Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, first off I want to congratulate the gentleman from New York [Mr. Walsh] and the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis] also in the authorizing committee, for their hard work. Washington, DC, is our national Capital. It is seen across this country as a symbol of our Nation, it is seen throughout the world as a symbol of our Nation, and its efforts to try to improve the situation there and to shepherd it are to be commended, and as my colleagues well know, as we go through this amendment process, these amendments are not aimed at any particular committee or any particular approach. I also serve on the authorizing committee, the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, and as my colleagues know, authorizing numbers are a cap, they are not the actual amount. That is up to the appropriating committee what they spend, and when we got our authorizing cap, we did not realize that the budget was going to have a bump up in the second year. That came later in the whole negotiating process, and some of the appropriating numbers got bumped up in dealing with the President and with the Senate, and we did not come to Congress to watch the deficit go up our second year here. We made a commitment to the American people that that deficit was going to go down. And we did better than expected last year. Now we have a challenge to meet. One of our concerns as fellow Republicans is that some of the rhetoric that has been used against our 1.9 percent amendment is potentially digging our party into a trap. Next year our discretionary spending is supposed to go down 4 percent in actual dollars. Nondefense spending is supposed to go down 4 percent in our own budget that we voted for, yet we constantly hear every time we bring up this amendment, ``Oh, there's nothing that can be cut, there's nothing that can be reduced.'' If there is nothing that can be reduced, how in the world are we going to reduce things 4 percent next year? Every time we bring this up, we hear over and over that, oh, we are going to wipe out this, we are going to wipe out that, and if we are not careful, we are going to hoist ourselves on our own rhetoric and dig ourselves into a hole. The fact is that the budget deficit goes up, I wish we could target it more precisely, I wish we could have worked it out through the different appropriating committees to be fair and rather than doing a 1.9 percent, but at this point since we do not have a lockbox that works, this is our only way to have the budget deficit not go up the second year. Any my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle, this is not aimed at the District of Columbia. I commend not only the delegate from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton] and many of the others for their efforts, but quite frankly we did not control the House for 40 years. We have a terrible deficit that we have to get control of, that we were making progress, and we are very nervous that this step backward that we are doing, ever so slight a step, but nevertheless a step, is in the wrong direction, and the American people sent many of us here because they were tired of hearing ``tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.'' They want to see it happen now, and this is our only way we have to express our frustration not only with our own leadership, but our frustration with the way Congress works. Every program has some benefits, every spending has some benefits, but we do not have any money. Even at the extreme it will take 7 years to balance our budget on an annual basis. Households do not have that choice, businesses do not have that choice, State governments do not have that choice, local governments do not have that choice, yet every time we try to reduce it just 1.9 percent it is always too much.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I will hope that many, as some have on the Democratic side who say that they are for balancing the budget, will vote with those of us who have been trying to promote the 1.9 percent, because a 1.9 percent reduction on every appropriations bill will fix the bump up. It is a small bump up. We have been moving in the right direction, but the fact is the deficit goes up the second year we are here in Congress. As far as the IRS, I understand that you need to have dollars to correct it. I understand that. We are saying that if we prioritize correctly, for example, in addition to the supplemental appropriations for church burning investigations, ATF, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, remained funded at the same level. I find it hard to believe that they cannot carry out their function at a 1.9 percent reduction. We could take more of that if there was a prioritization correctly. Also the same is true of the White House. They were able to give a 40 percent raise to someone like former security director Craig Livingstone, who had no apparent qualifications for that position, according to a committee hearing we were just in. They could absorb a 1.9 percent reduction. They have multiple pastry chefs at the White House, as well as the taxpayer funded database that we have been concerned about and concerned about the security systems. This 1.9 percent would not have to come out of the IRS, but at this point on the floor we are systematically offering 1.9 percent across the board, of which part of that falls on the IRS, part of that falls to ATF and different things because of procedures. We are offering a philosophical statement that says 1.9 percent across the board. I personally would have had it categorized inside the appropriations bills and dealt with that, but this is our only way to express our frustration with this budget.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, the second point I was going to make is that on the 1.9 percent amendment, it has been very interesting, because if this was the only bill where we heard that a 1.9 percent across the board cut in this department would devastate a particular program or a department, it would be a little more believable. One point nine percent is not the total amount that comes out of the IRS. It comes out of many different subsections of this bill. It seems like we hear this week after week after week, that we cannot do 1.9 percent, that 1 week we are devastating Yosemite Park, the next week we are devastating the entire thing. It is 1.9 percent. If the committees, and with all due respect, they have worked hard to get the budgets down, but if the committees would have been committed to not having the deficit go up the second year, we would not have offered this amendment. This is a principled amendment. We came to Congress, and we talk about balancing the budget. We say we are trying to balance the budget. But the fact is the deficit goes up the second year. One point nine percent would change that. It would be nice to get some of that out of the entitlement programs, but since we cannot pass an entitlement bill, if we are not going to have the deficit come up, it has to come out of the discretionary programs. One point nine percent will not devastate the IRS; it will not devastate Yosemite Park. Week after week we hear reasons why these bills are going to devastate the entire thing. In fact, some of our Republicans are starting to sound like the Democrats sound on our original bills, and it has been very disconcerting to many of the freshman.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I want to first congratulate the gentleman from Maryland, who is a very articulate spokesman for his constituents. And if I were a Federal worker who lived in his district, I would, too. I also believe he believes in his heart in the importance of the Federal Government, and I know he has been conscientious on other budget matters.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I voted against it.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to offer my amendment. I missed by a few minutes the earlier time and would like to offer the amendment at this time.