[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 109 (Tuesday, July 29, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H6023-H6025]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         A HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Metcalf). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SHAYS. First let me thank the gentleman from Washington [Mr. 
Metcalf], Speaker pro tempore, as we have the opportunity to address 
this Chamber for continuing to serve at a late hour here. I do not 
intend to take anywhere near the hour that would be allotted to me. I 
do know the House is going to be in session tonight as we wait for the 
rules, so our staff will be staying around for a bit. But I have not 
really had much opportunity to address this Chamber in a special order. 
Tonight is a night I am really grateful to have this opportunity.
  I am grateful to have this opportunity because I think of the 
historic achievement that has been agreed to between this President, a 
Democrat President, and this Congress, a Congress controlled by 
Republicans, a Congress filled with 435 men and women of both parties, 
but a party in control of this Congress, the Republican Party.

                              {time}  2215

  I think in terms of my history as I was growing up and as a student 
in high school and college and thinking about our Founding Fathers, and 
they designed quite a system. They designed a system where you would 
not only have competing interests in a Chamber and in another Chamber, 
the Senate, and this check and balance with the judiciary, but you 
would have an executive who would not have the ability to do everything 
he or she wanted, a Congress that does not have the ability to do 
everything it, the majority party, wants. This is a system designed by 
our Founding Fathers, and they wanted it to be exactly what it is, a 
system that does not allow one unit, one branch, to gain too much power 
or one group within a branch to gain too much power.
  So what did we have after the 1996 election? We elected a Democrat 
President. Frankly, by an overwhelming number the American people 
elected such a President, and they elected a Republican Congress, maybe 
not by the same margin, and they said very clearly in their message 
that they wanted us to work together.

[[Page H6024]]

