Address by NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia
Delivered to the United States Congress, Election of the Speaker, Washington, D.C., 7 January 1997
Let me say to those who voted for me, from the bottom of my heart,
thank you. To those who voted for someone else, I hope that I can work
with you in such a way that you feel that I am capable of being speaker
of the whole House and representing everyone.
To the freshmen and their families and all the young people who
are here today, you are part of a wonderful experience. Just as in less
than two weeks we will welcome the president for an inaugural, we here
in the legislative branch also celebrate a remarkable moment which the
entire world watches; a time when an entire nation voluntarily decides
how to govern itself and does so in such a manner that there is a sense
among the entire country that freedom is secure and that every citizen
can participate.
This is the 105th time we've done this as a country -- every
two years. The first one actually did not occur until April the 1st,
1789, because while everyone was supposed to show up in March for the
brand new Congress, they couldn't find a quorum. And then they all came
together. And there are wonderful stories by people who were there
written in their diaries and their letters about the fact that they were
just folks from all over, of many different backgrounds. Back then they
would all have been male and they would all have been white and they
would all have been property holders.
Today we have extended democracy and freedom to levels that the Founding Fathers could not have imagined.
And any citizen anywhere on the planet watching through C-SPAN
and through the networks and seeing this room and its diversity, can
appreciate the degree to which America opens its doors and its hearts to
all people of all backgrounds to have a better future.
In addition to the elected members, we are very fortunate to
have a professional staff on both sides of the aisle and a professional
staff serving on a nonpartisan basis. And let me say that I think that
Robin Carle stood well as the clerk of the House in representing all of
us in establishing with dignity.
And I thought that in the interchanges between she and Chairman
Fazio that the world could see legitimate partisanship engaged in
legitimacy -- legitimately, exactly the way it should be; in a
professional, in a courteous, in a firm way on both sides. And I think
that's part of what we have to teach the world.
In just a few moments, my dear friend John Dingell, who
represents a tradition in his district, who has fought all these years
for all that he believes in, who in the last Congress served so ably in
helping pass the Telecommunications bill, is going to swear me in. And I
am going to ask -- then I will have a chance to swear you in. But
before that, if I might, I'd say to my dear friend -- let me say my wife
is here and my mother and my relatives.
And two years ago, they were here with my father. He is not
here today, as I think all of you know. He was an infantryman. He served
this country. He believed in honor, duty, country.
Let me say to the entire House that two years ago, when I
became the first Republican speaker in 40 years, to the degree I was too
brash, too self-confident or too pushy, I apologize. To whatever
degree, in any way that I brought controversy or inappropriate attention
to the House, I apologize.
It is my intention to do everything I can to work with every
member of this Congress. And I would just say, as with telecommunication
in Congressman Dingell's case, on welfare reform, on line item veto, on
telecommunications reform, on steps towards a balanced budget, again
and again we found a bipartisan majority willing to pass significant
legislation, willing to work together.
There's much work to be done. I've asked Chairman Henry Hyde of
the Judiciary Committee to look at the issue of judicial activism. He
has agreed to hold hearings looking at that issue.
I think all of us should focus on increasing American jobs
through world sales. And I have asked Chairman Archer to look at the
whole issue of taxation and how it affects American job creation.
I've also asked the Ways and Means Committee to look at
oversight on NAFTA, on the World Trade Organization, because the fact
is, we have to move the legislative branch into the information age. If
there are going to be continuing bodies around the world, then Chairman
Gilman in International Relations and Chairman Archer and others have to
get in the habit, I think, of a kind of aggressive oversight, reporting
to the nation on whether or not our interests are being protected.
I've also asked Chairman Archer to prepare a series of hearings
looking at the entire issue of how we revise the entire tax code;
whether we go towards a flat tax or whether we replace the income tax
with a sales tax, or what we do; but to begin a process that, frankly,
may take four to six years, but is the right direction for the right
reason.
Finally, I've asked Chairman Spence, on the National Security
Committee, both to look at the issue of national missile defense and to
look at the question of military reform.
