John Shadegg

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, this is a new day in America, a great new day. It is a day where we talk about promises made and promises kept. The speaker before me made the point this is not a contract that was partisan. It is a contract which captures the American people's dreams and begins the process of starting change in America. The eight first-day reforms received an average of 397 votes; 160 of my colleagues on the other side joined us in those reforms. The average of the bills in the Contract With America received 316 votes. That is more than 70 of our Democratic colleagues who joined us in passing those reforms. Our predecessors promised to end welfare as we know it. They promised a middle-class tax cut. They promised to begin making Government smaller and more responsive, and they failed over and over again. The American people want change. The Contract With America delivered change. It is the beginning of a tremendous process. budget. I invite the American people, I invite my colleagues to join us in that challenge. It is immoral to continue to put the burden of the debt and the deficit they created in the last 40 years on our children and our grandchildren. Join us, I urge you. We are going forward to make America strong and better and to give it back to the people, the people who own it, the people who made it, the people whose taxes make it run and who believe in this agenda and in us.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I might begin by noting my predecessor on the opposite side of the aisle who expressed his opposition to this legislation decided to vote 2 years ago to raise taxes on his constituents by $1 billion, and now opposes a $500 tax credit that would go right to the parents of the 100,000 children in his district. That is the kind of rhetoric which characterizes this debate Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this bill. I also listened to my colleague, the gentleman from Utah [Mr. Orton] a few minutes ago who recently had a son and said it would change his life forever. He asked how would we explain this bill to children. I explain it to children because we are giving their parents a tax credit. His decision to vote against this bill is wrong. It is dead wrong. As I mentioned, 2 years ago my colleagues on the other side voted to raise taxes. Now they said they cannot cut taxes. It is a consistent pattern on the other side. They believe in raising taxes over and over again. If we care about children, we must balance the budget, and this bill begins that process. It enacts $100 billion in spending cuts. Not phony spending cuts from a baseline going way up, but real dollar spending cuts. If you care about children, we have got to also cut spending, because the tax burden on America's families today drives spouses into the workplace. Spouses who should be at home and who would like to be at home taking care of their children are forced to go to work. If you listen to their message, it is because of the profligate spending of my colleagues on the opposite side who have controlled this Congress for 40 years and who built a $4.3 trillion deficit, who say we overspent then, so we cannot cut taxes now. Well, I say baloney. It is time to give the American people a break. It is not our money, it is their money. I urge Members to support this bill

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. My colleagues, we are engaged in a great debate, a great debate which could only occur inside the beltway. The American people have no doubt about tax cuts. To listen to my colleagues on the other side, they simply do not get it. There is one fundamental message in America today. It is that the Federal Government is too big, it taxes too much, it spends too much, and it regulates too much, and the American people have no debate about that issue. My opponents, when they talk about deficit creation and how this tax cut will create deficits, it is shocking. They created this deficit over the past 40 years, and now they want us to continue to pull an outrageous sum of money out of the pockets of the American people to pay for the deficit they created. Amazing. It is time to give money back to the American people. We have increased the tax burden on American families twelvefold since 1950, the year I was born. Enough of that outrage. I say to my colleagues, ``They say they know better how to spend your money. I say you, as the American people, know how better to spend your money. I call on my colleagues to support this tax cut today.''

