[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 140 (Wednesday, October 2, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H12259-H12261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            PARTING REMARKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Walker). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. Cooley] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. COOLEY. Mr. Speaker, this will probably be my last presentation 
in the House of Representatives, as I am not returning for the 105th 
Congress. I would like to kind of wrap up my career and put a few 
things straight on the Record.
  I have learned a lot and gained a lot of knowledge. I am a product of 
public education. I was born in Central Los Angeles back in 1932, and 
it was a tough town then in 1932, as it is now. I was always taught to 
believe that you will be responsible for things you do and things you 
do to one another, and you have to pay the consequences when you have 
violated somebody else's either personal or private rights.
  This country has changed a great deal since 1932, all the way through 
the thirties and forties and fifties, until today you do not have a 
right to retaliate in any way, manner, shape or form, no matter how 
many people cast disparaging remarks upon you, insult you, even go as 
far as trying to spit on you today.
  I was reminded, and I have made a lot of press lately for using a 
gesture to the Sierra Club, and one of my Congress friends here 
reminded me that before Nelson Rockefeller became Vice President of the 
United States, he used the same gesture one time in his frustration.
  I am from a different time and I am in a different place, and I would 
like to go back to the old days when people were responsible for their 
reactions and paid the consequences when they tread upon another 
individual's rights.
  I came to Congress with a very interesting background. I spent most 
of my private life in the corporate world. I am, as I said before, a 
product of public education. I went off in 1952 during the

[[Page H12260]]

Korean conflict, I was a Special Forces agent in the 10th and the 77th 
Special Forces and Airborne, and got out and went, through the GI bill, 
through El Camino College and eventually to Southern Cal and graduated.
  I never believed I was going to Congress, I never wanted to be a 
politician. I think I probably still have the same thought today as I 
did when I was growing up, that politicians have a real difficult time 
relating to the real world they live in.
  I am a firm believer in term limitations. I think term limitations 
are necessary in order to reform this system we have here. Not that the 
system is bad, but when you are out of touch with the real world, you 
get distorted a little bit.
  I am a firm believer about the process we go through here. We talk 
about Republicans and Democrats. I am not sure that there is such a 
thing as a Republican or a Democrat, except after the first vote in the 
House of Congress and the U.S. Senate, which determines who is going to 
lead this body and who is going to run the committees.
  I think what we do is, we really are either conservatives or we are 
liberals, and of course we have some people in the middle who have no 
conviction whatsoever and just go with whatever way they think is to 
their advantage.
  I think the conservative Members of Congress we have are more 
Jeffersonians than anybody else and really truly believe in small 
government, less government, more responsibility back to the States and 
individuals; and I think the liberal aspect of Congress is more in the 
vein of, let us say, Roosevelt and others who believe in the large 
central government, that government, big central bureaucracies know 
best and can control you better than you can control yourself at the 
Federal level.
  People do not understand the code of CFF'S. Literally we pass laws 
that basically control every single thing you do in your life. We just 
do not enforce all of them. If we did, we would have major protests, so 
we just let that go.
  The problem is, is that government has passed intrusive laws, 
punitive laws, laws that control and restrict us. If we look in the old 
Webster's dictionary, not the new, if we look up the word ``law,'' the 
first word in the dictionary says ``harmony.'' I do not think our laws 
have created harmony in this Congress or any Congress preceding this 
one.
  We have developed an attitude here that we are going to help you, if 
you like it or not, and we are also going to control you, whether you 
like it or not.
  I leave Congress, though, with a lot of good thoughts. Our Speaker 
here spoke on the very last day before we adjourned about how our 
Founding Fathers developed this system in such a way as to make sure 
that no dictator ever could take over control of this country, and that 
is why it is complicated and has the intricate parts working in it. 
Well, I agree with him, and I believe that we need to turn this country 
back to our basic constitutional principles.
  But I also want to remind the Speaker and the people listening here 
today that through the evolution, through 9 individuals that make up 
the Supreme Court, we have reinterpreted the original meaning of the 
Constitution. And we have a lot of things today that make the original 
Founding Fathers I think probably turn over, as they say, in their 
graves to see what has happened to the Constitution and what has 
happened to this country through interpretation by individuals, 9 
individuals to be exact, and how this country is managed and run today.
  I think we should stick to our charter. I think we should stick to 
the Constitution, and we are not really basically doing that in many 
cases.
  Getting back to the Constitution, I am a firm believer in the 
Constitution. I am even a firm believer in the First Amendment, which 
is freedom of speech. But I think that we have allowed the freedom of 
speech process to go way beyond what our Founding Fathers really 
thought of the first amendment. The area we have allowed that to exceed 
is the area of media or communications.
  The media today, other than talk radio, has an open blanket. They can 
say anything they want to about any individuals without ever any 
reprisal whatsoever. They have actually adopted a very good tactic by a 
very infamous individual, Joseph Goebbels. Hitler learned a long, long 
time ago that if you control the media, you control the minds and the 
thought of the people. And they did a very, very good job.
  What has happened over the evolution of time is the American media 
has developed some of the same tactics. If you tell a lie long enough 
and frequent enough, believe it or not, people start to believe it, if 
it is true or not. And if you try to stop the lie, you end up in court, 
they keep running it. And then if you win, they run a retraction. And 
they run a retraction and always kid about running it on the back page 
in 7-point type, and that is pretty much what happens in this country.
  People wonder why the media is looked at with a lot less confidence. 
The media makes news, they do not report the news anymore. We have very 
few publications in this country that are very, very conservative, that 
really try to report the news objectively. It is always slanted in one 
way or another, depending on what political spectrum you come from.

