Todd Tiahrt

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. We are currently in the first session of the Congress.

Mr. TIAHRT. What I would like to do is move on to the 7-year commitment that the President has signed.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I am in agreement with what you are saying on Medicare.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I want to take a few moments tonight to talk about the significance of what has gone on this past weekend. As many people in the House know, as everyone in the House knows, we have had a partial shutdown of the Government. Last evening there was an agreement reached by the President and leaders in both the Senate and the House and we have been able to restart the Government and postpone any shutdown until December 15. The agreement on the continuing resolution was that we would, in fact, balance the budget not later than the year 2002, and that we would use the Congressional Budget Office figures. We also went on to list a series of items that are of priority for both sides of the aisle in the House and the Senate, as well as the President, and we will work toward getting those priorities established through the debate process, some of which I would like to start this evening. As we all know from November 8, 1994, we have been given marching orders from the American people. Many people ran in their campaigns and wanted to talk about various issues that were important to them. It was picked up by members of the public and those individuals who expounded on those issues, such as a balanced budget, were elected to this Congress. We have, over the course of the last year, been working toward that balanced budget. But just as a review, what we have been given as marching orders are in the accompanying chart I have, which says, basically, Congress is to balance the budget in 7 years, to save Medicare from bankruptcy, to reform welfare, and to provide tax relief for families and job creation. Those are the priorities that I believe, Mr. Speaker, are from the American public. Those are the priorities that we are going to work toward over this next month, next 3 weeks, and, [[Page H 13632]] hopefully, into the next year. And perhaps as we carry out this effort to balance the budget by the year 2002, we are going to achieve these goals on our route to a balanced budget and securing our future. Mr. Speaker, people have said why should we balance the budget, and we have told people it is important because of our children, and I think that is true. And the reason I do is because our debt is so significant. I brought another chart just to list the amount of the Federal debt. As of November 8, our Federal debt, this is November 8, 1995, our Federal debt is $4,985,913,011,032.65. Now, that is a tremendous amount of money. To give people a perspective as to how much money that is. If an individual had gone into business the day Christ rose from the dead, and they lost a million dollars that day, and the following day, and every day of the week, and every week of the month, and every year for almost 2,000 years, they would only be one-fifth of the way to losing $4.9 trillion. Most of us think a million dollars would be a sufficient amount of money to perhaps retire on. To think of losing that amount of money each day for almost 2,000 years and not even getting one-fifth of the way to losing what we have currently as our Federal debt gives us an idea of how much money that is. For a child born this year, it would amount to about $187,000 in the form of taxes just to pay the interest on this debt, if we are unable to balance in 7 years. Next year, in fiscal year 1997, the interest on the loan, on this debt, the national debt, the interest will exceed every other expenditure except for Social Security. It will be more than we spend on the Army and the Navy and the Marines and the Air Force and the Department of Defense structure, the intelligence-gathering community. The entire Department of Defense budget will be secondary to the amount we pay on interest on the debt, with Social Security being the only one we expend more on. With all of that going toward interest, we do nothing to meet the needs of the poor; we do nothing to meet the nutrition programs. We do nothing to provide part B Medicare support. Nothing on Medicaid. Only interest on the debt. It is a tremendous problem that we must deal with and solve, and we do that by balancing the budget. When we establish priorities toward getting to that balanced budget, we are going to have to deal with a lot of disinformation that is flowing. One, we have heard that we are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, and the earned income tax credit has been drastically cut. But, Mr. Speaker, between 1995, this year, this fiscal year, in which we are spending $19.85 billion, by 2002, in the budget that we just passed tonight, we plan on spending $25.4 billion by that year. That is an increase. From 19.85 to 25.4, an increase, and yet we have heard that it is a cut and that we are trying to cut individuals to balance the budget. Mr. Speaker, only in Washington, DC, is that called a cut. The school lunch programs, we saw last spring, the President go to an elementary school and state that the budget that was before the Congress was going to take food away from these children, that they would be starving. Well, I have visited some of the elementary schools in Wichita, KS, in my district, the Dodge-Edison School, and there were no reports of children starving at that institution, nor at any school in Kansas or any school across the Nation. In fact, the budget that we passed tonight allows for $6.3 billion to go to school lunches this year. It will grow. It will increase to $7.8 billion by 2002. Mr. Speaker, I want to close tonight by saying that we must establish priorities, we must balance the budget in 7 years, and I am pleased to be able to work toward that effort.