John Mica

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I took to the floor earlier today in response to charges from the other side. With Earth Day coming up, the other side is bashing Republicans. Republicans are going to hurt the environment. They send an incorrect message to the American people. Let me take, if I may, a few minutes and set the record straight. First of all, probably most of the Members and the young people who have come here to serve in Congress do not realize, Mr. Speaker, that in fact the Environmental Protection Agency is a Republican idea. It was started and proposed by President Nixon in 1972. But the idea was not to create a huge bureaucracy. The idea was to set some national standards, because Republicans want clean air. Republicans want clean water. Republicans want clean land. We have children. We breathe the air. We drink the water. We want our children to inherent a land that is environmentally protected and clean and secure. So it is a Republican idea that we are talking about. But the idea was not to pay more and get less. In fact, the Republican idea was to set some national standards of regulation. But let us look at what has happened. Just take a minute and look at this. Since today, we have 18,000 Federal bureaucrats in the Environmental Protection Agency, not to mention thousands of contract employees, and their job is to pump out rules. You think they might be in my State of Florida, but in fact they are scattered throughout 10 regional offices and 1,000 at a clip there. Then here in Washington, DC, we have 6,000 EPA employees within almost speaking distance of my voice. Mr. Speaker, we have 6,000 EPA Federal bureaucrats who, again, their responsibility is to pump out more rules and regulations and justify their bureaucracy and their rulemaking ability. So we have seen that bureaucracy grow. In 1972, we did not have 47 of the 50 States that have full-blown environmental protection agencies. Almost every city, every county, every State has full-blown authorities. Let us look at the programs that they talk about, the gentleman from New Jersey came back and talked about. Do these programs work? Are we making polluters pay? Look at this headline from 1993: ``EPA Lets Polluters Off Hook.'' So polluters are not paying under the current law. So this misinformation is incorrect. These are the facts. Now, of the sites that we have in Superfund, a program which was well-intended, are we cleaning up the Superfund? Wrong. Look at the number of sites. We have over 2,000 sites, and only a handful have been cleaned up at great expense. So we are not cleaning up the sites, and that is according to GAO reports. They do not want to deal with the facts. Then a GAO report that was released in 1994, it says: ``Are we cleaning up the sites that are most hazardous to public health, safety and welfare? And the answer is no.'' The report says EPA does not use risk to set priorities. You know what drives the cleanup? Political pressure. That is what this report says. That is what Republicans are trying to change. We say why pay more and get less? Superfund is a disaster. You know who gets the money in this? The lawyers and the people who do studies. About 80 percent of the billions of dollars that are expended on these programs go to the lawyers and the studies. Mr. Speaker, I sit on the committee that oversees EPA. You know who does the studies? Another report by the General Accounting Office showed that the largest percentage of contractors are former EPA employees. An incestuous relationship. So this is what they want to keep. They want to keep the pollution. They want to let the polluters off the hook. They do not want the sites cleaned up that are hazardous to our children and our future. They want to pay more and get less. They want the attorneys and these fat cats from EPA who have gone into the private sector to keep milking the cow because the taxpayers are paying. This is what the argument is about, and the American people and this Congress must listen. Republicans care about the environment. Republicans care about the land and the water and the air we breathe. The thing is, we are not getting our money's worth. The thing is, people are out there busting their buns to send money to Washington, and this is where the billions are going and the hazardous waste sites are not being cleaned up and priorities are not being met and promises are not being kept.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding, and also I must take a minute and thank him and his other 72 colleagues of the 73 new freshmen in the House of Representatives. How refreshing it is to have people come from all walks of life. Not just attorneys, but somewhere in the neighborhood of three-quarters of this class, this new class of freshmen, come from business. Three-quarters of them have never run for a political office or served in other political office. And they took time from their lives and their family obligations and business and professional obligations, and leaders like the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Lindsey Graham, have come here and looked at how our Government is operating. They brought a message from the people in this last election that the people were not pleased with paying more and getting less, as I often say. I have only been here 37 months in Congress, so I consider myself part of that new breed, but I commend the gentleman and his colleagues for what they have brought to the Congress and their recommendations. If you consider what we are doing tonight, Mr. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina is doing tonight, he is here late at night talking about education. He is a Republican, he is a member of the new majority, and the Republicans and Mr. Graham and every one of my Republican colleagues are very committed to good sound education, improving education in this country. We cannot make any better investment. But ask any American, ask any parent, ask any student, ask any teacher about education in the United States today, and they are going to tell you that education is in crises. Republicans have always been strong supporters of education. Being business men and women and professionals and people who are highly educated, they know that education is really the key to the success of the problems in this country. They know that if you go into the jails, if you go into the unemployment lines in this Nation, if you go into the homes of welfare recipients, you find that they did not have a good education opportunity. But Americans and Republicans and Democrats and independents and anyone who lives and pays taxes in this Nation must be concerned about paying more for education and getting less. Now, I always drive the other side of the aisle crazy and the Democrats crazy, because I like to deal with facts, and sometimes they come out here and say things and they do not base them on fact. But let me tell you about where we are in education and the facts about paying more and getting less. The fact is, and these are not my statistics, these are published statistics, the fact is SAT scores dropped from a total average of 937 in 1972 to 902 in 1994. The fact is we are spending more and getting less. The fact is 17-year-olds scored 11 points worse in science in 1970 than in 1994. The fact is reading of 17-year-olds, 17-year-olds who do not read at a proficient level, their reading scores have fallen since 1992. Spending more, getting less. The fact is, in math, United States students scored worse in math than all other large countries except Spain. The fact is we are spending more and getting less for education. The fact is 30 percent of all college freshmen must take remedial education, and in my district in central Florida, and I come from a fairly prosperous and successful central Florida area, some of our community colleges, one of the presidents told me over 50 percent of his students entering community college need remedial education. And then I was stunned to read that at another local community college, 71 percent of the entering freshmen need remedial education. This is the fact. These are the facts. We are paying more and we are getting less in education. That is what this is about. It is not just how much money we come here and spend, and the people just getting home today and are working and yesterday paid their taxes. And they are sending this incredible amount of their money here to Washington. This is the result of your dollars. We need to look at how; we came here to look at how effectively we were spending those dollars. I looked at Head Start. Let me again deal with some facts. Let us talk a little bit for a minute about the history of Head Start. Every Member of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and every citizen of this country should pay attention to this, because first of all they think Republicans are cutting spending in these areas. The fact is, in education we are proposing increasing expenditures of almost $25 billion over the next 7 years. I tell people that and they say, I thought Republicans were cutting education. The fact is, for possibly illegal aliens, you will not be getting education. That is part of what this debate is about. You do not hear that talked about here. But let us talk about one program that I took some time spending, spending some of my staff work and my personal time in looking at a Head Start program. Back in the schools that I attended at the University of Florida, I remember serving as the secretary of academic affairs and student government. This is back in the early 1960s. I was committed to trying to make a change and to do some positive things. I remember one of the things we worked on was a project called Project Begin Here, because we knew we had a university, the University of Florida, a great institution, here we had a town, Gainesville, where students did not have opportunities to learn. So we started this Project Begin Here to take the resources of this great university school of education I was a part of and bring it into the community and help give kids an opportunity and an uplift. We knew that was a key way back then. I supported Head Start Programs back then in the early 1960s. I support Head Start Programs today. The concept is basically good. The problem is look at what has happened. Look at the time from 1990 to 1995. Head Start funding increased 128 percent. Washington spent over $31.2 billion on the Head Start Program. Those are the types of increases. The House proposed, the House proposed $3.39 billion for 1996, only a minimal reduction from $3.52 billion that was appropriated for 1995. Now, that is not a very big difference. There is a reduction, and let me talk about the purpose for the reduction in a minute. But the funding for this program has grown almost five times as fast as the number of children served. The growth has resulted in a sloppy, I mean disgusting management of the program. This is not what I am saying. This is not a Republican report I am going to detail here. And again, we must look at how we are spending these