Mark Sanford

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, in this whole debate about the budget, I would remind everybody that Mother's Day was this weekend. One of my mother's sayings was that too much of a good thing is actually a bad thing. Benjamin Franklin said, ``I would rather urge moderation in all things,'' and farmers back in my district had this saying that you can only squeeze but so much blood out of a turnip. What these sayings say, I guess, is a word of support for a recent Joint Economic Committee study entitled ``The Impact of the Welfare State on the American Economy,'' by Lowell Gallaway and Richard Vedder. Its findings were highlighted in a recent Investors Business Daily article entitled ``Cut to Grow.'' What both the report said and what the article said was that there is a price tag to Government spending. If you look at this chart, that price tag is that you can only go so far before Government spending becomes a problem. Keynes was right up to a point that Government spending creates economic activity, up until about this 17.6 percent that the chairman alluded to, and then beyond that it is actually detrimental. Beyond that it is actually a drag on the economy. Mr. Chairman, here we are at about 22 percent of the size of our economy right now with Government spending, and what that means is that it is actually hurting us. For every $1 of additional Government spending beyond that 17.6 percent, it slows us down by about 38 percent, or, if you were to go out and find $100 of Government cuts, you would come up with about $138 of benefit to the total economy. So I would say that this debate in large part is about who is best at spending your money. If you think it is bureaucrats, then you probably do not want to support this budget resolution. But if you think you are best at spending your own money, this graph and this study support that idea. Therefore, I would urge us all to support this budget resolution. Mr. Chairman, I include the article referred to for the Record. Perspective--Cut To Grow Many supply-siders focus on cutting taxes as the best way to lessen the load of government and raise economic growth. But a new study suggests cutting federal spending can also do the trick. The best size of government is about 17.6% of gross domestic product, says a recent study from Congress' Joint Economic Committee. When government is very small it can do a lot to raise economic growth, say Ohio University economists Lowell Gallaway and Richard Vedder, authors of the study. These include providing a strong defense, fighting crime, creating courts where people can resolve disputes and building a basic infrastructure, such as roads and highways. But more government spending faces diminishing returns. That is, each additional dollar spent brings fewer benefits than the last one. So the bigger government gets, the less likely it is that the benefits of more spending outweigh its costs. Eventually, the study says, spending slows economic growth as government focuses on programs that dampen output rather than help it, such as regulating businesses and redistributing incomes. For example, in 1948 less than 10% of spending went to social programs. For the twelve years after that, 25% of added spending went to these programs. That moved up to one-third in the 1960s, and half in the 1970s. From 1990 to 1995, the government added more money to social programs than it added to the overall budget. As a result, from 1947 through 1951, government spent about 15% of GDP, while GDP grew at a yearly rate of 4.2%. Through 1974, government spent 19% of GDP, and the economy grew at a 3.3% rate. Since then, government has spent 22%; GDP has grown at a 2.5% rate. The government has exceeded the 17.6% spending level every year since 1965, ignoring gains to the economy from cutting spending, says the study. This excess spending has curbed the economy by an average of about 2% year, leading a cumulative loss of about $2.3 trillion in output. That leaves a good deal of room for today's lawmakers to raise economic growth by cutting spending. This year the government spent about 21.4% of GDP, according to the Treasury Department. The GOP budget plan would bring spending down to 18.5% of GDP by 2002, says the Congressional Budget Office. For every $1 of spending cuts, the private-sector economy will expand by $1.38, Gallaway and Vedder say. If sustained for seven years, that $1 budget cut would add $2.45 to total output, they say. Supply-siders have long urged Congress to change the way it forecasts how much revenue the government would forego if it cuts tax rates. By raising economic growth, tax cuts need not lose as much as Congress thinks, and may actually raise revenue. This study suggests that a similar effect may also work with spending cuts, meaning that cutting spending by $1 may close the budget gap by more than $1. This effect should hold until the government whittles the budget down to 17.6% of GDP, and perhaps further. Gallaway and Vidder got the 17.6% figure by assuming that government spending shouldn't be treated as a cost of production. If it were treated as a cost of production, then much less spending should be justified. Then, the best spending level for government would be between 10% and 11% of GDP, they say. But treating spending simply as a production cost may overlook other reasons for it. Also, the numbers may not tell the whole story. For example, what if lawmakers trimmed government back to 17.6%, but did so by getting rid of spending that Gallaway and Vedder say is good, leaving things like welfare and regulating agencies? That's unlikely, but it suggests a different route to the same theme of less government. Instead of focusing on numbers, perhaps we should focus on the kinds of spending government does, no matter the amount. For example, during wartime the best level of government spending may rise as it costs more to defend ourselves. By contrast, in a peaceful world, 17.6% may be much too high. Staying at that level might require welfare programs or wasteful defense spending.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, it is interesting that if one looks at the polls today, for the first time in American history when folks were asked: do you think your children will do better off or worse off than you did, they are answering ``worse off.'' That is the absolute opposite of the American dream, because the American dream is built on the idea that I did this well, my father did a little bit poorer than that, and my children are going to be doing better than that. One cannot build a civilization, one cannot build a country around the idea that my children are going to do worse off then I did. So I think at the core of this debate and the core of this budget, what we are really talking about is the American dream. Mr. Chairman, I would say second what those polls show is that Americans at the gut level understand what history has well documented over the course of time. Rome fell in 476 after controlling essentially the entire known world. The Byzantine empire, the Italian renaissance came to an end, the Spanish empire came to an end, the Dutch empire came to an end, the Ottomon empire came to an end. A host of civilizations came to an end because everyone of them reached a crossroads wherein they had to decide: Do we go back to what made us competitive and a world power in the first place, or we stay on this cozy but ultimately unsustainable cycle of upward government spending and upward government taxation? We are at that same crossroads today. A child born into America today will pay an 82-percent tax rate if we stay on the course we are on. That either means economic enslavement or it means a collapse of the financial system as we know it. It took every single personal income tax return filed west of the Mississippi River simply to pay for the interest on the national debt. A child born in America, as you saw by the check earlier, will pay $187,000 in taxes on their share of interest on the national debt if we stay on the course we are on. So we are at that crossroads. I think what this budget does is point us at the right fork in the road, because it begins to move decisions back to people in their local communities, in their local towns, and in so doing restores the American dream, and I think has a lot to do with saving the civilization.