[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 69 (Thursday, May 22, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1011-E1013]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E1011]]

       SPEAKER GINGRICH'S REMARKS OUTLINING THE REPUBLICAN AGENDA

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOHN LINDER

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 22, 1997

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I commend to my colleagues the following 
comments of the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich delivered to the 
Georgia Public Policy Foundation this week.

   Excerpts from House Speaker Newt Gingrich's Remarks Outlining the 
                           Republican Agenda

       What we have done is pretty remarkable. Four years ago a 
     very small group of leaders, 38 years in a minority at a time 
     when the news media told us that we were going to have the 
     largest tax increase in peacetime history, and we were going 
     to nationalize health care so the government controlled 
     everything, and we were going to have left wing social 
     policies--one of which led to a dramatic increase in drug use 
     in this country because it lacks in teaching our children. 
     Because the American people then stook up in 1994 and said 
     ``No,'' we clearly don't want to go in that direction. They 
     repudiated it, and things began to change.
       We had the largest voter increase in off-year election 
     history. We had nine million more people voting Republican 
     and one million fewer voting Democrat and for the first time 
     in 40 years there was a majority on the conservative side of 
     the House. Then, we worked for two years at keeping our word.
       And we accomplished a great deal. In fact, we did pass a 
     bill to apply to Congress every law that applies to the rest 
     of America; we did pass a bill to reform the 
     telecommunications system which will create about three 
     million new jobs; we did pass a bill which ended the 
     agricultural entitlement in the Midwest; and we did pass a 
     welfare reform legislation tha ended 61 years of federal 
     entitlement for welfare and dramatically improved the 
     opportunity for poor people to move from welfare to work and 
     from poverty to prosperity.
       Then last week we put the capstone on what we promised four 
     years ago. We reached an agreement on a balanced budget by 
     2002 with lower spending and lower taxes.
       Let me tell you what's in this agreement so you understand 
     why I can say with authority we won. First of all, spending 
     over the next 10 years compared to current law will be one 
     trillion, 100 billion dollars lower than it otherwise would 
     have been. Taxes will be a net of $250 billion lower over the 
     next ten years that they otherwise would have been.
       You have the president's agreement that he will sign a 
     capital gains tax cut, that he will sign a cut in the death 
     tax and that he will sign a $500 per child tax credit and all 
     those will be passed into law before he gets a penny of 
     additional discretionary spending. Our goal is to pass this 
     by the Fourth of July to give America a birthday present.
       Yet I want to suggest to you the greatest example of the 
     balanced budget is not economic. It is the fact that four 
     years ago, leaders set out to work with the American people 
     on something that the American people believe in. And if the 
     American people have leaders who are disciplined and 
     persistent and are willing to take a beating from opponents, 
     work together the constitutional system works.
       Yes, it takes time, but that's the way the founding fathers 
     designed it. The founding fathers were afraid of a 
     dictatorship. They wanted to design a machine so inefficient 
     that no dictator could force it to work. The corollary is 
     that sometimes it is very hard for us as volunteers to get it 
     to work voluntarily. That's fine. The fact is, it worked.
       I believe we have three great challenges for the future. I 
     want to analyze what we have to do over the next four years. 
     Imagine a January, 2001. The first morning of the 21st 
     century, the first morning of the new millennium, it just 
     happens to be a Monday morning.
       Imagine that on that morning you wake up in an America that 
     was for all practical purposes drug-free, an America in which 
     every child was learning at their best rate, an America in 
     which children were born into families capable of taking care 
     of them because we had ended the long process of teenage 
     pregnancy outside of marriage. Now how much healthier would 
     that America be?
       Now let me repeat those three clear, definable 
     achievements. An America that is for all practical purposes 
     drug-free, an America in which every child is learning at 
     their optimum rate, and an America where girls don't get 
     pregnant outside of marriage as teenagers and there is an 
     expectation of children being born into families capable of 
     raising them.
