Christopher Shays

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to follow my colleague from California, and also appreciate your willingness to take your time. I know you probably are getting ready to get back to your district. I will not take my full hour. I am not going to tell you how much time I will take, but I think it will be significantly less than that. Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you what it is like to think about what we have done in the last 2 years, because I have tremendous pride and satisfaction and gratitude that I have had the opportunity to serve in Congress and to be part of this new majority that really has attempted, and I think succeeded, in changing the direction that this country is headed. I think we are starting to end 40 years of bloated government, inefficient government, ineffective government and starting to turn the power and the money and the influence back home where it belongs. That is where we are attempting to empower people back home, because we have, one, faith in their ability to make the right decisions but, also, that they will make the decisions that are necessary for them in their own local communities. When we set out on this journey almost a year ago today, we were running on a Contract With America; 8 reforms on the opening day of the session and 10 reforms in the first 100 days. I remember some in the editorial boards would say how could I be part of this ``Contract With America,'' as if I had done something wrong. The more I thought about it, I thought what an absurdity. We are passing eight reforms. We are passing 10 major issues in the first 100 days; and it does not criticize President Clinton, it does not criticize then the majority in Congress, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is a positive plan for America. So I wondered whey they asked the question. I proceeded to respond by simply asking them: What do you think of the majority party's Contract With America, the 8 things they want to do on the opening day of Congress; the 10 things they want to do in the first 100 days? And I just enjoyed the silence. And I said is it not amazing that the minority party then, this Republican Party, knew what it wanted to do, said then it would do, and was proud of that effort? When we got elected people said we used this contract to get elected but we would not seek to implement it because it might be too controversial and take on some of the special interests that had been entrenched so long in Washington and we might stir up some things. We clearly stirred up some things, but for the good of the Nation. Mr. Rabin, for former Prime Minister of Israel said: Politicians are elected by adults to represent the children. This is about what kind of world they going to have. Mr. Speaker, we set out to implement these eight reforms the first day of Congress. The first was a bill that, Mr. Speaker, you and I worked on closely: Getting Congress under all the laws that we impose on everyone else. We were exempted for OSHA, civil rights, fair labor practices, the 40-hour work week. We put ourselves under the same laws as everyone else. What a great way to start that Congress. We also reduced the size of committees by a third, reducing the staff by a third. We reduced by $220 million the size of our budget. So we started to set the example. We were going to ask government to do with less. We were going to start with our own Congress. And so we saved in the last 2 years $420 million. Our budget is actually $220 million less than it was 2 years ago. So not only did we not add money for inflation, we actually are spending $220 million less; and over 2 years saved the taxpayers almost a half a billion in expenditures. We got rid of absurd perks like the ice bucket. I am embarrassed to suggest that we even had the ice buckets, but before the refrigerators we had ice, but after the refrigerators we had ice. We had 28 people in this Congress that would go around and drop off an ice bucket to everyone, even though we had ice in our refrigerators. We eliminated that kind of absurdity and others as well. We privatized some of the operations of Congress, making it more efficient and effective and making it more logical. There were times when we needed to use an office for extreme times of mail going out, and other times there was not enough mail going out. Yet we hired enough people to maximize for when we had that kind of workload. We got rid of proxy voting. Proxy voting was an interesting concept. It was a sheet of paper that the chairman had in his pocket and he would take the sheet out of his pocket and when an amendment was offered by his own party that he did not like, the chairman--I say ``he'' because until this year there was never a woman that was chair of a committee--and the chairman would take it out, and he would have the list of all of his committee members and he would vote for them. That was called proxy voting. It was right on his list. So the chairman was so powerful that he could even thwart the will of his own party and the will of his members because he always had enough in his pocket to defeat the amendment. So we did that, and we proceeded after the opening day of the session to do things like voting for a balanced budget amendment. The press got back into it. They said how could we be for what was really a positive plan for America. Those 8 reforms on opening day; the 10 reforms in the first 100 days; asking how we could be supportive of something that did not criticize Congress or the President. A positive plan. We said we would do it and we started to do it. And then they said, ``Well, you used it to get elected but you are not going to implement it.'' Mr. Speaker, we voted for a balanced budget amendment. They said that was easy. Anyone could vote for an amendment. But you are not going to vote to balance the budget. And then we started to vote to balance the budget. We dealt with tort reform and malpractice reform of some of these issues that the President vetoed, saving Medicare and so on. We proceeded to balance the Federal budget and make some tough decisions. We have three primary objectives. We want to get our financial house in order and balance the Federal budget; we want to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, for future generations; and, we want to transform this caretaking social and corporate and agricultural welfare state into a caring opportunity society. That is what we wanted to do, and that is what we set out to do. Now, why would we balance the budget? Because in the last 22 years our national debt has gone up 10 times, from $480 billion to $5.2 trillion. Not doubled, not tripled, not quadrupled; 10 times in 22 years in a time of relative peace. And getting back to Mr. Rabin, he said we are elected to represent our children. Just think what we are doing by ignoring that. We have taken a debt that was $480 billion and allowed it to grow to $5.2 trillion, and guess who pays for it? Our kids. That is the problem of deficit spending. We are asking someone else to pay for what we get to enjoy and what we get to consume. Now, we do not have a fetish with balancing the budget. In other words this is not the end-all and be-all. That is simply not it. But how do you build a strong structure on a foundation that is crumbling? Getting our financial house in order is the financial basis on which we built smart, sensible, caring programs. So that is what we are about. We are about building smart, caring, sensible programs and getting rid of a whole host of programs that have been there for so long that they do not make sense. They are just kind of like that ice bucket that we got rid of. It is symbolic, but think of how stupid it was to have the ice bucket every day coming to our office when we have refrigeration in our office. Spending $400,000 a year for those ice buckets times two, $800,000 in the course of 2 years for something dumb. Now, you can relate to getting rid of an ice bucket because it did not have a particularly good sounding name, but there are a host of programs that we have. The point about the ice bucket is simply this: Most people can understand the waste that exists there. But then there are programs that we have in a variety of departments and agencies that are just as wasteful. They have good-sounding names. They may be in the Education Department or they may be in HUD, but they end up being very small programs that have no critical mass and most of the money gets gobbled up by the administration and gets consumed by the executive branch. I am not blaming this Government, I am blaming the process, and I am actually critical of the fact that we failed to eliminate these programs for so long until now. We are getting rid of some programs with good-sounding names that simply have no critical mass and do not accomplish anything. So we are balancing the Federal budget to get our financial house in order so that we have a strong foundation to do smart, sensible programs. We are trying to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare. Medicare is fascinating. We are told in this political environment we are never to talk about Medicare, because it is called the third rail. You talk about Medicare, people on the other side can demagog it, and then you get hurt and you lost the election. Case closed. Unfortunately, with that kind of attitude, Medicare will continue to go deeper and deeper into the direction that it is headed which is literally bankruptcy. How do I know that? Because we have one report from the administration that says, last year, that Medicare would go bankrupt in the year 2002. We then had them come back to us and then so what did we do? What did this Congress do? This Congress tried to save Medicare, to preserve and protect, basically to defend the system against bankruptcy. Medicare is health care for the elderly and for the disabled, and so what did we do? We devised a very important plan that saves this program. In the process, we did not cut, but allowed the program to increase. This is the most important thing I think I need to say. We allowed Medicare to grow from about $178 to $289 billion, a 60-percent increase from last year now to the 6th year in the year 2002. We allowed it to grow 60 percent. Some said, you have a lot more seniors. It is true. On a per senior basis we allow it to grow 49 percent. From $4,800, to $7,100. So on a per person basis we are allowing Medicare to grow significantly in terms of total dollars, 7 percent more each year, 60 percent total in the course of the difference between last year to the 7th year, and on a per person basis it is going from $4,800 to $7,100. So we put lots more money into the program. But we were able to save the program. How did we save the program? We did not save it by increasing the copayment. We did not save it by increasing the deductible. And we did not save it by increasing the premium. Seniors were going to be asked to pay 31.5 percent of their premium. We did not ask that that increase and the taxpayers would continue to pay 68.5 percent. What did we do to save the program? We allowed the private sector to come in and compete on a fair basis with a fee-for-service system and offer better programs. If a senior wanted to, a senior could continue to get their traditional fee-for-service program with no increase in copayment, no increase in the deductible or the premium. But we allowed the private sector to come in, and the only way the private sector was allowed to come into the program under our legislation was if they offered eye care, if they offered dental care, if they offered maybe a rebate on the copayment, deductible. Some were going to pay the premium and some even said they could pay the Medigap in some parts of the country. There is so much money in Medicare that the private sector said they knew that they could offer better programs than the traditional Medicare system. Then we could have seniors simply say, I like my Medicare system, but if I can get eye care and dental care under the new Medicare system and I can get a rebate on the copayment or the premium and actually maybe even have my Medigap covered, I am going to go into that program. A senior goes into that program. They get the eye care, the dental care. They get the rebate on their copayment and deductible. They have more money. They even get money for prescription drugs. Not a bad deal, the co-payment and deductible and premium did not go up. But let us say for some reason they did not like the new program. Maybe they did not like that HMO. Maybe they did not like the doctors. Maybe they did not like the attitude or the billing process. Maybe there was a reason they did not like it. For the next 24 months we allowed seniors to go back into their traditional fee-for-service program. I suspect someone may have said, I am staying in my fee-for-service. I do not want to think about getting anything better. So they would never have gone into the program to start with. But say someone who is younger might have gone into the program. Then they did not like it, they could go back. Then they could get another program that they thought was better. What was the big mistake that we had in our program. We made a big mistake. One big mistake. We saved $270 billion. I thought, that is a mistake? But that is what the President said. He did not call it a savings. He called it a cut. So did my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Instead of allowing the program to grow at 10 percent a year we said it would grow at 7 percent a year. We put 60 percent more into the system. We gave a 49-percent increase per beneficiary. But we saved $270 billion. That is, in my judgment, something we should be very, very proud of. I am happy about the bill that the chairman, the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis], is bringing forward. There is more money in it for HOPWA, housing opportunities for people with AIDS. He had said on the floor of the House that we would try to address that problem. I understand there is more money for EPA that both sides could agree on and a program that I am very supportive of, national service. I look forward to getting this bill and debating it because at the same time we are still slowing the growth and saving significant sums. Mr. Speaker, just to conclude my point about Medicare, we did not increase the copayment, the deductible, or the premium. We gave seniors choice just like we have as Federal employees and we saved $270 billion. That $270 billion, half of which, as the Speaker knows because he led this fight, of the $270 billion, we put $132 billion right back into Medicare, part A and the $138 billion was available for Medicare, part B. We were looking to save the program. As the Speaker knows, because he has been a leader in this field and has spoken out so often, we know today that Medicare is losing $22 million each day, $22 million each day. We know that next year it will lose $36 million each day and in the year after it will lose $60 million each day unless we save this program by slowing its growth and taking the money that we slow, that $270 million, that savings, and plow it right back into the program. That is what we are doing. We did not increase the copayment, the deductible, or the premium and we saved Medicare until at