  Mr. Speaker, we have worked together, and we have a historic 
agreement, and it is for real, and it is not an agreement that is 
unable to take place because of a rosy scenario. This is an agreement 
where either the President and our own Congress said we would use 
inflated numbers and anticipate revenues that simply would be far in 
addition to what they would be in actual fact. This is an agreement 
that anticipates revenue growing at 2.1 percent a year. Now it is 
growing much faster now than that, but maybe in the fourth or fifth 
year it will not grow as much.
  There are a number of us, certainly on our side of the aisle, who 
anticipate a very robust economy for the next year or two, and we 
intend to have that move us toward balancing the budget sooner than 5 
years. Five years is the outer limit. There are many of us who feel we 
need to get our country's financial house in order sooner.
  I know for one, as a Member of this body, finishing now by the end of 
this week my 10th year; I won in a special election and started in 
September 1987. I was elected in August, and I remember that for me, a 
State legislator at the time, I was amazed that Congress would continue 
to spend and spend and spend when we did not have the revenue to pay 
for it and we would continue to have our national debt go up and up and 
up.
  Mr. Speaker, it has gone up tenfold in less than 22 years, 10 times, 
not double or triple, 10 times, and so there were Members such as 
myself, particularly Members more on this side of the aisle, who said 
we need to get our country's financial house in order. I am thinking of 
one Member in particular. It is our colleague the gentleman from Ohio, 
John Kasich, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, and I will 
never forget walking into the room, this Chamber, as the machine had 
closed for Mr. Kasich's amendment to begin to balance the budget.
  Mr. Speaker, the year was 1989, and there were 38 Members, mostly 
Republicans, some Democrats, who supported John Kasich and his effort 
to get our country's financial house in order.
  I use the gentleman from Ohio, John Kasich, and his effort as kind of 
the benchmark of what happened over time. Every year when John Kasich 
introduced his amendment he got more people to sponsor it and more 
people to vote on it. It started out at 38, then it went to 50, then it 
went to 80 the year after, then it went to close to 100, then it went 
over 100, then it got closer to the middle range between 100 and 200, 
and then we got to a point where Tim Penny and John Kasich teamed 
together. Republican John Kasich and Tim Penny, a Democrat, were on a 
major amendment to save $90-plus billion in savings, in appropriated 
expenditures in particular. He got over 200. Every year there was 
progress.
  So as one Member of this Chamber, I know that as a Republican you 
should not be surprised I would speak for another Republican, but this 
Republican deserves really the thanks of the American people, and he 
deserves the thanks of Republicans and Democrats alike because he truly 
helped steer us in the direction for what we have today.
  Now people talk about the effort that he made over the last 7 months 
to balance the budget, to reduce the size of Government, to control the 
growth of entitlements and to have meaningful tax cuts to make this 
Government smaller and give the American people more of what they have 
been giving this Government. Seven months is just a little part of that 
story. The real story is his long journey in 1989, when more and more 
people sponsored and supported his efforts. He truly has been a leader 
in this Congress, and he will go down in history as a major part of 
this historic agreement.
  I also want to thank the Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. I want 
to thank him, as unpopular as he may be in some areas, but I am not 
surprised because frankly a lot of good leaders are unpopular when they 
seek to do what needs to happen. Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the 
House, is the first leader in my entire political career, and I have 
been in public office since 1974, when I served in the State house for 
13 years, he is the first leader who has ever really truly asked a 
conference, a group of people, to do heavy lifting, to truly get our 
country's financial house in order.
  So when we adopted the Contract With America, and almost all of us 
who got elected on the Republican side of the aisle had said we want to 
move forward with these 10 major reforms on the opening day of the 
session and 10 major reforms in the first 100 days, that commitment, 
that was a true effort to do some major things.
  But we did not, for instance, just vote for a balanced budget 
amendment. In 1994, after the election and when we took over in 1995, 
we sought to balance the budget by making tough decisions in a whole 
host of programs to slow the growth of entitlements and to save them.
  For instance, Medicare was losing too much money each year. The trust 
fund, we were told by the President's own people in charge of the trust 
fund on Medicare; that is, health care for the elderly and the 
disabled, that it would run out of money around the turn of the century 
because too much money was flowing out of the fund. We slowed the 
growth of the program so we admittedly in 7 years under our old plan 
had spent 60 percent more over 7 years than 50 percent per beneficiary. 
But we were slowing the growth to try to get a handle on a program that 
is very important to all Americans.
  I guess what I really want to say because I do not want to speak too 
much longer: I am very proud to be part of this Congress, I am very 
proud the Republicans and Democrats could work together, I am very 
proud that this President recognized that he needed, frankly, to take 
some of his old legislative leaders out of this mix; Mr. Daschle and 
Mr. Gephardt were not part of the budget agreement because they clearly 
did not want an agreement, and he sought to have a true budget 
agreement with this Republican Congress.
  So we are finally getting our country's financial house in order and 
balancing the Federal budget. We are saving our trust funds at least 
for the next 10 years, particularly in Medicare. And we are doing 
something very important, we are transforming this caretaking, social 
and corporate and agricultural welfare state into what I call a care 
and opportunity society. We are trying with all the power that we have 
to be a caring Government rather than a caretaking Government.
  I salute the Republican Party for being determined to rein in 
entitlements and to cut taxes $91 billion net, but actually more than 
that. I salute the President for some of his spending priorities, but 
recognizing the President seemed to feel he won when he spent more and 
we seem to feel we would win when we slowed the growth of entitlements 
and cut taxes and made Government smaller.
  But some of what the President wanted to spend more on, on education, 
health, the environment and housing, I happen to agree with; I think a 
good number of the constituents I represent, in the urban areas in 
particular, in Stanford, in Norwalk, and Bridgeport, the three major 
urban areas I represent.
  I think this is a better agreement than most people ever expected, 
and for those who might be listening tonight and saying, you know, I 
will believe the tax cuts when I see them; well, turn on your TV set 
tomorrow and the next day. You will learn that we are going to lower 
the top rate of the capital gains from 28 to 20 percent, effective May 
7, 1997. We are going to have that rate drop to 18 percent for any 
asset held more than 5 years, effective in the year 2001. We are going 
to have a $500 child tax credit, and excuse me; let me first say 
another capital gains exemption.
  If you have a gain, and this was something the President wanted. It 
seems pretty high, but this is something the President wanted, along 
with the Members of Congress, a $500,000 exemption for capital gains in 
housing. If you hold a house for 1\1/2\ years and you have a gain of 
$200,000, you pay no tax. That is your home. You pay no gain on that. 
We have an estate tax that would go through that that basically 
increases the exemption from $600 to $1 million over the next 10 years, 
but if you have a family-owned farm or a family-owned small business, 
the exemption is going to rise immediately to $1.3 million. If you own 
a farm, if you own a small business, the child tax credit, you will see 
tomorrow and the next day, a $500 tax credit for kids 16

[[Page H6025]]

and younger beginning in 1999, $400 beginning in 1998, up to families 
of incomes of $110,000, and if you are single, up to $75,000.
  You will see additional IRA's. You will see additional $31 billion of 
loss in revenue, of tax benefits for individuals choosing to send their 
children to the first 2 years of college, $1,500 off each year. The key 
is to make sure the colleges do not just increase their tuition, but it 
actually goes to the families and the kids. You will see businesses 
that will be able to benefit from the alternative minimum tax. You will 
see a slight increase in the tobacco tax, but it is going for health 
care.
  We are finally getting a handle on Medicare, we are finally getting a 
handle on some other entitlements, and we are going to save this 
country not just for our kids, but our kids' kids.
  I am very proud to be part of this Republican majority, I am proud of 
the work that John Kasich has done, I am proud of the work that Newt 
Gingrich has done under tremendous criticism over his time as Speaker 
during the last 2\1/2\ years. It is a privilege to serve in the House 
of Representatives and represent the people of the Fourth Congressional 
District. It is a privilege to be on the Committee on the Budget and to 
serve with John Kasich. It is a privilege to have Newt Gingrich as the 
Speaker of this House. I know many have been critical of his tenure 
over the last 2\1/2\ years, but I think history will be a very kind 
judge of Newt Gingrich.

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