WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! CONGRESS ACTION: July 9, 2000 ================= REGO: This is the catchy acronym for Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" initiatives. To hear Gore tell it, REGO has been a resounding success. According the official AlGore2000 website, "For nearly seven years, Al Gore has led the National Partnership for Reinventing Government -- a reform effort that has eliminated waste and inefficiency throughout the federal government, to make it cost less and work better for the American people. . So far, Gore's initiative has saved taxpayers $137 billion, helping to make it possible to balance the federal budget for the first time in 30 years. It has eliminated more than 16,000 pages of regulations, and 640,000 pages of internal rules." The balanced budget boast is, of course, simply silly, since it is Congress, not the Executive Branch, that spends money; it was the republican Congress that balanced the budget, just as it was democrat congresses in the 1980's that created the debt. An analysis of the facts shows that Gore's contact with reality appears to be tenuous at best. Fortunately for taxpayers, Gore's hype that he has "eliminated waste and inefficiency throughout the federal government" need not be taken at face value. Congress, as well as the General Accounting Office, and individual agency Offices of Inspector General, all exercise oversight over the activities of Executive Branch agencies, those same agencies that have been under the stewardship of the Clinton/Gore administration for more than seven years. And the true picture is not pretty. Ongoing waste at the Department of Housing and Urban Development exceeds $8.5 billion. The Office of the Inspector General at HUD audited a number of ongoing HUD programs. Regarding HUD's "Storefront Operations" and "Community Builder" program: "The audit found problems with storefront operations, its implementation, and its financial impact.". "We found little use of storefront facilities.". "HUD did not adequately plan of justify storefront site selections, exceeded budget costs.". "HUD opened new storefront offices to serve as national models for more responsive government, however, their impact is minimal and overall benefits cannot be measured." "The costs associated with six storefront operations are excessive and the benefits derived by the customers are not measurable." "The PHA [the Puerto Rico Public Housing Administration] did not comply with Federal and agency procurement requirements and did not maintain control over its central office procurement activities." "PHA management controls were not effective in deterring waste, abuse, and fraud." Referring to Atlanta's Homeownership Center (HOC), HUD's District Office of Inspector General wrote: "Our survey identified significant weaknesses.which warrant additional audit work and immediate corrective action." Ongoing waste at Department of Education exceeds $232 million. According to the General Accounting Office: "The Department's stewardship over these assets [$75 billion in federal education funds and $175 billion in student loans] has been under question as the agency has experienced persistent financial management weaknesses. Beginning with its first agencywide financial audit effort in fiscal year 1995, Education's auditors have each year reported largely the same serious internal control weaknesses.". Ongoing waste at Medicare exceeds $13 billion. According to the House Committee on the Budget: ".in the government's medical programs, fraud has taken on a new form. According to an October 1999 GAO report, Medicare and Medicaid have attracted their own class of criminals, who specialize in defrauding these government programs.. Compounding the problem is the government's own laxity in monitoring and oversight.". "In other words, the government itself bears at least some responsibility for the fraud perpetrated against its own programs." Ongoing waste at Department of Transportation exceeds $3.5 billion. According to the Office of the Inspector General of the Transportation Department: "The Rapidraft Payment System has been seriously mismanaged. It has been used extensively for purposes other than intended and subjected to embezzlement. The System should be discontinued." "The internal controls designed for the System were not followed resulting in numerous weaknesses that leave the System vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse." "The GSA Inspector General concluded that Rapidraft checks were not properly safeguarded and were improperly used." There is much more. But perhaps a fitting conclusion to this review of Gore's tenure in office involves his boast that REGO ".has eliminated more than 16,000 pages of regulations.". According to the Center for the Study of American Business, bureaucratic regulations will cost the American taxpayer an estimated $721 billion dollars this year (up from $642 billion when Bill Clinton took office). That's more than $2600 for every man, woman, and child in the country. Of that $721 billion, $236 billion is spent just on filling out paperwork. According to both Grover Norquist of the Heritage Foundation, and the Americans for Tax Reform, the picture is even gloomier. They both calculate that in 1999, federal regulations cost Americans more than one trillion dollars. And the rate of growth of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the annual listing of executive agency regulations published daily in the Federal Register, doubled between 1993 and 1996, as federal regulatory agencies added at least 11,500 new pages of regulations. That's added, not eliminated, as claimed by Al Gore. But perhaps it all depends on what the meaning of the word "eliminated" is. KYOTO BY STEALTH: Why would a democrat sponsor legislation prohibiting the Clinton administration from imposing the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty by stealth, and why would a republican oppose such legislation? So convoluted has legislating become in our modern republic, that this apparently anomalous situation is exactly what happened on June 26, during the week before Congress went on its July 4th recess. But there's more to it than first meets the eye. In 1997, the issue of global warming pre-occupied the Clinton administration. A U.S. delegation was heading to Kyoto, Japan at year end to