[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5246-5247]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1115
              BUILDING ON BIPARTISAN CONGRESSIONAL RETREAT

  (Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, last weekend we had the second bipartisan 
congressional retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania. A lot of people helped 
in pulling that together. I want to commend the gentleman from Illinois 
(Mr. LaHood), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Sawyer), the planning 
committee, the staff at Hershey, the Pew Charitable Trust and the Aspen 
Institute who all helped in bringing Members on both sides of the aisle 
together, but I want to especially commend my colleagues who took the 
time out of their busy schedules to bring the family and the children 
and their spouses to the retreat so that we could get to know one 
another a little better and talk to one another. The goal of the 
retreat was simple, to try to make this great institution a more civil 
place in which to conduct the Nation's business. The format was also 
simple, get out of Washington, away from the media, bring the families 
in and the children and the spouses so that we could have some honest 
conversations across the aisle of how we

[[Page 5247]]

could improve this great institution. Because it is a fundamental rule 
of human nature that the better you know someone and their spouse and 
their little children, a lot harder it is going to be to demonize that 
person than during the hot debates of the day. I think we made a good, 
honest attempt last weekend, Mr. Speaker. I hope we can now build upon 
that for the sake of this great Nation.

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