dollars and what the effect is and what are we getting for the program. Now, these programs, and again, not Republican reports, and I only want to deal with facts because, as I said, it drives the opposition crazy, this report is the Office of Inspector General, Department of Health and Human Services, evaluating Head Start expansion through the performance indicators. These are 1993. This one is 1993, Head Start expansion grantee experiences. Let us talk about what we found here. Head Start is 30 years old, and yet there is little evaluation of the program's effectiveness. This is not what I am saying. What there is suggests that academic gains made by kids in the program are in fact temporary. That is what we find. The HHS report found that, one, children may not be fully immunized before leaving the Head Start Program. I mean here we spend hundreds of millions on immunization programs, a government program, and we cannot even get our government program to cooperate with the administration's program to immunize, so number one grade success. Grantees frequently do not identify families social services needs, another criticism of this, and wait until you hear how we spend the money on trying to identify this. Grantee's files and records are incomplete, inconsistent and difficult to review. And wait until you hear how I detail what is required as far as administration of this program in one small program in my district. The HHS report also found that there was no educationally meaningful differences between Head Start children and nonHead Start children by the end of the second year of grade school. Numerous independent studies confirm that the present Head Start Program has only short-term benefits for poor children. This is not what I have said. This is the report of the inspector general. These are the facts. So this is how they evaluated the program. So I was contacted by a parent who was a single mother, divorced, I believe, situation with two children and she put her children into the Head Start, had, I think, one or two children in Head Start Program. And she was having a difficult time personally but wanted to give her children every advantage. I commend her for her effort. But then she came to me and said, Mr. Mica, she is a very intelligent woman, a very educated woman. She said, I have had my children in this program and it is a disaster. So I thought, well, I better look at what is going on. So I went and I looked at the Head Start Program. Let me give you one Head Start Program in one community, and there are some, there are others that are not run in this fashion, but let me tell you what is going on in my area of Florida. Last year this one program that serves 378 children received over $2 million for the Federal Government, another $550,000 from the State, that is over $2.5 million. The cost per student for a part-time preschool program is $7,325. That is just the local administrative cost, the figures I have, not including this huge bureaucracy they have built in Washington, not including the bureaucracy that they have in Atlanta. I could send the student to the best preschool program, a stellar one in central Florida for this amount of money. And then with the money that bureaucrats are wasting in administration, I would have money left over, plenty of money left over. In addition, I know that the program would be, first of all, longer in duration because this is an abbreviated program. The teachers, there would be at least some certified teachers in the program. And the child would have a much better experience. This program in central Florida has been found to be deficient by HHS in serving children for the past two years. My attempts to try to change it are totally useless because you have to deal with a bureaucracy in Washington and Atlanta and all kinds of regulations. It is amazing that they can run this. Listen to the best part. This agency, again the local Head Start Program, one program, 378 students, employs 25 teachers and 25 assistants. Now, that is not bad. But first of all, not one of the teachers that I know of are certified. Not one of the assistants are certified. They have come up with some cockamamie certification program, but basically what you have is a minority employment program. So then they gather all the minority children together in this program with no certified teachers to basically provide day care services. It is an incredibly expensive price tag. And are these students getting a cultural advantage? Are they getting an educational experience? The answer has to be no. Now, you have not heard the most outrageous part of this entire story. I asked for the budget for these 378 students. For the 25 teachers, there are nearly 25 administrators. Listen to this: One director gets almost $40,000; an area coordinator gets almost $29,000; another area coordinator, $29,000; an education coordinator, $26,000; a family services coordinator, $26,000; a nutrition coordinator, almost $26,000; mental health disability coordinator, $26,000; another health coordinator, $26,000; personnel training coordinator, $19,000; an educational specialist, $29,000; another educational specialist, $24,000. It goes on and on, $20,000, they go on and on. Then you have family services specialists. It is absolutely mind-boggling. Then you get to the teachers, the teachers. Here is the teacher, first teacher, $12,000 a year, $14,000 a year. We might even have a teacher in here, there is one for $15,000. I do not have a certified teacher. This is a national disgrace, Mr. Speaker, that my disadvantaged students, 378 of them, that we have this bureaucracy. Now, it would not be bad if you just had this bureaucracy for this little program, but this incredible amount of money. Let us face it, this is what the debate is all about, Mr. Speaker. I am chairman of the House Civil Service Subcommittee that oversees the Federal employees. So I asked the staff to tell me how many employees there are in the Department of Education. There are 4,876. Now, of all of the departments, I think they probably take the cake, but there are 3,322 just down the street from here, 3,322. I really think the Secretary of Education, Mr. Riley, was taking great pride in how he had reduced the number of people in the Department of Education from some other year. So I ask our staff to also investigate, and they told me that there are thousands upon thousands of contract employees that are not now counted in these figures. But we have 3,322 bureaucrats here pumping out rules and regulations and they pump them out to Tallahassee, my State capital, and other State capitals. They pass then onto Atlanta, and they must pass them on. So we have 25 administrators making twice the amount of money anyone in the classroom made in this program, and we wonder why our students cannot read and why there is this debate. But it is all about spending more and getting less. Again, these are the facts. Anyone who would like copies of these, any of my colleagues, this is how the programs are run. These are the evaluations. These are not Republican evaluations. Mr. Speaker, Members can see I get a little bit hot under the collar when they accuse Republicans of cutting education. I have two children. I am concerned about education. I heard the gentleman from South Carolina talking about Title I. I do not know a lot about it, but I know how important it is to have it as a follow-up program. If you have Head Start and you do not have Title I, we know if the kids cannot read by third grade, as my superintendent so ably says in Seminole County, FL, the school superintendent, he says, they are lost. They cannot read, they cannot write, they cannot do basic math. If we are not spending the money in the classroom on the students, in the programs that need it, for the teachers, we have a problem. A teacher just came up to me in a Title I Program and stated, ``Mr. Mica, I want you to know, they told me I am going to lose my job, but they are hiring another administrator.'' I almost got sick when I heard that. Here is a teacher in a Title I Program, and Title I programs are important. We need to make sure that for the students who need Title I, that we have a consistent pattern of education; that we just do not do minority grouping with minority employment and give these children a disadvantage. They need an advantage, the very best advantage. Then we need to follow up in first grade and second grade and third grade, so they can read and write, and of course do basic skills. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk, if I may, just for a minute more. If the gentleman will continue to yield, when I get on these subjects, again, as a former graduate of the University of Florida School of Education, I just get so upset and concerned about the direction of education. Mr. Speaker, if we take a minute and look at what we are doing to employ students who need skills for real jobs, and I am not talking about $5-an-hour-paying jobs. We know people have difficulty living on minimum wage. But we are talking about jobs that give people an opportunity to be self-sustaining, good-paying jobs. When we start to look at what we are doing with our job training programs, the same accusations, Republicans are cutting money for job training programs. Again, Mr. Speaker, we must look at what we are doing. The American people must stop, listen, and learn about what is going on with their money. Here is one program for job education. I know this comes under the Department of Labor. Here is an article that says, ``Audit faults job training program.'' This is in Puerto Rico. We also pay for job training there, but the same thing happens in the United States. This report says, ``the department spent about $305,000 for each participant placed in a job-related employment whose employment lasted over 90 days. Mr. Speaker, this caught my eye just recently in the Washington Post, but there was an article within the last month or so in the Orlando Sentinel that absolutely was flabbergasting. It talked about the State of Florida and job training and education programs. Get this. The State of Florida, one State out of the 50 States, spends $1 billion in their job trainings programs, $1 billion. This was a State audit of those programs. The State audit said basically that the programs were, almost every one of them, a disaster. It said, in fact, that only 20 percent of the students who entered these job training programs ever completed them, 20 percent who entered. Then, of those who completed the job training program, only 37 percent got a job. Then, of the 37 percent, and remember, that is of the 20 percent who have entered who got a job, they got just above a minimum wage job. Then they found that within 6 months the people were out of a job. One billion dollars that people spent yesterday in paying their taxes, Floridians and other Americans, to send to Washington for education programs that do not make sense, for job training programs that do not make sense. Again, the reports go on and on. I served on the committee that oversaw some of these programs, the