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I compliment the gentleman from Minnesota and his colleagues from New Hampshire and Florida for bringing this matter to the attention of the American people. It is indeed a serious problem. Mr. Speaker, I rise to add my voice to those who are calling for us to reexamine the Federal retirement programs. I also would like to reiterate what my colleague from Minnesota said at the outset, that this is not a blame exercise. It clearly is not the fault of Federal employees. If it is the fault of anyone, it is the fault of prior Congresses that we are in this situation. But again, this is not a fault exercise but rather an exercise in determining what America needs to do now, indeed what the Congress needs to do now about this problem. Regrettably, the story is not good. It is a difficult problem, growing much worse over time, as we will talk about. It is, sadly, a very familiar parallel with many other Federal benefit programs and entitlements programs. Now, if you look at welfare, regrettably, look at Social Security, and a wide array of entitlement programs, prior Congresses have made promises about benefits and indeed have allowed benefits to grow and to grow over time, but they have failed to be responsible in a fiscal way. We have failed to require that the other side of the equation be funded or balanced. They have failed to provide the funding necessary. Let us look, for example, at the Social Security system. As we know, as is common knowledge, the Social Security system in America will run out of funds early in the next century. Why? Because we have ever increasing benefit levels without proper funding without the revenue to pay for those. If Congress continues to ignore that problem, it will threaten our freedom, it will threaten the solvency of this Nation, and it will be irresponsible, and the Federal retirement program, which we are here talking about today, is very much like that. It is a similar pattern where the Congress has added benefits and given out payments and then not provided a funding mechanism. If we take a look, we will find that we have promised not only increased benefits, but also COLA's, or cost of living adjustments, without footing the bill. Let us stop for just a minute, however, and take a look at history. The history in this area was in some way a positive one. From about 1920 to 1969, Mr. Speaker, our Federal retirement system was properly funded. It was on a sound fiscal basis where the moneys that were being paid out were adequately being funded by a combination of employee and employer contributions, as they should have. The system in that time was structured to where the Government and the employees roughly shared an equal split 50-50. The employee, Federal employees, paid half the cost of the retirement program, and the Federal Government paid the other half. Unfortunately that remains not the story today. What we have done is that we have allowed the system with amendments enacted roughly 26 years ago, in 1969, to grow dangerously out of balance. What has occurred is, where we once had a system with 50-50 funding, employee and employer, we now have a system which is closer to 30-70. The employee contributes about 30 percent of the cost; the employer, about 70. The taxpayer of America is shouldering this dramatically increased burden. But worse then that, Mr. Speaker, we have added another problem on top of it, and that is the problem of COLA's. What we have done is we have created this concept of automatic, annual COLA's for all Federal employees, and beyond that we have established those COLA's at times at a rate even greater than the Consumer Price Index. That would be fine if we had provided a funding mechanism. Unfortunately we did not. Let us take a look, by comparison, to the private system. This Congress in past years, taking a look at America and America's businesses, has passed very strict laws to govern private pension plans. Those laws say that, if you are going to establish in your business a private pension plan, you must follow a strict formula and fund that pension plan We recently passed on the floor of this Congress a bill that my constituents thought was a great idea, and it was a bill that said all of the laws that govern America and America's businesses also ought to apply to the U.S. Congress and its Members, a great concept. If we are going to require it of the American people, we ought to require it of ourselves. Well, let me tell you, if we took America's pension law, which is known as the ERISA law, and applied that to the Federal pension plan that we are talking about here today, the taxpayers would have an immediate, unfunded obligation to come up with $1 trillion in cash today. If we applied the ERISA standards to the Federal pension plan, we would have to come up with $1 trillion cash. We cannot do that. This chart which my colleague from New Hampshire mentioned and my colleague from Minnesota discussed in a little detail I think illustrates exactly what is going on, where at one point it was a 50-50 mix of employee and employer contributions, it now has grown to what you see. If you follow the path of this chart, you will see that the darker blue color at the bottom is the employee contribution. For about the next 35 years it stands at a fairly constant level, at about $4 to $5 billion a year, but the drama of the chart, what is so shocking in the chart, is the red, and that is the proportion paid out of the Federal Treasury, and let me just highlight those numbers for a minute. It grows from $42.9 billion in the year 2000, roughly $43 billion here, to $67.9 billion by 2010--I am sorry, by 2030, and to a whopping $160 billion if we allow the system to go without correction to the year 2030. What that means is that we have got a serious taxpayer fallout. Who pays the burden? Right now the other chart shows it. Last year alone, to fund this system, the Federal Treasury had to come up with, and this Congress had to appropriate, an additional employees contribution. We cannot do that. Now let us do another comparison of private to public and get a similar idea of our pension plan at the Federal level versus what a typical one at the private sector would be. By any standard the pension plan we have established for Federal employees is a very generous one. Sadly it is one which these charts illustrate is going broke. In the private sector on average Federal pensions are smaller and not as generous. Let me take one typical example. Typically in the private sector retirement age is 62, and if some employee chooses to take early retirement, they get a reduced pension. By comparison, in the Federal system the retirement age is not 62, but is rather 55, and although that is a significantly younger age than would be comparable in a good private sector plan, they get not a reduced pension at age 55, but a full unreduced pension at age 55. But perhaps though a shocking comparison is the one between COLA's at the Federal level and COLA's within the private system. Federal pensioners, as I mentioned, have now gotten into a system where they receive, and have become dependent upon, annual, automatic COLA's, and they are keyed to the Consumer Price Index at the rate of 100 percent; that is, the CPI dictates that the COLA is 100 percent of the Consumer Price Index. By contrast, in our committee, the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, we recently had testimony from a witness talking about the Dupont Corp's COLA's and about their pension plan. In the private sector that testimony established that COLA's are given not automatically, but rather when called for. They are not given annually each year, and they are not given at a level of 100 percent of the Consumer Price Index. On average they are much closer to about 50 percent of the Consumer Price Index, and that is in generous plans that go well, and that does not even mention the plan that in many instances the private sector employers do not even provide a retirement plan. The bottom line here is we have had 26 years of out of control Federal spending. The taxpayers cannot be responsible for irresponsible planning by the U.S. Congress. We cannot continue to defer our responsibilities to future generations. What we have got here ultimately is a moral problem, a moral problem of asking our children and our grandchildren to pick up the tab for our refusal to pay for what we have promised, and that is the bottom line. No one is asking the Federal employees to share the burden of solving this entire problem. That would not be fair or responsible, but what we do need to do is move toward a more reasonable balance between the funding of this system and the benefits which are provided, and every day that Congress fails to act in that way, every day that we continue to allow this kind of irresponsibility to go on in the Federal retirement system, we are doing a disservice, a disservice not just to the taxpayers, but a disservice to the Federal employees who are going to rely and are relying on that. We cannot make changes which would dramatically affect those who are close to the age of retirement. We cannot ask them to pay for Congress' irresponsibility. But we can begin the process of bringing some sense of financial sanity or reason back to what is clearly a radically out of balance system, one which is improperly funded and would be criminal were it judged by the standards we apply to private employers. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. SHADEGG. There simply is no question but that we owe it to the Federal employees to create a fair system, and I do not think they are asking us for any more than that, but we owe it to them, and we owe it to the taxpayers, to make sure that that fair system is comparable to what would exist in the private sector and is funded. If we could pass a law like ERISA and say to a private employer it is a crime for you to underfund your program, and you cannot even establish your program without our approval and your proof that it is funded, then we owe it to the public sector employers, employees, and to the taxpayers who foot that bill to do the same and to live up to that standard. Reform is necessary; that is evident. The subsidy of $1.6 billion a month, over $18 billion a year, 10 percent of the annual deficit, is something simply we cannot ignore, we cannot shut our eyes to it, and we have to get down in the trenches and discover a fair--and negotiate, come to a reasonable solution to this problem. I thank the gentlemen and compliment them.

