Mark Sanford

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I would follow up on the remarks of the gentleman from Texas, specifically the letter, because it seems to me, as the gentleman from Oklahoma just suggested, that naturally they are in the business of protecting the status quo. What the gentleman from Oklahoma is trying to do is anything but the status quo, and that is, on a line-by-line basis, to walk through money, where it is going, where it is being spent and asking, is the taxpayer getting the best bang for his buck. I would disagree with the letter on a whole number of fronts. I mean, for instance, the gentleman from Oklahoma's amendments, for instance, do not touch the sugar subsidy program. That letter has basically said the sugar subsidy is right. I know we would disagree on this, but I have problems with any system wherein you have got the Fanjul family out of Palm Beach who are worth over $400 million, who get $60 million a year as a result of a program that is part of this bill. That is not even being challenged by what the gentleman from Oklahoma is doing. So I think I would have a number of objections to that letter. But I want to go back to the original content of what he is getting at, which is, line by line, looking at where the money is being spent and simply asking, is the taxpayer getting a good return on his investment. I would say no, because going back to, I guess the comments of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), if you had any corporation out there in America that had 100,000 employees, had 80,000 contract employees and said, how can we make it better, their solution would not be to increase administration by 12 percent. Yet that is what this does. All this amendment would do would be to knock out that increase. That is worth doing, it seems to me, for a couple of reasons. If you took out this $3.9 million that we are talking about at $20,000 a pop, that would buy tractors for 200 farmers. I would rather put the money into tractors. It would pay taxes for 2,600 farmers if you figured the taxes on a small farm were $1,500. It would take 1,900 farmers earning an average income to pay the money for this increase; or turned around a different way, it would take one farmer 1,900 years to pay for the increase that this amendment gets at. It is a sensible amendment. It gets at where is the money going. Most farmers I talk to, talk to somebody down at the stockyard or talk to somebody at FTX, these are reasonable, commonsense folks, and the idea of plussing up the administration, and in fact I saw one thing here in the administration portion, and I would have a question for the staff on this, talking about aircraft management. I mean how many aircraft does the Department of Agriculture own?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the problem with that logic assumes that all things are equal within this category of expenditure. I do not think that to be the case, which is why I would think that the proposal of gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) does make sense, because some things we will like, some things we will not. By going through the debate process amendment by amendment, we find where the good is and where the bad is.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, it would seem to me that the problem with that logic would be that that assumes that all things are equal within the Department of Agriculture funding, which I do not think are.

Mr. SANFORD. Absolutely. Reclaiming my time, this is part of a much larger conversation, as the gentleman from Oklahoma has already suggested, and that is, as we all know, if we wait until the end when we run into Labor-HHS, when we run into VA-HUD, we are running into a train wreck, and so I mean unless we address this larger issue; which is, as my colleagues know, we can cherry pick the easy bills, supposedly ag was going to be one of those; do those first, and then wait for the really difficult bills later on. If so, we are in real trouble, and it means we will be taking the money from Social Security, which is why I go back to the simple point: would we rather spend money on this, as my colleague knows, administration here within the Department of Ag, or would we rather save it for Social Security? I would rather save it for Social Security.

Mr. SANFORD. No. Reclaiming my time, of all people, the gentleman from Vermont has been consistently independent in the way he votes. To suggest that he takes anything lock-step from the committee as it comes, I mean the gentleman would be the furthest person from that. He is the one independent that is here.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, on that very point, the back of the envelope, what we are really looking at here, if the gentleman figures he can get a good used tractor for about $20,000, we could just go out and buy 1,000 tractors for farmers across this country rather than spending the $20 million on space needs in Washington, D.C.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a very slight and modest change within the whole of the $13-plus billion that will go to agriculture. It deals specifically with the agricultural buildings and facilities rental payments section, and what it does is it deceases by a little over $21 million the specific agricultural buildings and facilities rental payment section. Now what this really gets at is, there is what they call the space plan within the Department of Agriculture, and there are numerous Department of Agriculture buildings throughout the country, and what we do not have in schools across this country where we have actually students in trailers is this kind of money being spent. So this is to take out $21 million which seems to me to be a Washington phenomenon, to go simply on planning on where buildings may or may not be, where leases will or will not go next, and so this is a 420 percent increase in this one category of expenditure, and again it is something that we do not see in the private sector. We do not see somebody in the private sector spending $21 million planning on where they are going to lease or sublease next, we do not see $21 billion additional being spent on planning when it could go into real buildings. One of the choices that we will be having later this year is do we spend this $21 million on planning, or do we put the money, for instance, into education? This could actually buy books for the classroom, it could actual buy computers for the classroom, it could actually take people out of trailers. In South Carolina we see trailers that actually house students. It could take them out of those facilities and put them in a real facility. There is, for instance, if the choice right now is between this $21 million and, for instance, VA-HUD, would we rather spend the $21 million on veterans or would we rather spend the money, the $21 million, deciding where we are going to put bureaucrats in and around Washington, D.C.? That is all this amendment does. It is part of a much greater context, and that is the context of what comes next. If we do not get ahead of the curve on where Washington is spending money, we have a train wreck coming this fall. There is no way this institution will cut $5-plus billion out of Labor-HHS, there is no way this institution will cut $3-plus billion out of VA-HUD, and the simple question before us is: Can we save this $21 million to go toward planning where bureaucrats will be housed in Washington, or would we rather save that for these greater purposes later on?

