John Mica

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I serve as a member of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight that has been looking into the Travelgate matter, the White House firings of the White House Travel Office. Each twist and turn of the White House Travel Office firings becomes more and more bizarre. I have a report today in the Washington Times by a gentleman, Mark Levin, who reveals an incredible misuse of power by the White House in use of the FBI, our Nation's chief law enforcement agency, that I feel should be investigated. I am calling today on our chairman to expand our investigation of this matter, of the misuse of the FBI, our chief law enforcement agency, and I also think that it is time that we look at Mr. Levin's call for the appointment of a special counsel, an independent counsel, to investigate this matter where the White House, in fact, has used this law enforcement agency in an inappropriate manner and now we find out that there is even more information to lead us to believe that, in fact, there was misconduct in these firings and the cover that the White House prepared for the public.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and my other colleagues that have come out to talk about the scandal at the Department of Commerce and our meager attempts to try to reorganize one agency in this huge bureaucracy. I talked about 37,000 employees in the Department of Commerce, and 20,199 just in Washington, DC. Here we are trying to balance the budget, we are trying to make some tough choices. It is not any fun to tell people they are going to get less, or the increases will not be as much, or some programs have to be eliminated. But then you have the responsibility, and I serve on the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, charged with looking at investigations and audits of these Federal agencies, and then these are the reports that we get about the Department of Commerce that Mr. Chrysler is highlighting today. Listen to this. Here is what these 20,000 people are doing in the Department of Commerce just in Washington. This audit specifically identified 293 employees with delinquent accounts. They had Federal Government credit cards within the Department of Commerce, including unpaid charges and use of credit cards for personal purchases, even with ATM's--293 employees had delinquent accounts. Now listen to this; 567 had used the card for ATM advances for personal charges for meals at fancy Washington restaurants, liquor, jewelry, flowers, books, music, on-line service fees, we do not know what that is, and automobile insurance. Would not all of my constituents in the Seventh District of Florida like to have one of these handy cards? This is not just a few folks; this is 567. Now, we came, we looked at the Department of Commerce, and we saw disorganization. We saw 20,000 people out of 36,000 just here in Washington, DC. We saw us losing our shirt and pants and economic opportunity in the international trade arena, and we tried to reorganize it. We proposed that and got slammed in the face. We have been ignored. Then we have the President come here and talk about global competition, and no one is less prepared than the United States of America to compete in this global market. So here is what is going on. These are the choices we have to make. These are the choices Americans have to make, and we have got to do something about it. We wanted to change much more. We acceded to one department, and this is what the people are getting for their money. Their money is being wasted. We are not competing. You heard Mr. Brownback. The answer that the gentleman gave is true. We can do more for business with a balanced budget. We can do more to promote business with less taxation, less litigation, less government regulation. Those are all part of our agenda here, what we have tried to do in a sensible, responsible, commonsense business fashion. But people do not want to listen to that. They want to stand up and say the Republicans are hurting the elderly, environment, and education. It sounds good and gets on a bumper sticker, but it does not jibe with the facts. These are the facts, that this department and other departments are out of control, that this Federal bureaucracy is out of control. When you have 350,000 Federal employees within just a few miles of my speaking distance from the floor of the House of Representatives, that is what this argument is about. These freshmen have come here from business, from every walk of life, and they do not care whether they get reelected. That is the difference here. They do not care whether they get reelected. They came here to get this country's finance in order. They came here to get this Government in order. That is what they care about. They do not care about the next election, they care about the next generation. When you see this country, the threat of our debt carrying us into a lower credit rating on the international market, when you see the President talking about responsibility with pension funds, while Secretary Rubin, the Secretary of the Treasury, is rocking the shreds that are left of our Federal employees' retirement funds. It is a pitiful state of affairs for this country, for this Congress, and for the future of any American. So I thank the gentleman. I get a little bit wound up on this, but I care too, and I know the gentleman cares, and that is why we came here. It does not matter whether we come back, because others will come to this job. It has to be done. It must be done, and it will be done for the future of this country.