[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 65 (Friday, May 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H2795]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            INTERNET ACCESS TO THE BALANCED BUDGET AGREEMENT

  (Mr. GINGRICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I want to let the House know that the 
House is not only working on a balanced budget for America's future, 
but that we are also making this information available through the 
Internet, so that every citizen, including Members of the House and 
their staffs, including the news media, including students, will be 
able to access this.
  I am going to mention this, and I hope that we will be able to work 
through the House Information System and with C-SPAN to actually get 
this put up on the screen a little bit. But I wanted to start the day 
today by indicating how different we are going to be.
  If you access through the Internet on a home page which will be 
labeled ``A Balanced Budget for America's Future,'' it is at 
Hillsource.house.gov/budget.html. I realize people cannot pick all that 
up. I will repeat it one time. But the point I am making is that all 
the talk about getting access to materials, all the talk about 
Washington lobbyists, we are making available today information on the 
budget.
  It is our hope that we are going to be able to make available by the 
end of today all of the balanced budget documents. The Thomas system, 
named for Thomas Jefferson, which the Library of Congress runs, will 
carry what is in the Congressional Record.
  We are working to get all of that available so that every Member by 
Monday and every citizen and every student and every class will be able 
to pull up this budget in virtually real-time, look at it at the same 
time as the Washington insiders, have all the knowledge we have, and 
truly move toward a balanced budget in the right way, with the American 
people participating. So every talk radio show host, every single 
potential critic, every columnist will have access to the same data, 
but so will citizens, without editing by anyone.
  Again, if I might say, if Members look for Hillsource.house.gov/
budget.html, and again, I hope we will work out some arrangement during 
the day to have the system put this up in writing so folks can get 
access to it. I am going to ask C-SPAN if there is a way when they do 
their call-in shows this weekend that they can actually print this.
  In addition, all the dates in the Congressional Record will be on the 
Thomas system and available through the Library of Congress, which now 
gets several million contacts a month through this sort of thing. The 
initial stage will include the two letters sent to President Clinton 
and Erskine Bowles from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and myself, 
the balanced budget agreement summary documents as compiled by the 
House Committee on the Budget staff, and other support details as 
rapidly as they become available.
  We are working with the committee, so as rapidly as we can get the 
entire markup and the Committee on the Budget on the electronic system, 
everybody in the country simultaneously will be able to have access, 
without having to wait for printing or having to wait for some document 
to come from a subscription or from a lobbyist.

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