Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman is saying, it is not what passed Congress; this is the administration's proposal coming to Congress that is actually to reduce interdiction and eradication efforts.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it is ironic. Sometimes here we look more organized than we are. I was going to speak on the drug issue. I did not know the President was going to be sending over right before me his initiatives and comments. This is a particularly critical time in Congress as we look at decertification questions and the cooperation of foreign countries in the drug issue. We are going to face many issues in this Congress that are very important, the education issue; rebuilding our national defenses, particularly in missile defense; trying to preserve and save Social Security; trying to make sure taxpayers can keep their own money; trying to work with the health care problems we have in this Nation. But drug abuse remains on the street, in our homes and in our neighborhoods, one of the most critical problems we have. We have heard much over the last months about the moral crisis that our country is facing. And we do, indeed, have a tremendous moral crisis from top to bottom of our society. There is only so much we can do here in Washington related to that. One, we should lead by example. Two, we should try to strengthen those institutions, whether it is in the Tax Code or in different programs, that strengthen families and promote strong family values and moral virtues in our society. But in one area, in drugs in particular, the government has a direct compelling and active interest. And it is a manifestation of the breakdowns we have in our society that we see rising drug abuse among junior high kids and in high schools in particular, that we see deaths in the district of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) and throughout Dallas and in the district of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) in Orlando and in the district of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), where heroin deaths have overtaken the communities to the point of having 25 deaths or more in each of those communities from heroin in a short period of time. Mr. Speaker, we see crack on the streets of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and small towns in Indiana and throughout our country. We see people sniffing coke, LSD, methamphetamines. We are getting overrun in this country with that. We need and will continue to work with a multitude of strategies to address this issue. We need drug prevention interdiction, drug prevention and eradication, drug prevention and treatment, drug prevention and programs in our schools, and drug prevention on our streets to help our police force. All of that is really preventing the drugs from getting there. The gentleman from Florida (Chairman Mica), of the Subcommittee on Drug Policy of the Committee on Government Reform, led a CODEL, a Congressional delegation, of which I was a part, to the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia where most cocaine and much of our heroin is coming from, as well as Central America where we spent 3 days, among other places, with the leaders in Mexico. We clearly have some major problems, but what we know is this: That in 1992 to 1994, when we backed up in interdiction efforts, and really into 1995, when we backed up in our interdiction and eradication efforts, this country was flooded with low-price cocaine, new sources for heroin, and methamphetamines in quantities that drove the price down in the streets of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, northeast Indiana, and throughout this country. We saw the purity go up, and the marijuana that is coming in is nothing like the marijuana in the late 1960s and 1970s that was glamorized in a lot of 1960s type shows. This is potent stuff on our streets that our kids are getting. Because when they have the huge quantities of it and it is cheap in the schools and the streets, there is no amount of DARE programs or treatment programs or putting policemen on the street that can stop this. Mr. Speaker, we know where it comes from. Some of these countries have been very aggressive for a number of years in eradicating the coca leaves and particularly the production in the cocaine. In Peru and Bolivia, we have seen a turnaround. We have seen their percentages drop. In Colombia they are at war, and we need to help the Nation of Colombia fight this so that we do not have troops down there. We also have our number one oil supplier on their border, Venezuela, and the Panama Canal on the other border. That is where we have a compelling national interest. But we have some real problems in Mexico. The Mexican leaders, their government seem very committed to trying to change this problem. But we have deep problems. Everybody says we should forget the past, but it is difficult to forget the past right now when our information has been compromised and when we have had so much corruption. We are hopeful, and one of the debates we are going to hear in Congress is how we should deal with this decertification question, because it gets inevitably wrapped up in NAFTA, trade questions, and the fact that an important and critical part of our long-term interests will be to work with Mexico. But the question is, are we going to have any accountability standards? Since most of the drugs coming into my hometown and the rest of this country are pouring across the border from Mexico right now, we need to see results and not just rhetoric. Over the next few days and weeks, we are going to hear a number of Members coming down here talking about this issue and about the drug issue as a whole as we develop packages, as we try to work with the administration and drug czar, General McCaffrey, to try to solve this problem. I am looking forward to seeing if we continue to make progress.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. For those of us who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the conservative movement, Ronald Reagan was our hero along with Barry Goldwater and William Buckley and a few others, and I actually was one of these conservative right wingers who came to Congress who was inspired originally by Ronald Reagan's speech for Barry Goldwater when I was merely 14 years old and formed one of the earliest high school YAF chapters and Americans for Freedom chapters the country, and, as you look at what we are about to face, this is what Ronald Reagan faced for 8 years. I am not going to stand up here and say that I like this budget agreement any more than Ronald Reagan, as President, liked the budget agreements he was given in 8 years in Congress. Yet he signed those budget agreements. The first year he got tax cuts, the other years he did not even get tax cuts. He got increased defense spending because he knew Congress wanted to spend more, and did we. One of the questions conservatives have to ask themselves as they vote on this budget is why are they so much better than Ronald Reagan, who they admire, if they vote ``no'' on this budget? Compromise is an unfortunate part of the political process. There are going to be many things in this bill that I am appalled by. I cannot believe that Members of Congress continue to take advantage of the legislative process when we are all under tremendous pressure to get special things for their friends and their district that might not be able to withstand scrutiny. I am very disappointed we do not have tax cuts in this bill. I cannot believe that we cannot even get an effective limitation on taxpayers' dollars being used to fund referendums overseas to overturn laws that are protecting innocent children from being aborted. American tax dollars are being used to fund pro-abortion referendums around this world. We have it tied to funding for the U.N. and for State Department reauthorization, but that to me seems like a no-brainer. But as long as we have the President we currently have in the White House, that becomes a very difficult victory. So I am not going to stand up here and say I like everything in this bill, but there are some things that in fact are important changes, and that is the art of compromise, and the President did give some ground, the Democrats in the House and Senate gave some ground, and we had to give some ground. In the education area in fact we made a lot of progress. The President will stand up and say he got 100,000 teachers or 40,000 teachers or whatever, but the fact is it moved back to the state level. We gave flexibility, and as the chairman of the Education