EPA and some of the others in the previous Congress. I would sit at the hearings and just about fall off my chair to hear how taxpayer money was wasted and abused. But this message is not getting out to the Congress, Mr. Speaker, it is not getting out to the American people, that they are paying more and getting less. I know in their hearts and in their guts, the American people know this is wrong. They know there is something wrong with the system, and they are dedicated. People are interested in education. Everyone I have met, whether it is someone working in a grocery store or someone who is a high professional in my community, is interested in education. Every Republican wants education. But what we do not want is this huge bureaucracy, this huge ineffectiveness that has cast a spell across the entire country. What we want, too, are some other things that we may not be able to legislate. We may begin to want to look at how we can restore some true caring, some love, some spiritual values, some values, some discipline in these schoolrooms. You talk to the teachers, I have talked to teachers who have been struck twice. Instead of another art course or a music class, as in where some of my children went, they are putting in security guards. There are police people. We do not have new math teachers or cultural teachers, we have more policepeople. We are putting in metal detectors in our schools. There is something wrong. There is something dramatically wrong. If this does not tell a little bit of the picture, I do not know what does. Mr. Speaker, I know there are other problems: the welfare system that we have created over 40 years. When children go to school and they have never seen a father, they come from a home that is in total disruption, they have no sense of values, then we wonder why we get into these situations. We are dealing with the problems that we have self- generated in 40 years of decline of family values, of discipline in our schools; of the professionism of education, rather than a 9 to 5 job: If I can just make it through one more day and keep these kids under some control, and keep the discipline to where they do not physically abuse me during the day, I have made it through another day in my classroom. It has to stop. I just came here for a short time. I do not plan to stay forever. But I am dedicated, and if the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Graham] is not here next time or the other freshmen are not here, I know the American people will send more people to get this job done, because they are concerned, and we are concerned. We do not care about the next election, we are concerned about the next generation. When we have to take our children out of schools and we are paying taxes and seeing this result, it is sad. It really is sad. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I get wound up in these debates, but these are all things that I take personally. I am a Republican who cares about education and does not like to have people tell me that we are gutting or cutting education. We are trying to improve, we are trying to re-examine education as it has been done and correct these mistakes, and do a better job with taxpayers' very hard- earned money. Again I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I saw the President was in New York earlier this week. He was talking about improving education. Unfortunately, he really did not tell the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say. The President really did not take time to tell the American people about the U.S. Department of Education and the fact that it has 5,000 Federal bureaucrats who justify their existence primarily by pumping out and churning out mindless regulations for our teachers and our States. President Clinton really did not tell the rest of the story when he did not tell the people that of those nearly 5,000 people in the U.S. Department of Education that three-quarters of them, about 3,500, are right down the street in Washington, DC, making over twice what our average classroom teacher is making in my district. President Clinton did not talk about ending welfare as we know it, welfare, really which has destroyed our family structure, any sense of values, self-discipline, and respect and really any hope for education. President Clinton really did not tell the rest of the story about his failed drug policy that has raised youth drug use to all-time levels and made juvenile crime epidemic in this country. You know, the debate going on, the debate today about funding the country, and we have just been in the process of passing a resolution to continue for 4 more weeks, a lot of people say, ``Why can you not decide this?'' There are some fundamental differences about how we spend money on education, the environment, and these other issues. Most people would not know this. But, in fact, the Republicans have proposed from the beginning in their budget a vast increase in spending in education, $25 billion more over the next 7 years. But the real debate is over how those dollars are spent, again, whether we finance bureaucrats in Washington, whether we pay to continue to support programs where students cannot read their own diplomas, where students continue to score lower in their tests and we spend more money. My community college has entrants of which over 50 percent need remedial education. So the real question is how we spend our money. I wanted to also cite for the House and the Speaker here a story from the Orlando Sentinel that cites a report on State education and job training programs. It says State and Federal Governments spend about a billion dollars in Florida on vocational education programs. What is the result? And this is from the report: The programs fail to produce graduates or workers who can earn a decent salary. In fact, only about 20 percent of those who enter these programs completed them, and then a small percentage, 19 percent, found a job after that, and then most of them got a low-paying job and were out of the job in a short period of time. Lawmakers in Florida were astonished, this report says, when they heard the findings. The report also indicated that money was wasted on duplicate programs. So this debate about education and environment is paying more and getting less, and that is what this is all about. People have to understand, because this is important, it is not just how much money you throw at the program, it is how you spend it and do we improve these programs, do we provide a better education, do our students come out with a diploma they can read and then get a job where they can earn a decent living and be a productive and capable, independent citizen in this great Nation? So that is what the debate is about, paying more and getting less. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, again, as Paul Harvey would say, that is the rest of the story.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I was going to speak on another subject, but I have to comment on the lack of information that the other side has on medical savings accounts. I, in fact, as chair of the Subcommittee on Civil Service of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, held hearings on this. We found that in every instance, for almost every State and local government that testified on these, we found lower costs, lower premiums, expanded coverage. Because it was not a Washington command and control idea, they do not like it. Because it does not limit your choices, the other side does not like it. Because it is not an old government idea or solution, they do not like it. Mr. Speaker, I think if we had a new idea and it came up and bit them on the leg, they would not even recognize it. Mr. Speaker, this is a new idea. It saves costs. It saves premiums. It is a good idea. It is time for it.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, small business is really the largest employer in our country. Small business in fact is the cornerstone of free enterprise. Today small business in the United States is being choked to death on mindless regulations, edicts and paperwork, and federally mandated compliance forms. When they write the epitaph of American small business, let me read for you what the tombstone is going to say: ``Here lies American small business, murdered by overregulation, murdered by taxation and litigation.'' Today we cannot totally free the bondage of small business in America. What we can do today, however, is allow some regulatory flexibility, and that is what this legislation does. Today, through this legislation, small business will have a small but a fighting chance to challenge this crazy Federal bureaucratic rulemaking process. Today we can let Congress place a small check on the bureaucrats who have made a lifetime career of pumping out mindless, costly, and ineffective regulations. Today, if we are going to sink our Nation further into the rathole of debt, we can, through these regulatory reform measures, give small business, who employ our people, who pay our taxes, a small but fighting chance to dig us out of that rathole of debt.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from the opportunity to address the question of MSA's and also follow the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone]. I serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and actually had the opportunity to conduct hearings on MSA's. We have heard the other side of the aisle and the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] just bash MSA's. Let me say what Mayor Schundler testified to, the mayor of Jersey City, NJ, who came before our subcommittee. He said MSA's were offered and 60 percent of eligible employees chose MSA's over their previous plan. What were the results? And this is a city facing financial disaster and not being able to provide health care for their employees. The results reduced the out-of-pocket costs to employees and still saved the city about $275 per employee, but they do not want to deal with the facts on the other side. Let us take another area, a small county, Ada County, ID, testified that under their county's MSA plan, the taxpayer saved money and the employees saved out-of-pocket costs which were reduced. Then the private sector was at our hearing. At the hearing the subcommittee heard of reported cost savings ranging from 17 to 40 percent by more than 1,000 private businesses that have adopted MSA's. Finally, how about the AFL-CIO? Let us see what one of their affiliates said. They called MSA's an option offered to their employees a win win situation. So if we went to provide health care cost effectively, these are the facts, this is the result, and this is how we can do it. It just happens to be a new idea whose time has arrived.