[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 31 (Wednesday, March 12, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H892-H893]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 KEEPING THE MOMENTUM OF HERSHEY GOING

  (Mr. SKAGGS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to follow the good lead of my 
colleague from Illinois [Mr. LaHood] in addressing this side of the 
House in the spirit of the weekend just concluded, where we had a 
remarkable event occur: almost half of this body, with many spouses and 
children, spending some time together, doing the fundamental business 
of any institution, which is getting to know each other, developing 
some minimum level of trust and respect so that we can conduct our 
business here on the basis of policy, not on the basis of going after 
each other personally.

[[Page H893]]

  We realized something very important over this weekend, which is that 
we are in charge here and we have the power, if we wish to exercise it, 
to change a bit the culture of the House. Many terrific ideas came out 
of the weekend, very practical, very much able to be implemented with 
the goodwill and support of the leadership on both sides which happily 
were in attendance for the weekend.
  We will be meeting again, the organizing committee and the coleader 
teams tomorrow, to start to work on keeping the momentum going forward 
in the effort that was begun this weekend. I thank the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. LaHood]; I thank all of my colleagues, both Democratic 
and Republican, for the spirit with which they approached this 
undertaking, and we are deeply in the debt of the Pew Charitable Trusts 
for their support in underwriting this experiment in making the 
democracy work better.

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