[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 19, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H15091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE BUDGET IMPASSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fattah] is recognized 
during morning business for 2 minutes.
  Mr. FATTAH. Mr. Speaker, good morning to my colleagues and good 
morning to America. It is clear now that we have a congressional 
majority that lacks the maturity to govern this Nation's budgetary 
processes. We have arrived again at an impasse in which the Congress 
has failed to pass a budget and the spending bills necessary in an 
acceptable enough form in which the President of the United States 
would sign them, which is the responsibility of the Congress.
  It is perhaps a good thing that the President is attempting to work 
with congressional leaders to help them figure through a shared 
approach to the budget, but it is the Congress' responsibility to pass 
a budget as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. We have arrived at a 
point today at which the seemingly clear set of circumstances lead us 
to believe that the House Republicans, Newt Gingrich and his 
colleagues, are the single stumbling block to us arriving at a budget 
agreement.
  We have the President, we have Senate Republicans and Senate 
Democrats who want to find a way to get the country back on the right 
track. House Democrats are prepared to work. But we have House 
Republicans who seem to in a childish way want to hold fast to their 
own particular viewpoint of how the budget ought to work out, a 
viewpoint that the American public has soundly rejected in every single 
poll that has been done over the last few months.
  They keep pushing something that no one else is buying. The American 
public says ``We don't want to cut education, we don't want to cut 
Medicaid, we do not want to see these programs eradicated. What we want 
to see is a more responsible approach that would lead us away from tax 
cuts, lead us away from increasing defense spending when it is not 
necessary, when it is well over what the Pentagon has even 
recommended.'' The American public has said no to the Republican 
budget, but yet Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans keep wanting to 
sell us something that no one is buying. That is why we have arrived 
again at this shutdown.
  Mr. Speaker, I would hope that as we face this new day here in the 
Congress, that some common sense would come to the majority, that they 
would stop acting in immature ways, because I think they really 
threaten their very majority in the ways they are acting now.

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