Jack Kingston

The other thing I think is important to emphasize is that we are not sitting around waiting on the line item veto to be responsible, nor are we set back by the fact that the other body did not pass the balanced budget amendment. It is…

We have 163 different Federal job training programs. We have 240 different miscellaneous education programs that the Federal Government funds, 30 different nutrition programs. There is clearly room to consolidate. Yet, if you picked up the…

there are four significant changes that are happening in our society that have to do with the field of medicine and the reason that medicine right now is going to be a hotly debated subject in the coming months, in the coming years, in our…

I think we have to put this in perspective. What we are arguing here is not ending family planning, it is saying who is going to run it, the Federal Government or the State government, and who has done a good job. Let us look at the…

Let me just conclude with what some of the options are that we are looking at, because I think it is important that our seniors know that we want to have reform plans that will simplify and strengthen Medicare, and yet give them all of the…

I can answer it in 30 seconds if the gentleman will let me. Please, the lady is right, medical inflation on Medicare is going up 10.15 percent a year, but regular insurance inflation is at about 4 percent, and in the private sector, some…

it has been almost 4 months now that the trustees of the Medicare plan, the Clinton trustees, have come out with a report saying that Medicare is going broke in the year 2002. About 2 months ago President Clinton said: We cannot leave the…

the gentleman is correct. Let me ask the gentleman one more question: Are there any other programs that you know of offhand in this Interior bill that are cut 50 percent?

Mr. Chairman, I rarely am on the opposite side of issues with my friend the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Tim Hutchinson]. He is a great budget watchdog, a super friend of the taxpayers, but this time I find myself going against him. And…

is it not true that the Historic Trust is working to reform itself from within already, and they have offered a plan to somewhat go private and change the way they are doing business, and in that regard they are moving towards what Mr…

Well, the thing that I am curious about is this administration made such a big play on health care reform, it is interesting that they are absent to the Medicare, except to criticize.

The gentleman is a learned politician and that is true. I was not here, neither were you, when we had the infamous Lawrence Welk debates where the U.S. Congress was funding the Lawrence Welk Museum. I am not sure where he was from.

we have tried to revise the way we do business in Congress. Everybody is excited about getting out early tonight. We have done a lot of things to revise and change the status quo in Congress. And this freshman class and this new majority…

What has been going on is that the appropriations process, this $1.4 trillion that we spend each year of taxpayer's money and future taxpayers' money, because we deficit spend, as you know, it is broken down in 13 different bills. Each of…

Of the 435 House districts, all of them but one thought that that was pork. And, yet, we all have that problem.

One of the things, as you know, that we do is when we reduce spending on a bill, we try to earmark the funds from one area to the other. So a lot of times a guy from one area of the country will try to cut spending from somebody else's…

But the gentleman, if he will continue to yield, it is the Clinton Democrats who are saying Medicare is going broke and yet it is Members of the Republican Party who are trying to preserve and strengthen Medicare through reforms?

As Mr. Fox of Pennsylvania said earlier tonight, we are looking at ways to slow the growth, the expense of Medicare to the senior citizens. Medicare inflation right now is about 11 percent. Regular medical inflation is lower than that…

But, in fact, is it not true that the committees are talking about going from about $4,800 per person to $6,400 per person? Those are round numbers. Is that not an increase over the next seven years?

What has the Democrat leadership done through the Clinton administration or through the House to offer Medicare solutions?

Is it not the intent of this Congress, this Republican majority, to increase spending on a per person basis on Medicare from a $4,800, approximate----

Yet they are criticizing what we are trying to do when we talk about strengthening and preserving the system.

I had an interesting experience the other day. A friend of mine from Savannah, where I am from, asked me, he has a son up here, he said, ``Would you mind taking an engagement ring up to them?'' They did not want to mail a diamond ring at…

You know, one of the tax statistics we do hear over and over again is that in the 1950's a middle-class family paid as a percentage of their income tax on the Federal level 2 percent. In 1972, that was 16 percent. In 1995, on an average…

When government is strong, especially when it is centralized, it poses a real threat to its citizens who are liable to many abuses. Every democracy faces the tendency of government demanding more and more taxes because some of its citizens…