                              {time}  1430

  It is a sad state of affairs. We see newspapers going out of 
business, and rightfully so. People are really kind of tired of it in a 
way and we see the popularity of talk radio. Under talk radio what 
happens is you have the ability to call in and challenge the one who is 
making the statements and try to get some kind of a dialogue going back 
and forth in order to change that.
  Overall, I would say that the 104th Congress has accomplished a great 
deal, and I think this is a historical Congress. You heard earlier on, 
if you heard some of the earlier speakers, some of the things that were 
discontinued in the Congress. These different entities that were 
discontinued by the 104th Congress were really paid for by taxpayers, 
using your money for special interest groups. We did not just 
discontinue them, we just said we are not going to fund them any 
longer, and I think we have done that all down the road.
  I was sad to see I was one of the 36 to vote against the continuing 
resolution last week because I do not believe we should have spent, and 
there is an argument, some were saying $6.5 billion, now I hear $7 
billion more than we proposed to spend. I want to tell you that we are 
already $22 billion over budget and now we are $7 billion or $6.5, 
whatever you want to believe, over budget. So that means we are about 
$28 billion.
  If we continue this trend, by the year 2002 we will be $6 trillion 
and not $5 trillion in debt, and this balanced budget amendment is 
going to go down just like the Gramm-Rudman and everything else. The 
American public cannot afford this kind of a debt load.
  Remember that we almost have a billion dollars a day in interest 
only. We could do a lot with a billion dollars. If you are socially 
inclined, just think of what we could do to help education, people on 
the street, the homeless, and those people who really need help if we 
had an extra billion dollars a day to spend on these efforts.
  In Congress many people have opinions about me. Some of them are very 
good, and of course some of them are very bad. I will take a quotation 
out of Kennedy's old book, and I believe that this is very true, that 
you forgive your enemies but you never forget their names. And I think 
that is a good policy to follow through.
  I know the public, the way it has been characterized that the public 
has looked upon the 104th Congress, in the media at least, that we have 
not accomplished anything, we have done a great deal to hurt everything 
and that, therefore, we should not be deserving to come back again. I 
want to tell you that the leadership, the Republicans, good or bad, 
deserve to come back.
  We need to carry on what we are trying to do. Even though we have not 
accomplished everything we wanted to do, I think we have went a long 
way toward that accomplishment. If nothing else, we have at least added 
to the debate and made the American public aware of what is happening 
as far as their finances are concerned, as far as welfare is concerned, 
as far as Medicare is concerned, and some of the other social issues 
that are very important to the American public.
  I think in this body you really do not have, quote-unquote, enemies. 
You

[[Page H12261]]