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, briefly I would like to say that we have been doing our job here. We voted about 800 times last year; the entire Congress only voted 507 times. By trying to work with the President, we have been wasting our time, and that is why we have not been successful in getting our appropriations bills through. We see the confusion of the American people when people talk about cuts in Medicare. When it goes from $4,800 to $6,700, that is not a cut. We are not balancing the budget on the backs of working people or senior citizens. That is what the Clinton tax burden did in 1993. It increased taxes on the working people through the gas tax and the poor. That is who pays the most for gas taxes. It increases taxes on Social Security. Mr. President did that. But what we are trying to do here is relieve some of that burden. We are trying to reduce taxes on working people, on people with children, and we are also trying to preserve and protect Medicare. But the real fundamental issue here is can you balance the budget in 7 years. We are tired of the dance. The music is playing. Let us dance to the music. The American public wants a balanced budget. I think this has been playing on for such a long time we are going to hear it over and over again. The real issue here is are you going to balance the budget in 7 years. Now, there has been talk about a little leverage, play room, maybe not quite 7 years. For 26 years we have been hearing this about we cannot quite do it this time, we are going to have to do it some other way, we are going to have to wait awhile. The American people want us to draw a finite line, say we are going to balance the budget, and 7 years is an optimal time. It is the time when we can do it with the least amount of discomfort.

Mr. TIAHRT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, what we are trying to do here is relieve people who have children, relieve seniors, trying to get them back to work, become actively involved. The President has failed to balance the budget in 7 years. He has even failed to agree to it. I support the rule.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding time to me. I think the American public is a little tired of the Government chasing its tail, and I think we have started debate a little early, but I think that is really what it is going to be about over the next 7 years as we come to struggle with what is going to be inside that budget in 7 years. It is that one phrase that the gentleman from Maryland brought up, I think, that bothers the American public so much. The options to go beyond 7 years. I know that the freshman class that I am a member of is very hard and fast on 7 years. How many votes have come up in the last 20 years about the balanced budget? How many times has this body voted on a balanced budget? Many, many times. The real issue is, can we do it? Do we have the discipline? Everybody wants to say, yes, we do. Well, let us put it in writing. Let us live by it. Let us negotiate the terms, as the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo] said. Let us negotiate the terms of what is going to happen inside that balanced budget. But let us make a hard and fast rule, 7 years, let us draw a line and say, we can do it, and let us just argue about what is inside. I think that is what the American public wants, and I think that is certainly what the freshman class wants is a 7-year plan to balance the budget.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. She spent $46,500 a year to hire a private investigative firm to find out who the unfavorables were. Mr. Speaker, with people like that, it is going to be difficult for the President to balance the budget.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I believe most Americans are puzzled why we are at an impasse here in Washington, DC. All the bickering about these alleged cuts, and the Speaker in plane rides and the parliamentary procedure is all really distracting us from the main issue, and that is the business at hand, and that is carrying out the will of the people. So let us take a minute just to talk about what the American people would like us to do. Now I have a chart here that is the marching orders that the people of America have been giving Congress, and this is based on polling data, and all of it runs about 60 to 80 percent. The top one is balance the budget in 7 years, and we will talk more about that later, but basically this is what 80 percent of America wants us to do. Next is save Medicare