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I do want to say what a pleasure it has been to work with the gentleman from Michigan and the refreshing viewpoint that he brings to the Congress, and also the background and knowledge. He is not an attorney, I am not an attorney. We both come from a background of business. He has dealt in international trade, knows what he is talking about. I ran a small consulting business that represented big and small firms around the world that was involved in international trade, and we think we have some idea of what is going on out there and what we need to do. I spoke earlier on the floor to my colleagues about what the President said and what he did not say. One of the things that people were concerned about that I talked to and that I am concerned about is our opportunities for trade. The President talked about global competition. I cannot think of any country, major industrialized country that is more ill-prepared than the United States to deal from a government standpoint in international trade. The gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Chrysler] has seen it, I have seen it, and others who have been involved in international trade. The President did not tell you that the trade deficit that we are facing, that this Nation is facing, is the most staggering from last year in probably the history of the recorded statistics, that we are going down the tubes, that we are losing jobs, we are losing opportunities for the future. We are losing good-paying jobs because we do not have our act together. It is easy to stand here and criticize, but in fact, the President and this administration are blocking the proposal that Mr. Chrysler and I and others have worked on. It was not an easy task to come up with a reorganization of this Department of Commerce. Let me tell you how disorganized our trade effort is. There are 11 committees of jurisdiction; Mr. Chrysler and I went to at least 5 or 6 of these committees with our dog and pony show to explain what was going on, to say we needed to make a change, we needed to reorganize the Department of Commerce, not just to spend money wildly or in excess, like you have seen the abuses outlined by Mr. Chrysler, but in some organized, cohesive fashion. That is what we propose. That is what is in this budget that we have proposed, and that is what has been sitting on the President's desk and has been sitting for consideration and ignored. Unless these kinds of program changes are made, we will continue to lose our shirts and our pants and our wallets and our opportunity for the future, because we do not have our act together. Now, that is some of the bad news. Let me tell you, it gets worse. You think about the Department of Commerce. Now, what does the Department of Commerce do? Do they help commerce? Are there a few folks involved? Let me give you the exact statistics. There are 37,009 employees in the Department of Commerce. Do you know how many are in Washington, DC?; 20,199 as of last January, 20,199. Now you think they would all be involved in helping promote commerce. Wrong, wrong again. What they are involved in, 16,000 of them are involved in the Weather Service; 16,000 in the Weather Service. Less than 3,300 are involved actually in trade and commerce and international export promotion. But we have scattered throughout 17, 18 other Federal agencies this responsibility for export promotion, for assistance for finance and for the other things that will help our medium and small businesses compete. In fact, we propose to bring together trade assistance, trade negotiation, trade promotion, and trade finance. You cannot cut a deal in business unless you have the ability to finance. Our medium and small businesses cannot compete. When you have the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing and 18 agencies involved in this spending of over $3 billion in a disorganized fashion, this is what you get, the biggest trade deficit in history. The White House continues to ignore this, and most of the people here know nothing about it. They have never been in business. Most of them are attorneys and most of them have been running for office most of their life. This new group has come in and said: We do not want business as usual, we want to conduct international business. We want our people to have good-paying jobs, and we need to get our act together. But let me tell you. It does not matter if it does not work; they want to continue doing it that way. It does not matter if it is ineffective. They want to continue doing it that way. It does not matter if it is costly, we will spend more money on it. And you see the results of what you get with someone like Mr. Brown running the Agency. So we have to make some changes. Even in the Weather Bureau, with 16,000 people, you know, they are still there. Let us put our thumb out and see what the weather is, our finger. That is how they did it 10 years ago, not recognizing that there are technology changes, not recognizing that we also have a Weather Service with the Department of Defense and FAA. How about some consolidation? How about some elimination of positions of duplication? So we propose an organized attempt for this country to get together. The freshmen are called extremists. Well, yes, they are extremists if they want to see your dollars spent properly. Yes, they are extremists if they want to see 2 or 3 people doing the same job that used to take 10. Yes, they are extremists if they see us losing our pants in competition. Yes, they are extremists if they see 30,000 people in the Department of Commerce and 20,000 of them in Washington, DC, right here. Now, folks, we have to get a