       How much healthier and how much better would that be?
       I know that the first time you hear that said, it sounds 
     like one more politician offering some big goal that sounds 
     good and nothing will happen. But I came here today to say 
     something very different.
       We have proven over the last four years that if you take 
     something seriously and you stay focused on it and you work 
     at it every day, you can achieve it. It's not just a campaign 
     slogan, it's not just an idea, it is a fact that this summer 
     we are going to pass the implementing legislation for a 
     balanced budget. It is a fact that you will have tax cuts in 
     your next tax report. It will be the first tax cut in 16 
     years by the federal government.
       And so I'm talking today about dedicating the country in 
     exactly the tradition that de Touqueville talked about in 
     Democracy in America in 1840.
       He said it wasn't the Constitution, it wasn't the 
     government, it wasn't the politicians. It was the spirit of 
     individual Americans working on an individual basis at a 
     community level across the country that made America so 
     remarkably different from Europe, a spirit that Marvin Olasky 
     caught in his great work, The Tragedy of American Compassion, 
     who pointed out bureaucrats that simply redistribute money 
     cannot save people.
       And in the 19th century when you had a much lower tax 
     system, much higher take home pay as a percent of income, you 
     had one volunteer for every two poor people. The volunteers 
     knew who was the alcoholic, who was the drug addict, who beat 
     their children, who was worthless and needed to be retrained. 
     And you had a much higher level of human to human contact and 
     that is the spirit that I believe you have to reestablish.
       Let me suggest to you that this is the core challenge and 
     intellectually mentally about where we are going.
       Can we stop drugs? Yes. Can we stop drugs with a liberal 
     bureaucracy and a social policy and an intellectual theory 
     that is wrong. No.
       Can we have every child learn? Yes. Can we have every child 
     learn in a failed bureaucracy dominated by tenure and 
     unionized work rules with an education theory that doesn't 
     work? No.
       Can we save teenage girls from getting pregnant? Yes. Can 
     we save them in a liberal bureaucracy with the wrong signal 
     policy and the wrong theory about how society works? No.
       So this is essentially an intellectual argument, what is 
     the nature of reality. I think there are signs frankly that 
     people are beginning to get it. Joseph Califano was one of 
     the designers of the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson. In a 
     recent magazine article he reports that on a tour of drug 
     treatment centers every single ex-drug addict that he talked 
     with said that religious belief was the key to their 
     recovery. He said ``I don't see anything wrong with public 
     funding for a drug treatment program that provides for 
     spiritual needs,'' says Califano.
       This is a man who would have been a Great Society liberal, 
     but he's at least willing to recognize that the reason 
     Alcoholics Anonymous works is that it starts with the notion 
     that you have to recognize that you have a problem inside you 
     and that it takes a higher being to help solve that problem. 
     I've had a number of recovering alcoholics report to me that 
     they have been approached by federal officials who say 
     ``Could we do an 11 step program, and skip that part about 
     God.'' I don't think they get what makes this work.
       And again there's a simple test, if we reinforce drug 
     rehabilitation that works and cut off drug rehabilitation 
     that fails what we are going to find ourselves doing is 
     helping institutions that are faith based and eliminating 
     secular institutions that are simply bureaucracies that don't 
     save anybody. We will save more people per million dollars 
     the faster we move the resources to a faith based center but 
     this is going to be an intellectual argument. It is going to 
     be a big power struggle. A lot of folks who are not doing any 
     good but are doing very well not doing any good are not going 
     to like it.
       Some of you have wondered why I would make one of the three 
     major challenges of the next few years end pregnancy outside 
     of marriage for young teenagers. I have to say first of all 
     that Kay Granger, the former Mayor of Ft. Worth, who is a 
     freshman member of Congress, convinced me of this. She has a 
     YWCA program in her city that has 800 at-risk girls.
       Statistically they should have 70 percent pregnancies, 560 
     pregnancies. In this particular group they have two. She 
     said, you have to understand the cost. The United States has 
     the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the industrial world. 
     Here are some of the costs.
       50 percent of the girls who have a baby out of wedlock will 
     be long-term welfare recipients.