from bankruptcy this year, reform welfare, another 80 percent issue, and the third is provide tax relief for families and for job creation. But I want to spend time tonight talking about the balanced budget issue. Let us concentrate on that because that is really what is pending now. The reason we have 800,000 Government workers off now is because the President is refusing to sign a continuing resolution that has been stripped from all the controversial issues except one, and that is the balanced budget, and the reason I say that is not controversial is because 80 percent of the Americans want a balanced budget. So what the Republicans are proposing is to balance it in 7 years, which is not unreasonable, but the President has already threatened a veto, and now he said many things about the balanced budget. He says he supports a balanced budget. During the campaign he was going to do it in 5 years, and then he said, well, we will do it in 10 years. Then he said, well, 7 may be OK, but it could be 8 or 9. Are you clear on that yet? Well, I do know one thing, that he did send us a balanced budget, and I can show that to you. This is how it was scored. This is his budget, and you can see from 1996 through 2005 it runs about an average of $200 billion a year deficit, $200 billion a year deficit, and, by the way, it did go to the Senate, and it received a ``no'' vote, or they voted it down 96 to zero. Not one person in the U.S. Senate supported the President's budget. But that is what he has proposed. This is the problem. The American people want to see a balanced budget. Now Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, says it is very important that we balance the budget, and he has a vision of what would happen if we could balance the budget. Let us just look at Mr. Greenspan's vision because he is very knowledgeable about these financial matters. He said our children will have a higher standard of living, that improvement in the purchasing power of incomes would occur, that there would be a rise in productivity, that there would be a reduction of inflation, that strengthening of financial markets, which we have already seen incidentally just from the hope of a balanced budget, the stock market is up nearly to 5,000 points. The bond market is up, all in the hope of balancing the budget for the first time in 26 years, and acceleration of long-term economic growth and significant drop in long-term interest rates. Well, now what would that drop in interest rates do? Well, it would help each one of us. A drop in interest rates would effect every individual in America and every family. A 2-percent drop in interest rates--and incidentally I just did not pick 2 percent arbitrarily. That is a number that came from Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. It came from Alan Greenspan himself. He said that a 2-percent drop in interest rates would, on a 30-year mortgage of $75,000, save $37,000 over the life of that mortgage. On a college loan, a 10-year loan at $11,000 would save $2,160. For a 4-year car loan for $15,000, it would save $900. A significant savings for each family of approximately $2,300 per year. So why is this a problem? Well, I think it is a problem because the President just does not think he can balance the budget, and the reason is he has members in his Cabinet who are really unable to control their own budget. For example, we have Secretary O'Leary at the Department of Energy. Now first it started out with the GAO report that said it was an ineffective agency. Then there was Vice President Gore in his national performance review that said she was 20 percent behind in her milestones, missing one out of five projects, she was 40 percent inefficient, it was going to cost us $70 billion over the next 30 years. Well, then we found out that she travels extensively. She is the most expensive member in the whole Cabinet. Then she spent $46,500 to hire a private investigative firm to find out who her unfavorables were, unfavorable people, so she could work on them a little.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, the Senate joined with the House and 80 percent of Americans and said, let us balance the budget in 7 years; let us get the show on the road. This balanced budget increases Medicare, goes from $4,800 to $6,700, it increases student loans, it does not repeal one environmental law, and it includes tax breaks for families, for middle-income workers. That allows the President to overcome the mistake he made in 1993 by raising our taxes. Now the stock market is up; the bond market is up. Why? Because finally Americans are seeing hope for the future in the form of a balanced budget. To quote someone quite important, ``If not now, when? If not us, who?'' Mr. President, let us do it.