Committee, Mr. Goodling, keeps pointing out, that in fact is what we were driving towards. We also have a ban on national testing so kids around this country are not slammed in under one major test. We have level funding on the National Endowment for the Arts, number of other things they worked with in the Education Committee. In addition to that, there are many of us who are very concerned that we have not developed an adequate missile defense in this country, and since we knew we were going to spend more on domestic issues, we wanted to make sure that the preparedness and the readiness of our Armed Forces, that the development of our missile defense systems, were going to be funded as well as the social spending. I am very concerned in this country about the expansion of pornography along with the expansion of Internet. We all know that whenever we have an expansion of technology, whether it be television, or whether it be computers, that that opens up things to our children and our families that we hoped would be, they could be protected from. Yet these advantages of technology have been wonderful for our country, but we need to the best we can, limit the pornography and the perversion from getting into our homes and making sure that minors do not have access to that. That was one of the last points negotiated in this bill. It is something that Dr. James Dobson in Focus on the Family has battled for for a decade, working on the Pornography Commission. We finally have a victory in the area of Internet porn. We have a number of extensions on tax extenders for self-employed businesses and for farmers that were very critical to many small businesses in my district and throughout the country. We have a whole range of what would be termed more minor issues relating to gun registries, relating to language on certain bills where in fact conservatives won, and that is how this process works. One last comment: Anybody who says that they are going to put aside money for Social Security, this is one more proof the only thing that government can do is either spend it or giver it back to you. We have once again seen the fraud of using senior citizens as a shield to cover real motives. In fact, we are spending 19 to 20 billion extra dollars, much of that will be in the baseline and be spent for future years, too. We have basically spent a big chunk, if not the majority, of the so-called surplus, and it did not go to seniors. That started when the President came up here with the State of the Union address, said I want everything put to Social Security, and then detailed for 20 pages new programs to spend that. Today we are seeing that come through. I am disappointed in that, but in the end this is a bill worth moving.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 598. This is an issue we have struggled with for a while now and I am pleased to see increasing support here in the House. The US steel industry, a highly competitive world-class producer, is being inundated by unfairly traded imports. In one year, from June 1997 to June 1998, steel imports from Japan grew by 113.7%, from Korea, 89.5%, and from Russian, 50.6%. This is not because they are producing better steel, and they certainly aren't more efficient. Since restructuring in the mid-80's the US steel industry is the world leader in quality, efficiency and productivity. On an even playing field, US steel producers are second to none. Dumping of steel is occurring because many countries in economic crisis have adopted policies of exporting their way out of their mess. They will do this at any cost, including selling prices that don't remotely cover their costs of production. Foreign steel is being sold in the US at far below market value. Import prices, traditionally $20-$30 per ton less than domestic prices, are now $80-$100 per ton less than domestic prices--according to David Higbee, President of Sawhill Tubular Division of Armco, Inc. The combination of massive tonnages of steel arriving at US ports and the aggressively low prices at which they are being sold has caused intense price distortion through our industry, even during a period of strong domestic demand for steel products. In the face of deterioriating prices, US producers have been forced to cut production, slash expenditures, and lay off employees. This is not trade based on comparative advantage. It's time we require those foreign countries that we assist to stop unfairly propping up their dying steel industries at the expense of our American companies. I believe the onus should be put on foreign companies and governments to prove that they are not dumping steel below cost. They simply need to be held accountable for selling one penny below their manufacturing cost. A slap on the wrist with a countervailing duty just isn't enough. We are not talking about protecting American industry here. Rather, it's about achieving equity. A foreign company selling steel under market value is a question of competitiveness. A foreign company selling steel under cost is a question of fairness. I would also like to submit for the Record the remarks of Keith Busse, CEO of Steel Dynamics International, during a hearing of the steel caucus last month. It is time to send a message to those countries that knowingly dump with intent to cause severe injury to our steel industry. We can no longer in good faith continue to help those that continuously injure us. Statement of Keith Busse, President and CEO, Steel Dynamics, Inc., Member, Board of Directors, Steel Manufacturers Association Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Steel Caucus, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today along with other representatives of the US steel industry. I am Keith Busse, President & CEO of Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI), in Butler, Indiana. SDI is a minimill producing carbon steels utilizing the electric arc furnace production process and thin slab casting to make hot rolled, cold rolled, and galvanized sheet steels. The company, which is one of the nations newest and most efficient steel producers, was established in 1994. We cast our first heat of steel in 1996 and became profitable in only 6 months. Since 1994, SDI has invested over $600 million in equipment, implementing the most advanced technology. This year, we completed the installation of an additional thin slab caster and a new state-of-the-art cold rolling mill. Later this year, SDI will commission a revolutionary new technology to manufacture virgin iron units for consumption in electric arc furnaces at a cost of $90 million. We also anticipate starting construction late this year of a $350 million structural mill, also in Indiana. SDI is one of the most cost efficient steel producers in the world. We provide 560 high-paying manufacturing jobs at our new mill in Indiana, and hundreds more in related industries. Accordingly, we support free trade flows based on comparative advantage. I am commenting today on behalf of my company and also for the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA), the primary trade association of steel minimills, which account for almost half of the steel produced in the US today. The SMA consists of 61 member companies, geographically dispersed across North America, with representation in 88 Congressional districts and 34 states. The U.S. Steel Industry The steel industry has undergone a remarkable transformation, beginning in the mid-1980s and continuing today as evidenced by SDI's success. Steel's revival can be attributed in large part to the minimills--efficient, low- cost producers that have grown rapidly during a time when many other steel companies in the US contracted or shut down. With few exceptions, the minimills have seldom relied solely on US antidumping and countervailing duty laws to challenge unfairly traded imports. Competition is so strong in our end of the business that we believe in exhausting all competitive means available to improve our efficiency, in order to meet importers' prices, rather than just reacting with trade law cases. In the past, we have been successful in meeting or beating our foreign competitors' prices. Events of the past few months, however, have reached crisis proportions, with even the most competitive US steel producers responding to import prices that reflect a desire of certain foreign producers to earn dollars at any price--at selling prices that don't remotely cover their costs of production. Even Nucor, the largest minimill and now the second largest steel company in the US, a company who has long supported a free trade stance, has recently written to members of the