least the year 2010. What to me was really surprising was how the President could call $270 billion a cut. I illustrate it, whatever opportunity I get, in saying that if I told my daughter that she could buy a car for $18,000 but I told her it had to be a full-sized car for $18,000, she could not have bucket seats, she could not have power windows and she could not have a CD, she could not have those things. I did not want her to buy a smaller car with those things. It had to be a good, large car that I wanted her to own. So I said, consistent with my trying to teach you how to do your own thing, you will go buy your own car. So I give her the $18,000 or tell her it is available. She spends a week looking and comes back all excited and says, ``Dad, I found the car of my dreams. I just love it, Dad, And, Dad, it has a sun roof and leather seats and it even has a CD.'' And I say to her, my daughter Jeramy, I say, ``Jeramy, I told you you could not do those things. I told you not to get a car with all those extras. I told you to get a full-sized car.'' She says, ``Dad, I did, I got a full-sized car but I got all those extras and here is $2,000 back because I did not spend $18,000, I only spent $16,000.'' And it would have been just as absurd if I had done this: I am ashamed of you for getting all these extras in the car and doing it and cutting $2,000. That would be absurd. That is no different than what the President did. We did not cut Medicare. It grew 7 percent a year, 60 percent from the last year to the 7th year, 49 percent per beneficiary from $4,800 to $7,100, but we gave them no increase in copayment or deductible, no increase in the premium, but what did we do? We gave them choice, lots of choice. They will get better care, and we saved the program because we got $270 billion of savings, not cuts, $132 million of it to go into Medicare, part A and $138 million to do and be available for Medicare, part B, which gets me to the third area of concern. The third area of concern is simply that we are trying to change this caretaking society into a caring society. The way we do that is to make government smaller and to empower people. All of those in our own family that we love dearly, we try to teach them to grow the seeds. The people we love the most, the people we care about the most, we do not give them something. We teach them, we help them, we push them. We encourage them to grow as individuals. I would certainly never say to my daughter, ``you do not need an education,'' and I certainly would not say to her, ``you do not need a job because I will be there.'' What a destructive thing to do. But that is what government does. We do not do it for welfare, for people who do not have education and the poor who have children. We do it for corporations. We have certain tax write-offs, which I call corporate loopholes, and others call it that as well. It is really, in my judgment, programs that make large corporations dependent on government, and they do not need to be. It is the reason why lobbyists become so important in this country, because if government was not so important, if it was not doing things for welfare, for businesses and agriculture, et cetera, and it was not so intrusive in your life, lobbyists would not be so important in our life. We want to make government less intrusive. We want to make it smaller. And we simply want to end the welfare that is destroying individuals. It is destroying corporations, and it is destroying the farmer. We are trying to help each become independent. That is why we passed the freedom to farm bill. We are allowing farmers to farm, not telling them they do not have to farm and then they are given a subsidy. They can compete. They can maximize the return on their farm. We are getting the Government out of the way. We are getting the government to be less supportive of things that are simply not necessary for corporations because we want them to compete without a lot of rules and regulations, except for health and safety and environmental reasons. In the process, we are trying to strengthen people. We are trying to help individuals grow the seeds and not give them the food. That is why I am so supportive of our welfare reform bill. What a destructive thing to have four, not three, four generations of people on welfare. They are doing what their parents did and they are doing what their grandparents did. They are staying on welfare because they were never taught to dream. They were not given the kind of push they needed and they were not given the kind of care they needed. We had job training programs that did not work because these were job training programs that said, you come in here and stay a bit of time. We teach you something and then you are out on your own. Our job training programs, our career bill is designed so differently. It is designed to say, we want to give you the day care, the job training, and we are going to follow you through work. Six months from now we are still going to be on your back. We are going to be pushing, encouraging you. The State of Connecticut has welfare reform, and it is very caring legislation. It is the kind of reason why we passed our bill in Washington. The caring legislation is this. We have 2 tracks, those who we think are employable and those who are not. Maybe they have mental challenges. Maybe they do not speak English well enough now so we have to teach them English. They have reasons why it may not be easy for them to get a job right away. But for the vast majority, we say, you are going to have to work. And Connecticut says, 21 months. And it does it this way: It helps people get the job. It allows them, this is really terrific, it does not penalize them for getting a job. They still can keep their entire welfare cash payment, they still keep their health care for the 21 months. So they get a job, they establish themselves for 2 years, they have this extra money coming in because they have their jobs plus they have the actual welfare benefits plus they get the health care benefits. Mr. Speaker, I remember in a Committee on the Budget meeting one time you pointed out one reason why people do not get off welfare is because they lose their health care. I remember in the dialogue that we had on the Committee on the Budget, the point was made that people should be able to keep their health care when they are pushed off of welfare so that they are not tempted to stay on welfare. So we push them in that direction. One bill that was controversial in this session was the minimum wage bill. I am so proud of how the Republican Party dealt with that issue because two-thirds of our party does not agree with that issue. They think that the minimum wage is too much of an intrusion on business. One-third supported it and a vast majority of people on the other side supported it. But we know that we had to do something else if we were going to pass the minimum wage, and that was to have some significant and meaningful tax cuts to small businesses who employ those who are considered the most unemployable, tax credits for those on welfare, tax credits for those who simply do not have the work experience to actually be yet credible to the employer. They know they might have to spend a year or two to train that person because they are not well-educated and not well-trained and they need the training. It is a cost to the business. They actually are discouraged from doing it under the present system until we passed our tax cut bill, $8 billion. Our tax cut bill took some of the things that we had in terms of our tax cuts when we were trying to pass the tax cut legislation earlier, which the President vetoed. Because the President did veto our 7-year balanced budget bill, he did veto our changes to Medicare with no increase in the copayment, the deductible, the premium and lots of choice and a savings of $270 billion, put right back into Medicare. He vetoed it. He vetoed Medicaid reform. He vetoed welfare reform, but finally the third time he decided he could support it. That bill we passed was basically the same bill that we had given him the first two times. So we have that bill, and he finally signed it. Well, we want to help people off of dependency in government, corporations and agriculture; we want to give them the job training as it relates to individuals, we want to give them the day care, and we want to allow them to work in their business, still keeping some of their welfare benefits for a period of time in health care. I am kind of drawing to a close, Mr. Speaker, but I do want to address this whole issue because we have had a lot of people criticizing this Congress, and for me, it is probably one of the most difficult things to contemplate. For the first time in the history of Congress, Congress is doing major heavy lifting. We are taking on some of the biggest and most powerful special interest groups to move this country to be more caring and less a caretaker. Those who want this Government to continue to be a caretaker are objecting to changes that we are making. Now, we passed and slowed the growth of some of our entitlements, but one of the ways that we are going to balance the budget is to slow some runaway programs, and in the process of slowing these runaway programs, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the school lunch program, the student loan program, Medicare, Medicaid, the student loan program actually is not running away. We are actually going along with exact numbers of loans that we did schedule to do; we are just continuing it. But let us take the Earned Income Tax Credit. It is a payment made to people who do not make enough money, but are working to really support themselves, so instead of paying taxes to the Federal Government, they pay Social Security, but instead of paying other taxes, they actually get a cash payment from the Government that, if they do not pay enough taxes or any taxes, they do not just get a reduction in their tax, they actually get a payment from the Federal Government. We allow that program to go from 19 billion to 25 billion, but our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that program, the Earned Income Tax Credit, tax credits for the working poor, that we are destroying the program, cutting the program. Only in Washington when you go from 19 million to 25 million do people call it a ``cut.'' I mean, it is absurd. It is a growing program and a very important program. We did decide that it should apply to income levels of $28,000 or less, not income levels of $36,000 or less. The school lunch program: I will never forget watching the President visit a school, trying to frighten the students and also the American people that we were cutting the school lunch program. I got pretty upset that we would cut the school lunch program, thinking we had done it. When I got back, I could not wait to speak to some of my colleagues who serve on the committees that would have done that, and this is what I found. What they were recommending and ultimately what we did until the President vetoed it: We allowed the school lunch program to grow from $5.2 to $6.8 billion. Only in Washington when you go from $5.2 to $6.8 billion do people call it a ``cut.'' The President calls it a cut, I have constituents who think I cut it, but when the learned it grew from $5.2 to $6.8 billion, they find that that is very acceptable. What did we do? The program is to grow at 5.2 percent more a year. We said, it should grow at 4.5 percent more a year, seven-tenths of a percent reduction in the growth. And what did we allow local communities to do? We cut the bureaucracy in Washington, which saved more than the money that we reduced in the growth. Then we gave to local communities and we allowed the State of Connecticut to say, for instance, that the school where my daughter goes to school and where her dad, who makes a good salary, and her mother, who makes a good salary, can find we do very well, my daughter's lunch is subsidized 17 cents by the Federal Government, every student in the country, 17 cents, rich or poor, wealthy communities and poor communities, 17 cents. We allowed the State of Connecticut and every other State to say, we want the money that is going to the wealthy communities to continue for the poor kids in the wealthy communities, but not for the wealthy kids in the wealthy communities. We then allow them to take that money and put it into Bridgeport and Norwalk and Stamford, for instance, in my Fourth Congressional District, the district I represent, for kids who are poor in relatively poor communities. Bridgeport is a working class, middle-income community, but it has a lot of poor people, and some kids do not get a breakfast, some kids do not get a dinner, they get that lunch. We do not want to take away that lunch. We want to give them a breakfast, and we want to give them a lunch and a dinner for those kids, and a kid in one of my suburban communities who is well-to-do should not be subsidized. So we did not cut the school lunch program. We allowed it to grow from $5.2 to $6.8 billion. The student loan program is the one that really gets me. $24 billion last year; that is what we spent, $36 billion in the seventh year. Those of you who are thinking mathematically know we increased it 50 percent. Only in Washington when you go from $24 billion to $36 billion would people call it a ``cut.'' But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle call it a ``cut,'' the President calls it a ``cut.'' It is simply not true. There is another word for when you say things are not true. It is not right for the President of the United States to go around the country and simply not say things that are not factually incorrect, in fact, factually so incorrect that he knows that. He knows that the student loan program is going from $24 to $36 billion. Now what we did do to save money is, we got rid of the direct student loan program. This was a government student program that, basically, we tied it down by getting rid of it? No, we clamped it down to 10 percent of all student loans. That is what we did, and this is a direct student loan program that the administration tried to tell us was cheaper than doing it through the banks. The only problem was they had not factored in all the people that the government had to hire to manage the student loans. So when you had a local college give a direct student loan bypassing the bank, you would think it would save money. But then who had to administer that student loan? You got it, the Federal Government, and the Federal Government did it with twice as many people as the banks and at twice the cost. So we just simply said, we have got to make sure we do not get too deep into that program because it is going to be so expensive that we are going to be spending more on administrative costs than we should. We saved billions of dollars by slowing and condensing that program. We did try and failed. We did try and failed to say that from graduation to the first 6 months, when you do not pay back the loan yet, your grace period, the taxpayers pay the interest on that loan. We said the students should. I am proud of the fact that we asked students to play a role in this process. Six months after they graduate they start paying back their 10-year or 15-year loan. In a basic 10-year loan, for the average