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, today is a special day in the fight against hunger around the United States. The Congressional Hunger Center and Victory Wholesale Grocers of Dayton, OH, presented the third annual Victory Against Hunger Awards to recipients from across the Nation. On behalf of the First District of South Carolina, I take special pride that one of our own is a recipient of this important award. The Food Source Network of Myrtle Beach, SC, headed by Chef Mark Rybecki, is a 1996 Victory Against Hunger Award recipient. The Food Source Network is an unique program among those dedicated to eradicating hunger around the country. First, because it was founded by chefs. And second, because it is the first type of program in its area--there are no other such programs within a 150 miles of the Grand Strand area of South Carolina. Mark Rybecki and the Food Source Network volunteers take food that is left over from restaurants and other food providers, and give it to organizations that feed people in need. This perishable food rescue program enables organizations around Horry County--like the Red Cross, Citizens Against Spouse Abuse [CASA] and Meals on Wheels--to feed more people. I want to commend the Congressional Hunger Center for their advocacy on behalf of those in need. And I want to thank Mark Rybecki, and the Food Source Network, for doing everything possible to help those in need.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding the time. I consider it good company that I had both this evening and on that particular scoreboard. I do not know if I thank you, though, for putting me behind J.D. It is always horrible following J.D. J.D., you are a walking encyclopedia on this stuff, and I admire the almost ever- growing list of things that you know about on the whole tax matter. I applaud your efforts there. I would simply say this. I do not want to beat an old horse, and a lot of things have been covered as we have talked about taxes, but I would like to throw in these two cents. That is, we had a town meeting last Saturday, just prior to everybody sending in their tax returns, back home in Charleston, and I tried to think about what is it that you are going to talk about just prior to tax day. I thought about well, May 7 is Tax Freedom Day. I thought about how the average family sends almost 40 percent of what they earned off to the Federal, State, or local government. I thought about how, you know, a hard-working couple works almost until noon to pay for the total cost of Federal, State, and local government. But what occurred to me was why in the world would I be telling them that? Because they know it a whole lot better than I do. In fact, when I have neighborhood office hours, people come up to me saying, Mark, do you realize how much we are paying in taxes? So I did not want to state the redundant, and so I looked. I do not know if you all have heard, Charles Adams wrote a book entitled ``For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on The Course of Civilization.'' So I got out pen and pad and began to work my way through his book. What he does in his book is he looks through the course of civilization, and with each different civilization breaks out tax rates. What was interesting about his study is that if you start, let us say, with the Egyptians, go all the way back to the Egyptians. You go back, let us say, 3,000 B.C., to all the way to when they ended, which I guess was around 476 A.D. And if you look at taxes in their civilization, what you would find is that on average, they had an agricultural production tax of about 20 percent. And then during hard times, this is nothing you would see with the IRS today. But during hard times, they had what they call philanthropa, wherein the pharaoh would say, we had a bad year with crops this year, therefore, there would be no taxes this year. It was rumored that is where the word ``philanthropy'' came from. But roughly around 20 percent. Then you move to the Greeks. Athens and Sparta had this sort of military sharing arrangement there with the other city/states to fight off the Persians, which they did quite successfully. And what was interesting there was they had an indirect tax, a tax ranging anywhere from 2 percent to around 10 percent, 10 percent if it was a shipping channel covered with pirates, 2 percent if it was not. And then around a 10 percent harvest tax for the city/states. They actually had the first progressive tax, which they called liturgy, where it was a voluntary tax for somebody who lived in that city/state who was doing well, they would come and say, we need this help with x. Would you help us? And there was a voluntary tax. But roughly again somewhere on the order of 10 and 15 percent on average. Then in Rome, you break out the republic versus the empire during the first part. During the republic, there was very little in the way of tax because you had a volunteer economy. What you had there is with their army, every citizen who was a landowner volunteered for the army for 1 year. That spirit of volunteerism, if you want to call it that, was so pervasive that even the magistrates volunteered. So as a consequence, there was not a lot in the way of taxes. They had indirect commercial taxes and custom duties, which ranged from on the order of 2 percent to 5 percent. Unfortunately they had slave auctions back then, which were roughly another 2 to 5 percent. But those were the two big taxes. Then as you moved into the empire, taxes began to go up because, first, they had tribunal, which was a war tax. There was a 5-year census. Every 5 years they took a census, and then depending on your wealth, if you were poor, roughly about one-tenth of your wealth was taxed. If you were wealthy, roughly about 1 percent of your wealth was taxes. And that tax went off. And if they were successful in their war effort, there was a rebate with the booty that came with war. They had a couple other taxes, again a 10-percent harvest tax, a 20- percent orchard tax, a 5-percent custom tax. And toward the end of the empire, they actually began to have an inheritance tax of around 5 percent. But again, something just slight of 20 percent on average. If you looked at the Spanish decline, the Spanish empire and how it declined, what you found was they had two