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I, too, want to commend this subcommittee, as well as the full Committee on Appropriations, on their efforts on discretionary. It is indeed unfortunate that we are not dealing with the mandatory spending. But the fact is that unless something miraculous happens, we are not going to deal with the mandatory spending, so we are forced to deal with the discretionary spending. In the budget resolution many of us were concerned that there was a bump-up in the second year, so 1.9 percent off of all the appropriations bills would eliminate that bump-up. This is not aimed at any particular committee. It is very easy to demagog on House expenditures. Probably if we put this to a vote in the general public, they would cut us 80 percent. At the same time, the truth is that there needs to be functions here, and 1.9 percent will not devastate our ability to communicate to our constituents, it will not devastate our ability to convert to computers. We are spending $211 million on that, 12 percent of the full funding. A 1.9-percent change there would not devastate our ability to do what we need to do, which is to be able to move into the age of the computer communications, the Internet. We can deal with this. If we can deal with 1.9 percent changes and bigger changes in social spending, if we can deal with those 1.9 percent cuts in other areas, we can deal with it in legislative appropriations. It is inconsistent for this Congress to say that we will cut everybody else and we will put the pressure on everybody else, but we will not put that much on ourselves. A 2.2-percent cut is commendable and better than we have done in the past, but we can do more than that, and we need to be willing to sacrifice if we are going to eliminate the budget deficit. In Indiana, they do not understand why it has taken us 7 years. We should be able to balance our budget in a lot shorter than that. To deal with that, unless we deal with mandatory, we have to do more out of discretionary. I do not believe 1.9 percent will devastate our ability to communicate. I want to commend the gentleman from Minnesota, who has been persistent in spite of pressures with this. Persistence is one of the traits that Minnesotans develop because of the cold weather. I think the persistence in SPAN, which is in his district, are the two things which gave him that special courage. We are going to continue to do this because we believe it is critical to our children and to this Nation to a move to a balanced budget. It is important that we in the legislative branch take the initiative. This 1.9 percent plus 2.2 is a 4.1 percent reduction. That is not going to cripple our ability to communicate, to do committees, or our personal work.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I want to first comment briefly on the question of veterans benefits. Should this amendment pass, I would be more than willing, as I am sure many others would, to look at how to transfer money into veterans medical inside this bill from HUD or other sections. That is not the question we are trying to get at here. Veterans benefits go up. We are trying to keep some of them out. I am willing to back more, and have looked at several amendments to back more money for veterans. But overall we have to look at the Federal deficit. Many of us are very upset that the deficit is increasing in our second year of office. This amendment is not targeted at this bill, it is being offered to every bill. We talk a lot about balancing the budget. The fact is we are not moving toward a balanced budget. We took a step in the wrong direction. Maybe we will over 7 years. We cannot bind Congress over 7 years, unless there is a constitutional amendment. We cannot bind the next Congress. All we can be held accountable for is what we do during our 2 years in office. A 1.9-percent cut across the board would get us, if we went back to our other appropriations bills, back to no bump-up in the second year. That is the intent of this amendment. Had others balanced off and figured out what priorities were inside that bill, we would not be faced with this. But we cannot constantly say, oh, well, we want to balance the budget but not here, but not here; 1.9 percent is a very small amount, yet it is what the difference is as to the trend line of where this country is going. I, and many others, came here to reduce the size of Government, to put more power back to the States, and to make sure we stopped mortgaging our children's future. At this point, my children will be saddled with such a debt and such a high potential of bankruptcy of Medicare, of Social Security, of all of our Federal programs, unless we get a handle on it, that I believe it is time that we do at least these small steps. Every year in this budget it gets harder. If we cannot change 1.9 percent now, how in the 3d year or the 4th year, the 5th year, the 6th year, and the 7th year are any of those numbers realistic? I urge this body to vote ``yes'' on this simple amendment.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, first I want to congratulate the gentleman from Minnesota for his amendment. I want to reiterate what both he and the distinguished chairman of the committee said, in that this is not targeted in particular at the Committee on the Interior. I do not believe Yosemite will close with a 1.9 percent budget cut, but he has done one admirable job of trying to manage the reduction in the growth of the budget. He has done an admirable job in being fair in his process. I am sorry that we are starting on his bill. The fact is, however, many of us felt there should not be a bump-up. We did not come here to increase the deficit in our second year. With a change of 1.9 percent in the remaining bills, and if we go back and recoup 1.9 percent in the bills we already passed, in effect we would not have a bump-up. This amendment is a start toward a meaningful reduction. Even if we do this is all the remaining, it does not get all of it back but it moves toward it. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, after the Republican budget passed, did a lot of whining and talking on the floor about the deficit going up. I would like to read a few quotes. The gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] in the Congressional Record said: Here we are considering a deficit that is going to be higher than the one we have next year. How can we have a higher one next year than the one we have this year, and then stand there and say it passes the straight face test, to stand around and look at people and say we are really for balancing the budget? This does not work. The real issue is not whether or not you are for the amendment, it is whether or not you can get the deficit under control. The gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer] said: Mr. Speaker, they are more interested in reducing taxes for the wealthy than they are in reducing the deficit. I may, let us reduce the deficit before we give any tax cuts for anybody. That is my position. Let's get a balanced budget first. The gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney] said: The Republican budget resolution passed last night actually increases the deficit. Republican leaders shut down the government twice just so they could increase the deficit by $40 billion, leaving real deficit reduction to future Congresses. The fact is, here is the amendment. Here is the way to do it. There would be no bump-up in the deficit; 1.9 percent from here on out, 1.9 percent, less than 2 percent gets rid of what all the talk has been on this floor in Congress about the bump-up. I say we should do it and not just talk about it.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to commend those in my district who today are celebrating Juneteenth Day, marking the freedom of the last known slaves on June 19, 1865, almost 2\1/2\ years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and 65 days after Lincoln had been assassinated. Gen. Gordon Granger entered Galveston, TX, with 1,800 troops, proclaimed Texas under U.S. Federal authority and declared the 250,000 slaves in Texas free. His remarks to the slaves and slave owners concluded with his reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Upon hearing the final line of General Granger's reading, the slaves in Galveston immediately began the first Juneteenth celebration in response to their freedom. A story that has been passed down through the generations says that President Lincoln sent a messenger on a slow-stepping mule from Washington with the news which did not reach these States, deep southern States, until 2\1/2\ years later. This shows that some things never change. Historians have attributed the delay to the slow-moving Washington bureaucracy. Today this holiday is celebrated throughout America, not just in the South. I know that in my district, in addition to celebrations like picnics, parades, and pageants, very much like those going throughout the country, there are 150 community leaders meeting and how their groups work to better people's lives. I rise to congratulate them. We all must work together.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Kolbe].

