Christopher Shays

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, this Congress in the last 2\1/2\ years has sought to balance the Federal budget and get our country's financial house in order. We have sought to save our trust funds for not just future generations but present generations. And, thirdly, we have attempted as hard as we can to transform our caretaking, social, corporate and agricultural welfare state into a caring opportunity society. We have worked hard to help mothers get work, a opportunity for employment and training to be free from welfare. We have seen an agricultural bill, the Freedom to Farm, wean farmers off welfare. And yet when it comes to corporate welfare, we seem to find every defense possible to continue it. This amendment is not going to eliminate OPIC, it is going to reduce its administrative costs. There are some of us who would sincerely want to eliminate OPIC, totally privatize this operation. But, Mr. Chairman, this is a modest amendment. I support it. It is in line with everything we have attempted to do in transforming our caretaking, social, corporate and agricultural welfare state into what must become a caring opportunity society.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman], a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley], one of the senior Members of Congress, the chairman of the very powerful Committee on Commerce.

Mr. SHAYS

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

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, we urge adoption of this freeze amendment to the defense budget.

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

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, could I just inquire how much time the gentleman is yielding to me?

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] has been totally consistent for years on the fact that we need to get our Defense budget in line with the other parts of our budget, and that is why I am more than happy to participate in this bipartisan amendment to have this Congress, this Republican Congress, realize that we have waste, fraud, and abuse, believe it or not, in Defense budget as much as we have it in domestic programs. We have had hundreds of hearings on the waste and the fraud and the abuse and mismanagement that we see in domestic programs. We have hardly had any hearings on the waste and fraud and abuse that exists in the Defense budget. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] and I and the sponsors of this amendment want a strong national defense. We want in fact a stronger national defense than we have now. We do not feel though we can commit to so many programs, spread ourself so thinly and then come back to Congress and say we have to keep spending more. This is truly a freeze amendment. We are going to be spending about $244.4 billion this year, and we are saying that we should spend about that amount next year. We are not cutting, we are not increasing; we are freezing. It is very disingenuous for people, particularly my own side of the aisle, to start talking about the fact that adjusting for inflation in this amendment is actually a cut and not a freeze. Well, if we say that, then let us be consistent with all the other programs that we say we are not cutting. Mr. Chairman, I am asking that we treat the Defense budget like we would treat any other budget.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, this is a freeze amendment. This is an amendment that says we are going to spend no more next year than we spent this year on defense. It is a recognition on the part of this Congress that we are slowing the growth of entitlements, we are truly cutting parts of domestic spending, and we are saying that the defense budget, which constitutes basically half of what we vote out and appropriate, should be under the same basic scrutiny. It is a recognition on the part of this Congress that we need to look at the fact that the cold war has ended and we are waging a different type of warfare. In many cases, it is an economic warfare. In many cases, it is a warfare against terrorism. This amendment is a recognition that we need to look at all our weapon systems and determine that some need to go forward and some need to be discontinued in terms of research and development but not deployment. It is a recognition that this Republican Congress will realize that a freeze is not a cut, as we have said when we have argued against domestic spending. It is a freeze. It is a recognition that we need to look at our defense budget with the same kind of scrutiny and desire that we have looked at other parts of the budget. It is a recognition that, if we are going to get our country's financial house in order, we cannot allow the defense budget to go up. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank], a cosponsor of this amendment. We have a number of cosponsors, but he is the primary partner.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. First let me thank the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Metcalf], Speaker pro tempore, as we have the opportunity to address this Chamber for continuing to serve at a late hour here. I do not intend to take anywhere near the hour that would be allotted to me. I do know the House is going to be in session tonight as we wait for the rules, so our staff will be staying around for a bit. But I have not really had much opportunity to address this Chamber in a special order. Tonight is a night I am really grateful to have this opportunity. I am grateful to have this opportunity because I think of the historic achievement that has been agreed to between this President, a Democrat President, and this Congress, a Congress controlled by Republicans, a Congress filled with 435 men and women of both parties, but a party in control of this Congress, the