Administration complaining about the surge of unfairly traded imports at insane dumped prices. In response to the import surge, Nucor has recently announced two price reductions on hot rolled sheets, steels' most common product, a $50-$60 per ton (16-20%). the problem The US steel industry, a highly competitive world-class producer, is being inundated by unfairly traded imports. In one year, from June 1997 to June 1998, steel imports from Japan grew by 113.7%, from Korea, 89.5%, and from Russia, 50.6%. Steel from Russia, Japan, Korea, and other trading partners is being sold in the US today at far below market value, and in some instances below variable cost of production, in the home countries. The import surge can be specifically linked to the Asian and Russian economic crises. To some extent the crisis is driven by emerging nations whose currencies have been sharply devalued, a crisis that we have never before faced and that our trade laws are not prepared to handle. Collapsing non- market economies where cost accounting is an unknown art is also a major trade problem that can threaten this nation's basic industries. The other driver in this calamity relates to Japan's failed financial programs, which are now substantially affecting it as well as other nearby nations. A diversion of steel trade into the US is occurring from Asian economies, which are no longer importing steel, and have also lost their own home markets. Other industrial countries have either closed or limited access to their own markets through negotiated bilateral agreements or understandings to limit their steel imports from Asia and Eastern Europe. The countries in crisis have adopted policies of exporting their way out of their economic mess, at any cost, including selling at prices far below costs of production. The result is wreaking havoc on the US steel industry-- injuring almost every US steel producer, including some of the most competitive steel mills in the world. The combination of massive tonnages of steel arriving at US ports of entry and the aggressively low prices at which they are being sold has caused intense price distortion across the US steel industry, even during a period of strong domestic demand for steel products. Deteriorating prices have forced US producers to cut back production, slash expenditures, and lay off their own employees in reaction to the flood of imports traded far below market value. This is not trade based on comparative advantage. We are, in fact, confronted with an economic crisis in the US steel industry, stemming directly from the structural mismanagement by several other governments of their economies. Inadequacy of US Trade Laws In time of trouble, the steel industry has often looked to US antidumping and countervailing duty laws to remedy the problems caused by unfairly traded imports. Unfortunately, these remedies take time, and, if successful, often provide relief too late to forestall serious injury from occurring. Furthermore, US trade laws were not designed to address structural failures of economic management by governments, triggering massive currency devaluations or the disruptive incursions of non-market economies in the world steel market. US trade laws require US steel producers to prove injury before a remedy, in the form of a duty or quota, can be applied. Trade law remedies are limited in scope and may not be able to address effectively the structural economic problems that are contributing to massive import surges. SMA members do support the maintenance and strict enforcement of our nation's trade laws, as one component of US trade policy. Our trade laws are effective in responding to dumping and subsidization on a product-by-product basis involving a limited number of steel trading partners. Alone, they are insufficient to cope with the structural flood of imports we face today. Proposed Steps Neither the US Government nor its steel industry can afford to wait for the trade law process to take its course. Accordingly, we propose the following specific actions, and urge the Congress to request the Administration to implement these measures: Initiate Bilateral Discussions with Offending Countries In Russia, steelmakers simply do not know their cost of production. Having visited and talked with many of these producers I can assure you that cost accounting, as we know it, is not an art which is practiced there. US steel industry analysts and US steel companies agree that Russian steel producers are selling at prices that don't remotely cover their costs. Other countries, including Japan, are also engaging in similar predatory behavior in the US market. US acceptance of undervalued imports is an ineffective way to help these countries obtain hard currency or solve the World's economic crisis. We respectfully request Members of the Congress to urge the Administration to begin bilateral discussions with the exporting countries currently responsible for the disruptions in the US steel market, with a goal towards establishing voluntary export limitations, similar to those which the European Union has had in place with its East European trading partners. exercise leverage Our trade negotiators should use every possible forum to alert our trading partners to the nature and depth of injury their policies are causing the US steel industry. US trade negotiators should warn of potentially severe steel import limitations emanating from trade cases, and suggest that offending governments and their industries take immediate action to alleviate US market disruptions. concurrent resolution Mr. Chairman, and the other Members of the Steel Caucus, we would like to express our appreciation for the concurrent resolution you intend to introduce ``calling on the President to take all necessary measures to respond to the surge of steel imports.'' We shall urge the Members of Congress in those states and districts in which our member companies have plants to support this resolution. In addition, we urge the Congressional Steel Caucus to press the Administration to initiate bilateral discussions with the countries that have caused this problem, in order to provide us with some potential for prompt relief. Thank you for your continuing support and for the opportunity to address the Congressional Steel Caucus on this urgent matter.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, we have been working on education all year. Indeed in this budget it appears the amounts have been set and we are just negotiating the fine details of where it is going to be put. The question is why we are here right now, since we knew we were going to come to these straits earlier on this year and we knew what our differences were earlier on. Saturday the President said in his radio address, I do not want to see this Congress walk away from America's school children. Then he went out to play golf for a couple hours. Then he walked away all of yesterday and into last night for two fund-raisers in New York. Today the Vice President flew out down to Palm Beach, Florida for a fund-raiser down there. Then he goes to Miami for a fund-raiser. Then he goes to Coral Gables for a fund-raiser. In between he talks at a school in Miami about the need for us to deal with school kids. Mr. Speaker, the President and the Vice President should have been dealing with the education issue and working out the differences between an elected House and an elected Senate and an elected President and Vice President a long time ago, not trotting off and doing fund- raisers and press conferences.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Ohio for their leadership, and also my colleague from Indiana for his leadership, and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) for his part in this important issue, because we clearly see American steel companies being driven out of business with unfair market practices. We can talk as Republicans all we want about free trade, but, in fact, when you have people who cheat, who do not follow the rules, you cannot have free trade. I, too, wish this resolution were tougher, but the plain truth of the matter is we are at the end of the session. The Senate is not in session. The only thing we can do at this point is a resolution that puts us on record. This is the best we can do. If this resolution would go down, it would be a terrible sign because thus far we have been working in a bipartisan way between the two sides to try to point out to this administration and this Congress what is happening in the steel industry. This book, American Steel, which I would recommend to anyone, tells the details of the founding of NUCOR as well as what was later developed as Steel Dynamics in Indiana. Those two companies drove the price of steel down, yet they cannot compete because of this illegal dumping. We have put so many restrictions on our steel industry, yet they have been innovative. If we at times do not offer protection when other countries will not play fair, we will not have a steel industry. If we do not have a steel industry, how can we talk about national defense? How can we talk about being a strong Nation if we do not have something as fundamental as steel in this country? We cannot just produce hamburgers and CDs and the type of soft things, those are important, but steel is a foundational part of our country. We cannot lose this industry. This resolution puts us on record as a Congress. If it goes down, it will be a bad, bad signal.