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica].

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from New York, the chairman of the Committee on International Relations. (Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment will prohibit any funds available in this bill from going to Mexico unless the agency receiving the funds certifies that Mexico has taken specific antinarcotics actions. I want to thank the cosponsors of this bill: Chairman Bill Zeliff of New Hampshire, who has been a leader in our Congress' effort to reduce drug abuse, cosponsored this last year with me; also International Relations Committee Chairman Gilman us a cosponsor. Other original cosponsors include my friend from Florida, Mr. Mica, who has been active on the subcommittee; the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Blute; the gentleman from Washington, Mr. Metcalf; the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. McIntosh; the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Funderburk; the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Shadegg; the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn; and the gentlewoman from California, Mrs. Seastrand. The problem is real simple. The State Department's 1996 Narcotics Control Strategy concluded that no country in the world poses a more immediate narcotics threat to America than Mexico. Mexican drug lords now supply more than 70 percent of the cocaine sold and 80 percent of the marijuana imported into the United States, as well as growing quantities of heroin and methaphetamines. Drug seizures in Mexico lagged for most of 1995, and the final seizure total remained flat and well below the record level. They are making progress but they need to make more. At the same time the DEA administrator, Mr. Constantine, and the State Department have recently expressed serious concern that Mexico has, ``become the money laundering haven of choice for initial placement of U.S. drug cash into the world's financial system.'' Drug dealers are literally packing 18-wheel trucks full of cash and driving them to Mexico for laundering. Up to 90 percent of drug cartel profits move through Mexico. I was very privileged to go with the CODEL from this Congress to Mexico, as well as Panama, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, and we met with President Zedillo as well as the foreign minister and members of the House and Senate of Mexico. I was convinced, as were the others with us, that President Zedillo and the leadership of Mexico has a strong commitment to trying to reduce the narcotics flow to America. I also understand their point that it is our demand that is propelling much of the growth of coca leaves around the country, the distribution, and what is coming into our country. We do have to work on our internal problems but they also must work on the exporting of drugs into America. I also understand the difficulty of patroling the long borders we have with Mexico, particularly as we open trade. That is all true. Few issues are as explosive as the immigration issue and the NAFTA issue as well as the drug issue, the support of the peso and the environmental questions along the borders. If our two great nations are to work together, we have to have a strong continued commitment from the Government of Mexico not just to talk but to crack down on the drug lords. This particular amendment passed last year 411-0 when we asked for a rollcall vote. It is the actions that must be changed and stiffened in the future. I want to continue to point out that I am impressed with the sincerity of the Government of Mexico and I am particularly impressed with their commitments, but we need to see additional and continued progress on this issue.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, Saturday was a historic day in America, well, at least in Indiana or at least in my house, because my daughter graduated from high school and it was a big event. I do not feel like I should have a daughter graduating from high school. It makes one feel older. It makes one reflective about when they graduated and what their hopes and dreams were at that point in life. Everything seems like it is going to go on forever, that the risks are small, that the adventures are great. I remember my dad gave a plaque to my band instructor in my little high school in Leo. He thought it was the most hilarious thing, and the band director thought it was the most hilarious thing, and they posted it up over the band director's office so that every day when we practiced we had to see this sign that said, ``Why can't all of life's problems come when we are young and know all the answers?'' I think that is the way many young people feel. At the same time, we get the sense that many of them are very concerned about their future as well. I think any parent, and many children, who look at what is going on around them, wonder what is going to happen in the next, 10, 20, 30 years. What if the vision on MTV actually becomes the complete reality in a few years? What if the attitudes towards the opposite sex that are reflected in those music videos, the rape, the abuse, the derogatory language towards women, would become the standard in our society? What if the violence that we see in the movies, and in those videos, and the talk of suicide that is rampant in today's rock music would become the reality of the society, even more than it is today? What if the TV show families, very few of which represent the majority of America, were to become the reality of America for my daughter and my two sons? The Internet and computers have brought an incredible opportunity for all Americans in the education area. We, on our home computer, to be able to tap into the encyclopedias, to be able to tap into the type of educational games and the many things that all of us can go through Internet and other things is miraculous. But on the other hand one can get manuals on how to perform rape and all sorts of pornography right into our house, where we have little or no control as a family, and some of us can get accidentally into our house even when we want to try to control it. In addition to that, what about the incredible national debt that has just been dumped on my daughter? We just heard a special order which illustrates why we cannot get real change in America. Medicare is going broke. They can talk around it as much as they want to talk around it, but the fact is that it is going broke and every report brings its final reckoning day another year closer in spite of the administration's attempts to cover it up. And what do we do? We come up with this excuse and this kind of rhetoric, and we do not address it. We have all this big fuss about whether or not the Republicans were mean-spirited and shut down the government because of trying to cut government for senior citizens, when in fact our program was 75 cents a month different from the President's program, when in fact the President had proposed less growth in Medicare spending than the Republicans did just 2 years before we came into office; when in fact the President's proposal wanted to wait and delay those changes until after the election. The ultimate of the problem that we came to try to Washington to try to change, we in the freshman class, yet we just heard an hour about there not being a problem in Medicare and whistling in the dark as the program goes broke. My daughter is being struck with a long-term national debt because this government and the people in Washington do not get what the people in America do, which