The Foley Speakership

    Mr. OLESZEK. It's my pleasure to introduce Jeff Biggs as our 
moderator for the Foley speakership. Mr. Biggs was a long-time press 
secretary to Speaker Foley. I want to point out that Mr. Biggs and 
Speaker Foley co-authored a book on Mr. Foley's career in the House, 
which I recommend to all of you, entitled Honor in the House. It was 
published in 1999 by the Washington State University Press. Today, Mr. 
Biggs is the director of the Congressional Fellowship Program of the 
American Political Science Association [APSA]. With that, let me turn 
the podium over to Mr. Biggs.
    Mr. BIGGS. Thank you, Walter. All of us on the podium would like to 
thank the Carl Albert Center, the McCormick Tribune Foundation, and 
particularly the Congressional Research Service [CRS] for having 
sponsored this special day. I would like to extend a special thanks to 
the Congressional Research Service. For some 50 years, the CRS has 
helped prepare the journalists, political scientists, RWJ [Robert Wood 
Johnson] health policy fellows, a Native American Hatfield fellow, 
domestic and foreign policy specialists from the public service, and 
international congressional fellows for their 10-month congressional 
staff assignments on the Hill. This year's 40 APSA congressional fellows 
are part of the audience today. In fact, I believe that every Member of 
Congress in the audience today hosted a fellow during their 
congressional tenure.
    Memories are short, and the two commentators on our panel did great 
honor to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives during 
their years in Congress. They deserve more than a cursory introduction. 
My thanks to Congressional Quarterly's Politics in America and National 
Journal's The Almanac of American Politics for their admirable 
biographies of the Members of Congress. On my left is former Congressman 
Bill Frenzel. Before arriving in Washington, DC, he was an executive in 
his family's warehousing business, and served four terms in the 
Minnesota State legislature. His moderate brand of Republicanism 
appealed to his Third Congressional District constituents in 1970, and 
they never tired of it. Over two decades, his Twin City supporters 
always returned him to office with more than 60 percent of the vote. 
While he would come to be regarded by his colleagues as one of the 
intellectual guardians of GOP economic orthodoxy, he maintained his 
moderate views on many social and foreign policy issues. Over the course 
of his congressional career, Bill Frenzel became a senior member of the 
Minnesota delegation and emerged as one of the hardest working and most 
influential Republicans in the House.
    Described by National Journal as ``loud and brainy, partisan and 
thoughtful,'' he put his stamp on every debate in which he participated. 
With intellectual ability, oratorical skills and the work habits of a 
true legislator, Bill Frenzel left his mark in both policy and 
institutional arenas. As the ranking member of the House Administration 
Committee, he introduced a bill to create the Federal Election 
Commission in 1974. His interest in congressional ethics led to his 
participation in writing an ethics code in 1977. On the Ways and Means 
Committee, he became the Republicans' leading voice on trade matters 
and, along with Tom Foley, was an outspoken advocate of free trade.
    But if he fared well as a Member of Congress, his party did not. 
Frustrations began to emerge. He must frequently have recalled 19th 
century Republican Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed, who was once asked by a 
Democratic Member, ``What is the function of the minority?'' ``The 
function of the minority, sir,'' the Speaker replied, ``is to make a 
quorum and to draw its pay.'' Bill Frenzel's frustration with what would 
become the 40-year Democratic majority in the House, from 1954 to 1994, 
rose to the surface in early 1989 when he threw his political weight 
behind Representative Newt Gingrich's effort to vault himself into the 
Republican leadership. Bill Frenzel nominated Mr. Gingrich to be GOP 
whip. As a respected senior member of both the Budget and Ways and Means 
Committees, Frenzel was just the kind of legislatively-oriented, older 
generation Republican who would have seemed a natural adversary of Mr. 
Gingrich's confrontational, partisan style. But support from Members 
such as Mr. Frenzel went a long way toward explaining Mr. Gingrich's 
upset victory. Bill Frenzel was a formidable legislator and advocate 
during his congressional career in the minority.
    He retired in 1991 after 20 years of service. One can only imagine 
what the talents of this moderate Republican could have achieved in the 
majority. Bill Frenzel is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution 
and, along with Messrs. Fazio and Foley, serves on the American 
Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship Programs Advisory 
Committee. I guess that's my third plug.
    Former Congressman Vic Fazio is on my right. As was the case with 
Speaker Foley and our Republican commentator, Mr. Frenzel, Vic Fazio is 
one of that unfortunately diminishing breed, an institutionalist in the 
U.S. House of Representatives. During two decades representing 
California's Third Congressional District in the House, he carried an 
enormous amount of water for his colleagues on both sides of the aisle. 
He took on responsibility for what most observers would characterize as 
an insider's portfolio. He served in what one might regard as the 
trenches of House politics. He did so without losing sight of how these 
tasks also served to improve the operation of the U.S. House of 
Representatives as the great deliberative body of our Nation. As one of 
the so-called ``college of cardinals,'' the 13 Appropriations 
subcommittee chairs, Mr. Fazio chaired the Legislative Branch 
Subcommittee responsible for such unpleasant housekeeping chores as 
defending congressional pay raises and congressional office budgets. His 
willingness to bear those burdens warranted the respect and gratitude of 
Members from across the ideological spectrum who were glad to have 
someone else take the heat for what they wanted.
    During an era of heightened public antipathy toward the Congress, a 
phenomenon which seems ever with us, Mr. Fazio added to his burdens when 
he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, served as 
the vice chair, and then chaired the Democratic Caucus. He accepted a 
position on the House Ethics Committee during the period it reviewed the 
case of Speaker Wright. In 1989, he co-chaired an ethics task force 
under Speaker Foley which, among other reforms, eliminated speaking 
honoraria for the Members of Congress. A strong, unapologetic partisan, 
these were roles which unquestionably added burdens at home in what was 
becoming a marginally Republican district.
    To the end of his time in the House, Mr. Fazio was outspoken against 
those Members whose electoral instincts were to vilify the House in 
order to gain political advantage, particularly incumbents who ran for 
reelection as purported ``outsiders,'' criticizing the very body in 
which they served. At the same time, he was sensitive to the public 
perceptions of Congress and its possible excesses. During the 101st 
Congress, for example, he pushed for substantial reforms of the 
congressional franking privilege despite the criticism of his 
colleagues. He was a politician in the very best sense of the word. For 
Vic Fazio, there is life after Congress. He is currently a partner at 
Clark and Weinstock. And, according to his wife Judy, he is overly 
involved in non-profit and charitable activities.
