Martin Hoke

we would not possibly kill Big Bird if we wanted to kill Big Bird. Nobody wants to kill Big Bird. The fact is that Big Bird generates hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue every single year to the great benefit of the…

It is the commerce clause, the commerce clause is the part of the Constitution that gives the mandate to the Congress to do what we did last week. Mr. Speaker, March madness usually refers to that time of year when all college basketball…

I think we have forgotten again what the basis is of punitive damages. Punitive damages comes from the doctrine of punishment which is really a quasi-criminal remedy. It is not strictly a civil remedy. That is the whole purpose of raising…

we have heard repeatedly over the past several days of debate that there have been only 350 cases in all of American history that have resulted in the assessment of punitive damages and we have just heard that in fact this movement to try…

Mr. Chairman, this punitive damages amendment is fairly simple and straightforward. What it does is it restores the original intent of punitive damages awards which is namely to punish wrongdoers, it is not to compensate plaintiffs. Every…

I personally sat in a meeting in which the executive director of the Girl Scouts of America for Washington, DC, told an entire group of people in a public place that they had to sell 87,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies just to pay their…

I wonder if that applause coming from the other side of the aisle, if those Members who applauded, if perhaps they also voted back on the first day of Congress, of the 103d Congress, 1992, to seat delegates, to allow them to vote in the…

My amendment specifically deals with cases of early offers of settlement in contingent fee cases. To the extent that defense counsels have entered into contingent fee arrangements with their clients, I cannot see that it would be a…

what this piece of legislation does with this amendment to H.R. 988 is essentially to codify in Federal law what is already the legal code of just about every State bar association in all of the United States. Here is the problem. What it…

the events yesterday and in the past several days in the other body have compelled me to come to the well to, if nothing else, at least vent a little bit to you and to the American people regarding the disgrace and hypocrisy that we have…

do you know how much money we are cutting from the school nutrition programs? Zero, zip, zilch, zippo, zippola, niente, nada, nothing, nil, none, squat, the big goose egg. Here are the facts. Under the Republican proposal, spending on…

Yesterday we passed the final piece of the crime package dealing with personal safety, being personal safety, personal security. Today we are going to begin with national security. Mr. Speaker, tell me what do you think of when you think…

I think this reflects two things. No. 1 is the compelling quality of your own persuasiveness in bringing these things forward. Second, is the good things that happen when we have an open rule. We are actually debating, we are listening…

if President Clinton needs any proof that his crime bill is misguided, he only needs to look out the window right here in Washington, DC, where the police chief has come out in support of the Republican idea to give block grants to local…

She is being taxed on inflation, is she not? Is that not really what is being taxed?

Maybe one of the greatest reflections for the need for this is we seem to have an absolute inability to balance our budget. This is one more tool to try to get specifically to that. And Mr. Kingston, maybe you could illuminate this a…

tonight I have asked some of my good friends in the House to join me in a special order where what we are going to do is review some of the legislation that has already been passed in the 104th Congress, and then we are going to continue…

Let me ask you a question, if I could, I say to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston]. What is that tax on from $10,000 to a half-a-million dollars, is that on what is really being taxed there with this capital gains tax?

In Germany there is no capital gains tax. In Japan there is a capital gains tax of 5 percent, which I understand from accountants gets zeroed out with some exemptions, so there is effectively a zero capital gains tax. It is by creating…

We are talking about the tremendous frustration that society feels as a whole, that the community feels and that victims' families feel with the inability of our justice system to actually come to final resolution in these things, and the…

Are we effectively tightening up the habeas corpus process in a way that will shorten the time frame? Are we doing anything in this process to in any way undermine the rights of defendants in this process? Do they still have the ability to…

Can you flesh that out a little for us, Ed? How much time does somebody have now, after they have been convicted of a capital crime, and I mean convicted through the entire appellate process, so I think people should understand that we are…

At that point they have already had two appeals process. This is not from the trial court, this is already after a final adjudication from the highest court in that particular State?

Is bipartisan. As you point out, I said it earlier, we have strong, strong bipartisan support on every single measure we passed. You remember, what was the toughest victory for the Democrats in 1993?

What else do we have in the Contract With America that is designed specifically, aimed at job creation?