[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1289]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


       ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE 104TH CONGRESS IN ITS FOURTH MONTH

  (Mr. EHLERS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, last month a very important event occurred. 
We passed a bill giving the President line-item veto authority. We hope 
this will also pass the Senate and be signed into law.
  What is remarkable to me is the pace of what we have been doing in 
this Congress during the past month and the accomplishments we have 
made.
  And those of you who know me well know I am not this sort of person 
who brags. In fact, I was born in Minnesota, just like Garrison 
Keillor, I am somewhat shy and humble. As Garrison Keillor does 
occasionally, I have to talk about what we do.
  We are often criticized as being a do-nothing Congress. I would like 
to announce we now have a do-something Congress, and I have the figures 
to prove it, and in the words of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke], 
who spoke a few moments ago, a can-do Congress.
  If you look at what this Congress has accomplished in the first month 
compared to Congresses of the past dozen years, it is striking. The 
number of hours spent in session, the average for the past 12 years, 
28, our Congress, 115, three times as much; number of votes on the 
House floor, 9.3 is the average of the past dozen years, this year 79, 
roughly eight times this many; number of committee and subcommittee 
sessions, average before, 25, this year 155, six times more; number of 
measures reported out of committee, the average, 1.6, this year, 14, 
about nine times more.
  This Congress is not in the process of reinventing Government, to use 
that term that is often used. We have a new way of governing. We are 
getting things done. Not only have we passed a number of important 
measures such as the balanced budget amendment which Congresses have 
tried to pass for 40 years or the line-item veto which has been 
discussed for many years, we have also passed unfunded mandates reform 
which the States desperately want. We passed the Congressional 
Accountability Act which applies many of the work place laws to 
Congress itself. Previous Congresses have exempted themselves.
  I think what is even more striking are the internal reforms that we 
have accomplished, many of which were done the first day of Congress. 
We have eliminated proxy voting which I felt was an abominable 
practice. We have cut committee staff by one-third. We have reduced the 
number of committees and subcommittees.
  And I wish all the people in this land could walk through the 
basement corridors of the Cannon Building and some of the other 
buildings and see the dozens and dozens of desks lining the walls in 
the corridor, the hundreds and hundreds of file cabinets that are there 
and will be auctioned off because they are no longer needed. The staff 
that used those desks and those file cabinets are no longer here. 
Congress truly has cut back, and I hope that trend continues.
  I think we have to have many cuts in the budget of this Nation, but 
we have to start with ourselves first, and we have done that.
  We have open committee hearings to the public, and we have made 
dozens of other changes in reforming the way Congress operates, even on 
such mundane matters as parking. It was discovered that some lobbyists 
had been given parking privileges in the parking garages here in our 
buildings, and that has been stopped. Providing parking for partisan 
political organizations has been stopped.
  What I want all of us to recognize and to appreciate and in fact 
celebrate, is that we are governing in a different way, and the people 
of this Nation have responded.
  Last year the favorable rating of Congress was about 14 percent. It 
is now almost 50 percent. We have really made progress in changing 
things, and the public is responding and saying, ``Go on. That is what 
we like. Keep it up.''
  Now, I do want to warn the people of this Nation that these cuts we 
imposed on ourselves, as I said a moment ago, are a precursor of what 
we will be doing to the entire budget, and no one likes to have their 
part of the budget cut, but everyone is going to have to share the 
pain, because the people of this Nation have said, ``Enough, we want 
our budget balanced. We want our taxes to be reasonable. We want our 
country to go forward and operate the way we have to operate our 
families and stay within our income.''
  This Congress has pledged to do that.
  

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