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, because it seems to me that what this amendment is about is the very simple theme of putting good money after bad. The reason I say that is that if you were $2,000 into a hypothetical $10,000 investment and then all of a sudden that $10,000 investment began to look very iffy, would you invest the other $8,000 if it was your own money? I think most of us would not. That is exactly where we are with this Space Station. We are $20 billion in, but we still have another $80 billion to go. Would you really go that distance if it begins to look iffy, which is what basically the scientific community has said? Put another way, if you were $200 toward fixing your car in a, quote, $1,000 repair job but then it turned out the $1,000 repair job would not get you there, would you put in the other $800? I do not think most of us would. That fundamentally is what this amendment is all about. There is a big hole down in south Texas where there was going to be a supercolliding super conductor, yet in the end that project was found wanting and people said, ``Let's not continue to fund it.'' This is something that is done all day long in people's homes. It is something that is done all day long in businesses. Businesses have start-ups, they venture out, check it out, see if it is going to work and then if it does not look good, they retreat. We can do that in government, too. So, one, fundamentally, this is what that amendment is about. Two, why is it putting good money after bad? It is putting good money after bad because first of all there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty in this project. As has already been mentioned, this is not the American Space Station, this is the International Space Station. As we all know, there is a lot of uncertainty in Russia right now. Yeltsin seems to be running through prime ministers on a fairly regular basis. There are a whole host of other problems within this country. Is this the kind of subcontractor you want in a business deal? I know of no contractor, whether in Charleston, whether in Houston, whether in Los Angeles, who would go out and depend on a subcontractor that was iffy. That is exactly what we have in this project. Therefore, would you risk $100 billion--or $100--of your own money if it was that kind of setup? In fact, it was the independent Chabrow report that last year said it is costing us between $100 and $250 million for each month that the assembly is delayed. That is what this subcontractor is costing us. I think it points to the uncertainty of this overall project. Two, the reason I think it is putting good money after bad is that the scientific value so far has proved to be very, very limited. Because it is limited, we have to set priorities. Nobody wants to set priorities, but that is fundamentally what our role is about here in government. Indeed, we have got a lot of priorities in government. You could buy 40 B-2s, you could buy a bay full of aircraft carriers, you could buy a whole lot of books or computers for education. You could do a lot of other things with this money. That is why the National Taxpayers Union supports this amendment. That is why Citizens Against Government Waste supports this amendment. In fact, I have here a stack of different articles that point to again the questionable nature of, quote, the scientific value of what is being talked about with Space Station, which is the reason it would be up there in the first place. Indeed, the American Society for Cell Biology declared that crystallography experiments in microgravity have made no serious contribution to analysis of protein structures or the development of new pharmaceuticals. I have here another article that points to scientific publication is the hallmark of a good laboratory, and yet there is not scientific finding or publication out of Space Station. In fact, it points to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is by all models a model for scientific organizations. It has a budget of about $500 million and has numerous findings in all sorts of different scientific journals. Therefore, we could fund several fold, in other words, a multiple of Howard Hughes type organizations with this money as opposed to sending it off into space. I have another article here that talks about how the Space Station is vulnerable to debris and how NASA is leaving off shields to fast track the project. In fact, according to the ISS partners, there is a 24 percent chance, a 1 in 4 chance that it could be hit by debris. Is that the kind of project you want to put $100 billion into? I have another article here from the Sunday Times of London talking about how NASA jeopardizes Space Station research to help the Russians.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise in ambivalence toward the rule but in strong opposition to the supplemental itself. Because my dad used to have a saying, and that was that ``the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'' And I think that that fairly well sums up this supplemental, because it may have the best of intentions in a whole lot of different areas within the government, but it is most certainly the road to hell in saving Social Security. I mean, last fall we spent $20 billion on an ``emergency basis.'' Now we find ourselves about to spend another $13 billion on this ``emergency basis.'' That is $33 billion sucked out of my kids' Social Security account. So I think we really are on the road to hell with these ``emergency bills'' because they are coming out of one pot and that is the Social Security pot. Now, leaving aside the fact that it has got a lot of strange stuff in it, whether it is $2.2 million for a sewer for the winter Olympics, $3 million to redo dormitories, $100,000 for a YMCA down in Southern California, $330,000 for the minority leader and the majority whip, $25,000 for the chief deputy whips to the Republican and Democrat parties, a lot of stuff that is by no means emergency. What I think we need to take from this thing is a lesson; and that is, if this same $33 billion was in individual accounts across this country, in individual Social Security accounts across this country, then Washington came up short for the YMCA down in Southern California, or who knows what, and wanted to take that money out of that account, I think people would go berserk. I think we have really got to look at creating some kind of real firewall between people's Social Security money and political forces in D.C. Because, if not, we are going to continue to go the way these supplemental bills are going.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. My dad used to have a saying, and that was, the Lord helps those who help themselves. I think my dad would be rolling around in the grave right now if he knew that we were part of a 19-country alliance wherein we were picking up about 80 to 90 percent of the bill. Yet, that happens to be the case. So the question with this amendment is, if we choose to foot the bill on 80 to 90 percent of the goods, will we at least account for it honestly, rather than borrowing it from social security? So I think that is the simple choice that this amendment is all about. To put it in perspective, what we are talking about here is Thirteen billion. Experts have said we have a real problem coming with social security. If we do not do this, that problem gets worse. Thirteen billion dollars is enough money to pay for a full year's worth of social security benefits for 1.4 million retirees. Thirteen billion would pay for a full month's worth of benefits for nearly 20 million retirees. Thirteen billion is more than social security pays in an entire year for seniors' insurance, for benefits for kids under the age of 18. Thirteen billion would pay social security benefits for every African American retiree until September in a given year. Thirteen billion is over 10 percent of this illusory and quickly-diminishing social security surplus. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is just about truthful and straightforward accounting. If we want to spend, if we want to build somebody else's house, if we want to cover 80 to 90 percent of the cost of this endeavor, fine, but let us account for it honestly.