community, Pat was also a renowned photographer. Pat traveled around the world, from Afghanistan, Nepal, Russia and China, taking striking pictures of foreign places and people. According to a beautifully written obituary that recently ran in the Baltimore Sun, Pat's photographs ``reflected a sympathetic curiosity, with a portfolio of portraits of law enforcement officers across the country and artists around the world.'' Many of her photographs were displayed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In addition, Pat worked closely by my side on the campaign trail on many occasions over the years, shooting an assortment of photographs of me and my family. In every case, her work was the highest quality. Pat's photographic skills brought her great distinction and were rightly a source of pride. While her accomplishments as a photographer and humanitarian are many, Pat's lasting legacy rests in her family. Pat was the mother of two--Alexander Lion Krongard and Randall Harris Krongard--and the proud grandmother of two more. In her sons and grandchildren, Pat's love and generosity will unquestionably endure. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, Pat was a beautiful human being who lived an accomplished life. Although friends and family are profoundly saddened by her premature passing, each can take solace in the wonderful life that she led. I know I speak for everyone who knew Pat well when I say she will be greatly missed.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is with personal privilege that I enter this tribute in acknowledgment of Roy and Judy Trivett, great Americans and superb business leaders. The Trivetts' family business was recognized by the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce as the Small Business of the Year. The Trivetts were recognized for their tireless efforts developing a successful electrical business. In 1994, the Trivetts started Royal Electrical from one room in their home. Today, Royal Electrical is a successful business with 23 employees and $1.5 million in gross revenues. The depth of this family goes far beyond the business community. They have been equally active in trade and community organizations. Their company, in conjunction with Electrical Contractors, Inc., provides training for select employees, and they also work with Pueblo Community College providing various other types of training. In addition, Roy is also the current President of the Rock Mountain chapter of the Electrical Apparatus Service Association, and both the Trivetts are active leaders in the Trinity Lutheran Church and serve on the board of the Rare Breed Foundation. The people of Colorado have every right to be proud of the Trivetts. On behalf of the people of Colorado, I thank you both, Roy and Judy, for your hard work and service to the Pueblo community. We are all very proud of you.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker. It is at this moment that I would like to congratulate Debbie Wilde for receiving the ATHENA Award, in recognition of her commitment to helping women reach their full leadership potential. Mary is currently the director of Garfield Youth Services and her professional accomplishments, community efforts and youth activities deserve the recognition of this body. Mary has played an important role in Garfield Youth Services' road to success. During her time with the organization, GYS has seen a tremendous growth in their staff and their membership. Currently, the youth organization provides more than 10 programs in which area youth and parents play an active role. One of Mary's most notable undertakings is the ``Kiss-A-Pig'' Contest, a contest that has seen an increase in proceeds for the organization from $3,000 to $100,000. Mary has not only been instrumental in developing the Garfield Youth Services into a renowned organization, but she has also been very active in other facets of her community. As a resident of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Mary involves herself in church, school, and various recreational activities. She believes it is important to ``be a servant'' and credits her devotion and faith as the backbone to her public service. It is with this, Mr. Speaker, that I congratulate Mary for receiving the ATHENA Award and I commend her on her public involvement. It is a real pleasure to honor people of Mary's character. We are all very proud of you, Mary. Congratulations!

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to honor Thom Peabody, a man that has devoted his life to the community and to teaching. Mr. Peabody has been named the L.S. Wood teacher of the year. In recognition of this outstanding achievement, I would like to pay tribute to him today. Mr. Peabody has been a seventh grade science teacher at the Riverside School, in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, for twenty years. His enthusiasm for teaching is apparent when you only look at his students, and you see how much he has affected their passion for learning. One former student, Audrey Hughes, recalls Mr. Peabody in this way: ``Mr. Peabody is an inspiration to me and many others as a teacher, coach, and a personal role model. This seventh grade science teacher had a way of teaching the material in an exciting, interesting way that made learning easy. Students have a great deal of respect for this man because he shows respect for them. Mr. Peabody emphasizes how hard work and perseverance pay off in the end and how education is a crucial part of life. Mr. Peabody is an example of the person I hope to become someday. He has touched so many lives and means so much to all that know him. I feel privileged to have had this man as such a large part of my life. Mr. Peabody is truly my hero''. After 20 years of dedicated service, Thom recently retired. Students, staff and the community will miss this man who has touched their lives in so many ways. During his tenure, he went above and beyond the teachers call of duty, serving his community and its youth well. It is with this, Mr. Speaker, that I would like to pay tribute to Mr. Peabody and his efforts to make his community a better place to live. We are all grateful for his service.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to recognize an exceptional man, Blake L. Boteler, of Colorado Springs, Colorado. In June, Mr. Boteler was recognized as one of America's finest at the seventh annual ``TOP COPS'' awards. The ``TOP COPS'' award recognizes law enforcement officers that have demonstrated outstanding acts of heroism and exceptional service to their community. Mr. Boteler won the award because of his considerable efforts to help his community in the war against drugs. Mr. Boteler personifies the goals that this award stand for and we all can learn from the example he has set. Mr. Boteler is an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who was recognized for the ``Top Cop'' award because of the heroism he showed in fighting the flow of narcotics and weapons in to this country by a well known outlaw motorcycle gang. Using his tactical skills, he successfully infiltrated the gang and helped apprehend several suspects, effectively ending the gang's reign. His perseverance eventually paid off and as his efforts were instrumental in helping the State of Colorado serve 26 warrants and prosecute 40 defendants. The gang was eventually disbanded and Agent Boteler seized over 225 weapons and other paraphernalia. Agent Boteler had this to say when he learned that he was a recipient of this award: `` I was honored to have this investigation considered so highly, especially considering the fact of all the hard work and sacrifices made on a daily basis by members of this nation's law enforcement community that are equally deserving of this award.'' Because of the dedication of this outstanding American, I think it is all together fitting that this distinguished body pay tribute to him. It is obvious why Mr. Boteler was chosen as the recipient of the ``TOP COPS'' award. I think that we all owe him a debt of gratitude for his service to the state. Due to Mr. Boteler's dedication, it is clear that Colorado is a better place.