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[Page: H1586] GPO's PDF---
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. SCHAFFER) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I want to spend this evening's Republican special order hour talking about a number of issues that define our Republican majority and what we are trying to accomplish here in the United States Congress. I want to invite any of our conference members who may be monitoring today's proceedings and this special order to come down on the floor and join in this discussion if they have anything to add to it or to relate to the rest of the Members of this great body.
One of the topics that I wanted to discuss tonight is an effort by the administration to greatly expand the percentage of land in America that is owned and possessed by the government as opposed to private landowners.
I recently had a chance to go to Russia with an 8-member delegation, the purpose of which was to discuss national missile defense and the legislation that we just passed last week relative to establishing a missile defense policy. The absence of property rights there captured my attention.
In Russia, all land is owned by the government. Even since the fall of Communism, Russian politicians have failed to make the transition to private land ownership, despite growing public fondness for this dramatic step. As more Russians exchange ideas with the rest of the world, they are collectively coming to an obvious conclusion that government is a poor steward of the land. The sad irony is the propensity of our own Federal Government to ignore so self-evident a truth.
The White House has proposed a virtual real estate spending spree involving the government snatching up private land faster than one can say glasnost or perestroika. Well, perhaps it is time for a little honesty, openness and restructuring here at home, too.
Westerners bristled during the State of the Union performance when the President announced his land legacy initiative , a ten and a quarter billion dollar land grab. Remember, the Federal Government already owns 30 percent of all land in the United States and a staggering 50 percent of all land in the west.
Now add to the Federal estate, expanding land acquisitions by State and local government, and it is not hard to conclude that America's destination is the very point of Russia's departure. The Clinton administration seems bent on breaking this bond between the American people and the earth, the very stricture of President Teddy Roosevelt's 1902 Reclamation Act which opened the door for water development, irrigation and agriculture in the west.
The Federal Government is notoriously ill-suited to manage the land it now holds, let alone more. For example, last year, the General Accounting Office reported to Congress widespread financial mismanagement, fraud, abuse
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Similar abuses have been reported within the National Park Service, which spent $784,000 of taxpayer money on the construction of a single outhouse in Pennsylvania. The Park Service has built similar royal commodes in Montana's Glacier National Park, and last year congressional hearings focused on the devastating impact of Federal land use policies on rural communities. Testimony from county commissioners documented how designating more Federal land erodes the tax base for schools and other critical services.
The Federal payment in lieu of taxes program designed to alleviate these burdens does not work well, they said. Historically, America's land policy has always favored private property ownership but under the lands legacy initiative , choice private lands currently thriving in the capable hands of America's farmers and ranchers will be relinquished to the control of Federal land managers with Washington, D.C. agendas.
At a time when the agriculture economy is enduring record low commodity prices, Congress should instead encourage private land management through positive incentives and tax relief. Indeed, this is why I introduced the Family Farm Preservation Act in the 106th Congress, to keep family farms and ranchers productive and in the family, keep their ranches in the family. The bill exempts family farms from the death tax when passed to succeeding generations.
Congress should address capital gains and other tax burdens, reform the Endangered Species Act and more aggressively expand trade markets. These steps would enable America's farmers to continue providing open space and the world's safest and most efficient food supply. In America, the right to liberty entails the right to hold property, especially land.
American politicians and their Russian counterparts would do well to consider John C. Freemont's 1856 observation that the valves upon which this Nation rests are, quote, free soil, free men and free speech; or we could all learn to speak Russian.
Growing the size of the Federal Government is a general theme that more than defines just the administration's efforts on acquiring additional public lands throughout America and restricting the available lands for private ownership. Growing the size of the Federal Government is really what divides both sides of the aisle here in the United States Congress.
We heard the previous Members engaged in a Democrat special order hour on the House Floor this evening talking about the United States census as though the Constitution as it relates to the census is somehow irrelevant but what matters more is the amount of the public wealth that is redistributed to the rest of the American people on the basis of how one counts bodies. That is a huge difference of vision in what constitutes real freedom and real liberty as we head into the next century.
Our plan is something that is very, very different. It entails a bold agenda here on the floor of the House of Representatives, to talk about smaller government, to talk about lower taxes, to talk about reducing the Federal burden of regulatory law in the lives of Americans on a daily basis. It is a pro-freedom agenda, a pro-liberty agenda. First and foremost in that agenda is our efforts to strength Social Security.
