H 5592 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE May 25, 1995

That is absolute nonsense. It is a

falsehood. It is a lie. Those who are uttering this lie day after day in this

Chamber should be ashamed of themselves, and I call upon them to stop

with their falsehoods.

First of all, their numbers are not

correct. They have simply arbitrarily

picked them as $300 billion each to try

to make them match, but the numbers

are not exactly that. This is used to try

to mislead the public.

Furthermore, this is not tit-for-tat.

The tax cuts are not for the rich, as

you hear over and over again, $300 billion in cuts for Medicare to pay for $300

billion in tax cuts for the rich. I happen to think that allowing parents of

children to keep $500 more of their

money for every child they have, regardless of the income of the parents,

is not a tax cut for the rich. Absolutely

not.

If you try to analyze the income

breakdown of the tax break that was in

the tax bill passed by the Republicans,

you can verify that only a small percentage of the amount of money will go

to the rich. Frankly, it is the rich who

pay the most taxes, so anytime you

have a tax cut, they are going to get a

substantial portion of it back. But it is

not a tit-for-tat, and the numbers used

on the floor are not accurate.

Furthermore, the statement that we

are cutting Medicare by $300 billion to

provide money for the tax cuts for the

rich is nonsense, because we are not

cutting Medicare. Medicare will increase under the Republican proposal

that has been adopted. It may not increase at the incredible 10.5-percent

rate that it has been increasing at, but

that is nearly three times the amount

of increase in the private sector health

care cost.

We cannot as a Nation continue to

pay 2 or 3 times the rate of increase for

those on Medicare that we do in the

private sector. Clearly there is something wrong with Medicare if costs are

going up that rapidly.

The proposal is to try to make Medicare run more efficiently. Our proposal

is to try to preserve Medicare, it is to

try to protect Medicare, to make sure

that it is there for the people who need

it.

If we do not take action to cut the

rising rate of cost, there will not be

any money left in Medicare after the

year 2002. It will be bankrupt and people will not have the medical coverage

they have come to depend upon.

That is the problem we are trying to

address. It is a problem that has to be

addressed in a bipartisan fashion by

this House, by the Senate, and by the

President.

I am very disappointed that in our

attempt to begin addressing that issue,

the other side of the aisle, including

the President, is not addressing the

problem with us. They are not sitting

down with us and trying to cooperate,

but they are rather getting on their

high horse, or standing on their soapbox, and saying ‘‘cuts, cuts, cuts’’ when

we are not cutting, we are only trying

to make it more efficient and more responsive to the needs of the people.

As I said at the beginning, I am a

person of integrity. I try to be honest,

and I have tried to be honest in this

statement.

I truly hope that the other side of the

aisle, everyone involved in this Chamber, the Senate, and the White House,

will get together with us and say,

‘‘Look, we have a serious problem with

Medicare.’’ The President’s own nominees on the trust fund board have said

we have a problem with Medicare. Everyone agrees we have a problem with

Medicare. Let us sit down as people of

good will and say we have a problem.

Let us work together to solve it.

My plea is that we all get together

and solve this problem so in fact we

can preserve, protect and repair the

Medicare system so that we will meet

the needs of the elderly, not just now

and not just in the year 2002 but for all

time.

previous order of the House, the gentleman from California [Mr. M

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

f ARTINEZ]

is recognized for 5 minutes.

[Mr. MARTINEZ addressed the

House. His remarks will appear hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.]

Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, due to an

PERSONAL EXPLANATION

fillness, I was forced to miss a vote on

Tuesday, May 23. Had I been present, I

would have voted ‘‘aye’’ on the

Brownback amendment, rollcall vote

No. 348.

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

CALL FOR ABOLITION OF

fThe SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. HOKE] is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I have a

number of things I wanted to discuss

with the House today, first of all with

respect to the Department of Energy.

Mr. Speaker, as a part of our ongoing

effort to both balance the budget and

give our children and our grandchildren a better future and to turn

back the tide of taxation without representation, which is one of the things

that the patriot founders of this country shed their blood for, we have to examine every single program and weed

out those that do not provide a vital

national service.

By that measure, the Department of

Energy should and must be abolished.

Under the Clinton administration, the

Department failed to adequately meet

the minimum requirements of maintaining the operational readiness of

our nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead,

it appears to have become more of a

travel service to satisfy the Secretary

of the Energy’s wanderlust. Evidence of

that failure can be found by simply examining Energy Secretary Hazel

O’Leary’s schedule. Last Wednesday,

May 17 she traveled to Paris in order to

give the welcoming speech at an international energy conference on Monday,

May 22. Then she went to Baku, Azerbaijan, to give the keynote speech at

an oil and gas conference. Today Ms.

O’Leary is in Florence, Italy, for a

luncheon and a dinner banquet at a

conference on geothermal energy.

While these world travels are indeed

very exciting, it would be interesting

to know just how much they cost. I understand that Secretary O’Leary has

transferred at least $100,000 from other

travel accounts, including accounts

used by scientists and technicians in

the Department’s nuclear safeguards

and security program, to pay for this

globe trotting.

That is the gist of this, that is the essence of this, not so much that we want

to micromanage the Secretary’s travel

schedule but that we are very concerned that money is being taken from

other accounts, particularly the accounts that have to do with the safety,

security, oversight, and general management of the nuclear weapons that

she is charged with being the steward

of to pay for this travel.

Indeed, it is my understanding that a

number of offices involved in maintaining the safety, performance, and reliability of our nuclear weapons will run

out of funds by July, 3 months before

the end of the fiscal year, because of

the Secretary’s personal travel demands. They will run out of travel

funds from those accounts.

While Secretary O’Leary’s commitment to personally attend these international alternative and traditional

energy conferences may be commendable, I find it very difficult to conceive

that her attendance in exotic locales is

more important than safeguarding our

nuclear deterrent.

For that reason I have sent letters to

the chairmen of House Commerce, National Security, and Government Reform and Oversight committees asking

them to initiate investigations into the

Secretarty’s prodigious travel. Here is

a copy of the Secretary of Energy’s

travel schedule for the period that I

was describing.

STUDENT LOAN PROGRAM

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak next

with respect to the comments of the

gentleman from Texas regarding the

Student Loan Program.

I have followed this as a member of

the Committee on the Budget very

closely and I have frankly been astonished at the response of the minority in

this case. The issue is whether or not

we should subsidize, that is, pay for the

interest on student loans during the

period of time that a student is in

school Or should that money, the interest on that loan, be capitalized and

added to the principal amount of the

loan at the beginning of the loan period

immediately following graduation; I

think it is maybe 3 months following

graduation.