From the Easy Chair

P. Biddle on Congress

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 112-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CF154

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CF154, P. Biddle on Congress, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 264, April 8th, 1982.

In this session we are going to continue talking with Paul Biddle. And Susan Alder, Otto Scott and Douglas Murray and I are going to ask him questions about Congress, because while we do not concern ourselves with candidates nor do we promote candidacies, nevertheless, this year there has been a deep seated moral revulsion against Congress on a number of grounds. Some of it goes back to the Barney Frank case and other like things, then the post office and the house bank scandals, the Keating scandal and the general feeling is that we have an Aegean stable here that needs house cleaning.

Now Paul Biddle is a candidate for Congress, but our basic concern in this session is what are the problems in Congress as you see it, Paul, and what needs to be done there to make that body more accountable to the American public, to clean up the kind of thing that permits the corruption at Stanford and where men like Barney Frank attempt to come to the defense of Stanford and other men as well so that we have a situation where corruption seems to have more friends than anything else.

[ Biddle ] Well, I... I found Congressmen to be as much or more than we could ever want them to be. And I have also found Congressmen to be asleep at the wheel. You know, we have all types there. I think one of the problems that I see now as a candidate is that in order to become a Congressman you need to buy. You need to buy air time. You need to buy flyers. Well, all of these things have buying associated with them connote money.

And normally the sources of money for our congressional candidates comes from people who have access to these people once they are elected. If the people have access to their Congressman, then there is an off setting counter balance to special interest. But most congressional representatives, as time passes and they... and their membership in the Congress, they become more and more supported by special interests. They become more and more approachable by lobbyists.

If I ask you what is the telephone number of your Congressman in his office in Washington, DC, you might have to say, “Well, Let’s see. I know where I can find that in this directory.” But I can promise you there are a number of lobbyists that if I would ask them, “What is so and so’s telephone number?” they could tell you that telephone number just as I can tell you the telephone number of Congressman John Dingle. Why? Because I work with John Dingle all the time. Or I have. Now I do not do it so much. But during the time of the revelations on Stanford there was frequent communication back and forth.

The lobbyists have direct access, immediate access, continuing access and they control dollars. And that tends to disenfranchise the rest of us from the process. That is one of the problems I see. Secondly, the complexity of law within the Congress that we are enacting because we have given a charter, a scope of action, a purview to the Congress that demands tremendous intellectual capability. You could be a true mandarin and be staggered by the types of legislation coming down the tube. So who do you go back to for guidance on this apart from the lobbyists? Well, you go to your political leadership. And your political leadership often times is in the same predicament that you as an individual Congressman are in terms of wanting to remain a party in power, wanting to continue the flow of monies into your campaign fund, wanting to see particular personalities within your power who are jockeying one against another to come out on top. And, again, the odd man out is the tax payer.

Now those are fundamental problems that I think one particular swift blow of the sword to the Gordian knot can accomplish and that is open up the system so people know how bad these people are or how good they are. Now in matters of national security where we have put a lot under that umbrella that doesn’t deserve to be there. But I would support the fact that if it is a matter of national security, perhaps there is justification for to providing information like that to people who would take advantage of us. But there is most of our governmental activity that every citizen has the right to know about and most citizens, if things are portrayed to them in a reasonable fashion, can make a reasonable solution, a reasonable choice.

That is something that Congress does not do. So if we open up the process, people know what the Congress is doing. We know the riders that are coming through, the people who have set up special pork barrels here and there. Hopefully we won’t just say, “Well, that is just the way Congress is,” but we will say, “Those types of people have violated a trust and weakened the vitality and integrity of our government. They deserve to be pushed out the door.”

So the openness, the accountability and here, again, is... for myself a group that has been very helpful to me have been the media. When I was going after Stanford, I can promise you I went to Congressmen and Congressmen I spoke to were polite, but of little help until John Dingle involved himself. And he is quite a fellow. There are people who are very critical of John Dingle and he and I are to of the same political party, but he is a very gutsy man. And he feels the same way that I do that if the public sees how bad a situation is and they can relate to it, you get change.

Now that is the biggest thing I would want to see a change in the Congress, the openness and the accountability.

[ Murray ] You think that the check off on the income tax returns are public funding of politically campaigns should ... is a solution? Get rid of the PACs?