negotiate and sign the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, what came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol. In anticipation of those negotiations, on July 25, 1997, the United States Senate passed -- unanimously -- the Byrd-Hagel Resolution. That resolution provided, in pertinent part, ".the Senate strongly believes that the proposals under negotiation.could result in serious harm to the United States economy." and further expressed ".the sense of the Senate that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter.". Disregarding the unanimous instructions of the Senate (which, under our Constitution, would be asked to confirm any such agreement before it could become operative), the U.S. delegation went ahead and signed the Kyoto Protocol anyway. The Clinton administration never submitted that Treaty for required Senate ratification, and has been trying to implement that Treaty by stealth ever since. Which brings us to June 26, 2000. During debate over H.R.4690, the "Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act", Congressman John Olver (D-MA) submitted House Amendment 902, providing "That any limitation imposed under this Act on funds made available by this Act shall not apply to activities specified in the previous proviso related to the Kyoto Protocol which are otherwise authorized by law." (Congressional Record page H5136). Because of Olver's amendment (which passed 217 -- 181, Roll Call vote # 323) Section 622 of H.R. 4690 now reads: "None of the funds appropriated by this Act shall be used to propose or issue rules, regulations, decrees, or orders for the purpose of implementation, or in preparation for implementation, of the Kyoto Protocol which was adopted on December 11, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, at the Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has not been submitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification pursuant to article II, section 2, clause 2, of the United States Constitution, and which has not entered into force pursuant to article 25 of the Protocol: Provided, That any limitation imposed under this Act on funds made available by this Act shall not apply to activities specified in the previous proviso related to the Kyoto Protocol which are otherwise authorized by law." Congressmen Knollenberg (R-MI) and Peterson (R-PA) opposed the amendment. As Knollenberg explained, "This is a gutting amendment. It is destructive, and frankly, it slaps the Byrd-Hagel resolution in the face. It bypasses the Constitution, and it is wrong for America.. .the attempt.is to cut the heart out of the language that is law. This is law that was passed in 1999, and the law of last year. Seven times the President has signed language that is now in effect. What H.R. 4690 is not about, it is not about funding of research and development for clean power with renewable energy, or funding to develop new homes that are more energy-efficient, or trying to reduce methane emissions. .what this amendment does is it trips through the year 2000, through the 1999 year, and brings us really back to a point where we were before we even started this language." Peterson continued, "Mr. Chairman, here we go again. Another effort to back-door the Kyoto treaty. The Knollenberg language that is in this bill is appropriate. It has been put into law year after year, and it says that we are not allowed to implement and spend billions of tax dollars implementing the Kyoto Protocol which has not been put before the Senate, when it has not been debated, when it is not in the appropriate setting. There is no reason for the language that is being offered. There is no good reason. There is no prohibition of exchange of information. There is no prohibition of us doing the normal things that our environmental agencies do from country to country. This creates a loophole that one could drive a Mack truck through. This administration, year after year, has budgeted billions of dollars to sell their theories, to sell the American public on this concept. Solemn science should rule and we should have a scientific debate. Most of America is concerned about this proposal that is before us right now. The people that create the jobs in this country realize that the Kyoto Protocol, as implemented by the back door as the Gore administration wants to do, will take jobs out of this country and put them into Third World countries faster than anything that has been done. The Kyoto Protocol, as was mentioned the other day, is a horrible idea. It is a horrible concept. It leaves the Third World countries out and will have our businesses buying credits from them so they can continue to process and manufacture in this country. It makes no sense and we must not let this administration implement it in the back door." Olver's amendment appears to prevent the imposition of the Kyoto Protocol by stealth. So what is the problem? The problem lies in Olver's concluding words, that the funding prohibition shall not apply to any activities ".which are otherwise authorized by law." Recall the words of Clinton functionary Paul Begala, "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kind of cool." Begala was referring to Bill Clinton's use of Executive Orders to circumvent the legislative function of the Congress (and in this case the Advise and Consent treaty function of the Senate) and override the will of the people. Once issued, a presidential Executive Order has the force of law, which means that with the adoption of Olver's amendment, Clinton can simply write an Executive Order mandating the imposition of the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, and that mandate will suddenly find itself funded as an activity ".otherwise authorized by law." FOR MORE INFORMATION. ======================== AlGore2000 website: http://www.algore2000.com/ Office of the Majority Leader Waste Watch: http://freedom.gov/wastewatch/wasteometer.asp Regulatory Facts and Figures: http://www.regulation.org/keyfacts.html Legislative Text: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c106query.html Roll Call Votes (# 323 passing Olver's amendment to H.R. 4690): http://clerkweb.house.gov/evs/index.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mr. Kim Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? 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