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Madam Speaker, I come before the House this afternoon really concerned about a report that has now been released to the Congress. It is the National Drug Policy: A Review of the Status of the Drug War. Madam Speaker, I serve on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, and this product is from our subcommittee, which I also serve on, which is the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice. This report should be required reading for every Member of Congress, should be required reading for every citizen of the United States, and it should be required reading for everyone who is involved in the media of the United States. This report details a history of total failure of our Nation's drug policy, and we see that decline almost immediately the moment that President Clinton took office. This is one of the most startling reports to ever be produced by the Congress, and I hope it gets the attention of every Member of Congress and every parent and everyone in the media. What it does is, it in fact outlines a policy of national disaster. President Clinton started this when he dismantled the drug office, and did not make drug prevention and attacking the drug problem a priority of this administration. Madam Speaker, when he talked about cutting the White House staff, he in fact cut 85 percent of the White House drug policy staff, and that is where the cuts came in. That is where the attention was not focused. Then he appointed Joycelyn Elders, who made drugs and drug abuse a joke and sent a mixed message. It was not the message of ``just say no,'' it was the message of ``just say maybe,'' and this report details the disaster that that policy has imposed on this Congress and on the Nation and our children. Under President Clinton's watch, listen to this, drug prosecution has dropped 12.5 percent in the last 2 years. You have heard the comments about the judiciary he has been appointing and their decisions as far as enforcement, which have made enforcement and prosecution a joke in this country. Madam Speaker, let me tell you the details of what this report is about and how it is affecting our children. Heroin use by teenagers is up, and emergency room visits for heroin rose 31 percent between 1992 and 1993 alone. In less than 3 years, the President has destroyed our drug interdiction program, and we know that cocaine is coming in from Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, and transshipped through Mexico, which he recently granted certification in the drug certification program to. What did we do with the drug interdiction program? We basically dismantled it. What are the results, again, with our children? Juvenile crime, in September 1995 the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reported that, now listen to this, and this is from the report: after years of relative stability, juvenile involvement in violent crime known to law enforcement has been increasing, and juveniles were responsible for about one in five violent crimes. We see what this failed policy of this Clinton administration has brought us. Juvenile use and casual drug use in every area, marijuana, cocaine, designer drugs, heroin. Every one of these areas is dramatically off the charts, and it is the result of a failed national drug policy, and the responsibility and the trail to responsibility leads right to the White House. Let me say finally that even the media coverage of this situation is terrible. It is a national disgrace that the media is not paying more attention, that they in fact put on one antidrug ad per day in markets and the Federal Government controls the airwaves, so the media should have as much responsibility for getting the message out, the message of this disaster created by this administration, and should begin a policy of education. Finally, the President's policy, every standard, including drug treatment, is a disaster, and I will detail this further in another special order.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, let me tell Members what this debate is all about and what the administration and the liberals are talking about in education cuts. They are talking about paying more and getting less. Let me read, if I may, about the great success of the programs they are talking about and what Republicans are talking about. This just appeared in the newspaper in Florida. Many of Florida's training and vocational education programs that are supposed to give Floridians the skills to find good-paying jobs are not working, according to the report. State and Federal Governments spend about $1 billion a year on vocational education programs in Florida, more than 1.2 million residents use the programs, but many of the State's programs fail to produce graduates or workers who can earn a decent salary. Most students who enter the programs never graduate. In all, 37 percent of 347 job training and vocational programs perform poorly, according to the report. Only 20 percent of those who enrolled in high school vocational programs completed them. They want you to pay more and get less, and that is what this argument is about.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, when you think you have heard it all from this administration, they never cease to amaze me. In today's Washington Times, the U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley responded to an editorial that questioned the role of the Department of Education. To justify the Federal Department of Education, let me read what Secretary Riley said: ``Most recently, the President asked me to distribute the manual on school uniforms,'' and I have got a copy of it here, the manual on school uniforms. I have not read this invaluable tool that helps justify the existence of the U.S. Department of Education. Maybe Secretary Riley suggests color coordination on uniforms. Maybe Secretary Riley suggests now mixing plaids and stripes. Or maybe, in fact, this manual justifies the employment of 4,876 Department of Education employees, of whom 3,322 are in Washington, DC, working on this manual on school uniforms.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to address the House this evening and talk about the Vice President's speech today. The Vice President was on a mission to distort what the Republicans are actually doing in Congress relating to environmental changes and funding the EPA. I think it is important that the Congress and the American people know what is happening. Today Vice President Gore said we are putting our kids in danger. He said that today more than 10 million American children under 10 currently under 12 currently living within 4 miles of a toxic waste site are at risk. The Vice President also said, yes, the era of big Government is over. My colleagues, unfortunately, I think, the Vice President is talking out of both sides of his mouth to us. I think we need to set the record straight, and let me share with you some of the facts relating to what is going on with this great current Superfund site. First of all, the Superfund Program has been in existence for 15 years, and only 75 sites out of several thousand identified sites out of several thousand identified sites have been cleaned up, an average of 5 sites per year. The average cost of a cleanup of a site is $30.7 million. The total cost to date in the Superfund Program to the Government and private sectors is about $25 billion. The Superfund costs the Government and private sector $4 billion annually for nonfederally owned sites. However, only 53 percent of the total Superfund dollars are spent on cleaning up the sites. The rest of the money, and this is the Paul Harvey part of the story, the rest of the money, $1.3 billion annually, is spent on attorneys and studies. So we are, under this current system of Superfund that the Vice President is so concerned about protecting, the money does not go to clean up these sites. The money goes back for attorneys' fees and studies, and you see out of all of the sites identified, several thousand, only a handful have, in fact, been cleaned up. What about those children the Vice President spoke about today when he addressed group here in Washington? Are we taking care of the risk to human health and safety and welfare? How did the GAO report? This GAO report is June 17, 1994. Let me read this GAO report about the sites we are cleaning up. Although one of the EPA's key policy objectives is to address the worst sites first. Relative risk plays little role in the agency's determination of priorities. EPA headquarters leave the task of setting priorities to the regions. Yet the regions do not even rank the sites by risk. So we find that we are not cleaning up the sites that pose, in fact, the most risk to our children, public health, and safety, and that the system that President Gore is protecting is really out of whack. Ladies and gentlemen, we have also heard comments that EPA is going to, in fact, make polluters pay. We have to look at the record. The Vice President says this great system, in fact, currently makes polluters pay and we do not want to change that. In fact, look at these headlines, ``EPA Lets Polluters Off the Hook.'' In fact, under the current system, you find that very few of the dollars are collected by EPA. The Lincoln Star reported, June 21, 1993, that internal EPA figures obtained by Associated Press showed the Agency has recovered only $843 million, or less than one-fifth of the $4.3 billion, in cleanup costs that could be recovered from polluters under the current law. So they are not doing it now. And these are the kinds of changes we want to make here. Finally, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you what this is about. This is about command and control bureaucracy here in Washington, DC. This is about how many employees EPA has. EPA has 5,924 of its nearly 17,850 employees in the entire agency. There are 6,000 here in Washington, DC. This is about command and control and bureaucracy, not about the environment.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, I am glad the gentleman mentioned one case. I would like to mention another. In Hastings, NE, that community began a review of its environmental costs and concluded that the single biggest drain on the Treasury was the $65 million it would take to build a treatment plant to meet a proposed EPA rule for removing radon from the city's water. Now, radon is a radioactive gas that occurs naturally. Before the EPA proposal, almost no public health specialist had considered radon in drinking water to be any sort of a threat. Independent radiation health experts said that in virtually every area of the United States, the amount of radon that evaporates from water is only one-thirtieth to one-one hundredth of what is really naturally in the air. So here is another example of a small community that had imposed on it a burden from EPA that made no sense. This is what we are talking about. This is not some fancy lobbyist coming in here asking for changes. These are our cities, our counties, our States, our legislatures asking us to look at what we are doing. Again, even Carol Browner said before she got into the empire and bureaucracy-building business in Washington that what the Federal Government was doing to her as a State director of the EPA in Florida made no sense. That is what this argument is about. The rest is just not the truth.