loan, we were asking the students to pay $9 more a month. That is the price of a pizza. But where I live, it is the price of a movie and a small Coke. I have no problem saying to someone after they graduated from college or graduate school, 6 months after they graduate, they start to pay the loan back. It costs them $9 more a month. I have no problem saying you do not have to go to a movie maybe once a month. You may not be going to get that pizza, for the good of the country, so you do not have to pay a big debt later on. We are trying to get our financial house in order. It ends with the two points: Medicaid has grown from $89 to $127 billion. Again, only in Washington when you go from $89 to $127 billion do people call it a ``cut,'' but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle call it a ``cut.'' It is a significant increase in spending, and then, as I have already pointed out, Medicare is growing from $178 billion to $289 billion, $4,800 per senior to $7,100 per senior. Mr. Speaker, you have been very patient. I am drawing to a close. My biggest concern of all is that I have colleagues on this side of the aisle who have done some very, very heavy lifting. They have put, in a sense, their political careers on the line for the good of the country. We were told early on, when we got elected, the best way to get reelected is to avoid controversy, controversy is conceived as the enemy of the incumbent. We had a freshman class and a number of senior members and rank and file members of this conference that said, I do not want to be back if being back means we continue to allow the country to go bankrupt, if coming back means we ignore saving Medicare from bankruptcy, because, remember now, the President vetoed our Medicare plan. He vetoed it last year when we thought the plan was going to go bankrupt by the year 2002. Now we know it is going to go bankrupt by the end of the year 2000. We know we are losing $22 million a day in Medicare, we are losing $36 billion next year, projected, and $60 billion the year after that, every day. Who is going to deal with that problem? Are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle going to do that kind of heavy lifting? How could they possibly when they demagogue? How can they possibly do that if they simply oppose getting our financial house in order and balancing the budget and taking on the tough decisions? And so, Mr. Speaker, I just would like to end with the basic concept that the people we love the most, the people we care about the most, we try to teach them to grow the seed and to be better Americans. We try to free them up to compete in a very competitive environment. We try to help those who cannot help themselves, but not help those who can help themselves. Those that can help themselves need to be encouraged to be on their own, to work and to study and to grow as individuals. This Congress has taken on heavy lifting, and I hope and pray, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, I will say it this way: Those who have done the heavy lifting, those who have dealt squarely with the problems, those who have not demagogued the issues, those who have tried to serve this country with courage, those are the people who should be reelected and returned here; and if those are the people who are defeated, think of what the message will be. Those who survive, who were doing the heavy lifting, will say: ``I had better not do that again,'' and those who were critical of this heavy lifting, those who may demagogue the issue, are in there saying, ``Well, I had better just continue what I am doing,'' and that unfortunately is what has happened for the last 20 years. This is a crossroad in our country. I hope, I pray, that the true story will get out about the extraordinary job this Congress has done. We passed congressional accountability, we pass gift ban, we passed lobby disclosure, we passed the line item veto, we passed not imposing expenditures on local governments and State governments, the so-called unfunded mandate, bill, we passed welfare reform. We have changed welfare as we know it; it happened under our watch because of what we did. We have passed major changes in health care. We have passed the telecomm bill that will create 3 million jobs. We passed the Freedom to Farm bill. There are just so many other bills, the immigration bill that we hope to pass before we adjourn, and we have helped get our country's financial house in order. I have never ever been more proud to be part of this institution.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with great pleasure and distinct honor to wish Martha Falk of Darien, CT, a very happy 100th birthday. Martha's leadership in founding 60 Plus, as well as her continued commitment to Children's Aid, participation in each Memorial Day Parade and devotion to numerous charitable organizations, are an inspiration to us all. We salute Martha for being such an outstanding, vivacious role model for her peers and the community. Darien is a better place to live and work thanks to Martha's humorous outlook and dedication to improving and enhancing the lives of others. Martha is a real treasure! She can look back on a long and fulfilling life with the satisfaction of having made a significant contribution and look ahead to the opportunity to add to these precious memories. I am proud to have Martha Falk as a constituent and wish her continued happiness and success.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, it is my intention to use about 30 minutes, give or take, and then yield back time which then will be claimed by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon]. With that, I would like to just thank you for serving as Speaker, as Acting Speaker, and to tell you that I was looking forward to addressing this Chamber tonight, particularly more so after hearing my colleagues who just preceded me. For a variety of reasons, I just strongly disagree with their attempt to really spin what this Congress has done. Let me say from the outset I have never been more proud to be a Republican in this 104th Congress, to serve with so many other men and women who believe deeply in doing some very important lifting for this country. Preceding the 1994 election, Republicans who were in the minority made a determination that we wanted to present a very positive plan for the American people, and that this plan would be a statement of what we intended to do if in fact we became part of a new majority. We decided that we would set forward this plan in a Capitol steps event, and not just invite incumbent Members of Congress, but those that were challenging incumbent Members of Congress. We also decided we wanted people to have a sense that if there was this new Congress, there would be a major shift in policy and direction, and that we would promise to do much like what might happen in Britain or Canada or Israel, that when you had a change in government, you really had a change in direction. So we set out with what we called the Contract With America. It was a contract that we collectively, Republicans, both incumbents and those challenging, put together. When we started working on our Contract With America, there were things we took out because we could not sign if they were still in. So what remained of our contract was a piece of effort that really had the support of almost everyone, 390-plus Members and challengers who signed this Contract With America, and I was one of them. I remember when I was being interviewed by one of the editorial boards before the 1994 election, I was asked how could I as a moderate Republican sign on to the Contract With America, as if somehow this contract was something that I would not be proud to be associated with. So I thought about it a second, and I said to the people asking me the question, ``What do you think of the Democrats' Contract With America? The 8 reforms they want on opening day, the 10 reforms they want in the first 100 days?'' I asked the question and waited for an answer, and I waited. And finally I said, ``Isn't it interesting that the majority party,'' the then Democrats who were then the majority, ``had no plan, didn't share what they wanted to do, no sense of direction?'' And here you had a minority party that was not sure it would be in the majority, promising they would do certain things. I said, ``Isn't it also interesting that our Contract With America did not criticize President Clinton or the 103d Congress or the 102d Congress or the 101st Congress?'' There was not any criticism of Democrats. It was just a positive plan of what we wanted to do. The reforms in the first day of Congress, those eight reforms, getting Congress to live under all the laws that we imposed on the rest of the country, Congress had exempted itself from the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the age discrimination, the family and medical leave, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Employee Polygraph Protection Act, the Worker Protection Act and so on. This Congress put Congress under all the laws we imposed on everyone else. So we are now under the 40-hour workweek. That was one of the reforms in our Contract With America. We also cut the number of committees, we cut the number of staff in the committees. We did something that was really monumental, though I think it is hard to explain, we eliminated proxy voting. Proxy voting was the process where a chairman would get a Member to sign a proxy that gave the chairman the right to cast his vote or her vote. And it was the reason why chairmen controlled the committees, because they had a fistful of proxies. And when we eliminated proxy voting, we brought democracy back to Congress. In fact, there were a lot of good Democrats who lost in previous elections, not because they were not trying to do the right thing, it is just they could not get beyond their chairman who had so many proxies in their pocket. They could not pass legislation that they themselves wanted to pass what the American people had asked for. What this Congress is attempting to do, and we have succeeded in a whole host of areas, our first is we are trying to get our financial house in order and balance the Federal budget, not because balancing the budget is the most important thing or the end result. It is the foundation. So in that sense it is the most important because what is built on top of it has to have a strong foundation. So we have to balance the budget and get our financial house in order so that when we do programs, they will be on a strong financial footing. The second thing we need to do is save our trust funds from bankruptcy, particularly Medicare. We learned last year that Medicare would go bankrupt in the year 2002. Now we are learning that Medicare may go bankrupt in the year 2000. It is going bankrupt because more money is going out of the fund than coming in because we are spending too much money. So we are looking to save Medicare. We had a plan and the President vetoed it. And he vetoed it when we thought the fund was going bankrupt in the year 2002. Since his veto we now know it is going to go bankrupt basically in 19 to 20 months sooner. And our third effort is to transform our social, our caretaking society into a caring society, to transform our social and corporate and agricultural welfare state into a caring opportunity society. We want to end welfare not just for people who have been on it for years but for corporations and for those large farms in particular that have become addicted to government price supports, and so on. So that is what our effort is. Now my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talked about the cruelty of cutting the school lunch program, the student loan program, Medicaid and Medicare. First and foremost, I have to be direct, we are not cutting those programs. So the very premise on which my colleagues spoke is just wrong. Now, one of the things they talked about was the earned income tax credit. This is a payment made to someone who works but does not make enough to pay taxes, so they get something back from other taxpayers. It is an earned income tax credit. They are working Americans who get something from the government. They said we were cutting that program. Yet the program is going to grow from 1995 to the year 2002 from $19.9 to $25 billion. Now, only in this place and where the virus is spreading, when you go from $19.9 to $25 billion do people call it a cut. This earned income tax credit is important and we want it to go for families. We want to help families have money when they are working poor. The school lunch program is going to grow from $5.1 billion to $6.8 billion. Again, only in this place and where the virus is spreading, when you grow from $5.1 billion to $6.8 billion do people call it a cut. Now, what we did do is the following. The school lunch program is going to grow at 5.5 percent more a year. It is going to grow at 5.2 percent more a year. We said it should grow at 4.5 percent more each year. So we are going to spend 4.5 percent more each year. But then what we did is we said 20 percent of it, State and local governments could reallocate. We got rid of all the Federal bureaucracy involved in the program, saving the money so the students could have it, not the bureaucracy. So we allowed the student loan program to grow at 4.5 percent more each year. That enables it to grow from $5.1 billion to $6.8 billion in the seventh year. We allowed governments, local governments, to transform and the States to transform 20 percent of it, to transfer it and to transform it so that a child in a suburban area who comes with parents that make a decent income like myself would not have their daughter subsidized. Why should my daughter have 17 cents of her meals subsidized by the Federal Government when I make a nice salary as a Member of Congress and my wife teaches? So we were going to allow local communities to take that money and spend it in communities that need it more, like my cities of Bridgeport and Norwalk and Stanford for kids who come from parents who do not have much income. So rather than taking and slowing the growth of this program and giving some children less increase than they would have gotten, they are going to get more because we are going to take it from those who make a lot of money and give it to those who need it. The student loan program is another example of where my colleagues are just totally off base. Now, the student loan program, which was last year $20 billion under our plan, would go to $36 billion. That is a 50-percent increase in the student loan program. A 50-percent increase in the student loan program is not a cut. It is an increase. It is a 50 percent increase. So we are going to go from $24 billion to $36 billion. What did we propose? Republicans said that when the student graduates, they have 6 months in which they then pay the loan from that 6 months on. When they graduate for that first 6 months, that interest was paid by the taxpayer. We wanted the student to pay that interest from when they graduate to that first 6 months and amortize it over the course of a 10- or 15-year loan. That would have amounted for the average loan to $9 more a month to a student with an average loan of about $17,000, $9 more a month now that they have been out of school for 6 months. $9 