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I think it is very significant to note it has been 40 years since we got to this now. I do not want to wait another 40 years before we get to the part of the problem that we have. I think this Clinger amendment addresses some of the important problems that we have now. I am sorry, I am a freshman here. I do not have a lot of experience on previous administrations. I do want to thank the current administration, because I think they had something to do with me being here. I have found that there are agencies today that are abusing the system by sending out mailings in the hopes of influencing legislation. These are not individuals, these are not nonprofit groups, these are not private sector companies, these are Federal agencies that are using lobbying money, using money to lobby for more tax dollars to be spent on their agency. In June this year, the Department of Energy sent out a mailing that was timed in correspondence, they sent out 10,000 of these to private individuals and businesses, at the cost of $3.50 each. June was selected to oppose some current legislation coming out, H.R. 993, the bill to abolish the Department of Energy. Part of the propaganda read, ``Dismantling the Department of Energy only is likely to disrupt Secretary O'Leary's efforts to reshape the department and produce meaningful savings.'' Let us talk about some of the meaningful expenditures. This is the agency that has over 500 public relations employees, costing taxpayers $25 million. This the agency that has spent over $46,000 to hire a private investigation firm to develop a list of unfavorable people, and ``to work on these people a little.'' Does that sound like lobbying, to work on these people a little? This is the agency that has hired a personal media consultant for Secretary O'Leary at a cost of $75,000 per year. These are all abuse. This money does not go toward any valid mission of the Department of Energy, not toward environment management, not toward developing an agency energy policy, not toward finding one drop of oil, not one valid mission. I think it is an abuse of taxpayer dollars. That is why I support the Clinger amendment.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, the strategy of the liberals is very clear here. Let us distract the House. Let us focus on the real issues today. We want to get Government workers back to work. We want to see a balanced budget in 7 years. But I know it is going to be difficult with the Cabinet that the President has. For example, Secretary O'Leary has been wasting money. According to the GAO, her agency has been ineffective. Then there was Vice President Gore's report that said she was inefficient. Then there was a first class travel, taking a large contingency. Then there was a private investigatory firm that was going to cost us $46,500 of taxpayer dollars, this year. Well, now we find out she has also hired a media consultant at $277 a day, at taxpayers' expense, to improve her image. She spent $200,000 on this. Mr. Speaker, it is time for Secretary O'Leary to resign. We need for her to do that just to balance the budget and get these Government workers back to work.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, the debate rages on regarding the balanced budget and I am a little tired of hearing the same old excuses over and over. The calls that are coming into my office right now overwhelmingly say do not let up, keep pushing for a balanced budget and do it now. They tell me we have a wonderful opportunity to finally end the habit of spending away our children's future, and balance the budget. What is so extreme about working together to save Medicare for our parents and our grandparents? What is so extreme about working together to reform welfare, to emphasize work? What is so extreme about working together to cut taxes for working families? This budget restores the American dream. An analysis done by the Heritage Foundation said the Republican plan to balance the budget in 7 years with tax relief will offer the following for workers: $32 billion more to keep for themselves in tax relief, higher compensation per hour for workers, lower mortgage rates, more industrial production. This is clearly a wonderful opportunity. No more excuses. It is time to do the right thing for the people of this country. Balance the budget.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, we are facing a dilemma here in the United States. It is called the Federal debt. This chart shows the Federal debt, the amount of money that is included. It is just close to $5 trillion. It is 4 trillion, 985 billion, 3,913 million, and on and on and on. I want to give you an idea just how much money that is. If you had gone in business the day Christ rose from the dead and lost $1 million that day and every day until today, you would only be one-fifth of the way to losing this much money, one-fifth of the way in almost 2,000 years. The problem is now the linchpin of the struggle between the President and his liberal supporters and the American people and their Representatives in Congress. The American people want a balanced budget. The House and the Senate have passed provisions to balance the budget and continue Government, but the President, Mr. Speaker, the President has chosen to shut government down. This is very clear. The President does not want a balanced budget. The American people and Congress do want a balanced budget. Let me show you what the President has offered. His budget that was sent to Congress over the next 10 years never does balance. In fact, when you get out to the last year, 2005, it is $200 billion in deficit. I have a contrasting chart that shows the difference