[ Biddle ] Well, again, you... you engendered two questions there. First of all, do I think that the check off on the 1040 is a... is a viable way and an appropriate way to finance the campaigns? No. I don’t. I don’t necessarily like that, because I think any time you provide money to the government or bureaucracy you are just asking for trouble. I don’t ... I don’t prefer a situation where things are more immediate and direct. I don’t... I don’t think the government should be involved in... in the political process of electing our... our officials. There is too much of a chance for things to go astray. The ... the other question that you asked and let me come back to that...

[ Murray ] Eliminate the political action committee money which seems to be steering long term public service people into this channel of corruption after...

[ Biddle ] I... I think the concept for PACS was possibly occasioned by good intent, but there is tremendous abuse in PAC money now. I observe that to be the case. Other people would dispute that I am sure, but I ... I think it is, because a Congressman, in order to get the significant contributions of a PAC ends up selling his soul sometimes.

And that denies you and I, as individuals, of our rights. Now what I... what I see as more appropriate in the way of congressional funding is I don’t think PACS should be allowed to contribute to primaries. And I think that in primaries there should be not so much everyone drawing out of the same till, but in... in primaries they have to be incubated a little bit. That is the chance for individuals. And, remember, the thing that makes our government great is not that we have career politicians, but that the process is open to a number of people, a plumber, an electrician, a doctor. Whoever wants to go out and become a political figure for two years, four years, six years, whatever the period of time that we deem appropriate by our processes of government, that they have access and entry to the system.

That comes through the primary process. And for that I think if we took the PAC money out of it, it would be a much more open arena. Also I think the term limitations is a big factor in opening up the process and getting more sunlight down into the way Congress does business.

[ Murray ] Do you think it is reasonable to establish spending limits for the various federal elective offices?

[ Biddle ] For general elections I say no. But I don’t believe in the check offs and I don’t believe in PACs. But I believe as soon as you try to... now are you talking about individual contribution caps or are you talking overall caps?

[ Murray ] No, how much money a... a candidate can spend on his election. I have seen...

[ Biddle ] I don’t worry so much about the overall amount of money that he can spend if we take PACs out of it and we still retain a cap on individual contributions, because there, in effect, what you have is people right now the cap is 1000 dollars.

[ Murray ] Because the problem is if a guy stays in office for a log period of time he keeps building up a fund. He may not spend it all.

[ Biddle ] Right.

[ Murray ] So that the incumbent then accumulates a tremendous war chest so that anyone challenging him his chances diminish.

[ Biddle ] But most of that money came from the PACs. If we look at the amount of money coming from individuals you are going to find that very few politicians can run campaigns based upon individual contributions.

[ Rushdoony ] That is a very important point and it is one that I have been harping on for some years. I feel that Christians in particular are derelict because they do not contribute to political campaigns. So it is no wonder they are ineffectual and get nowhere within the political system with their demands, because they do not contribute. Most Christians spend their lifetime without ever having given to a campaign and they then wonder why Washington or the state house is the way it is.

I recall about 20, 25 years ago in Mississippi there was a congressman who was highly vulnerable, deeply entrenched, but very vulnerable if a man had the money to go after him. This one Christian there decided to do so and everybody told him they were so glad to see a Christian run for office and they would pray for him, but none of them contributed. And as a result he ended up losing not by too bit a margin, but with a very heavy debt because he financed so much of his own campaign.

Now that is the problem. I think there are many Christians who could win office if the Christian community were supportive of them. And I think it is a moral obligation for Christians to put their money where their mouth is.

[ Murray ] Well, let’s discuss the reason why Christians don’t. I think one of the reasons is that Christians have developed such an intense cynicism about politics. They are cynical and wary of any politician even self described Christian politicians.

[ Scott ] They have very good... very good reason for that. They have been perpetually cheated. And there is also the fact... there is a big gap here between campaigns and governance. And the politicians are not held accountable for the fact that they campaign on one set of principles and govern on another. Nobody gets impeached. Congressmen remain in office. Judges put out these squirrely decisions and sit there for life. The people of the United States have actually behaved as though they have lost all initiative. They don’t hold their officials accountable. They don’t even keep track of what they do. And this is... this is a terrible indictment of a system. I mean the read my lips, no new taxes, when are we supposed to believe the man who broke that word? And how dare he stand up and run for election? You would think in a ... in a commonwealth of courageous and educated people he would be impeached.