    And now to the subject of this panel: Thomas Stephen Foley. Thomas 
Foley would never have described himself as the predominant Washington, 
DC, ``type A'' personality. He rose to the top of the leadership ladder 
without displaying the type of vaunted ambition usually associated with 
such success. Even his first candidacy to represent the voters of 
eastern Washington's Fifth Congressional District in Congress was 
reluctantly undertaken at the urging of others. In 1974, he chaired the 
Democratic Study Group, which served as the strategy and research arm of 
liberal and moderate Democrats. The next year, he became Agriculture 
Committee chair under unusual circumstances. His predecessor, the 
elderly and conservative W.R. Poage of Texas, was targeted for removal 
by the huge bloc of reform-minded Watergate-baby Democrats. Ever the 
institutionalist, Foley backed Poage. But when Poage was unseated 
anyway, the Democratic Caucus turned to Foley and promoted him chairman 
of the committee.
    Foley continued to rise within Democratic ranks. After the 1980 
election, the position of Democratic whip opened up. And when Mr. 
Rostenkowski (D-IL), chief deputy whip and first-in-line, decided to 
take over the Ways and Means Committee chair, Speaker Tip O'Neill and 
Majority Leader Jim Wright, both looking for someone with parliamentary 
skills, chose Foley as the party's whip. When Speaker O'Neill announced 
his plan to retire at the end of the 99th Congress, there was no 
guarantee Foley would ascend to the majority leader's spot. A number of 
Members wanted a more partisan figure. In the end, no challenger to 
Foley emerged and the same dynamic was there in 1989 when Foley rose 
without opposition to the speakership.
    It sounds like a happily-ever-after story. It wasn't. Not only was 
Foley the first Speaker from west of the Rocky Mountains, he was a rare 
Speaker who did not represent a safe seat in his marginally Republican 
district. The higher his Democratic profile became, the greater his 
vulnerability. Ultimately, he was the first Speaker defeated for 
reelection since 1862. Maybe it could have been avoided. But he felt 
putting your career on the line, and at risk on principled stands, was a 
test of doing the job right. And he did so in favor of gun control and 
in opposition to what he viewed as an unconstitutional Washington State 
term limits referendum. Later, the Supreme Court after the 1994 
elections confirmed his view. Foley had built his career and reputation 
in part on being a facilitator and conciliator with the ability to 
appreciate opinions on the other side of the aisle, and in part on 
congressional reform initiatives.
    As Speaker, Foley inherited a Democratic Caucus which had gotten too 
used to big majorities and now struggled to find the discipline to 
marshal tough votes. In the seventies, he had played a key role in the 
reforms which opened up the Congress to the press and the public, and 
challenged the power of committee chairs by making their appointment 
subject to a secret ballot in the caucus. As Speaker, his reform 
instinct was called forth to counter what emerged as decades-old 
institutional abuses, such as the House bank. The abolition of the bank 
led to the appointment of a House administrator, the elimination of long 
cherished perks, and the appointment of a bipartisan panel to look at 
more sweeping reforms. Foley initiated a program under the direction of 
Representative Martin Frost to provide congressional assistance to the 
emerging eastern European democracies. Most of these changes remain to 
this day.
    His long-admired bipartisan instinct was newly challenged under the 
unified government of President Clinton. Foley undertook to pass a 
legislative agenda, including a budget proposal that failed to receive a 
single Republican vote, and comprehensive health care reform which 
ultimately failed to make it to the floor of the House. These brief 
illustrations highlight the value and importance of the qualities that 
Foley brought to the House for three decades. He placed a premium on 
governance following an election, whether the President be Democratic or 
Republican. He stressed a legislative search for solutions, rather than 
the perpetuation of the campaign. He urged a willingness to accept 
bipartisan compromise. He recognized the international role of the 
Speaker. These were qualities which remain essential to the institution 
of the Congress and remain part of his legacy to the speakership of the 
House.
    Speaker FOLEY. Thank you, Jeff. I'd like to begin by repeating what 
others have said about the Congressional Research Service, the Carl 
Albert Center, and the McCormick Tribune Foundation for their support of 
this wonderful day for me, and for many others. The day provides a 
chance to see so many friends and associates of past years, and a chance 
to reminisce over three or four decades of one's past life. It is a 
special pleasure for me today to be with Jim and Betty Wright, my 
predecessor in the Office of the Speaker. And later with Newt Gingrich, 
my successor. The day prompts many pleasant memories of Carl Albert and 
Tip O'Neill. I am also delighted to be here with Bob Michel, who was the 
Republican leader all the time that I was Speaker and a man for whom I 
have unbounded admiration as a model of congressional and public 
service. And as Speaker Hastert said today, we all are saddened by your 
wife's recent death.
    Looking back at the time that I first came to Congress, I recall a 
story I've told before. I hope those who have heard it may forgive me. I 
joined the Congress in 1964 as a part of the 89th Congress. It was a 
young and rather large Democratic majority. In those days and today, the 
parties meet in December to organize their work and to offer newly-
elected Members a chance to familiarize themselves with their 
responsibilities. Speaker John McCormack addressed us newly-elected 
Members at that 1964 December meeting. He said that the leadership 
probably would have to make a judgment 2 years later about whether we 
had been elected seriously by our constituents or by accident. Members 
are sometimes elected by accident, he said, and we won't really know 
which you are until you are reelected, if you are. With that warm 
greeting, we proceeded into the orientation program.
    One of the speakers was Michael Kirwan from the State of Ohio, who 
was a powerful member of the Committee on Appropriations. In fact, he 
was ``Mr. Public Works.'' You couldn't get a footbridge built in the 
United States without Mike's approval. He leaned forward to tell us that 
he wanted to warn us about the single greatest danger that could occur 
to a new Member of Congress entering his or her congressional service. 
We leaned forward to hear what this was--an ethical problem or whatever. 
He said that the danger was thinking for yourselves! Avoid that, he 
said, at all costs. Avoid thinking for yourselves. You must follow the 
subcommittee chairman, follow the committee chairman. Support the 
chairman of the Democratic Caucus. Follow the majority whip. Support the 
majority leader. And especially, above all, support, defend and follow 
the Speaker.
    I remember being quite outraged. I had gotten elected as a new 
Member of Congress, I thought, to make some contribution to my time in 
public life and perhaps even beyond. And the idea that I should 
subcontract my judgment to the political leadership of the party was 
really offensive. And Kirwan went on to say that in his experience, more 
people had gotten into trouble in the Congress of the United States by 
thinking for themselves than by stealing money. That unbelievably 
shocking statement made me truly angry. Later on, it was my opportunity 
to become a subcommittee chairman, a committee chairman, the chairman of 
the Democratic Caucus, the Democratic whip, the majority leader under 
Jim Wright, and, finally, taking the oath of office as Speaker of the 
House of Representatives. And I recall that as I was taking the oath, 
the wise words of Mr. Kirwan came back across a generation of time. How 
right he was!
