[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 65 (Friday, April 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H4420]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         WE KEPT EVERY PROMISE

  (Mr. HOKE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, to listen to the strident shrieking, 
incredibly hard words and tone from the other side of the aisle, you 
would think there was only one party that was voting for the items that 
we call the Contract With America.
  But when you analyze the votes, you find out some very interesting 
things. First of all, this had bipartisan support for every single vote 
that was cast. If you look at the average vote for contract legislation 
in the House, excluding eight contract items the very first day, you 
had an average of 316 ``yes,'' 110 ``no.'' If you include those eight 
items from the first day, you have an average of 337 ``yes,'' 90 
``no.'' Seventy-seven percent, 77 percent of the House voted ``yes'' on 
contract items.
  That means that we were not voting as Republicans and Democrats, but 
occasionally we were also voting as Americans, Americans first, and 
when the gentleman from Florida says that we were listening to America, 
he is absolutely right, because there was another very powerful 
intuitor of what the American people want, in 1992, and he promised to 
end welfare as we know it, he promised a middle-class tax cut, he 
promised to lift the Social Security earnings test, he promised a line-
item veto, and he reneged on every single promise, and we have kept 
every single one of those promises.

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