more a month is the equivalent of, in my part of the country, the price of a movie theater and a small Coke or a piece of pizza. I have no problem telling the student for the good of the country that they can pay $9 more a month after they have graduated and are now working. But that notwithstanding, we still spend the same amount of money, $24 billion to $36 billion, a 50 percent increase in the student loan program. Medicaid, we are told that we wanted to cut Medicaid and that this is health care for the poor and nursing care for the elderly. That grows from $89 billion to $127 billion under our plan. Only in Washington when you go from $89 billion to $127 billion do people call it a cut, but they just did. They just did. Previous to my addressing Congress, my colleagues said we were cutting the Medicaid program. Medicaid is the program, however, that I want to talk about in more detail. We spent last year $178 billion, a lot of money. In the 7th year of our plan we will spend $289 billion. That is a 60-percent increase in the amount of spending that we will make in the seventh year as opposed to what we did last year. Now, only in Washington when you go from $178 billion to $289 billion do people call it a cut. Now, people then said, well, you need more money because you have more seniors. If you have more seniors, you need more money. We do have more seniors. On a per person basis per senior we spend $4,800 on average per senior for Medicare. That is health care for the elderly and health care and other assistance for those who have disabilities. In the seventh year we will spend $7,100. That is a 49 percent increase per person from last year to the seventh year, or the year 2002. Yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said we were mercilessly savaging Medicare. And yet it is going to grow 60 percent in total and 49 percent per person. Now, what did we do with Medicare? We did not increase copayment to the senior. We did not increase the deductible. We did not increase the premium except for the wealthiest of wealthy. The premium for those who are single, who are seniors who make over $125,000, they will have to pay all of Medicare part B. And if you are married and you make over $175,000, you have to pay all of Medicare part B. If you are married, $175,000, you pay all of Medicare part B. So we did not increase the copayment, did not increase the deductible, did not increase the premium. What we also did, though, is we gave seniors choice. Right now a Medicare recipient has one program, a traditional fee-for-service. We allow them to keep that program if they want, but we then bring in the private sector, various HMO's, allowing hospitals and doctors to compete with HMO's, allowing for medical savings accounts, allowing for all these different programs. And the only way that these new programs can participate is that they offer something better than Medicare, because they have to draw people away from the traditional fee-for-service program. How do they do that? They do it by doing something very logical. There is so much money to be made in Medicare, so many people are making so much money that the private sector can come in and give you better service. They can give you eye care, dental care, a rebate on the copayment, the deductible or premium, and some have even in certain areas said we can give a rebate, actually may pay all of MediGap. So now we have a Medicare program that grows from 178 to 289 billion. We did not increase the copayment, did not increase the premium. We allow the private sector to come in to offer eye care, dental care, a rebate on the copayment or deductible or the premium and maybe even pay all of MediGap. What was our one mistake? We made a mistake. At least that is what the President said. What was that mistake? We happened to save $240 billion. Now, how were we able to do it? Instead of the program growing at 10 percent a year, we had it grow at 7 percent a year. How were we able to have the program grow at 7 percent a year? Because when we asked the private sector how much they would require to offer the same as the fee-for-service program, they said, if you put 3 percent more in the program, we can make money off the program and give you the traditional fee-for-service. We said, what happens if we give you 7 percent? They said, if you put 7 percent in the program, we can give better than the fee-for-service, we can give the eye care, the dental care, the rebate on the copayment or the deductible or the premium. So now I am thinking about a program that does not increase the copayment, the deductible, the premium, gives seniors choices and saves $240 billion. Yet the President said, that is a cut. Yet we are spending 60 percent more totally, 49 percent more per person. And I was trying to think of how I would describe this. The only way I can describe it, and it seems somewhat ludicrous, but it is really. I mean, I guess what I have to say is I never thought the President would veto the Medicare plan. Why would he do it when we did not increase the copayment or deductible or premium and gave seniors choice and saves $240 billion? I do not understand why he would have done that. There is no explanation for it. It is just about as stupid as if I had said to my daughter, which I will not do, but if I said to my daughter, honey, I want you to buy an automobile and I want it to be full size because I want you to be in a big car. And I only have $16,000, and I want it to be a full size car. And I say that means you cannot, you can only get a cassette radio, you cannot get a CD and you will not be able to get a sun roof and leather seats. It is going to be a big size care and it is going to be stripped down. And give her this $16,000, and she comes back all excited and she says, Dad, I got the car. And Dad, you will not believe it; it has a sunroof and it has a CD and it has got leather seats. And I say to her, Jeremy, I told you you could not do that. You were not supposed to do that. I get mad at her because she did it because I wanted here to get a full sized car. And she said, I bought that full sized car. And by the way, Dad, here is a thousand dollars back. It only cost me $15,000. Would it not have been stupid of me to say, you did something wrong? You got a better car with more things and you saved $1,000 and I say you cut $1,000? I think that is pretty stupid, but I do not think it is any different than what the President did. He basically vetoed a bill that had no increase in copayment, deductible or premium, gave seniors choice and saved the country, the taxpayers $240 billion. Now, when I look at this program and I look at what we have been doing, I am trying to think of what happened in the first 2 years of the Clinton administration when they had their own Congress. There was talk that we were forced into passing a minimum wage bill. Some on our side supported it. But it is not lost on any of us that they did not attempt to pass the minimum wage bill when they controlled the House and the Senate and Congress. But when we passed the minimum wage bill, we did something more. We provided $8 billion of tax cuts for businesses that employed people who make the least amount of money, who in some cases need to be trained, who are on welfare. We are giving tax credits for small businesses so they can compete in a very competitive work environment. We passed the welfare reform bill. That is a bill that the President said he wanted to pass and yet he could not pass it under a Democrat Congress. We passed it in this Chamber. He said it was too harsh. He said he did not like it and he signs the bill. Now my colleagues on this side of the aisle have got to be careful when they talk about certain things they think are harsh and then sign onto them. They cannot have it both ways. We passed 13 budgets this past year. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said that some of them were harsh. I am not quite sure why they think that, but they were signed into law by the President. The President cannot sign them into law and then say they are too harsh, nor can my colleagues vote for it and then act like they did not vote for it. What have we tried to do? We tried to get our financial house in order by cutting, truly cutting discretionary spending, making Government smaller. 1945 We want to return the power and the money and the influence, take it away from Washington, give it back to States and local governments, and the reason we want to do that is we think the Federal Government has a one-size-fits-all mentality. We think the Federal Government basically says, adds up all the people in the room, adds up their collective shoe size, divides the number of people and their collective shoe size, and says there is an 8\1/2\. I do not care if you wear a size 12, I do not care if you wear a size 6. Wear it. One size fits all no matter what part of the country you come from. We believe that States and local governments can do it better. We also think that they can do it better without the Federal Government setting up a whole great deal of regulation and rules and a bureaucracy that siphons off 10, 20, 30 percent of what we choose to spend for the people who we are ultimately trying to help. I look back and think of my 22 years in public life, and this summarizes what I think government ultimately should do because it is what we want to do for our own children. I have a dad who passed away recently, but he used to come back from New York City because I was on the commuter line. My dad worked in New York from Darien, CT, and he would come home every night, and I was the last of four boys, and all my brothers were off in college and out of college, and we would read stories that he had read in the newspaper, and he would sometimes bring home an Ann Landers column that he thought was interesting, humorous, or instructive. And Ann Landers said something that I think summarizes the feelings I have about what we are about in this 104th Congress. She wrote: In the final analysis it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings. I believe a caring society has to teach people how to grow the seeds, how to farm the land, how to fish, not give them the food, not give them the fish. When we give them the food or the fish, that is a short- term effort; but when it goes from one generation to another generation, as it has both in terms of individual lives, in terms of corporate write-offs, in terms of agricultural subsidies, we make people dependent, we make them less efficient, and frankly we have done something very cruel. There is nothing caring about constantly giving people the food without ultimately teaching them how to be independent. And so what we would like to do for our own children and for our own families and the people we love, it seems to me ultimately we should do for those in our society who need the most help. I believe this is the most caring Congress that I have ever, ever seen. I believe it is the most caring Congress because we are dealing with big issues; we are not sweeping things under the rugs as had been swept under the rugs for years and years and years under previous Congresses. We are trying to make our country self-sufficient, we are trying to make our constituents self-sufficient, we are trying to bring the money and the power and the influence back home where it belongs. With that Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield back the balance of my time. If my colleague is here, I am not yet about to give it up, but I do not see him, but when I do I will yield it back, but just continue by saying that as a moderate Republican I take some real interest in the fact that this Congress that is deemed to be a conservative Congress is dealing with some very important issues, whether it is health care reform which we passed and the President signed into law, whether it is welfare reform, whether it was the tax cuts found in the minimum wage bill, whether it was the telecom bill that passed recently. We have a major agenda, some of which has been passed into law by President Clinton, others which have been vetoed. Sadly, he vetoed 2 welfare bills. Sadly, he vetoed our Medicare reform bill. Sadly, he vetoed our Medicaid bill, which was an attempt to allow State governments the opportunity to manage health care for the poor because, frankly, that is where you have seen the greatest reforms. One of the things I am most proud about as a Republican is that 31, I think 32, of the 50 Governors happen to be Republicans. They represent 75 percent of all the American people, and the faith that I have in our plan to bring the money and the power and the influence from Washington to local communities, the satisfaction that I have, is the knowledge that we have had Governors, Republican Governors and Democrat Governors, who have made Medicare work on a State and local level, who are making welfare reform work on a State and local level. The State of Connecticut has welfare reform, and one of the things we have done, which is a very caring aspect of this effort, is that in our welfare reform bill in the State of Connecticut, while we are pushing people off of welfare, when they work they are allowed to keep their welfare health care, and by their keeping their health care they are able to protect their families while they are working in a job that does not yet provide that. So our State is saving money as well by having welfare health care be under managed care, and the logic was if the average man and woman in this country has managed care for health care, why should it not also apply for those who have it as seniors who would take it by choice, not by requirement, or those who have it as welfare recipients who pay no taxes, who are getting health care at the taxpayers' expense; why should they not have managed care, and why would they not have better health care, and the fact is they have better health care by it being managed.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, this is an historic day I am thrilled to be able to celebrate. This is, in fact, a bipartisan effort. Republicans wanted a tax cut, and some Democrats wanted a minimum wage, and some Republicans. We united in a common goal to do both. We have $8 billion of tax cuts for businesses who are going to hire the most unemployable in our society. We have a minimum wage for those who work for the least amount. As my colleagues, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Quinn], a leader in this effort pointed out, this is not just an historic day, it is an historic week, because we passed welfare reform. We want to get people off of welfare and onto work. It is very important that we have a minimum wage that is competitive with welfare. Welfare recipients will have a minimum wage that will not pay them 20 percent more. In a 40-hour workweek they were making $8,000. They will now receive $10,000. This was an effort that would not have passed had it not been bipartisan. I might just express one slight concern with the bill. We are kind of distorting the concept of how we classify workers, and this is an issue we are going to have to find a way to address, because we have too many workers who work as outside consultants who then are not paid certain benefits. I just want to lay that on the table for the record. We have to find a way to make sure that workers are properly classified. But this bill does two things it needs to do. It provides tax cuts and it provides a livable minimum wage. No one can live, in my judgment, on a minimum wage if they only work 40 hours a week. But tell me, what people in society only work 40 hours a week and succeed? This, to me, is truly an historic day. I congratulate both Republicans and Democrats on their combined effort to provide a minimum wage and tax cut for those businesses that need it.