[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 151 (Wednesday, October 21, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2291-E2293]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 SPEAKER'S RALLY FOR THE 105TH CONGRESS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 21, 1998

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, the 105th Congress has achieved numerous 
victories for the American people. Among many other things, we have 
balanced the budget for the first time in decades, kept funding in the 
control of local officials for their schools, passed strong anti-drug 
legislation, increased funding for the military, and passed tax cuts so 
American families can keep their hard-earned money. I submit the 
following speech for further consideration of the accomplishments of 
the 105th Congress.

             Rally for the 105th Congress, October 20, 1998

                        (By Hon. Newt Gingrich)

       Mr. Gingrich. It's truly disorienting and I commend the 
     other speakers. They got up here and looked out over a sea of 
     eager young faces and to see Bill Young and Bill Thomas in 
     the middle of them is one of the more disorienting moments of 
     this entire Congress. (Laughter.)
       The thought of the two of you as interns is almost beyond 
     comprehension. And we can't get them up here. They both 
     deserve a lot of credit. Bill Young worked very hard on the 
     defense effort that we put in this year. And Bill Thomas, an 
     achillean effort working with Mike Bilirakis and Bill Archer 
     and with Tom Bliley managed to get home health care included 
     at the very last minute.
       And a very important home health care (off-mike). I'm 
     delighted both of you are back here. (Applause.)
       I want to drive home three messages and then illustrate 
     them for a minute because I think it's important that we 
     recognize that politics at its best is an educational 
     experience. Despite the 30 second commercials and the some 
     times mindless talk shows, the fact is that the way a country 
     grows over time is by engaging in the political process.
       And there are three lessons at the end of this year I 
     think. The first is that this is an American victory. And I 
     kept getting phone calls from reporters and the president who 
     was in the Rose Garden claiming credit for the budget, and I 
     wanted to set up a fight. I wanted to say well, don't you 
     want to claim credit? And I said, you know, Republicans in 
     the Congress deserve five percent of the credit for balancing 
     the budget. The president under our Constitution had to sign 
     the agreement and he deserves five percent of the credit. And 
     90 percent of the credit for balancing the budget belongs to 
     working, tax paying Americans who sent the money to 
     Washington. And that's what ought to be. (Applause.)
       Well if you think about it, the things we've tried to do 
     for the last few years are the overwhelming sentiment of the 
     overwhelming majority of Americans. Welfare reform according 
     to ``The New York Times'' the week before it was finally 
     signed into law after two vetoes, 92 percent of the American 
     people supported it. Virtually every Democrat, virtually 
     every Republican, virtually every Independent. It was an 
     American victory that we were simply the vehicle of the 
     American people in getting their will through to a 
     Washington, DC that didn't want to believe in the people.
       The question of balancing the budget, every poll for 30 
     years has shown that whether you're a Democrat, a Republican 
     or an Independent, you thought balancing the budget mattered. 
     The Republican party through the Contract with America became 
     the vehicle for the American people's will and we moved from 
     a three trillion, one hundred billion dollar projected 
     deficit over 11 years when we were sworn in as a majority in 
     January of 1995 to a one trillion, 650 billion dollar surplus 
     over the same period now that we've had three-and-a-half 
     years to get a job done. (Applause.)
       But those lower interest rates that Heather described are a 
     victory for every young American who's going to college. The 
     lower interest rates that Vito Fossella described earlier are 
     a victory for every small business, every family farm, every 
     person who buys a home. All Americans are better off. When 
     you balance the budget, lower interest rates and have lower 
     taxes because you don't have to tax this entire generation to 
     pay the interest on three trillion dollars in debt. So that's 
     an American victory.
       Strengthening our defenses for the first time since 1985 is 
     an American victory because every American should care about 
     the young men and women who have the courage and the 
     patriotism to put on our uniform and we did the right thing 
     in the vote we're