is, unless we change our behavior and start transferring some of the power back to Indiana and back to the homes and individuals and businesses and communities where they can take control of their lives, my daughter and my sons are going to be stuck with everybody else's debt from their irresponsible spending and lack of willingness to gain control of that. And, furthermore, as we watch our freedoms being eroded, both because of the breakdown of moral values in our society and the breakdown of the willingness of local communities to handle the problems and the general takeover by Washington over our lives and our decisions and our flexibility, and see that power come here to Washington, what type of society is my daughter going to have? How much freedom is she going to have to maneuver? Are we going to have so killed our market that we are only going to have a few oligopolistic companies or monopolistic companies from which to choose for a career? Is it going to be such a government that we have no economic growth because the government takes such a huge percentage of the taxes or runs up the deficit so high that the interest rates absorb a phenomenal number? Unless we somehow change the inflationary nature of the health care for senior citizens from 10 percent down to more approximating the 2 percent of the health care growth rate that occurs in the rest of society, our entire Nation is going to go broke. Unless we deal with Social Security, 43 percent of my daughter's income, 43 percent, will be going to FICA taxes within the next 15 years. We have to deal with these questions, and we in Washington cannot just keep trying to excuse it so we can get elected to the next one and hope we can retire before we have to deal with it and stock our children with it. But these are not even the main concerns that I want to talk here about tonight. I came here to talk about two, and they are not directly related but they affect our families and our society. One is welfare, and the other is drug abuse. One of the problems in our society is that we cannot really have freedom unless we have personal responsibility. If people do not exercise personal responsibility, freedom is gradually eroded. Mr. Speaker, I do not think that putting a policeman on every street corner and building prisons everywhere is going to solve the problem of crime. But the people in America and the people in Indiana are not going to stand for the inability to walk in their neighborhood, the inability to go shopping, the inability to talk to their neighbors without fear of being shot. So they will demand that we put a policeman in every corner and build more prisons if we have to. Freedom gets eroded. The same if we do not control the pornography and the sexual appetites in this country. If we have to worry whether our daughters and wives and our families and single women are concerned whether they are going to get raped, then we are going to have more crime protection and more liberties will be restricted. If we do not get control of the budget and more and more money goes to taxes, more liberties will be restricted there. With freedom comes responsibility. I believe that one of the dangers of what this administration is doing is they talk the conservative talk. When the President was here early this year, he sounded like the former occupant of my congressional seat, Dan Quayle. He sounded like somebody who was going to promote family values. He said the era of big government was over. He talked about balancing the budget. In fact, he has gone around the country running all of these different ads about what a great conservative he is, but the problem is that the actions do not match. Let us look particularly at welfare. We can have an honest difference in policy as to what the Federal Government should do and what the government should do on welfare, but what really frustrated me, I was a staffer here on the House side for 4 years and on the Senate side for 4 years and 2 years in the district, so I have been around. But to be in the middle of it, it is really disappointing to see how much posturing there is and how little really comes often from the heart. There are honest liberals and honest conservatives, but much of it is just reelection gimmicks, and the rhetoric on the House floor gets very disturbing when we see that. It is one thing if a person says, ``Look, I believe we need a welfare program, we need to expand that welfare program.'' I believe that we have at least one Member of the House who is a member of the Socialist Party and is open about what he believes. One should stand up and say, ``I believe the Federal Government should do this.'' But it is another thing to say, ``I do not believe the Federal Government should do it,'' but then, as the President does, veto every welfare reform bill that comes to him and try to say in TV commercials that in fact he supports welfare reform. We have been trying to do some welfare reform, but quite frankly part of the reason we are vulnerable when we do things like oppose the minimum wage--which I opposed not because I am not concerned about working families who are trying to make it on a low income, but I am concerned about the people who are going to be laid off because of this bill--but part of the reason many of my friends in the Republican Party voted for the minimum wage bill and why Republicans do not seem to know how to handle the welfare issue, is that we have not articulated a vision for how working families and those people struggling to get out of poverty, those people who are working poor and trying to move up to the next level, we as Republicans have been remiss in trying to articulate a vision. So, we become vulnerable when some of these controversies occur. Let me start with a very simple point which to me seems so basic, that it is amazing that here in Washington we have to debate it. That simple point is this: I do not believe that anybody on welfare should be making more or have any more take-home income than somebody working full-time on minimum wage. That seems so simple, does it not? That if somebody is working 40 hours a week for minimum wage, why should somebody not working be making more money through government transfer payments? I had in our family business in my small town, this has been a number of years ago, we had what we called the second spot on one of our delivery trucks. It was an entry level position, a turnover slot that paid just slightly more than the minimum wage at that time. I had a college graduate come in looking for a job, and at that point he was getting welfare benefits and his wife had a baby. He said that he would really like to work. He believed that it was the right thing to do to work, but in fact he could bring in this many more dollars staying on welfare than he could working, and would I meet the difference? He said if I came within a thousand dollars of the difference he would take the job, and I did. There is something wrong with a society where that is the case. Right now, depending on your family mix and what State one is in and a few variables, somebody on welfare can usually get around $15,000. A minimum wage is more like $10,000. I would take that differential, and by this I do not mean AFDC. We hear Aid to Families with Dependent Children as the welfare program. We have housing programs, we have Medicaid with health care, we have child care programs, we have transportation programs, we have job training programs. I mean the whole range of those benefits. We ought to have a basic point that says it is not going to be