grip. This Congress has to get a grip. The American people have to grip and look at what is happening with their money and look at what is happening in the area in which we have the most opportunity for the future. This country always depended on domestic trade. Now we have to compete in an international arena the President said, and yet they do not have one idea. They will not come forward and accept this well- thought-out, well-negotiated proposal to allow us to compete, to allow us to get our act together, to allow us to give some opportunities for the future. Mr. Speaker, one of the first things I did as a Member of Congress as a member of the Aviation Committee, I flew out to Washington. I was there because they were laying off over 10,000 employees at Boeing. We cannot allow this to happen. That was one of the few areas where we excel and exceed in exports. Now they are beating our pants off with Airbus and other activities. We are not able to compete. We have to have a new relationship between business and Government working together to create jobs, to create opportunities, and to compete with the other guys who are beating our pants off. The Germans, the Japanese, the English, they have been trading with the Europeans for centuries with international markets as part of the nature of things. We have relied on domestic markets. Now we have to change. Now, this class of freshmen who are not all attorneys, who are business people like Mr. Chrysler, have come here. They are bringing their knowledge, their experience, and applying it to an agency like the Department of Commerce. They wanted to do away with four or five agencies. Did you see the parade the other day when they started coming in, the Cabinet members? My goodness, they took up a whole row of the House of Representatives. There is not enough room for the Cabinet to sit at the table anymore. Even Mr. Panetta, when he was on this floor and a Member of this House, had recommended that we downsize to seven Cabinet members. We are talking about consolidation of one activity, the most important, commerce, commerce and business that pays the bills for all of the rest of it. It pays for welfare, it pays for Medicare. None of this is provided by the tooth fairy; it is provided by the taxpayers, and then we get the funds and we spend them. But we have to have some basis for that, and that basis is business. Our best opportunity for business is export and getting the Department of Commerce together. I yield back to the gentleman, and I thank him so much for the leadership he and his class has provided, for the abuse you have taken in trying to bring this country into the 21st century as far as business, economic opportunity, and I salute you.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, we heard in this Chamber just a few days ago the President of the United States give his State of the Union, and I think some of the things that he alluded to should be responded to. I am going to try to use as many facts as I can in my consideration of the State of the Union. The President came before the Congress and he talked about how good the economy is and how things are going and how people felt good about economic data. I pulled up the economic data from the Joint Economic Committee, the last report that they had, and here is what they said: Recent data shows the economy has slowed considerably. Manufacturing has contracted for 4 straight months, the lowest since 1991. Housing starts have fallen for 3 consecutive months. Both new orders for durable goods and leading economic indicators fell in October. Industrial production fell. New home sales fell. This is the information that I have. In talking to the people of my district, too, during the recent recess and also around the country, I found that people are concerned about the future, that the major jobs that the President has talked about creating under this administration are, one, low-paying jobs, part-time jobs, and service jobs, all again low-paying jobs. I heard, I think it was Senator Bradley, talking about one of his constituents who said he heard the President talk about this and said that several years ago the husband and wife had two jobs. And he says, now we see where the job increase has resulted. Because now we have four jobs to keep the income level that, in fact, we had some years ago. Then we heard the President talk about the 200,000-job cut in Federal employment. Folks, that is strictly smoke and mirrors. I chair the House Subcommittee on Civil Service. We looked at the cuts. The cuts are almost 95 percent in the civilian defense work force and relate primarily to base closures, civilian defense employees. The bulk of bureaucrats, the 350,000 that we have just within 50 miles of the U.S. Capitol are still well entrenched, and there have not been cuts in that core bureaucracy. The President talked about values, and he led off with V-chips and regulating cigarettes, and maybe he forgot that there is already a turnoff switch. Then he got to welfare. Maybe he had his priorities mixed up, because I see the crime, I see the problems in our society; and the people I have talked to say that it is coming from the welfare system that we have created in 40 years of Democratic rule of this House. It has perpetuated the problems that we see. It is not just answered by a V-chip or regulating cigarettes. Then I heard him talk about immigration, and he said, immigration, illegal immigration is down. Well, I had a press report where 1,000 Haitians left his success story to come to the United States and had to be brought back, where over 40 died at sea in the last couple of months. Then