Steve Stockman

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am deeply touched by how after a year we still see the grassroots and I want to thank everybody who went out today. I have to tell you, I went out today and voted this morning at a little church near our home. I did start out at night, looking up, in Fort Worth at the clock, it also had the temperature, it never dropped below 80 degrees in 1980, and I was sleeping on the concrete slab and had a lot of introspect and thought, a lot of different things. I had to say, how did I get here and were do I want to go? But I realized one thing, that I could have easily taken food stamps. I could have easily gotten in welfare and got into the system. But that is not the road I chose. The reason I did not choose that road is because that is a dead-end road. What Republicans are doing is opening up the road. We are not giving them the fish. We are teaching them to fish. We do not count how many people are on welfare. We count how many got off welfare and are productive members of society. That is what this revolution is about. I think tonight as the vote count is coming in, the revolution will continue. I ask, Mr. Speaker, that this freshman class commit to, no matter what the media up here says, that we commit to the revolution of lower taxes and lower and less government.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, in ``Alice in Wonderland'' they say it is curiouser and curiouser. Our friends on the other side are saying $3.5 trillion is a gnat. Yes, I confess, I am a conservative. I think $3 trillion is a lot of money. Somehow, I think stealing it from working people is wrong. That is what it is. They stole everything out of the Social Security, and now they are wanting to steal it out of another big pie. They see this $3.5 trillion. We have a social agenda, and we are going to use this money for our purposes. That is exactly what it is; it is stealing people's money. Nothing, nothing else matters in this Congress but to steal money. This is people's pension money. Keep your hands off of people's retirement, keep your hands off the pension.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, speaker after speaker will get up here and say, ``I remember as a child, I remember as a child the great things that astronauts used to do.'' But do you know what they are saying? ``We want to kill the dream for the next generation so they cannot stand up here a generation from now and say, `I remember space station, I remember how it thrilled me.' '' They want to rob that. We are going to rob the next generation of that. They say, ``Well, what is it going to produce?'' I have never heard a scientist predict what he is going to find in space. I never knew so many scientists were in Congress. My wife [[Page H 7929]] worked on it, and time after time again they would say, ``Redesign it.'' I ask: How many rocket scientists do we have here? I have not heard them speak. I have not heard a thing. You know, when we were discussing Alaska, it was an icebox, and on this very floor they denigrated it. Why get Alaska? There is nothing in Alaska. Where are those voices today? They are gone. Where are the voices for science? The doctors, the naysayers? They are all out here robbing our children of the future. ``No, we cannot have a space station. No, we cannot have a future.'' It is because we do not have a vision in this country anymore that we are willing to kill the space station. We cannot allow that to happen. Queen Isabella, she had lots of problems. I am sure she had potholes and social problems, but she went forth, spent the money, and it was expensive and found this country. That was probably a waste, in many of my colleagues' eyes. I think it is wrong and shortsighted what we are doing here today, or trying to do, and this annual amendment is shortsighted.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time to speak today on space station. My friend from New Jersey said we get wobbly and tear up when we talk about the space station. That is because I think of the starving children around the world who are hungry. We say, how can we feed these kids? Well, we are going to feed them one time by transferring the money. Ladies and gentlemen, the answers to the problems may be by going to space. When we go to space, we have a totally new environment in which we can solve many problems. We are denying our scientists that access to that research if we vote to cut the space station. It is wrong. It is misguided, and it is shortsighted. I am embarrassed to say we cannot even cut the National Endowment for the Arts 10 percent, but we are willing to cut our Nation's future. Queen Isabella had problems. She had potholes. She had problems. She still sought out new worlds. We will always have problems, but we will always not have the space station.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that the gentlewoman was making a point. She outlined some serious allegations and some serious charges. In 1930 we heard serious charges before, and we said we are not sure, and we did nothing. Now, 50 years later, we hear the same allegations, and, again, America is doing nothing. There is something wrong. What lessons have we learned from history? None, apparently. We should not trade with a barbarous nation such as China, and we should vote to cut their MFN. This is more than just a symbol. We cannot even purchase anything without the label ``China'' on it. I was offended July 4 when I took out of my pocket an American flag, and on it it said ``Made in China.'' That is an outrage. We need to stop trading with these guys. It is wrong, and America needs to stand up and say so.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I think what we have done here is we have abdicated, we have abdicated our responsibility to the Constitution, and we should be ashamed in this body. We sit here and duck our responsibility. That is what we did here. We were given the job of controlling the money. That is where this comes from, from this body. But when it came time for our job to be voted upon, we slipped out and slithered out and allowed the administration to do it for us. That is wrong. Currently the banks in Mexico are under a great deal of financial strain, and they are predicting they may collapse, and the reason they are collapsing is because of the strings that were attached to this bailout. Let me repeat that. The banks are on the verge of collapsing in Mexico. They are charging these little campesino bankers, these little campesino people, 90 percent interest. That is not compassion. I do not think that is compassion. I do not think anybody in this body would consider that compassion. They cannot make those interest-rate payments because we up in this country are telling them, dictating to them, what banking rates they should be charged. So they cannot fulfill their obligations. Mr. Chairman, when they cannot fulfill their obligations, they cannot pay the banks, and when they cannot pay the banks, the banks do not collect the money, the banks will fall. Mr. Chairman, there is no financial expert that says the Mexican banks are in better status today than they were before the bailout. Those are facts that cannot be denied. All we have done is made a situation which was OK worse. We are fooling ourselves. We are just rolling this money over, and in a short time we will be at this same situation. Mark my words, we will be doing it again. I am for loan guarantees. I would have voted for loan guarantees for Israel, but we never had an opportunity to vote on that, and I am glad that the gentleman from Vermont has stuck up for the American taxpayer and has stuck up for the campesino in Mexico, and to sit here and say it is a racist thing or anything else is an outright lie. If anything, it is more compassion and more feeling. Mr. Chairman, those people have been under the boot of a very repressive government, and it is wrong for us to sit here in silence and duck our abilities. We were elected here to do something, and I think the gentleman from Vermont, I owe him a great deal. I say to the gentleman, ``You are wonderful, and I think that we need to support this amendment, and it is wrong for us to duck our responsibility, and thank you for bringing it to the floor so we can show exactly where we stand.''

