[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H51]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               SHUTDOWN AFFECTS INNOCENT FEDERAL WORKERS

  (Mr. MORAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, during 1987 when we had a Republican 
President and a Democratic Congress that could not agree, what we did 
was to respond to the President's request to have a continuing 
resolution throughout the year. Again in 1988 we had the same inability 
to agree, and we had a continuing resolution throughout the year.
  This is the normal course of business. That is what the majority 
leader in the Senate has attempted to do. He said yesterday this does 
not make any sense. Whatever point there was, I do not know what the 
point was, but it has not been made.
  The fact is that what we are doing is punishing Federal employees, 
and that is the point we want to make. The Congress is not punishing 
the President, it is not punishing ourselves. We are punishing innocent 
Federal employees, public civil servants. These people are innocent.
  Politics is the art of compromise. It is not the tactics of 
terrorism. Terrorists take hostages, innocent hostages for purposes 
beyond anything to do with the hostages. This has got to stop.

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