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I salute the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Hastert, the gentleman from California Mr. Thomas, the gentleman from Texas Mr. Archer, the gentleman from Virginia Mr. Bliley, and my colleague from Connecticut, Mrs. Johnson, on our side of the aisle, and I know there are Members on the other side who deserve credit as well because this is a bipartisan effort. I am grateful in a bipartisan effort we have ensured portability of insurance, limited preexisting condition exclusions, required health insurance providers that serve small group plans to accept every small employer, and I am grateful that we have made health care more affordable and available by reducing administrative costs, but I want to speak to title 2 of the bill, particularly, which attempts to address the $100 billion of health care fraud. Both presidents Bush and Clinton had advocated that we deal with this. Unfortunately, President Clinton's proposal was in his socialized medicine plan, but that part of the plan that said deal with fraud had merit. It was what President Bush also had suggested. The gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff] and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Towns] and I on our committee had worked on this, and we are happy to see it included in the bill, because in the past we dealt with fraud such as wire and mail fraud and attempted to get someone who cheated the system when we had hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud. Now we are making health care fraud a Federal offense, not just for Medicare but also for Medicaid, for CHAMPUS and all private providers. This obviously makes sense, and I salute my colleagues for doing it. We just need to know that those who commit fraud have a tough test. They should have known for a civil penalty the issue is that there has to be knowing and willful attempt to defraud the system. This does not go at individuals who have unknowingly miscoded. This goes after the real pattern of continued fraud, and I salute this bill and those on both sides of the aisle who have, for the first time in decades, attempted to get at waste, fraud, and abuse in a very real way.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, politicians are elected by adults to represent the children. We need to save our children from crippling national debt, Government debt. We need to make sure that our trust funds, like Medicare, are there for our children. And most importantly, we need to enable, we need to help our children become independent citizens of this great and magnificent country. This bill helps to transform our caretaking, social and corporate welfare state into a caring opportunity society. I extend tremendous admiration to the gentleman from Florida, [Mr. Shaw] for not giving into those who wanted to weaken the bill so that it would end up not doing anything. We have a caring bill that does this. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings. It ends this caretaking society and moves toward a caring society where we teach our children and the adults who raise our children how to grow the seeds, how to have the food.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I would say right off that I have tremendous disagreement with the presentation that was just made by my distinguished colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I look forward to filling in some of the missing pieces that I think were left out, to give people a better idea of clearly what happened last year and what we are attempting to have happen this year. Mr. Speaker, we have three primary objectives in this new Republican majority. Our first objective is to get our financial house in order and balance the Federal budget, not because balancing the Federal budget is the end-all and be-all, it is just the basic commonsense logic that is required before you build on top of it. We want a strong foundation. But the foundation is not what we want to have as the ultimate. We want to have a stronger economy that has to be built on a strong foundation of getting our financial house in order and balancing the Federal budget. Our second interest and concern is to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, for future generations. I will get into great depth about the reason why we need to save this trust fund and the reason why our plan did save this trust fund. Our third objective is to transform our caretaking social and corporate and, frankly, farming welfare state into a caring opportunity society. We want to teach people how to fish, not just give them the fish. We just do not have that problem in social welfare for welfare mothers, where we have had now three generations of welfare mothers, but we have the same challenge in corporate assistance that is not necessary, that is carved out for special interests, that was created basically during the last 40 years when this majority was in the minority. We see it as well with our effort to reduce the subsidies that exist to our agricultural sector. Mr. Speaker, getting our financial house is order to us is kind of basic stuff. The challenge is that one-third of the budget is what we call discretionary spending. We vote on a third of the budget each and every year. We do not vote on 50 percent of the budget. Fifty percent of the budget are entitlements: Medicare, which is health care for the elderly and health care for the disabled; Medicaid, which is health care for the poor and nursing care for the elderly poor; and programs like agricultural subsidies, food stamps. You fit the title, you get the money, you get a benefit from the program, even, in fact, without a specific vote each and every year by Congress. So Congress votes on a third of the budget. Fifty percent of the budget is on automatic pilot. Then there is about 15 percent left, which is interest on the national debt, also on automatic pilot. What we did was we cut domestic spending. We made Government smaller. In the parts of the budget, the 13 bills that we report out each and every year, we made the Government smaller. We eliminated 240 program. Some of them might have been large programs, some were small, but we eliminated 240 programs in Government and made Government smaller. We had a freeze on defense spending; not an increase, not a cut. We basically attempted to freeze defense spending last year when we voted out our budget. Then what we looked to do was slow the growth of entitlements. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle made reference to the fact the Republicans are claiming we are slowing the growth of entitlements. We are not claiming it, that is what we are doing, we are slowing the growth of entitlements. Some entitlements were growing at 10 percent and 11 percent and 12 percent a year. We are allowing them to grow at 7 percent a year. We are going to spend 7 percent more on some entitlements, where before we spent 10 percent. We are slowing the growth of entitlements. That is the reality. Look at what we did and then tell me if you think it is a cut. Last year we looked to slow the growth of the school lunch program from $5.2 billion to allow it to grow to $6.8 billion. Last year it was $5.2 billion, and in 2002, the 7th year, it would be $6.8 billion. If Members remember, the President of the United States actually went to schools and told young schoolchildren and the world community that we wanted to cut the student loan program. When I heard the President do that, I was pretty outraged, because I thought, my gosh, what are we doing? Who in my conference, Republican Conference, would do that? When I got back over the weekend and came back down to Washington, I immediately went to the individuals who were on the committee that would have jurisdiction, pretty unhappy that they would ``cut the school lunch program.'' I learned they were going to allow it to grow from $5.2 billion to $6.8. That is obviously not a cut, that is an increase. What they did do is they slowed its growth ever so slightly, but hen allowed 20 percent of the funds to be reallocated to the most needy areas. I represent three urban areas. I represent Bridgeport, Connecticut, a middle class community with a lot of poor people and a declining tax base. I represent a community, the city of Norwalk, and another city of Stamford. These cities have young children, in particular, who need school lunches. I represent some very wealthy communities, vibrant, wonderful communities, suburban communities around these cities. Under our present school lunch program, these students are subsidized. My daughter is subsidized, as all students are in the country, 13 cents per lunch. I am hard-pressed to know why my daughter, who has a father who is a Congressman and a mother who teaches, whose income collectively is quite satisfactory, obviously more than satisfactory, well above the median income, why does my daughter need to be subsidized? She does not. Republicans passed a bill allowing 20 percent of the program to be reallocated to the most needy areas, our urban and rural areas, where we may have young children who need a better school lunch program. So we allowed the program to grow from $5.2 to $6.8 billion, still staying in the school system. The student loan program last year was $24 billion, $24.5 billion. Members have been told that we cut the student loan program, yet the student loan program under our plan will be, in the seventh year, $36 billion. That is a 50-percent increase in the program in a 7-year period. Only in this place, and frankly, from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, when you spend 50 percent more do people call it a cut. Every student will be given the same basic grant programs that they had in the past. They will be given the same grant program. What we did try to do, and we ultimately withdrew this, and I regret that we did, we said that students would pay the interest from when they graduate to the 6-month grace period before they have to start paying the loan. Taxpayers were required in the past to pay for that and presently pay for it. Taxpayers pay that interest. What we said is the student can pay for it, and it would be amortized during the life of the loan, the 10 to 15 years students are allowed to pay back the loan. That meant for an average student loan, it means $9 more a month. So we were asking students once they were out of school, 6 months later when they were working, to pay $9 more a month. That is the price in my area of a movie and a Coca-Cola, or basically the price of a pizza. That is what we did. We allowed the program to grow from $24 billion to $36 billion, and then said students would pay the interest after they graduated, 6 months after they graduated, and they could amortize that part of the interest and pay it over the course of the next 10 years. I have no problem looking at any student and saying, for the good of the country, you can afford and should pay that $9 more a month. Why would we want to ask anyone to make any sacrifice, if it is viewed as even a sacrifice? I view that as an opportunity, because during the last 22 years our national debt has grown 10 times. It has grown from about $480 billion, that is what it was 22 years ago, and now it is over $5,000 billion, or actually it is $5.1 trillion. So we have a situation where during our lifetime, during the last 22 years, during a time of relative peace, we have allowed the national debt to increase tenfold. What we are trying to do is get our financial house in order. We are trying to balance the budget and we are trying to say to all Americans, if we all do our part, we can eliminate those deficits that are robbing future economic growth and basically bankrupting our children. That is what it is doing, it is basically saying to our children that they have to pay the bill for our expenditures. Mr. Speaker, we did not cut the student loan program, it grows from $5.2 billion to $6.8 billion, and allow for 20 percent of the program to be reprogrammed, so allow the wealthier kids, basically allow communities to take these sums that go to people like me, who do not need to have our families subsidized, and provide it for children in urban areas and rural areas and some suburban areas, where they simply cannot afford and sometimes actually go hungry at night. We can help them. We allow the student loan program to grow 50 percent, from $24 billion to $36 billion. Again, I would say, only when you increase 50 percent do people call it a cut. They call it a cut usually on that side of the aisle. Mr. Speaker, the earned income tax credit is a program that a lot of people believe in. I sure believe in it. The earned income tax credit is a program that basically says, you are working but you do not make enough money to really survive, pay your room and board; basically, to pay your living accommodations, pay for your food. You just simply do not have enough. What we do is for people who earn so little, they do not pay it. Under the earned income tax credit, they are actually given money from other taxpayers. Taxpayers are giving some taxpayers or some working Americans money. They do not pay a tax, they are given the money. That is called the earned income tax credit for the very poor. We allow that program to grow from $19.9 billion to $25.4 billion in the next 7 years, last year versus now in the year 2002. Only in Washington when you go from $19.9 billion to $25 billion do people call it a cut. What I want to get into is just two very important programs. They are sure important to me, and I think most Members on both sides of the aisle. Medicaid, under our plan on Medicaid, we allow the program, which is $89 billion of expenditure on health care for the poor and nursing care for the elderly, which also has a State match in addition to that money, to grow from the seventh year to $127 billion, so going from $89 billion to $127 billion. Only when you grow that much do people call it a cut. It is not a cut. It was $89 billion. It is growing to $127 billion, a significant increase in the program. What I am going to talk about in more detail, though, however, because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle basically totally, frankly, got it all wrong--that is a generous way to say it. The ungenerous way would basically be to say that they simply do not have their facts right, and they do not. I know they would not intentionally mislead people, but the end result of their presentation was misleading. Because our Medicare program last year, on a basis of $178 billion, grew to $289 billion. So that is a 60 percent increase in our program. Basically what we said was that Medicare would grow at 10 percent a year, the traditional Medicare program would grow at 10 percent a year. We want it to grow a 7 percent a