Tom Tancredo

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, the issue I want to rise today to discuss is actually to draw attention to a couple of people in my district. I represent the area that includes Columbine High School in which we had such a tragic event a short time ago. We keep talking about what we can do to stop something like this from happening again. Eventually, it all gets down to changing people's hearts. That is really all that can happen. But there is something that is going on that can work in that direction, and I want to draw attention to it. Two teachers, one Mary Catherine Bradshaw in Hillsboro High School in Nashville, and Heather Beck, a teacher at Green Mountain High School in Colorado, and also a student, Rebecca Hunter, they have created a pledge, a pledge which I will enter into the record, a pledge they ask each student to take. It says: As a part of the blank community, I will pledge to be a part of the solution. I will eliminate taunting from my own behavior. I will encourage others to do the same. I will do my part to make my school a safe place by being more sensitive to others. I will set the example of a caring individual. I will not let my word or actions hurt others. I will become a part of the solution. This is the real way to address it. Mr. Speaker, I include the following for the Record: Please print this out and sign this petition. As a part of the __________ Community, I will . . . I will pledge to be a part of the solution. I will eliminate taunting from my own behavior. I will encourage others to do the same. I will do my part to make __________ a safe place by being more sensitive to others. I will set the example of a caring individual. I will not let my word or actions hurt others. . . . and if others won't become a part of the solution, I will. Signing here reflects your commitment to your pledge through graduation 1999.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, this week we are celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week. There have been a number of speeches on this floor. I have, in fact, come to this microphone before to extol the virtues of the teachers of America, the public school, the private school teachers who work so hard and contribute so much to the well-being of the children of this Nation. Today, however, Mr. Speaker, I want to rise in recognition of a particular part of that educational establishment that is not often recognized. And it was brought to my attention again, although I have long been aware of its existence, but it was brought to my attention again by a card I received in the mail not too long ago. Here it is, a little handwritten, hand-drawn and colored-in star here. It says, ``thank you, thank you, thank you.'' It goes all the way around, ``thank you very much.'' It is from a young man named Jerrod Padinama. It says: Dear Mr. Tancredo, thank you for giving us the privilege of home schooling. My home school co-op is studying the Constitution, and it is fun. I am 9 years old. I am in the third grade. I am praying for you. Jerrod Padinama. Well, Jerrod, thank you for your prayers. I sincerely appreciate them. But I tell my colleagues, this is really a very touching little card I received, and I have been holding on to it because I wanted to reference it in a way. The neat part is that this young man would take the time to send me this little card and draw it in. But in a way it is a sad commentary because he has to tell me ``thank you'' for letting me be home schooled. And he does know intuitively, I suppose, and certainly his parents are well aware of the fact that often there are attempts in this body and certainly in legislatures all over the country and States all over the Nation to actually restrict the ability of parents to actually teach their children at home. And they have to say ``thank you'' to us for letting them have a right that, frankly, is as natural as breathing, a right of a parent to teach their child at home. This is as if this is a strange anomaly, this is something weird that we do in this country that they have to be allowed to do by the legislature. And that is the only kind of negative part of this thing I see. Because, otherwise, it is a very beautiful thing. I just wanted to point out that home schooling certainly preceded any other kind of schooling we had in the United States of America; and it did very, very well, and it continues to do very, very well. And it is an expanding phenomena. Many, many people are participating in this. It is growing astronomically, almost beyond, really, ways to describe it. I find in my own State of Colorado that there are thousands and thousands of parents who are taking on the responsibility of teaching their children at home. Mr. Speaker, recently I received a copy of an article that was written by a gentleman by the name of Steven Archer, and he details a study that was just done by Larry Rudner, who is the leading statistician at the University of Maryland. He studied home schoolers, and what