[ Biddle ] Well, I think you are right on the money, Otto. I... I see it in my area.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Biddle ] In my district. The idea is people will ... the San Francisco area is area that thinks they are quite gourmet.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Biddle ] And they will send back steaks to the kitchen because they are not cooked right or they have too much salt, but they end up having elected officials that are quite a bit worse than too much salt or... or too little {?}

[ Alder ] Why can’t they?

[multiple voices]

[ Biddle ] But they never send these people back to the kitchen. So I... I think you are right on the... the money with that, Otto. I ... I would hope that we would get this sense of accountability. But we... we never look to these people as being accountable. It is like we have give up on them.

[ Scott ] We have actually behaved as though once they are elected they can’t be removed. And this is not true. They can be removed. I mean, if I a man is a public liar he can be impeached. He can be taken out of office.

One of the methods used in turning now to an equally bad, worse, worse form of government. The Soviets disciplined individuals, campaigned against them by creating social ostracism. It was one of the strong weapons that they used. They didn’t have to send everybody to the concentration camp. They ostracized individuals. They have disciplined them in the factories. And I remember being invited to a party at which Norman Mahler was going to be and I said, “Why should I go?”

Well, the fellow said, “Norman Mahler is going to be there.”

And I said, “I wouldn’t speak to Norman Mahler on the best day in the year and I wouldn’t shake hands with him and I won’t go to the party.”

And he said, “You are very hard to get along with.”

But why do we keep accepting in ordinary circles abortionists? Why don’t we ever apply social sanctions? Why do we put up with these politicians? Why do we allow a man to campaign knowing that he says doesn’t make any sense or what he says he doesn’t mean?

[ Rushdoony ] If I may comment about removing these public officials, my years on an Indian reservation—and this was when things were much better, the 40s, the beginning of the 50s—it was impossible to remove an incompetent or corrupt person in the federal ... in the civil service.

[ Scott ] Indian service.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. It was true in any branch of it, because I came into contact with several. The process took years. Even a person who was mentally incompetent if their wife chose to make a battle of it they could reach retirement age before there could be a decision. So the method of dealing with incompetence was to promote them and keep the competence, because then they would stay put. So if any able man were hired he would never get a promotion, but, for example, I recall one doctor who was an alcoholic. He would come in to the hospital for a day or two and then be on a binge again. The nurses would go over to his house, get him ... put him into bed, nurse him back to health so that he would function a day or two.

Now on one occasion, now this is the only hospital for 100 miles in any direction and very well equipped, a beautiful building, in fact. A rancher 50 miles or so to the west brought his wife in, in very great agony, because whether it was a lamp or what, I don’t know, the gasoline exploded and had burnt her from head to foot and the skin was hanging off of her face and her chest and she was in screaming pain. And the doctor forbade the nurses to let her in, because, he said, “I am only required to take care of Indians and you are not Indian.”

The nurses were going to try to give the woman a shot so she would not be such intense pain of the 100 mile drive to Elko and the doctor said, “If you do, I will file charges against you.” And the man said the only reason I am not staying here to strangle you is because I want to rush my wife to the hospital to save her life.”

Now he got a promotion. So the whole of the federal set up favors incompetence. So a real housecleaning is necessary.

[ Murray ] Let’s... let’s talk about practical remedies. I think everybody has a feeling that once elected officials get to the national level they are almost and virtually untouchable, because they are... they have become disconnected from their constituents economically, because the money comes from the PAC. One of the illuminating statements I heard recently I attended an NRA grass roots meeting and he said that all politics is local. He said, “If you don’t want incompetent people at high office, make sure they don’t get into the lower offices.” And one of the things that Christians can do in their local community is start auditing the decisions of local judges, municipal and superior court judges in their local counties, because these people and... and also district attorneys, because these people have political ambitions for higher office and that is where the national figures come from. And if Christians would pay attention to the kinds of decisions that local judges are making and local county boards of supervisors and call them to task of them, these people don’t make it into the higher... higher offices.

[ Alder ] And, Rush, as you have pointed out in the past, if you have a good local government, you have a hedge against a fallen and corrupt state and federal government.