The Republican budget proposal sets aside every penny of the $1.8 trillion surplus in the Social Security trust fund to provide retirement security to three generations of Americans. Seniors, baby boomers and their children can all count on retirement security without a cut in benefits or an increase in taxes.
This is the first time since Congress passed the Social Security Act back in 1935 that 100 percent of the money going into that trust fund is being set aside for retiring Americans. We, the Republicans, are putting the trust back into the Social Security trust fund. House Republicans plan to create what is called a safe deposit box, to put that money off-limits
legally for the first time in more than 60 years. The Social Security trust fund will no longer be a slush fund for wasteful government spending.
The Clinton-Gore plan only sets aside 62 percent of payroll revenues for retirement security over the next 10 years, again, compared to 100 percent that the Republicans are proposing.
The White House proposal on Social Security and Medicare totals only $1.68 trillion over the next 10 years compared to $1.8 trillion proposed by Republicans for retirement security on both Social Security and Medicare. I point out, Mr. Speaker, we accomplish this not by talking about proposals on the House Floor as we just heard a little while ago from our Democrat friends to grow the size of the Federal Government, to spend more money, to enlarge the size of the Federal bureaucracy. We talk about just the opposite and we do so because allowing the revenue that the Federal Government collects to be set aside for real priorities matters more to us, real priorities like saving Social Security and creating a solvent Medicare program as well.
In the fiscal year 2000 alone, the President's plan, their 62 percent plan, sets aside only $85 billion. The Republican plan, again, sets aside 100 percent, $137 billion.
Let me talk about how we accomplish this because we do so within an overall budget framework and a blueprint to allow retirement security for three generations, and historic tax relief.
When the American public put the Republican Party in charge of Congress in 1995, the annual Federal deficit was $175 billion and growing as far as the eye could see. In 1995, we promised the American people we would balance the budget and reduce the Federal debt. In 1997, we passed the balanced budget resolution and in 1998, just last year, we balanced the Federal budget. This was the first year the budget was in balance since 1969, the year man first walked on the moon.
We have begun paying down the $5.1 trillion national debt. In 1998, we paid the debt down by $51 billion, the first time in a generation a payment has been made on the Federal debt.
Just 4 years after being elected to the majority, we expect Federal revenue surpluses as far as the eye can see. With a strong economy, and the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, we expect over $130 billion in surpluses in the year 2000, and $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
This is only possible, Mr. Speaker, if we continue on our plan to shrink the size of the Federal Government, to slow the rate of growth in Federal budgeting, to stand in the way of efforts of our counterparts on the opposite side of the aisle and their liberal friends down in the White House to grow the size of the bureaucracy, to expand the scope of Federal regulation; and instead leave a greater quantity of the American people's wealth back home where it belongs, in the hands and in the pockets of those who work hard to earn it.
By shrinking the size of the Federal Government and by allowing the public wealth to be reinvested into the economy and in the American people, we allow for economic growth to occur at greater rates so that lower tax rates actually collect more revenue, not through higher tax percentages and higher tax rates but through a stronger, more vibrant economy, where private capital, private cash, is circulated over and over and over again to create jobs, to create economic growth and investments and other kinds of wealth and to allow our government to function as our Founders once envisioned it should.
That is how we create a budget surplus. That is how economists throughout the country have concluded that under a plan of smaller Federal budgeting and lower tax rates, we can expect a $2.6 trillion surplus over the next 10 years. That $2.6 trillion surplus is comprised of two elements. One, the on-budget surplus of approximately $800 billion as a result of working Americans paying Federal income taxes and other revenues. Under the budget plan, this 10-year surplus will be returned to working Americans as tax relief.
The second element, the off-budget surplus, comes from working Americans paying payroll taxes into the Social Security trust fund, money they expect will be there for them when they retire. The payroll tax revenues and interest total $1.8 trillion over 10
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I want to reiterate that this is the first time since Congress passed the Social Security Act in 1935 that every penny of money going to that trust fund is being set aside for retiring Americans.
[Time: 22:30]
I would like to ask Members to compare that with the White House plan on retirement security. The White House plan, and again, I mentioned this earlier, only sets aside 62 percent of payroll revenues for retirement security over the next 10 years compared to the 100 percent that the Republicans put aside.
The President of the United States himself just a few months ago stood right at the rostrum just in front of me and disclosed this plan as though it were something the American people should celebrate. In fact, many Members on the House floor rose to their feet in wild applause, suggesting that setting aside only 62 percent of the social security trust fund to save social security was somehow a good idea. I think for a day or two the American people may have actually bought it.