it comes down to is this. He said, Regarding the results of this research, Rudner said, the bottom line of the study is that the 20,000 home-school students I studied were doing extremely well in terms of their scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. In fact, the median test scores for home-schooled children who participated in this study were in the 75th and 85th percentile range. This is exceptional compared to the national average which, by definition, is the 50th percentile based on the performance of children in the public schools, which, Rudner explained, deviates little from that value. Home schoolers also did significantly better than their private school counterparts based on Catholic school norms where the median scaled scores were in the 65th to 75th percentile range. According to Rudner, major findings in the study include the following: Almost one-quarter of home-school students are enrolled one or more grades above their age-level peers in public and private schools. It goes on, Mr. Speaker, but I would just say that it verifies what we already know about home schooling and that is that it works, it works in an academic sense, it works in a social sense. And I want to take the opportunity here today to thank Jerrod for his card, to thank Jerrod's parents for giving him the opportunity to be home schooled, and to thank all those thousands and thousands, perhaps millions, of parents around the country who are doing the same for their children.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I was impressed that my colleagues, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), could remember so many of their teachers, and I was just sitting here thinking if I could remember any of my elementary and secondary teachers, and I do remember the first names of all of them, but I cannot remember much more. The first name was: Sister. I rise in support of the House Resolution, pay tribute to the hard work of our Nation's teachers. As a former public school teacher, I take great pride in my former colleagues and believe that teachers are a national treasure. Those are teachers in public schools, private schools and, of course, parents who take on that huge responsibility of home schooling, and who have provided such wonderful models for their children and have done such a wonderful job in teaching their children. But I would especially like to take this moment to pay tribute to an educator who through his heroism 2 weeks ago inspired us all. His name is David Sanders, and he gave his life to save the lives of several students at Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, my district. Dave Sanders was a business teacher and the coach of the girls' basketball and softball teams at Columbine, but he was also a friend to the hundreds of students at the school who looked at him for guidance and support. Two weeks ago, during the rampage at Columbine, David Sanders saved a number of students from ricocheting bullets and then went upstairs in the school to aid other students. While leading two dozen students down a hallway to safety, Mr. Speaker, he was shot twice in the chest, and 3\1/2\ hours later David Sanders passed away, however, not before asking nearby students to tell his family that he loved them. Later Rick Bath, Columbine softball coach, said about his friend: ``There were just so many good qualities about him, you always knew that he would just be there for you. All he ever wanted to do was teach since he was 21. He would not have known what else to do.'' Mr. Speaker, today the community of Littleton, Colorado joins me in thanking David Sanders for the sacrifice that he made for his students and his fellow teachers during last Tuesday's massacre and for making a difference in the lives of children at Columbine and, as a matter of fact, all over America.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, there are many murky things about the situation we now face in Kosovo. One, however, is not murky. What is not even remotely unclear is the fact that we are not there for the often heard cause of stopping ethnic cleansing. That is the one thing about which I am absolutely sure. That is not the reason we are there. We can debate, and we will debate at length, the variety of reasons we may be there. It may have something to do with legacies and all the rest of that, but it has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing, else we would be in at least a dozen countries around this world where the situation is 10 times worse. Certainly we can start naming them now. At the top of the list is the Sudan. There were 2,000 people dead when we went into Kosovo to begin with, a third of them Serbs. We have already ruined too many lives there in Kosovo, we have done too much damage; too many people are dead as a result of the actions we have taken. It is time to withdraw our forces. When we have dug ourselves a pit, the best thing to do now is stop digging and get out.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema).

