Newt Gingrich: “let me start by saying I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], for yielding this…”

“let me start by saying I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], for yielding this time to me, and I want to thank the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], who has been, I think, most generous in his efforts to work out a procedure and a process for a number of very, very difficult issues, and I have often gotten on the floor and complained about some of the rules we get and some of the situations, but I would say that working on this bill has been frankly a very important step toward bipartisanship, and I want to thank Mr. Dellums for, I think, an exemplary effort to reach out and to try to actually have time for everybody to explore important issues. So, in that spirit I want to briefly describe an amendment which we thought was so important that the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Michel] and I wanted to lead off the conversation on our side, and other members of our leadership, I think, are going to want to join in. Let me be very clear what this is about. We are going through a period of terrible downsizing in our defense budget. We are cutting beyond bone. We are shrinking below what President Bush thought, we are shrinking below what President Clinton, said was necessary. We are going to weaken America's military over the next 5 years in very significant ways.”