But as soon as the veneer was peeled back on that plan that the President put forward, economists and the American people in general realized that what the President had done was the same old Washington trick, the same old ploy of political partisans here in Washington, D.C., and that is to double-count imaginary money.
On the Republican side, we are convinced that the American people are fed up and sick and tired of that kind of accounting, playing fast and loose with their money. It is why we are so completely devoted to the cause of walling off the social security trust fund, keeping the Federal spenders' hands off of it, and preventing that social security trust fund from ever being raided by this government again. We want to set aside the full 100 percent, and leave it in the account of the social security trust fund for future generations.
The President's proposal, the combined proposal to strengthen both social security and Medicare, totals only $1.68 trillion over the next 10 years, compared to our plan of $1.8 trillion proposed by the Republicans for retirement security. That difference is a significant one, and it is one that every senior, every baby boomer, and every baby boomer concerned about the retirement prospects for their children should watch very closely.
Let me add two more points. When it comes to taxes, the White House has proposed a budget that raises taxes and fees by $172 billion over the next 5 years, which disproportionately affects agriculture, I might add, a number of agricultural financial institutions, insurance funds, as well as many of the supporting industries that farmers and ranchers rely upon; for example, herbicide and pesticide manufacturers and so on.
Now, the Republican tax cuts, our proposal is for tax cuts between $10 billion and $15 billion this year, between $150 billion and $200 billion over the next 5 years, and $800 billion; when we add all that up, $800 billion over a 10-year period; once again, a dramatic difference between what the Democrats represent on the House Floor and what the Republicans represent in the House of Representatives.
The second key element of our agenda in Congress, particularly on the House side, is education flexibility, creating world class schools, schools that are second to none, and reclaiming our international prominence as a Nation of excellent educational institutions.
We will give local schools and school districts more flexibility to spend education dollars as they see fit. More decisions will be made at the local level where parents are involved, not here in Washington, D.C.; again, a dramatic departure from what we have seen represented through the U.S. Department of Education, under the leadership of the White House, and a new, bold Republican agenda that moves forward in a way that honors parents as real customers, teachers as real professionals, administrators and school board members as real leaders, and children as real Americans.
Too often Federal education funds are tied to the special interests of Washington, not to the best interests of children and teachers. Schools can teach our children more by cutting Washington's red tape and spending our Federal education dollars where the children need it, not where bureaucrats 2,000 miles away say it should go.
The Ed-Flex program, for example, a piece of legislation that we discussed again on the floor today with respect to some of the changes that the Senate made in a similar proposal, currently provides 12 States with the flexibility to wave certain Federal and State regulations.
Now, this is important. It is important because every schoolchild, every administrator, every school board member, knows the agony of complying with the rules, the regulations, the red tape handed down on high from Washington, D.C. to their local institutions.
The amount of Federal funds that go to schools is relatively small, on the order of maybe 7 or 8 percent at the most in certain schools, usually 6 to 7 percent in the average school district around the country. But in exchange for that relatively small percentage of Federal funds in an overall school budget, these administrators, teachers, and school board members are fade with an insurmountable burden of complying with mountains of paperwork that comes along with those dollars.
We want to cut those strings. We want to cut that red tape. We want to untangle the education quagmire that this Federal Government has created across the country, and move forward on an education agenda that is about the freedom to teach, the liberty to learn, treating parents like real customers and teachers like real professionals.
Mr. Speaker, I am joined by my good friend the gentleman from California, and I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. CUNNINGHAM) to add to the discussion.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I was all the way down on my boat on which I live, Mr. Speaker, and I heard the gentleman talk about private property in some of the agenda, so I put my tie back on, I think I got it on straight, and I even buttoned my tab.
I want to thank the gentleman for holding this special order, because there are a couple of areas which I want to the gentleman to talk about. One, I heard the gentleman on the social security issue. The other is where the President claims to put a percentage in Medicare, and actually draws out $9 billion out of Medicare.
When we talk about double-using figures in a budget, and the President takes out $9 billion and then puts in money, and then takes money out of social security and then puts 62 percent in, and he takes those billions of dollars and spends them on programs, then when it comes to our budget time he claims that we are cutting programs.
First of all, we believe in maintaining the caps. A balanced budget to us is very, very important. For those, it is not. We will see in every single bill except for defense that our liberal colleagues over here will increase spending, regardless of what the program is. They will pay for anything, a chicken in
every pot. That is where our big disagreement is.
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