Mr. SHADEGG. I mean indeed that is, in fact, true, and it is not something that I think is a great attribute, but in point of fact only large employers in America provide pension plans. Many of them do not even do that. While we might all wish that the small employers of America, which make up the backbone of America, could establish this kind of plan, they simply cannot, and in those jobs, and in people working for small businesses across America, all too often are, or at least in almost all cases, those employees are asked to be responsible and to look after their own retirement. They get Social Security, but they are expected to look beyond that and to fund it themselves. We have done, and I think we should do, the responsible thing by Federal employees, to establish a system which assists them in this way, a system which is comparable, or should at least be comparable, to a private sector system, but we cannot promise them radically better than the private sector system especially if we do not fund it, and indeed we cannot fairly ask the taxpayers of America to fund a system which gives benefits way in excess of what even the best private sector employers provide.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. The people of Arizona have embraced term limits. They have done so with full knowledge. They are intelligent, and they can make their own decisions. I listened to impassioned speeches on this floor today about how the Founding Fathers would not have tolerated it. I heard quotes read from the Founding Fathers' papers. But the Founding Fathers wrote into our Constitution the ability to change the Constitution, and it is important to harken back to the fact that when the Founding Fathers wrote that document, they had no idea that the Congress would devolve into what it is today, that it would sit 50 out of 52 weeks of the year here, that it would not be a citizen legislature, made up of people who go home and work in their districts and then come back here, citizens who write laws part of the time and live under those laws the other part of the time. I am prohibited by the ethics code of this body from continuing to engage in my livelihood. I am a full-time Congressman. If we want to return to a citizen legislature, then it is time to recognize that we have got to enact term limits. The arrogance of saying those who are here are the only ones who have the wisdom to govern this Nation is dead wrong. It is time to recognize the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in allowing us to amend the Constitution and to return to a concept they embraced, which was that citizens write laws for America.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by my colleague the gentleman from Oklahoma. The Coburn amendment makes very modest changes to this legislation which will do a tremendous amount to solve the real threat to the credibility of the Food Stamp Program which is posed by fraud, waste, and abuse. Beyond that, it will save taxpayers dollars. We have to all be about that task. The electronic benefit transfer cards save money over the current paper food stamps. Distributing food stamps by this method will also enable us to eliminate a great deal of the fraud. There is indeed, today, a regrettable amount of black market in food stamps. Hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayers' money are going to be used right now not for food for the hungry but to buy drugs from black-marketed stamps and to buy beer and drugs that do not help the families who are supposed to be benefited. This program will give us an opportunity to stop that kind of fraud and abuse. But more importantly, it will let the States decide. In the debate we just heard on the Traficant amendment, we saw the mentality of Washington, DC, that for too long, we, in the Congress, know the answer. Certainly a photograph is a right step in the direction of stopping fraud. But there are other mechanisms. There are retina testers, there are thumb-print screeners. There are lots of different devices. Technology moves faster than the U.S. Congress. What the Coburn amendment does is it said, we don't have all that wisdom here. We should let the States, charged with the responsibility of administering this program, make those decisions. I urge my colleagues to support the Coburn amendment.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, today on this floor we will vote on the Private Property Protection Act. This is critically important legislation, and I urge each and every one of my colleagues to support it. The principle in America that private property cannot be taken from our citizens without paying them just compensation for that private property is at the heart of our form of government. It is, indeed, one of those values that we as American hold sacred. Yet, yesterday Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt called this legislation an attack on America's great natural resources. Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. It is a sad day in America when officials of our national government openly advocate taking property from our citizens without compensating that those who own that property. We are all agreed that we must protect our natural resources, but we must not do that by stealing property from them or by nationalizing their resources. I urge my colleagues to support the Private Property Protection Act.