[[Page E1012]]

       70 percent of all juveniles in state reform institutions 
     were raised in fatherless homes.
       Now rates of illegitimacy have passed 50 percent in seven 
     of our 20 largest cities.
       Some numbers the president used are very sobering. A child 
     born to a single head of household family will have 140,000 
     social transactions by the time they are four years old. A 
     child born into a family of two parents will have 700,000 
     social interactions. That is learning how to speak, learning 
     how to talk, learning how to read, learning how to interact. 
     Think what the difference is of that child coming into Head 
     Start, the child that has had 140,000 and the child that has 
     had 700,000 social interactions, and then we try to play 
     catch up with government employees at that point.
       Now the goal is not, as our liberal friends would say, a 
     bureaucrat at the crib, and a bureaucrat for prenatal care 
     and a bureaucrat that teaches them how to speak and a 
     bureaucrat that stands next to the parent and watches over 
     the children.
       What we need is to reestablish the healthy social patterns 
     and the healthy social programs and the principles that 
     simply made common sense to most people. One of them is: if 
     you're a young boy and you get a girl pregnant, you have a 
     responsibility. You have an obligation. Another is to reach 
     out to girls and give them an understanding that they can 
     have a better future.
       The program that has worked at the YWCA in Ft. Worth 
     emphasizes the motivation of the young girl, the integrity of 
     the young girl, the chance to be ambitious of the young girl. 
     Because she sees herself with a better future, just saying no 
     makes sense, because there is a life beyond one evening. It's 
     very important to give people who are poor an opportunity for 
     a better future and a belief in a better future because it 
     changes their time horizon.
       Drugs and teenage pregnancy are in large part a function of 
     the breakdown of society's belief that every person has the 
     right to pursue happiness, and we need to reestablish that 
     belief and make it real for the poorest children of America. 
     In the poorest neighborhoods you will see a dramatic change 
     in behavior because hope precedes discipline. And people, 
     once they have hope will begin to discipline themselves.
       This is not a federal program. All elected officials are 
     societal leaders who happen to be involved in the government. 
     And our ability to lead our people is more important than 
     fighting over legislation or fighting over bureaucracy.
       Take the example of Best Friends, an Elayne Bennett 
     program. It's an abstinence program for fifth to 12th grade 
     girls. It's now in 50 schools in 15 cities. Each year each 
     girl gets at least 110 hours of adult attention, discussing 
     problems, gaining skills, learning self confidence. In nine 
     years, out of 600 girls who participated at least two years, 
     there have only been two pregnancies.
       I would challenge anyone to find a government program with 
     similar results. Because the fact is when you volunteer, you 
     give of your heart and your time and your soul. You are 
     engaged. But when you write a check to the IRS, you think you 
     have bought permission to ignore the health of your country 
     and you haven't.
       So we have an obligation to reestablish lower taxes with 
     higher take home-pay, so we can then turn to every American 
     and say, if America has been good to you, it's time for you 
     to find a fellow American and be good to them. And that's the 
     spirit that will truly save every young person in the next 
     generation.
       What is at stake here goes far beyond the concept of simply 
     waking up in a drug free society with everyone learning at 
     their best rate and young children being born into families 
     that can take care of them. This is about the very fabric of 
     America. It's about what we are going to become. It is 
     doable.
       I want to come back to this point. I am not today giving 
     you a set of solgans for a nice political campaign. I am 
     suggesting to you as the Speaker of the House and as one of 
     the leaders of our two great parties that we should at every 
     level of society make these three things happen by January 1, 
     2001.
       Now we know we can bring about great change because we are 
     bringing about great change in welfare. In one year, 
     nationwide welfare caseloads have dropped by 18 percent. 
     650,000 people left welfare in just the four months after we 
     passed the reform. Fact is, people left welfare before the 
     bill became effective. The word was on the street. Go to 
     work. Get off welfare.
       You could literally talk to welfare workers and they would 
     tell you once the news media began to describe it, once it 
     began to penetrate the common dialogue and once people 
     discussed it over coffee, behaviors began to change.
       The law followed the behavior change, but the act of 
     debating the behavior change led to the law. In Wisconsin, 
     where welfare reform has been far advanced because of the 
     great leadership of Tommy Thompson, it reduced those on 
     welfare by 33 percent in one year. The welfare rolls in 
     Wisconsin are 50 percent lower than when Tommy Thompson first 
     became governor.
       And it's beginning to be recognized. Here's what the New 
     Republic, the bastion of modern liberalism, said: ``So far it 
     seems the logic behind welfare reform is right. Now that the 
     incentives have changes, welfare recipients are making better 
     decisions. Liberals who opposed reform speak of the poor as 
     if their were irrevocably crippled, lost forever. But as we 