main taxes there. The second tax began to get out of whack, if you will. There was a revolt there with Charles V around 1520 as a result of these taxes because they were not viewed as fair. They almost had an arrangement wherein the legislature was promised a whole lot of benefits, pensions, et cetera from the king, which worked fine until the taxes got too high and then there was revolt. The Swiss have long understood the connection between liberty, taxes, and democracy, and for that matter all revenue matters essentially come to vote. An example of that would be, in 1991 a value added tax was proposed in Canada and passed. The same value added tax was proposed in Switzerland and failed, in large measure because they could take that vote straight back to the people. But what struck me about all this, and you could wander through a whole lot of empires and civilizations, was that you can only squeeze so much blood from a turnip. Those numbers happen to fit, in terms of the study of civilizations and taxes there with his book, fit with OMB numbers, and they fit with Reader's Digest, which is an unlikely pairing in my book. Because with OMB they went back and looked at numbers from 1950 to present, and what they found was that regardless of which tax rate you were at, roughly the government share was around 19.8 percent, just shy of 20 percent. Whether you were in the 70-percent tax rate or the 20- percent tax rate, as tax rates ratcheted up and down, you could only squeeze so much blood from a turnip. People responded to that tax. If the tax was up at 70 percent, sure enough, the second earner stopped earning. They stayed home more. If it was down to 20 percent, they went back to work. People responded. So, first, you can only squeeze so much blood from a turnip; and, second, this is where Reader's Digest recently did a poll and went out and asked folks, ``What do you think a fair tax rate would be?'' They asked males, they asked females, they asked whites, blacks, and people earning below $35,000. They asked people earning above $35,000, ``What would be a fair tax rate?'' Resoundingly, in each of those different categories people came back with the answer, around 25 percent. Any yet, as you know, our overall tax burden is closer to 40 percent, which again says to me two things: First, civilizations must have had something right throughout time, and the fact that they were at or below 20 percent on average says to me that we are probably out of whack. And, second, if Reader's Digest gets it right, maybe they could pass along the lesson to us here in Congress, in that here we are bouncing along in the neighborhood of 40 percent. What do their readers say? Around 25 percent would be fair. So I just thought that that was interesting to look at that whole time frame and just say where are we in the grand perspective. Because when I say tax freedom or I say, do you realize you are paying x, people already know that. What was interesting was to look at those numbers and to say, boy, 20 percent seems to be a number that has worked throughout time. I will yield back. I do not want to take too much of your time.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, this past month terrorist acts in Israel have taken the lives of innocent people. More than that, they have placed the peace of this region once again in jeopardy. Today, I rise to stand with the people of Israel and the Jews around the world. This measure, which we are currently considering, condemns the recent terrorist attacks as well as urges action in support of the peace process. However, it cannot console those who have become victims of a misguided attempt to settle a dispute over land. It cannot repair the buildings and lives which are now fragmented. Through this measure the United States states its opposition to actions such as those which have occurred recently in Israel. This Nation will not condone the senseless actions of terrorists. We stand with those for peace and for Israel.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, during this discussion we have heard a lot of debate, and the problem with that debate is that it has been filled with Washington voices. If there is anything that we have learned, it is that Washington does not know best. So I think the missing ingredient in this discussion is, what is it the Cuban people living in Cuba think? And in testimony after testimony with the gentleman from Indiana, Chairman Burton, what we have heard is that the people at home in Cuba think that the way that we solve this problem is not by sending tourist dollars to prop up Fidel Castro, not by allowing investment dollars to go in and prop up Fidel Castro, but rather by tightening the embargo. In this case I think we should listen to those voices.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, this vote is a gut check. Like few votes that I have seen recently, it asks us who are we and what do we really believe in. As Republicans, we talk about free enterprise, we talk about open markets. Yet, the sugar program has a guaranteed floor price of 23 cents. When I go to the produce store, I do not see a guaranteed floor price for tomatoes. When I go to the car shop, I do not see a guaranteed floor price for repairing the car. When I go to the hardware store, I do not see a guaranteed price for hammers. Yet, we are going to make an exception here? I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, many folks say we are for the working folks, we are for the little folks. If that is so, how could we possibly ask folks to pay double the price for sugar? A lot of folks say, ``Forget it, Mark. We are talking about sweet tea and we are talking pecan pies.'' That is not a lot of money. That is just a little bit of money. Yet, if you were to talk about sweet tea, especially down South, we are talking about a lot of sweet tea. In fact, what we are really talking about is principle. How can we allow big benefits to accrue to just a few small folks; in other words, special interests? In fact, you add up those sweet teas and pecan pies, you are looking at $1.4 billion of benefit. I think probably nothing better illustrates this problem than the way that this subsidy in essence flows down to one family in Palm Beach, $65 million a year of benefit. They are, I am sure, fine folks, and they are certainly good capitalists, but that is not fair. It does not pass the commonsense test, nor does this sugar program. I ask that we pass this amendment. Mr. de la GARZA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida [Mr. Hastings]. (Mr. HASTINGS of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. de la GARZA. If I have time, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 30, my wife Jenny is about to have our third child and the doctor says if I don't leave now I will be missing the big event. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Where I grew up back in South Carolina, volunteering was actually volunteering. Aside from having philosophical questions about being paid to volunteer, I think it goes back to what Davy Crockett said on the House floor, again more than 100 years ago, and that was this whole notion of there are a lot of good things we would like to do for other folks, but when we are spending other people's money to do so, I think which have to pause a real long time.

