[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 145 (Tuesday, October 13, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10816-H10817]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THIS CONGRESS MADE PROGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, there was this guy who was in hell and he 
was sentenced to go to hell and he was walking around down there and he 
was smiling. The devil says to him, what are you smiling about. He 
said, I am from South Georgia. It is 90 degrees. I do not feel so bad. 
I kind of feel like I am back home again.
  The devil got mad. The devil cranked up the thermostat to 100 degrees 
and checked on the guy after a little while, walked over, the guy was 
not even sweating. Devil said, now what is the problem, why are you so 
happy now? He says, well, again, I am from South Georgia and 100 
degrees is like July. This does not bother me a bit.
  The devil got real mad, cranked up the thermostat to 110 degrees. And 
at this point the guy was smiling again. The devil runs over to him and 
says, I know, August, right. And guy says, you got it, devil, 110 
degrees is not a problem.
  The devil got real mad and turned the thermostat down to 15 degrees. 
Everything got blue and frozen. Devil ran over there and he saw the 
South Georgia boy smiling one more time and he said, what is it now? 
And he says, devil, I am smiling because apparently the

[[Page H10817]]

Democrats and the Republicans have finally found something that they 
agree on up there in Washington.
  And so the reality is, Mr. Speaker, we are often painted, Democrats 
and Republicans, as fighting things over. I will say this, that I 
believe philosophically so often that my side is right, as my good 
friends on the Democrat side believe their side is right. But what 
probably a less than complete world it would be if one side always won.
  I think that if the Chicago Bulls keep on winning the National 
Basketball Championships, people are going to get tired of watching 
basketball. I am real proud of the Atlanta Braves, as I know the folks 
in New York City are proud of the New York City Yankees. If every year 
it boils down to the Braves versus Yankees, this year it may be San 
Diego versus Cleveland, people would get tired of watching baseball all 
the time.
  The point is, Mr. Speaker, you cannot always have it the Republicans 
win; you cannot always have it that the Democrats win. We do need to 
cooperate. We do need to get some things accomplished, but at the same 
time, I do not think either side needs to apologize for what they 
believe in.
  I am very proud of what this Congress has accomplished under 
Republican leadership. We have the first balanced budget since 1969, 
1969, when Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon and the Mod Squad was 
on TV. We have reformed, protected and saved Medicare which a mere 3 
years ago was on the road to bankruptcy. Now Medicare, on a bipartisan 
basis, has been reformed.
  This Congress, under Republican leadership, has passed the first tax 
cuts in 16 years. We have passed IRS reform. This year we pushed for 
some more tax cuts. We have pushed for ending the marriage tax penalty. 
And my chart over here, Mr. Speaker, shows you some actual people, some 
real people who will directly benefit from marriage tax penalty relief. 
We have Kris Hanson in Nyssa, Oregon; William Johnson, Reno, Nevada; 
Larry Bergman in Tracy, California; Tom Smith from Columbus, Ohio, and 
the names go on and on and on, as millions of Americans would benefit 
from paying less taxes and avoiding paying higher taxes simply because 
they are married.
  How big is this tax cut? We keep hearing the tax cut is huge, but of 
our $9.6 trillion estimated expenditure over the next 5 years, the tax 
cut is a mere $80 billion. It is a slither of a slither, Mr. Speaker, 
as you can tell from this chart. It really has been exaggerated. So 
that people can see it, it is just a mere slice. If this was a pie, I 
can promise you, you are going to go away hungry.
  How much is the tax cut from the surplus? It is about 10 percent. 
What do we do with the other 90 percent of the surplus, Mr. Speaker? We 
for the first time in 40 years protect Social Security. We do not take 
the Social Security money out of the Social Security trust fund. We 
build a wall on it so that that money cannot be used for roads and 
bridges. The first time in 40 years, 90 percent of the Social Security 
surplus would be protected.
  What else has this Congress done? We have reformed welfare, welfare, 
Mr. Speaker, which was vetoed twice by the President and finally signed 
into law by the President. Today we have 37 percent less people on 
welfare rolls than we did 5 years ago. We need to continue to do that 
so that people become independent and that is a very important part of 
the American experience.
  Mr. Speaker, finally let me say on education, we have a whole gamut 
of issues on education designed to put dollars back in the classroom 
and control back in local educators' hands and away from the Washington 
bureaucracy.
  Mr. Speaker, is this Congress making progress? Yes, it is. Is it 
everything the Republicans wanted? No. Is it everything the Democrats 
wanted? No. But is America being served by the dynamic of the two-party 
system? I would say that it is, and we should continue working for 
these very important reforms.

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