[ Scott ] That is true. We have... we have some fantastic national problems. The Congress of the United States enacts laws to which it exempts itself. And a very good writer in the Wall Street Journal today quoted Madison, I believe it was in The Federalist, saying that one of our guarantees against tyranny is the fact that we have no body which is capable of exempting itself from the laws it enacts for the people, because if a body were able to do that it would, of course, be the essence of tyranny.

Well we do have a body that is doing that. We have Congress and we have a subsidiary or a subjugated judiciary that allowed Congress to do it. And that has never ruled against Congress’ violation of that principle that all people of the United States should be under the same set of laws. Now that is a glaring crime, political crime, ethical crime, moral crime committed over a long period of years. The first time that Congress did that was in the World War II. It has never so far been brought up by any group of political partisans, by any candidates, by any office holders, by any part of the press. The Wall Street Journal has just recently gotten around in the case of one columnist to talk about the rights of the American people and ... in terms ... that have been violated in terms of property rights, in terms of the distribution of law, et cetera.

[ Murray ] You have got to... somebody has to bring an action before the Supreme Court can rule on it. Could the {?} action be used against Congress for exempting itself from the laws that it passes to force the U S Supreme Court to rule?

[ Biddle ] They have... the {?} provisions of the False Claim Act presuppose a claim being made against the government. Now this is a piece of legislation that I... I promise you there are a lot of lawyers who would like to see expanded in its application and I think a lot of tax payers that would like to see it expanded. Possibly so. I mean, you are hitting on the essence of what I see. As I related to you before, I say, when I went to my minister, I knew the extent of the problem. And when he said this is a validation of your record, then the next step for me to do was to figure out how to correct it. You are talking about the{?} action. We are talking about term limits. We are talking about...

[ Scott ] The limits of Congress.

[ Biddle ] Yes. All... all ... all these different things. I... we have got some very powerful laws in the {?} that protect us not so much from our... in the past they have never been used to protect us from our government corruption. They have been used to protect us from contractor corruption. But it think it is only one quick hop, skip and a jump to start moving them over to start making administrative agencies and their personnel accountable. And, boy, that is something we really need in government and all our problems do not emanate from the Congress. The Congress merely passes legislation. It determines what is good law so to speak. But the next step is implementation and that is where the administrative agencies come in and no one holds them accountable. They actually respond only to one person if at all and that is the president.

[ Scott ] Well, I would say this that Congress has violated ... violated the delegation of powers principle which John Locke talked about at the end of the English Civil War. Congress, in effect, has delegated to agencies more power than Congress itself possesses. It has... it has attempted to delegate to Congress all its own powers and plus additional powers. Now Congress is not allowed by the Constitution to delegate any of its powers to anybody. It set up agencies that both enact laws in the form of regulations that adjudicate laws in the form their own private courts and that monitor the laws according to their own inspectors. And this is ridiculous. This has created a fourth branch of government out of thin air.

[ Rushdoony ] Well in just a moment we are going to ask everyone to turn the tape over and we will continue, but let me just make this. The Constitution no longer exists to all practical intent because it has been made a dead letter by the Supreme Court and in court cases I have been in I have heard federal and state judges say they will not allow any reference to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the First Amendment in the discussion or in the case. They will only be guided by the most recent act on the matter by the Supreme Court.

So we do have a serious problem in the fact that we are so far removed from truly constitutional law.

Paul, it is easy in any group, in a barber shop, a church meeting for people to vent their spleen about Congress. But you tell us, now, what you think we need to know to be able to assess the seen moreover intelligently.

[ Biddle ] Well you... you need to have the openness and you have to have a tool to cause accountability to be brought to bear. Now here in California we had thing called the referendum. If we have a law or a proposition that we think is appropriate and we can’t get our legislators to get off the dime, people can cause action themselves without the benefit of the legislative branch. The put a proposal on the ballot. Having national referendums are... are nice also.

We have something that is available to us right now that we as individuals who place a bit of emphasis on efficiency, economy and containment of waste and abuse could avail ourselves of. And that is the piece of legislation that it took me a while to locate, but once I located it, I said, this is a real treasure trove of opportunity for individuals to cause correction in our federal government and that is the False Claims Act.