    But fortunately, then and now, Members do think for themselves. And 
they not only think for themselves on the Republican and the Democratic 
sides of the aisle, they think for themselves inside each party. I had 
an opportunity to talk a little bit with Speaker Hastert today at lunch. 
We both recognize that one of the problems of the speakership is to deal 
with very strong and powerful voices within one's own party. I came to 
the speakership of the House as a former committee chairman, but not the 
most senior of them. Dan Rostenkowski, John Dingell, Jack Brooks and 
others had been powerful and wonderfully effective legislators and 
committee chairmen. They had extensive knowledge and experience in their 
fields. This is true not only with the committee chairmen, but with 
subcommittee chairmen, who have proliferated dramatically over the 
years. I think we had something like 160 Democrats in the House of 
Representatives who were subcommittee chairmen. Sometimes there were 
conflicting jurisdictions between Appropriations subcommittee chairmen 
and authorizing committee chairmen or subcommittee chairmen. There is a 
problem, sometimes, of managing strong, effective, and powerful 
personalities. That's one of the jobs that I didn't really anticipate 
when I became Speaker--how much time is required managing jurisdictional 
disputes and trying to mediate between conflicts of approach. It's the 
sort of kitchen work, as my former mentor Senator Warren Magnuson spoke 
of, in terms of the day-to-day work of a Speaker--conciliating, 
organizing, trying to move the tasks of the Congress forward.
    As Speaker Hastert said, I had a particular notion that it was the 
institutional responsibility of the Speaker, a special obligation, to be 
absolutely, as far as humanly possible, fair in the judgments made from 
the chair. The British model, the Westminster model as it's called, 
takes the Speaker out of all party politics. My first opportunity to 
meet a British Speaker after I became Speaker was Bernard Wetherow, who 
moved from the House of Lords to become the Speaker of the British House 
of Commons. He resigned even from social clubs that were overly 
associated with the Conservative Party, so that his absolute 
impartiality would never be questioned. By the way, Speaker Wetherow 
asked me what number Speaker I was. I said, ``Mr. Speaker, I'm the 
49th.'' He said that he was the 322d. I said, ``Sir, that's what we call 
in the United States a put-down. I'm the 49th, you're the 322d, or 
whatever.'' He said, ``Well, we started in 1277 or in 1388, depending on 
how you count the speakerships in the House of Commons in the U.K.'' And 
he said, ``And 10 of us were beheaded, 2 on the same day when the king 
was in a particularly unhappy mood.'' We don't have that problem here, 
at least physical beheading. We sometimes have political beheading. I 
know something about political beheading.
    But the role of the U.S. Speaker is a combination, as Speaker 
Hastert said, of the party leader and the impartial British-type 
judicial Speaker. It's not an easy task. You are pushed by your own 
party to move legislation forward and you want to do it. You face the 
problem that sometimes a motion to recommit with instructions if 
proposed in a certain way may create great problems. There's a tendency, 
sometimes, to perhaps cut a little too close on what others feel is the 
absolute right of the minority. Those are tough decisions. I had, 
however, the great benefit of having an impartial Parliamentarian, who 
Speaker Hastert also talked about. The two offices that are voted on 
that are usually without any controversy are the Parliamentarian and the 
Chaplain. It is important that the rulings of the chair in critical 
times can be depended upon by both parties.
    We had a few occasions when there was an objection to the ruling of 
the chair, and someone called for a vote on that decision. I don't think 
any time that happened that Bob Michel didn't support the chair. He 
felt, I think, that the chair's ruling had been correct and that it 
should not be the subject of controversy in the House. On the other 
hand, the price for that support was that, as Speaker, I had to ensure 
that the rulings are fair so that they can elicit bipartisan support. In 
many legislatures, appealing the ruling of the chair is a constant event 
and takes place routinely. I think in 50 years, we may have had a dozen 
or so formal challenges to the ruling of the chair.
    During the time I was Speaker, I served with President George Bush 
41, as we now say. President Bush was President for 3 years of my 
speakership and President Clinton for 2. It was interesting to me that 
there is a difference in whether you have divided or united government 
between the congressional leadership and the Presidential leadership. We 
have had, for most of the period after World War II, divided political 
responsibility--generally Republican Presidents with Democratic 
majorities in the Congress and those have a particular dynamic. There is 
a tendency, frankly, for relations between the Congress and the 
Presidency to be as good, and in some cases even better, with divided 
government. For some, that might come as a surprise. But the fact is 
that the need to make the system of government work leads to a kind of 
elaborate, almost diplomatic, sensitivity between the White House and 
the Congress to the reactions of the other.
    In contrast, if there is united government with the White House and 
Congress under control of one party, Congress expects that the new, 
let's say, Democratic President is going to solve all the problems that 
they want to have addressed and they now think it's possible to go 
forward with a very energetic and effective legislative program. The 
congressional majority Members expect all those they appointed in their 
districts to be happy and satisfied with them. At the same time, the 
President feels that his program should be taken up without much 
question and enthusiastically passed by his congressional colleagues. 
The disappointments that are possible on both sides of this united 
government are great.
    During the period of divided government, I was blamed, along with 
then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, for having talked President 
George H.W. Bush 41 into agreeing to some tax increases. Some attribute 
his defeat in 1992 to his having allegedly broken his ``no new taxes'' 
promise. As I look back on that period, one of the things that I admired 
most about President Bush was his willingness to confront internal 
problems in the Republican Party by taking that decision. It was a 
decision taken along with spending restrictions on the budget. But an 
agreement on spending cuts and new taxes was obviously going to be a 
problem for President Bush and it turned out to be.
    I used to say, somewhat jokingly, that there are two sins in 
politics--one is the obvious sin of not keeping your campaign promises. 
But sometimes I think that's the more venal sin. The sometimes more 
mortal sin is keeping your campaign promises. If they turn out to be 
wrong for the country, wrong for the future of the Nation, then I think 
whether we're in Congress or the White House, we have to reconsider 
that. I had great respect for President Bush's willingness to take that 
risk.
