David Weldon: “this morning I rise to talk about what I feel is a historic change in the Congress of the United States. When I was…”

“this morning I rise to talk about what I feel is a historic change in the Congress of the United States. When I was running for Congress last year and I received the Contract With America in the mail, I was very, very pleasantly surprised, because when I read through the contract I felt like I was reading my own campaign platform. For months I had been campaigning on how we need to reform the Congress itself and how the Congress does business, how we needed to shrink the size of Government, and how we needed to start in the Congress itself by reducing the number of committees and the number of committee staff. One of the most important things that I ran on was how strongly I felt that the Congress needed to make all of the laws that they exempted themselves from apply to themselves. Indeed, I was very impressed when I read in the Federalist papers No. 37 written by Madison, how he described in that paper how the Congress should not be allowed to pass laws that did not apply to themselves and their friends. Mr. Speaker, I am so delighted to actually be here and to see us fulfilling our commitment to the American people, how on that historic day on January 4 we passed all of those congressional reforms reducing the staff, reducing the number of committees, and then how we went on to pass legislation making all of the laws the Congress had exempted themselves from applying to the Congress itself.”