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the timing and consideration of this bill because ultimately I think that this is a constitutional question. It is one that the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell) has raised because he knows what our Founding Fathers knew, and that is that when body bags come back from some foreign deployment, they do not stop within the Beltway. They go across America. They go to Charleston, South Carolina; they go to Knoxville, Tennessee; they go to Los Angeles, California. It is for this reason, and it came up yesterday in debate, that in contrast to the English system, the Framers did not want the wealth and blood of the Nation committed by the decision of a single individual, which was just pointed out by my colleague from California. So, one, I rise in support of the timing of this because of the constitutional element. I will ultimately vote ``no'' because of the foreign policy element of this decision. Now, all of us would like to solve every ill in this world, but both individually and collectively it is something we do not have the resources to do, so for foreign policy to be effective, it has got to be limited and it has got to be focused. Part of focus means consistency. If we stay in Kosovo, we are going to create a very inconsistent foreign policy. In fact, I do not even want to be part of a government that would ever signal to people around the world that if you are of European ancestry, we care about your human rights, but if you happen to be unlucky enough to be born in Africa, well, then, good luck. Because in January 3,000 people were killed in Sierra Leone, and if we are going to stay in Kosovo, we owe it to them to go to Sierra Leone. 300,000 people were killed in Angola since 1992. 500,000 people were killed in Rwanda in the genocide there. 1.9 million people have been killed in the south of Sudan basically over the last 15 years. It is important for our foreign policy to be effective that we be consistent and that, I think, is what this bill is all about.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with you thoughts on Kosovo from a friend back home, retired Vice Admiral Al Baciocco. His insight as a military man speaks powerfully to the U.S. actions in the Balkans. I hope we will take the time to think through the lucid thoughts he offers. To: Hon. Mark Sanford From: Al Baciocco, VADM, USN (Ret), 747 Pitt Street, Mt. Pleasant, SC Dear Mark: As you reconvene in Washington, DC, and begin debate on many important issues, I hope that you will consider the current KOSOVO situation an issue of critical and major National Security importance. I have taken the liberty of providing you a copy of an item I wrote to other senior retired military friends a few days ago, reflecting on my feelings about this engagement we have become involved in. I have also provided a copy of one of the responses, this one especially poignant, which I received from other retired senior Admirals. I thought these items might be of interest to you--and perhaps useful in guiding your thoughts. My somewhat wordy epistle follows: ``To all of John's (and my) Friends-- I worry that I am somewhere out in left field on this Kosovo disaster that we seem to be marching further into, despite continued opportunities for someone (anyone!) to speak up and bring the country to its senses! What we hear and see the Serb military and their leadership engaged in is grossly, morally wrong--beyond the limits of civilized toleration! Given that, it is correct that the United States and the rest of the civilized world be engaged in correcting this outrage--politically, at least; militarily, if necessary! However, the actual endeavor in which we are currently engaged--and the manner in which we have chosen (or allowed ourselves to be eased into) to carry out this endeavor is troubling. Despite my long professional association with and personal respect for NATO--a mutual defense alliance with a proven track record for deterring aggression--I anguish that we are now engaged in a rather ambiguous mission to ``deter with destruction'' and to ``punish'' an offending European leader who clearly has no moral conscience or standards of conduct, with the United States virtually abdicating its visible position of leadership and allowing itself to be represented by a European (NATO) presence, with political and military leadership only vaguely understood by the American people and demonstrating only rather vague definition, judgment and experience. I am offended to find that briefings and statements describing this very dangerous situation are being provided by ``glib'' NATO political and military ``spokesman'', not by the elected and/or appointed, potentially-respected ranking officials of the United States. Granted, we have allowed ourselves to become involved and engaged in this NATO (European) show--albeit with some 75-80% of the resources, combat troops, munitions, and ``target for ultimate blame'' provided by the United States--but, if in fact this engagement is truly in the vital National Security interests of the United States of America, then the nation should hear this from its leaders, both political and military, every hour and every day of its duration. We must clearly understand why we are there; we must clearly be on the field exercising bold and realistic military judgment and direction; and we must be willing, in fact, must demand-- through our processes--that our national leaders, both political and military, act and be held accountable for their Constitutional and moral responsibilities! I am deeply troubled and honestly quite offended as an American that we are expected to feel good about seeing our forces calmly (and quite professionally) go about launching cruise missiles and bombs, however accurately guided, against what is perceived by the world as--and in fact, is--a fundamentally civilian infrastructure of a small, rather poor country--albeit led by a ruthless thug! We have seen this happen before in recent months--most of the time with ambiguous results, at best. All too often today, the general populace and the media seem to view the deployment and use of such military force with the same interest, fascination and concern as they view a ``video game''! In my view, cruise missiles are becoming--perhaps have become--``TOO EASY'' to use! Their use does not demonstrate a clear commitment of our nation's soul--and a clear commitment to the fray of a nation's soul is the only sign that history demonstrates will deter and influence a tyrant to quickly stand down from his adventure. The National Soul is demonstrated by a willingness to commit ``warriors'' to the field, and to shed the blood of our young, if necessary, to achieve justice, freedom and what is morally right! Our nation was founded on these principles--and they should be overlooked, blurred, or discarded only at our peril. None of us were brought up believing that we were a nation that was capricious in the use of our military might. We were brought up as, and are a nation and a people of justice, of honesty, of principle founded on high moral ground! Have all of our men and women in positions of leadership and responsibility within our political and military hierarchy forgotten this? Has ``political correctness'' clouded their recall of history and our heritage, their judgment, and their courage? We should answer the question as to the fundamental importance to the United States of America of the current situation and of our current endeavor in the Balkans. If the answer clearly measures up to the standards and principles our nation stands for, then we should openly, proudly and aggressively take the political and military lead, and complete the task--however long it takes--with our Soul and our ``warriors'' fully committed! If it does not, we should depart the field! So much for ``Views from the Low Country''! I hope my stream of consciousness (and conscience) is not too far off the mark! Warm regards, Al'' The response from another retired senior Admiral follows: ``Dear Al, Right on the mark in my opinion. I share your views and I believe that a large number of the active duty senior leadership does as well. The military power of our country is being applied to solve the world's humanitarian problems and we are creating more problems in the process. The United States of America is no longer perceived as a protector of freedom, but it is now an enforcer of ``our way of life.'' The image of the GI slogging through the mud or riding in the back of a jeep sharing some candy with the children of a devastated community has been replaced with cruise missiles launched from ships that are 500 miles away or from aircraft that nobody ever sees. We need to stop this madness and return to the values that have made this country great. Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, talks about these values and the men and women who not only believed in these values, but lived them as well. Best regards,''