Mr. SANFORD. I think what the gentleman is getting at is balance, because I think what we both recognize is that over the years the Federal Government has done a lot of good things, whether that is with helping in cleaning up some of the rivers that were burning not that long ago, or whether it has been with educational programs, or bringing us out of the Great Depression, or bringing us through World War II. The Federal Government has done a lot of good things, but the pendulum has swung too far over here, and what I hear from back home is it has done a lot of wonderful things, but it is too far over here, because we want a little greater hand in educating our children. We want a greater hand in how we spend the hours of our day. We want to have a little greater hand in deciding a whole host of things; and, therefore, we just have to bring the pendulum back over here a bit, so that we at the individual level or the county level or at the State level are making those decisions rather than the bureaucrat in Washington.

Mr. SANFORD. I think what you are really getting at is the relatively gradual nature that is being proposed. Again, what we are talking about is overall Federal spending still going up by 2.4 percent each year. To give you an idea in relative terms of where that stands, take, for instance, right now our deficit is basically 2.2 percent of the whole economy. In France, it is about 2.5 percent, and in Sweden it is about 7.5 percent. As you know, those countries have proposed cutting back on the size of their government. But what is interesting is we proposed to do this over 7 years. France has proposed to do it over 2 years. Sweden has proposed to do it over 3 years. What that means is the slowing of the rate of government that they are proposing, or the cuts in government they are proposing, are eight times as great in Sweden, and three times as great in France. So, again, it goes back to, I think, the reasonableness nature that you were getting at.

