Pete Hoekstra

There are bureaucrats at every level. There are over 5,000 in the Department of Education, which administers about 260 of these programs. There are bureaucrats at the local level who are trying to figure out what is coming from Washington.

If I were still employed, most likely if these were the results of my area of responsibilities, I would be unemployed. The business would have never let such a key part of its future languish with these kinds of results for this long. They…

But you know, that is the other myth that we are fighting here, that Washington bureaucrats, that a Washington bureaucracy cares more about the education of our kids than what parents in local communities do. This myth is also hurting…

I now want to turn our attention to another myth. We have talked about the one that Washington creates communities, Washington creates homes, and we have found out that after $5.5 trillion that is not the reality. I would now like to…

I think if we take a look at Habitat for Humanity, it is active in Michigan. They take a caring attitude in reaching out and finding the people to move into these houses. These people are part of the process. They maintain their dignity…

And the issue that we are going to be talking about tonight builds very much off of the problem that you describe. We are going to be talking about the myth of the magical bureaucrat, the myth of moving all of this power and responsibility…

These are just 2 examples: The Corporation for National Service, the direct lending program. There are many more. Bureaucrats at the Commerce Department know another myth is that the bureaucrats at the Commerce Department know how to…

We really are talking about focusing on how do we make kids scholars... Seven hundred and sixty programs. The number of programs for arts promotion and education, and arts are important, are 39. What I did not know is that the arts are…

In time, also just happens to be the largest funded program of those 760 programs. So for a program that is a half a billion dollars, we cannot keep the books. Whey you get to a program, the Federal family -- or Federal family education…

We need only use the same wage determiner as used in the Private sector, which is supply and demand. Only the market can accurately set wages that reflect reality.

I support Mr. Traficant's amendment because I feel that it is necessary that before the Coast Guard closes a station, they should develop and implement a transition plan in consultation with the affected communities. I have expressed this…

The problem is the first part. The first part of the book talks about spending cuts, and that is exactly what we are going to have an opportunity to do after we get 218 signatures on the A to Z plan.

I think we have a fantastic opportunity. Here is another book that was prepared by the Congressional Budget Office, something that we should read every night, ``Reducing the Deficit.'' It talks about spending and revenue options. I think…

It was cuts off of projected spending, not cuts off of--what historically I have always said is, you are spending this much this year, and a cut means next year you will be spending a little bit less.

What we do is cut off projected spending, so I anticipate one of these years we are going to blow projected spending up, really make it look high, and then we are going to come back and say we just had the biggest budget cut in history…

If we cap Federal spending at a rate of 1.5 or 2 percent, we could achieve a balanced budget. I think that is an important thing for the American people to recognize. When they here about us cutting spending, again, when we cut spending in…

That is absolutely true. The irony now is, again when you are not benchmarking off the best, what are we benchmarking off of? We are benchmarking off of mediocrity. We are on the path today of benchmarking 14 percent of our gross domestic…

I was excited to tackle a very difficult job, a challenging issue that is a nationwide problem. And I thought that maybe we will take some of the same types of approaches in Congress that I am familiar with in the private sector. When you…

Mr. Walker, I think what a ``no'' vote means is that those Members are unwilling to take the accountability and responsibility for the integrity and the honor of the House and that they are willing to let some outside agency bear that…