     have learned over the last six months, the problem is much 
     simpler, a small core of people need tremendous health, a 
     large majority seems to need only a small shove. That is the 
     best news that we could have hoped for.''
       So I just want to say to you, you are seeing real change in 
     welfare, you are seeing real change in government spending, 
     you are about to see real change in taxes. So if we talk 
     about a drug-free America, with children learning at the 
     optimum rate and being born into families that can nurture 
     them, these are just the next wave of changes in a pattern 
     that we began in 1994.
       The reason this is happening is that we are part of a 
     worldwide movement of freedom and faith. You may think that 
     sounds grandiose. So I brought a Washington Post article 
     captured the rise of this worldwide movement of freedom and 
     faith--and I'm quoting from the Washington Post:
       ``On a stool in his portable felt and canvas yurt, 
     Yadamsuren, a 70-year-old nomadic sheep herder, offered a 
     visitor chunks of sheep fat and shots of fermented mare's 
     milk to ward off the unspeakable cold. Seventy miles of bleak 
     desert northeast of Ulan Batur and many miles from the 
     nearest neighbor, he spoke glowingly of the work of House 
     Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party.''
       I'm not making this up. This is what he said, quote, `` `I 
     read the contract with the voter closely; everybody did,' 
     explaining why he decided to vote for a new government in 
     Mongolian elections last June. `In the contract, they clearly 
     say what society and the people can do for each other.' ''
       They printed 350,000 copies of their contract with the 
     voters. They distributed it by car, truck, horse and camel. 
     The contract became the most widely distributed Mongolian 
     publication in history. The Mongolian people responded with a 
     91 percent turnout, and elected a 43-year-old speaker, a 41-
     year-old prime minister and a 38-year-old majority leader. 
     Over half the new legislators are under 35. They are totally 
     part of a worldwide movement.
       There are things happening around the world. We are part of 
     a worldwide movement of faith and freedom. We believe that if 
     you combine the wisdom of the Founding Fathers with the 
     opportunities of the information age and the world market 
     then everyone has an opportunity to pursue happiness.
       Now as a historian, I know people have changed their 
     countries more than governments have changed their countries. 
     The greatest example is the rise of Wesley and the rise of 
     the Methodist movement in the 1870.
       Those of you who are Methodists may be very familiar with 
     the story. By reaching out across Britain, by saving souls, 
     by reducing the number of people who were using gin. There 
     was a crash in alcoholism among the industrial poor because 
     of the Wesleyan movement. It not only saved Britain from the 
     pressure of revolution. It saved the people Britain both from 
     political turmoil and a tremendous amount of pain. And it set 
     the stage for one of the great achievements of modern times.
       One of the amazing stories in all of history concerns how 
     the institution of slavery, deeply rooted in the practice at 
     the millennium, was virtually eliminated in one hundred 
     years. The greatest achievement in the nineteenth century. 
     The Abolition movement began among a small group of people in 
     England known as the Clapper Sect. It's leaders were Henry 
     Thornton, a wealthy banker and one of the fathers of monetary 
     economics, and William Wilburforce, a Methodist and a member 
     of Parliament. Their goal was the change the laws of England 
     and abolish the slave trade. Their method was an amazing 
     information campaign.
       Researchers associated with the group interviewed witnesses 
     and gathered information on the horrors of slavery. Pamphlets 
     were published. Actual specimens of leg shackles and whips 
     were displayed to the public. A boycott of slave produced 
     sugar was organized. The opposition in Parliament was strong, 
     56 members of parliament had a direct financial interest in 
     slavery. But after 20 years of defeats they won in 1807 the 
     beginning of the end for slavery around the world.
       Changes in sentiments and beliefs create the base for legal 
     reform. And that leads to changes in government. It was after 
     all the Royal Navy that actually suppressed the slave trade 
     after it was banned, not prayer but ships. But it is the 
     prayer that made the ships possible.
       Government action makes a secular reality out of the moral 
     spiritual womb. And that's really the framework for what I am 
     describing about where I think we need to go. Now, when I 
     said if you combine the wisdom of the Founding Fathers with 
     the opportunities of the information age and the world 
     market, so that every person on the planet has their God-
     given right to pursue happiness.
       Let me show you something I learned two weeks ago at the 
     Library of Congress which has a wonderful display of the 
     treasures of the American collection. Part of that collection 
     is Jefferson's personal Bible. It's a book there from 
     Jefferson's own collection. It's called Essays on the 
     Principles of Morality and National Religion.
       It's not what you think of a modern politician reading. 
     Here's a quote underlined by Jefferson because it will change 
     your thinking on one of the most common phrases in American 
     political history. ``People have an innate sense of right and 
     wrong. When they act virtuously they increase the general 
     happiness of mankind, thus the pursuit of virtue and morality 
     is the pursuit of happiness.''

