[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H132-H133]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ewing] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EWING. Mr. Speaker, I think all of us come to the well today, I 
hope with some reason, to discuss the Government shutdown. Yes, it is 
devastating and, yes, there are people who should be paid. I support 
paying them. Yes, we must care about those single parents and single 
mothers and single gentlemen who are working and have families and 
married couples who live on marginal incomes. That is very important to 
small businesses and every one who is being hurt by this.
  That is all true. I hope that we will, within this week, come to some 
resolution. But what bothers me is that the rhetoric here is so shrill, 
so biting, so negative about this Congress. This House of 
Representatives has in fact done more of what the people sent us to do 
than any Congress before it. I do not care how much those who attack 
the reform movement by calling it revolutionaries or whatever may say. 
We have done what the American people sent us here to do.
  The issue they would like on this side of the aisle clouds the issue. 
The issue is, when are we going to put America back on a sound 
financial basis? When are we going to balance the budget? When are we 
going to have meaningful welfare reform? When are we going to return 
power to the States and to the individuals? The debate is about basic 
policy, not about numbers, the debate between this Congress and its 
leaders and a President who does not want any of those things. So the 
problem is not just with the Congress; the White House has to take its 
share of the blame.
  Let us review a minute what happened after the last shutdown. We gave 
the President 30 days. He traveled around the world. He never came to 
the table until the 15th, when we had another shutdown. So he 
absolutely blew 30 days when he could have worked with the leadership 
in this Congress to come to some agreement. Will that happen again if 
we start the Government up? I certainly hope not. I hope the President 
has learned a lesson that the American people want the basic issues, 
they want a balanced budget. They want welfare reform. He promised it. 
They want to return power to the States. The calls in my district, 
while they do not support hurting people who are working and not paying 
them, are strongly for the basic issues here. Balance the budget, 
welfare reform, do the things that we said we were going to do. People 
across the country want that. If my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle think they can run a campaign next November and win on doing 
nothing and on blocking the reforms, I think they are sadly, sadly 
mistaken.
  What we want is a President who will negotiate and work with the 
leadership to come to an agreement. I just want to refer to an article 
in the paper today. It just says very briefly in the Washington Post 
that, if the President and leaders of the Republican Congress agree on 
a plan to balance the budget, the benefits could mean roughly $1,000 a 
year for every American family. At today's interest rates, the 
trillion-dollar government debt that would be avoided by a balanced 
budget would save the taxpayers over the next 7 

[[Page H133]]
years $60 billion. It is worth it. It is our children's future. It is 
the future of this country. I hope the American people will listen to 
reason. I know that they believe in what we are trying to do.

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