What the Senator from Wyoming said is absolutely right. This country is a great country because we have people who cared about people, who did `suffer with,' who did care about their neighbor, who did know who their neighbors were and went out and did something about it. And because Government has gotten so big and is starting to do so much for people, we stop doing so much for each other because it is not our job anymore. It is not our job to help take care of our fellow neighbor. There is a Government program that does that and just call this office, toll free.

That is not what made America great. Toll-free numbers for calling a Government bureaucrat is not what made America great. What made America great, what the Senator from Oklahoma said, is the goodness of America. I can tell you there is nothing good about taking money away from people who work hard for it and giving it to people who we want to for whatever reason we want to. That is not good. That may be necessary in some cases. There are people in this country who do need help and there are Government programs that do it. But do not come here and say that is good, or that is compassionate. It may be necessary sometimes.

What is good is if you participate individually, if you get out there and help your neighbor and become part of the fabric of community, which is what de Tocqueville wrote about over 100 years ago. That is what makes America great. That is what we are trying to get back to--understanding that families and communities and neighborhoods are important to the fabric of our society. And if we continue to lose them we will lose America.

So, the Lancaster Intelligencer is dead wrong. There is nothing compassionate about keeping the Federal Government in control of people's lives. It is anything but compassionate because there is no suffering here. There is only more suffering out there.

Mr. THOMAS. The Senator has made a great point. One of the exciting things, it seems to me, about this Congress is that we have for the first time in many years an opportunity to take a look at Government programs that have been in place for 30 or 40 years, such as the War on Poverty--which has failed. There are more people in poverty now than when it began.

So we are not talking about taking away the safety net. We are not talking about doing away with the assistance to people who need assistance. In welfare we want to help those, but help them back into the workplace. And that is exciting, to have for the first time a chance to say, Is there a better way to provide this assistance? Is there a more efficient way to do something, rather than just continuing to fund failed programs? I think that is the exciting thing we are doing.

Mr. INHOFE. I think it is inherent in the bureaucracy. We have to address it that way.

I can remember a very famous speech that was made, back in 1965. My colleague and I, we may be freshmen here but we are the two oldest Members of the freshman class. We can remember this well. The speech was called `A Rendezvous With Destiny' by Ronald Reagan. It was his first political speech. It was back during the Goldwater campaign.

In this speech he said something very profound. He said, `There is nothing closer to immortality on the face of this Earth than a Government program once started.'

I learned this lesson when I was mayor of the city of Tulsa. This is kind of an interesting story and tells you what is happening here today.

I went in and made a decision that over a 5-year period I would keep the level of government, city government, the same size yet increase the delivery of services. I did this because at that time the average large city doubled in size every 5 years. I thought, let us try to stop that. So I started firing people for inefficiency. And when I saw them later and said, `I thought I fired you,' and they said, `Well I have been reinstated,' I found out in government you cannot fire people for inefficiency. I found the way to do it. You defund departments and get them all.

There are some bureaucracies that were at one time performing a function that was needed; the problem went away, but the bureaucracy continues. This is what we are talking about, going through, having sunset provisions where we can say, Is this thing really needed? Is this in the public interest anymore, as it was 40 years ago when that particular agency was started?