between what we are doing with the Congress, this is the blue line that starts here and goes down to a balanced budget by the year 2002, and the President's budget, which continues at about a $200 billion deficit every year. It is kind of like my uncle, John Armstrong, says: ``If you don't want to do something, any excuse will do.'' Mr. President, we are tired of you looking for excuses. The President says, ``Send me a clean continuing resolution, a clean debt limit ceiling, and I will start government up again.'' But let us look when the liberals controlled [[Page H 12322]] the House of Representatives. Since 1977, there have been 57 continuing resolutions. In the 1980s they hung an entire annual Federal budget on one continuing resolution. This is not uncommon. But on the same path of inconsistency as the President and his alleged desire to balance the budget, Chief of Staff Panetta says, he said on November 9, ``Don't put a gun to the head of the President. It is a form of terrorism.'' Further on he said, ``Republicans are now obviously resorting to a form of blackmail in order to push their agenda onto the country. That is not an acceptable choice. This is blackmail.'' But when Mr. Panetta was in Congress, and when the liberals were in charge, he said about the debt ceiling: ``This is the only vehicle we have as we close these days before recess to try to bring the American public what I think is a very important issue, and it relates to our ability to control spending and to provide a shared sacrifice in terms of our approach to dealing with the deficits in this country.'' That was on June 28, 1984. On the continuing resolution he said, ``Having to adopt another continuing resolution in this process, I know the chairman and the Members of the Committee on Appropriations would prefer consideration and passage of separate bills, but I think we have to recognize the reality that we must pass on a regular basis massive continuing resolutions, and whether they like it or not, these continuing resolutions set national priorities, they send signals, they lock us into a future in one way or another.'' That was September 22, 1982. It was okay for the liberals in the Democrat-controlled Congress, but now, it is ``blackmail.'' Which way is it, Mr. Panetta? Is it ``the only vehicle to bring to the American public a very important issue,'' or is it a form of terrorism, as you said on November 9? Is it that ``We have to recognize the reality and set national priorities,'' as you said on September 22, 1982, or is it a form of blackmail, like you said on November 9? I think the American public is tired of the doubletalk, Mr. Panetta. They want to lock us into a future, all right, but it is a future with a balanced budget. It goes well beyond--this double talk goes well beyond the Chief of Staff Panetta and the President's alleged balanced budget. It goes to cuts on Medicare. We are actually increasing the payments of Medicare from $4,800 per year as an average recipient to $6,700 per year in 7 years. It is the same on college student loans. They are going up over the next 7 years, almost $9 billion. It is the same on nutrition programs. Many of us remember that the President went to an elementary school and said, ``School children will starve under the Republican Plan.'' No children have been reported starving in public schools. Nutrition programs are going up 4 percent each year for 7 years, a total of $1 billion. The bottom line is ``No more cheap excuses for shutting down the government, no more duplicity, no more doubletalk.'' Let us balance the budget. It will lower interest rates 2 percent, according to Alan Greenspan, from the Federal Reserve, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and that will affect every American, every household, every family. Balance the budget. Let us not have any excuses. Let us have a bright future for our children and our grandchildren.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the following committees and their subcommittees be permitted to sit today while the House is meeting in the Committee of the Whole House under the 5-minute rule. Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Committee on Commerce, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Committee on International Relations, Committee on National Security, and Committee on Resources. It is my understanding that the minority has been consulted and that there is no objection to these requests.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Madam Speaker, I am proud to be a member of the reform- minded freshman class here in Congress. We came to change the way business is done here in Washington, DC. We want to balance the budget. But it has been really frustrating. The House has agreed to balance the budget. The Senate has agreed to balance the budget. But the President and the liberals in Congress are willing to say anything to keep us from balancing the budget, even if it is not true. We have heard about cuts to education, but yet student loans are increasing. We heard about cuts to Medicare, yet the average recipient is going to get $4,800 this year and $6,700 in 7 years. We heard about cuts to nutrition programs, and yet we are increasing them 4 percent every year, a total of $1 billion over the next 7 years. The truth is the President and the liberals in Congress do not want to balance the budget, but the American people do. Let us get real, Mr. President. Let us stay home from Japan and negotiate a balanced budget.