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, we have been hearing a lot of panicky people up here today on the other side. The truth is that the basic appropriations have been done for a long time. We have been held up over some disagreements that we have known that were going to come for a year. Yet the administration, apparently because a lot of staffers were running around working on apology statements or coming up with legal strategies, is only now starting to focus and dragging in day after day. I want to go through one other thing. This is the President's schedule for this afternoon, when we are on the verge of a government shutdown: At 2:45, he is going to make a statement on the South Lawn; At 3:05, he boards Air Force One; At 3:15, he heads for Andrews Air Force base; When he gets to New York, he arrives at the Wall Street Landing Zone. Then, at 5:05, he boards a motorcade that departs for Wall Street for a fundraiser at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; At 5:05, he arrives at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; At 5:55, he greets a reception in honor of a New York gubernatorial candidate; At 6:30, he concludes his remarks; and At 6:45, he goes over to the Hilton Towers for a fundraiser for the gentleman from New York (Mr. Charles Schumer). He should be here, not at hotels in New York raising money.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to make a brief comment on the census and some of the education things before I make my major points here. It used to be years ago in the schools they taught the Constitution. Constitution said you actually have to count people. You cannot guess. I have a business undergraduate degree, a business graduate degree as well. I have worked in the private sector before I came into government. It is far too important and constitutional that we have to count people. We cannot use statistical sampling. It can be part of a procedure to try to establish parameters, but you actually have to have real people to know how to assign block grants and dollars, how to assign congressional districts. Furthermore, we seem to have lost, in the whole education debate, what our Founding Fathers intended and what we have done here. That is that local parents and local school boards are going to make the decisions on education, not some fountain of wisdom in Washington, where they do not know our kids names, where they do know the differences between the school districts. We cannot micromanage decisions here in Washington. For the past number of days we have been in session here, we have been waiting to try to get a budget agreement. We have known for months what the final things were going to be that were going to be negotiated. But we have not had those meetings. The President has not been engaged. We have not seen the White House engaged. They have had lots of other matters on their mind. But one of the fundamental questions that we have to ask about this administration in general is, are they focused on the task at hand? The President has traveled 153 days this year, 32 on vacation, 57 for fund-raisers. He has only held two cabinet meetings. Those cabinet meetings, the focus was, well, let us just say the focus of the two cabinet meetings was not on the pending crisis at hand and on the budget debate. I want to go through, while we are here trying to keep the government open, while we are here trying to negotiate the final settlement, this is what the President did today. At 2:45, he made a statement which I saw on the south lawn, saying we need to get down to business. We need to get an agreement. Then he boarded the helicopter to get over to Andrews Air Force base. At 4:55 he landed on Wall Street. A 5:05 he boarded a motorcade and departed the Wall Street landing zone en route to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Park Avenue, East 50th Street, New York. At 5:15 he arrives at the Waldorf Astoria hotel and proceeds to a private event. At 5:55 he greets a reception in honor of New York gubernatorial candidate Peter Vallone at the Waldorf Astoria still up on Park Avenue. At 6:45 he boards a motorcade and departs the hotel en route to the Hilton New York Towers, 6th Avenue and West 53rd Street. At 7:30 he greets Democratic Senate Campaign Committee reception in honor of the Democratic senatorial candidate and Congressman Charles Schumer of New York at the Hilton Tower, by the way, a member of the Committee on the Judiciary that is supposed to be neutral in this, potentially a member of the jury that will sit on the President, basically jury tampering. At 8:15 he concludes remarks and proceeds to the motorcade. At 8:30 he arrives at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in New York. This is while we are supposed to be negotiating the budget. Where is he? At 8:35 greets the first gala benefit for the GMP charitable foundation for cancer research. At 9:25 he boards the motorcade and departs the Sheraton Hotel and Towers en route to a private residence. At 9:35 he arrives at the private residence Manhattan, proceeds inside to private event. A 10:15 he greets the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee reception in honor of of Congressman Charles Schumer, a private residence in Manhattan. At 11:55 he arrives at Kennedy International Airport, boards Air Force One. At 12:10 he leaves for Andrews, arrives at 1:05. At 1:20 departs for the White House, at 1:30 lands. Where is the Vice President? The Vice President left this morning to go down to Palm Beach, Florida because the President cancelled his fund-raiser at Palm Beach, Florida so the Vice President went down there. Where is the First Lady? She has no direct line of responsibility here but she is usually involved in a lot of discussions, particularly has been very outspoken on social issues. She is over in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. But supposedly we are a do-nothing Congress. Supposedly we are the ones holding up everything. I would suggest that if we are indeed in a crisis in our government and if we are on the border, borderline of a government shutdown, the least the President could do is stay in town and talk. Maybe we should have been doing this in the summer, during the August break, since we knew that the final issues were going to be education funding, pro-life concerns, IMF, emergency spending on year 2000 computers, and the farm crisis. We knew that. There is no shock here. We have known this for months. But everybody has been so preoccupied with other things that they have not sat down and dealt with it. Now that we are down here, we are in extra days. We are trying to negotiate the final budget. The appropriations bills are over there. The House and Senate leaders are negotiating. In fact, some of what they have been negotiating on the drug issue, for example, they worked out with General McCaffrey, the White House drifts in and says, oh, by the way, he does not speak for us. Well, if your staff cannot speak for you, if the people you appoint cannot speak for you, stay in town. Do not go trotting around to the Waldorf Astoria for candidates who indeed actually sit on the Committee on the Judiciary. Do not go trotting over to the Hilton and into private receptions raising money when we are supposed to be trying to figure out how do the people's business.