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, it is funny what those numbers translate into, because I had seen recent numbers that showed for a young person born in 1970, making $24,000 a year, which is average income, assuming they never made a pay raise, in other words they never had an increase in their pay over the course of their lives, they kept earning that $24,000 a year, what they could expect to get returned to them on their Social Security was 0.4 percent if they were male. That is not 1 percent, that is four-tenths of a percent. If they are female, it is 0.7, seven-tenths of a percent.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about how much goes through this place, which is $1.7 trillion.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would further yield, Madeleine Albright came and testified before one of the committees that I am on, the Committee on International Relations, today, and she testified before the Senate yesterday. And on this very point, I think her reply was interesting, because when asked, should we offset the proposed supplemental for Kosovo, the answer was no, because if we did that it would mean money could come out of USAID, the State Department and a host of other priorities, as she put it, here in Washington. The simple question the people need to ask back home is, is USAID and State Department spending a higher priority for them or is the money going to their Social Security a higher priority, is a question that needs to be asked.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I just want to follow up what the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) is suggesting. I have got friends back home that said, ``Mark, are you all a bunch of green-eye-shade-covered accountant types in Washington, or are you not the guys that are cutting spending in Washington, taking stuff away from people?'' Again, as the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) just pointed out, no. In other words, that may be the rap that at times people send in this direction, but reality is very, very different. That is, if we look at this one-way upward curve, what we are talking about is trying to restrain the growth and spending in Washington as opposed to cutting. There is not any cutting that is going on here, but an attempt to restrain the growth. The reason that I think that is so important is well illustrated with the second chart, which shows that basically Washington has been getting a lot more of a pay raise than folks back home. If we look at each year, the purple line is the degree to which spending has been going up in Washington versus the orange, I guess that is orange, orange line showing the rate at which growth or incomes have been going up at home. All we are trying to do is keep the two equal. In other words, if Washington is getting a pay raise, it ought to be equal with what folks are doing back home, not above that.