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, over the weekend, Speaker Gingrich from the House and Senate Majority Leader Dole from the Senate displayed true leadership by calling the President on the phone in a genuine attempt to reconcile the differences over the budget. But what happened? The President was gracious enough to let Senator Dole speak one sentence and the Speaker of the House two sentences. But then he proceeded to blast both of them and basically hung up. The fact is the President does not want to balance the budget, not in 10 years as he proposed, which ended up being $200 billion over each of the 10 years in deficit, but also in 7 years, the plan we presented him with. Mr. Speaker, this is why we stand on the brink of a government shutdown. This is why the budget is not balanced. This is what the American people are tired of, business as usual, excuses. The President needs to spend less time on the golf course and more time meeting with congressional leaders to iron out their differences and make Government work, but if the President chooses, he can shut the Government down. [[Page H 16951]]

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, the truth is now documented. The President's latest veto shows that he does, in fact, not want to balance the budget. This weekend I was in the Fourth District of Kansas. I was speaking with some of my constituents. One of them told me, well, it was going to happen sooner or later because there is a deep philosophical difference between the American public, those of us who believe we need to balance the budget and the President who apparently does not want a balanced budget. Well, they were absolutely right. If you go back to the campaign when the President was running for office, he said that he would present a balanced budget that would balance in 5 years. We have yet to see that budget. Then he did present us a budget that would balance, allegedly, in 10 years. However, when it was scored by those in Congress who do scoring, we found out that it has a $200 billion deficit a year for 10 years. It never balances. Well, so now we have the facts out. He does not want to balance the budget. He has not presented us a balanced budget. When he was given a budget that does actually balance in 7 years, he refuses to sign it. Some of the allegations have been that there are things hung onto this continuing resolution and this temporary debt ceiling; that there should not be anything on there. ``Send me something clean.'' There is a long history of hanging things on continuing resolutions. You heard earlier there have been 57 continuing resolutions since 1977, 10 since 1980, and one of them during the 1980's hung the entire Federal Government's budget on one continuing resolution, not just a few riders, the entire budget for a whole year. So this is nothing new. The President should not shirk away from it. His chief of staff should not tell people that it never happened before. But the President has made it very clear there in his latest action not to balance the budget and reminds me of something my uncle John Armstrong told me when I was younger. He said, ``When you don't want to do something bad enough, any excuse not to do it will do, any excuse will do.'' Well, you have heard one of the excuses. There are cuts in Medicare. Mr. Speaker, there are no cuts in Medicare. The average spending is going from $4,800 per recipient this year up to $6,700 per recipient in 7 years. It is increasing by some 43 percent. Well, I think it would be a little more clear maybe if you were a baseball player. If you understood there were 48 baseballs in this one bag and 67 baseballs in another bag and you said which bag has more baseballs, they had say you are increasing it 19 baseballs to 67. That is what we are doing with Medicare. We are increasing spending. Medicare part B premiums are scheduled to go up $7. The alternate plan, current law, is the Government's portion would increase, and individuals would go from 31 percent of the part B premium per month to 25 to 18 percent, and the Government's portion, which comes out of the general fund, which comes out of borrowed money, would go from 75 to 82 percent. So what are we doing, after borrowing $170 billion this year, we would have to increase that amount of money and pass that debt on to our children. Right now our Federal debt is $5 trillion. If you had gone into business the day after Christ rose from the dead and lost $1 million that day and every day of every week of every month of every year almost 2,000 years, you would only be one-fifth of the way toward losing $5 trillion. Most of us think that $1 million a day would be a lot of money. To do that for almost 2,000 years and still not be a fifth of the way to the Federal debt is a phenomenal amount of money. Yet we want to stack more on top of that. It is morally wrong to our children. We cannot afford it. But by doing this, we will just force Medicare into bankruptcy sooner, put