[[Page E1013]]

       Let me repeat that: Jefferson replaced what John Locke had 
     written, ``the pursuit of property.'' Jefferson replaced it 
     with ``the pursuit of happiness.'' Here is the meaning as 
     underlined by Jefferson's own hand. ``Thus the pursuit of 
     virtue and morality is the pursuit of happiness.'' Doesn't 
     that place that in rather a different light than say 
     situation comedies or modern theoretical thought?
       Doesn't that sort of suggest that the core principles of 
     the American system are remarkably faith-based. There is a 
     reason that Washington's first inaugural and Washington's 
     farewell address are replete with references to God and 
     morality, and there is a reason that the Declaration of 
     Independence says, ``We hold these truths to be self evident, 
     that we are endowed by our creator * * * that we pledge our 
     lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.''
       That Lincoln 12 times in the second inaugural refers to God 
     as the almighty in explaining America. That Jefferson in his 
     memorial has around the top of it, ``I have sworn upon the 
     altar of God Almighty eternal hostility against all forms of 
     tyranny over the minds of men.'' And to get to a drug-free 
     America where every child is learning and children are born 
     into families that can raise them does require a faith-based 
     society and a society that returns to its roots.
       These may seem like big grandiose goals. Let me cite for 
     you why it is very American to have goals that are in fact 
     larger than you think. The story of George Nast * * * that 
     the great seal of the United States was adopted by the 
     Continental Congress in 1782. We weren't yet a free country. 
     On one side is a majestic eagle.
       The other side, less familiar, is the unfinished pyramid 
     with the date 1776 in Roman numerals on its base. Below is 
     the motto: a new order for the ages, self-conscious break 
     with history, identified with the hopes and the futures of 
     mankind by design and intention. Nash adds, ``hovering above 
     the pyramid is a symbolic unblinking eye, the eye of God. And 
     placed there is another motto: He has favored our 
     undertaking.''
       I believe if we will return to that which has made us a 
     unique country, that we will recognize that we are a great 
     nation filled with good people who will call upon all those 
     people, not the federal government, not the bureaucracy, not 
     the law, but all of our people in all of our communities, we 
     will in fact awake on January 1, 2001 a country that is 
     virtually drug-free, in which practically every child is 
     learning at their best rate, and in which children are born 
     into families that can actually raise them.
       And I believe that those three tasks have to be done and 
     when done we will be able to say to our children, we have 
     given you a country that is economically in order, is 
     socially in order and where we have reestablished the 
     framework of freedom. And now it is your generation's turn to 
     lead the rest of the human race to that kind of a promised 
     land.

     

                          ____________________