Republican Party. I think in terms of my history as I was growing up and as a student in high school and college and thinking about our Founding Fathers, and they designed quite a system. They designed a system where you would not only have competing interests in a Chamber and in another Chamber, the Senate, and this check and balance with the judiciary, but you would have an executive who would not have the ability to do everything he or she wanted, a Congress that does not have the ability to do everything it, the majority party, wants. This is a system designed by our Founding Fathers, and they wanted it to be exactly what it is, a system that does not allow one unit, one branch, to gain too much power or one group within a branch to gain too much power. So what did we have after the 1996 election? We elected a Democrat President. Frankly, by an overwhelming number the American people elected such a President, and they elected a Republican Congress, maybe not by the same margin, and they said very clearly in their message that they wanted us to work together. Mr. Speaker, we have worked together, and we have a historic agreement, and it is for real, and it is not an agreement that is unable to take place because of a rosy scenario. This is an agreement where either the President and our own Congress said we would use inflated numbers and anticipate revenues that simply would be far in addition to what they would be in actual fact. This is an agreement that anticipates revenue growing at 2.1 percent a year. Now it is growing much faster now than that, but maybe in the fourth or fifth year it will not grow as much. There are a number of us, certainly on our side of the aisle, who anticipate a very robust economy for the next year or two, and we intend to have that move us toward balancing the budget sooner than 5 years. Five years is the outer limit. There are many of us who feel we need to get our country's financial house in order sooner. I know for one, as a Member of this body, finishing now by the end of this week my 10th year; I won in a special election and started in September 1987. I was elected in August, and I remember that for me, a State legislator at the time, I was amazed that Congress would continue to spend and spend and spend when we did not have the revenue to pay for it and we would continue to have our national debt go up and up and up. Mr. Speaker, it has gone up tenfold in less than 22 years, 10 times, not double or triple, 10 times, and so there were Members such as myself, particularly Members more on this side of the aisle, who said we need to get our country's financial house in order. I am thinking of one Member in particular. It is our colleague the gentleman from Ohio, John Kasich, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, and I will never forget walking into the room, this Chamber, as the machine had closed for Mr. Kasich's amendment to begin to balance the budget. Mr. Speaker, the year was 1989, and there were 38 Members, mostly Republicans, some Democrats, who supported John Kasich and his effort to get our country's financial house in order. I use the gentleman from Ohio, John Kasich, and his effort as kind of the benchmark of what happened over time. Every year when John Kasich introduced his amendment he got more people to sponsor it and more people to vote on it. It started out at 38, then it went to 50, then it went to 80 the year after, then it went to close to 100, then it went over 100, then it got closer to the middle range between 100 and 200, and then we got to a point where Tim Penny and John Kasich teamed together. Republican John Kasich and Tim Penny, a Democrat, were on a major amendment to save $90-plus billion in savings, in appropriated expenditures in particular. He got over 200. Every year there was progress. So as one Member of this Chamber, I know that as a Republican you should not be surprised I would speak for another Republican, but this Republican deserves really the thanks of the American people, and he deserves the thanks of Republicans and Democrats alike because he truly helped steer us in the direction for what we have today. Now people talk about the effort that he made over the last 7 months to balance the budget, to reduce the size of Government, to control the growth of entitlements and to have meaningful tax cuts to make this Government smaller and give the American people more of what they have been giving this Government. Seven months is just a little part of that story. The real story is his long journey in 1989, when more and more people sponsored and supported his efforts. He truly has been a leader in this Congress, and he will go down in history as a major part of this historic agreement. I also want to thank the Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. I want to thank him, as unpopular as he may be in some areas, but I am not surprised because frankly a lot of good leaders are unpopular when they seek to do what needs to happen. Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, is the first leader in my entire political career, and I have been in public office since 1974, when I served in the State house for 13 years, he is the first leader who has ever really truly asked a conference, a group of people, to do heavy lifting, to truly get our country's financial house in order. So when we adopted the Contract With America, and almost all of us who got elected on the Republican side of the aisle had said we want to move forward with these 10 major reforms on the opening day of the session and 10 major reforms in the first 100 days, that commitment, that was a true effort to do some major things. But we did not, for instance, just vote for a balanced budget amendment. In 1994, after the election and when we took over in 1995, we sought to balance the budget by making tough decisions in a whole host of programs to slow the growth of entitlements and to save them. For instance, Medicare was losing too much money each year. The trust fund, we were told by the President's own people in charge of the trust fund on Medicare; that is, health care for the elderly and the disabled, that it would run out of money around the turn of the century because too much money was flowing out of the fund. We slowed the growth of the program so we admittedly in 7 years under our old plan had spent 60 percent more over 7 years than 50 percent per beneficiary. But we were slowing the growth to try to get a handle on a program that is very important to all Americans. I guess what I really want to say because I do not want to speak too much longer: I am very proud to be part of this Congress, I am very proud the Republicans and Democrats could work together, I am very proud that this President recognized that he needed, frankly, to take some of his old legislative leaders out of this mix; Mr. Daschle and Mr. Gephardt were not part of the budget agreement because they clearly did not want an agreement, and he sought to have a true budget agreement with this Republican Congress. So we are finally getting our country's financial house in order and balancing the Federal budget. We are saving our trust funds at least for the next 10 years, particularly in Medicare. And we are doing something very important, we are transforming this caretaking, social and corporate and agricultural welfare state into what I call a care and opportunity society. We are trying with all the power that we have to be a caring Government rather than a caretaking Government. I salute the Republican Party for being determined to rein in entitlements and to cut taxes $91 billion net, but actually more than that. I salute the President for some of his spending priorities, but recognizing the President seemed to feel he won when he spent more and we seem to feel we would win when we slowed the growth of entitlements and cut taxes and made Government smaller. But some of what the President wanted to spend more on, on education, health, the environment and housing, I happen to agree with; I think a good number of the constituents I represent, in the urban areas in particular, in Stanford, in Norwalk, and Bridgeport, the three major urban areas I represent. I think this is a better agreement than most people ever expected, and for those who might be listening tonight and saying, you know, I will believe the tax cuts when I see them; well, turn on your TV set tomorrow and the next day. You will learn that we are going to lower the top rate of the capital gains from 28 to 20 percent, effective May 7, 1997. We are going to have that rate drop to 18 percent for any asset held more than 5 years, effective in the year 2001. We are going to have a $500 child tax credit, and excuse me; let me first say another capital gains exemption. If you have a gain, and this was something the President wanted. It seems pretty high, but this is something the President wanted, along with the Members of Congress, a $500,000 exemption for capital gains in housing. If you hold a house for 1\1/2\ years and you have a gain of $200,000, you pay no tax. That is your home. You pay no gain on that. We have an estate tax that would go through that that basically increases the exemption from $600 to $1 million over the next 10 years, but if you have a family-owned farm or a family-owned small business, the exemption is going to rise immediately to $1.3 million. If you own a farm, if you own a small business, the child tax credit, you will see tomorrow and the next day, a $500 tax credit for kids 16 and younger beginning in 1999, $400 beginning in 1998, up to families of incomes of $110,000, and if you are single, up to $75,000. You will see additional IRA's. You will see additional $31 billion of loss in revenue, of tax benefits for individuals choosing to send their children to the first 2 years of college, $1,500 off each year. The key is to make sure the colleges do not just increase their tuition, but it actually goes to the families and the kids. You will see businesses that will be able to benefit from the alternative minimum tax. You will see a slight increase in the tobacco tax, but it is going for health care. We are finally getting a handle on Medicare, we are finally getting a handle on some other entitlements, and we are going to save this country not just for our kids, but our kids' kids. I am very proud to be part of this Republican majority, I am proud of the work that John Kasich has done, I am proud of the work that Newt Gingrich has done under tremendous criticism over his time as Speaker during the last 2\1/2\ years. It is a privilege to serve in the House of Representatives and represent the people of the Fourth Congressional District. It is a privilege to be on the Committee on the Budget and to serve with John Kasich. It is a privilege to have Newt Gingrich as the Speaker of this House. I know many have been critical of his tenure over the last 2\1/2\ years, but I think history will be a very kind judge of Newt Gingrich.