Mr. SANFORD. I think this is what really gets underneath the skin of folks back home, these kinds of horror stories. I think what we also have to remember, we proposed fairly radical welfare reform, which I think is absolutely needed. But at the same time, I think what we are doing is preserving that hand-up element to welfare. In other words, when people are really down, what we have said is we are not going to abandon them. To give you an idea of that, again, the budget is constantly talked about as being extreme, extreme, extreme. Yet, over the past 7 years, we spent $492 billion on welfare. What is proposed here with the next 7 years is $878 billion on welfare. That does not seem extreme to me. It seems to me it preserves the helping hand nature, but it ends that hand-out nature.

Mr. SANFORD. I would simply agree with the gentleman in that there are too many things with the way Washington works that do not reward savings, they do not reward investment, they do not reward hard work, and a lot of things in essence are tied to feeding people in essence with a spoon, keeping them tied to the government knot, rather than having them out there. Again, what we need to reward in American society is initiative.

Mr. SANFORD. Just on the subject of taxes, I hear it a lot at home. You are talking about Main Street. What is interesting is to think the National Taxpayers Union estimates that all of us spend basically the first 6 months of each year working to pay for the total cost of Federal, State, and local governments. If you actually break that down on a daily basis, it means that everybody goes to work in the morning, they spend the entire morning working for somebody else, they break for lunch, and then they get to spend the afternoon working for themselves and their families. What I am hearing from folks is that does not make common sense. What I think to be even worse, you look at how that is going to impact children. It takes every single Federal income tax filed west of the Mississippi simply to pay the interest on the national debt. And if that was not bad enough, what is worse is how it looks for our children. A child born in America today will pay $187,000 in taxes to pay for their share of interest on the national debt. Viewed another way, generational accounting says to keep our Government solvent, they would have to pay an 82-percent tax rate if we stayed on the course we are on. So I think when we talk about these tax rates, they are fairly alarming numbers that I think impact everybody's lives.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I think what is interesting about doing that job is that we not lose sight of the prize, and that prize is actually getting to a balanced budget in 7 years and using real numbers to get there. Back on Monday, I spent a couple of hours in front of the Kmart in Myrtle Beach talking to folks, and what was interesting about those conversations was that people over and over and over again said, ``Hold the line,'' because if we look at this budget, what we are looking at is $12 trillion. $12 trillion. It is called extreme. Mr. Speaker, over the last 7 years the Federal Government spent $9.5 trillion. Over the next 7 years what is proposed is spending $12 trillion. Basically, for too long talks in Washington would go along to get along and there were plenty of slaps on the back. And now what we have said in essence is let us hold the line here. This is what we are hearing from folks at home, is that $12 trillion over the next 7 years is enough.

Mr. SANFORD. What is interesting, if the gentleman would yield, about that particular number, a carry with me a quote, it is from Sir Alex Francis Taylor, a Scottish historian a little over 100 years ago. His quote was a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. it only exists until the voters discover that they can vote for themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority usually votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy and is generally followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from great courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency and from dependency back again into bondage. What I think is startling about that is as you look across the time line of history, Rome, it was the largest place in the world at that time, collapsed in 476. The Byzantine Empire came on its heels and yet collapsed in 1453. The Italian Renaissance, as great as it was, came to an end in 1550. The Spanish empire controlled a quarter of the entire known world and yet came to an end around 1588 with the sinking of Spanish Armada. The point is, you could go through a lot of parallels and in every instance each of those nations, each of those civilizations reached a crossroads in which they had to decide do we stay in this awfully comfortable cycle of upward spending and upward government consumption, or do we go back to what made us a world power in the first place. That is what those numbers I think suggest.

