[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 25939]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                  EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENINGS ON THE HILL

  (Mr. WALDEN of Oregon asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.
  Mr. WALDEN of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, it is extraordinary tonight to 
listen to this, because there are 73 Democrats missing. The Democrat 
leader is missing. It is a little hard to negotiate when they are not 
in town. Our leadership is here and we are here.
  But more importantly for the American people to understand, for 30 
years around this place, whenever they wanted to spend more money than 
they had, the Democrats would just take the money out of the Social 
Security fund and leave an IOU behind.
  We changed that in this Congress. We changed that. We created the 
lockbox that safeguards Social Security and Medicare. We also put money 
into paying down debt. There has been $350 billion paid down in the 
last 3 years. We hope to pay down another $240 billion in this budget 
alone. That is why we are standing here ready to fight, because we want 
to pay down debt, not just grow the government. We want to do 
meaningful tax relief, not just add to the burden of working Americans.
  Tomorrow, we are going to do something extraordinary for the State of 
Florida and for the United States, and that is approve the Everglades 
legislation.

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