Now it was amended in 1986 and I took heart by one of the comments made by Senator Grassley who made the comment, “Every individual should be the shotgun behind the door.” And I thought, boy, isn’t that picturesque speech? I wonder if it really works. And this legislation originated back in the 1860s under Abraham Lincoln to save the union cavalry from getting horses with split hooves. A person who would point out that a horse trader was really trading low could institute suit for the cavalry, for the federal government, for the union troops. All right. So I am looking at this law. I saw that it had pretty much been used as a vehicle for a very modest recoveries by employees of federal contractors. But the wording was sufficiently open and by the congressional intent such as Grassley’s comment, I felt that maybe new spins could be attached to this that would benefit the individual tax payer.

And what it has come down to, although there have been some significant efforts in the last two weeks to try and change this, is that any citizen who sees financial disadvantage to the federal government associated with procurement or the presentation of a bill... you don’t even have to... an individual does not even have to receive money from the federal government. The idea is if they present a bill to the federal government for something that is unallowable, unacceptable for legal reason, I mean, not just the fact that you don’t appreciate what they are buying with our dollars, but if you can show that there was a disadvantage, a financial disadvantage to the federal government, you can avail yourselves of a particular provision of the False Claims Act called the {?} provisions.

The {?} provision is a tremendous vehicle for individuals to institute suit against the federal government’s manipulators. You have to recognize that is it not free. It is not like a civil rights law where the government will do the work for you. In effect, if you see a violation you can file on behalf of the federal government whatever the overcharging was. It is multiplied by three. And so if it is 100 dollar overcharging, the government has the right to collect 300 dollars plus the interest and penalties and the person who identifies it gets one third of potentially 30 percent, not one third, potentially 30 percent of what the recoveries are to the federal government. It is meant to be a bit harsh, because people are not supposed to take advantage of the public trust. But that piece of law works in a way that is magnificent.

If the Department of Justice were relied upon to initiate all actions to recover federal waste and abuse we would get very little. But that law allows an individual if they are willing to pay approximately 6000 dollars in filing fees and they can find a law firm to do the remainder either pro bono or contingency, to set in motion the wheels of recovery for the federal government. The bad side is that the federal government doesn’t have to give you a penny. If you go through and win the case—and this has been demonstrated in the past in one case by a gentleman in Florida where he pointed out a substantial level of abuse by some Japanese contractors for construction work overseas amounting to approximately 300 million dollars in bid rigging—it was found to be with justification and the air force went ahead and settled on the side and never gave the gentleman a penny. That, I think, one, demonstrates how little interest the government has in containing waste and abuse. They were more interested in containing their embarrassment. They didn’t want it to be let out that they had bee none upped by some Japanese contractors.

[ Scott ] That doesn’t apply, though, when taxes are involved. They pay informers who point out tax evaders.

[ Biddle ] Yes. Now that is something where you cannot go out and prosecute for the collection of the taxes.

[ Scott ] That is true.

[ Biddle ] But under {?} if you do the filing, you pay the 6000 dollars...

[ Scott ] Then you can collect on taxes. Or the government could collect on taxes.

[ Biddle ] Well, it is... it is an area we could push for and I would not be opposed to it. If I was the Congressman I would push for that interpretation. The idea is normally it presupposes a presentation of something for money and in a taxing situation it is just the opposite. It is there is not a presentation by an individual to the government, but there is a presentation by the government to the individual. But under a {?} situation you don’t have to rely upon the Department of justice and... in the instance you have to apply with the IRS. You... you would have to rely upon the IRS to go out and push the case you presented to them.

Under a {?} action you do the filing on behalf of the federal government. Out of the matter of courtesy in the... in the past it was the only way you could eve get anything done because most lawyers would not follow up on {?}. It was too expensive. The Department of Justice pulls away the action from whatever administrative agency is involved. If the air force and the army or the navy is doing a negotiation on a contract and they have given away our money for naught, hey will say, “Hey, you can’t do a resolution of this dispute. DOJ is taking the lead now in the resolution of this dispute.”

If the DOJ for political reasons chooses not to involve themselves, what if it is a very prestigious heart transplant type fellow who is working on a federal grant and charged his wife and himself when they were both on vacation in Bermuda. That is something that you as an individual can take up on a {?}. You go in there and you say, “I would like to exert this claim. We were billed unfairly and I want the money given back to the federal treasury three times over plus interest and penalties.”