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. Mr. Speaker, he is moving so fast, it is hard to tell when it is an actual pivot. Mr. Speaker, then what happened this year, he sent down a series of proposals, as he does regularly, to try to nationalize education. Because his philosophy of education is that, unless he does something, nothing is happening in education, unless it comes out of the President. When he was governor, it had to come out of the governor. But now that he is President, it has to come out of the President. As they propose these different things, the Democrats did not even pick them up. We heard very little about it in the Committee on Education and the Workforce; occasionally a whine here or there, occasionally a whine on the floor. But basically his policies just lay in state almost. We went through several major pieces of legislation, the higher education bill, where we worked and wound up with a bipartisan bill that has many important parts to it that was signed last week. We just completed and passed through a bill to reauthorize Head Start, community services block grant, and other things. We have been working for 4 years trying to get compromises on vocational education and job training legislation. We did Dollars to the Classroom through here. We have been moving education bills, as has been pointed out today numerous times, 25 different bills in this 2- year term. We have been moving education bills, and the President basically signs them. In fact, the day after he blasted us for not having an education policy, he invited us over to the White House to sign the higher ed bill. Then yesterday, he blasted us on education. Probably in the next day or two, we will have a signing of the Head Start bill. There is a disconnect here of what is going on. The gentleman very well prepared, I think, the general public for what is going on here. In the last couple of days, he has refound these education bills. There can only really be two explanations. One is that he realized, contrary to all the grandstanding that we hear, because the process that we hear is, just give us a clean appropriations bill and put nothing on it, and that the Republicans, I heard this on some news broadcast yesterday, again the Republicans want to put additional things on the spending bills. Why would we want to do that? Maybe because he vetoes everything else that has substantive reform. The only way to do it is to put it on an appropriations bill. But he is doing the same thing. He wants to put unauthorized, which is basically not allowed by House rules, new programs on appropriations bills. Whatever he is saying about Republicans on pro-life principles and other things, he is doing on education principles. That is point one. Point two is, as I have pointed out several times today, this looks very much like the ``Wag The Dog'' movie. I personally do not believe that the movie was very realistic. I do not believe a President of the United States, including in the terrorism incident, would put American lives at stake just for his own political gain. But I do believe a President would put something like this to try to make us look like we are the bad guys in Congress. I mean, with all due respect to our majority whip, and I do not mean this personal to him because he is a strong conservative, but some of us believe we have already negotiated too much away in this budget, that sometimes our negotiators, probably when they were growing up on Halloween, when they went to the door and said trick or treat, they gave the people the candy rather than the people giving them the candy. We seem more than willing to surrender in these appropriations bills, yet the President still does not want to deal. Why does he not want to deal? Maybe because today's Washington Post and other papers have ``Are the Republicans Going to Shut Down the Government'' on the front page, instead of whether or not what problems he has with impeachment, with Monica Lewinsky, with Chinese contributors, and so on. If I can take one more minute before we engage. One of the issues is national testing, that national testing is something that neither his base likes; teachers do not like it. The blacks and Hispanics are worried they are going to discriminate against them. Conservatives do not like it because, if you have a national test, potentially every home school or every Christian school, everybody who has concerns about a national test could all of a sudden have a standard that they cannot get into college, they cannot get Federal employment, they cannot get into the military. It could become the standard around the country. We do not know what are going to be in these national tests. The President every year wants to fight over this national testing.

Mr. SOUDER. Absolutely. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, how could you have a national test? Every teacher with a right mind and every principal would say teach to the test. That means, to teach to the test, they have to have courses that have the subject matter that is in the test. It is not even logical. I mean, anybody with basically about a first grade or a Head Start or preschool education ought to be able to figure that is curriculum. But I wanted to give a couple reasons this afternoon why the President should actually oppose national testing to see if we can move him in the direction. Because this is the report card for President Clinton the first semester. If the subject is math, he clearly would get a D minus because he misses basic arithmetic. For example, he sent over ag. appropriations that were less than what he vetoed the other day. I mean, wait a second here. Let us look at the math. This is like blaming us for school lunches when his bill was actually less than we funded in school lunches but then said we tried to cut it. His math does not work. He can't be for a balanced budget and say our tax cuts are taking away from the surplus. But he can propose surplus. His math is D minus, is a little generous. In history, we have an incomplete, because, clearly, he is following the Nixon parallel well. He has read up on Nixon. He has got all the things, yell at the special prosecutor, stonewall them, all that down. But he does not understand other parts of history too well. So we gave him an incomplete there. In citizenship, he gets an F. He fails to grasp the basic concept of a respect for the legal process. The perjury, what you tell your staff to do, that is a clear F. Health. He fails there with an F. He fails to master the dangers of illegal drugs. In fact, just the other day, apparently we thought we had an agreement on the two drug bills. Senator Lott now says that, since General McCaffrey agreed with this, the President apparently said General McCaffrey did not speak for this administration, and they want to go through the drug bill piece by piece. He continues the lack of I did not inhale, all that kind of thing. Plus he relies on lawyers instead of doctors. Basic health, he thinks the way that we get health care reform in this country is to put it in the hands of the lawyers. In foreign languages, we did give him an A. He interacts well with the Chinese unable to speak English. He has clearly done really well in a lot of the fund-raising from overseas. Nonnationals contributed to his campaign. So he gets a good A in foreign languages. We should have given him an A in English, too, because he really is precise. He tries to sort out exactly what ``is'' means. He tries to go through the preciseness of the English language to make sure that he is avoiding saying anything he did not mean.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. Mr. Speaker, that is a good point. In science, we gave him a D. He misimplies census statistics. Clearly he does not know how to count and what the Constitution means regarding counting and what math means there. Sampling is one thing, but when we come down to actually getting a count, sampling does not really work. Furthermore, he fails on missile defense. Clearly, Moscow is 80 percent protected. We do not have anything protected. He does not understand some basic science there. We could also throw in environmental science in here where he has no real understanding of the fundamentals of the environmental science. In government, he would get a D. He lacks knowledge of the role of Congress. He was elected, he keeps reminding people he was elected President. We were elected to control the House and the Senate. At some point here, somebody has got to make a deal. We are are all adults. We get upset that we cannot see pro basketball right now. We say, why cannot adults, knowing they have the differences, sit down. It is not like there are any surprises. It is not like they have not been been talking and warning each other for two years. Unless one side has a posturing point here, we ought to be able to sit down and do that. Economics, we give him a C minus. He does not understand tax incentive very well. He does understand what a balanced budget is but, then he wants to spend the surplus. He signed the agreement. Gave him a C minus there.

