Newt Gingrich: “I am going to talk this evening about renewing American civilization, lessons from a visit to Russia. I want to share…”

“I am going to talk this evening about renewing American civilization, lessons from a visit to Russia. I want to share with my colleagues that, led by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt], the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Michel], a group of us just spent 6 days in Russia. We visited Moscow, St. Petersburg and Petrozavodsk, and it was a very, very useful 6 days. The thing which, I guess, most struck me is how much we Americans have to learn. As my colleagues know, we tend to go to places like Russia, and we are going to teach them how to be a democracy. We are going to talk to them about what they need to do. We are going to suggest to them what they should do about economic growth, about creating jobs, about solving their problems. Yet I found that as we talked to people, I was learning an awful lot of lessons about what we need to do. And I guess it was first brought home to me, it took several days for this to sink in, because this was our second visit in a year, and we had been there last year at about Easter. When you first arrive in Moscow, you are so struck by the differences, and by the physical differences, by the differences in attitudes, by the differences in language. Then you begin to listen to what people worry about. For example, the top two issues in Russia everywhere we went, with every group we talked to, were taxes and crime. Now, when I go to town hall meetings, taxes are often one of the top issues in the United States.…”