[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 25693-25694]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE NEW PELOSIAN CALENDAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Madam Speaker, tonight, I want 
to talk just briefly on the calendar, a little bit of historical note.
  Julius Caesar took over the chaotic Roman calendar because, as Matt 
Rosenberg of About.com said, it was being exploited by politicians and 
others for their own political purposes and it had the effect of adding 
additional days, because in certain ways changing the timing of things 
made a difference politically.
  So Julius Caesar, in the year 46 BC, established what we have been 
calling for years the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar was an 
improvement over the Roman calendar, except for one thing; it was 11 
minutes and 14 seconds too slow, and that added up to a full day off 
every 128 years.
  Well, for a number of centuries, it didn't mean anything. But, over 
time, it meant something. And what happened was in the year 1582, the 
Pope, Pope Gregory XIII, concerned that Christianity's most important 
dates were falling behind with respect to the calendar, particularly 
Easter, which was based on the date of the vernal equinox, believed 
what we had to do was to adjust that calendar. So he issued what is 
known as a Papal bull establishing the new calendar, which actually 
corrected, fairly well, the problem. It would be comprising 365 days, 
with every fourth year adding an additional day, but no leap year in 
years ending in 00 unless they were divisible by 400.
  Now, I am not a mathematician. I can't tell you how that works out, 
but it pretty near makes it perfect. The problem was, of course, there 
was a cleavage between the Catholics and the Protestants. So the 
Catholic countries adopted that in 1582.
  It wasn't until 1752 that Great Britain decided to follow. As a 
matter of fact, that is a famous day in English history, because the 
British Calendar Act of 1751 meant that people went to bed on 
Wednesday, September 2, 1752, and woke up 12 days later. They lost 11 
days in order to correct the calendar.
  But this is the calendar that has been adopted around the world ever 
since that time, until recently. What do I mean by that? Well, here 
would be the Gregorian calendar for 2009. You see it does have 365 
days. You see it does have an August. But we have found this year that 
August did not exist, because we have what I call the Pelosian 
calendar.
  Under the leadership of the Democrats, we have been told to ignore 
what happened in August. Those town halls did not take effect. The 
American people did not express themselves. We did not hear outcries 
about what was happening in the Congress.
  Rather, nothing occurred. You don't hear about it on this floor. You 
don't hear about it in the President's statements. You don't hear about 
it in the recommendations made by the Democratic side. And now, as we 
are moving forward on our calendar and told that we have a few days to 
make up, we forget about the 31 days.
  I would like to say that the Pope took 11 days away from us, but it 
appears he was a piker. The Speaker has taken 31 days away from us. 
There was no August. There is no August. There were no town hall 
meetings. The American people did not rise up and say, Congress, listen 
to us. We don't want a public option. We want you to make some changes, 
but don't put us at jeopardy for losing the care and the coverage we 
currently have.

[[Page 25694]]

  I must say, this is a historic moment, because it took us 1,600 years 
to change the calendar the first time. But now, by the magic of the 
congressional calendar, we have done it in just, well, less than 600 
years.
  There is something fundamentally wrong, extremely disappointing, that 
somehow we would have the temerity to tell the American people, You 
don't count, because we know better here in Washington, D.C. And, as a 
matter of fact, if you have a different idea, we are going to question 
that idea. We are going to question what you are doing.
  Madam Speaker, give us back those 31 days.

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