Mr. SOUDER. I try to be generous to the President when possible. In physical education he got an A. He is an excellent golfer and a jogger. No comment beyond that. In attendance, we have had an attendance problem. We have a serious attendance problem. He spent 153 days this year traveling, 32 for vacation, 57 for fund-raisers and other extraneous events. He has only held two cabinet meetings so clearly we have a focus and attention problem. Just out of the kindness of my heart, we did not put a conduct rating up. In fact, the question is what exactly would you write in a conduct. It would be very hard if you were his teacher to give him a conduct rating. But given all this, you would think that this would persuade him that he should be against national testing, because with a national test he himself would not be able to pass.

Mr. SOUDER. I think it is important for those who may not be real C- SPAN junkies who may be watching today, you did not say the President is trying to provide Gortex to people. It is a Gore tax. The vice president has proposed a tax on all American consumers to pay for one of their pet programs. A lot of times when we say it real fast, it sounds like Gortex. I think you have hit the fundamental point. There is a difference. In my heart of hearts, I believe that the President and the First Lady have a sincere commitment to education. I believe, however, they want to nationalize it. Furthermore, the way they do that is they poll test. I had the unusual experience, when I was working with Senator Coats for 2 years, to work with Dick Morris, who is a very brilliant pollster, but he tests different things to see, and these things get the highest response, even down to the words with the little things on your arm where you try to see which words get the response. My daughter is an elementary ed and her secondary emphasis in education is preschool education. And as I mentioned, I am on the committee. I also am more of a neoconservative than a particular libertarian. We may have some differences on this, but there is a framework for the Federal Government within to work. That is, if certain school districts, say, in inner city Chicago or New York do not get covered or do not have the property tax base and they do not get covered at their State, we have developed programs at the Federal level, chapter 1, TRIO accounts and so on, to say for the very poor there is a Federal role. We also, because a lot of States and local governments ignore the handicap, have developed a program called IDEA. We developed Head Start. It is not that the Federal Government is not in education. Quite frankly, almost everybody in this body votes for those particular programs every year. The question is that that was a very particular need. These, I believe, as you stated, are poll driven. Even when the money is there, they do not use it. There is no reason that every school district has to surrender their sovereignty on computers and that type of thing, that there can be, there are plenty of targeted funds that can be better used. We did far better for this country by balancing the budget, getting interest rates down, getting taxes down in local communities and giving families more money to work with so they can try to make the decisions at the local schools. If we are going to fund Federal programs, it takes a lot of gall for the President of the United States to propose new programs when he has not funded the programs for the handicapped children in this country. If he is going to spend money, he ought to give it to those who are hurting and where we have a consensus, not come up with new gimmicks.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our majority whip. He has been a leader in pointing out a lot of the inconsistencies and problems of this administration as well as being a strong voice for conservative principles. It is an honor to be associated with the gentleman in this special order. I think the gentleman has made the basic point here that, and I wanted to elaborate on it and get into it a little bit in detail, because I chose when I got elected to Congress in 1994 to pick to go onto the Committee on Education and the Workforce and to choose that as my first choice, not something that many Republicans do. Because I wanted to come in and do battle. My background, besides being in the private sector business, I had been a staffer for 10 years for first Congressman and then Senator Coats and was Republican staff director with the Children, Youth, and Families Committee in the House for 4 years, and then worked as legislative director and deputy chief of staff for Senator Coats in the Senate where, predominantly, I worked with a lot of the difficult social issues. I do not think there is anybody that is going to deny the importance of education or how we need to deal with education. We may have some differences of local, State, and Federal, and we even have differences within our party, and the other party has differences. We are not really going to question, I do not believe, that the President is committed to education. I was over at the White House for the higher ed markup the other day, and I think he is very committed to certain parts of that education. But we do have a fundamental question of what is happening right now and why we are here this weekend. The President was up here for the State of the Union address. We saw what is coming now. He said, we are going to use all the surplus for Social Security. Then, for about 15 or 20 pages, for about 45 minutes went on with spending program after spending program that would have bankrupted this government for the next 10 years. Just in child care alone, he had, I am forgetting, it was like $20 billion. It was a phenomenal kind of the twofer approach that we are starting to see now.

Mr. SOUDER. He clearly does not deserve more than a C minus.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. Hopefully later today we will be talking further about that. In fact, this is interesting, the board that I chose to put the national testing on is one I had earlier of 94 witnesses who have fled the country or pled the fifth. The problem is that you have to change this part up here a lot. It is now 116 or 118 people. We know that a number of these witnesses, they have had to refund the money, but others are still pending. If they would talk to us, we probably would have a lot more money that has been illegal. As Chairman Hoekstra's oversight investigation of the Teamsters, he sees the same money laundering pattern there. As these things move up, you start to see the same names pop up in different places. They have some real problems. They would like to make this whole discussion of what Congress has been focusing on just about the legal questions or about personal affairs of the President or people in the White House, but the truth is that it is a lot more complicated. It would be nice if some people helped come forward to clean up the process that this government has sunk into.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, once again it is important to point out why we are here. We have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress with disagreements. We have disagreements that are deep and heartfelt. However, we have known these disagreements since at least January 1, probably for the last 4 years since. Every year at this time we come down to the same disagreements. It is over protection of human life. It is over national testing, over the census. It is whether to and how to spend the budget surplus. It is over tax cuts, over IMF and U.N. funding. This list is no surprise. We have known it all year long. So where have the negotiators been? Why can we not sit down, or is there something else going on? Is there something that maybe perhaps the President of the United States would like to take attention away from and try to relive 1995, where we can try to say the Republicans are trying to do a shutdown. It is pretty clear that we have surrendered almost everything in this appropriations bill and that there is an election going on and those of us who are in the House have to run this year. We are not the ones holding up the process right now. We have been trying to negotiate. We have been trying to work through. Later on today in a special order I want to point out something that I have been going through, this new book on the tapes of Richard Nixon, which were released for the first time. Thanks to the efforts of the author, Stanley Cutler, we can now read in actual words much of the abuse of power that goes through. I am struck by the similarities that have occurred in this White House. I want to just kind of give you an overview of what I want to go into in more detail later. One, limit