[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23846]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1630
                PARTISAN STRIFE WEAKENS NATIONAL RESOLVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Miller of Michigan). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Madam Speaker, I am relatively new to Congress. When I 
first came here 2\1/2\ years ago, I was surprised and somewhat 
disappointed by the partisanship that I encountered. I was from a 
competitive arena, and yet I had really never encountered anything like 
it. And then 9-11 came, and for 2 or 3 months I saw Congress function 
as it could. What we saw was unity of purpose. Welfare of the country 
was the primary priority. Partisanship, personal ambition was set 
aside.
  Now here we are 2 years later and it seems as though we are drifting 
toward and have drifted toward business as usual. We are told that this 
is an election year that is coming up. Partisanship is escalating and 
some people say, well, we really cannot get much done next year because 
this is going to be an election year. Yet I would submit that the 
threat to our Nation is just as great as before 9-11 at this time. The 
battle lines are more clearly drawn. The stakes are higher. And still 
the internal dissension intensifies.
  To me, this is a little bit mystifying. The great majority of people 
I have gotten to know, both sides of the aisle here in Congress, are 
genuinely good people. Yet that is really not the image that we 
project. Most people in my district are totally turned off by the 
discord they see. They do not seem to understand it; and they dismiss 
it as, well, that is just politics.
  Certainly not all Democrats are tax-and-spend liberals with no moral 
compass. Certainly all Republicans are not heartless pawns of big 
business. And yet many times that is the way we portray each other. 
Certainly the President of the United States has not started a war to 
boost his approval ratings. Those types of comments are alarming, and 
they are very disturbing.
  Unfounded congressional comments impugning motives and denigrating 
character only give substance to the belief we have no national resolve 
or unity. Where there is unity of purpose, the whole exceeds the sum of 
its parts. And I saw that consistently in athletics. If people were 
committed to a common goal, they pulled together and the dissenting 
factors tended to fall away. But where there is a lack of unity, the 
whole is less than the sum of its parts. Sometimes I feel that that is 
what characterizes this body as we get fragmented, as we throw rocks at 
each other.
  It is critical at this time in our Nation's history that both parties 
pull together, that civility is exercised. As far as I am concerned, we 
are at war. It is a different type of war. At a time of war we cannot 
afford partisan strife that weakens national resolve.

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