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle).

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley).

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the veneer that separates civilization from barbarism, that separates good from evil, is very thin, and it appears everywhere to be wearing thinner. Last week it wore through in my hometown, and the evil seeped out and stole the lives of 12 innocent children and one valiant teacher at Columbine High School. Mr. Speaker, yesterday my son Ray gave me something he had written in response to this tragedy. I believe it is not just fatherly pride that compels me to read parts of it here today. I believe he eloquently captures the nature of the cultural abrasives that ever so relentlessly eat away at our national soul, and I would like to cite just a part of it: ``Do you believe in God?'' ``Yes, I believe in God.'' ``Seventeen year old Cassie Bernal's life ended with that answer. Our answers to the Columbine High School murders begin with the same question, and our answer must be the same as Cassie Bernal or the nihilistic fury unleashed by those two young murderers will surely prevail.'' People search for meaning in these brutal senseless acts. People question the norms of a society in which monstrous violence can be countenanced. People question the righteousness, even the existence of a God who can allow such pain and violence into the world. These are valid, but unanswerable questions. We can speculate and hypothesize, we can blame and vent, but in the end we know we cannot fathom the meaning of this event or presume to comprehend this evil. Nevertheless, our choice is stark: Do we believe in God or not? An answer to that question is the whole of what we take away from the Columbine massacre, for the answer means everything. We either coast in the cultural currents of a facile nihilism, or we embrace God on our knees and pray for His grace and forgiveness. Nihilism or God, that is the choice. The comfortable in-between is now gone. In reporting on Adolph Eichmann's 1960 trial in Jerusalem, philosopher Hannah Arendt noted the banality of evil; that is, how small, petty and unoriginal evil appears. She was speaking of Eichmann, a trivial bureaucrat who efficiently and systematically undertook the murdering of the Jewish people in Europe. Likewise here, evil's banality is made plain to us. Two disaffected punks have changed life in my hometown forever. In the end my conclusions are unsatisfying and incomplete: sin is real, evil is real. The inscrutable evil of these men made perfect sense from within their world. If I do not believe, if we do not believe, then their nihilism is right, and even if we ourselves do not embrace it, we have no means to stop others from doing so. Pray the Lord's mercy on us. Stopping it is one thing, but where and how did it start? The comfortable, prosperous suburbs of Denver, Colorado should not foster such dark realities. Moreover, high schools have always had this same group of disaffected bright kids, who flirted with the darker regions of the culture. What changed for the diabolical fantasies of murder to be made real? No doubt a confluence of factors coalesced to make these young men's revenge fantasies turn into reality. I offer some comments on three factors in particular: the culture, technology and institutions. the culture Ours is a culture wrapped in cotton candy nihilism. Poses and attitudes of nihilism are struck and celebrated. The academy has its au courant ideologies. Feminism, postmodernism, structuralism, scientific materialism all presuppose a purposeless universe without any transcendent order where society is predicted on power and violence. Entertainment has its explicit nihilistic messages--the goth rock of Marilyn Manson and KMFDM--its ironically hip ones--the accomplished, but immoral, films of Quentin Tarrantino--and its implicit nihilism-- Jerry Springer, or the titillation cum therapy of MTV's Loveline. Indeed, nihilism in a soft and weak form is everywhere. Meanwhile, `'adult society'' complacently indulges the destruction of cultural traditions. Legal norms are in shambles--murderers and perjurers escape punishment, and civil justice has become an elaborate shakedown scheme. Rampant materialism fuels a vicious cycle of decadent consumption and unending labor. Finally, cynicism and lassitude are the ``adult'' responses to the widespread cultural decay. Our culture not only whispers, but veritably screams, that anything goes. While this is the cultural undertow, the current at the surface holds up ideals that are betrayed almost immediately--democracy is in disrepair; big business alternately rentseeks of foists cultural rot onto a complacent public; and education is mind-numblingly dumbded-down and awash in psychological fads. An idealistic (yes, idealistic) young man regarding this spectacle can easily be drawn into the depths of the undertow. It is a wrong, but facile, conclusion that all is power, and that the ideals of this country are fraudulent. Reinforce this with bombs, guns and music--and someone just might, indeed, did, snap. technology The internet is praised for its promise and ability to connect people in ways hereto before unthinkable. The commercial and intellectual potential of the internet is a marvel. But there is a dark side to all this. An absolute majority of internet traffic is pornography. Subcultures that used to be isolated, can now connect and reinforce one another. As I said before, the type of student that Harris and Klebold represent has always roamed the halls of American high schools. Such students endure cruelties and indignities in the remorseless culture of high school, but they do not end up killing their classmates and trying to blow up the school. With the internet, however, instead of hanging out with a few like- minded outcasts in their parents' basement, these youths can log-on and interact with a whole underground world. These internet ``communities'' promote the ultimate in social atomization--a whole new self-created virtual identity. Wann-be Supermen could formerly only hear one-way communication through records and, for the semi-literate, books. Now, that communication is two way--bomb recipes can be exchanged, home pages can advertise and promote the rage, chat rooms can stiffen the resolve of would-be mad bombers. institutional Columbine high school houses nearly 2000 students. The principal of the school has said that he didn't even know these two students; nor had he heard of the ``trench coat mafia,'' the disaffected coterie of students to whom these men belonged. It was easy for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to get lost at Columbine. They apparently did get lost, to all of our detriment. The magnitude of 2000 student schools serves no educational purpose, but mainly an athletic one. Parents and students cannot hope to have a stake in a school of that size. In the same way that big business and big government depersonalizes, big education makes it easy for students to feel warehoused and adrift. Who knows if a smaller school, with more particular attention would have changed these young men? It may well not have. But in this time when we talk about community, let us realize that communities start from the ground up, and are built on personal connection to a group, be it a family, a neighborhood, a church, or a school. Values are shared and friendship is shared in a real community. Industrial-sized education does not serve community-building. Neither does an education monopoly that must meet the needs of the lowest common denominator. conclusion Secular culture has no effective response to the nihilism of these young men, and the subculture from which they emerged. Therapy and ``anger management'' did not, and could not have, saved them. To the contrary, therapeutic interventions probably only further confirmed their view of our weak and feckless culture. In reporting on Adolph Eichmann's 1960 trial in Jerusalem, philosopher Hannah Arendt noted ``the banality of evil;'' that is, how small, petty and unoriginal evil appears. She was speaking of Eichmann, a trivial bureaucrat who efficiently and systematically undertook murdering the Jews of Europe. Likewise here, evil's banality is made plain to us. Two disaffected punks have changed life in my hometown forever. In the end, my conclusions are unsatisfying and incomplete; Sin is real; Evil is real. The inscrutable evil of these men made perfect sense from within their world. If I do not believe, if we do not believe, then their nihilism is right--and even if we ourselves do not embrace it, we have no means to stop others from doing so. Pray the Lord's mercy on us. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint).