And let me say to all of my friends on both sides of the aisle,
we have every opportunity through reform to shrink the Pentagon to a
triangle; we have every opportunity to apply the lessons of downsizing,
the lessons of the information age. And just because something is in
uniform doesn't mean it has to be saluted, but instead, we should be
getting every penny for our taxpayers, and we in the Congress should be
looking at long-term contracting as one way to dramatically lower the
cost of defense.
But I want to talk about one other area. And here I just want
to say there's something more than legislation. Each of us is a leader
back home. And I want to just talk very briefly about three topics, and
it's about these children and their America, children on both sides of
the aisle, children from all backgrounds in every state.
I think we have to ask the question, as leaders, beyond
legislation: How do we continue to create one nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? I believe most Americans,
whether native-born or immigrant, still desire for us to be one nation.
So let me briefly talk about three areas that I think are vital.
Let me say first, I think -- I'm going to talk just for a
second about race, drugs and ignorance. First, let me ask all you: Do we
not need to rethink our whole approach to race? And let me draw the
parallel to Dick Fosbury. He was a high jumper. In the 1968 Olympics in
Mexico City, he developed an entire new approach which is now used by
everyone. Yet for six years, the U.S. Olympic Committee rejected it.
My point is very simple. I don't believe any rational American
can be comfortable with where we are on the issue of race. And I think
all of us ought to take on the challenge as leaders, beyond legislation,
beyond our normal jobs, of asking some new questions in some new ways.
After all, what does race mean when if based on merit alone, ethnic
Asians would make up a clear majority at the University of California at
Berkeley? What does race mean when colleges recruit minorities in the
name of inclusiveness and diversity and then segregate them in their own
dormitories? What does race mean when many Americans cannot fill out
their census forms because they're an amalgam of races? And furthermore,
if those of us who are conservative say that bureaucracy and compulsion
is not the answer, then what are we going to say to a child born in a
poor neighborhood with a broken home and no one to help them rise, who
has no organic contact to prosperity and has no organic contact to a
better future?
Now, I mentioned this in passing two years ago, and one of the
failures that I would take some of the responsibility for is that we did
not follow up. But I want to put it right on the table today that every
one of us, as a leader, has an obligation to reach out beyond party and
beyond ideology and, as Americans, to say:
"One of the highest values
we're going to spend the next two years on is openly dealing with the
challenge of meaning that when we say in our declaration that we are
endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that every child in every
neighborhood, of every background, is endowed by God. And every time America fails to meet that, we are failing to meet God's test for the country we should be."
Let me say second about drugs; I think we have to redefine and
rethink our approach to drugs. One of my close friends had her
19-year-old sister overdose, and her 19-year-old sister today is in a
coma and celebrated her 20th birthday in that coma. Drugs aren't
statistics. As Charlie Rangel told me at breakfast just two years ago,
drugs are real human beings being destroyed. Drugs are real violence. If
we did not have drugs in this country, the amount of spouse abuse, the
amount of child abuse, the amount of violence would drop dramatically.
And so I want to suggest that we should take seriously reaching across
all barriers and establishing an all-out effort.
You know, the Columbia University Center for Addiction and
Substance Abuse has done a fascinating study. The center found that one
of the best predictors of whether a child will stay free of drugs is
whether he or she practices a religion. Joe Califano, Lyndon Johnson's
former adviser and Jimmy Carter's secretary of Health and Human
Services, says that religion is part of the solution to our drug
problems and to drug treatment itself. Alcoholics Anonymous refers to a
"higher power."
I don't know what all the answers are. But I do know
that if we love these children, in addition to fighting racism and
reaching out to every child, we need to decide that we are prepared to
have the equivalent of an abolitionist movement against drugs and to do
what it takes so that none of these children end up in a coma
celebrating their birthday or end up dead.
Lastly, we need to pay closer attention to a word you don't
hear much anymore: ignorance. Traditionally, ignorance ranked with
pestilence, hunger, war as abominations upon humanity. But in recent
years, the word ignorance has been cleaned up and refined into some
aspect of educational failure. I mean by ignorance something deeper.
It's not about geography in the third grade. It's about learning the
work ethic. It's about learning to be a citizen. It's about learning to
save. It's about all the things that make us functional. It's about the
things that allow virtually everybody in this room to get up each
morning and have a good life.