above minimum wage, take the dollar differential and help those who are working. The people who are working should be getting the health benefits in the transition, so that each dollar they make, they get to keep most of it, so that we have the change in the Federal benefit level being slightly less than the change in what they are earning, so there is always an incentive to earn more which we do not currently have in our system. It seems so eminently logical that we think somewhere along the line someone would try to do this, that instead of rewarding not working we would reward working, and we would build that incentive in for the working families and try to encourage people to work rather than order them to work. We can continue to try to order people to work but we also need to encourage people to work. We also need to trust more in the people back home. Quite frankly, the people in Indiana, in fact the people in northeast Indiana, know a whole lot more about how to deal with the welfare problem than the people here in Washington know how to deal with the problem in northeast Indiana. This is generally true but it is not just rhetoric anyone. We have Governors all across this Nation who have been innovative in their attempts to handle the welfare question, whereas Washington has floundered and been ineffective on the welfare question here in Washington. We had the President praise the Wisconsin program and he said he would try to grant them a waiver, and he was a bit stunned when we actually passed it through the House. We are tired of the talk; we want to see the walk. We passed it through last week and now the Wisconsin model can go forward. Furthermore, we heard a little bit more about Medicaid a little bit earlier tonight. Do you know in a Government Reform subcommittee that has oversight of this, what stunned me was, do you know that in the Medicaid Program, even though it has been increasing, the actual dollars to poor children and the actual dollars to the seniors have been declining. Do you know why? Because this Congress made--not this particular Congress, but the Congress here in Washington over the last couple years--made people who abuse drugs and alcohol eligible for Medicaid. A tremendous growth in the Medicaid Program was mandated out of Washington that the State of Indiana and other States, Indiana, for example, did not cover that, had to absorb the cost of drug and alcohol abusers. So we hear rhetoric about Medicaid helping poor children and rhetoric about Medicaid helping seniors, but in fact a Washington mandate said that they had to cover drug and alcohol abusers. Part of the reason, in fact a major reason why we are giving flexibility to the States on the question of Medicaid is so they can set their standards. And in Indiana, there will be more dollars for low income children and more dollars for seniors under the Republican plan because not every drug abuser and everybody who is abusing alcohol, who I feel very sorry for them, but there is a little bit of a question here, when working families cannot get health coverage and people who choose life styles that are self-destructive can get health coverage, there is some kind of a mismatch. It is your tax dollars that are being spent this way. So my first point, and I will not belabor this first point any further, is that I think we can generally agree that the welfare program, as it currently stands, is not working. Let me move to the drug issue. I have talked here on the House floor a number of times, and my friend from Florida, John Mica, earlier talked about this tonight. But in Fort Wayne and in northeast Indiana we have had a tremendous problem with crack cocaine, in particular, as well as other forms of cocaine. We have had a huge increase in LSD, and we have been battling this problem for longer than most cities. It came down from Detroit 12 to 14 years ago and has been expanding. This mentality of the drug abuse, particularly, and it is not just in the, while much of the activity is taking place in the central city of Fort Wayne, those who are abusing it are not just those residents there. The people from the suburbs and small towns have come in and they destroy those neighborhoods by patronizing the dealers in those neighborhoods. It has now started to expand outside of the central city of Fort Wayne. It is concentrated in the central city of Fort Wayne. There that culture of crime and the desire for quick money has--not every case of these have been proven to be drug related, but they are usually drug abusers and the culture has infected it. We see at two different times about a year apart pizza delivery boys being shot for the cash they have on them. We had a 13 year old shot by a younger child. Police Chief Neil Moore in Fort Wayne told me a terrible story about a little girl who he found naked in a crack house, who had been selling her body for rocks of crack cocaine. And she was so small that they could fit a, they cut holes out of a burlap bag to put her arms and legs through and she was selling her body for drugs. Yet what do we see coming out of Washington? We see, if you are going to smoke, do not smoke cigarettes, smoke marijuana. I did not inhale. Oh, we are going to take the things that we are using down there and divert one of the AWACS things up to Alaska to look for oil spills. We are going to send one over to Bosnia. And relax some of the interdiction efforts of the drugs are pouring into my home town and around this country. And it is not surprising that we have seen an increase in the amount of cocaine coming into America. We have seen an increase in the purity of that cocaine coming into America. And we have seen a decline in the price. While Washington is talking and posturing in other ways, we have been drowning. And we have reversed, instead of going down as we were for years in drug abuse, we are going back up. Instead of young people going down in their approval of marijuana and cocaine, it has gone back up. We are inundated again when you to go the mall, it feels like I am back in the late 1960's again. You see marijuana leaves on hats and on shirts and on the front of album covers. All of a sudden we are back in a drug culture. I was fortunate enough to go with Congressmen Hastert and Zeliff and Mica down to Mexico and Central America and South America. And we met with the leaders of those countries and were saying that they needed to crack down on the cocaine and the coca leaves and the coca growing and all the transit into America. But do you know what else they said, they said, your appetite for drugs in America is also destroying our countries. And while they need to work harder at interdiction efforts, we also need to realize that we are not just destroying America, we are destroying the countries who want that money that our abuse and insatiable demand for drugs is causing. When we look at this soaring drug and alcohol abuse in our society and the terrorism that it is causing in our neighborhoods and when you go in, have I visited a number of African-American schools in inner city Fort Wayne. One thing that always strikes me is almost every student there will have some story about how they are scared to go out at night, how a cousin was shot, how somebody was going through the neighborhood and got shot, that their lives are filled with terror because we are refusing to grapple with this problem in America. So drug abuse is a big problem. So what are we going to do? Well, the first thing is we need growth and opportunity. Yes, that means one of the things we need is tax cuts. I