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H.Con.Res. 92) expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the tragic shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer).

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from New York, for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I should say that having now lived through this horrible experience and participated in all of the events, as many as I could in Colorado, it has certainly touched my soul in a way that few other things that I have experienced in this Congress have. Mr. Speaker, I assure my colleagues who have spoken to this point that I personally will be more than willing, I would be happy to look at any proposal, any idea anyone has to address this kind of issue, any solution. I yearn, I ache for a solution, just like anyone else in this Congress. I fear so deeply, however, that what we can do here cannot even begin to touch or make a dent in the problem that has created Columbine High's tragedy. It is a problem that is close to home, close to home for all of us. We must look in the mirror, every single one of us, for the real reason, for the real answer here, because we have created a culture in which a generation at least has grown up without the ability to look at life through the same sort of eyes that many other generations have, and without the ability to actually have a sense of worth, of value. When I was younger there was a popular movie, ``Easy Rider,'' and the characters in the movie spent the entire thing living the high life, literally and figuratively, on drugs. At the end, however, they looked up and said, we blew it. We blew it. That was the message that not too many people got. But I must tell the Members, I look at our generation and I look at all the things that have happened, and I look at the life we tried to live and provide for our children, thinking it was the right thing, it was a life that we decided was not worthy of restrictions, that we would not impose them on our children, that we would be pals instead of parents, and we live the high life, and we blew it. We blew it. I think of my neighbor, whose son cradled Mr. Sanders in his arms as the last breath left his body, and he said to my neighbor's son, ``Please tell my family I love them.'' And I think of the scars that that child now takes with him for the rest of his life, and not just the physical scars that we know are on there from the people who are surviving in the hospitals, but all the mental scars that we will have no idea, we will never know the depth of them. We will never know the extent to which they exist. We will never know how to treat or who to treat, because we will never know. We will not see with our eyes how they affect these children. And I think to myself, for some children there is still hope, but we have to look at ourselves as families. We have to look in the mirror. There is nowhere else to go. As John Donne says, ask not for whom the bells toll, they toll for thee and for me. I accept the responsibility, and I hope with all my heart and I pray to the ever-living God that he gives me the wisdom, and my colleagues, and my community, and the culture, the wisdom to know what action we individually can take so as to avoid a tragedy like this ever happening again. I pray for that wisdom.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that I sincerely appreciate the comments of my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall). Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Salmon).

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, Thursday of last week, I returned to my home in Littleton, Colorado to pray for the victims of the shooting at Columbine High School. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on the motion to instruct conferees for H.R. 1141, the Supplemental Appropriations Bill (rollcall No. 96).