There are too many place in America where people are born into
dysfunction, educated into dysfunction and live in dysfunction, and we
should find a way to reach out in this modern era and use every tool at
our tips, from computers to television to radio to personal
volunteerism, so that every family that today happens to be
dysfunctional has a chance within the next few years to learn to be
functional.
And I think we should take ignorance as as serious a problem as drugs or race.
We in the Congress have one place; we have an obligation beyond
any other, and that's this city. And I want to commend Eleanor
Holmes-Norton for the leadership she has shown and the courage she has
shown day after day and week after week. She and Tom Davis and Jim Walsh
worked their hearts out over the last two years, and I believe it is
fair to say that in some ways, we have begun to make progress. It is not
easy. It has to be done carefully. It cannot violate the right of the
citizens of this city. But let's be candid, first, this is our national
capital. We have a unique obligation on both sides of the aisle, to care
about Washington, because we are today to Washington what a state
government would be back home to your town. We have an unusual
obligation to Washington.
Second, it is our national capital. And people looked at me as
though I'd lost my mind a year and a half ago when I met with Mayor
Barry and I said, "You know, our vision ought to be the finest capital
city in the world." And that ought to be our vision.
And furthermore, if we're going to talk honestly about race and
we're going to talk honestly about drugs and we're going to talk
honestly about ignorance, we owe it to every citizen of this District,
every child in this District, to have a decent chance to grow up and go
to a school that succeeds, in a neighborhood that is drug-free and safe,
with an expectation of getting a job in a community that actually cares
about them and provides a better future.
And we should take on as a
capital -- as a Congress, our responsibilities to the District of
Columbia, and we should do it proudly. And we should not be ashamed to
go back home and say, "You're darn right we're helping our national
capital because we want you to visit it with pride, and we want you to
know that you can say to anyone anywhere in the world: Come to America
and visit Washington, it is a great city."
Let me close with this final thought -- and I appreciate my
friend, John, standing there. And I apologize for having drawn you
forward, particularly since you're standing on one foot.
But this has been a very difficult time. And to those who
agonized and ended up voting for me, I thank you. Some of this
difficulty, frankly, I brought on myself. We will deal with that in more
detail later. And I apologize to the House and the country for having
done so. Some of it is part of the natural process of partisan
competition.
This morning, a very dear friend of mine said that he was going
to pray to God that I would win today, and I asked him not to. I asked
him to pray to God that whatever happens is what God wants, and then we
would try to understand it and learn from it.
Let me put that forward in the same thing for all of us as we
approach the next two years. I was really struck about a month ago when I
walked down to the Lincoln Memorial and I read the Second Inaugural,
which is short enough to be on the wall. And 12 times in that inaugural,
Lincoln refers to God. I went back and read Washington's first
inaugural, which is replete with reference to America existing within
God's framework. I read Jefferson's first inaugural -- since he's often
described as a Deist -- which refers to the importance and the power of
Providence. All of you can visit the Jefferson Memorial where he says --
around the top it is inscribed --"I have sworn upon the altar of God
Almighty eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the minds
of men."
We have much to be proud of as Americans.
This is a great and a wonderful system. We have much to be
ashamed of as Americans; from drug addition to spouse and child abuse,
to children living in ignorance and poverty surrounded by the greatest,
wealthiest nation in the world; to a political system that clearly has
to be overhauled from the ground up if it is going to be worthy of the
respect we want and cherish.
I would just suggest to all of you that until we learn in a
nonsectarian way -- not Baptist, not Catholic, not Jewish -- in a
nonsectarian way -- until we learn to reestablish the authority that we
are endowed by our Creator, that we owe it to our Creator, and that we
need to seek divine guidance in what we are doing, we are not going to
solve this country's problems. In that spirit, with your prayers and
help, I will seek to be worthy of being speaker of the House, and I will
seek to work with every member sent by their constituents to represent
them in the United States Congress.
________________________________________
Do you agree? If so, why? If not, why not? Is this the speech of a limited government Conservative or a Progressive Republican?
I can tell you that it is not the speech of a libertarian.
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