The Department of Justice said, “Hey, this... this fellow is an icon. We don’t want to touch him, because as soon as we go after him someone is going to say that is not the kind of person we are trying to catch. We want to catch the people that make toilet seats.”

Well, you then can go on your own initiative. The attorneys pay their own way. You can prosecute that case with ... as though you were the federal government. That is the beauty of the {?}. And that is the reason the defense industry dislikes it. That is the reason many people who have been abusing the tax payer for a long time dislike it. It has although an appearance of accountability to it, it is not as strong a piece of legislation as I think should be put in place.

The reason being that to do complex against a major defense contractor and that is where the predominant abuse occurs in our procurement systems, runs about two million dollars a year. Stanford at the last estimate was spending about 800,000 dollars a month in pre trial preparation, nine million dollars a year in pre trial prep.

Now that is because they are the defendant. But on the plaintiff side easily it runs possibly on an average over a five year case roughly two million, two and a half million a year to prosecute a case effectively.

That means that a law firm that decides to substitute for the Department of Justice—and I would suggest we should always let the private sector do the prosecutions and let the Department of Justice sit on the sidelines and take notes—they need somewhere in the neighborhood of four to 10 million dollars to go after a major defense contractor who has abused the trust.

To pay for that, because not every case they are going to go into will they win, they have to build in a profit factor. Plus they have to build in a risk factor. That means that on a level of four to 10 million dollars of cost for the five years involved, you are going not have to see a potential recovering to the law firms in the neighborhood of somewhere between 25 and 75 million. On the way contingency work is done that means that you are going to have to have a claim of overcharging somewhere in the neighborhood of at least, I would say 80 million dollars. That is when the law is weak. And that is premised on the fact that there is a 30 percent reward for a bounty given to some one who successfully prosecutes a {?} action. If you don’t win you don’t get anything, all right? But if you win the max you can get is 30 percent under the 1986 revision. Barney Frank right now is trying to reduce it to 10 percent. Burman out of Panorama City in California wants to reduce it to 10 percent for government officials and government officials know more about the corruption of this government than anyone else.

Well, what they have done on that is they have no pushed the threshold up to where a law firm will not look at a claim for fraud or abuse that is less than a quarter of a billion, because their likelihoods and ... of success, plus their contingent fee arrangements cannot justify a case less than that, unless it is a real headline case where they are going to get image and ... and good will. But you are talking about strictly dollars and cents, we have left every case from 250 million down to zip without a means for getting it into resolution. We don’t have, as I call it, the implementation phase for the correction.

So I... I think that we need to look at this much more carefully how we handle fraud, waste and abuse in government. We need, one, to get it down to the point where we not only look at 250 million dollar instances of fraud, waste and abuse, but we get it down to a million dollars. I think a million dollars is a reasonable amount of fraud, waste and abuse.

[ Scott ] Well, you also ought to take a look at the cost of litigation.

[ Biddle ] It is expensive, Otto. No doubt about it.

[ Scott ] I know. Isn’t it wonderful that we have managed to beat inflation?

[ Biddle ] Only one other industry can do that well and that is healthcare, so....

[ Alder ] Speaking of health care, would this type of litigation be effective for Title X if someone had an abortion clinic in their community that took Title X money, could pro life group or a pro life individual use this type of procedure to ratify that abuse?

[ Biddle ] Ok, now, I... I am not a lawyer. I mean, I... I would offer to you, though, that when Paul Biddle went out to look for a law to save tax payers money I wasn’t a lawyer then either. I just really applied myself and kept reading and reading and reading until I found a statute I thought would work. The ... the way I see the false claim act it could very well apply. You would have to show not so much in the nature of the activity of it being an abortion clinic, but in the nature of the occasion for reimbursement being without cause. You could go after them.

[ Alder ] And they have even been very bold and brassy about that, openly stating that they over charge women and try to get them in under Title X so that they can charge higher rates for the abortions.