the debt on our children. Any excuse will do. We have heard about cuts in nutrition programs. You remember last spring the President went to a school and said these children are going to starve under the Republicans' plan to balance the budget. I was in a school just recently in Wichita, KS, Dodge-Edison Elementary School. Not one child has been reported starving in that school. In fact, no reports across the Nation have any children starving in a school. It just was not true. But, Mr. President, any excuse will do. In fact, funding for nutrition programs is going up 4 percent each year the next 7 years, a total of $1 billion. Any excuse will do. [[Page H 16948]] Cuts in Medicaid, funding for the poor is going up hundreds of millions of dollars in the Federal budget over the next 7 years. Any excuse will do. Well, Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, the American public is tired of the excuses. They are tired of business as usual. They are ready for a fresh wind in this country. They are ready for some hope. They are ready to balance the budget. I head it in the Fourth District of Kansas. I urge the President to come to the table with Congress. Let us sit down and see what your true problems are, but we are going to balance the budget.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, Energy Secretary O'Leary wasted over 43,000 taxpayer dollars to compile an enemies list which included some Members of this Chamber. If any Member of Congress had taken the taxpayers' dollars and spent them in such a blatant self-serving manner, they would have been run out of office, and rightfully so. At a time when we are making tough choices to balance the budget, it is the height of irresponsibility for Secretary O'Leary to be wasting money like that. One of the targets of her investigation, Senate Majority Leader Dole, said the whole thing was a shocking waste of taxpayer dollars. I was also a target of this investigation. I think it is an abuse of the American taxpayers themselves. After all, this administration has been mired in one ethical scandal after another: Whitewater, Travelgate, Webb Hubbell, Ron Brown. The list goes on and on. While the administration warns of an impending financial default which could put 800,000 Government workers on unemployment, it is clear that there has been an ethical default of almost 3 years. It is time for Secretary O'Leary to find gainful employment outside the U.S. Government.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Yes, and even though we have this out there as part of this agency, and it is unnecessary, we should sell it off, we do not do a very good job of producing oil as a Federal Government. We have a charter to produce oil in Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve, but we do not have a charter to produce natural gas. It is a byproduct of the whole operation there, and instead of selling it, it is pumped back into the ground to force more oil up to fulfill the charter. So we are again inefficient in the way we handle even the Naval Elk Hills Petroleum Reserve. We also have three-fourths of the effort within the Department of Energy that is defense-related functions and what that has caused is a redundant bureaucracy where we have entities inside the Department of Energy which are very similar, provide similar functions as entities in the Department of Defense. So what we have uncovered is a 1970's tax guzzler and we have decided it is really time to turn the lights out on the Department of Energy. Let me talk just a little bit about the budget, because it relates back to balancing the budget. As I said earlier, the Department of Energy's budget is about $17.5 billion a year. In the President's request for a budget back in January, Secretary O'Leary was requesting an increase in the budget of $337 million. Over the next 5 years, that type of increase would equate to a $1.5 billion increase. Well, as we are going through the legislative process of looking at the details inside the Department of Energy, developing legislation which would correct that and in effect eliminate the Department of Energy as a cabinet-level agency, the Secretary of Energy came out with an alternative plan last May or so, last spring, which said basically that if you allow me to play a little shell game, sell off a few things, I can save taxpayers about $14.1 billion over the next 5 years. So now we are seeing a shift from what was an increase of $1.5 billion to a decrease of $14.1 billion, because people like us knew in Congress, or returning to Congress after a sabbatical, as is the gentleman from California, were putting pressure on the administration and on the system to change the way business is done, so that it is not done the same as it was prior tot he 104th Congress. I think that is a significant swing for the taxpayers, and again, it is their money. But this just kind of points out the fact that the Department of energy should be abolished. We have started even this year in the balanced budget amendment. We reduced their budget $500 million over what it was in fiscal 1995. Now, instead of increasing it $337 million, we are decreasing it about a half of a billion, which is a significant swing, almost a $1 billion swing, but