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong opposition to the Porter amendment and in support of the legislation as it stands before us. The Porter amendment, at least it has been acknowledged, will gut this bill, and that much and to that degree only has there been candor. This bill is about the protection of private property rights, and I am personally outraged about the tone of the debate. First, we hear that it is too costly. You tell me when in America it is too costly to live up to the U.S. Constitution and the guarantees in that Constitution? You tell me when it is too costly. It is not too costly to live up to the cost of the Endangered Species Act the Wetlands Act or the plethora of other laws we have pummeling the American people everyday. They are not too costly. And when they went through this body, we were told there would be no cost to them at all. Now we discover there are massive costs to them. But the opponents of this legislation call it too costly to pay those whose property rights they are taking. Second, we are told it is too bureaucratic. I ask again, since when is it too bureaucratic to live up to the words of the U.S. Constitution which promise to each American citizen he will be compensated when his private property is taken? But I could not stand silent any longer than when people took to the floor and cited my home State of Arizona in support of the Porter amendment and in support of defeating the legislation we have before us. It is critical that we set the Record straight. The fact is that the people of Arizona did not defeat a Private Property Canady and Tauzin bill. What in fact they defeated was a bill very much like the Porter amendment. What was put before the people of Arizona was not a private property takings compensation piece of legislation which would have said to people whose property was taken by government regulation. They did not have that before them. What they had before them in the initiative which we recently debated in Arizona was a phenomenally bureaucratic piece of legislation very much like the Porter amendment which said what we ought to do is have a lot of government bureaucrats study the issue and do an analysis. At the end of the day it provided no remedy. The people of Arizona said that is not sufficient. The people of Arizona believe in the fifth amendment. They believe it is not time for further bureaucracy, it is not time for an impact analysis, it is not time to empower bureaucrats to study the issue and, having studied the issue, no matter now valid the study, to deny people their private property rights. Rather, they want compensation. If, in fact, there are great and worthy purposes to be served by wetlands takings, by ESA takings, then so be it. But the people whose property is taken then deserve not bureaucracy, not words, but compensation for the property they have surrendered. Mr. Chairman, I urge the defeat of the Porter amendment. Mr. Hastings of Florida. I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, as I listen to the debate, I become genuinely concerned that all of us need to tone down a bit, for the reason that no one here wishes that anybody's property be taken without fair and just compensation. But I do believe that the Porter amendment would provide for that, and I do not believe that my good friend from Louisiana means to establish the rather extraordinary bureaucracy that likely will come into existence in order to be able to implement what is a well- intentioned bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, let me focus the debate on this issue. Quite frankly what we have here is a proposal to subsume the entire moratorium in one rule. The language which appears in the existing bill is carefully crafted to preserve the rights which presently exist. That language appearing in section 7 says no private right of action may be brought against any Federal agency for a violation of this act. What that means plainly and simply is: By the passage of this measure we are not creating a new and separate right of action. However, there is a second sentence also intended to preserve that balance, and that is: This prohibition shall not affect any private right of action or remedy otherwise available under any other law. Mr. Chairman, those combined two sentences are designed to preserve the status quo, and what that means is that anyone who is in a rulemaking proceeding and who has a right to bring an action under the Administrative Procedures Act is authorized to bring that act under this section. No new action is created, but no existing action is taken away. What the Kanjorski amendment does when it proposes to change the language of section 7 is to literally take away the entire meaning of the moratorium. What it would do in effect is to say that any regulatory agency which chose to ignore willy-nilly the moratorium itself and to proceed with a regulatory action, no matter what the basis for that was, could not be challenged in court for doing so. The plain and simple effect of that is to mean that no regulatory action would be stopped. We would have passed a moratorium which would say that for this period there were to be no ongoing rulemaking regulatory actions, and yet there would be absolutely no penalty whatsoever for a Federal regulatory agency that just simply chose to ignore that language altogether. I suggest to my colleagues that when they understand that language of the Kanjorski amendment and when they understand that effect, it is not surprising that the administration supports that amendment and opposes the current language in the bill, and it is not surprising that what they will have done is rendered this entire act meaningless. This Congress is not about passing a moratorium which will have no effect whatsoever, a moratorium which will say the U.S. Congress wants to suspend all rulemaking actions and all regulatory actions except those for which there are enumerated exceptions, but nonetheless imposes no penalty whatsoever for doing so. Mr. Chairman, I cannot more strongly than that urge the rejection of that amendment on the ground that it would render the entire moratorium and the very important purpose the moratorium will serve nugatory and accomplish nothing.