    When President Clinton came to office, he was the first Democratic 
President in 12 years. With George Mitchell in the Senate and me in the 
House, there were many Democrats who wanted to see the new President 
succeed and wanted to support his major legislative agenda. Looking back 
on it, I think that perhaps we could have been more supportive of the 
administration by, once in awhile, being a bit more candid with the 
President. I think the new administration came in with great enthusiasm, 
particularly on health care. The White House overstressed the 
institutional support of the House. We had to decide, for example, 
whether to put the President's health care reform bill through the 
established committees of Congress, such as Ways and Means and Commerce, 
or push the legislation through a task force. The task force idea I 
rejected. I thought the legislation should go through the ordinary 
committee structure. But that required multiple committee referrals.
    Eventually, the Congressional Budget Office was overwhelmed by the 
demands of individual Members to examine the cost of their amendments. 
The system slowed down and was greeted on the Republican side with a 
decision to straight-out oppose, rather than just try to modify, the 
health care bill. We all know the consequence of that--the bill did not 
proceed through the end of that Congress. I think this was a 
contributing factor to the country's disillusionment with the Democratic 
leadership and the 1994 defeat of the majority in Congress. In 
retrospect, I think we would have been wiser, as Dan Rostenkowski 
suggested today, with a more incremental approach such as the Kennedy-
Kassebaum bill, a step-by-step process, as opposed to trying to achieve 
everything overnight in the way of health care reform. We might have 
been more effective and successful.
    Tony Coelho gave me good advice one time after he left Congress. He 
said, ``Don't look back and don't regret.'' I think that's a good rule. 
You may have made mistakes. There may have been opportunities you didn't 
fulfill, but you did what you could while you were there.
    In the session on Jim Wright, the question arises as to whether it's 
better to be more assertive or more cautious. If I have a regret, it's 
probably been on two or three occasions that I wasn't as assertive as I 
think now perhaps I should have been. But one of the things that I hoped 
we would see--and I'm disappointed we do not see today--is a 
continuation of the kind of relationship between the majority and the 
minority that existed when I was Speaker and Bob Michel was the 
Republican leader. We met almost every day and the staff certainly met 
every day. We went back and forth to the other's offices. I always felt 
that Bob was an extremely effective Republican leader. It was necessary 
to know exactly where we wanted to go and to see if we could compromise 
or find an approach that would lead to some accommodation of the issue, 
rather than a confrontation.
    Our efforts in those times were sometimes rewarded with success, 
such as was the case with most of our party members in different camps 
on the 1991 Gulf war. Despite those differences, we had a debate which I 
still think was one of the most thoughtful and impressive that I can 
recall in the Congress. There was a full discussion of whether the 
United States should authorize war and give the President authority to 
enter the war. It's interesting to me that President Bush 41 wanted this 
vote to come after the election so it would not be politicized. The vote 
in the present case came before the election. In any event, I'll never 
forget Bob Michel coming up to the Speaker's chair, where I was sitting, 
wearing that combat infantryman's badge, which he won so well in World 
War II. Here was a big tough guy with tears in his eyes. He said, ``This 
is the hardest vote I think I've ever had to cast because I'm putting 
young men and women at risk and I know it. But I think it's the right 
thing to do.'' He and I voted differently on the bill, but it was a 
sense of, I think, the mutual respect that Republicans and Democrats 
throughout the House had with the differing opinions of their colleagues 
on an issue of enormous importance to the country.
    I regret that in recent years there's been a tension between 
persons, as well as between parties and policies. There was even a 
civility conference a few years ago at Hershey, Pennsylvania, where 
Members of both parties came with their families to try and reconcile 
those harsh personal relationships in the House and try to get a sense 
of comity and friendship and a common effort.
    The House of Representatives is the voice of the American people, 
the Senate the voice of the States. That's the way we see it in the 
House. Former Representative Richard Bolling was once accused of making 
a derogatory comment about the House, saying it was made up of 
``provincials.'' He defended his remark by saying that that is what the 
House was supposed to be. It is intended to be the place where people 
represent their districts, represent the differences in our country. 
House Members represent the communities in which they grew up and where 
they have their primary residence in life. I think Speaker Hastert 
reflected that again today when he spoke of returning to his district on 
weekends and his desire to keep always in front of him the origin of his 
service in the Congress and his speakership.
    Former Speaker John McCormack once said another thing that I'll 
never forget. He said if the day comes when you look up at the Capitol 
as you come to work in summer, in fall, in rain or in snow, and you are 
not individually thrilled and heartened by the enormous honor of 
representing 500,000 or 600,000 people as constituents, and if you don't 
think that that is something that you should be deeply grateful for--he 
said quit, just quit. Because if you don't have that sense of thrill, 
that sense of great honor and opportunity, he said you've stayed too 
long. I think that's good advice, and I think that those who have had a 
chance to serve here will look back on that service, regardless of their 
party, with a sense of first great obligation and thanks to their 
constituents.
    For over 30 years, my constituents sent me to Washington and allowed 
me to represent them as best I could. Those of us who have held the 
Office of Speaker have had a second honor bestowed on us. Speakers have 
that special sense that they have been chosen by their fellow Members--
all of them representatives and delegates of a great national 
constituency. To be elected Speaker is even a greater honor in many 
respects than being elected to represent a constituency. And whether we 
have done the job well or less well, whether we have achieved all that 
we might or not--and none of us achieves everything we wish--I think we 
can look back on being Speaker as one of the great opportunities and one 
of the great honors of our lives. And I am happy today, regardless of 
differences between individuals and parties and personalities, to join 
with others who have had that experience. I thank you all for taking 
part in this conference. Thank you.
    Mr. FRENZEL. Thanks, Tom Foley. Thanks, Library of Congress. Thanks 
to all of you for being here. And thanks to whomever was rash enough to 
invite me.
    Being asked to comment on the Foley speakership creates a real 
temptation to deliver a eulogy while a body is still warm. And I'm going 
to have to succumb to it, because it was my great privilege to serve all 
my time in Congress concurrently with Speaker Foley and have had many 
opportunities to interact with him.
    I remember the first time I really met him was in the early 
seventies on a trip to Japan. Tom was then a very ancient senior Member 
of four or five terms, and I was just a rookie from the minority. He 
showed me around and I remember being very impressed with his reception 
by the Japanese and with his knowledge of that country and its political 
system. And, of course, more than 20 years later, it was my pleasure to 
dine in his house at our Embassy in Japan where he was representing all 
of us with distinction as our Ambassador in Tokyo.
    Of course, distinction has followed Tom wherever he has gone. Those 
of us who served in the House are wont to say that he really gave 
politics a bad name. He was forever thinking selfish thoughts about 
integrity and decency and service and trustworthiness and about doing a 
good job for the constituents. That really was Tom's hallmark.
