Jack Kingston: “A year ago, Mr. Speaker, we in this Congress, the 104th Congress, had passed 30 out of 31 parts of the Contract With…”

“A year ago, Mr. Speaker, we in this Congress, the 104th Congress, had passed 30 out of 31 parts of the Contract With America, and all of these were designed to reduce the size of government, to decrease taxes, to cut wasteful spending, to balance the budget, to have welfare reform and increase personal responsibility by shrinking government regulatory command and control bureaucracy. We in the House were excited about it. We had passed 30 out of 31 parts. We knew that the Senate would grab these parts and run with it. And as it turned out, our friends across the Capitol in the Senate said, well, the Contract With America was a House promise, not a Senate promise, and we will get to it as soon as we have dealt with Whitewater and antiterrorism and Packwood. So with each month of deliberation, the public interest and public support also, Mr. Speaker, ebbed and finally to the extent that it appeared that the President would not even have to veto this legislation because he would never see it. To speak about the press a minute during this interim of time, the Republican Party has enjoyed probably an unprecedented in modern time era of public support. All the programs, everything seemed to be going well and in fact, 90 percent of the Contract With America passed with strong bipartisan support.”