we are headed in the right direction. We are going to privatize the Alaska Power Marketing Administration. This is something that is part of the legislation to eliminate the DOE, a very necessary action. Mr. Speaker, there are many power companies that do a good job of distribution power to the private sector, to our homes, to our companies, to where we work, where we go to school, where we shop, and for the Government to do this seems a little bit redundant. Often, it is done more efficiently by the private sector and we have started that process. We are going to sell the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve; I think is very important. We are going to sell the strategic petroleum reserve because of some infrastructure problems that we need to correct, and even the Secretary of Energy, Secretary O'Leary, as admitted that the lab structure is too big, too complex, and needs to be consolidated and downsized. So we see that the system with the new Congress is putting pressure on the administration to try to correct the problem. We have not gotten there all the way yet, but we have made a significant step. Then, next, we started seeing some evidence of the management problem and it came in the form of travel. There was an article that came out in the Washington Times from information that was received through the Freedom of Information Act that looked at cabinet-level travel, and it [[Page H 12080]] was found that the Secretary of Energy, Secretary O'Leary, has the highest average trip expenses of anyone in the President's Cabinet, even higher than the Secretary of State, who is forced to travel overseas. Quite often her travel problems include upgrading herself to a resort or a four-star hotel, kind of living the life of luxury. She operates at first class, but more than that, she takes along a large contingency of staff, sometimes as many as 70 when going to foreign countries. We even found out that in the agency they made a T-shirt that had a globe on it, on the chest, and the different countries that Secretary O'Leary has visited this year, and it was titled, Secretary O'Leary's World Tour, kind of taking off from some of the concert tours that rock groups have gone on. But it is just a reflection of where there is an abuse here in the travel. The Committee on Science is currently looking at some of these problems, because what has happened is the travel budget has been diverted from some of the very important research programs to the Secretary's bureaucracy, central bureaucracy, so that she can fund these lavish travels. We also have a GAO audit going on requested by Congressman Hoke from Ohio and myself just to look at where this money is coming from, how it is being spent, is this the best use of taxpayers' dollars.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, what we have found in some of the earlier period today, we got a lot of calls in my office where people thought this was more than just wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, but to use taxpayer dollars to hire a private investigative firm to develop information or an enemies list, as was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article, goes beyond, as the gentleman says, the gray area, and really crosses the line. I think we have already started the process here on the floor of the House and around the Hill here of talking with different individuals. They have become very upset at what has happened today on revealing this, that the Secretary of Energy has misused these tax dollars. We have a letter that is, as was mentioned by the gentleman from Ohio, going to the President that has almost 70 signature on it now, and it has gained momentum. This is on top of other patterns that have been developing. Over the last 6 months we have seen several articles in the paper about the travel that has been going on through the Department of Energy. Secretary O'Leary often takes many people with her when she travels. She upgrades to first class, stays at resorts or four-star hotels, and has really been living the good life on taxpayers' money.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, in today's Wall Street Journal we found out that Secretary O'Leary, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, has been using tax dollars to investigate reporters that have been writing unfavorable articles about her. We already know that she has the highest travel budget of anyone of the President's Cabinet, as reported earlier. According to Vice President Gore in his national performance review, her environmental management is 20 percent behind on the milestones, which means one out of five projects is late. Forty percent inefficiency is going to cost us $70 billion over the next 30 years, unless we do something. Now we find out that she is using your money, taxpayer money to investigate reporters that are not giving her very favorable reports. It was a waste of tax dollars by the high travel budget. It is fraud and management techniques, and now it is abuse of the taxpayers to take their money to investigate reporters that have not been giving her favorable reports. I think it is time for Secretary O'Leary to move on and resign her post as Secretary of the Department of Energy.