year. Want it to grow 60 percent, from last year to the seventh year, the year 2002. When you grow from $178 billion to $289 billion, my colleagues call it a cut on the other side of the aisle, even though it is a 60 percent increase. One of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, said, they may have spent more and are slowing the growth, but there are more people in the system. That is a fair point. There are more people in the system. So what we did is we broke it down on a per person basis to know if we were cutting the program, because the last thing we want to do and can afford to do is literally cut the program. Health care costs more. We are going to need more to pay for additional health care costs. Last year we spent $4,800 per senior, per senior on Medicare. Under our plan, the plan went to $7,100. That is a 49 percent increase, a 49 percent increase in Medicare. Now, per person, only when you go from $4,800 per person to $7,100 per person do people call it a cut. That is not a cut. By any definition, when you go from $4,800 per person to $7,100 per person, growing at 50 percent per person, that is not a cut. In terms of total dollars, when you go from $178 billion to $289 billion, that is a 60 percent increase. You cannot call it a cut. It is a 60 percent increase in spending. How were we able to do it? How were we able to have the program grow from $178 billion to $289 billion, and save, our colleagues said $270 billion, which they call a cut, how were we able to save $240 billion? Because that is how CBO scored that number. As one time they said it was $270 billion. Then they rescored it to say it was $240 billion. When we allowed the program to grow overall 60 percent, per person 49 percent, we still save $240 billion. How can it save $240 billion? What happens is, instead of allowing it to grow at 10 percent a year, we allow it to grow at 7 percent a year. How do we do that? How can we provide the same level of service and have it grow at 7 percent a year instead of 10 percent? The fact is we not only do that but we provide a better service. How could that be? How could you have a program that is growing at 10 percent a year, now you say it is going to grow at 7 percent a year, you are going to save $240 billion, and you say it is going to be a better program? The fact is, it is quite simple to understand. We did not do it, contrary to what my colleague said, by increasing the co-payment. We did not do it by increasing the deductible that seniors pay. We did not do it by increasing the premiums that seniors pay except for the very wealthiest. This is something that some people on my side do not always like to acknowledge. We are asking the wealthiest to pay more on premium, the very wealthy. We are saying that the very wealthy should not get free Medicare services premium without paying more. So we say that someone who is single that makes over $100,000 should pay all of Medicare Part B. We are saying a married couple that earns $175,000 should pay all of Medicare part B. So we are asking the very wealthiest under our plan to pay more. But the 99.5 percent of the American people, we are not increasing the premium at all. We did not increase the deduction, we did not increase the copayment, we kept the premium at 31.5 percent. What happened? What was so significant about 31.5 percent? The taxpayer pays 68.5 percent of Medicare Part B. Why would we want to save $240 billion? The reason we want to save $240 billion is that is wasted money. The program is gong bankrupt. Medicare is going bankrupt. The program my colleagues on that side of the aisle and this side of the aisle appreciate, respect, know it is very important for our country, that program is going bankrupt. Mr. Speaker, the problem is that my colleagues on that side of the aisle choose not to deal with the issue. Our colleagues on this side of the aisle had the courage, frankly, to deal with the issue and deal straight with the American people. We said that the premium should stay at 31.5 percent. What is significant about that? Taxpayers are paying 68.5 percent. What some may not know is that the premium under the tax plan that President Clinton passed in 1993 had the seniors pay increases up to 31.5 percent by last year, but then in the election year, they allowed it to drop to 25 percent. So seniors last year were paying $46 per month. Now they are paying $42 a month. It dropped $4. We said keep it at 46; not increase it, keep it at the 31.5 percent. Why would we have wanted to do it? Because the program is literally running out of money. So we kept the co-payment the same, the deduction the same, the premium the same. We did not let the premium drop, and we saved $240 billion. How would we save $240 billion? Because we went to the private sector. Why would we have gone to the private sector? We went to the private sector because we felt that the public sector was providing a plan with too much waste, fraud, and abuse. We said that the Federal Government simply was not policing the system well. So we asked people in the private sector, if we allowed Medicare to grow at 7 percent a year, could you provide a better program? They said we could provide the same level of program. They said we not only can provide the same level, we can provide a better program at 7 percent. We can provide eye care, dental care, maybe a rebate on the co-payment and the deductible. Some plans said we could even pay all of the premium. Some even went to say we can do a rebate on the co-payment, the deduction, pay all the premium and MediGap, MediGap which is paid by the seniors, the 20 percent paid by seniors for health care services. These plans said we could do it. How could they do it? They said, if you allow it to grow at 7 percent a year, you are spending 7 percent each year; that is a lot of new money. They know we are going from $178 to $289 billion. We are not spending less, we are spending more. They know, if we spend more they can provide more. What we did is we devised a plan that my constituents have asked for for a long time. They said you, meaning me, a Member of the Federal Government, a Member of Congress, have many choices of health care. We want the same kind of choices you have. So what we did is we devised a plan to give them choice. Seniors will be allowed under our plan to keep their traditional fee-for-service plan or they can get all these different private health care plans that will provide the eye care, the dental care, a rebate on the co-payment and the deductible, no premium cost or maybe even some reduction or contribution to the MediGap payment. They will get those benefits and get better care. Mr. Speaker, I was trying to understand how the President of the United States first off would veto that plan. We made, this side of the aisle, a very real mistake. We did not think the President of the United States would veto a plan that did not increase the co-payment on the deductible or the premium, gave seniors a choice. We simply did not think he would veto it. Maybe we should have realized that, this being a political year, it was too tempting not to demagogue the issue and veto it. This is ultimately what the President did. He vetoed a plan that would have taken that $240 billion and put it into the program so that Medicare parts A and B would have been solvent to 2010. What we have learned subsequent to his veto, that the health care providers, the people who administer the Medicare plan have pointed out, that the plan now goes bankrupt, not in 2002. And by bankrupt I mean there is no money left in the fund. What is that money that goes in the fund? It is the money that every taxpayer pays, the 1.45 percent that the employee pays and the 1.45 percent matching that the employer pays. If you are self-employed, the 2.9 percent that you pay for Medicare goes into a trust fund. Last year that fund lost $35 million. This year it is losing already over $5 billion, and it is going to go bankrupt by 2001, not the end of 2001, the beginning of 2001, basically at the end of 2000. That plan is going bankrupt. Our plan would have injected into Medicare Part B about half of that $240 billion and saved that fund to 2010 when our big challenge is that we start to have the children that are basically the baby boomers. Our challenge is quite simple: We passed a plan that did not increase the co-payment, did not increase the deduction, did not increase the premium, allowed the program to grow from $4,800 to $7,100, a 49- percent increase per beneficiary, a 60-percent increase in total cost, gave seniors choice. The President vetoed the plan. How would I explain the effect of that? The only way I have come up with to explain how stupid it was and how irresponsible it was for that plan to be vetoed is to basically give the following analogy. If I had, and I would not do this for my daughter, but if I said to my daughter she could have $20,000 to buy a basic, say, Taurus automobile which would not give her bucket seats and leather seats, power windows, and it would not give her basically, say, a sunroof, some of the amenities, I would say: Honey, you cannot buy those things. Here is the money. You are to buy a basic car that will serve you well in the years to come. I give my daughter $20,000, which I will not do. So I say: Honey, do not think you will get that. But if I did and she went out and she looked at different automobiles and she came back to me with tears in her eyes because she had disobeyed me, and I said: Honey, did you get a car? She said: I bought a car, Dad. And I said: Now, Jeramy, you got the kind of car I asked you to get, right? She said: Well, Dad, not quite. I said: What do you mean not quite? I gave you $20,000 to buy a basic Taurus automobile. And she said: Dad, well, I did not do what you asked; I did not do what you asked. I bought a car with leather seats, a sunroof, and other amenities. I even got not a cassette, but I got a better hi-fi system. I start to get mad at her. She says: And furthermore, Dad, I did not spend $20,000; here is $2,000 back. She hands me that $2,000. She bought a better automobile, but she disobeyed me. I say to her: Honey, you did not do what I asked; you cut $2,000. Well, obviously she did not cut $2,000. She saved $2,000, and obviously I would not be unhappy with it. I would have said that she did the right thing, and I would have congratulated her on saving $2,000 and getting a better product. That is what we did with Medicare. And so what is the tragedy? The tragedy is that we could have saved $240 billion over the next 7 years. Now we have not. It is an opportunity lost. Our failure to save the Medicare system, slow its growth, provide a better program, and our failure to do that means that we are going to have to make severe reductions in other programs because it is a basic concept of opportunity lost. If you continue to spend so much money on entitlements, your other programs are going to have to be reduced more. If you can make some savings here, your programs here do not have to be as tightly regulated and cut as much, because we are cutting some programs; not cutting the earned income tax credit, not cutting the school lunch program, not cutting the student loan program, not cutting Medicaid, not cutting Medicare and allowing all those programs to increase. This get me to a basic point, the third point. We want to get our financial house in order and balance the Federal budget. We cannot allow these gigantic annual deficits to continue at the end of each year to add to our national debt. We want to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, from bankruptcy, and we did that with our plan. Regrettably the plan was vetoed by the President. But the third thing we want to do is we want to transform this caretaking social and corporate and agricultural welfare state into a caring opportunity society. We want to help people in this country grow the seeds, we want to help people in this country learn how to grow the food, and want to help people in this country to fish rather than to be given the fish, and it seems kind of basic, and I have to say as a centrist or moderate Republican, someone who has voted for some programs that were meant to do good things but ultimately did not accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, I have had to say we have to be up-front with ourselves and with the country. Some of what we have done has been destructive. We do not have 12-year-olds having babies and 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds having babies by accident. We do not have young people selling drugs without some factors contributing to it. We do not have 15-year-olds killing each other without some factors contributing to it. We do not have 18-year-olds who cannot read their diplomas and not recognize that the government has been a contributor to that. Or the fact that 24- year-olds have never held a job, not because jobs do not exist. Jobs exist. The problem is that some people think it is a dead-end job. If I had ever said to my dad that I did not want that job because it was a dead-end job, my dad would have asked me how long I had worked there and doubled the amount of time I worked. Because my dad would have known that a job teaches you to get up in the morning, it teaches you to be of service to people, it teaches you to recognize that you do something, you make a contribution, and in return you are paid for it. A job that some would call a dead-end job is the beginning to a job of greater opportunity when you learn basic skills. This Republican majority wants to end welfare as we know it. We do it by providing day care and job training. We just want the job training and the day care to be purposeful to helping get people off welfare. When I was growing up, my dad used to commute into New York. When he commuted into New York, he would read three papers in the morning and he would read three papers in the evening and he would come back filled with so many wonderful stories. My three older brothers were 11, 8, and 7 years older, so for part of my childhood in junior high school and high school and part of even elementary school, I was really an only child. My dad would come home at night and we would talk about so many different issues. Sometimes he would come back and read something that maybe Ann Landers had said, a crazy question someone asked Ann Landers and her response that usually was quite sensible and we would always try and anticipate what she would say. My dad would say this was the question, what do you think she is going to say? I was looking at a calendar I have and each day there is a kind of a quote identified with someone who is usually a well-known person. It is really the quote of that day. On April 3, I was looking at my calendar, thinking about the very things I am talking about now, and there was a quote from Ann Landers. In the quote she said, ``In the final analysis, it is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.'' I want to read that again. This is her quote. She said, ``In the final analysis, it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.'' I began to think about this and think of what I have done in the last few years. Whenever I have someone in my office who talks to me or I am meeting with someone who really started at a lower economic echelon