Mr. SANFORD. I would think two thoughts on what the gentleman has just been saying. One would be, there was a question as to why would the President be doing this. I think it is awfully easy inside the Beltway to lose sight of the decided benefits to balancing the budget. Jack, I do not know if you saw the article in today's Washington Post, but there was an article talking about, it reads, ``On Balance, Budget Deal Could Offer a $1,000 Bonus,'' and it talks about a study by several economists and it looks at the three benefits that would go with balancing the budget. One would be our children would not have to pay debt in the future because we would have not added another $1 trillion worth of Government spending, the economy would grow more, and we would see lower interest rates. But here in the Washington Post it is talking about a $1,000 bonus per family for balancing the budget. So I would say that one of the reasons probably the White House has gone back and forth on this number is it is easy to lose sight of those future benefits. As to your second point about being one of those radical freshman, I think it is awfully interesting to move away from the talk, because there is plenty of talk in Washington, DC, and simply look at the numbers. And how radical is this budget, because what is interesting is if you go from simply the last 7 years, the Federal Government spent $9.5 trillion, and what is proposed in this budget is spending of $12 trillion, which is roughly 2.5 percent annualized growth each year. For instance, take some of the programs. With Medicaid, we spent $443 billion over the last 7 years, and what is proposed is to spend $791 billion over the next 7 years.

Mr. SANFORD. On just Medicaid. I will get to Medicare. For instance, with Medicaid we go from spending $443 billion over the last 7 years to spending $791 billion with this proposed budget over the next 7 years. With Medicare we go from spending $926 billion over the last 7 years to a proposal that suggests we spend $1.6 trillion over the next 7 years.

Mr. SANFORD. I know my colleague from Georgia knows these numbers better than I do. When you actually look at the Medicare on a per capita basis, look at how we go from spending $4,800 per beneficiary to moving up basically at 7 percent a year to $7,100 a year in 2002, it is remarkable to see that kind of yearly growth.

Mr. SANFORD. If the gentleman will yield, I think what is interesting about the numbers, and I mean you are looking at a 49-percent increase over 7 years, you are looking at an increase two times the rate of inflation, but you are touching one of the holy grails in politics, and I think the significance of that is that typically the way that Washington has been hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, as it relates to anything that might be at all controversial, and clearly Medicare is; but you have got a trustees' report that says if you do not do something you guys are going to have a real problem, that it will go bankrupt, period.

Mr. SANFORD. If I might interject just prior, I think the significance of that, though, is that you look at, I mean, Medicare right now is the equivalent of the only gas station stop on a very long and lonely stretch of interstate, and what is being proposed with this Republican plan is basically rather than that one gas station where, sure enough, you can count on getting gas but you may not get the lower price or best service, is having six or seven little gas stations so you begin to have competition, which begins the working of the marketplace which directly affects price.

Mr. SANFORD. I would say, in the midst of that debate, I have talked to folks back home, and they get awfully frustrated with the seeming fractiousness over Washington, yet what I tell folks at home is let us keep it all in perspective. We can look at a place like, for instance, Cuba, and we look at any kind of disagreement basically being squashed because there is a dictatorial rule, or we look at a host of places around the globe and we see people solving problems with guns rather than with words. And what we have going on right here, as messy as it is, I have heard that saying, that if one likes sausage, do not watch it being made. I guess the same is true with democracy. But what we have here is everybody yanking on the level of government control that was afforded them by the Founding Fathers; the Congress with its power to appropriate, and the President with his power to veto, all within the confines of a system that the Founding Fathers created. I think that is kind of exciting.

Mr. SANFORD. I would agree.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, this holiday season, I want to pay special tribute to those in the military who will be far from their family and friends. I also want to pass on a way that we can all thank them. For the last 12 years, Bill Herrmann of Ladson, SC, has directed Operation: Eagle, which encourages people to send cards and letters to overseas service men and women. Through his efforts, thousands of cards and letters have been delivered to those who might otherwise feel alone and far from home this holiday season. This season, Operation: Eagle is concentrating on serving military personnel in and around Bosnia. I encourage everyone to send cards and letters to this address: ATTN: Any Soldier, Task Force Eagle, APO AE 09135. This is the least that we can do to thank service men and women for their sacrifices.