Dan Burton: “I, like all of my colleagues, would like to extol the wonderful accomplishments of President Reagan, the economy coming…”

“I, like all of my colleagues, would like to extol the wonderful accomplishments of President Reagan, the economy coming back from the doldrums, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the Communist menace that we faced so much back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. But what I want to talk about today are personal experiences I had with Ronald Reagan. When I was running for office over a period of 10 or 12 years, I promised my mother, who was a waitress for many, many years at L.S. Harris & Company, that if I ever got elected to the Congress of the United States, the first thing I would do is take her in the front door of the White House and introduce her to the President of the United States. I got elected in 1983. I called the White House and they said, yes, we can give you a couple of minutes with the President. I called my mom, and I took her in the front door of the White House expecting a very perfunctory kind of meeting where he would shake hands and take a picture, and that would be it. Unbeknownst to me, he contacted my office and tried to find out everything he could about me. When we walked in, he put his arm around me and said to my mother, ``This is one of the finest young Congressmen in the Congress. I want you to know that I really appreciate all of the things he has done,'' and he reeled off three or four things I had accomplished that I did not think he had any idea about. I could see my mother's chest expanding, expanding, and expanding.…”