[[Page E2292]]

     going to have tonight in rebuilding our defenses, and as Tom 
     DeLay pointed out, in establishing a national missile 
     defense. Because if we can save one American city from a 
     North Korean, Iranian, Iraqi or other missile, one city, that 
     will be a victory for every American and the lives that we'll 
     (ph) lead (ph) there because we had the foresight to invest 
     in the right kind of defenses. And that's an American 
     victory. (Applause.)
       As Heather pointed out, we took the president's proposal. 
     Look this negotiation took nine days.
       We could have done it the three if we just caved. We took 
     the president's proposal for a Washington-based, Washington-
     controlled, Washington-regulated, narrowly-designed teacher 
     plan. We broadened it out to include every grade. We brought 
     it out to include special education and special needs 
     teachers. We brought Chairman Bill Goodling, who is an expert 
     on the topic, into the room.
       And we returned power back exactly as Heather Wilson said, 
     to the local school board. We didn't say the Republican 
     school board. We didn't say the Democratic school board. We 
     said the local school board because we believe it is American 
     to have local people working with local teachers to have 
     local children get an education under local control. And 
     that's a big difference in the two philosophies. (Applause.)
       The second point I'd make is that you get major 
     achievements by sheer persistence. We ran on a Contract with 
     America. We didn't get it all. We learned that the Senate's 
     not always easy and the White House is far harder. We learned 
     the hard way in the fall of 1995 that the president, no 
     matter how weak he is in the polls, nonetheless has a veto 
     pen. And a clever president can use it well.
       And we got back up and we kept moving. Three months after 
     that, we cut $100 billion out of domestic discretionary 
     spending. We passed the Freedom to Farm bill liberating 
     midwestern farmers. We passed the Telecommunications Reform 
     Act. And five months after that, we passed the welfare reform 
     bill, and then we had the election of 1996 and we campaigned 
     on getting the job done, completing the contract, and in the 
     summer of 1997 we passed a bill to save Medicare exactly as 
     we had promised, without raising taxes. We passed a tax cut, 
     as Tom pointed out, the first in 16 years, including $500 tax 
     credit per child because we believe parents are better than 
     bureaucrats and the center of raising children. (Applause.)
       We reduced the capital gains tax substantially, and I would 
     suggest to you as you look at market turmoil around the world 
     this year, it's a pretty good thing the Republican Congress 
     insisted on lowering the tax on investment at a time when we 
     need to make sure that the investment community doesn't have 
     the kind of problems it could have if we had liberal 
     Democrats raising taxes and imposing regulations.
       And finally, we got to a balanced budget. September 30th, 
     we ended the 1998 fiscal year, and they will report in the 
     next few days somewhere a $71-75 billion surplus last year, 
     that will go to paying down the national debt and setting the 
     stage for us to save Social Security. (Applause.)
       The bill we will pass tonight still provides for over $60 
     billion in surplus, and if the economy grows, I suspect we'll 
     be above $80 billion next year and I might point out, in 
     January when the Congressional Budget Office was talking 
     about an $8 billion surplus, I was saying they were way off 
     and way too small. And all year they played catch up before 
     they got the $70 billion. And I noticed by the way that the 
     architect of the historic balanced budget act I think just 
     walked in the room back there. Direct from Iowa I believe, 
     John Kasich come up here and join us John. (Applause.)
       If you weren't . . . I just read that you were in Iowa. You 
     were on a hiad (ph). Well thanks for (off-mike). I just want 
     to say, when I talk about persistence, no one can tell the 
     story better than Kasich who started as a back-bencher 
     offering his own budget when all of us thought he was nuts 
     and I include myself in that group. We all opposed him. Came 
     back as the ranking member when we were the minority. Came 
     back as our budget committee chairman fought his way through. 
     And without John Kasich's courage and charisma and effort, we 
     would not have a balanced budget today. (Applause.)
       Mr. Kasich. Now let me just say one thing. If you think 
     that Newt and I early on fought for a balanced budget, 
     because it wouldn't be done without Newt's help, we are going 
     to have a huge, giant tax cut next year. And we are going to 
     fight for it every single day until we get it done. 
     (Applause.)
       Mr. Gingrich. So if my (off-mike) was that this is an 
     American victory, and my second point is it takes 
     persistence, remember I said we had the contract. It took us 
     through the summer of last year and January, I began talking 
     about four goals per generation. They were very direct. Win 
     the war on drugs and violent crime, give us a world class 
     system of education and learning, use the surplus to save 
     Social Security and modernize government to reduce its cost 
     so we can ultimately lower taxes so that no American paid 
     more than 25 percent of their income in total taxation state, 
     federal and local combined.
       Let's look at this year. We will pass tonight the strongest 
     anti-drug measure in the history of the Congress. We will 
     pass a substantial increase in interdiction money and we will 
     ban the federal government, block the federal government from 
     distributing free needles to drug addicts because it is 
     exactly the wrong signal. You cannot have healthy drug 