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on House Concurrent Resolution 92.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I come here tonight to ask everyone listening, watching around America, I come here to ask you for your prayers for those parents who have lost children in this incredible, horrible, devastating event. There are no words any of us can utter from this position, even in this House, that can ever soothe the hearts of the people who have lost their family members. But it behooves us all to think about how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken away any time, any place, anywhere. It must make us all think again about turning to God and asking for his counsel and for wisdom which we all need in order to address these kinds of issues and others that will confront us. So I have no other speeches to make. I have no other words to utter than to simply say again to everyone, please pray for the grieving, pray for the lost, and pray that this never, ever happens again.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding time to me. During the 1970s, I think there was a trashy novel that was quite popular. I think the title was, Fear of Flying. I have thought about it often as I listen to debate about this, because it seems to me another novel could be written by my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle called Fear of Freedom, something like that, because it really does characterize what I hear from everyone who stands up at this microphone and talks about what would happen, what a catastrophe would befall us, if in fact we were to reduce our ability to tax the people and give them greater freedom. That is the peculiar nature of this debate, because that is truly what we are arguing here, whether or not we are on the side of greater individual freedom, we believe that people should have more of an opportunity to keep the money that they earn, or if we believe the government should have the ability to tax it away from them, and in a way that makes it extremely easy, and as we can see over the last 40 or 50 years, that all kinds of bad things have happened in that process. The tax loopholes that my friends on the left talk about, where did they come from? When my friends from the Democratic side come up and talk about tax loopholes being a problem, it does remind me a little bit of the child that kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. The fact is, of course, these are the problems that were brought to us over 40 years of Democratic rule in this body, and on the Senate side. In Colorado we had a similar debate. The same exact kind of thing happened when we started talking about an attempt by an actual citizen of the State, he kept putting an initiative on the ballot called the tax limitation, and it is now referred to in Colorado as the Taber amendment. A gentleman by the name of Douglas Bruce four or five times with his own money put it in at his own initiative. It finally passed. Every time it was debated, exactly the same sort of sentiments were expressed by the people on the other side. What it said is no tax at the State or local level can be increased without a majority vote of the people, which is much more severe, by the way, certainly than a majority or two-thirds vote of the legislature. We are talking about a majority of hundreds of thousands of people who have to vote on every tax increase. Exactly the same thing was stated, that it would be the end of the world as we know it. Mr. Speaker, it is exactly the same thing that they proposed, that in fact blood would run in the streets, it would be the end of civilization, everything would collapse. But in fact do Members know what has happened? We passed this in 1992. We have never had a more robust economy in the State of Colorado. Jobs increased by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. It has never ever had the kind of dismal effect that was projected. Why? Because people kept more of their own money and invested it and created jobs. That is exactly what happens when we give people control over their own dollars.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, when I got back to my district, I asked people about what they think should be done with the budget surplus. On more than one occasion, I am asked in return, ``what surplus?'' There are a lot of people out there who are on to the games we play in this town. They ask, how could there be a budget surplus if the national debt went up last year and will go up again this year? What kind of surplus is that? In fact, they are right. The Federal budget is only in surplus if we count the temporary surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund. The ironic thing is that the government would never let a business keep its books that way. But that is the way it does with our seniors' retirement money. It uses it to mask the true size of the deficit. Republicans want to put an end to that. Many Democrats are not very happy about that prospect. Ending this practice would make it a lot harder to create new spending programs and expand the size of government. It sounds like another good reason why we should do it, does it not?

