Date: 2001-03-28
Speaker: GARY MILLER (republican)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. it is interesting. we talk about education. We in our budget have proposed an increase in education. yet the proposal we have before us today is more mandates for local school districts. It says. when you are through hiring 100.000 teachers. we want you -to hire another 100.000 counselors. Well. maybe schools do not want counselors. maybe they need facilities. maybe they need money for special education. Maybe they do need money for counselors. but if they do not. we should not mandate them. What we should do is tell education and the institutions associated with it that. here is the money. they know the needs of their children. they know the names of their children: Educate their children. We have many Members coming before the House as if poor people only come in one color. There are black. white. brown. and red poor people. I know when I was a young man. I was raised by a single mother with my grandparents. We were poor. I remember coming home from school one day driving in a bus in seventh grade. and having the two boys before me. when we were driving. on my street. they said. "Can you imagine anyone having to live on that street?" I never knew until that day I was poor. When I decided to start a business. I had an old van that used more oil than gas. Every tool I had came in a cardboard box in the back. What did government do? Every time I tried to better myself. they took more of my money. All the Tax Code does today is build a wall between poor people and success and says. "We are going to hold you down." because every time somebody works harder. every time they make more money. we take more money from them as government. We need to allow the working people of this Nation to keep their money. and people in Congress need to realize it is the money belonging to the people who earned it. it is not our money. because government does not earn any money. Some say it is too much of a tax cut. that we want to eliminate the tax cut. we want to use it for new programs that the government thinks are better programs. Then one will say. we need to pay down more debt. Our budget pays down every bit of the available debt that we have over a 10year period. Members can go beyond -that and say. we are going to pay our debt that is not due. First of all. we have to find somebody who wants to allow us to pay off debt that is not due. If we do find those people. I guarantee Members. we will pay a premium to pay off that debt. - We need reasonable government. rea-. sonable structure. as the private sector has. We pay our debts as they come due. We are saying we are going to do that. but we want to go farther. We want to tell the American people that they earned their money. We want. them to succeed. We want to give them more than lip service. When we tell people they do not deserve a tax cut. we are giving them lip. service when it comes to them being successful in life. Let us allow people to succeed. Let us allow people to be entrepreneurs if they want to. to take advantage of the capitalistic system we have out there. a freemarket system. If people want to work. want to work harder. let them keep Imore of their money. Their budget does not do that. our budget does that. -