[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1287]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          HISTORIC CHANGE IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, this morning I rise to talk about 
what I feel is a historic change in the Congress of the United States.
  When I was running for Congress last year and I received the Contract 
With America in the mail, I was very, very pleasantly surprised, 
because when I read through the contract I felt like I was reading my 
own campaign platform. For months I had been campaigning on how we need 
to reform the Congress itself and how the Congress does business, how 
we needed to shrink the size of Government, and how we needed to start 
in the Congress itself by reducing the number of committees and the 
number of committee staff.
  One of the most important things that I ran on was how strongly I 
felt that the Congress needed to make all of the laws that they 
exempted themselves from apply to themselves. Indeed, I was very 
impressed when I read in the Federalist papers No. 37 written by 
Madison, how he described in that paper how the Congress should not be 
allowed to pass laws that did not apply to themselves and their 
friends.
  Mr. Speaker, I am so delighted to actually be here and to see us 
fulfilling our commitment to the American people, how on that historic 
day on January 4 we passed all of those congressional reforms reducing 
the staff, reducing the number of committees, and then how we went on 
to pass legislation making all of the laws the Congress had exempted 
themselves from applying to the Congress itself.
  Then in recent weeks we have seen historic vote after vote, the 
passage of a balanced budget amendment, the passage of legislation 
stopping the practice of passing unfunded mandates on to our cities and 
on to our counties. I heard over and over again in my campaign from 
local legislators, local politicians how the burden of unfunded 
mandates and regulations was killing them.
  Then last night again we had another historic vote where a Republican 
Congress, with a sitting Democrat President, voted to give the 
President line-item veto authority. It was doubly ironic, it was sweet 
that this occurred on the birthday of President Ronald Reagan, a man 
who had campaigned over and over again for the need for a line-item 
veto for our President. He stated over and over again how there were 
dozens of Governors in our Nation, in our States who have line-item 
veto authority, and how they exercise that line-item veto authority 
prudently to pare back pork-barrel spending and to trim State deficits 
and help State governments to be more efficient.
  Last night we had a historic bipartisan vote where we passed a line-
item veto.
  Mr. Speaker, we have many, many more important votes coming before 
this body, votes on some real criminal justice reform to lock up 
violent offenders, some real welfare reform. Mr. Speaker, I am excited 
and delighted to be here and be part of this historic Congress, 
restoring to the American people, their body, faith in Government 
again.


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