the testimony. This is Haldeman talking to Nixon. So they have granted Sloan temporary immunity and he is going to cover what he knows about the Watergate stuff, which is nothing, and that gets him out of the thing. Two, limit the scope of the investigation, just as the FBI director and Mr. LaBella have alleged this Justice Department is doing. Peterson of the Justice Department is working with that knowledge directing the investigation along the channels that will not produce the kind of answers we don't want produced. Three, finish now, no fishing expedition. This is about a year and a half before the impeachment hearings. Nixon says it is over, otherwise it is a fishing expedition. We have had enough of this. Four, early on they were overstating the potential damage. They talk about trying to build up expectations of indictments and then pulling it back. Five, they complained about spending too much money on investigation. Dean tells the President the resources that have been put against this whole investigation to date are really incredible. It is larger than the JFK assassination. Six, build up expectations so the news is less damaging as it comes out. Seven, October 13, 1972 discussion, they complained about the press obsession. Eight, they took advantage of the public's belief that Presidents actually act logically. I will go through the actual transcripts later. Nine, this is incredible, what is is, December 11, 1972, Nixon, Haldeman and Erlichman. Erlichman says the Watergate thing, I don't think there is anything to add to what we have already said. Haldeman says, you might resay it. Erlichman, that nobody in the government did this thing. Haldeman says, the White House. Nixon says, what do you mean Watergate White House. Nobody currently in the government. Haldeman says, currently employed in the government, say currently employed. Nixon says, ever involved in the government. Erlichman says, now you have Liddy and Hunt who were at one time employed. Nixon says, but while they were doing it even, while they were doing it. Erlichman, that's right. Then employed I could say. Nixon says, no one who is an employee of the White House, who is an employee of the White House. And Erlichman says, either at the time of the incident or since? And Nixon says, or since, that's what I mean. Erlichman says, yes. 10, the everybody does it defense. Our Democratic friends said a lot of these things, too, and never got caught, Nixon says. 11, this is just partisan politics. Haldeman tells Nixon, because for the first time in our history we have one of the political parties using the machinery of government to investigate the other political party. Boy, I've been hearing that a lot. 12, coordinate the witnesses. 13, conspiracy to commit perjury. They discuss that. 14. Hidden clues in their testimony and how Sam Erwin was able to pick it out. 15, unapologizing. Nixon says in a conversation with Ray Price, the President, the only problem is that if you get sackclothed too much then you know you no longer can be President. If you go too far in terms of saying, well, I take all the blame and I don't blame these poor fellows and all that, then you think, well, this poor dumb President, why didn't he resign? 16, whining about the special prosecutor and the grand jury. 17, the country is fed up with all this. Haig tells the President, the country is just fed up with all this. It just wants to get on. That is all through the book, by the way. 18, is that all they're doing back there? Dole tells the President, May 23, 1973, Dole, my farmers have criticized, you know, is that all they're doing back there, all they're talking about is Watergate, what about the farm bill, the REA bill, they're sick of it. 19, rally the party's Members of Congress. This is coming towards the end. They say, why don't we go down to the Hill and talk to all the, Dole and Bush are meeting with the President and Dole says to talk just frankly about how important this is that the Republicans, not for Richard Nixon but for the presidency and the party that we do something, and Bush says, I like that, it's a great idea. Then there is even the loyal scheduler, Nixon and Rosemary Woods. He says to take something home. And she says she has it already home, at his request. I want to go into these quotes more later because I personally think this is Wag the Dog.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding. It is once again really important to remind people why on a Sunday night we are here and not with our kids and families. There is nothing going on in the negotiations right now in the budget agreement that we did not know were going to be in the final conditions 12 months ago. There is no excuse that we are here. As I would like to point out again as I did earlier, the plain truth of the matter is many of us believe our leadership has negotiated too much away. In fact when they were kids, I bet they were the kind of kids who when they went trick-or-treating and they knocked on somebody's door and said trick-or-treat and the person came to the door, they probably gave the person candy out of their pumpkin. We have in effect surrendered much of what we fought for. The plain truth of the matter is that the President has a lot of leverage right now, but why would he not want to deal? Why given the fact that we have gone through these same points, we had a shutdown in 1995, we are down to the end here, we know what things we are going to debate over, human life, over the size of government, over national testing, over census, what could possibly be a motivation? Well, one of the things that has been much talked about in this country is a movie called ``Wag the Dog.'' The dog, the tail wagging the dog, because of an allegation in that movie that because of a personal affair of the President he decided to start through a movie thing a war. Now, in this case clearly there is no war. I am not making any allegations that the movie in fact says anything about this President regarding that type of incident. But there is a legitimate question, is there a secondary motivation? Is there in fact a tail that wags a dog in this case where the tail says, in effect, I need a second show, I need to be able to say to the general public that there is another crisis that may take precedence over this crisis. And that in this case I think that there has been a pattern. I want to go through, rather than talk about this President, I want to talk about a different President. I want to talk about Richard Nixon. There is a new book called Abuse of Power. Stanley Cutler has gone through the tapes which he fought through courts to try to have made public. We do not have such tapes with this current President and probably given what has happened with the Nixon tapes we may not in future years. But there are some dramatic things on this that come across very similar to many of the things we have been hearing over the last few months, and I want to put some of these in the Record. Number, point number one: Limiting the testimony, July 20, 1972, Bob Haldeman is talking to the President, quote, so they branded slow and temporary immunity, and he is going to cover what he knows about the Watergate stuff, which is nothing, and that gets him out of the thing. Now what they had planned to do is he was going to take the fifth, but this avoids his having to take the fifth, which is much better because he has no guilt, where under the Watergate thing he has some of the other. They just opened a new line of prosecution. We have seen that in limiting the testimony today too regarding some people in this administration. Two: Limit the scope of the investigation. In 1972, Bob Haldeman again talking to the President: Petersen, the Justice Department, is working with that knowledge, directing the investigation along the channels that will not produce the kind of answers we do not want produced. Now he also goes on to say that Petersen also feels that the fact that there were some lines in this case that ran to the White House is very beneficial because it slowed them down in pursuing things because they are all of the view that they do not want to indict the White House, they only want to indict the, they want to tighten up the case on that criminal act, Watergate, and limit it to the degree that they can. This is in fact exactly what the FBI director and Mr. LaBella who did the Justice Department investigation said in their memos to the Justice Department which is that the Attorney General had limited the investigation to narrow parts and would not broaden the investigation. That is in that memo that they will not release. Number 3: We need to finish this investigation, no fishing expedition. We have been hearing that for 4 years now. On