know that that just drives the other side of the aisle crazy, but it works. And we need various types, both in the general society so there is economic growth, also in the urban areas and places where unemployment is high. That is not my focus tonight. But tax cuts do work. If the Government sucks all the dollars here to Washington and does not turn it into industries where you have high productivity rates, where you have a high velocity of the money, to use the business term sense, I have both an undergraduate business degree and a master's degree and velocity of money is one of the key things that you can get out of private sector that you do not get out of public sector. Unless we have that economic growth we can sit here and talk and we can play money shuffle games all we want, but unless that money grows, all we are doing is reshuffling a deck rather than, as Kennedy and Kemp, would say having a rising tide that lifts all boats. Then I also agree, I think it was Congressman Rangel who has said that we also have to worry about those boats that got stuck on the shoals. In other words, while a rising tide might lift most boats, some do not lift. And I am not going to argue that there should not be a minimal safety net. In think, as Nicholas Eberstat has argued in an eloquent paper that I heard him present a number of years ago, there is a difference between destitution and poverty. Poverty is a relative term. You will never get rid of poverty. But destitution is an absolute term. Nobody should freeze; nobody should die of hunger; nobody should not have some sort of a roof over their heads. They do not necessarily need a color TV. They do not necessarily need individual private rooms for each of the kids. There is a standard here. But we ought to have the decency to say there is going to be a minimal safety net in society. Furthermore, for those people who want to move up, for those people who want to work, we need some job training programs. I differ from some of my Republican colleagues, I think we have a lot of problems with affirmative action, but I believe affirmative action has played an important role. And I believe it would be a mistake to suddenly eliminate all these programs. I also believe in certain things we need reach out efforts to reach out to particular minority communities often who felt disenfranchised in society and when all of a sudden you say here is an opportunity does not mean they necessarily rise up. They may have faced past discrimination. They may have faced past persecution, or they may simply not have had the family exposure around them to see how to capitalize on those opportunities. I do not believe it is inappropriate for Government to sometimes help give a hand up. But the goal needs to be how do we move somebody with the hand up. How do we move them into the workplace? How do we make them productive citizens? How do they become full and participating members of society, not to breed the dependence which the current government programs have largely done. Furthermore, I believe that we need to look at some of the innovative proposals that have been put out. I am a cosponsor of Congressman Talent of Missouri and Congressman Watts of Oklahoma's different package to promote urban opportunity. I also, my former boss in the U.S. Senate, Dan Coats, has an initiative to do that. I think we should encourage and the party should encourage those. I myself have pushed the charitable deduction, an increase in the charitable deduction. Let me tell you why. I have seen programs in urban centers around this Nation that have had a huge impact. Very seldom have they been Government programs. Let me give you a couple examples. Rev. Lee Earl of Detroit, who is now working with Bob Woodson at the National Center on Neighborhood Enterprise, at one conference where they had grass roots activists, foundations, people from the government, he was getting this pitch about why religious groups should not have any access to the funds. He said, let me tell you, and this is a paraphrase, I do not want to pull all these words in Lee's mouth, but the paraphrase is this. He said, my church operates a child care center. My church does job training. We have housing. We do drug rehab. We do all these different things, and we are having an impact on the city. Yet what I see out of the Federal Government, talking to HUD in particular, are housing projects that are crumbling, drug treatment programs that do not work, job training programs that do not work, and I see the whole range of failed programs. Yet you tell me that unless I do it your way we do not get access to the funds. Part of the problem here is that I, like many Americans, am nervous about who might get the dollars if you do it through the regular Government transfer programs. Let me give you another problem with the Government transfer programs. I just spoke at the Abundant Life Ministries, a jail ministry program, about 2 weeks ago. They have turned down a big Government grant. They have been tremendously effective. I have met with a couple of individuals who have been through 13 different drug treatment programs and they know how to beat every system. But when they gave their life to Jesus Christ they changed. And Abundant Life Ministries can get the Government money to help more people like them as long as they do not mention Jesus Christ. As long as they take out the components that works, they can have the money. Now, this is going to be the way the Government operates. So one of the things we need to do--let me give you another example. There is a teen pregnancy program in northeast Indiana operated by a Christian organization that just got a grant. They can only talk about teen pregnancy if they do not mention anything about religious in the teen pregnancy. Excuse me? If this is going to be the way the Government grants programs work, we need to make sure that more of the dollars get into the private sector where they are actually having an impact. In San Antonio alone, with Juan Rivers and Freddie Garcia's program down there, I personally met over 200 addicts and dealers who have now become Christians, who are back in their communities, who have been working and having an impact on drug abuse. Yet the department of alcohol and mental health in Texas for awhile was considering shutting them down because they do not have degrees. They are not licensed drug counselors. Do you know what? The magic of this is they were not doing drug counseling. They were changing people's lives. When people's lives changed, they got rid of drugs. We need to figure out how we balance the rights of individuals not to fund churches on the other side and at the same time get money into the hands of programs that are actually working. In my home district, for example, Rev. Ternae Jordan's son was at a music lesson at a local YMCA. He was sitting on the couch out by the door and was shot in the back of the head by two kids who were shooting outside. The whole city was traumatized by the event. The son recovered, but it led to Reverend Jordan starting a program called Stop the Madness, trying to crack down and encourage neighborhood groups to work on the drug program. Mr. Speaker, recently I was privileged to attend the seventh anniversary celebration at the Greater Progressive Baptist Church in Fort Wayne, IN honoring Rev. Ternae Jordan. Pastor Jordan has been a leader in Fort Wayne in many ways, not the least being through his antidrug organization, Stop the Madness. I particularly enjoyed this eloquent tribute by Cheryl Story, which I now include