[ Biddle ] Could possibly be an occasion. I mean, one... now, see, the reason we had ... the tax payer had such success with me at Stanford was that I have done major complex litigation and a lot of the legal concepts of an accountant I had worked with. What you have to be careful is when you get out into an area of burgeoning interpretation... What we are talking about now is using {?} provisions the way they have never been used before. But that is no reason why we can’t be aggressive in trying to make it work for us, right? The government is there to benefit the people. And if we have a way of making this happen, so be it. But you want to be very careful about the development of costs, the development of damages. Secondly, on how you are going to lodge it against the False Claims Act. But I think it could be done.

If you were to ask me would Paul Biddle venture out and try something like that? Yeah.

[ Alder ] Yes, he would.

[ Biddle ] Yeah. And I... and I would encourage other people who have professional skills. Now recognize we have to have a lot of Christians who believe in pro life who are accountants, CPA’s statisticians and lawyers. Now if we start turning our skills to God’s missions as well as our own on a personal basis, we are a tremendous and potent force. I mean that... that is what we see at Stanford, I... I think more than anything else. I... I was not Paul Biddle necessarily doing these things. But I had to have a lot of influence from areas that I can’t even comprehend. And I think that could be put to use in the... in the situation of abortion funds, but I think in health care, boy, if you want to talk about an industry that is out of control. It is in chaos and it is just running up bills against us right and left.

If I had stayed at Stanford, the next place I was going to go was the university hospital. And before I decided to resign and run for Congress I went to the chief financial officer for the Stanford University Hospital and I gave him notice and I said, “I am coming in here to start reviewing Stanford University Hospital.” And he said, “The attorneys have told me I am not supposed to speak to you and I cannot encourage you that you will have any access to information in the hospital.”

But if... if I had had two years and it takes about that long to develop the information to successfully go after someone for these types of violations, I think I couple have had a tremendous impact on health care costs in this country. I may still. I mean, as a Congressman I think that is one of things I would like to try and contain are our healthcare costs. But we normally don’t put the appropriate focus and intensity on public problems that we put on personal problems. You know, we can always figure out how we can pick up our kid after school or how we want him to go to a Christian school, but we don’t sit down and try to perpetuate Christian schools in general. It becomes very focused on ourselves that I... I think if we start looking at a lot of problems in the... in the country and we start putting our personal skills to work for public purposes that are... that are within our framework, what we believe, we will have accomplishment like you cannot measure.

[ Scott ] I... I think that is wonderful, because we have more highly skilled people in this country than the world has ever produced before and, as you pointed out, they are mainly concerned with their personal positions and not with larger issues.

[ Alder ] Of course, they have to become concerned about those larger issues and if they don’t become concerned about those larger issues today they will be destroyed by those larger issues within 10 or 20 years.

[ Scott ] Very definitely. Very definitely.

[ Biddle ] Well, I hope all of the people listening to this tape will support an enlargement of the False Claim Act and the {?} provisions and anything that allows us get accountability and then correction in the government.

[ Alder ] What are the efforts being made? After you were effective at Stanford—you and I were talking about this earlier—is it possible now for people to go into universities like Stanford and do the same types of things that you did there, you know, go into other universities? What has happened in that situation?

[ Biddle ] In public universities, yes, because you can get access to information. In private universities you won’t get access. The heart... the ones who are most motivated to take public monies are private universities, because they are not state supported. So it is said, but the only ones that can get the correction there are the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Naval Research. They ... otherwise it is very hard for us to uncover waste and abuse unless we have a defacto from the university. And because you look at... there are 26 navy universities around the country. I say navy universities, ones that are oversighted by the navy. And I ... and I have identified 42 universities which include a DHHS schools of abuse. Dingle and the GAO and Dingle being the chairman on the House subcommittee on oversight of energy, he was able to validate that we did have overcharges from these universities, presidents taking their wives to the Grand Cayman islands, chartering jets using limo service and charging it to research and they have nothing to do with research. But we also had violent abuse of things that are appropriate and necessary to research. The idea is many schools would load everything they could onto the federal tax payer’s back.

[ Rushdoony ] Didn’t Kennedy of Stanford include his wedding and other things?

[ Biddle ] He had a 700...

[ Rushdoony ] Research?

[ Biddle ] That is right. He had a major expenditure for his wedding reception to introduce his second wife to the university administration. And he considered that was part of the role associated with research. And we paid a portion of it. We only paid 30 percent of it. I didn’t think we had to pay a penny of it.

There are too many costs that universities have viewed us as an easy mark for. They just pass them through and no one was vigilant on the government side to stop it. That is what I am saying. It is sad in the private universities.