August 2, 1972, Bob Haldeman said this to Nixon. The Attorney General has ordered the director of the FBI to end the investigation. He said they have got all they need to wrap up their case that is on Watergate. The President: Do you think that is correct? Haldeman: Yes. Nixon said really it is over. Otherwise it is a fishing expedition. We have had enough of those. As the gentleman from Florida knows, we have heard over and over, fishing expedition, fishing expedition. Number 4: Overstate the potential damage. This is in September now with the President, Haldeman and Colson. Haldeman goes on saying that you know there is a perverse theory that we walk through this this morning. We might be better off with the Watergate story. It is not doing us much harm. The President says, yes, not much. What I mean is the harm that is done when the reporters are in a hurry too much. Haldeman: That is right, but the difference also is that the indictments will be less than anticipated rather than more. The indictments do not, see they said all along if the indictments or guilt reaches into the upper levels of the Committee on the White House, then there is the problem, and they did not at this time, which is what we have been seeing here, limiting. You say it might be this bad, and then it comes in this bad, and everybody goes, oh well, that is a relief. Number 5: Complaints about spending too much money on the investigation, something we hear constantly. September 15, 1972, 5:27 p.m., Nixon, Haldeman and Dean, John Dean says quote, the resources that have been spent against this whole investigation to date are really incredible. It is truly a larger investigation than was conducted against the after inquiry of the JFK assassination. Number 6: Build up expectations so news is less damaging. Here it is Nixon and Colson, and they are talking about leaking false information through a friend in the media, that the spread is going to be 19 points over McGovern, and Nixon then says 27 points, and Colson says it will sandbag him, it will sandbag him, and Nixon says sandbag them always, that is right. Number 7: Complain about press obsession, avoiding real issues, October 13, 1972, 7:26 p.m., Nixon and Colson. Nixon: They have to attack the press for its double standard. Colson: Yes, I think that is the only way. Nixon: And by making it an all-out assault on the press for their double standard and the rest and say now come on, you are going to report this campaign, let us report what is happening. By the way, I have been going through this book, and last night I spent 3 hours because the more I heard this the more I thought this is what we hear in the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight all the time.

Mr. SOUDER. Okay, one I want to finish on then is the loyal secretary/scheduler, Nixon and Rosemary Woods. Two points, one Woods. He said says, well, I think he is too a nice man, referring to a man, but because of that fact is it even safe for me to talk on the phone? Nixon says, no, do not talk on the phone. Woods says I will call this girl today and say as soon as he gets back into town, say I need to see him. In other words, do not do it at the White House. Then in another amazing parallel Nixon and Rosemary Woods, June 12, 1973. Nixon: You know, Rose, you know that money you got from that fellow? I would like to find a way to get that to the campaign committee. I do not know how it could be done. Woods: I am concerned. Who can hand it to them? Who can hand it to that does not have to say he has got it? It is safe and sound already. Nixon: Third parties. You never know when it is going to be investigated. Woods: But I do not think he would need it, but if so, it is out of the safe, it is in my home. We have seen this over and over, and it is amazing parallel, and I will submit them all for the Record.

Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to make a brief comment associating myself with your earlier remarks. One thing, I was a little concerned that you were going to discourage them from advocating socialized medicine when, in fact, you and the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and I owe a lot of our presence here, as you point out, to the fact that they advocated socialized medicine in 1993 and 1994. And I hope they continue to advocate that because it goes contrary to the American will. I want to associate myself with two other things that you said. I think it is very important for the Speaker and anybody watching this discussion to understand. When the venom comes out of the other side's mouth and they talk about the radicals and the people who are extremely conservative, the truth is that they are talking about, if anybody else, you and me and the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). Do you know what? I do not take tobacco money. I sent tobacco money back. I do not even take the affiliates of tobacco money. I, too, like you am concerned about the impact of tobacco on my kids. Yet we are the class of 1994. We are supposed to be these conservatives. Who are they talking about exactly? Furthermore, they talk about education and beating on it, saying we are not doing anything. In the higher education bill, there was bill developed by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) that he worked with the President on called High Hopes. Not a lot of Members in on our side advocated that. I was a cosponsor. In committee we talked together and you cast the deciding vote. The fact is, the number one priority of the President in education would not be there if the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) had not voted in committee giving them their margin of one to get it through. We are supposed to be the terrible people. We are the people they are constantly fingering. We have reached over and tried to work together. We have tried to give them tobacco. We have tried to pass bills through here. We have tried to move the Patients' Bill of Rights and different health legislation through. What we do not see is any accommodation from the other side except venom. I thought you did a good job of pointing that out.

Mr. SOUDER. I, too, want to point out that I have two children in college. Both of them went through public schools, through elementary, junior high and high school. My youngest is going through public schools. I went through public schools. I get tired of people lecturing me, whose kids are in private schools, about public schools. I thought that was a very good point.

Mr. SOUDER. You would at least think they would come out and say they are sorry. ``We're sorry that for 40 years we did this.'' Maybe it would take seven speechwriters to sort through this over time to get the ``sorry'' part down just right. But how you can come down here and not even say you are sorry and then point at us who have just gotten here, barely 4 years in control, have balanced the budget for the first time, have a surplus actually putting the money over in Social Security and then to point at us just takes an incredible amount. At the very least you should say you are sorry.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it would be really helpful if we did not attack each others motives. I do not consider myself a mean person. I consider myself like other Members of this body on both sides, deeply committed to the issues we believe in, and we confuse the American people because they do not understand what is going on right now. They look at this and say this looks a lot like the NBA strike lockout where we have people on both sides with strong differences of opinions. But they are adults; why can they not sit down? Obviously we both care about education. We differ how to do it. We obviously both care about health care. We disagree how to do it. We obviously both want to see a form of government; in this case some of us are more local than state-oriented and some are more federal, but it is not that we are not trying to do a good government. In 1995, actually right after the 1994 elections, we had a historic point in American history. For 40 years we had had a Democratic Congress, and all of a sudden we had a conservative Republican Congress and a liberal Democratic President, and we had those passions on both sides tested, and we went through this before. This is now our fourth time. There is no reason that we cannot come to an agreement unless there is another political reason, unless there is a wag-the-dog problem going on right now where the President is trying to distract attention. We know he feels passionately, we feel passionately. Let us be adults and get it resolved.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to substitute for the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns).