Jack Kingston: “I will be glad to yield on the gentleman's time. We can talk about the Reagan record, reducing inflation. We can talk…”

“I will be glad to yield on the gentleman's time. We can talk about the Reagan record, reducing inflation. We can talk about unemployment going down, the creation of 18 million new jobs, economic turnaround, interest rates falling, the demise of the Soviet Union, the rise of the American military and international prestige. We can talk about the Reagan spending programs, the fact that seven out of eight of his budgets that he submitted to the Democratic-controlled Congress were actually increased, that if we had kept as a Congress with the Reagan budgets, he would have left office with over $100 billion in surplus. Now, we can talk about his strong economic legacy. But I want to speak to you, Mr. Chairman, about Reagan the man. I am a baby-boomer. I was raised during the Watergate era and then Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostage situation. And do you know what? Speaking as a young American, we did not have that much to look up to, particularly out of Washington. But when Ronald Reagan came to the scene, I can tell my colleagues that, as a youngster, younger than I am now, in my late 20s, we had somebody to look up to. My wife said, ``Isn't he wonderful? He is like a king, somebody you can really respect and follow.'' Then I said to her one day, I said, ``Libby, you know what, you like Ronald Reagan'' she kept on going on and on and on, ``You like Ronald Reagan better than you like me.'' And she said, ``Yes.”