[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 58 (Tuesday, April 27, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H2309]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 19, 1999, the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon, and first let me 
offer a debt of gratitude to my friend from Ohio who, in very Orwellian 
fashion, has offered the rhetoric of fear rather than facts that we 
will hear in Campaign 2000. Indeed, it is very revealing to now hear 
the ``Mediscare'' tactics of the left, to deny the fact that the very 
reason the Medicare trustees say that Medicare's life has been 
lengthened was because of the new majority's plan to save Medicare that 
we successfully enacted after the jihad that was waged against us, 
politically speaking, in 1996 with a liberal Mediscare plan.
  It is also worth noting, while we are in the neighborhood, Mr. 
Speaker, that the bipartisan commission, headed by the gentleman from 
Louisiana in the other body, and the gentleman from California with 
whom I am pleased to serve on the House Committee on Ways and Means 
offered a variety of avenues that give seniors, our most honored 
citizens, a variety of choices. It is revealing that there are those 
who would like to limit the freedom of Americans to make choices in 
their own interests.
  But I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to speak of another matter that goes 
directly to the core of our survival as a constitutional republic. It 
is, Mr. Speaker, the people's right to know. Mr. Speaker, in the very 
near future, it is my understanding that Johnny Chung will testify 
before the House Committee on Government Reform about contributions, 
political contributions the Communist Chinese Government made to the 
Clinton/Gore campaign and to the Democratic National Committee in 1996. 
It has been interesting, Mr. Speaker, to note the coverage, or perhaps 
lack thereof, of this important issue in the Nation's press.
  Now, to be sure, Mr. Speaker, I understand full well the nature and 
the scope of the first amendment to the Constitution, Congress shall 
make no law abridging freedom of the press, nor would I ever advocate 
such a dereliction or disruption of our first amendment rights. But it 
is fair, Mr. Speaker, in the marketplace of ideas to ask my former 
colleagues in television, where will they be when Johnny Chung comes 
before the congressional committee to testify about these 
contributions?
  We should also say in passing, a tip of the rhetorical hat is 
necessary to many publications, whether the New York Times, the 
Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, many 
mainstream publications who have chronicled the abuses.
  But now, Mr. Speaker, it is time for my former colleagues in 
television to step up, specifically those news networks that are 
available via cable with 24-hour-a-day coverage. Without trying to set 
their agenda, but in the spirit of constructive criticism and open 
dialogue in a free republic, I would challenge the cable news networks, 
I would challenge public broadcasting, to follow the example of C-SPAN.
  And from this vantage point I can say, Mr. Speaker, that we 
congratulate C-SPAN on 20 years of service to the American people, 
bringing to the people of our Nation an unvarnished, straight conduit 
of what happens in the halls of Congress, what happens on the floor of 
this House and what happens in the many committee rooms.
  But I would welcome far more exposure of these hearings. Indeed, Mr. 
Speaker, one is tempted to look at the recent promotional campaign of 
the Public Broadcasting Service and the rhetorical question that is 
asked: ``If PBS won't do it, who will?''
  Indeed, I think of the recent past when I was a private citizen in 
the 1980s, the mid- to late-1980s, seeing on public television gavel-
to-gavel coverage of the confirmation hearings of Judge Bork, the 
confirmation hearings eventually of Mr. Justice Thomas, and all the 
mainstream media scrutiny. How much more important it is then, Mr. 
Speaker, that the media devote its considerable energies and its 
agenda-setting ability to checking into these disturbing allegations 
that go to the very fabric of our constitutional Republic.
  For, Mr. Speaker, if there are those both within and outside 
government who seek to influence decisions and policy for another 
government that wishes us ill, the consequences for our national 
survival are grave indeed.

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