he talked about tightening up immigration. Well, he has, in fact, begun to talk about tightening it up, but what we have done in fact is changed our policy so many times it has been the policy de jour, like the soup de jour. In fact, we have imported into my State of Florida over 20,000 Haitians and Cubans in the last year. They have been flying them in at 500 a clip. So this is the policy that I see, a failure. No economic plan in Haiti. We have empowered one party who has really executed the opposition, and we have no hope. We have put the entire country on a Clinton-style economic welfare program. Then we heard about EPA, and that really galls me, because I served on the committee that oversees EPA; and the real argument with EPA is some of the policy that they have and also the operations that they have. They have increased their number of employees from less than 12,000 about 10, 12 years ago, to now 18,000. They have almost as many employees, 8,000 people in Washington today, just a few miles from here, as they had in the entire program a little over a decade ago. So this is the kind of debate that we have. I served on that committee. We had a report that EPA wasted a half a billion dollars in a management information system. They could not even tell us where any of this money was spent. Then we heard the President talk about cleaning up hazardous waste sites. We spent 85 percent of our money for studies and attorney's fees. I submit that that is not the way to go.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I want to take some time to deal this afternoon with something that often is lost in this debate. That is some of the facts. Yesterday the President of the United States in a press conference went before the American people and made a series of statements about what this shutdown, and he blamed it on the Republicans, would do. I thought this afternoon it would be interesting to deal with some of the facts and our perspective and what this debate is all about. A lot of the debate is about spending more, as they have done in the past, and getting less in return. Let us look at what the President said. He said this week the Meals on Wheels Program for seniors will run out of money. I talked to my seniors in my district. Some of the senior citizens are in the Meals on Wheels Program. I talked to them. They said: Mr. Mica, we would be willing to miss a meal or meals if it meant our contribution, making our contribution toward balancing our Federal budget. I almost cried when I heard them say that. Then I talked to the program administrator. The program administrator said: Mr. Mica, we know you have to balance the budget, but let me tell you, when you balance that budget, include in it, as you have done, a proposal that would give us flexibility because we get money and we cannot spend money because of stupid Federal regulations. So do that. That is what this debate is about. We have allowed that. That is what this holdup is about because we know that the President will not make these program changes. That is one of the program changes. Then let us talk about Head Start. I have always been an advocate of Head Start. I love Head Start. Who would not want to give a deserving child a head start? Then I looked at the programs in my district, and I almost threw up. Let me tell my colleagues what we do with Head Start. Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, and also my colleagues what we do with Head Start. I have 18 teachers in one program in a community Head Start; not 1 teacher is certified, not one is certified. But we have 11 administrative force for 450 children. This is sick. This is sick, 11 administrators. I thought we would change this. No, you cannot change it because it is required by Federal law and regulations. So our children who need this assistance, what are they getting? They are getting second-class education. That is what this is about, spending more and getting less. I am sick of it. All right, let me tell you, you could send the kids in my district, you could send them to the best private schools, preschools we have got, and spend less and give the parents a $1,000 check and still come out better. I have not counted the money that they are spending on the administration for Washington and Atlanta and then you impose on our State and locals to administer these programs. I get upset when I hear this. Then the President has the gall to go before us and say: Environmental Protection Agency, shut down toxic waste. Can you think of a bigger toxic waste program than EPA? The whole program is EPA. I sat on the subcommittee that investigated EPA for 2 years; 85 percent of the money goes for attorney's fees and studies. Even the GAO produced a report, I will show it to anyone that wants to see it. It says toxic waste site cleanups are done on the basis of a political decision, not on the basis of public health and safety and concern for our children. So, then he goes on and says, lets do this, that EPA's efforts to prevent cryptosporidium from contaminating water supplies, something that proved deadly, threatened the city of Milwaukee, have been badly delayed, have been badly delayed. First of all, let me tell you about cryptosporidium. It is caused by deer feces. It was caused by deer feces, as I believe. Let me tell my colleagues about water contamination. Under Federal law and Federal regulation, we looked into this. We investigated it; 54 contaminants are required by law by statute for EPA to investigate. That is what they told us they were doing. They were doing the inflexible thing that Congress mandates that we are trying to change so that we could look at water contamination so that we could spend less and get more instead of the opposite. Then Medicare contractors who serve our elderly are not being paid. I will tell my colleagues what that debate is about. I come from Florida. We have a billion dollar's worth of contractor fraud in Florida in Medicare and a billion dollar's worth in Medicaid. That is $2 billion. How many elderly could we serve in this Nation if we would eliminate the fraud, waste, and abuse? So that is what this is about, spending more and getting less.