    I have served with only four Speakers, all of them Democrats, and 
all of whom I consider friends. And so I'm not really anxious to get 
into comparisons. But one of the things that I enjoyed about Tom and his 
leadership--not just as Speaker, but as majority leader, as a committee 
chairman--almost certainly from the time I came to Congress, was that he 
could be a real Democrat, a ``big D'' Democrat, but still respect and be 
respected by all of the Members of Congress, be they Republicans or 
Democrats.
    I don't know if that arose from the fact that Tom came from a fairly 
competitive congressional district where you had to make friends with 
everybody. Perhaps it did, or perhaps it simply originates from the fact 
that he is that kind of a person, respectful and respected.
    In watching him, I learned that you could be a party loyalist, but 
still remember that you had representational responsibilities to the 
whole country, to all the people within your district. And remember, 
too, that you have to be fair to every Member of the House, especially 
when you're the boss. As he spoke of trying to work compromises with my 
great hero Bob Michel in the House, with whom I was also favored to 
serve, I thought that with great men like that, compromise does not 
represent weakness. On the contrary, it represents the strength of our 
system. That made me terribly proud to be a part of the system.
    The House is a very tough political environment. Compared to the 
other body, it is like the difference between professional football and 
chess. The majority has an important duty to move a program. Often, it 
is moved over the dead bodies of the minority, or by stretching the 
rules a bit. But that's not an easy chore, because the majority has to 
put its troops together.
    And I can imagine that when Tom got ahold of the gavel and got up 
there on the Speaker's podium, he was praying that every one of his 
caucus would follow the admonitions of Chairman Kirwan and follow the 
Speaker's wishes. But sometimes they didn't. And that's one of the 
reasons that it is rash to compare speakerships. The House is different 
at all times. It has different Members. It has different issues. It has 
different cross-currents. There are different coalitions. Everything is 
different. And Speakers are different, too. And while their problems are 
similar, they are by no means the same.
    Tom presided over the House in what we now recognize was a period of 
the decline of the Rooseveltian coalition, which was beginning to come 
apart. It apparently had good, strong majorities. But, on the other 
hand, after 62 years of ascendancy with two small imperfections, most of 
its Democratic Members believed that they were born to rule and that 
their rule was ordained by the Almighty.
    That was a nice feeling, except for Tom. It gave him an army of all 
generals and no foot soldiers. And it was not a really easy matter to 
put all of those people together in a single place for any bill. He also 
ruled at a time when the committees were manned by very senior ``old 
bulls'' in the party. As everyone knows, when they are at full strength, 
the Speaker is never quite at full strength.
    Jeff touted him as a conciliator, a facilitator, a mediator, and so 
do I. He was, for me, just a remarkable affirmation of what our system 
should be. As a member of the minority, I trusted and respected Tom 
Foley.
    Now remember, I didn't vote with Tom Foley a lot. I thought he was 
kind of squirrelly in his voting habits. But he was doing the best he 
could. You remember Dennis Hastert gave us his admonition, which is 
people expect you to keep your word. For me, you could put Tom's word in 
the bank. And that's pretty hard to equal. That's about as good as you 
can do in Washington in my judgment.
    I saw Leon Panetta out in the audience and I was just remembering 
that there was a time when Leon and I went to see Tom about a matter 
that had to do with the Budget Committee. Leon was then chairman and I 
was a flunky. Leon said, ``Mr. Speaker, can you help us with this 
problem?'' And the Speaker said, ``Of course. I think you're right on 
this.'' The Speaker made one phone call and resolved our problem 
instantly.
    The following year we were back with the same problem. I said, ``Mr. 
Speaker, can you help us with this problem?'' And the Speaker said, 
``No, I can't do that for you.'' Since I was the minority person, I had 
to challenge the statement. I said, ``Why not, Mr. Speaker? You did it 
last year.'' And he said, ``Ah, but I was new in the job and then I did 
not know the limitations of my power.''
    So if you think it is an easy job to be Speaker, forget it. But 
also, if you think it's going to be easy for any future Speakers to live 
up to the reputation and achievements of Tom Foley, abolish those 
thoughts as well. As far as I'm concerned, he was the greatest.
    Mr. FAZIO. Jeff, thank you and the Library of Congress for including 
me in this discussion of the speakership. I think it is the most 
important, most difficult, most under-appreciated and least-understood 
leadership position in American Government, second only to the 
President. There's no question that I tend to agree with a lot of what 
Bill Frenzel has said. I'd like to concentrate on the question of 
Foley's marginal seat and the impact it had. I think he's the last--not 
just one of the few as Jeff said--but the last Speaker who will come 
from a district that was evenly balanced and could go either way in any 
election.
    Tom Foley was elected to the House in the midsixties during a 
Democratic ascendancy. He kept the district with some tight races for 30 
years, largely because of the force of his own personality and his 
effective representation of the wheatgrowers and all the other elements 
of that district. He always put the needs of his constituents first. 
That was his first and most compelling assignment and he always carried 
it out well. But the speakership had evolved to a multifaceted, 24-7 
job. It became not just the internal collaborative leadership that the 
Speakers are required to provide, but also the ``outside job,'' the 
fundraising, the Sunday talk shows, the speeches in faraway places--not 
just to help your colleagues with their fundraising and their reelection 
campaigns, but as a way of projecting the party on issue after issue and 
raising money for the Congressional Campaign Committees. It means that 
inevitably the district fades to some degree. And it's not just the fact 
that you can't be there as much as you may have been, but it's also the 
reality that you have to take more partisan positions than they are used 
to hearing you express at home.
    So inevitably, I think, Tom Foley's career in the eastern district 
of Washington State ended when his speakership did because not only was 
the Democratic Party in eastern Washington State weakening, but the 
traditional Democratic Party that Bill Frenzel referred to as their 
Rooseveltian coalition was disintegrating as well. The style of 
leadership that Foley brought to the speakership was also changing. No 
question it influenced how he ran the House. Tom Foley was like Tip--a 
man of the House that he grew up in. That was why Speaker Foley was so 
much a regular order kind of guy.
    I was thinking earlier today about the health care legislation, 
still referred to as the Clinton health care plan. Other names have been 
attached over the years, but the bottom line is this Speaker felt 
regular order needed to prevail in order to bring a health bill to the 
floor that could pass. I am sure Danny Rostenkowski remembers meeting 
after meeting in the Speaker's office when we tried to put together the 
votes, either in the Commerce Committee or the Ways and Means Committee, 
to begin the process. We didn't have those votes and could not move the 
legislation. I realize now what Newt Gingrich would have done, and we 
did it regularly in the next speakership--put a task force together. 