Mr. SHADEGG. Therefore the moratorium as written preserves their current legal rights and your amendment would take away those rights.

Mr. SHADEGG. The first sentence of the amendment simply says that this legislation does not in and of itself create a new right of action. That is because it was not the goal of those who are proponents to create a new right of action or to increase any amount of litigation. That is what the sentence says.

Mr. SHADEGG. What we are talking about really is the fact that average Americans take advantage of the APA on a regular basis, and that you are taking advantage of this moratorium to take away their right to go to court and challenge the regulatory agencies that are currently regulating and taking away their rights. The purpose of the moratorium is to preserve the status quo for the time period. The language of section 7 does that precisely by saying we are creating no new right of action, but we are preserving the existing rights of action.

Mr. SHADEGG. Absolutely. So everyone affected by a rulemaking proceeding would be left at the mercy of calling the Secretary of that particular regulatory Agency and asking him to stop. He could not go to court and pursue the current legal rights he would have but for the language. That is, you are taking away a right he would have under the APA to go to court and challenge a rulemaking proceeding by the Kanjorski amendment.

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to make a couple of points. First, by acknowledging that what you think should happen here is that we who have the authority to promulgate your rules, you are acknowledging that the Kanjorski amendment would leave no judicial remedy for an Agency which chose to ignore the moratorium. You are at least agreeing that is your proposal.