     addicts. The message we should send to drug addicts is, we 
     want to reach out a helping hand for you to be rehabilitated 
     and get on drugs. Not we want to help you stay on drugs. But 
     at least your government will give you clean needles. I think 
     this is a major victory in the right direction. (Applause.)
       Second, we began to insist on point after point on the 
     basic concept of dollars for the classroom of returning power 
     back to local control and allowing the local community to 
     really take a grip on their local education system. And we're 
     going to continue in that direction. And again this evening, 
     we'll be voting on an important step forward for our second 
     goal.
       Our third goal frankly got postponed for a year. I'm sorry 
     it did. I began talking with the president and working with 
     the president in October of last year on saving Social 
     Security. John Kasich and Bill Archer whom I saw a minute 
     ago, both worked very hard. We've been working with President 
     Bush and President Reagan's economists. We think it's 
     possible to develop a program to use the surplus to save 
     Social Security by creating personal savings accounts for 
     every person that pays the FICA tax so they can have a 
     savings accounts they control that has a tax free build up of 
     interest of dividends with no Washington politician taking 
     the money away from them. But frankly, in this kind of an 
     election year, with all of the other problems that began in 
     January, it was not possible to move that dialogue as far as 
     we would have liked.
       I also repeat what John just said, because I agree with him 
     entirely. We fought for a tax cut this year. I am proud of 
     the House because we passed an $80 billion tax cut this year. 
     That was the right thing to do. I am very disappointed that 
     the Democrats in the Senate and the president blocked us 
     passing a tax cut.
       But I want them to know that very early next year, with 
     Chairman Archer's leadership, we're going to bypassing a bill 
     that both saves Social Security and takes any extra surplus 
     and turns it into a tax cut on a very simple premise. The 
     number one difference between liberals and conservatives in 
     American today is that we believe the surpluses belongs to 
     the American people who pay the taxes. They believe the 
     surplus belongs to the Washington bureaucrats and who ought 
     to be allowed to spend it. And everybody knows if you leave a 
     trillion dollars sitting around here near Al Gore and Teddy 
     Kennedy, they will find a way to spend it.
       So we're going to get it back home first to save Social 
     Security, and second as a very large tax cut early next year. 
     (Applause.)
       Our fourth goal to modernize government in order to be able 
     to reduce taxes and I mean modernize at all levels--state, 
     federal and local to reduce all taxes combined to 25 percent 
     on the moral premise that in a free society in peace time, no 
     one should have to work longer than Monday and half of 
     Tuesday to pay their taxes. That the rest of their week in 
     peace time ought to belong to themselves, their family, their 
     community, their favorite charity, their church or synagogue 
     or mosque, their own retirement. That's going to be a big 
     complicated job and it's one that we're going to be enlisting 
     every Republican committee chairman to work on. We're going 
     to try enlist every committee to begin next year working with 
     the budget committee on this.
       And I've already been talking with governors, mayors, 
     county commissioners, school boards, because it has to be 
     done at every level including tracking the state legislators. 
     And we'll be having a conference in December of state 
     legislative leaders around the country to talk about how we 
     can work together to reduce the cost of government at all 
     levels so we can have a one-third cut in taxes over the next 
     10 to 15 years so the American people can be working for 
     their room families more of the time and for government 
     bureaucracy less of the time.
       Let me say finally, in addition to this being an American 
     history, in addition to persistence paying off, elections 
     matter. There is a very big difference in where the two 
     parties will take America. I sometimes get distressed by our 
     friends in the media because they try to reduce everything to 
     gossip, scandal mongering and cynicism that I think is 
     profoundly false for this country's future.
       There is an enormous difference in the two parties. We 
     would go two very different places. The Democrats 
     legitimately stand for a big government, big bureaucracy, 
     high tax vision of the future. There's nothing dishonorable 
     about it. Charlie Rangel can defend it eloquently. It is his 
     vision of how America works. More bureaucrats with more 
     paperwork based on more taxes from working Americans. They 
     have a model of big unions and big trial lawyers gradually 
     wiping out small businesses and medical doctors. But it's a 
     rational model. And we need to honor it by having honest 
     debate and talking about how really different the two parties 
     are.
       We favor a smaller central government, lower taxes, more 
     free enterprise, more job creation, more volunteerism. We 
     favor money being in the family rather in Washington. And 
     there are places we do think government has a powerful 
     legitimate role. For example, we want to census strong enough 
     that it's accurate. That's not a weak government.
       We truly are prepared to work with the Black and Hispanic 
     caucuses to design a census that will reach out to every 
     minority neighborhood that will count every American because 
     we believe we have a constitutional duty to have a government 
     effective

