Harold Volkmer: “Members of the House, this morning during my 1-minute speech, I chastised the Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, for…”

“Members of the House, this morning during my 1-minute speech, I chastised the Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, for not telling exactly the truth this morning on one of the talk show programs when he was being interviewed in regard to President Clinton's State of the Union Message last night, because Speaker Gingrich said, in answer to a question as to whether the President was really for welfare reform, that the President had vetoed welfare reform twice and that one time he had vetoed a bill that had passed the Senate by 85 votes. Now, when I brought out this morning that that bill, that bill that the President vetoed, had only gotten 52 votes in the Senate, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns] got in the well and said, well that is the same bill; that that bill got 87 votes in September and it got 52 votes in December. Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns], it is not the same bill. I think the gentleman should learn legislative procedure.”