really have people who have different philosophical opinions. And I 
think those that are very, very far to one way or the other, everybody 
respects those people. Probably the people in the middle, which I call 
the middle-of-the-roaders, the get-along, go-alongs, they have no 
opinions about anything, just whoever is leading the charge, they jump 
into it. It is kind of sad that we have people like that in Congress 
because I think we should all be standing up to be counted, and 
sometimes that does not happen.
  In closing, I want to say that I think the toughest thing on Congress 
people, individuals, both the male and the female in Congress, is 
spouses. It is very, very tough on the spouse. We work long hours. We 
spend a lot of time here and do not spend a lot of time at home, and it 
is really a sacrifice. I will be glad to get back to my little house 
and my home and my little ranch in Oregon after spending 2 years here.
  At one time I spent about 6 months and only talked to my wife on the 
phone, which is not very pleasant, especially at my age. I also want to 
tell you that their support is very necessary in making sure that you 
have some kind of stability because otherwise you really start doubting 
yourself; am I really doing what I should be doing, am I really serving 
the constituents, am I voting for what my people sent me here for.
  A lot of people in Congress do not realize this, but I am an 
employee. The people of the Second District of Oregon hired me to come 
here and represent them, and, therefore, as an employee, I should be 
doing whatever I can do to benefit them, trying to pass laws, making 
sure they are not overtaxed, to benefit them and make sure their lives 
are better for me being here than they were before I came.
  Sometimes that is difficult. As you know, a lot of us vote against 
legislation and you wonder why. Because part of the legislation is good 
and it is lumped in with things that are not so good. I would very much 
prefer to see every bill stand on its own and not be lumped together 
so, therefore, you could really be accountable. But a lot of times we 
vote for things because there are three or four good pieces of 
legislation and there is a couple we do not agree with, but you go 
ahead and vote for it because you want the good and so, therefore, you 
have to accept the bad.
  We have been taught and told here and you have been taught and told 
yourself that politics is an art of compromise. Well, I think we have 
compromised ourselves into $5 trillion worth of debt. We have 
compromised ourselves into a way of life where people have lost the 
work ethic. I think we have compromised ourselves into a way of life 
where people believe someone, quote-unquote, the government, owes them 
something or should give them something and they are not responsible 
for themselves. That is what we have done in the art of compromise.
  There is no such thing as the government. You are the government. It 
is not a third entity. So every time you see a social program and you 
say, ``gee, isn't that nice,'' remember you are paying for it. And if 
you are willing to do that, that is fine, but Congress, the Senate, and 
the administration should be willing to tell you the facts, and a lot 
of times we really do not. And you do not get the facts from the media 
because the media has a different agenda as well.
  So you need to make sure the people you send to Congress are 
accountable to you and you know where they stand on issues and you 
evaluate them before you hire them to come here and represent you.
  In closing, I want to thank not only my wife for her support but for 
the people on the floor here that supported me and some really good 
Americans I think that are really here. I listened to the gentleman 
from California, Congressman Dornan, the other night talk about the 
military. We have a lot of people, but nobody talks about the military 
as eloquently as Congressman Dornan does, really a good American and 
understands what the Constitution is about and what our 
responsibilities really are. But he has been criticized very deeply for 
this, not only by the media, by the executive branch, but even by 
people in his own party, the more moderate part of the party.
  I have a great staff of people who have dedicated and stuck by me 
through a lot of tough times. We have had about 6 months of living hell 
and my chief of staff, Brian MacDonald, the guy who runs my office; 
Brian Hard, my legal man; David Spooner; Doug Badger, natural 
resources; Chris Matthews. Chris handles PR and also our press 
releases. Jason Vaillancourt. Jason is kind of a handyman in the 
office. And Merrick Munday, who handles all of our computer work.
  Out in Medford we have Duane Bales, who runs the office; Terry Haines 
handling our GI stuff and the VA stuff; Ryan Beckley and Teri 
Thornburg.
  These kids, and I say kids because to me they are young people, they 
are in their thirties really, really will make you feel good about 
America. And in fact all the people working here on both sides of the 
aisle in the way of staff, these are really dedicated, bright young 
people. When you look at them, no matter what you hear in the media or 
what you read in the papers about children graduating and cannot read 
and write and really are not set up for the labor market, you look at 
the young people who come to Congress, and maybe they are the brightest 
we have, but I will tell you, they are really sharp and they need a lot 
of praise and they need a lot of nourishment and encouragement. And I 
think we are doing that here because I think those will be the leaders 
in the future of this country, and I think we are probably leaving it 
in some pretty good hands.
  You will hear in the next 40 some odd days, what we have running in 
the Presidential debates, a lot of things. I think you need to really 
make sure you weigh those things out and understand what is coming, who 
is saying what about whom and where we are really headed and what we 
want to try to do.
  One of the most critical things in this country I think today is to 
make sure that we do not leave a huge debt for our children and our 
grandchildren. And I think that was one of the primary objectives of 
this 104th Congress, and hopefully it will be of the 105th Congress. We 
cannot continuously spend more than we bring in. The debt load will 
literally cut down and shut down the economic value of this country and 
destroy it. And I think this is the main focus. I think the 104th has 
done a good job on this. I think the 105th will as well.
  So in parting from Congress, I want to say basically I came here not 
as a politician, but I came here hopefully to learn something, to 
participate in the legislative process. I have done that. I have been 
here. I am sad to leave this year, but everything worked out probably 
best for everybody. I think that we need to have term limits. I think 
we need to bring more people into the system to understand it.
  No one has ever captured Congress in the written word. I have read 
every book anyone has written recently on Congress. They have never 
really captured Congress. I am not sure anybody totally understands 
this process. It is complicated, it is very decisive, there is a lot of 
things that go on that people do not know about, not even we in 
Congress know about, that come up out of the ground, and it is pretty 
tough sometimes to be able to perceive all these things going on.
  It is the best system in the world. Our Founding Fathers did a pretty 
good job of setting it up. We have messed it up a little bit through 
the Supreme Court decisions, but I think that all in all we have a 
pretty good country. I am very, very concerned about the lack of 
support by many, many people in this country of what is happening to 
them personally, how the laws have been, like I said before, more 
punitive than encouraging. We should be passing laws that benefit 
people and not laws that restrict them and prohibit them from doing 
what they can do best in the free enterprise system.
  So, Mr. Speaker, it has been a great time, I have enjoyed it.

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