[[Page E2293]]

     enough and modern enough to count every American in an actual 
     enumeration as required by the Constitution.
       Similarly, we're very proud that we've began strengthening 
     defense because we think it's important that this country 
     lead the world. I'm frankly proud that the president is 
     working today trying to bring peace to the Middle East. I am 
     proud that this president reached out in Northern Ireland. 
     And I can tell you from my own visits there, and my 
     conversations there that without his leadership and Senator 
     Mitchell's leadership, we would not have made progress. We 
     can work together as Americans even when we disagree about 
     basic philosophy or even when we have other problems we have 
     to work on.
       And so we believe that just as the 1994 election changed 
     the direction of America, and no serious person believes that 
     the Democrats would have balanced the budget, cut taxes and 
     reformed welfare if they had remained in charge. Jim 
     Traficant, a Democrat has said flatly, he tried every year 
     with his own leadership to bring up the IRS reform bill. And 
     they would never bring it up. It took a Republican Congress, 
     it took Rob Portman as chairman of the IRS commission, it 
     took Bill Archer as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee 
     to pass IRS reform. So elections do matter.
       And two weeks from today, this country can vote for higher 
     taxes by voting Democrat or it can vote for lower taxes by 
     voting Republican. It can vote for more power and bureaucracy 
     in Washington by voting Democrat. It can vote for more power 
     back home by voting Republican.
       It can vote for a weaker defense by voting Democrat or it 
     can vote for a stronger defense by voting Republican. It can 
     vote for less effort on the drug war by voting Democrat. It 
     can vote for a much stronger effort on the drug war by voting 
     Republican. These are basic legitimate philosophical 
     differences. And I think we've proven over the last four 
     years, it makes a big difference whether or not you're 
     elected to try to move in one direction or another.
       We're think we're getting our message to the American 
     people. And if we come back and we're a majority for the 
     third time, which would be the first time since the 1920's in 
     70 years. We will have our marching orders from the American 
     people to get some more American victories starting with 
     saving Social Security and cutting taxes. Thank you very 
     much. (Applause.)

     

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