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I care about our civil servants, and I care about our Federal employees who are without compensation and who are not working today. But the pain now being felt by our Federal employees will be exactly the same pain felt by all Americans in the next decade if this House and this Congress fail to act. Let me give an example. Some Federal employees recently received half of their monthly salary, and all of their benefits were taken out and their costs of benefits were taken out of their paycheck, and that is exactly the type of paycheck that Americans will receive in 10 years if we fail to act and act responsibly at this time. So I urge my colleagues to hold tight, to balance the budget, and to act responsibly now.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting turn of events today. We have had opportunity to put Federal employees back to work. This House met its constitutional responsibility and in fact did vote, and twice the other side of the aisle has now voted down measures that would put our Federal civil servants back to work. Now we had another opportunity here to get some relief for the District and other Federal employees, and that was objected to by the other side. We have given the President of the United States a balanced budget, we gave him a CR and 30 days to come back with a plan, and we have met in good faith. We need trust, we need working together. We do not need this obstructionism from the other side of the aisle. We need to come together, get these problems resolved. It is a sad day for the country and a sad day for the Congress that in fact we could not have taken care of the people's business and the Federal employees' business today with simple action by the House of Representatives and working together.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this conference report. Thomas Jefferson said it best in 3 words, ``Despondency begets servitude.'' Through misguided compassion our welfare system has fostered chaos. We have enslaved two generations. The Federal welfare system has destroyed family structure, work ethic, and any sense of values and smothered opportunity. The Federal welfare system has destroyed hope, discouraged personal responsibility, and cast a dark gloom over the lives of millions of Americans. Today we offer with this welfare reform bill a glimmer of hope. Today we offer hope for people to help themselves. Today we offer hope to end the cycle of dependency.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I get confused. Is this the same President that went on TV tonight and said, after vetoing the VA appropriations bill, we are going to delay veterans benefits? Is this the same President that I recall that cooked with the other side a bill to delay military COLA's for months and months and would permanently have to reinstate it? Is this the same President that proposes better benefits for a volunteer program, a new volunteer program, than he does for our veterans? Is this the same President--I keep getting confused--who proposes better benefits for welfare recipients than our veterans? My goodness, am I confused. Is this the same President who offers better and cooked with the other side better benefits for illegal aliens who wash up on the shore and have never served the country? Is this the same President who just a few weeks ago threatened to veto the appropriations bill until he was going to send our troops into Bosnia? I get confused. Is this the same President that my colleagues have said he, as a candidate, he was going to have a plan, and he would get elected, and he would have a plan to balance the budget in 5 years? I get confused. Is this the same President who called the 73 freshmen extremists, the businessmen and women, people who have worked for a honest living and come to this place to straighten up its messed-up finances? Now who do my colleagues believe? I am telling my colleagues that there are over 230 of us who are prepared to stay here until Washington, or whatever, freezes over, until we get a balanced budget and until we treat our veterans right.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, how could the President of the United States gather little schoolchildren for a media event backdrop to veto a bill and not tell them and the American people the truth? Mr. Speaker, our President should remember the story of Pinocchio when he weaves these fables. The President and the American people should know what is happening with their Federal Environmental Protection Agency and hazardous waste dollars. The truth is the General Accounting Office has said raw politics, not public health or safety, is the prime consideration for picking cleanup sites. The truth is that 85 percent of Federal Superfund money goes for attorney fees and studies. The truth is that we have doubled the size of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, with almost 9,000 bureaucrats in Environmental Protection Agency downtown just a few miles from here. The truth is that even the courts say that cleaning up dirt to an edible standard is wasteful and ludicrous. We need to stop weaving these fables and tell the truth.