Denny Hastert earlier referred to them as, he said, a way of undermining 
the committee system. But Speaker Gingrich would not have hesitated 
about moving a bill of that importance to his party and his President 
through by irregular order. He would have found another way to do it and 
it somehow would have gotten to the floor and probably passed by a 
couple of votes, as so often has been the case since 1995.
    I respect Tom Foley's approach. He knew his caucus was not as 
unified as it needed to be and most of all he respected the committee 
system that had served the House so well. He was a product of that 
tradition. It was also regular order for Speaker Foley when it came to 
supporting the Clinton administration. Having observed the conflicts 
between the O'Neill speakership and the Carter Presidency, Tom Foley 
took a different, more supporting approach. You remember it was Hamilton 
Jordan, Carter's Chief of Staff, who was frequently called ``Hannibal 
Jerkin.'' There was real antipathy there. Most Democrats saw, in 
retrospect, that the discord didn't necessarily aid the Carter 
administration in their difficult reelection quest.
    Speaker Foley, as he's already indicated, did all he could possibly 
do to help implement President Clinton's agenda. All those who were 
members of his last caucus look back with pride on that budget vote in 
1993 which brought us, Democrats believe, a balanced budget and a decade 
of prosperity. It also probably contributed significantly to the decline 
and ultimate defeat of our majority. I remember later when we took the 
crime bill to the floor, we had a very tough choice to make. Do we move 
the assault weapons ban as a separate, stand-alone piece of legislation, 
or do we make it part of the omnibus crime bill, however difficult that 
would make it for many moderate and conservative Democrats with strong 
NRA constituencies to vote for it? Parenthetically, we even had some on 
the left voting against the crime bill rule because they didn't support 
any provisions relating to the death penalty. It was a very good example 
of how fragmented and diverse our Democratic Caucus had become, and how 
difficult it was to bring it all together. We chose to, as I think my 
friend Leon Panetta said, give the President a victory and pass that 
bill with the assault weapon ban in it. But we also had tremendous 
negative fallout for many of our Members just 1 year later.
    Speaker Foley personally paid the price for the bill in his own 
race. He lost the NRA's support for the first time in his career. 
There's no question that Tom Foley liked to work with his fellow 
committee chairs. He was one of them. He came through the Agriculture 
Committee to be its chair, then moved into the elected leadership and 
ultimately the speakership. He respected the diversity within the 
bipartisan committee process. Remember, it was an era when you put out 
bills with as broad a bipartisan majority as you could get. When 
possible, you worked with the Republicans during those years in the 
majority, in part because it gave us more impetus, more momentum when we 
got to the floor. After all, we weren't always sure where all those 
elements of that Democratic coalition were going to be at vote time. 
Fragmentation had set in within our caucus, and the committee structure 
normally gave the Democratic leadership the broader support it needed to 
pursue its agenda on the floor.
    Tom Foley's time in the leadership was already an era when we were 
closely divided. But it was also the era when the one-party South, the 
Democratic majority in the South, had totally disintegrated. It was also 
a period where the diversity that had become one of the keys to changing 
our caucus in the eighties and into the nineties, worked against us. We 
didn't all know or empathize with each other. We didn't share common 
experiences. And that certainly was true of the House in general as well 
as the Democratic Caucus.
    I remember hearing stories about Bob Michel and Danny Rostenkowski 
driving to and from Illinois together through many of their years in 
Washington. That sort of friendship, that sort of personal relationship 
above and beyond party, had almost vanished during Tom Foley's 
speakership. What existed was a more divided House with little 
community. It's a trend that has continued to this day. Families live in 
their districts, not in Washington. Two- and three-day weeks are common 
with jet travel back and forth to the district. There is pressure on the 
leadership from the Members to come in late and go out early. These 
circumstances contributed to an incredible amount of disarray, not just 
in one party, but in the House in general.
    On top of that, we suffered greatly from the internal troubles 
brought about by all of the so-called ``scandals'' that the House came 
under scrutiny for--the bank, the post office, and so on. We had 
elements of our caucus, generally older Members and those from safe 
seats, who felt that if we would just hold tight, these problems were 
transitory and they would all blow away. Other elements, people younger 
and more marginal in their seats, were under such pressure in their 
districts that they couldn't go home for a weekend without coming back 
fully inflamed about what these problems that they didn't really know 
much about, or hadn't participated in, were doing to their reelection 
chances. So Tom Foley had a very tough time reconciling the generational 
shift that was going on within his caucus--the large influx of people in 
1974, plus the Members who carried over for 30 and 40 years, and a lot 
of people who had been elected in the late eighties and into the 
nineties whose tenure was quite tenuous.
    And so I think Tom Foley epitomized modern collaborative leadership 
in this very difficult environment. He worked very hard at bringing 
people together, brokering compromises, working with State delegations 
and the exploding number of informal caucuses, dealing with committee 
assignments, and assigning legislation to one or more committees. These 
kinds of one-on-one, small group gatherings are leadership requirements 
that are really the hallmark of the speakership. It wasn't just that 
other strength he has of being a great stentorian speaker and floor 
leader. It was also the personal touch. The need to be putting your arm 
around somebody, bringing together a compromise that might otherwise 
have been lost.
    There's no question when you ask Members to look back on their years 
in the Foley House, they will relate to his ability to go into the well 
and extemporaneously make remarks that actually moved votes, and, I 
believe, probably on both sides of the aisle. He was also great in our 
districts. For those of us who had him come by and speak to our 
contributors and our supporters, it was always a positive experience. He 
has wonderful rhetorical skills. I think back on all those stories that 
I came to know almost so well that I could repeat them myself--the words 
on Jefferson's tomb were the basis for one of my favorites. And Mike 
Kirwan--a far more familiar figure with the American public today 
because of Tom Foley's stories that you heard a version of earlier. This 
was a man who could communicate in every sense of that term. He was 
someone whom I was proud to serve with, and I look back on that time 
very fondly. Thank you.
    Mr. BIGGS. We still have some time and would welcome questions.
    Question. How important is it for Congress to be more assertive in 
foreign and defense policy? That concern has come up in a couple of 
different speakerships, and I think in today's climate it is an 
appropriate question.
