[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1288]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          THE CAN DO CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, what we have seen in the past 30 days is a 
stark contrast between the can-do Congress and the me-too White House.
  Let us just review a little bit about what this can-do Congress has 
done. By the way, the can-do Congress is something that is being said 
about our U.S. Congress in international reports. If you pick up the 
Herald Tribune in Europe or if you pick up any of the London papers, 
you find out there is tremendous celebration and rather a fair amount 
of amazement that the U.S. Congress can get so much legislation 
accomplished in so little time, in such a short time.
  What exactly have we done? Well, first of all, we reformed the 
process. We required Members of Congress would actually have to be 
present at committee meetings to vote on the bills that are being 
marked up at those meetings. It means no more proxy voting. It requires 
our presence at those meetings. We cut staff by a third. We cut the 
budget for the Congress itself, and we have cut two standing 
committees, the first time since the 1940's, as well as 27 
subcommittees.
  So we have reformed this process to make it more efficient, more 
streamlined, more workable.
  And we passed the Congressional Accountability Act. It seems like a 
very simple concept. We had not even been able to get it to the floor 
of the Congress for a vote before this session.
  We passed the balanced budget amendment for the very first time. We 
voted on that many times on this floor. We actually passed it. We 
passed an unfunded mandates bill that requires analysis before we go 
putting mandates on the States. We have to know exactly what it is 
going to cost on a State or a local community.
  And last night we passed a very important piece of legislation, the 
line-item veto. The line-item veto is something President Clinton asked 
for in the 1992 campaign. He did not talk about that very much in the 
103d session of Congress, the last session of Congress.
  I might go through a few of these things, too, that Mr. Clinton 
campaigned for in 1992. He campaigned for unfunded mandates reform both 
as a Presidential candidate and as the Governor of the State of 
Arkansas. He campaigned for reforming the process, and he campaigned 
for a middle-class tax cut, all of which are in our Contract With 
America, and yet last fall what did he do, he called this not a 
Contract With America but a contract on America. Now, he is back to 
being me too, but so that he will say, ``Well, me, too, we want to do 
this as well with some exceptions or some provisions or some 
considerations.''
  What did he present to us yesterday? He presented to us his version 
of the 1996 budget for the United States of America for the Federal 
Government, and without overreacting to that budget, because in a way 
you have to remember, you have to remind yourself this is not that 
important an event since he does not have the votes in the Congress to 
pass the budget anyway, but let us look at what he did do and, in my 
view, what he did is he went through the motions. He is treading water. 
He produced a document that he has to produce because of a law that 
says that he has to send a document to the U.S. Congress.
  But it essentially does not make any real changes. What it does do is 
it continues $200 billion deficits all the way through to the 21st 
century. What it does do is it adds in the next 5 years, it adds $1 
trillion to the national debt. What it does do it makes the interest 
payments projected for the year 2000 to be $310 billion, when we spent 
$204 billion on interest in 1994, in other words, a 50-percent increase 
in interest payments alone in this budget.
  And it is clear that there is no will for bringing us to a balanced 
budget. It is clear from testimony that the Director of the Office of 
Management and Budget, OMB, Alice Rivlin, gave several weeks ago to my 
Judiciary Subcommittee, that not only is there no plan for it, but 
there is no real desire to balance the budget in the White House.
  What we have got is we have got a can-do Congress that is actually 
keeping the promises that it made to the American public. It is re-
instilling a sense of confidence in the integrity of this institution. 
It is re-instilling a sense of confidence in the American people's own 
ability to elect officials who will do what they said they would do, 
that this is an institution which can accomplish things, which can get 
things done, instead of pretending to get things done all the while 
obfuscating and making every attempt to only create the appearance of 
activity when, in fact, the real issue is to keep things under wraps.
  So here we have got the can-do Congress versus the me-too White 
House. Keep your eyes posted on what happens in the next month.


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