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, as we approach the decision to send ground troops into the war in Kosovo, it is important for us to look at the historical events surrounding that particular area and to then look at the request that is being made, that will probably be made for this Congress to approve in some fashion or other, a request from the administration to commit American troops to this folly. During the break, I was given an article that I found quite sobering, from an individual in my district. The title of the article is ``Serbia: The lesson of Army Group E.'' It came off of the net, World Net Daily, Friday, March 26. The author, a gentleman by the name of Joel A. Ruth. And I quote from this article because I think it needs to be widely read and widely heard, again, as we approach this potential decision to send American troops in. It says: Before we engage the Serbs in a limited war over Kosovo, it would be wise to review the experiences of the 22 German divisions that were committed to stamping out Serb resistance between 1941 and 1945. While the Germans also had the help of 200,000 Croatian, Slovenian and Bosnian Moslem volunteer auxiliaries, they still could not do the job, and with a combined army of over 700,000 men willing to commit atrocities that the United States and her allies would never contemplate in this, quote, civilized day and age. In the end, and without direct Allied help, the Serbs succeeded, through extreme human sacrifice and one of the bloodiest partisan wars ever fought in history, in recapturing over half their country by the time the war had ended on all the other fronts. Army Group E surrendered to the Serbs and was subsequently force-marched the length and width of Serbia without food until every German soldier had dropped dead by the wayside. The fate of the Croatian Slovenians and Moslems who had helped the Germans was mass murder; all prisoners were taken, shot and clubbed or tortured to death and dumped in mass graves. Over one half million soldiers and their families were thus exterminated by the Serbs, over 1 million murdered if one counts the victims of the German Army Group E. After the war the Serbs under Marshal Tito were determined that no outside aggressor would ever enjoy an advantage in occupying any part of Serbia ever again. Therefore, for the next 40 years, a massive system of underground defenses were constructed deep under the mountains, atomic bomb-proof and capable of maintaining a million-man army underground for several years while guerilla warfare would rage against any future aggressors. These underground facilities contain massive quantities of munitions, field hospitals, food stocks, fuel and consist of thousands of miles of tunnels which can enable a guerilla force to strike and vanish to safety during bombing and artillery strikes. Believe me, if the Germans who utilized the most brutal tactics could not subdue the Serbs in 5 years when they did not possess such a defensive infrastructure, how much harder is it going to be now that they have spent 50 years in preparing for the next invaders? The article goes on to claim that any attempt on the part of NATO and this administration to participate in any such venture would be just as full of folly and certainly would be just as bloody. And the idea that we can bomb Milosevic into submission is, of course, if you are taking this at face value, if the information supplied in this particular article is correct, then that theory, that strategy, is idiotic. For if there is such a system of caverns and caves within Serbia where a million men could be housed and probably are being housed even at the present time, then how can we possibly expect to really cripple him through any amount of bombing that we can possibly do? It will, of course, take armed forces on the ground, and it will, of course, turn into the same sort of bloody situation that preceded us there some 50 years ago. So I ask my colleagues once again to reconsider, when we are asked to commit American forces to this area, that we consider the lessons of history as it is so often difficult for us to understand. But it is important for us to realize that history does repeat itself, that this is a bad place for us to be with no particular reason for us to be there.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, on March 11, as a freshman Member of this body, I witnessed one of the most profound debates on the issue as to whether or not we should allow the President to move ahead on his plan to attack Yugoslavia. I was on the losing side of that debate. I believed that the decision was wrong; I believe that it is wrong. Mr. Speaker, I am still convinced that the decision is a mistake, and I could not in good conscience say otherwise. Now, however, the trigger has been pulled and we cannot put the bullet back into the chamber. Our only course of action is to, in fact, pray for the safe return of our Armed Forces now engaged and pray also that we do not use this as a criteria for future involvement of a similar nature because I can assure my colleagues that if, in fact, everything I have heard tonight as to the reasons why we are here, why we are doing what we are doing in Yugoslavia, if that is what we are going to use for interaction, if that is what we are going to use as a reason to put our forces in harm's way, I have a list of countries about, oh, as long as my arm that I can get for my colleagues that fit everyone of those criteria, and I hope and pray that we do not go there.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it is perhaps the old teacher in me, but whenever I see something like a budget proposal that has been submitted by the President, I want to give it a grade. And I am afraid, Mr. Speaker, that this President's budget proposal will not win any accounting awards. It will never be used in any economics class unless to show students just how slippery a politician can be with retirement money. The President's budget proposal for Social Security contains more phoney numbers than a Millie Vanilli soundtrack. $2.4 trillion in double counting. That is even more double counting than the administration's unconstitutional census sampling scheme. And it gets worse from there, Mr. Speaker. GAO and CBO are both on record stating that the President's proposal for Social Security might actually make the problem worse. The problem, of course, is that the baby-boomers will soon retire and Social Security will greet that event by going belly up faster than can you say Jeff Gordon. Seniors deserve better. Instead of reassuring seniors that Social Security will be put on a sounder financial footing, the President's proposal sends a message that the politicians will have to deal with the mess after he is gone. The President's Social Security proposal gets an F.

Mr. TANCREDO

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

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I am incredulous at some of the comments of my friends from the other side, from the Democratic side, who continue to talk about education as being improved or the possibility of it being improved with just more regulation, the fear that if we gave freedom to the educators who we know, the people who teach our children, to the principals of the schools in which our children go to school; if we gave them more freedom, somehow or other our children would suffer as a result of it. I am amazed at that kind of an argument. For years as a teacher, Mr. Speaker, I taught children, and I sat in classrooms and in faculty lounges with other teachers who continually talked about the fact that they needed and demanded more freedom, that they were impeded in their ability to teach because of the regulations we place on them, both the State and Federal level. So here we come, finally forward with a plan to give those teachers and those principals the freedom to actually teach children in the ways that they know work, and all of a sudden the Democrats in this body rise up, unanimously almost, to object to that. This is very peculiar indeed, Mr. Speaker, very peculiar.