    Speaker FOLEY. I think it's obviously important for the House and 
the Speaker to have their voices heard on foreign policy. The President, 
by some constitutional opinion, inherited the powers of George III to 
make foreign policy and to command the military services as commander in 
chief. But the power of the purse, the power to implement foreign 
policy, which is essential today in any foreign policy undertaking, 
requires the House and the Senate to be involved. I think the Speaker 
must be involved in that. We talked earlier here today about Jim Wright 
and the work that was done with the Reagan administration. Looking back, 
for example, on Tip O'Neill's service--I was a whip when Tip was 
Speaker--I never saw a case where President Reagan called and asked Tip 
O'Neill to do something that Reagan thought was in the interest of the 
country's foreign policy that Tip didn't agree to do it. But he would 
also tell the President what he thought about various foreign policy 
issues. He told him privately and told him candidly. But, on the other 
hand, Tip felt very strongly that the Speaker should be supportive of 
the President on those issues where he could conscientiously support him 
in the interest of the foreign policy of the country.
    I want to take the opportunity again to express my regret at the 
sort of permanent campaign we have under way now. It's a function of 
both congressional and Presidential politics that the campaign never 
really ends. Fundraising goes on constantly, and preparing for the next 
election almost begins the day after the returns come in from the last 
one. That has consequences for the ability of the House or the 
government to work together after an election to move the country's 
agenda and purposes forward. It can be a very critical problem, 
obviously, in foreign policy.
    So, how do we get over the political consequences of the permanent 
campaign and restore a sense of comity and trust that both branches are 
trying to move the country's agenda forward? As a Democratic Speaker, I 
also wanted to see a Republican President succeed in every way when I 
could conceive it as being in the interest of the country. Anyone who 
doesn't want a President to succeed, who wants a total failure, is, as 
they say, no friend of the republic.
    I should also say that one of the things I felt when I was in office 
was that we needed to have opportunities for Democrats and Republicans 
to find ways to talk together outside the formal debates of the House. 
There was a case that occurred when I was Speaker in the 102d Congress 
when we had one of those briefings for new Members. I was telling the 
new Democratic Members that I thought they should take an opportunity--I 
didn't think the press was present--to miss a vote. Not a serious vote, 
not one that would affect their reelection, obviously, or affect public 
policy, just miss some kind of ordinary, routine vote so they could 
never, ever think about having a 100 percent voting record. I mentioned 
this because we had a couple of Members who had 100 percent voting 
records. When one of them finally failed to get back to the House in 
time, he wept on the floor after missing the first vote after 17,372 
consecutive votes. I also recall that former Representative Bill Natcher 
came from the Bethesda Naval Hospital on a gurney, on life supports, to 
vote so his consecutive voting record would not be broken.
    I told the new Members to avoid that situation. Just sit through a 
roll call vote on approving the Journal or something--you get 99.99 
percent, but you can't get 100. Second, I said that you ought to travel, 
if you get a chance in your committee, to some place where the 
committee's jurisdiction is involved. You'll learn something important 
about the committee's work. But you'll also have a chance to have some 
association with your colleagues. There's nothing like being together on 
an airplane for awhile, and being in a foreign country, to make Members 
who don't usually have much opportunity to see or talk to each other do 
that. You learn that there's a lot of wisdom and judgment and good 
character on the other side of the aisle, if you had any doubts about 
that. If you needed a political reason for travel, sometime later in 
your career you might get a vote from the Republican side of the aisle 
on something the Member had no particular interest in except the fact 
that you and he were together, or you and she were together, somewhere 
on committee business.
    Anyway, it turned out there was a press reporter in the room, and 
the next day he reported that Tom Foley, as Speaker of the House, told 
the Democrats of the 102d Congress to miss a vote and take a junket. Fox 
Morning News the next morning said they were shocked to learn that the 
Speaker of the House had told the newly elected Democrats to miss as 
many votes as they could--miss as many votes as they could--and never 
miss a chance to take a publicly financed trip abroad.
    There is a need for Members of Congress to have this opportunity to 
get through the divisions that we have on committees, the divisions that 
we have across the aisle, and to have a chance to know each other and to 
learn the kind of respect that follows from that. I think it helps in 
the legislative process. I think it helps bring about an opportunity for 
compromise and common effort.
    When you sit down here and reminisce about the past with other 
Speakers, I am reminded that I always had the problem of being mistaken 
for Tip, in part because Tip and I were about the same weight. 
Naturally, we both have white hair and big Irish mugs, as Tip said. When 
I became Speaker, I weighed about 283 pounds. I weigh about 90 pounds 
less than that today. But I remember I went to a gym in New Orleans when 
I was Speaker. A very old retainer of the club had been very helpful to 
me, and I thanked him. He said, ``Don't thank me, Mr. Speaker. It's been 
an honor and pleasure to have you here, and I'm going to tell all the 
club members we had the Honorable Mr. Tip O'Neill here in our club 
today.'' I didn't know what to say except thank you. A year later I was 
in Nordstrom's in San Francisco with Tom Nides, who was on my staff, and 
I bought a shirt. As I was leaving the counter, I heard the two clerks 
talk and one of them said, ``Do you know who that was?'' And the other 
said, ``No.'' He said, ``That's the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives.'' He said, ``Tip O'Neill?'' The other said, ``No, 
dummy--Jim Wright.'' Anyway, it was an honor to have followed both Tip 
and Jim.
    Mr. BIGGS. We've got time for one last question.
    Question. You talked about carrying out the speakership through 
processes of negotiation and coalition building that had to span both 
sides of the aisle. That's a mode of operation, as we've heard today, 
that goes right back to the ``Board of Education'' room and Sam Rayburn, 
if not before. I remember having the impression that when the New Yorker 
magazine did a profile of you during your speakership, that in a lot of 
cases the negotiations you were engaged in tended to be putting together 
different factions within what was a very large Democratic majority. 
We've also heard commentators say today that we're now in a more 
partisan era where a lot of the coalition building tends to take place 
within the majority party.
    To what extent, then, did the necessity of carrying out coalition 
negotiations--just to hold the large and diverse Democratic majority 
together--contribute to the situation in which the minority tend to get 
more and more left out of the coalition process? Did this trend 
contribute to a more partisan operation in the House?
    Speaker FOLEY. I think there's some truth to what you say. I think 
in recent years a close majority in the House and the Senate put an 
emphasis on getting legislation through with your own troops, and 
keeping the core coalition of your own party together. And that inhibits 
reaching out very much to the other party. It all depends on time and 
circumstances. In the Democratic Party, frankly, we had many more 
Members who were on the conservative side politically than Republicans 
had Members who were very liberal. There were a few, but I think the 
spectrum in the Democratic Party was much broader than it was in the 
Republican Party. So we had to deal with the possibility that 
Republicans would attract some support from Democrats. We had a 
committee chairman, I should say a subcommittee chairman, who somebody 
calculated had voted against the Democratic position on key bills 85 
percent of the time. I had to justify our continued support for him by 
the fact that he voted to organize the House, which was an important 
vote by the way.
