Lloyd Bentsen: “I took this time today in part as a point of personal privilege. Earlier today, while I was with some students from…”

“I took this time today in part as a point of personal privilege. Earlier today, while I was with some students from Crafton Academy, which is in my district in Houston, having taken them to the Senate Chamber and then to the House Chamber and then to Statutary Hall and walking out, our colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker], felt the need to take the floor and seek to smear the reputation of eight of the other Members of this body, myself included. Mr. Speaker, I assume Mr. Walker was attempting to infer that somehow Democratic freshmen sought to hide links to organized crime and organized labor because of contributions we may have received from members of labor unions or, worse, to try and tie the members themselves to organized crime. Of course, both are incorrect. But a more troubling problem exists. This all started last week when the eight Democratic freshmen brought to light a memorandum dated April 23 from Mr. Walker and the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Nussle, who is part of the Republican leadership, asking committees to use official time to root out information on the Clinton administration on labor union bosses and corruption in order to expose anecdotes that amplify these areas so that these could be used for political purposes. First, the memo which Mr. Walker authored, along with Mr. Nussle, would appear to constitute a violation of House rules prohibiting the use of taxpayer resources for political purposes.”