[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 150 (Tuesday, October 20, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H11552-H11553]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REMARKS ON THE OMNIBUS BUDGET COMPROMISE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by commending 
the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Christensen) for his remarks. As a 
member of the other political party, I would like to join him in really 
condemning what the leadership on both the minority and majority side 
are trying to do to the 435 elected representatives of the people.
  Mr. Speaker, all across our country, people hire tax accountants to 
help them make sure that they are not violating any laws. You can 
imagine how aghast they would be if when it came time to submit that 
form, the accountant told them they had never actually looked at the 
information that they had given them.
  People hire lawyers from time to time to help them with contracts, 
and, again, you can imagine walking into negotiations and at the last 
minute your lawyer saying well, he has not quite bothered to read it; 
or having a purchasing agent who works for you who on a daily basis is 
signing forms for tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands 
of dollars, but who never bothered to see what he was really signing 
for and spending your money on.
  Starting Friday at 9:30, the great young people who help me in my 
Congressional office started calling and asking for copies of this 
4,000-page document that is going to spend over one-half of a trillion, 
that is $500 billion, of the citizens' hard-earned money. They have 
been calling about every hour since then.
  As of right now, 20 minutes to 1, a copy of this document is still 
not available. Yet the Democratic leadership and the Republican 
leadership are going to tell us to trust them, just go ahead and vote 
for it.
  One of the people who is asking us to trust them is now being studied 
to see if he committed perjury. Another of the people who says ``trust 
us'' admitted lying to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. 
That is not a very good place to start.
  Every Member of this body was elected. Not one of us was given this 
job. We had to go out and ask for it. Most of us went out and begged 
for it. We mortgaged our houses, we sold those things we really did not 
need and put ourselves in financial jeopardy because we wanted to come 
here and make things better.

[[Page H11553]]

  But now we are being given the option of either taking a half a 
trillion dollars worth of spending that does some good things, but we 
do not know what else it does.
  My friend from Nebraska mentioned the Welfare Reform Act. There is no 
one that can tell me with great certainty that this bill does not 
repeal it. We do not know if it establishes all new criteria for gun 
control. We do not know if it says on a permanent basis that we are 
going to have troops in Haiti or Bosnia forever. We do not know what 
kind of trade pacts are buried in there, because, quite frankly, there 
is not one copy of this bill that 435 Congressmen are being asked to 
vote on available for any of us to read.
  Mr. Speaker, I take my job very seriously. I begged for it. When we 
get through with this, I am going to go back home and beg for it again. 
I am not going to give my responsibility away. I am going to vote no. 
Until there is a copy of that bill that is available for the Members to 
study and have some idea and some certainty as to what we are doing to 
and for the American people, I am going to continue to vote no.

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