Mr. MICA. Just in Washington.

Mr. MICA. I would like to thank my colleague for yielding, and also spend a few moments tonight talking about what is going on as far as the environment, what is being said as far as the environment, what is being said as far as the Republican policy and some of the changes proposed relating to the environment by the new majority. I can tell you, I am a member of the new majority. I am a Republican, but I consider myself a strong advocate of the environment, of protecting our air, our land, or water, and making certain that it is safe for this and future generations. But I am also concerned that there has been a great deal of misinformation spread about what we are trying to do and want is being done by our chief environmental enforcement agency, and that is the Environmental Protection Agency. Just in the last day or two, President Clinton has visited New Jersey and he has made some comments relating to the EPA and also the Republican agenda for the environment, and I think that it is important that we respond to those. He stated in New Jersey that lobbyists for special interests were dictating the environmental policies by the new majority. I am here to tell my colleagues and the Speaker tonight and the American public that that is just not correct, that in fact the agenda that has been dictated on making changes to EPA and to regulations that deal with the environment has not been dictated by lobbyists or corporate interests, but in fact by the mayors, by the Governors, by the legislators, by the county commissioners across this great Nation. In fact, I have a story dated March 24, 1993 from the New York Times, and it says that in January mayors from 114 cities in 49 States opened the campaign by sending President Clinton a letter urging the White House to focus on how environmental policymaking had in their view gone awry. So the genesis of the changes proposed by the new majority are in fact by our local government officials. They have seen that the regulation and some of the other edicts out of Washington have in fact cost the taxpayers, their local taxpayers, enormous amounts of dollars, and not gotten very good results for it. Let me just cite, if I may, how some of the money is being spent. In fact, it really concerns me that the moneys are being spend in Washington on administration and on employees in a huge bureaucracy that in fact has been built up over the past few years. In Washington, DC, for example, out of 18,000 EPA employees, there are a total of almost 6,000, nearly 6,000 just within 50 miles of Washington, DC. Part of the argument with the changes that we are trying to make is to stop the command and control and the bureaucracy and administration from Washington. What is interesting is EPA in fact is a Republican idea. It was founded in 1972 under President Nixon to provide some better regulations, some better national standards in cleaning up the air, the water and the land. What has happened is, over the years we have created a huge bureaucracy, now with 6,000 employees in Washington, and that number, I might say, is about the total figure of EPA employees that was in the entire Agency about a dozen years ago. Since 1972, I might add, almost every State in the Nation has created their own department of environmental protection. Each State has created an agency which can deal with enforcement, which can deal with some of the problems, which can take into consideration some of the local issues and factors relating to the land and the water and the air in that particular area. So we have built a huge bureaucracy centered in Washington that wants to keep command and control. Republicans in fact have proposed that we dismantle some of that administration, we dismantle some of the overhead. Not only do we have the administration in Washington to deal with, you take, for example, the State of Georgia where 1 of the 10 regional offices is located, and that is Atlanta, GA, there are 1,300 EPA employees located in that regional office, 1 of, again, 10 highly bureaucratized and highly staffed offices that are not out there, again, with the cities and the counties and the special districts and the States tackling the tough environmental problems. So the money and the bureaucracy is in Washington and these regional offices, and the real problems are not being tackled out there. Let me give you just a statistic. More than 90 percent of the environmental enforcement is conducted by the States today, not in fact by Federal EPA. However, the majority of environmental funding goes to EPA, if we look at the statistics. Furthermore, the EPA has doubled its size during the past 20 years, as I have pointed out, now employing these 18,000 employees and maintaining a budget of $3.6 billion. So the question before the Congress and before this new majority is not just how much money we spend but how we spend it. Let me say that even Carol Browner, who is now the Administrator of EPA, admits there is a problem with environmental problems. She said to the New York Times on November 29, 1993, let me quote, and she was our State administrator in Florida. Let me quote her. Carol Browner said, ``When I worked at the State level, I was consistently faced with rigid rules that made doing something 110 times more difficult and expensive than it needed to be.'' It makes no sense to have a program that raises costs while doing nothing to reduce environmental threats. What Carol Browner said in 1993 is what we are talking about today in 1996. Even President Clinton proposed a request for a reduction of 400 full-time employees in environmental enforcement for fiscal year 1996. So we have even the President saying we need a reduction in this massive bureaucracy in the proposal he made to Congress. We have Carol Browner in 1993, fresh from Florida and her role there as the State director of our environmental program. What has happened, again, is we have threatened these 6,000 bureaucrats in Washington. They have a role and they view their role as pumping out rules and regulations. What would they do if they had some reduction in force? No one wants to see, again, any lessening of regulations, of protections, of standards. What we are saying is let us get the work force where it should be and the dollars where they should be, and that is in our States and local governments, and let the Federal Government set some national standards and also work on international standards. One of the first bills I introduced in the last Congress was the Global Environmental Cleanup Act, and that dealt with the problem that we have and where some of our focus should be. Countries around the world are polluting the Earth and destroying the planet, in fact, and some of our financing of this Congress and the American people is going to promote that destruction of the planet. I can tell you, I have been on international business across this hemisphere, across the Southern Hemisphere. You can go through Brazil and see the destruction of the Amazon. You can go to Guatemala, see the destruction, clearcutting of forests on the Mexican border. You can go to Mexico and see the raw pollution going into the streams and river and land. You can go to China and see the destruction of the planet, raw sewage and raw fluid going into the rivers, and no consideration of protection of the air or water where the largest population of the world is. Then you can go to Europe. I traveled the Tatra Mountains, and you can see the destruction from the former Soviet bloc of the beautiful forests, and again the raw pollution going into the land. Some of our taxpayer money is going into international financing of projects in these countries without a consideration of environmental cleanup. So we have a role for EPA on the international level, we have a role on the national level with pollution between our States, and we are concerned about that. But we do not need 18,000 full-time employees, the bulk of which is in Washington, not to mention thousands and thousands of employees who are on a contract basis, ruling and dictating from Washington. We need to get the money where the problem is and to those that are cleaning up the environment. They are State and local officials and our State legislatures. That is the emphasis this new majority is interested in. Then if we look, and the President talked yesterday in New Jersey about cleanup and Superfund. Superfund must, in fact, be one of the worst government programs ever devised. Its original intent, now, was good. It was designed to clean up hazardous waste sites and have polluters pay for polluting, and in fact it has not done that. In fact, polluters do not pay. We find that and I have evidence of, in fact, polluters not paying, and also EPA letting the statutes of limitation expire, according to one of the reports from a subcommittee on which I served during my first term. So polluters get off the hook. They do not pay under the current system. The President says this is a successful program. Then would you think that in fact we are cleaning up sites that pose the most risk to human health and safety and our children's safety? The fact is a GAO study in 1994 said no, that is not the truth, that in fact