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, the American people should know how bad our national indebtedness situation has grown. To satisfy the insatiable appetite for expanding our $5 trillion debt, this administration is now robbing Federal retirement trust funds. Oh, yes, we promise to pay back grandma and grandpa, but is it not sad in fact that we have sunk to a new low, stealing from our senior citizens' rainy day account? As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil Service, let me tell you the irresponsible mess the new majority inherited. Thirty-five of our Federal pension funds have $1 trillion; it amounts to trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. In the private sector you would be arrested for running pension funds in this fashion. The Federal Employees' Retirement trust fund that I oversee, this is just one of them, has an unfunded liability of $540 billion. Another $350 billion has already been raided from the current account. Now, Secretary Rubin tells us, he can cook the books and feed the debt until the end of January. Today we must act responsibly. Today we must act to protect our dwindling retirement funds, and today we must begin to get our Nation's finances and these retirement accounts in order.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, this measure asks us to ignore the policy. My colleagues, how can we ignore the policy? How can we ignore this ultimate policy failure of this administration and this President? How can we ignore the failed policy of Somalia that turned a humanitarian mission into a nation-building fiasco that left dozens of Americans dead and United States taxpayers still paying billions? How can we ignore the failed policy of Haiti, where we sailed into Port-au-Prince Harbor, retreated, imposed an embargo on the poorest of the poor, sat by while the opposition was exterminated? We destroyed any shred of the economy and we spent and we are spending billions and billions, only to watch 1,100 flee just in the last few weeks and dozens die at sea because of our policy. And we are still paying billions. How can we tonight ignore the failed policy of Rwanda where this administration ignored Butros Bugalis who begged and pleaded for action to avoid a slaughter of three-quarters of a million people and they died. And then we sent troops and then we spent millions. How can we tonight deny and ignore a failed policy where for 3 years Bosnians begged us to change our policy? This week is Sarajevo, a Bosnian leader said to me, we did not ask for your troops. We asked for the policy to allow us to defend ourselves. Where was our policy when 12,000 Sarajevo men, women and children were slaughtered? I saw the countless graves across the landscape of Sarajevo just in the last few days and another quarter of a million people were killed in the Balkans. Where was our policy? Bosnians ask me, where was our policy when the U.N. told Bosnian citizens at Srebrenica to lay down their arms and their women and children are slaughtered. How tonight can we ignore this policy?

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would just like to comment in closing that we tried to reach a compromise and a balance here, a balance between the rights of individuals and the ability of this country and this Government and Amtrak to operate. We have taken over this. We are trying to do our best to get Amtrak back on track, and we think that some of these reforms are both reasonable and needed, and I do oppose the amendment.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Really, if we want to run a passenger railroad in this country and we want it to be affordable and accessible, we really have to make these reforms. I appreciate the gentlewoman's concern about award of economic damages for those that are harmed, but you have to create a balance. That is what this legislation does, is try to get us to a position where we can have an affordable railroad. If you will look at the two areas of concern, some labor reform, we have labor laws that go back to dozens and dozens of years ago that need adjustment, and we also have liability reform, which increased the costs and inability to run a railroad. I asked the founder of Autotrain, which started out as a private enterprise, what factor contributed to their demise. They were running very well, running a profit privately; and he said, it was the liability question. They suffered several accidents, and liability brought that private enterprise down, and Government has had to take it over. So if we want to continue employment, if we want to continue opportunity, we have to strike a balance, and liability reform is one of those. This House overwhelmingly passed liability reform, and the chairman of the committee has cited other instances where we, in fact, have liability reform in public transit. So there is a precedent for this.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, we are really here to end the sham, the scam. If Members will recall when Bill Clinton, before he was President, I saw him with my own eyes. I have a little bit of nearsightedness, but I saw him, I heard him. I am not visually or hearing impaired, and I heard him. He was running for office, and he promised to balance, he would submit a plan to balance the budget in 5 years. We heard him. Now, I am sure you have seen the recent commercial. We also have Bill Clinton saying, I think it can be done. Well, it can. First of all, it can be done in 7 years. That is May 1995. Then we heard 10 years, then we heard 9 years and 8 years. . . .