in terms of they just grew, they are not poor now but they were poor, and they did not particularly have a life where their mom and dad had the kind of hopes and dreams that they have, but they have become very successful, I ask them why. What was it that enabled them to be successful? To a person they had someone who cared about them, someone who loved them, who mentored them, who sometimes basically kicked them in the butt and told them to get off their rear end and get working; who did not give them excuses about maybe they had encountered something and they wanted to feel like a victim. Their mentor got them to stop thinking of themselves as victims and realize they could take control. What a gift to teach someone, that they can take control. They also said they had people who taught them to dream. Now, we have to wrestle with the fact that we have young kids who basically have a disadvantage because they do not have someone giving them a lift, they do not have good parenting, they do not have the advantage of someone who helps them to realize they are not a victim, that they have the ability. But every one who I have encountered has made it clear to me that in their case they did. So I have asked them if they would do for their child what government does for so many of our citizens, and they have said there is not a chance that they would ever do that. They know that the kind of welfare system we have now is a caretaking type of system. It makes us feel good because we care for them and we are being caretakers, but we truly are not caring for them because if we cared for them our focus would be on what we have taught them to do for themselves. We know that is what is going to make them successful human beings. It is not giving, it is teaching, it is guiding, it is helping people dream. That is the motivation, the very caring motivation of this Republican majority. Out the window goes this caretaking approach. We want a caring society. We want health care, we want day care, we want job training for our poor, but we want to encourage them, push them out a little bit, help them know that they are going to have to get a job, and we are going to have to encourage them and guide them and teach them how to dream. We are going to have to teach parents how to be parents, when we have kids raising kids. We are going to have to do all of that. That is caring. We have to stop just giving people something and then allowing them to just expect that more is going to be given to them. This is probably the most important thing that can come from this new Republican majority. Now, I cannot say that this new Republican majority is going to win reelection, because we have had to deal with a tremendous amount of demagoguery. We have had to deal with people who have said we are cutting Medicare and Medicaid and we are cutting welfare when we are not doing those things. I talked about what happened last year, and what I want to do is just talk about what is in our plan for the next 6 years and use these charts. During the last 6 years we spent $8.7 billion. During the next 6 years we are looking to spend $10.4 billion. We are looking to have basically a $2 billion increase in the total. Trillion, I am sorry. This is $8.7 trillion spent in the last 6 years and this is $10.4 trillion spent in the next 6 years. We are basically looking to spend in the next 6 years $2 trillion more than we spent in the last 6 years. Now, I talked about what we did with the student loan program in our budget last year. Now we are in the next year of the budget. It is not $24 billion, it is $26 billion, as we expected. This is the student loan program. We are allowing the student loan program, now not in the next 7 years in the next 6 years, it is going to grow 42 percent. In 7 years it would grow more than 50 percent, but in the next 6 years it will grow 42 percent. Our budget is identical, basically in the turquoise, with the President's budget, which is in the red: $26 billion this year, $37 billion in the 6th year of our program, by the year 2002. Both the President and this Congress want to spend the same amount for the student loans. The earned income tax credit. During the last 6 years we spent $109 billion on the Earned Income Tax Credit. Now, the earned income tax credit is money that is given to people who work who make very little, so little, in fact, that they do not pay taxes other than social security. They actually get money back from the taxpayers, and it cost us during the last 6 years $109 billion. In the next 6 years it is going to cost us $156 billion. Only in Washington, when we have spent in the last 6 years $109 billion and then have it grow to $156 billion, do people call it a cut. But some on the other side of the aisle actually call that a cut. And by the way, that program, like the student loan program, grows over 40 percent during that 6-year period. Welfare spending. We have heard the Republicans are basically cutting welfare spending. But how is it, if welfare spending was for the last 6 years $441 billion and in the next 6 years, under our plan, we are going to spend $576 billion? How is it when it grows 30 percent, we are going to spend 30 percent more dollars, can people call it a cut? It is an increase and, frankly, it is a sizable increase. We are talking about well over $100 billion of new additional dollars being spent. In our plan what we do is we get welfare recipients off welfare and we get them back into work, and they are provided job training and day care and health care benefits. They are allowed to keep their health care benefits even though they are working. They are allowed to keep some of their welfare benefits, even though they will be working. Medicaid spending. During the last 6 years we spent $463 billion. During the next 6 years we are going to spend $731 billion. This is the Medicaid program. The Medicaid program was $463 billion. We will be, in terms of the last 6 years and in the next 6 years, it will grow to $731 billion. Only when we grow from $463 billion to $731 billion do people call it a cut, but they call it a cut. It blows my mind. They call it a cut when we are spending so much more. This gets me now to the Medicare trust fund. The Medicare trust fund is going bankrupt. It is kind of a scary thing to contemplate, because basically this side of the aisle is really the only one who has truly attempted to deal with the issue of making sure that it will not go bankrupt by the year 2001, right here. Now, we are in the year 1996, and we know that the program is losing billions of dollars. This chart here illustrates how much it is losing. Last year we were told the program was going to grow by $4 billion. Instead of being zero, we were going to add $4 billion to the trust fund. Now, it is kind of hard to see, but there is a small red line here and it amounts to $35 million less money in the fund at the beginning of 1995 until the end of 1995. The fiscal year 1995. So we ended up with less money, $35 million less. Now, in terms of this fund, that is not a tremendous amount of dollars, considering how many dollars are in the fund. But when we realize we were not supposed to have a $35 million loss, we were supposed to have over a $5 billion increase, and then in this year, when we were told the program was going to begin to go bankrupt already, and I am talking by April, we have $4.2 billion less in the fund than we started out in the beginning of that fiscal year. We are being told now by the trust fund that in spite of the fact and because of, frankly, the President vetoing our bill, that the trust fund is going to go bankrupt not at the end of the year 2002 but beginning in the year 2001. And that was just a nice political way to say the end of the year 2000. It will go bankrupt 2 years sooner. I just have two more charts, and I would just love to just point out that our Medicare spending during the last 6 years, we spent $920 billion. In the next 6 years we are going to spend $1.4 trillion. Only in this place, when we have spent $920 billion and then we are going to spend $1.4 trillion, do people call it a cut. It is a 61-percent increase in a 6-year period of more dollars spent. On a per-person basis, now remembering that this plan is now a 6-year plan instead of a 7, it grows from $5.2 to 7,000. I have a colleague who would like to join me, but I would just like to touch on one last point. When I was elected in this last election and I was meeting with people from the editorial boards, they asked how could I as a moderate Republican have signed on to the Contract With America. I answered them by asking them a question. Now, remember, we were many the minority then. We were in the minority. And we came out with a Contract With America which said the eight reforms we wanted to do on opening day and the ten major reforms we wanted to do in the first 100 days. I answered their question by asking a question. I said, ``What do you think of the majority party's Contract With America?'' Meaning in this case the Democrats who had been in control for 40 years and still were in control. I just enjoyed the silence, because there was no plan. They had no plan. I said is it not amazing that the minority party then, the Republican Party, had a plan of reforms for the first day, eight reforms, and a plan for the first 100 days, major reforms, balancing the Federal budget, dealing with tort reform, malpractice reform, saving our trust funds, all of those very viable important programs, I said is it not amazing that the minority party has a plan and the majority party does not? Then I said something that means more to me than almost anything else. First off, there was not a Member who signed that who did not have a role to play in fitting it together, and I am joined now by my colleague who played a major role in making sure that this contract actually came to fruition, who was not an incumbent at the time, who helped us write it. And the exciting thing was that this was put together by over 390 Members of Congress or challengers. This was a positive plan that did not criticize President Clinton, did not criticize Congress, it just said if you elect us, this is what we will do. I want to emphasize before yielding to my colleague this point. The press is constantly saying why do we always criticize the other side? Why are we so partisan? I am thinking, when we finally had a clear-cut plan that did not criticize the President, did not criticize Congress, then the Democrats in Congress, but just simply said you elect us and this is what we will do, they were critical of it. Then when we started to implement it and do what we said we would do, they started to criticize us again. It just made me realize that doing the kind of changes that we need to do to save this country are not easy, but I count my blessings each and every day that I have the opportunity to be part of that change. Mr. Speaker, with that, I would like to recognize my colleague, who I am very pleased has joined me.

Mr. SHAYS. Thirty-eight percent of their income is paid in taxes, where when my parents were raising me it was about 15 percent. And my parents were allowed a much larger deduction per child than families are today. Let me close and thank my colleagues for joining me by saying that this new Republican majority has three basic objectives: to get our financial house in order and balance the budget; and the second, to save our trust funds particularly Medicare from bankruptcy; and our third effort is to transform our caretaking society into a caring society, to transform our caretaking social and corporate and agricultural welfare state into a caring opportunity society. We are looking to bring money, power, and influence out of Washington back to people in local communities. And we are going to do this for the good of the children because, as Mr. Rabin said, the former Prime Minister of Israel, politicians are elected by adults to represent the children. And this Republican Congress is looking to represent the children so that they have a brighter future than we had. With that, Mr. Speaker, I truly thank you for giving us this opportunity, and I am going to yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SHAYS. It is inaccurate for two reasons. First off, recognizing that part of it is a trust fund, the Medicare Part A is a trust fund and Medicare Part B is funded out of the taxes. And we tax revenues and the premium that people pay. By our saving $240 billion, half of that goes into the trust fund and the other half basically reduces the burden to the taxpayer of continuing to spend more for a program where we do not have to spend more. But the other part is that they are not tax cuts for the wealthy. The two-thirds of the tax cut that we proposed was a $500 tax cut basically, not a tax cut, well it was a tax cut, $500 tax credit per child for families making under $100,000. So if you had a family of four children, and you were making under $100,000, you would have in your payroll $2,000 more. What was the logic of that? It is not a tax cut to the wealthy; it is a tax cut to families. And if you were making $30,000 or $40,000, you may end up paying no taxes because that $2,000 reduction may eliminate all of your Federal taxes except for the Social Security tax. That was a tax cut, a tax credit for families. Not wealthy people, for families.

Mr. SHAYS. The collective gross dollars. We are spending $920 billion, or we spent in the last 6 years $920 billion. In the next 6 years, $1,479 billion or $1.4 trillion. This clearly is a significant increase. Now if our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we should be spending $1.6 trillion, then let us have that debate. But then the question is why? I ask myself why would we want to spend more when we did not increase the copayment, did not increase the deductible, did not increase the premium except for the very wealthy? And if they do not like the choice programs, they do not have to go to the choice programs. They can stay in the traditional fee-for-service. But if they went to a program that had eye care and dental care and did not like the doctor, they can go right back to their traditional fee- for-service Medicare plan. And we saved $240 billion. If we saved $240 billion, what happened it? What happened is it went into the program to make sure it does not go bankrupt for the next 14 years.

Mr. SHAYS. This chart that I have here is what we are doing this year. This is Medicare in terms of what we are spending over the last 6 years versus----

Mr. SHAYS. It is a fair debate to say you are spending $4,800. Let us take what we did last year that the President vetoed. We went from $4,800 per beneficiary to $7,100, a 49-percent increase in terms of per-beneficiary costs. We allowed it to grow 49 percent from $4,800 to $7,100. Now, it is fair to say if someone wants to, well, you are allowing it to increase and you are allowing it to increase quite significantly because that is not enough. We want it to grow to $7,500. That is a debate that is valid and then we have that debate. But what happened was that I would go back to my district and my constituents would say well, some of your congressional colleagues from around the State said that you have cut Medicare, and I give them the number and they say that is not a cut.