we do not clean up sites on the basis of risk to human health and safety and welfare, that they are chosen basically on the basis of political pressure. So we are not cleaning up these sites, we are not cleaning up the sites that have the most risk. These are just a few of the studies about EPA, the failures of EPA on the subcommittee on which I sat for my first 2 years in Congress. This first study talks about EPA's pesticide program, and food safety reform and the disaster in that agency. This particular report talks about the impact on safe drinking water regulation and small systems, drinking systems, how the regulations have forced our local governments to the point where it is almost cheaper to deliver bottled water than it is to comply with some of these regulations. We had testify the mayor of the city of Orlando at a field hearing, and she said that EPA requires in the treatment of water, and water comes in, to take out certain natural occurring substances, one part of the process at the beginning, and then put them back at the other end, and she said this makes no sense and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with these ridiculous regulations. So another report that details Superfund and the liability provisions, how now under Superfund, and again the President talked about the success of Superfund and the need for Superfund, and we agreed that there should be a Superfund. But when 80 percent plus of the money in Superfund, a program that was supposed to start out at 1.6 billion and has grown to $75 billion, when 80 percent of the money, in fact, goes to attorney fees and studies, there is something wrong with what we are doing with Superfund. So we do not want to let polluters off the hook. We think that they should pay. But you find, in fact, that EPA gives them a free ride under current law. They do not enforce the current law; they let the statute of limitations expire. They are letting it happen now, that polluters not pay, and we think there should be a change there. And then also spending all of the money for a cleanup program again on attorney fees and studies and ignoring the real risks makes no sense. So all this is documented in hours and hours and days and days of hearings. Then you look at the management problems in contracting activities at EPA. The American people would be appalled to see the waste. We held one hearing on this particular matter, and they said that this particular activity with EPA laboratories is out of control, mismanaged, examples of abuse. Then we held another hearing on information management systems, so the right hand of EPA would know what the left hand of EPA is doing, to better communicate. I could not believe the hearing, and it is detailed also in these reports, that, in fact, they had spent almost a half a billion dollars and had no clue as to what they were going to do as far as a real management information system. So one problem after another at an agency again that is out of control. I spoke just a moment ago of the contract employees. I spoke about 18,000, nearly 18,000 full-time employees that have mushroomed this agency to a huge bureaucracy in Washington. We found in one of the hearings, and this is interesting to note, that of the thousand of contract employees and the hundreds of contracts that are let out there that nearly all of the contracts that are let by EPA go to former EPA employees. So they have a revolving door, an incestuous relationship, that really would not be permitted under any other circumstances. So almost every program we look at as far as the management of this agency is again out of control. Here is another report on clean air protection problems at national parks and wilderness, and this details how EPA cannot even get its act together at it relates to Federal operations. So each and every one of these reports, and these are just a few tonight that I detail, tell about a story of failure, and that is the Federal EPA program. And let me say that between the House of Representatives and the other body there are many disagreements. You rarely find the two houses agree on anything. But there was unanimous consent on both this side and the other side, in fact both sides of the aisle, the majority and the minority, that we needed to make some changes in the administration and management of EPA. The House recommended a cut in their funding of somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 percent. The Senate was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 percent. And rarely do you find that unanimous agreement that an agency should be cut in that fashion. But these are the reasons, in fact, that I presented tonight that there is unanimous consent on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, and both of the Houses of Congress, that there needs to be change there. So we have presented changes, we have said that we should look at the way the money is being spent, not just throw money at problems, but in fact try to get a better result so that taxpayer hard- earned dollars are expended in appropriate fashion, that we clean up the environment, that we clean up the real risk areas for our children, that in fact the money does not go just to attorney fees and to studies, that we work with local governments, with State governments, with local authorities, with business and industry, trying to resolve some of the environmental problems, that we renew our emphasis on international problems, that we look at problems that do, in fact, transcend the State and local boundaries, and concentrate on where EPA can do a better job. So these are some of the issues that we wanted to bring up tonight, and then you think you have got it all together, and you think that EPA has been criticized by Members of Congress, again from both sides of the aisle, and you think that we are trying to get our message across, and maybe it has gotten across. You read articles like the article that I found last week in EPA Watch, which says that in fact EPA's office of enforcement and compliance has circulated a memo of January 19 that notes that staff from no fewer than 11 EPA offices are working with PTA on a project to protest budget cuts in the department. And I think that that is rather sad, that an agency that has been criticized also for misusing its resources and not cleaning up the environment, protecting the environment, but in lobbying Congress and coming after Members of Congress, is now using its limited funds from the office of compliance and enforcement in a lobbying campaign that brings in the children and the PTA with the misinformation campaign. So I think that is the wrong way to spend these limited resources. When I found this article, I asked the appropriate chairman of the House committees and subcommittees to investigate now their activities. Even after being criticized, even after being asked not to conduct this type of activity, today you find EPA spending again limited resources, taxpayer dollars, on lobbying the Congress and on misleading the parents, and teachers, and schoolchildren of our country in their campaigns. So it is disturbing, and I think that that should be thoroughly investigated by the appropriate subcommittees of the House of Representatives and the Congress. So those are some of the points that I wanted to bring out tonight. Again, when the President makes these statements, I think that someone should address that in fact the new majority is interested in protecting the environment, that we have children, that we care about the environment, we care about the future of the environment of this great country, we would do nothing to lower the standards. But in fact when you see the misuse and abuse of power, and authority, and an important charge given by the Congress, you become concerned, every American must be concerned, and every American should also have the correct information, that in fact what the President is saying is political rhetoric, in fact political rhetoric. It is not based on fact or the action of this agency. What Carol Browner is trying to do with the resources of that agency are, in fact, not a proper expenditure of those resources. If she would concentrate in remembering what she said, and I quoted it to you 3 years ago about how she is forced to spend 110 times the energies on things that do not make sense, then we could all be better off. So this is a debate about command and control in Washington. It is a debate of how our limited resources, your taxpayer dollars, the American taxpayer dollars, are expended, and how we really go about facing the problems of pollution and cleanup across, again, our great lands. So tonight I wanted to bring some of those facts to the House, and to my colleagues, and to the Speaker's attention. We can do a better job, we must do a better job, we do not need a huge bureaucracy to do it, and that is a part of what we have proposed here, and again I think I share the concern of everyone on this side of the aisle that the environment, clean air, clean land, clean water are our priorities and part of our agenda, and we can do a better job, again with limited resources. I thank the gentleman for yielding and wanted to make those points tonight.