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

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be able to participate in this tribute to a great American--Ronald Reagan--and to his continuing legacy. Through my father's lifelong association with Senator Barry Goldwater, I first met then Governor Reagan in 1968 on my way to the Republican National Convention in Miami. He impressed me then and he impresses me today. There can be little doubt that it was his commitment to downsizing government, renewing federalism, restoring America's defenses and re-establishing our belief in ourselves that led to the tide that swept Republicans to victory on November 8 and put this House under the control of the Republican party for the first time in 40 years. As we debate the Contract with America, whose central features are intended to bring fiscal discipline to Congress and the country, I am absolutely confident that the Reagan record will stand the test of time. Under the policies of Ronald Reagan, America experienced the longest period of peacetime expansion in our history. This expansion created 19 million new jobs ad more than doubled the U.S. economy. Regardless of all attempts to rewrite the Reagan legacy, the central fact is that Ronald Reagan's policies benefited more people at every economic level than ever before. Had Congress had the discipline to rein in domestic spending during the Reagan years, not only would we have defeated the Evil Empire, but we also would have avoided the serious deficits and mounting debt which now threaten our security. Thanks to Ronald Reagan more of the world is free today than ever before and as a result, people who were once prisoners of tyranny and our enemies are now our trading partners. It was his vision for the Strategic Defense Initiative that is being pursued today to protect our troops on the battlefield; and it was his commitment to peace through strength that brought the cold war to an end. Ronald Reagan reminded us daily and by example what it means to be an American. He is still reminding us today. It is for all of these reasons and for all of the others that will be discussed in this tribute that the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based public policy institute, will present to him their prestigious Goldwater Award. The award is presented to an individual whose efforts have significantly promoted the principles that Senator Goldwater championed through out his career: Limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility. This year the award will be presented on April 21 and will be accepted by Former First celebration of the movement for limited government. Barry Goldwater, the man largely responsible for launching the movement, will honor President Reagan, who brought the movement to victory. And, the keynote address will be given by our Speaker, Newt Gingrich, the man whose task it is now to carry this movement into the future.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman and commend him for his leadership in this fight. I rise tonight simply to add my voice to those voices that have spoken out. As I sat back and listened, all too often on this floor we talk in kind of government-speak. We talk about the Barton amendment or the tax limitation amendment. In Arizona when we carried this debate forward, we called it the supermajority amendment. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people back home who perhaps do not understand those terms. But it is really straightforward, and it is important that people understand. Paul Harvey has said, and I admire him greatly, that self-government without self-discipline does not work. Tomorrow there will be a historic vote on the floor of this House. It is a vote which is focused around that notion. That is, that to preserve self-government, we must institute self-discipline. And what is the form of that self- discipline? It is a change to the United States Constitution. But it is a change that many people in this body I do not believe understand yet and that many people at home may not yet understand. Oh, they understand that we will vote tomorrow on a balanced budget amendment, and they understand that the Federal Government must balance its budget because they know they have to balance their own budget. And they are very much aware that we are awash in Washington in a sea of red ink that is literally drowning the Nation and threatening our survival. But this debate tomorrow goes one step beyond that. We cannot simply agree to balance the budget. We must recognize that that alone is not at the root of America's problem. The root of America's problem is that government taxes too much and it spends too much. I was born in 1949. One year later, the average American family with children paid $1 out of $25 in federal taxes. In 1993, just a short year ago, it was $1 out of every $4 in taxes. In 1950, it was $1 out of $25. Today it essentially is something in excess of $1 out of every $4. We cannot continue on that path. our small businesses. It is crushing our economies. How many households are required, indeed compelled, to have both spouses work just to have one pay the tax burden for that family? And mind you, and I might remind those on this floor that that $1 out of $25 and the $1 out of $4 is just Federal taxes. It does not even begin to contemplate the addition of State and local taxes. What have we gotten for this massive increase in taxes? We have gotten a massive Federal Government which fundamentally fails to do its burden. Is the crime rate in America lower in 1993 than it was in 1950? Did we buy safer streets with that massive increase in taxes? We did not. Are welfare recipients in our cities better off? Has the level of poverty in America fallen? It has not. We have failed. Those who have argued that each problem that comes along simply needs a few more dollars have been proven flat wrong. Government is not the answer. Higher taxes are not the answer. How then do we stop those taxes? The answer is what Paul Harvey said. It is self-discipline. We need to add to the American Constitution something that is necessary in order to restrict the ability of the people who sit on this floor to continue to tax ``you'' to pay for what ``he'' needs, and we need to do that in the form of what has been called in this discussion tonight the Barton amendment, or the supermajority amendment, or the tax limitation amendment. It is this simple. It says that it has been too easy in America to raise taxes, so we are going to raise the threshold, not from 50 percent, not one-half of the Members of this body plus one, but a slight raise, indeed for me not enough, to a 60 percent requirement to try to institute some discipline. Those who have gone before me tonight have pointed out that Congress time and again has said that it was going to cut taxes, has said that it was going to cut spending, and it has failed over and over and over again. Without external discipline, it will fail again. If we enact a balanced budget amendment alone, we may indeed balance our budget, but we will do it at the expense of raising taxes. The message sent by the people of America on November 8 was clear. It was that we must balance the Federal budget not by tax increases, not by increasing the burden on the backs of the American family who are already overtaxed, but by cutting spending. And the most important step we can take in that direction is to pass a balanced budget amendment with a restriction that says, ``You cannot raise taxes again, Federal Government, unless you get 60 percent of the Members of Congress to agree.'' We need to put that in the Constitution so it is sacrosanct. Let me briefly conclude by the history in Arizona. Two years ago in Arizona, we fought this battle and we won. We won with citizen support. We took an initiative to the streets. We said to the spenders at the Arizona State capitol, no more. The Arizona constitution had in it from statehood a balanced budget requirement. But the spenders, those who believe that they can solve every problem facing society just by raising taxes and creating a government program, got carried away and year after year after year, they raised our taxes and increased government spending. Do you know what they did? They damaged the Arizona economy. It plummeted from one of the best climates in the Nation, with a healthy economy and happy families and a prosperous place to come to an economy where we tax more than the State of Massachusetts and where it was a damaged economy. So, we said no. We went to the streets with an initiative called ``It's Time'' initiative, and by a vote of over 70 percent we amended the Arizona constitution to say that there would be no future net increases in Arizona's taxes without a two-thirds majority of the members of the legislature. We must do that here. We must do it now. I implore those citizens listening tonight to join us in this fight. It is not an initiative, but your voice heard by your Member of Congress tonight or tomorrow that can make the critical difference in this race.

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Then let me honor that tradition and ask the question. I understood from the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Weller] that they they do not have what Arizona now has, which is a supermajority requirement for future tax increases.

