[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 12, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               HEALTH REFORM AND THE HEALTH OF DEMOCRACY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I want to take my 5 minutes to talk about 
health reform and the health of democracy.
  I have really been very, very saddened by the response of the Clinton 
administration and the Democratic leadership to what is happening with 
public opinion on health care. The President came to this room last 
September and outlined his idea of how to solve health problems in 
America, and initially people were positive, and then they began to 
read the details of the legislation, and they saw that it was a big-
government, big-bureaucracy, big-tax-increase program, that the Clinton 
program would take a great deal of control away from you and give it to 
the Government, and that bureaucrats would begin to replace doctors and 
hospitals as the center of decisionmaking in health care, and the 
result was that week by week, month by month, more and more people came 
to oppose the Clinton plan.
  At the same time that the Clinton health plan was decaying, Mr. 
Speaker, the President, beginning in about February of this year, with 
a combination of, frankly, ineffectiveness and incompetence in foreign 
policy on the part of his team, confusion about Bosnia, North Korea, 
Haiti, and a whole series of issues, the declining value of the dollar, 
which has lost 12 percent against the yen and 10 percent against the 
German mark again this year, and all the different factors of 
Whitewater and other so-called scandals have combined to lower the 
President's prestige so that in the latest Gallup Poll he is, for the 
first time since he had his haircut at the Los Angeles airport last 
year, a net negative. More people disapprove of the President's 
performance than approve.
  Now in that setting in a healthy, free society, Mr. Speaker, Members 
of Congress would go home, they would listen to their district, and 
they would learn that people do not want the Clinton health plan, and 
they would come back to the Capitol, and they would say to their 
leadership, ``No, we can't do that.'' But it is very clear from the 
Washington Post on Sunday that the Democratic leadership has decided 
that the machine in Washington is more important than the American 
people, that, to paraphrase Senator Jay Rockefeller, it does not matter 
what the American people want, they are going to get the health reform 
the Democratic leadership has decided on.
  Over the next several weeks I am going to take several special 
orders, and I am going to outline the evidence given by one of the 
Democratic freshmen about how the Democratic machine blackmails, and 
bribes, and browbeats and humiliates. I am going to put in the Record 
what the Democratic Member of Congress said on television on ``60 
Minutes.'' I am going to talk about the way the machine works, and I am 
going to do it for a very specific reason.
  It is fundamentally wrong for America, for people who are supposed to 
be elected every 2 years, who are supposed to be sensitive to the 
concerns and the needs of the American people, to deliberately and 
ruthlessly run roughshod over the American people, and it is very clear 
that the Democratic leadership strategy is to have some secret room in 
this building to bring Democratic Members in in small groups, to get 
them to buy into the bill by offering them various promises, or making 
various threats, and then at the last minute, just before we rise for 
the August recess, to bring a bill to the floor without public 
hearings, without expert analysis, without the country having a chance 
to know what is going on. Having failed totally in a campaign which 
began last September to openly sell the American people, the Democratic 
leadership will rush in here in the last 3 or 4 days. They will twist 
arms. They will offer inducements. They will make threats. And then at 
that moment they will say to the Democratic Members who are wavering, 
``Oh, keep the process alive.''

  We saw all this last year with the tax increase, and by one vote 
right here, and God and I stood where I am right now and watched the 
last two Democrats switch their vote under pressure from their 
leadership face to face in the 10 minutes after the vote was closed 
while they kept it open enough, long enough, to twist the last arms.
  We can see what is coming. What is coming is a closed rule to stop 
the Rowland-Bilirakis or the Cooper bill from having a fair vote. What 
is coming is twisting arms in a machine, and let me say to my 
colleagues I have never before seen incumbent Members running behind 
the challenger in June of an election year, and yet U.S. News reports 
this week five cases of Democrats running behind the challenger. I do 
not ever remember term limits getting 77 percent in the average 
placements on the ballot. I have never before seen senior incumbents 
with 60 and 65 percent disapproval. I do not remember ever seeing a 
time when the average Democratic incumbents reelect number was down to 
37 percent.
  And what does it all say? It says the American people believe that 
things are on the wrong track, they want change, and I hope the 
Democratic leadership will listen to them.

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