[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 22, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1973]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 FIRST 50 DAYS SAID TO BE MARKED BY POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY AND SYMBOLISM

  (Mr. VENTO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute, and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, we have now seen 50 days of the GOP majority 
in Congress in which symbolism reigns supreme. The people of the 
Nation, children, families students, and older Americans, are at risk. 
They are concerned and they are worried, and they should be. These 
actions promise to undercut the basic needs of working men and women.
  During these first 50 days of the GOP they have retreated from the 
active, positive role of the Government, the cooperative role, and have 
replaced it with confrontation and threats of denial of benefits to 
those who need help in our society. The new majority has tried to make 
a virtue of their political actions. It will not work.
  A deliberate Congress is necessary, and consideration in this 
Congress has been pushed aside by the new majority in the name of 
political expediency. The lockstep votes of the GOP have demonstrated a 
discipline--in fact, an almost ideological stand, not pragmatism--that 
prevails in this House today.
  Mr. Speaker, the actions of these first 50 days cannot be totaled or 
added up today. They will have to be added up in the names of those who 
endure the human suffering that is going to be created by the 
abandonment of the American people by this new majority's actions.


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