Mr. SHADEGG. I would like to ask one quick question. I noted that like Arizona----

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I will be brief. You know, as I listened to the discussion tonight, it occurred to me it might be helpful if there was a practical explanation of at least how one Member of this body thinks this provision will work day to day. Let me tie into that how we got into the mess we are in now. Mr. Speaker I am on this floor for the first time. I am a freshman Member of this Congress. I have not served in any public office before. But I did serve a period of 7 years in the Arizona attorney general's office. Then I was hired to advise the Arizona State Legislature. I sat in on literally hundreds of meetings in those capacities where a member of the Arizona legislature would be present and a contituent or a group of constituents would come forward and they were well- intended, serious, concerned citizens. And they would come forward and explain to the members of the Arizona legislature their dire need, this severe problem this, unmet problem in society which government could solve. In Arizona it was easy for the citizens to get to their legislature and to go and implore their members of the legislature to help solve this problem with one little program. That same scene happens here in Washington thousands of times every day. It happens in your office, I suspect, and in my office and the office of every Member who votes on the floor of this Congress. Constituents come in, lobbying groups come in, organizing groups come in and say, ``We have a small problem, but it is serious and it needs your help. We need just a little bit of money. It is not a lot of money, but a little bit to solve this very serious problem,'' sometimes it affects children, sometimes we say it is going to solve a problem that will pollute our society or pollute our Earth. Whatever the reason is, it is always compelling, whoever the advocate is, he is always sincere and well-intended. But there is something missing in that conversation. What is missing is the person of the people who have to pick up the tab. They are not sitting there. I often thought as I sat in on those conversations in the members' offices in the Arizona legislature, why not have one more Chair sitting in that discussion, empty, that says, ``The Arizona taxpayer''? We ought to have somebody. We are all talking about lobbyists. The President devoted a great deal of time last night to the pressure of lobbyists. It occurs to me that the people do not have a lobbyist who sits in on that conversation. So the pressure is there and no one is sitting in that empty chair that I envisioned, saying, ``Wait a minute. Who is going to pay for this?'' Well, a supermajority requirement for future tax increases raising the hurdle so that it is not just 50 percent but rather 60 percent would be a structural change which would put essentially that Chair in the room and say, ``It may be a good idea, but somebody has got to pay for it, and you have to go get the assent of just a few more people to do that.'' It is the kind of discipline we desperately need in this body. I thank the gentleman. I ask if it is possible to join in this conversation briefly with the gentleman from Illinois, my colleague.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, the language of the draft which I hope will appear before us states a simple principle, and that is, first, we must balance the Federal budget and, second, future tax increases will require a super majority. It is built around the premise that I think Paul Harvey best elocutes, and that is simply that self-government without self-discipline won't work. The sad truth is that what we are doing now is we are voting ourselves benefits, but passing the bill on to our children, our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren. However, more than that, because we are creating that debt, we are also creating an interest burden, which means we have fewer and fewer dollars to pay for today's services because we are paying the interest on the debt we are creating, because we simply refuse the discipline to say no to extra spending. The super majority or three-fifths requirement would institutionalize that discipline which is so critically needed, so we do not continue the policies of tax and spend and tax and spend and tax and spend, to the point where we are today creating an underground economy where people no longer are willing to pay the onerous tax burden we are imposing on them because they simply understand they are not getting their dollar's worth.