    Coalition building also depends on whether there's a closely divided 
House and what party is in the White House. If you've got a Republican 
White House with a Democratic majority in the House, that requires 
greater consultation. It is true, frankly, that Republicans, I think, 
felt much more abused--I don't know what the right word is--much more 
ignored or much more overridden than the Democrats felt they were 
overriding or abusing. So it's a perception problem, in part. Now 
Democrats tell me whatever we did then pales compared to what the 
Republican majority is doing to the Democrats in the minority.
    I remember Speaker Hastert saying about a month ago, when this issue 
arose in the press, that at least the Republicans didn't take away the 
Democrats' parking spaces or office keys. With great respect to the 
Speaker, who I do admire very much, I can never recall us going so far 
as taking away a parking space or an office key. That would be really 
intervening. But it's always as seen by the beholder. I guess the other 
thing that's gone, in my judgment, is this kind of bipartisan social 
relationship. There was, I think, a tendency to become almost like the 
British parties. There is a tension not only on policy and even on party 
principle, but even personal tension. That is the degree to which, I 
think, the situation has gone too far and where it has had a deleterious 
effect on the House and its operations.
    Actually, my admiration and interest goes to the great Speakers of 
the 19th century, who were pretty authoritarian Speakers, by the way. My 
favorite is Thomas Brackett Reed, who was an enormously powerful Speaker 
and a very witty one. As legend has it, he was asked one time if he was 
going to go to the funeral of a political opponent. He said, ``No, I'm 
not going, but I approve of it highly.'' Somebody suggested that he 
might be a candidate for President himself and he said, ``They could go 
farther and do worse and they undoubtedly will.'' One Member was excited 
on the floor making a speech and said, ``Mr. Speaker, I'd rather be 
right than be President.'' The Speaker leaned down and said, ``The 
gentleman need not exorcise himself. He has very little chance of being 
either.''
    Mr. BIGGS. Could you speak for just a couple of minutes about 
something that is a little extra-legislative, and that is the whole idea 
of the budget summits during your speakership?
    Speaker FOLEY. The budget summits are the only time that I have a 
twinge of nostalgia about not being in the House anymore. And I don't 
understand why because budget summits were great periods of tension. We 
had two or three of them when I was a majority leader and Speaker. They 
involved various problems. One was the stock market crash of 1987. We 
had to do an emergency reduction of the budget in order to strengthen 
the market, along with the Federal Reserve's quick infusion of a lot of 
liquidity. I chaired a bipartisan House-Senate committee at that time--a 
task force, I guess. Senator John Stennis asked someone if that young 
Foley was chairing it. They said, ``Yes,'' to which he responded, ``I 
like young people to get their chance.'' I treasure that remembrance.
    We also had budget summits with President George H.W. Bush and it 
involved constant meetings in my office and other places where Nick 
Brady [Treasury Secretary] and John Sununu [White House Chief of Staff] 
and Mr. Dick Darman [OMB Director] would come up and we would work over 
the various alternatives. I remember the famous budget summit we had 
over the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill. Senator Fritz Hollings said his 
name on the end of the legislation was a sure way to anonymity because 
the proposal generally became known as Gramm-Rudman.
    This is an interesting form of the previous question. The House was 
then in Democratic control and the Senate was in Republican control. The 
summit was between House Democrats and Senate Republicans. We sat around 
my office--Senator Pete Domenici, Senator Warren Rudman, Senator 
Hollings, and others. The question was whether we should invite the 
minority to take part in it, that is, House Republicans and Senate 
Democrats. It was one of the Republican Members, who shall remain 
anonymous, who said, ``No, no, no. We are the governing coalition, the 
Democrats of the House and the Republicans of the Senate on this bill. 
And if we invite in the minority, yours or ours, they will have no 
particular incentive except to obstruct and delay.'' I didn't think that 
was right. I thought we should have invited the minority Members. But it 
was overruled at that time. Budget summits also can lead to very serious 
consequences. I think the defeat of the budget summit by the House under 
Newt Gingrich's leadership was a seminal event at the time.
    By the way, it's interesting for me to recall that single events 
that don't seem to be connected can have significant consequences. For 
example, Senator John Tower was appointed by President George Bush 41 to 
be the Secretary of Defense. He ran into the opposition of Senator Sam 
Nunn, and the Senate Armed Services Committee failed to report his 
nomination affirmatively. This was an embarrassment for the 
administration and they decided, I think, that they needed someone to 
appoint as Secretary of Defense that would be instantly confirmable--
unanimously confirmable. They decided that person was Dick Cheney, who 
was then Republican whip. He was taken from the House whip's job, 
nominated as Secretary of Defense, and unanimously confirmed by the 
Senate. Cheney's departure led to a race in the House between a moderate 
Member and Newt Gingrich to replace Secretary Cheney as GOP whip and 
Newt won by one vote. All this came about as a consequence of the 
opposition of some Democrats to John Tower's nomination to the Secretary 
of Defense job.
    Events have consequences. There are connections and some of us are 
old enough to recall them. By the way, I think Dick Cheney did a very 
credible job as Secretary of Defense and that, I think, led to the 
possibility of him becoming Vice President of the United States. So 
these things are interestingly connected.
    I'm generally not very much in favor of these extraordinary 
legislative vehicles like task forces and budget summits. But in times 
of emergency, sometimes regular order just doesn't function that quickly 
and that responsively to a crisis that exists in the country.
    I'd like to--because he's here and others are here--just say a word 
of great admiration for Dan Rostenkowski. He talked about Tip being a 
great legislator. I think Dan Rostenkowski was a great legislator. He 
also was a legislator who worked between the two parties in getting 
legislation out that was otherwise difficult to do. He would charge the 
President, if it was President Bush or whomever, to take care of his 
side of the aisle and he would take care of the Democrats. People I've 
talked to over the years remember with great respect Dan's service on 
the Ways and Means Committee. They have always commented that Dan kept 
his eye on the ball, knew where the legislation had to go, and was 
extraordinarily effective at getting things done. It was an era of great 
figures like Dan and John Dingell. Both of them were great figures 
because they were both great chairmen.
    Mr. BIGGS. Thanks to Messrs. Fazio and Frenzel, Speaker Foley, and 
the audience. We can now declare a recess until the next session begins.