Mr. MICA. I wanted to comment, and I thank the gentleman for yielding. I come from the State of Florida. We have a very large elderly population that rely on Medicare and some who rely on Medicaid. In fact, if you just spend a minute and look at what has been going on in a State like Florida, for example, the Miami Herald did a story last year and identified in Medicare $1 billion worth of waste, fraud, and abuse. I sat on one of the other subcommittees in what was Government Operations that oversaw Medicaid. We identified about $1 billion in Medicaid in Florida in fraud and abuse. One of the cornerstones of the Republican plan is to create some penalties, to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. That is the main, major change we have proposed. People can still stay on Medicare. We do offer choices. But, again, we must address the problem of waste, fraud, and abuse. Let me talk for a second, too, about nursing homes. The proposals that the Republicans have advocated, we provide some change there, also addressing fraud. But the other major change we have that affects the folks in Florida is, we are not advocating lessening of regulations or wheeling people out on the street from nursing homes. What we have said is we should give people some more compassionate, some more cost-effective alternative. Right now people have to divest themselves of any savings. They must expend all their savings and basically go on this program for the poor or transfer their savings to their relatives. Once they have done that, they lie, cheat and steal in some cases to get on the programs or divest themselves of life savings. And then what do we do? We give them one choice. You go in a nursing home. What we said is why not allow the elderly to live with their families, pay for some attendant care. It could cost one-third, it could cost 20 percent, and they could live with their families. Why not, in fact, give some alternatives they they could stay in their own home and not be forced into a nursing home, and we live longer and can live longer by ourselves with a little bit of help from our friends rather than this one forced option that we are forcing. So we can and we should make a difference for the elderly. And these are the choices we hold out for them. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am glad the gentleman mentioned Cryptosporidium and contaminated water supplies. I sat on the subcommittee, of course, that oversaw some of these issues in the 103d Congress. One of the things we have heard folks talk about here on the floor was Milwaukee and how their water supply became contaminated. We questioned, in fact, some of the people who were involved in the problem. I think there were some deaths there, and many people were sick. In fact, it turned out, and the gentleman spoke about the 53 or 54 water contaminants that are mandated by Congress and the EPA for each area to look at. And the folks from Milwaukee told us in fact that they were busy checking on some of these mandated contaminants that actually had no opportunity to occur in that area, and had to use their resources on these edicts that were sent out from Washington, when in fact Cryptosporidium, which is caused by deer or animal feces, I think, is the root of it, was ignored by the community. So we are requiring, with these edicts and mandates from Washington, them to spend their limited resources not looking at where the real risks are, and that is part of what we are trying to change. I had another example of an area, and it is good to cite these, engineers in Columbus, OH, were Attempting--the city was attempting to build a parking lot behind a city garage. They discovered traces of chemical in the dirt. Federal hazardous waste required a $2 million cleanup. This is over a parking lot. The city was required to dig up 2.4 million pounds of dirt containing no more than a few pounds of toxic chemical from a patch of ground no larger than a baseball diamond. They shipped that dirt 1,500 miles to the south of Texas to be burned in an incinerator. They had to install detection equipment to monitor the air for up to 25 years for traces of any contaminants that might be remaining. All this is to build a parking lot. These are the examples of an agency and regulation out of control. The cost is being passed to the cities, the counties, the special districts, the States who have asked us to make these changes. These are the interests we are talking about. This kind of regulation accounts for the largest percentage of increase over the last 10 years in local taxes. All of these regulations are passed on to cities and counties for compliance, and then in fact we make them spend this money, whether it is for water treatment, whether it is for building this garage in some expensive, not cost-effective fashion, and it results in higher taxes for the local property owner. So this is another example of an agency and regulation out of control.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I want to refer to articles in today's newspapers, not only here in Washington, but also across the country, in which the President recently traveled to New Jersey. He has continued his campaign, both to scare the American people and seniors, and also those concerned about the environment. I think it is important that we set the record straight. In fact, the President said, and let me quote, ``The GOP-controlled Congress is cutting Federal safeguards to cater to corporate interests. A small army of very powerful lobbyists literally have descended on Capitol Hill, as if they own the place.'' It makes good campaign rhetoric, but it just ``ain't'' the truth, Mr. Speaker. The fact is that the people who represent cities and towns and States have descended on this new Congress. Let me quote the New York Times again, the New York Times of March 24, 1994: ``In January, 1994, mayors from 114 cities and 49 States urged the White House to focus on how environmental policy-making had gone awry.'' That is the true story. ``Mississippi and Vermont were among the first to appoint panels of citizens and scientists to examine our environmental policy. In published reports both State panels concluded that the largest sums of monies were being spent on the least threatening environmental problems.'' Mr. Speaker, let me tell the Members, the story goes on and on. Let me tell you what the mayor of Columbus said. This is his quote: ``What bothers me is that new rules coming out of Washington are taking money from decent programs and making me waste them on less important problems. It kills you as a city official to see this kind of money being spent for nothing.'' Let me tell the Members, Mr. Speaker, what this debate is all about. This debate is about command and control in Washington, DC. We would think there are a lot of Federal EPA officials working in the States and trying to improve the environment. Wrong. Let me show the figures of what we have done. First of all, there are nearly 7,850 Federal EPA employees. Of that, there are 5,924 in Washington, DC, within 50 miles of where I am speaking right now. There are almost 6,000, just under 6,000. In fact, a dozen years ago there were not that many in the entire EPA program. In Atlanta, in a regional office, one of 10 regional offices, there are 1,287 bureaucrats. This whole debate is about this bureaucracy that we have built up. EPA was a Republican idea. The department creating an agency of environmental protection was a Republican idea in 1972, to set some national standards. We should do that. We can do that without this huge bureaucracy. These folks are not in our States. For example, there are only 67 EPA Federal employees in the State of Florida, out of this mass of Federal bureaucrats. Then the President talked about Superfund. Let me tell you, there is no greater example of a failure of a government program than Superfund. It does not clean up the sites. There are thousands of sites. They have only cleaned up a handful. Over 80 percent of the money goes for attorney's fees and studies. Then what do they do? Does the polluter pay? Here is a headline: ``EPA lets polluters off the hook.'' Right now they let people off the hook. They do not pay under current law. That is what we think needs to be changed here. So Republicans have a better idea. We think that we are spending more and getting less, and we should reverse that process. Then, are we cleaning up the riskiest sites to human health, safety, and our children? The fact is, no. I have here a GAO study of 1994. It is absolutely appalling that we are not cleaning up the sites that pose the most risk to human health, safety, and welfare. This report says, in fact, and let me quote: ``Although one of EPA's key policy objectives is to address the worst sites first, relative risk plays little role in the agency's determination of priorities.'' Do Members know what does determine their priorities? Political pressure. That is what this report says. So a program that was originally, according to this report, going to cost $1.6 billion has grown to $75 billion. It is not cleaning up the sites and it is letting polluters off the hook. We think that is wrong.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House this afternoon really in a sense of outrage about our out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency. We have heard EPA talking about how the new majority and Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle were going to gut their budget and hurt the environment and do away with any regulations. That, Mr. Speaker, is all bunk. We have seen EPA use public resources in the past to continue their mission of misinformation of untruths and distortions. Today I received a copy of EPA Watch dated January 31, 1996. This, Mr. Speaker, really takes the cake. It says, ``EPA Enlists PTA To Battle Congress Over Budget Cuts.'' This story tells how the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance has a memo dated January 19 that states that their staff, from no fewer than 11 offices, are working in this mission of lies and distortion and now trying to drag the children, parents and teachers of this Nation into this campaign against much-needed reform. First of all, let me tell the parents and teachers and my colleagues that EPA was a Republican idea. It started in 1972. It was an idea to do a better job in cleaning up the environment. It was a Republican proposal to set some national standards and we have done that. We have begun to clean up. We have had 20 some years of experience and we have seen where mistakes have been made and we need to draw on that. When President Clinton came into office in 1993, in January, and I quote from the New York Times, it said, ``in January, mayors from 114 cities and 49 States opened a campaign by sending the President a letter urging the White House to focus on how environmental policymaking had, in their view, gone awry.'' That is what started the debate. The cities, the counties, the special districts, the Governors, the State associations came to us and said, ``Some of what you're doing, some of what you're imposing makes no sense, it's a great cost on us, and we pass