Mr. MICA. We are going to nail down the balanced budget.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, first I want to apologize for the inconvenience that I have caused the House. I did ask unanimous consent to have my remarks withdrawn. I hold the House in great honor and really consider it a tremendous privilege to serve here. As Members know, my family served on that side of the aisle. It is a great institution. I do nothing to shed any bad light on the House and apologize if any words that I, in fact, made were improper to each and every one of you personally, but I guess we get emotional in this. I never went to law school and sometimes I come up here and say things I should not say. I probably should choose better words. But, like some of you, I missed my son's football game last night, I did not get a chance to get the house cleaned today with my wife for Thanksgiving. You really think about the reason we are here is to balance our budget and to get our Government's finances in order. I know everybody on this side wants to do that with compassion and care. That is the reason we are all here and to try and do a good job to get our country's finances in order and to be responsible as Representatives of the people.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I would state for the Record that my words in fact were referring to the budget, and at no time would I refer to the President, and I ask unanimous consent that they be stricken.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I would gladly apologize.

Mr. MICA. Yes, I do, I ask unanimous consent.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I am really appalled at what we hear here on the floor about what we are doing. When all else fails, I always say read the bill. I rise in support of the rule. The rule and the bill, in fact, provide student loans, which are currently at $24 billion to go to $36 billion in 2002; Medicaid to go from $89 billion currently to $124 billion, Medicare from $178 billion to $273 billion. And they call these cuts? It does not matter in education if students cannot read. It does not matter if in Medicaid we force, in my State, the institutionalization of senior citizens with no alternatives. And it does not matter in Medicare, in Florida, if we have a billion dollars' worth of waste, fraud, and abuse, and we give seniors no other choice. I urge the passage of this rule.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I think it is important that we pass this rule, and we pass it by a large margin. Let me say why. Mr. Speaker, we just heard the previous speaker say that we should take the advice of the military on the spending issues. Under the Constitution, the most important role of this Congress is to provide for our national defense, to provide for our security. We do not need a Congress if we let these decisions be made by our Department of Defense. Let me tell my colleagues why we are making these decisions. Just look at the experience we had with Iraq. If they were launching Scud- type missiles with intercontinental ballistic capability at the United States, there would be a whole different theme here today. If we took into consideration the situation with Iran that has bought dozens of submarines. If we took into consideration the dismantling of the former Soviet Union and the largesse arms sales of not just weapons, but weapons systems. If we look at the policies of this administration who are now talking about selling intercontinental missile parts from the former Soviet Union, republics, on the world market, then we see that this Congress has a responsibility to make those decisions, and if we just remember the experience of the Gulf war when our friends would not even let us fly over their areas or their territories, we see the importance of a B-2 bomber, a B-2 bomber which is going to replace dozens of men and women who would be put at risk who are flying planes that are older than the pilots. We make those decisions. That is the purpose of this Congress, not to listen to people in the Department of Defense or people who want to spend money on other programs that do not provide for national security. So this is our most important responsibility under the Constitution. That is why this rule is important, and that is why we must pass it by a large margin and send a message to the White House.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to contain myself when I hear the accusations from the other side. Again, we hear the Mediscare threats that are made by the other side. It really galls me because they do not want to deal with the facts. If all else fails, I always say on the floor, read the bill. The bill in fact says that any savings in our proposal go into the Medicare trust fund. It is a simple fact. But they want to insist on scaring the seniors of this country. And then they talk about veterans. What a shame, what a scam that here just before the eve of Veterans Day that in fact this side that has developed programs and plans that give better benefits, better benefits to illegal aliens and people who will not work in this country than they do to our veterans and our senior citizens. This is a shame on the eve of that occasion.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I only need 1 minute, really, to address the House, Mr. Speaker, to refute the comments from the other side. It was not our side that said this Medicare system is going bankrupt. It was their Presidential Commission, made up of their Cabinet members. Our plan only limits the increase in spending. There are increases. But what they want to do is continue the bankrupt policy. Read today's paper. See what Secretary Rubin has said. He said that to make this thing work, to go on spending us into debt, to continue this tax-and-spend policy, we will even rob the retirement funds, the trust funds, what little is left in them, to keep this scam going. That is what this is about. That is what has to end. People are tired of the tax-and-spend and wasteful policy, and they want these programs in order, and our seniors demand that they be in order. The 10 percent and 13 percent increases in Medicare that have continued are crazy. What is wrong with doing away with fraud, waste, and abuse and adopting some of the other reforms we have proposed?