Mr. SHAYS. I have to say when you brought out the rule on the congressional accountability bill which was to get Congress to live by all the laws that we impose on everyone else, you were not speaking for the freshmen, you were speaking for the majority in this Congress and the vast majority of American people who knew it was ludicrous, immoral, and harmful for Congress not to be under the laws that we impose on the rest of the country. Our Founding Fathers, as you pointed out in that early debate, and I have used your quote since, our Founding Fathers, Madison in particular, and in his Paper 57, basically said, of course, the protection to the people would be that of course Congress would live under the same laws it imposes on the people and it would not impose laws on itself that it could not live by. Little did Madison know that for about a 30-year period, Congress did not want to live under certain laws but was willing to impose the laws on everyone else. If the gentleman would allow me to continue, you did a superb job of just making sure that the American people heard the plainness and sensibility of that effort. And I was instantly very proud. I have to tell you, at first my nose was a little out of joint. I have to tell you I thought these freshmen, they are just here and they are taking over. And I said, thank God, because you all did us proud. You took the floor that opening day on every rule, and you spoke for all of us. And I was never more proud to be associated with an effort than when you came and brought this bill to the Chamber and to join you when it was signed and it was a bipartisan effort. It happened under this Republican Congress but it was a bipartisan effort. The interesting thing, and I am holding the floor probably longer than I should, but you talked about today what we did. What we did today, or what we had not had to do before, was before this bill passed we did not have to give overtime and we did not have to give compensatory time. We did not have to pay someone 40 hours plus time and a half. And we did not have to live under OSHA and a lot other laws. But now all of a sudden we are living under the laws that we impose on others, the 40-hour work week and time and a half. In the past, there are some employees who are actually behind you, who were unhappy that we had a situation where we were denying them the opportunity to have compensatory time. I am talking generally about employees who worked in Congress. And so today what did we do? We passed a law, with basically very little support from the other side of the aisle, that said if an employer is willing and an employee wants, and the employee has to want this, an employee can get instead of time and a half pay, they can get time and a half overtime. So, if they worked 20 days, they can get 30 days off with pay. Or they can cash in their 20 days of work and get 30 days of pay immediately and continue to work. We gave that choice to the employee and employer. And amazingly, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle just thought that was wrong.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe this debate. I simply do not believe this debate. This is really a debate between union leaders and rank-and-file members. The union leaders tell me they do not want their employees to have the choice, their union workers to have the choice between getting time and a half pay for time and a half vacation. The employees, the union members tell me they want the choice. It just seems to me logically that we would give them the choice. What this bill does is simply allow for them to get time and a half pay or time and a half off. So, if an individual works 10 days, they would get 15 days off. If they worked 20 days overtime, they would get 30 days off. Their choice. If they chose not to, they could get 10 days of work. They could get 15 days of pay, 20 days of extra work. They could get 30 days of pay. Tis is basically a choice to the individuals who work to allow them to decide for themselves. They are not idiots. They are not fools. Give them the choice. What I cannot understand is the protections we have for these employees are the same as we have under the Fair Labor Standards Act, under the Family and Medical Leave. They can go to court directly or they can go to the Labor Department and the Labor Department can go to court against an employer who basically coerces a worker. We have all the protections. Why should people in the private sector not have the same right that exists in the State, local, and Federal Governments?

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, this has been an amazing experience because this is a time in the history of Congress where two-thirds of Congress believes we should move forward in a certain direction where two-thirds of the majority party for very valid reasons disagrees, and this was a test of this Republican Party on whether a minority within the party could have some opportunity to pursue with the minority party on the other side. I am absolutely convinced that we have been dealing in good faith on this issue. There were other issues in the Senate, like some Member holding up the health care bill, and it seemed logical that that was a bill we wanted because we wanted to deal with the issue of transportability and preexisting condition and the health care fraud positions there and the medical savings accounts and so on, and that bill was being held up by the minority party there, and there were some on our side who said, ``Well, if that's the case, then the minimum wage, we're just going to wait on the conference report.'' But both have been resolved, and we are having a debate now that is somewhat academic because I understand as soon as the debate is over we will have individuals appointed to the conference committee. But I just want to, one, thank my leadership for their willingness in my conference and particularly the Members who strongly disagreed because they thought it would and still believe that jobs would be at risk and that profits will be at risk and that prices would be at risk. We disagree, those of us who support raising the minimum wage. We have a very good debate on the floor of the House. I believe people on both sides of the aisle were dealing in good faith. Two- thirds of this conference wants to move forward on the minimum wage. I think that will happen, and to the credit of this majority party we just did not vote out a minimum-wage package, we voted out a package of economic stimulus tax credits for those individuals who are hiring the least employable. So I think we got a better bill through the synergies that exist. I recognize that the Democrat Party has been pushing the minimum wage, that they cut a clear majority on their side, they had a role to play in this process. But this side of the aisle, and I do make the point, as has been illustrated, but they did have 2 years when they were in power they could have brought this bill up. And we do understand that there is a lot of politics involved in this process, as well. But to the credit, we are moving forward, we will see Members appointed to the conference committee, and I urge adoption of this conference effort.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding, and I thank both of my colleagues from New York, Mr. Gilman and Mr. Rangel, for allowing those of us who are not part of New York, but certainly part of this Congress, to just express our love and our admiration and affection for Ham Fish. But I want to claim him as someone who had tremendous impact on Connecticut because his district was in Westchester County, to the west of Connecticut and to the north of part of our district. In fact, I think Ham's home and my home are probably less than 20 minutes apart. Ham Fish was a good friend of my predecessor, Stewart McKinney. They were two very distinguished Members of this Chamber, both of whom are no longer living. But I remember thinking as a young person that I was represented by an extraordinary man, Stewart McKinney, but also I felt in some ways represented by another extraordinary individual, Ham Fish, because he was still part of our area, and he was just someone who stood out almost any time he spoke as someone who was thoughtful, someone who was quiet in one sense, but strong behind that quietness, and at times you do not always get to see the courageousness of a Member, but you saw it periodically in some very key votes where Ham Fish simply was kind of going against the tide of maybe his district or maybe his party. But you always felt that he was doing what he felt was right, not with a sense of arrogance, but with a sense of conviction and a willingness to accept however his constituents judged him. So as a member of Connecticut's Fourth Congressional District and someone who got to see him in his function not only as a Member when I came here but as someone who I loved and admired before I got here, it was a privilege to be able to have served with him. This would probably be hard for someone who is now 50 years old to say that he had a sense of a fatherly figure for me, but I did feel like I could go up to him and say, this is what I am wrestling with, and it was not a difficult issue for him to help me analyze. He just helped me sort out what my feelings were and what my constituents' feelings were, and then what did I think was right and why did I think it was right, and he just gave me a nice process to move forward. And once in a while when I felt that I was maybe taking a stand that might take a little bit of courage, it did not seem like courage when after you spoke with Ham you just felt like you were doing the right thing, even, and I make this very key point, even when it was voting against the way he wanted me to vote. I think one of the nicest things you can say about someone is that they will tell you the truth and they do not have any hidden agenda, and so there were times Ham wanted me to do something and vote a certain way, but he would know where I was coming from, and he said, well, given you, and given the way you think, and given your district, this may not be the way you want to go, and he would do that even if it risked losing a bill that he wanted very much. I just want to again thank my colleagues. Mr. Rangel, if Ham Fish could make you want to be a better person, that kind of drew me over here, and he made all of us want to be a better person, and I just want to express my love, my condolences, to his wife Mary Ann, to his sons, Nicholas and Peter and Ham Fish III, and to his daughter, Alexa Fish Ward, and to their eight grandchildren. You have a precious husband, father, and grandfather to always remember. You have benefited by his love and affection, but so have we.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I support the Fox-Mollohan amendment, this bipartisan amendment. I voted for the Commerce-Justice-State bill last year, reducing support for the Legal Services Corporation from $400 million to $278 million. I never in my wildest imagination thought I would be voting to reduce it even further, yet even with this amendment we are seeking to restore funds to $250 million. I hope and pray that this Congress seeks to do that. Mr. Chairman, I believe American citizens should have access to the courts, no matter how much money they make. I think a mother should be able to seek child support in the courts, if necessary, regardless of income. I think a tenant should be able to sue for decent housing, regardless of income. I know that we got rid of what all of us wanted to get rid of, or most of us, the class-action suits funded by the taxpayers against their own governments. I can understand that issue, but we dealt with that issue last year. What I cannot understand is why we blame Legal Services for seeking to enforce the laws we pass and the Constitution of the United States we would die defending. If we do not like the end result of the court decisions, then maybe we have to look at the laws we pass. What Legal Services attempts to do is make sure that all citizens, the poorest, in fact, have the same right to defend themselves in court. I hope and pray, I truly pray, that we have the good sense to pass this amendment.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. I would love to just illustrate, if the colleague would allow me, a real-life example of what the gentleman is talking about with the growth of entitlements. Entitlements are 50 percent of the budget and doubling every 5 to 6 years, crowding out the discretionary part of the budget. I have had constituents who come and say, ``We need to spend more for this education program,'' or more for this child care program that comes out of the discretionary budget. I say, ``Yes, we do need to do that.'' Then they say, ``And, by the way, don't cut Medicare and Medicaid.'' I say, ``Well, I don't want to cut Medicare and Medicaid, but let me understand something. If we allow Medicare and Medicaid to continue to grow at 10 percent a year, how will we be able to do all those things you want?'' It is a concept of opportunity cost. If you spend your money here, you give up the opportunity to spend it here. If we can make savings in Medicare and Medicaid, allow it to grow much faster than any other part of the budget, we then have some resources to spend on some good programs that come out of what we call the appropriations side of the budget.

Mr. SHAYS. We have wasted a year already.

Mr. SHAYS. To illustrate, we did not increase the copayment to the seniors or the deductible and we kept the premium the same, but what we allowed them is the opportunity to have what you and I have as Federal employees, we get choice in health care. We are going to allow seniors to choose different health care plans. Because of your instance and a wise one, we allowed seniors to go back, it they did not like that private plan, and just go back to the traditional fee-for-service Medicare system that we have had since 1960. So we left the existing plan in place, but we gave choices. To me, the choice was the most exciting part. In part of our plan we said if a senior discovered something that was a waste in the program, we would allow them to receive some of the benefit if they reported it. It is even in our health bill that Senator Kennedy is holding up right now by not allowing for a conference committee between the House and the Senate. We passed a health care bill dealing with portability in health care and allowing people if they have an illness to go to another health care plan, if they have been in a health care plan, and that is being held up. But in that bill is the same thing we had in our Medicare plan, allowing seniors to report programs that they thought were abused. I would like to talk about one abuse because I am on a committee that oversees HCFA, which was the agency that the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] was referring to when he talked about it withering on the vine, not Medicare, which our colleagues like to distort.

Mr. SHAYS. The bottom line is that the bureaucracy was working terribly. I started to talk about some of the abuses. I sit on a committee where we see a number of different abuses. Medicare cannot buy a particular health service, let us say an oxygen concentrator, and reprice it at the market rate. It has to buy it at whatever the market cost is on the chart. If they want to reassign the cost, they have to go through a 2 to 3-year process. So the inspector general came in and looked at this process and said that Medicare was overpaying for a lot of goods, like an oxygen concentrator. The oxygen concentrator for the Veterans Department, if we paid the same price they paid, in 5 years we would save $4 billion. But we cannot reprice it without this long, laborious process.

Mr. SHAYS. This Republican majority is trying to get our financial house in order and balance the Federal budget. My colleague knows that just balancing the budget is not the end all and be all. It is just the logical realization that we would rather spend our money on real programs rather than interest on the national debt. We want a strong foundation in which to build. The second thing is we are trying to save our trust funds from bankruptcy, particularly Medicare, and last year when we were trying to save it, when we did our Medicare plan we saved about $240 billion that could be used directly to save Medicare part A and Medicare part B. To save it from bankruptcy we extended the program out from the year 2001 to basically 2010. We are going to have another problem that we are not going to get into right now, but it is going to be a mammoth issue of how do we deal with the baby boomers. But we did the responsible thing of slowing the growth of programs, still allowing them to grow 60 percent more total dollars and 50 percent more per beneficiary, but saving about $240 billion that could be used to then make sure the program was solvent for the next 15 years. And the President vetoed that plan.

Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman would just allow me to make the point that entitlements are 50 percent of the budget, and when we add interest payments, we are talking about two-thirds of the budget and the discretionary is only one-third of the budget.

Mr. SHAYS. The difference is that when he refers to it, he calls it a savings. When he refers to ours, he calls it a cut. But before we leave Medicare, I do not want to leave it without just summarizing the fact that we allow Medicare to grow from $178 billion to $289 billion, a 60-percent increase in Government spending on Medicare. On a per-person basis, we allowed it last year to grow from $4,800 to $7,100, a 50-percent increase per beneficiary.