it on to the taxpayer in higher, unwarranted costs in many cases.'' So they gave us the responsibility of trying to make some sense out of this. Mr. Speaker, I served on the committee that conducted oversight of EPA from 1992-94. What I saw was a horror story and the children and the parents and teachers should know, not just the misinformation that they are being fed by this compliance office to lobby Congress for more money but they should know what is really going on. Let me cite, for example, a memo dated March 31, 1993, from the inspector general for audit of that agency. He is talking about the Environmental Research Laboratory, one of the operations of EPA. He said for over a period of up to 7 years the audit concluded that ERLA management had avoided or circumvented laws, regulations, and agency procedures in the award and funding of certain contracts and had misused or abused the use of contracts, and it goes on and on and on about the misuse. Mr. Speaker, this is how taxpayer dollars are being expanded. When I served on the committee, we looked at Superfund, a multibillion-dollar project that was to clean up the hazardous waste sites. What we found in this report from GAO in 1994 said although one of EPA's key policy objectives is to address the worst sites first, relative risk plays little role in the agency's determination of priorities. This study by GAO finds in fact that they choose cleanup sites on the basis of political pressure, not the risk to children and safety. That is something our American children, our teachers, and the Congress should know. What about polluters? Do polluters pay? Not with EPA. They let them off the hook. Look at this headline, ``EPA Lets Polluters Off the Hook,'' $4.8 billion in noncollected funds. Mr. Speaker, I have just about had it with EPA. I am calling on the Speaker, and I am calling on Chairman McIntosh of the oversight committee to conduct an investigation of what they are doing. Rather than going out and enforcing environmental laws, they are using taxpayer funds to start a campaign against Congress, and this action must stop.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment. The Everglades are not just a Florida treasure but they are a national treasure. While agriculture practices have contributed to the degradation of the Everglades, overdevelopment and also Federal projects and paving and growth have contributed just as much to the pollution of the Everglades. Now we all have an obligation to roll up our sleeves and begin the Everglades cleanup and restoration. Only through a combined effort of State, Federal, and local and private efforts can we make that happen, and we can make it happen here today.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, tonight our action is really about choices. The administration and the other side of the aisle has made their choices. They would choose in fact to cut off payments for Social Security and maybe veterans at this point if in fact they run out of additional money to steal. In fact, the irony of this is they have been stealing and robbing Federal retirement trust funds to keep the indebtedness extended for this country. So tonight is really about choices. We have seen on TV they are going to stop the printing presses. They do not want us to pay seniors. Mr. Speaker, that is not what the Republicans want to do tonight. We want to see, in fact, that our seniors receive their check. We want to tell seniors that, in fact, we have made a different choice, that we think that we should choose in this budget whether people should continue to be paid for not working; whether we should pay illegal immigrants who come in and get better health and medical and housing benefits than our seniors and our veterans. Those are some of the choices before us, and that is part of the choice in our budget, in our proposal. And we are going to face that measure and those choices. So, tonight the choice is we stop the show, we stop printing the funny money or continue in a responsible fashion. We set a deadline, and that is what we have been doing and what we have been trying to do to get this Nation's finances in order. So our choice is to pay seniors tonight, to pass this rule, and to act responsibly, and we will meet our debt obligations; but we will not continue to drive this country further and further into debt, in an irresponsible fashion.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, we on this side, I think, were foxed before by the President because he promised to come up with a balanced budget. He never did. Now they are telling us the responsible thing to do is raise the debt limit without any guarantees, to continue taxing and spending. We were betrayed before. The alternative is the President's budget, which they are afraid to really even bring on the floor today. It has in it $210 billion in additional spending. That is more than 1 entire year's deficit that we are running now. Then another surprise, $66 billion in taxes. They are saying we cannot pay our senior citizens or our veterans, but in fact we are going to make choices and we are going to pay if we do not make some changes here; our illegal aliens, we are going to pay volunteers for paid volunteer programs, and we can dig up $50 billion here or there for Mexico. We cannot make these wrong choices again.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. This really does concern me, because it is again another scare tactic. We saw the scare tactic with Medicare, the comments about Medicare dying on the vine. In fact, the President's own commission said that this program was going to die on the vine if we did not do anything. God forbid we should give seniors another choice. You just take this is full of waste, fraud and abuse, and everybody is dipping their bucket into it and profiting from it except the seniors it is to serve. So here again we are scaring the seniors that we are not going to be able to pay their checks, using them as pawns, giving them only one choice, but in fact we, the President and this administration, will make a choice, and the choice is also in these budget figures. They want to pay illegal aliens. They want to pay people not to work. Now this has not worked. We have seen the mess it has created in our society, and it is related to crime, it is related to our juvenile problem, it is related to teenage pregnancies, and you can do all you want, put them in uniforms or do whatever you want to do, I am telling you, unless you make people responsible and people to work; they want to pay people not to work, but they do not want to pay the senior citizens when this bill comes due. They do not want to pay our veterans; they would rather pay volunteers in a volunteer program with better perks and benefits than pay our seniors and our veterans. So this is what this debate is all about, really. We have got to get a grip in this Congress. We came here as the new majority. We said we were going to do things. We cut a quarter of a billion dollars out of our legislative appropriations. They talked about cutting here. They talked about congressional accountability. We passed it. We live under the same laws. We passed gift ban, lobbying reforms, things they talked about and dreamed about for years and never did a darn thing about.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Finally, my colleagues, let me say that the President, after this Congress and this new majority did its job and came forward with 12 funding bills, the President never came up with a balanced budget proposal until January 6, 1996.

Mr. MICA. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues, I come to the floor this morning to talk about two scams that have been perpetrated by both the administration and the other side of the aisle. The first scam is what I call the Clinton shutdown and the charges that were made about balancing the budget and about getting our Nation's finances in order. It is part of a scare scam, and it is pretty clever. It says, that Republicans will hurt the elderly, the environment, education. In fact, if we just take a minute and look at the facts involved here, in the area of Medicare, we have heard it over and over: Republicans are going to cut it. In fact, over the next 7 years we will add $724 billion in spending. Medicaid, we will add $348 billion in spending. In education and job training and student loans, we will add $25.7 billion in spending. But we hear it over and over. What they do not in fact tell us is that part of this argument is about the bureaucracy. EPA has 6,069 employees in Washington, DC. That is almost as many as a dozen years ago, a total of 18,000. I am not talking about the 12,000 outside of Washington, but 6,000 in Washington, DC. Education, we have 3,322 employees in Washington, D.C., out of a total of 4,876 employees. A total of 358,000 Federal employees. These are not defense; these are not civilian defense. These are part of that bureaucracy within just earshot of the Capitol building. That is what this debate is really about. Now, my colleagues, a second scam comes before us, and the second scam is this: If the Republicans do not continue taxing and spending and driving this Nation into debt, then we will not be able to pay our Social Security recipients, and they have even said, Mr. Smith said, we are not going to be able to pay our veterans. This administration, which has just gotten through robbing the Federal retirement trust funds, now is engaged in the second scam. They can pay welfare payments to illegal aliens, they can pay medical benefits better than we have for our veterans, but they cannot pay Social Security. They can pay for bilingual education for illegal aliens. They can find $50 billion to bail out Mexico. But, in fact, they cannot pay Social Security and our veterans. So the President is making these choices. The administration is making these choices. They can even pay AmeriServe, or whatever the name of the President's volunteer, so-called volunteer program, which pays volunteers for the first time in the history of this country and gives them an array of perks that would make any veteran blush. These are the choices that we face. I will say again, the greatest threat facing our senior citizens today is that we get this mess in order. We debated here about extending the debt limit of this country for 34 days, and we needed $67 billion. We are going into the hole at the rate of over half a billion dollars a day, and they want to continue this tax-and-spend policy; and they say that in fact we cannot pay our senior citizens Social Security checks. Well, that is their choice, because they have other choices, and that is what this debate is about, whether the debate deals with in fact balancing the budget or extending the debt limit. So we are in fact here today. Let me tell my colleagues, I chair the Subcommittee on Civil Service, and let me describe the mess we inherited: 35 of 39 Federal retirement trust funds have unfunded liabilities in the trillions of dollars. Now they have spent the last number of days robbing what little remains, what shred remains, so now they are threatening our senior citizens. That is what this is about.