I want to salute both the chairman as well as the ranking member for their leadership during the past year. It has been superb. They have really set a standard. I think that there is a lot that we can be proud of in this bill. I am…

I want to particularly make reference to his comments in the light of the unfortunate incident of barely 2 weeks ago, the downing of TWA Flight 800. I think that we are all greatly sorry that that aircraft was downed in the manner that it…

the debate this afternoon is not necessarily about the Legal Services Corporation. It is about the Federal obligation to provide legal assistance to those who need it. And, yes, that is a Federal responsibility. I have no love necessarily…

I want to emphasize the nature of the compromise that we feel should be reached, which would be to maintain funding at the current level and restore the additional cut over cuts that had been made in prior years. I think the point that I…

Mr. Chairman, the Weatherization Assistance Program is used to increase the energy efficiency of residences occupied by low-income individuals. I know that there are a number of changes that many in this body would like to see made to…

the reason we are debating these amendments to this trade agreement today is that we are seeking at least some element of fairness to our shipbuilders. The reason we are debating these amendments is that we believe it is important to…

I will be supporting the Bateman amendments, but I also want to make clear that I do not think the shipbuilding agreement itself is the solution. It will in all likelihood make much more difficult if not impossible U.S. shipbuilders'…

we need to move beyond the harsh rhetoric, the sound bites, the slick language that emanates from focus groups. We have got to be honest. Medicine is in deeper trouble than we realized before. It began losing money last year a full 2 years…

on Monday of this week, a chilling announcement was received by 500 employees of the C.F. Hathaway Co. in Waterville, ME. When the Warnaco Co., which is a national holding company, which owns the C.F. Hathaway Co., in Waterville, made the…

it is my sad duty this afternoon to inform the House of the passing of Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine this morning at about 4 a.m. Senator Muskie was 81 years of age, a graduate of Bates College and Cornell University Law School, a very…

Just to pick up on one example, I think if someone asked me what has bothered me the most perhaps since I came to Washington, I have to say the lack of honesty, the lack of directness, being candid about the difficult issues that we are…

Just to end on that note, I think it is easy to forget we as a country have faced greater crises in the past. We are going to face greater crises in the future. What we have learned as a country, and particularly I know the senior…

I would just add to that particularly with reference to the chart of the gentleman from Wisconsin, that what we do not hear our attackers saying, and we hear an awful lot about, for instance, how much money we are going to be spending on…

What has been amazing to me is, as I mentioned, from 1980 forward, there have been 16 major pieces of legislation. Most of this legislation passed on a strong bipartisan basis. I do not say this to be critical.

I had gone back, actually, and I had mentioned 1975 and Senator Muskie's appointment as chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget, and that was the year the House Committee on the Budget was established and the Congressional Budget…

The facts are that spending increased at tremendous rates during the 1980's. Yet, at the same time, we had Congress working together on a bipartisan basis, probably everyone believing they were trying to do the right thing, but what they…

It is even worse than that, I would say to the gentleman. The revenue increases always happen. The spending cuts, reductions, never happen. There had never been a cut in Federal spending in the last 15 years. The Federal Government has…

Since 1980. Theoretically Congress has only raised taxes by just about $500 billion over the last 16 years. The reality is we have increased spending somewhere in the vicinity, in other words, if one took the baseline approach which was at…

It is hard, I think, for people across the United States to recognize the extent to which people in this body frankly can become so clever with language and words that they have made an art form out of disguising the truth. As an example…

First let me tell what the third option is. We ruled out cutting benefits, we ruled out increasing payroll taxes. If anything, we said, we need to reduce payroll taxes and lower the tax burden, particularly on working people. The third…

Not only that, it is clear that we have people in this city who have made a career out of taking more and more and more money from the public for their purposes, not for the public's purposes.

I think you are making an outstanding point. This is one of the reasons I went back and looked back over these 16 years of legislation. Literally, of these 16 acts, at different times the Democratic Party supported 12 of the 16 acts, and…

We cannot even go, to go just one step beyond what you are saying, most people cannot even afford the tax burden now, even though we are not even paying for the entire Government. That is the difficulty we are trying to confront.

Not only, this is particularly with respect to the current debate and the impasse between the administration and the Congress, and clearly, as the gentleman from Michigan pointed out, the President has vetoed welfare reform. He has vetoed…