in the Record. Now, Let's Talk About the Pastor (By Cheryl Story) As a Pastor, Rev. Jordan, along with Angela, must not only have Faith, (belief without proof, but they must have Hope: Desire joined with expectation, the opposite of doubt with an anticipated promise of expected benefits and blessings.) Now Rev. Jordan's substance material is ordained by God. Therefore, regardless of the magnitude of the metamorphosis of his physiological structure, that is whether he gets old, his hair turn gray, if his teeth fall out, whether he gets ugly or remains handsome, Ternae Sr.'s substance will not change. It does not matter how much he accomplishes and achieves in this life or how many mistakes he makes, how much good he does or how many lies you tell on him, his substance remains the same for he will always be a Preacher and a Pastor. The Pastor is on duty 24 hrs. Day & Night. He polices the Community, he provides assistance/comfort to those in need. He must be an Educational Instructor, Therapist/Counselor, Philosopher/Psychiatrist, Mediator, some folk's 1st Attorney, a Marriage Officiator, a Funeral Eulogist, a Sick Room Specialist and a Dying Hour Confidant. The Pastor must be a Persuaded Preacher, for he is a Salvation Salesman, a Paradise Pusher, a Jesus Junkie, a gansta for God, a Jehovah Witness, your best friend and satan's worse enemy. For Faith can and will move Mountains. What is it that turns an ordinary man into an Addictive Apostle who is obviously strung out on a Jesus, who hung out on a Hill, who sends us a comforter, who calls himself The Holy Ghost, that runs with a Spirit that spoke Himself into being GOD, who ordained this man before he entered his mother's womb? I tell ya it was ``Faith!'' For March of 1989, Rev. & Angela took leave of their home, accepted the Greater Progressive Baptist Family, stepped out on Faith and told their God, ``Send me, I'll go,'' and left their Comfort Zone behind them. ``THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN'' Evidence is the Proof of a Pastor's Faith. Let me give you a little documentation and you can determine the truth. When Pastor arrived, if you joined one of the four Auxiliaries you were guaranteed to automatically become an officer. Now we grown spiritually from skeletal Auxiliaries to full scale Ministries. We've got an up-front discipled Deacon Brd., a unified Trustee Brd., morning & night Bible Study & Prayer Meetings. I remember when our one choir consisted of the Nelson & Trice families with 5 or 6 others mixed in, now God has blessed us to have a full choirstand of children's choir, a dynamic young adult choir, a 30 & over Generation choir a full Mass Choir. We got Pam, 2 Dres, Tony, 2 Pianists, Gor'don and Sheila all in the same House. I'm talking about Faith & Evidence now. The Lord has blessed us with CWF, a Brotherhood Men's Support Group and Promisekeepers. We had an old organ and ragged mikes, now we got high tech equipment and state of the art sound room. Sometimes we couldn't even make payroll or pay our bills and God has given us financial increase thru tithing members. Seven years ago, if you came to Church at 12:30 p.m. you could pick & choose your own ``Praying ground'' now it's standing room only by 11:00 a.m. We got Birthing of a Vision and Stop the Madness now has nationwide video presentations. We've got an intergrated Congregation and we participated in inter-racial Church Fellowhips. Pastor Jordan is a Jefferson Community Service Award winner, the NAACP's Golden Anniversary Man of the Year and everybody else's Man of the Year. Certainly God has ordered the Steps of Rev. Ternae Tsgarias Jordan and We've Come This Far by Faith! Also in addition to the Stop the Madness program in Fort Wayne, I just visited a couple of weeks ago with Rev. Jesse White and his daughter's wonderful computer program. Rather than just talk about the problems, Rev. John Perkins from Pasadena, CA, said too many people get their satisfaction from feeling good about talking about the problems rather than doing something about the problems. Reverend White has a computer program where people come back, get the training and then either get a job or move up in their jobs because they have the skills with which to work in the job market. It is one thing to whine about stuff; it is another thing to do it. People like their church and their program need to be encouraged, as another pastor in Fort Wayne, who is a friend of mine, Rev. Otha Aden has a similar program in the southeast side of Fort Wayne working with kids in the after school southside opportunities program where he, too, has working with local businesses, has computers there and is trying to promote among the young people in that hard hit area the importance of getting the training so that they can be important factors in the growth of Fort Wayne and in their neighborhoods and their families. Another friend of mine, Shirley Woods, has started a center right in the middle of an area. There are five different crack houses in the immediate vicinity of where she started this neighborhood center for Saturdays and afternoons after school and in the summer, and it is not just an activities center for the kids. She also has some educational training and family training programs with the families and trying to work with the virtues and the things that families need to rehabilitate their families. There are just a few. Another program in Fort Wayne at the Cooper Teen Center, they have been out here a couple times to visit with me. Andre Patterson and Carl Johnson have a program, Simba, of black pride and self-esteem with these kids and giving them training skills. There is hope. I have been into Newark, South Bronx, I have been in the center of, just after the riots in LA, into San Antonio, inner city Chicago, some of the toughest housing projects, as well as in a rural area in Appalachia for multiple days, that everywhere you go, even where it seems most dismal, somebody is having an impact. There are these little flower gardens in the middle of the toughest area where people are having an impact. What we need to do in America is figure out how to encourage those little gardens, how to give them the funds and encourage people to give them the funds so that they grow. Rather than stomping them out through massive government from implying to America that the solution to America's problems is the Federal Government, or any government really, that it can be a supplement, it can be a time to be there when you are in great need, it can give a stimulus and some training. But it is not the ultimate answer to our problems. That is the vision that we Republicans are trying to communicate, that the answers to America lie in people's heart, they lie in the families, they lie in the communities, they lie in the local governments, and only then to Washington, and hopefully we can accomplish that, and we will continue to try to communicate that message, and I thank the people in northeast Indiana for giving me the chance and for having so many of us here who share these views, and hopefully for my daughter who just graduated and for my sons who are still coming up, that they can look at America with hope and with opportunity rather than the type of America that we can see on MTV and the type of pessimism I fear we are going to have if we fall back into the trap of the deficit spending in the collapse of the families and morality.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I object. Maybe we can have this come up when we know how many there are going to be, but at this time I object.