Mr. SANFORD. As the gentleman is pulling that chart up, Mr. Speaker, what I think is interesting about what the gentleman was getting at, again, is this whole notion that we have said we are going to have surpluses basically as far as the eye can see. Last year, as the gentleman mentioned earlier, the surplus was $70 billion, but we borrowed $100 billion to get there. Next year they are talking about a surplus of again around $80 billion, but borrowing $130 to get there; the year after that, a surplus of about $100 billion, but again, borrowing $100 billion to get there.

Mr. SANFORD. If the gentleman will yield, one of the reasons I think the gentleman's point is so interesting is the Supreme Court decision of 1960, which was Fleming v. Nestor. And, basically, what it said is that none of us have any legal claim whatsoever to our own Social Security money. So this whole issue of private property rights, the issue of owning our own account, seeing a monthly statement, knowing to the penny how much is there, I think, is very, very important.

Mr. SANFORD. Yes. So basically $100 billion, to keep the math simple, got borrowed here, and 277 versus 164, again a difference of about $100 billion that was borrowed in 1995. In 1996, $261 was what we borrowed, and 107, a little more than that. We could round it out to be in the neighborhood of $100 billion. Then going back to the number that the gentleman just talked about, which I think is interesting, because this is this $70 billion surplus, and yet we borrow over $100 billion. So the gentleman is exactly right, common sense and regular language and regular accounting back home would say what we are running right now is not exactly what the rest of America would call a surplus.

Mr. SANFORD. That is exactly right.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. If we might, just in comparing our respective charts, because I want to show this thing off, staff has been kind enough to put this together, it illustrates the exact point that the gentleman is getting at, which is the yellow here basically is what we borrow in total from each of my three young boys each year. I have a 6-year-old, a 5-year- old, a 3-year old, and a 6-month-old. The yellow number, for instance, back here in 1994, we borrowed $293. The deficit was $203. In 1995 it was----

Mr. SANFORD. That is right.