[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               TRIBUTE TO SPEAKER THOMAS ``TIP'' O'NEILL

  Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to the late Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, the Honorable Thomas ``Tip'' O'Neill. 
Without any doubt, Thomas ``Tip'' O'Neill will be written up in the 
history books as the one of the greatest Speakers we have ever known.
  Tip O'Neill was elected by his colleagues to be their Speaker in 
1976. It has always been my great personal pleasure to have been sworn 
in as a Member of the House in 1976, and to have begun my public 
service under his tutelage. I had much to learn about the work of the 
People's House, and Tip O'Neill was a grand and excellent teacher.
  He served as Speaker for a decade, retiring in 1986. But his public 
service to the people of Massachusetts and this Nation began in 1936--
40 years before his term as Speaker began, and 50 years before he 
retired from office. Throughout this half-century and more, he was a 
man of the times. He was as attuned to the needs of his country when 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office as President, as he was when 
Ronald Reagan took office--and he never gave up his principles no 
matter who was in the White House. From Roosevelt to Reagan, Tip 
O'Neill never forgot, and always practiced, his deep belief that ``all 
politics is local.'' While serving as a national leader in his own 
right as Speaker of the House, and in earlier leadership positions he 
held, he never for a minute forgot who sent him to Washington--the 
folks back home whom he loved and revered. He was devoted and dedicated 
to the needs of middle America.
  There was one saying attributed to Tip O'Neill--one of literally 
hundreds of sayings attributed to Tip O'Neill--which I took as my own 
and have practiced ever since: If a constituent calls your Washington 
office and tells you of a problem he has with City Hall, don't tell him 
or her to call City Hall. You call City Hall yourself and take care of 
the problem.
  He has been greatly missed since his retirement as we have gone about 
the busy schedule of the House of Representatives, but he has still 
been with us--still leading us, in absentia, by the example he set. He 
was always available to advise us if we asked, and often when we 
didn't. Since leaving office, he was surely available to us through the 
books he has written about his lifetime of public service, books which 
should be required reading by every person, young and old, who aspire 
to or who want to learn about public service, about compassion and 
caring, about the legislative process, about humankind, about true 
leadership.
  And if you want to learn about how to be a faithful and loving 
husband and father while going about an entire lifetime of commitment 
to the Nation's needs, you have only to look at the life of Tip 
O'Neill. To his loving and caring wife, Millie, and to his beautiful 
children, we say thank you as well.
  He was good and kind. He was tough and irascible, almost any human 
dynamic that can be assigned to man, can and should be assigned to Tip 
O'Neill, and it was this that made him a leader, and that made him a 
friend to all of us.

                          ____________________