Mr. SOUDER. And does the gentleman know if the gentleman from Wisconsin intends to offer most of those amendments?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, does the gentleman have any idea how many amendments there are pending?

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his clarification and his leadership on this bill and in ensuring that areas vulnerable to severe weather receive adequate warning. This is a critical safety concern for northeast Indiana because our State ranks first in the Nation in tornado deaths. You might say we have twisted twisters. We very much appreciate the efforts of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Chairman Walker, and the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, on this issue.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, the President's request includes funding for a new NEXRAD unit to be placed in the vicinity of Fort Wayne, IN, and new units in the southeast Tennessee/northern Alabama region, and in Arkansas, as recommended by the Secretary of Commerce. Is obligation of funds for these units in fiscal year 1997 consistent with the limitations contained in section 411(c) of the bill?

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to engage the chairman of the Committee on Science in a colloquy concerning authorization for NEXRAD radars for the National Weather Service. Is it not the case that this bill in the 1992 authorization, Public Law 102-567, authorized full funding for the administration's request for the NEXRAD line items?

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. First, as a small businessman, Mr. Speaker, I would like to compliment the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], and the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Fawell], on the actual bill we are discussing here, the portal-to-portal bill. In my case, in the retail business, we had a number of employees, including our service manager and our warehouse manager, who had vehicles that they drove home. It worked well for them. It was something we could do as a joint employer-employee, and to have the Federal Government, through the courts, who often decide that they are the State and Federal legislators of this country and can make better decisions than Congress and State legislators can, to see that overturned is a tragedy for American workers and small business. I also want to say, Mr. Speaker, that I am sorry that I cannot vote for that bill, because I cannot support a bill that lays off American workers. I understand it is called a minimum wage bill rather than a layoff bill, but in fact, it is a layoff bill. As the chairman just said, I knew the other side did not like businesses, but I did not realize how much they disliked small businesses. They use the rhetoric of the dignity of work, but in fact, it is the dignity of not working that this is promoting. They stand up once in a while and talk about different statistics that have no basis in reality. The truth is, facts are stubborn things, and the fact is every time but one when there was a national minimum wage increase, job layoffs increased. Every time but one. The facts are there. State statistics are interesting. That is why we give options to the States. But federally, only one time did the unemployment not increase. In fact, Mr. Speaker, jobs will be lost in this country. In fact, kids will lose their jobs, minorities will lose their jobs, senior citizens will lose their jobs. In small towns, in center cities, marginal businesses will be devastated. I am concerned because I grew up in a town of 700, and spent most of my life in this small town. As I look around the country and see the businesses shuttered in these small towns, and see the businesses shuttered in the central cities, in the suburbs, and the people in Washington who often live in the big houses in the suburbs, where they can do the volume of business with which to pay this, do not seem to have the sensitivity for the many small towns that are losing their little businesses. Many of those people who want a living wage move to the bigger cities, but some people would prefer to live in those small towns. Those kids who now will not have a place to work, those senior citizens who now will be trapped at home because they cannot take a marginal job, those young kids and middle-aged kids who struggled, who obviously have a special need and can barely hold a job at a minimum wage, who lose their job and are thrown back onto the welfare system because of the policies of this Congress, I wish every Member who voted for this bill had to look those people in the face when they get their pink slips, when they are trapped in their homes, when they are standing on the street corners, when they no longer have the opportunity to work because of the supposed rhetoric of compassion, rather than the real compassion. It really disappoints me to see this promotion of the Wal-Martization of America, the disdain for the marginal businesses. I have heard Members in this body say, if those businesses cannot give enough money to meet the minimum wage standard, then they should just disappear. That is so insensitive. We are working in the central city of Fort Wayne to try to get a supermarket back in where the supermarkets have all closed down. You will not only raise the minimum wage but all the bumps up. You increase the wages 20 percent, and we will not get that supermarket in the central city or central cities in other places. This is not a matter of rhetoric, this is not a matter of sounding compassionate. The facts are there. The people do not understand because the American people are compassionate. They hear living wage and they want to give a living wage. The truth is that people at the margin are going to be lost. We could have helped the people who needed a living wage through earned income tax credits, through different types of legislation. I am sorry our party is not even allowing us to vote on a number of those things, because we should have had that opportunity, and we should have been out there leading how to, in a free market economy, make sure that people, through the market system, can get a living wage. This is not the way to do it. I am embarrassed quite frankly that our party, rather than decide to fight and stand on principle and explain the facts to the American people, instead have tried to work at the margins with the minimum wage. They have done a good job within the confines of trying to save a few jobs, but I reluctantly am still going to have to vote against the good portal-to-portal bill and against some other things that I support, because I cannot have it on my conscience to cost people that I know their jobs: seniors, young people, people who are handicapped, who have struggled to get into the work force, and now because Washington, people have decided that they should lose their jobs, they are going to lose their jobs.