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


[[Page 25939]]

                          WE WILL NOT GIVE IN

  (Mr. GUTKNECHT asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)



  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, the question that everybody is trying to 
wrestle with is why are we still here?
  Let me, first of all, say everyone is entitled to their own opinion. 
They are not entitled to their own facts. Let me just offer my opinion 
as to why we are still here. It really does come down to some fairly 
simple questions, and the first one is how much is enough? Now, the 
Committee on the Budget worked out with the Senate earlier this year a 
budget agreement that said we could legitimately meet the needs of the 
Federal Government for about $1.9 trillion. The President of the United 
States wants more, and no matter how much more we give him he keeps 
moving the bar. Even today we do not know how much the President really 
wants to spend, but it is not just about spending. The President 
thought that in our eagerness to get home and campaign that we would 
roll, we would roll over and he would get what he wanted on ergonomics, 
on blanket amnesty for illegal aliens.
  Know what? He was wrong. I am so proud of the House of 
Representatives and our leadership because we said no. We are not going 
to give in to even more spending. We are not going to give in to 
blanket amnesty for illegal aliens, and we are not going to give in to 
a bad ergonomics policy that hurts small business.

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