it is common sense in my areas of Michigan, that if you make it too easy to file bankruptcy and discharge your debts, a lot of those lenders are going to have to jack up their interest rates on everybody else to compensate for the money…

I favor further inquiry by the Judiciary Committee. The issue before us today is straightforward: Do the allegations of possible impeachable offense merit further investigation? Anyone who answers ``no'' and asserts that there should be no…

in the Monday's Wall Street Journal there was an editorial that talked about the Jones Act. The Jones Act is legislation that was passed in the 1920s that is pretty much pure protectionism. It says that only shippers of sea-going vessels…

I rise to address the assembly today on the subject of the problems facing Michigan farmers and ranchers. The conference report on the 1999 Agriculture Appropriations Act helps some of these farmers in facing what is a very, serious…

First of all, I invite the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) to come over and join the Republican party. We still believe in that philosophy that he is starting to think. Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed that there is so much rhetoric…

I just want to express my emotions that it is so disconcerting to have Members stand up and say, gosh, let us save Social Security. Why do they not do something to save Social Security instead of just talking about it? We have several…

as I have been down here since 1993, I see one danger, and that is many people in Washington tend to become elitists. They study a problem. They think they can solve that problem better than anybody else in the world even if it is a local…

Drug dealers, while the economy is good, while there are jobs out there, you better start looking for another job, because here comes some aggressive legislation that is going to be serious about the war on drugs. These bills that we are…

I want to talk about Social Security. Mr. Speaker, when I first came here 5 rac{1}{2} years ago, we were not only borrowing a great deal from the Social Security Trust Fund, but we had an additional deficit spending that approached $300…

They would be in violation of existing law, is my understanding. But if they have a green card, I have exempted these types of individuals from the more extensive parameters of the law under my amendment. But if the gentleman would look to…

The penalty is not more severe. The option is more extensive. So in the eyes of the court, if they decide that the violation is egregious enough, they have an option of a greater penalty than under existing law. Existing law has a maximum…

They have been indicted under existing law. I am not familiar whether they have been convicted or not. There was a guilty plea this afternoon, I understand.

Well, certainly if we look at the activities of Charlie Trie or John Huang or Johnny Chung, these individuals that now have been indicted for illegal contributions under existing law. Again, we do not change any of the definition in…

I would suggest I am not making existing law more tougher, but if the court decides, for lack of a better word, that the violation is egregious enough or the amount of the contribution or the potential for influence is egregious enough…

Mr. Chairman, the 1996 elections were marked by many questionable financial tactics in fund-raising for political purposes, but I think the one that must concern us is the vast amounts of illegal donations by foreign contributors. The…

Mr. Chairman, very briefly, each one of these bars represents how much money has been spent by the Federal Government for each one of these years, 1994 through 2003. In 1994 we started out at $1.4 trillion. We are ending up in the…

very briefly, this debate is important, because the White House spins the President's budget as a glorious solution of how government can solve problems by spending money. Nobody has talked about where the money comes from. That is the…

what is disconcerting is that I think that side of the aisle, I think the Democrats after experiencing success 2 years ago in demagoguing what the Republicans were doing in trying to slow down the growth of the budget, when they realized…

I am a farmer from Michigan and seems to me we need to get the budget hay out of the mow and down on that barn floor where we can chew on it a little bit. This graph represents what has been happening to spending in this country. There has…

I want to talk briefly about Social Security. I see a lot of young people in our gallery today, and not only for their future, and what might happen in their retirement years but all workers today, including all retirees today, need to be…

I suspect a lot of people are going to be tired of hearing about Social Security. But I think it is so important that every American, either retired or somebody that is going to be retired some day, look at the problem of Social Security…

I hope everybody might be as excited as I am about moving ahead with a solution to Social Security. I introduced my first Social Security bill when I arrived in 1993 and then three years ago in the 104th session and again last year I…

I would just suggest that it is very dangerous if we continue to rely on tax increases to solve this problem. Today, the American working families pay more, 75 percent of American working families pay more in the FICA tax, Social Security…

Today the Social Security trustees released the annual report on their new projections when Social Security runs short of money to pay benefits. Because of the economic growth, because of the good economy with more jobs and higher incomes…

I think it is reasonable to carry on the discussion of what has happened in the last 5 years. I was elected, and my first year in Congress was 1993. In that year we had a deficit under the unified budget of $322 billion. In the next, that…