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Markey amendment. A number of us are supporting it for a very real reason. We are very concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We are very concerned that, as the cold war has ended, we are in a different kind of war, the kind of war that will occur when terrorists or rogue nations get access to nuclear weapons. Mr. Chairman, we can have long and extended debates about this issue, but the bottom line is that if we continue with pyroprocessing, we are going to be allowing a process to be developed that is quite simple, not complex, and nations that do not have a lot of resources will be able to get this type of technology because once we develop it, we cannot contain the knowledge. Once the knowledge is developed, it is there to share with everyone. Terrorists will get it. That is the bottom line. We talk about this being a serious issue. It is a serious issue. The promoters of this technique, pyroprocessing, make it very clear that this process can be developed in a very small room. When we had dialog about it, they said it could not be developed in a small room because other ancillary services would be needed that would make this product show up and be visible to many. But, Mr. Chairman, the fact is this is a process that can be developed in a small room. It is a process that separates uranium and can also lead to the separation of plutonium. The trusted scientists that we have spoken to make it very clear that while pyroprocessing does not separate plutonium, a slight change in the process can separate this item. Mr. Chairman, I cannot speak strongly enough. I wish I could be more eloquent about my feelings, but this is, in my judgment, something that is important to Illinois and Idaho. It is important to these two States because it is a jobs program. But it is absolutely deadly for this Nation and the world. For that reason, I support the Markey amendment and hope that tomorrow we will have the good sense to pass it.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, first, I want to thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes] on the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies bill, a job well done. There are lots of various issues that they have had to work out, and I think they are doing a tremendous job. My admiration goes out to both of them. I rise, however, in opposition, in strong opposition, to this amendment, a very sincere amendment on the part of the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt] but one that I think is very wrong. And I feel so strongly about it I was almost reluctant to get up because I am almost afraid of what I might say. I mean I hear people calling it the President's program, and yet the President worked very hard with Republicans to make it a bipartisan program. That is why, instead of it being a national program, one-third of the program is decided nationally, and two-thirds is decided by the States. Republicans really did a good one on the President, though, because when we allow States to do their programs, they are going to have good programs and bad programs. So instead of having a national program that, as my colleagues know, is pretty good, and no one can find any criticism, we allow States to be innovative. And so they have a number of good programs, but they have some that are not so good. And when AmeriCorps finds out what are the bad programs, they are eliminated. So what we have is some really excellent programs, and we have a few bad ones. I look in terms of where this money is going. I serve as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform, and we oversee the Veterans Department along with HUD and the Education Department and HHS, and so on. We have had 10 hearings on gulf war syndrome, and I think I can say with some authority that the problem is not funding of illnesses. The problem is the VA and the DOD failed to recognize the problem in the first place. It was not a money issue. We are going to spend in the 1998 budget $20 million earmarked for medical research in the VA HUD bill. We are going to spend $78 million in DOD budgets. We are going to spend $10 million in HHS. One hundred eight million is going to be spent on gulf war illnesses in the budget that exists right now. We have the money there to do the work. The question is, is the VA and the DOD going to spend the money the right way? There we might have debate. Mr. Chairman, I represent the cities of Stamford, Norwalk, and Bridgeport. I have kids who are hungering to be of service to this country. They are also hungering to get an education. A great Republican principle, I thought, was to not give them something, make them earn it. They earn it. They work at a minimum wage. Yes, we call them volunteers, even though we call it AmeriCorps. I am a Peace Corps volunteer. I got paid. I was given a stipend at the end, just like these volunteers who are doing service. They are participants, no different than Peace Corps volunteers, but they are working at basically $4 an hour. When they are done, unlike me in the Peace Corps, when I had money set aside that I could spend on anything, all these individuals can do is spend it on education. So for me, Mr. Chairman, this was a program that the President reached out to our side of the aisle, made two-thirds of it funded and decided by States, and therefore brought in the possibility that we could have some bad programs, which we are quick to criticize, and did not make it a national program. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to be asking for a rollcall vote on this issue. I accept the fact that our chairman of this committee is going to try to work it out in conference, and I accept the fact that his logic said that, better to keep some of the program there to be funded and argued with the Senate. But I just strongly, strongly oppose those on my side of the aisle and maybe a few on the other side of the aisle who have targeted AmeriCorps, because I think they are dead wrong. It has been a tremendous program for my cities in Bridgeport and Stamford and Norwalk. I have kids who are being of service. They are so grateful to be of service, and to know that they can get an education in the process.