When Paul Biddle left Stanford University on March fourth...

[ Scott ] Did they celebrate?

[ Biddle ] They celebrated. They bought two cases of champagne.

[ Scott ] I knew it they would.

[multiple voices]

[ Biddle ] They bough two cases of champagne and celebrated my departure.

[ Murray ] And charged it to the government.

[ Biddle ] No, worse than that. The.... one of the individuals who had been disciplined by the navy was reinstated with back pay and interest and put into a position near his home which was convenient for his commute. I mean, we don’t have enough Paul Biddles. And I am not saying that in a vain sense, but we... we don’t have enough people who are willing to shake the tree when they see things are wrong. We don’t have people who go into government and come back out. I... I went in with no intention of being a lifer. I went in there for five years and stayed six and a half because we were in the middle of this investigation when my creative departure came up that I was going to leave. But we have got to start rotating these people through the administrative agencies.

[multiple voices]

[ Scott ] End tenure in government service with the exception of the military. And we have to end tenure in academia.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And we should have to end tenure in the judiciary.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Mrs. Thatcher ended tenure in Britain and they never forgave her for it. They hate her with a passion.

[ Scott ] And {?} across the Atlantic.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I had a slight part in that in that Sir Brian Griffith, policy chief for Mrs. Thatcher studied Messianic Character of American Education in some detail, knew the book better than I who wrote it.

[ Scott ] I thought he memorized it. He brought up passage after passage.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And I couldn’t imagine why he kept talking about this particular book excepting that before we left, I believe, or shortly after we left England the Reform in Education Act went through parliament.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And it... it ... it ... they use the language, of course, very precisely. They said, “No member of the faculty or administrative staff will be secure from dismissal for reasons of redundancy of incompetency.”

[ Rushdoony ] We went to the ... to 10 Downing Street on invitation and were startled to find this interest in education in my book. He was quoting passages I had forgotten I had written. And then subsequently, the Reform Act was announced and we began to understand his interest.

Well, our time is nearly up, Paul. This has been a most enlightening evening. Is there something you would like to say in a couple of minutes by way of summation?

[ Biddle ] Well, I... I think very rarely do we have such public angst about the situation of our government that people are driven to action. This seems to be a year when that is the case. And one of the things I would hope that our electorate does is start looking to which laws are more supreme than others? And I... I very rarely hear anyone lodge a complaint against a piece of legislation or a program or an enactment or enforcement of law on the basis that it is contrary to things that we as Christians would put first. And we have to start being more demonstrative. We have to be more willing not be out on point and speaking our minds in what we want better than letting other people tell us how to state will view this and this is how it is going to be.

We are very docile as Christians about how our government governs and how they choose to relate to us and... and our ideas of what is correct. The ... the thing that we speak of at Saint Paul’s where I attend, we talk about a church militant.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Biddle ] And that means something. That means you get up off of your duff and you make a difference. Now I... I would hope that as people feel oppressed. I mean, we are really in a financial bind right now as a country. If we don’t get off the mark I don’t know what it will take to get Christians off the mark. So my ... my point is that I hope that a lot of people around the country, as Reader’s Digest said in their January article about me, we need a lot of the common man, the average man and woman to take a position and implement actions accordingly. And I... that... that would be my ... my final comment. Everything that has pointed to me is that an individual can make a difference. They can make a change, but you have to set foot on the ground and walk through the door to do it.

[ Rushdoony ] Perhaps it is appropriate since you are with us, Susan, that we give a woman the last word.

[ Alder ] The reason we have the government that we have is because Christians don’t give a hoot. They will not vote. They will not support candidates who are good Christian candidates. And thank God we have ... we do have some good candidates across the nation. And if the candidates... if the Christians would just get out and vote and support those people we would see it change and their government. But we have to see it. We have to look of the long haul. We have to be willing to be in the trenches. We have to be willing to support the candidates, not only for one election term, but for as many terms as God allows. And that is the only way we can change our government.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, thank you, Paul. It has been a delight to have you hear and God bless you and we will be in prayer for you. Thank you all for listening.

[ Voice ] Authorized by the Chalcedon Foundation. Archived by the Mount Olive Tape Library. Digitized by ChristRules.com.