Pete Hoekstra

Is this the same Washington that is going to stop our kids from smoking but we are going to give them free needles? Somewhere in here there is a contradiction. We can stop our kids from smoking through Washington programs, but we cannot…

We know that, since 1979, with the Education Department, we have been bringing more power and more funding, more rules and regulations to Washington and saying we need to improve education in America, and the way to do that is to move more…

When I first came here in 1993, the deficit as Washington counted it for 1998 was projected to be $300 billion per year. We are on the path now to have a $40 billion to $50 billion surplus. This is a switch of $350 billion to the positive.

I always get beat up at my town meetings between getting the deficit and the debt confused.

We do know what works in education. We do know that if we move responsibility back to parents, to the local level, the teachers and local administrators, we can make it work. Now we need to start implementing the steps to make that happen.

That is why so often we are viewed as being controversial, that we cannot see the logic in this system. I drive through my district, and I have seen lots of new schools opening up. I am saying these people are taking the lead, and they…

How crazy that we would do that, and we would do it here in Washington and set the standards from Washington, when we have been building schools for years at the local level, and that is what we need to do.

Absolutely. What we want is we want parents and teachers and local administrators deciding what they are going to do for their children and their school, based on their needs, and that is a very different vision than the vision that our…

For education, we know that the Federal Government has to be defining the standards for our schools and our local districts, because we have never built a school before, right?

If our Governor and State legislature want to do that, why are people in Health and Human Services saying no? ... we passed the resolution last year. That is a step in the right direction. It does not get us where we need to be, but it was…

It costs money, but it is not that much. Really, we have taken a look at it. When you sends a dollar and we send it back, for every dollar you send us, we only take 30 to 40 cents, to make sure you spend the 60 cents left in the way we…

I do not think the gentleman needs to worry about that, because we are fairly efficient here in Washington, because when you send that dollar to Washington and we figure out how to send it back to you, remember, also when you get the…

That costs money. We know you are probably not going to tell us the truth, so that means we have to send auditors into Wisconsin.

Back to Washington. We go through them and say whoa, you might have been lucky and got it all through the first time. We say, it looks like Wisconsin is qualified to get X amount of dollars, so we send the dollars back to you and you can…

They have to fill out some papers. So they send fill out papers, and send them where?

Well, I do not think so. We, you know, what I have been involved in and almost all of 1997, I think we have had 22 different hearings around the country. We have been in 14 different States taking a look at what works and what does not…

And I would propose that the same kind of focus and enthusiasm and energy that we have put behind the problem in 1995 of addressing this deficit and addressing the debt, we have come a long way and we got a long way to go, but we are on…

I cannot tell you the excitement that I feel to see first term Member, a second term Member, and it is my third term, and just reflecting back on when I came to Washington in 1993, if we had projected in 1993 that we would be approaching…

Today we are faced with strong evidence that the President lied after swearing an oath to tell the truth

If the gentleman will yield, I asked the gentleman the specific question about the anglers in Ireland only because I chair an oversight subcommittee on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and we asked a very simple question of…

Let us take a brief look at exactly what this resolution is calling for. Number one, it asks to determine the extent to which the Federal elementary and secondary education dollars are currently reaching the classroom. It invites us to…

Absolutely. I am just trying to reinforce the point that we need to get the computers and technology in there. When it happens, the gentleman and I need somebody to fix our computers for us, and those kinds of things. These kids out there…

I think he is a great student now and he is contributing in a very different way to this school. So everything is kind of coming together because we have that student in the right environment. It does not mean that the other school was a…

Rebuilding computers. They do not need a corporation to rebuild the computer and give it to the school. This kid, they give him, people drop stuff off and they give it to him and he fixes the stuff and he is a great student now.

This kid was put into this environment where he was provided an opportunity to flourish. You know what his strength was? He developed a whole bunch of strengths. Do you know one of the things he is really contributing to the school is--