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, it is interesting that the other side, when I was running against the former chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, he stated, and I quote, ``Burning to death was too good for them. I prefer a slower method.'' What do we have? Is there a threshold of conscience on the other side that we have found out now that there is racism rampant in the department? Where do we rise and say that this is wrong? Do we stay silent? Now it is coming out on ``Nightline'' and ``20/20,'' other news shows, other credible mainstream shows, saying ``What is going on? There is something wrong,''and they do not want to talk about it. Mr. Chairman, I think the other side should be ashamed. We need to talk about this and this motion to rise is a fraud and an unrealistic motion. We need to vote this motion down, but I ask the other side: At what point do you say we have to to stand up and say what is going on is wrong? I do not criticize the gentlemen that are in the front-lines. One of the boys that passed away, was shot at Waco, was a camp counselor just near my home; one mile. He died. But I think in his memory we need to preserve freedom. And freedom is what this country is about and we are being denied the access to discuss this issue by this cheap motion.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. STOCKMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Speaker, I just want to tell the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] how grateful we are to her to get this ball rolling. I think for many Members of Congress it has been a real frustration, and the gentlewoman has taken the lead in that effort.

Mr. STOCKMAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Speaker, I am very happy that this bill is here today, but I think it was so eloquently stated that this is only the first base. This Congress is responsible to the American people, and we have been left out of the process. When people call us and tell us how they feel and we turn our backs, they know the institution is broken. Yet time and time again we are called upon to do the right thing, and we run and hide. We have been working very hard to get this vote, an up or down vote, to cut off funding, and yet they are not allowing us to vote. That is wrong. We need to do the right thing here and the right thing for America and allow us to speak the will of the people. I think the will of the people will say no money for a country in which its president's brother was willing to participate in an assassination. The government is corrupt, the system is corrupt, and we do not need to subsidize it with American dollars.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House today a little bit surprised to see that we are giving away billions of dollars to a country in which the president has been implicated in the murder of another presidential candidate. We are talking about real tax dollars and real money, and I am proud to say that I am going to reach across the aisle and support the Kaptur amendment today to ask some serious questions from our President. We are planning to give away $53 billion without any oversight from Congress. It is the people's money and the people need to speak and say where we stand. I stand here saying that Congress needs to know what Clinton is doing with the money from an organization which has no oversight by Congress. I plan to support the Kaptur amendment.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I want to stand in support of this bill and this amendment.

Mr. STOCKMAN

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Speaker, it is my distinct honor to speak in strong support of the reforms in title II. I was elected to Congress as a servant of the people; to limit the size and scope of the Federal Government and to clean up the mess here in Washington. This title has 23 provisions and I will focus on just a few. In the Contract With America we committed to slash the number of committees and we have kept our word. This is revolutionary legislation. Today, we will eliminate three committees (Post Office, Merchant Marine, and District of Columbia). No full standing House committees has been eliminated since 1947. In addition, 25 subcommittees will also be eliminated. The savings will be approximately $35 million. House committees, like Federal programs, ought not live forever. Our first order of business is to put the People's House in order. We signed a contract with the American people to look at every Federal action by the House will send a strong and clear message to the American people that we are serious about our purpose. This bill will ensure that what is said on the floor and in committee will be recorded verbatim for the American people to read. Staff members will no longer work into the middle of the night to conceal what was actually said in the People's House. This bill will end pork barrel projects on emergency spending bills. This change will make spending cuts easier. National Asparagus Day. Banning this practice will save at least $300,000 according to the Congressional Research Service and improve the operation of Congress by eliminating the 25 percent of floor time consumed by commemoratives. Last, and perhaps most importantly, this bill will require the Pledge of Allegiance as the third order of business each day. In 1988, the Democrats defeated an attempt to require the Pledge on the House floor. The Pledge ought not to be optional in the People's House and now it is not. I am proud of our great Nation and believe our best days are yet to come. We will set an example by beginning our day pledging allegiance to this country which has been so richly blessed. Mr. Speaker, thank you again for this historic opportunity to lead the debate on this bill. It is a good first step and sets an example that we are able to get our affairs in order. Let us move boldly ahead to return Congress and this Nation to the people. I urge adoption.