[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 11, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H189-H190]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          CONGRESSIONAL REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dreier] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I have taken this time out to talk about an 
issue which I raised briefly in the 1-minutes earlier, the question of 
congressional reform.
  I would like to take time because today marks the 1-week point of the 
strongest and most dynamic reform of this institution that we have seen 
in decades, and there has been this sense 
[[Page H190]] among many that January 4 brought about an end to the 
issue of congressional reform.
  The new Members who are represented, among others, by the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Bilbray] here on the floor insisted that we pass a 
resolution in the Republican conference which called for continued 
review of the issue of reform of this institution. Because while we 
have spent a couple of years in the Joint Committee on the Organization 
of Congress and in our Republican conference talking about the need to 
reform the Congress, we have not completed our job.
  Now, on January 4 we did a number of things that were extraordinarily 
important, having Congress comply with laws that are imposed on every 
other American, very important; trying to reduce the number of 
committees and subcommittees in the Congress, very important; reducing 
the number of committee staff, very important. But we have not 
completed that effort.
  I believe that it was really a first step on the road toward even 
further reform of the institution.
  Now, as we look at some of the things that we would like to do, I 
believe that this review effort that the Republican conference has put 
together will have a great deal of input from new Members of this 
institution, and as they familiarize themselves with the workings of 
Congress, I am convinced that they will come up with a wide range of 
recommendations which will include, among other things, probably even 
more streamlining of the committee process. We, I believe, still need 
to look at changes that conceivably could be made throughout the 104th 
Congress.
  Also, a number of the items that came up in our rules package need to 
be incorporated in statute, and we know that if we are going to have 
complete and full compliance of the laws imposed on every other 
American, we cannot simply do it with a rules change here. We are going 
to have to look at a statute.
  So I think that what needs to be realized is that tremendous reforms 
were made with those votes that were cast 1 week ago today, but much 
work lies ahead. We, of course, during this 100-day period are focusing 
on the balanced budget amendment, unfunded mandates which we are 
discussing right now upstairs in the Committee on Rules, and a wide 
range of other items, and then following the first 100 days, we 
obviously are going to be addressing items which were actually included 
in that advertisement that appeared in TV Guide magazine, that pointing 
out things like health care reform. We have not ignored that, and there 
are other proposals that will be debated as we go on into the rest of 
the 104th Congress.
  It is important to realize that the 104th Congress is not going to be 
100 days long. It is a 2-year period. While we address issues beyond 
the 100 days, included among them will be further reform of this 
institution.


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