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by commending the gentleman from Florida for bringing this issue forward. Indeed, on November 8, the American people sent the first shot, I believe, of a new revolution, a revolution not to change America but to restore America, a revolution which will remind us and our children and our grandparents that America was built around the premises outlined in the Constitution, which the gentleman from Florida raised at the outset of this hour. Those premises were that people relied upon themselves, could govern themselves best, that a central governmental authority like we had escaped in England was not the best way for men and women to govern themselves. But, rather, that we should have that government which governs least and that men and women of this country for the first time would be free to determine their own future, to succeed or to fail on their own ingenuity, their own energy, their own effort and their own drive and that there would be no guarantee from government other than that of equal opportunity. We have drifted so far from that that it is difficult to even recognize the Government that we once began. The principles which were at the heart of that Government have become ignored regrettably here in this Capital City, and it is time that we returned to them. You began this debate by reminding us of the words of the 10th amendment. I think it is worthy to reharken to those words on many occasions. That amendment of the Constitution says that only those powers delegated specifically to the Federal Government are for use and exercise by the Federal Government and that all other powers are reserved to the States and to the people respectively. I submit it is time to begin to review not just some pieces of legislation that pass through this distinguished body, but every piece of legislation which passes through this distinguished body, on that standard. In fact, is it within the power of the Federal Government to legislate in the area, or is it, rather, reserved to the States or to the people? When I ran for this office, I did so on a premise that it simply was not true that the people who occupy this hall and the one across the way, and the army of bureaucrats that they control, know better how to run the lives and the businesses of the citizens of the State of Arizona than those people in my district and in the State of Arizona, and, indeed, across America. I simply reject the premise that Washington, DC, is the font of all wisdom, and that we can manage every business and run every life better from the floor of this House than those individuals can do for themselves. The simple truth is, that stands the premise of this country on its head. I trust the people of Arizona, the people of Florida, and the people of America to determine their own fate. Yes, we need laws. We need to deal with those issues which cannot be dealt with by the States or by individuals, but we have gone so far beyond that that it is hardly recognizable. Let me talk, briefly, about an issue that has been touched upon here, and that is the issue of the balanced budget amendment, Mr. Speaker. It is absolutely essential and an essential element of the Contract with America that we pass a balanced budget amendment. That is critical because we have discovered what Paul Harvey has warned us, and that is that self-government without self-discipline doesn't work. Regrettably, what has happened is that we have come to that point in America where at least all too often we have determined that we can vote ourselves benefits out of this body without ever having to pay for them. Like you, I listened to the gentleman before this hour started talk about the dire consequences which would result if we simply enacted a provision requiring a balanced budget: that children would go without education in his particular school district, that schools would not have the resources they need; that the cities and towns in his particular district would not have the funds necessary. That simply cannot be true, Mr. Speaker, because if that is true, then he is asking the people of some other part of America to subsidize the schools and the cities and the towns and the counties in his district. The truth is there is no free lunch in America. If in fact there is a subsidy going to the schools or the towns and cities and counties in his district, that means that they would not have sufficient resources to run those schools, those cities, or those towns without getting money from Washington, DC. Then, in fact, he is asking America to subsidize his community. That is dead wrong. The Federal Government cannot provide resources to one district that it does not first take from another. So the balanced budget itself is absolutely critical, and it is no more complicated than the principle you laid out at the outset, which deserves repeating, and that is that the American people can have and should only have the amount of government that they are willing to pay for. However, there is a critical decision which will be made on the floor of this House within the next 10 days. That is will we pass a simple balanced budget amendment or will we pass an amendment with teeth. I have been talking with the members of our class, and they are uniform in their belief that a simple balanced budget amendment is not sufficient; that indeed, it does not exact the degree of discipline which is needed in today's world, and that what we need, rather, is a super majority requirement to raise taxes. Why is that? It is true because Government has discovered that we have anesthetized the taxpayer. We can take money out of their pocket through withholding and they never know it is there. So every time someone in this body dreams up a new idea for a new Government program or to solve somebody's problem, all we have to do is raise taxes just a little bit to pay for that good idea. The burden has become excessive. It simply is not true that Government taxes too little. It is true that Government spends too much. Let me relate a personal experience that I have. I have never served in a legislative body before having the privilege of joining this one, but I did have the privilege of serving as a part of a group of people who advised the Arizona legislature. I sat in on countless meetings where citizens with good intentions came to a member of the Arizona legislature and said, ``Here is a serious problem. We need you to solve it.'' They played upon the emotions and the sympathies of those elected representatives, and of course their instinct was, ``yes, we should solve the problem.'' However, there was something missing in that dynamic. What was missing in that dynamic is that no one was there to represent the taxpayers who were to be asked to pay for that purportedly essential or necessary service. It is time for structural reform as a part of this revolution. It is time that we placed limits on the ability of Government to casually dip into the pockets of an already overtaxed citizenry. The way to do that is with a super majority requirement. That is, if the citizens and taxpayers of America cannot be participants in that conversation where we are being asked to extend one more Government benefit, then make the structure of Government so that it is harder to raise taxes. Put them there by virtue of a structural change which would say ``We cannot raise taxes upon a simple majority. We must do it upon a super majority.'' On this floor within the next 10 days we will have an opportunity to vote for a requirement that says ``No future tax increase can be enacted without a 60 percent majority.'' I urge the people of America to get on their fax machines and their phones and to use their letters and any other communication device they have, buttonhole their Member of this Congress in the next 10 days, [[Page H383]] and tell them that they are not undertaxed but they are overtaxed; that we need a real reform, and that what we do not want is a balanced budget amendment which will lead to a balancing of the budget by an increase in taxes, but that what we need essentially in America is a balanced budget amendment which will lead to a balanced budget balanced on the basis of spending reductions. This is a critical vote. It will occur within the next 10 days. I urge the American people, you are participants in this revolution.