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I want to explain my support for S. 768, and say why this private bill serves an important public purpose. In January, Christopher Meili made a simple moral choice. When he found financial records documenting accounts opened by European Jews while the Nazis were in power, he could have ignored them. He was a security guard at the Union Bank of Switzerland, and he could have followed orders. He could have allowed the records to go to the shredder, to oblivion. Instead, Meili made a choice. He gave the records to Jewish leaders, to help them document the problem of assets stolen from the heirs of Holocaust victims. It's true that theft is less egregious than murder, greed less evil than race hatred. But justice demands a reckoning, a settling of accounts. Christopher Meili's choice placed him on the side of those against forgetting, in favor of justice. Christopher Meili's employer, the Union Bank of Switzerland, acknowledged that an employee had destroyed records in a regrettable incident. But the chairman accused Meili of having some other motive than morality or compliance with a Swiss law mandating preservation of these records. Christopher has also received death threats. He has had to leave his homeland, with his family. I support Christopher Meili's moral choice, and I support this bill.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, first let me thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs], the chairman, and the gentleman from California [Mr. Martinez], the ranking member, as well as the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Greenwood], the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott], and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], the chairman of the full Committee on Education and the Workforce. This is a bipartisan effort, and it is a recognition that one of the most important things we can do is to have preventive programs for our young people. I serve a district with 10 communities. There are three major cities, the cities of Stamford, Norwalk, and Bridgeport, where we have serious juvenile crime problems. If you meet with the chiefs of police of any of those three cities, they will tell you one basic thing: ``Give us prevention programs for our kids.'' I attended a Memorial Day parade in Fairfield, CT, a suburban community next to Bridgeport, CT. The parade route was lined with people and lots of kids. Then came the Indian Princesses, the Indian Guides, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the soccer team, the high school band, the junior high school band. It went on for almost 2 hours. That kind of parade in the city of Bridgeport would have lasted about 10 minutes. I think that sometimes, those of us who live in the suburbs take these extra curricular programs for granted. In the town of Fairfield, the challenge for kids is what don't you do after school. They have a tremendous overload of choices. But in the neighboring city of Bridgeport, the question is what do you do. A kid in many of our urban areas, when 2 o'clock is out, they are out, without adult supervision, without the kind of programs we need. I am absolutely convinced that preventative programs are the best way to combat crime. The city of Bridgeport has a program in Longfellow School. On Saturdays they bring kids in to do academic programs and to have some recreational programs. All are adult supervised, with discipline and rules. The kids hunger for this. They show up in droves. They want to be in school on Saturdays. In addition to this kind of program, we clearly need to make better use of our schools, before school and after school, and that is what this legislation allows as well. I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Martinez] for what he has done, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] for what he has done. This is just the beginning. Such sums as are necessary. Now we have to go to the Committee on Appropriations and make sure that the real sums that are necessary are appropriated.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Joseph Rosenberg of Bridgeport, CT, as he celebrates 50 years of living in the United States. For nearly a half-century Joseph has been an outstanding American citizen and role model for his peers. As a survivor of several World War II Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz, he is a living testament of courage, bravery, and the desire for freedom. Upon Joseph's arrival in the United States, he joined the Army and served his new country proudly. We are deeply grateful for his contributions to the Bridgeport community and our Nation. We should all be proud to have a fellow American as patriotic as Joseph Rosenberg. As he often says, ``There is no place like the United States. People don't know what freedom really is. It's great.''

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Fawell]. (Mr. FAWELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the chairman, the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. John Kasich], the gentleman who began this long march toward a balanced budget in 1989.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Jersey [Mrs. Roukema]. (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Boehner], our conference chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston].

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to point out to the gentlewoman from Hawaii who spoke earlier that in the State of Hawaii, the benefit that a welfare recipient receives is $13.65 an hour just for the cash payment and the food stamps. That is what they are required to pay off in a 20-hour work period. In the State of Connecticut, it is $10 an hour. The kindest thing we can do for someone is to move them off welfare and into work, and this is what our legislation does. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Talent], a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, but also the chairman of the Committee on Small Business.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran].

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware [Mr. Castle], the former Governor of Delaware.