[gavel] the house will be in order. Mr. Doorkeeper. The speaker elect, House SpeakerNewt Gingrich from georgia. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] [cheers and applause] [applause] [applause] ladies and gentlemen of the house, i first want to thank my democratic colleagues for their support and confidence. I noted we were a little short but i appreciate your friendship and your support. As you might imagine, this is not a moment that i had been waiting for. ]laughter] when you carry the mantle of progress, there is precious little glory in defeat but sometimes, we spend so much time lionizing the winners and labeling the losers we lose sight of the victory we all shared in this crown jewel of democracy. You see, mr. Speaker, this is a day to celebrate a power that belongs not to any Political Party but to the people. No matter the margin, no matter the majority. All across the world from bosnia to chechnya to south africa, people lay down their lives for the kind of voice we take for granted. Too often the chance for of power is an act of pain and carnage, not one as we say today of peace and decency. Here in the house of representatives, for 219 years longer than any democracy in the world, we heed the peoples voice with peace and civility and respect. Each and every on this very floor, we echo the hopes and dreams of our people, their fears and their failures, their abiding beliefs in a better america. We may not all agree with todays changing of the guard. We may not all like it, but we an act of the peoples will with dignity and honor and pride. In that endeavor, mr. Speaker, there can be no losers and there can be no defeat. Of course, in the 104th congress, there will be conflict and compromise. Agreements will not always be easy. Agreements sometimes are not even possible. While we may not agree on matters of party in principle we all abide with the will of the people. That is reason enough to place our good faith and our best hopes in your able hands. I speak from the bottom of my heart when i say that i wish you the best in these coming two years. When this gavel passes into your hands, so does the futures and fortunes of millions of americans. To make real progress, to improve real peoples lives, we both have to rise above partisanship. We have to Work Together where we can and where we must. It is a profound responsibility one which knows no bounds of party or politics. It is a responsibility not merely for those who voted for you not merely for those who cast their fate on your side of the aisle but also for those who did not. These are the responsibilities i pass along with the gavel i hold or will hold in my hand. There is some burdens the Democratic Party will never ceased to bear. The democrats came to congress to fight for americas hardworking middle income families, the families who are working often for longer hours, less pay for fewer benefits and jobs they are not sure they can keep. We together must redeem their faith that if they work hard and they play by the rules, they can build a better life for their children. Mr. Speaker i want this entire house to speak for those families. The Democratic Party will. That mantle we will never lay to rest. [applause] so with partnership but with purpose, i pass this great gavel of our government. With resignation but with resolve, i hereby and 40 years of democratic rule of this house. [applause] with faith and with friendship and the deepest respect, you are now my speaker and let the great debate begin. I now have the high honor and distinct privilege to present to the house of representatives our new speaker, the gentle from georgia, Newt Gingrich. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] let me say first of all that i am very deeply grateful to my good friend Dick Gephardt. I could not help but notice that my side probably over reacted to your statement of ending 40 years of democratic rule. I could not help but look over at bob michael who has often been a peer and knows that everything dixit was true that this was difficult and painful to lose and on my side of the aisle we have for 20 elections, been on the losing side. And yet there is something so wonderful about the process by which a free people decides this. My own case, i lost two elections and with a good help of my friend digg as io came close to losing to others. [laughter] im sorry did not work out. I can tell you that every time when the polls closed and i waited for the vows to come in, i felt good because win or lose we have been part of this process. In a little while, at last the dean of the house, john dingell, to swear me in. To insist on the bipartisan nature of the way in which we together work in this house. Johns father was one of the great stalwarts of the new deal, a man as an fdr democrat created modern america and i think john and his father represent a tradition we all have to recognize and respect and recognize that the america we are now going to try to lead grew from that tradition and is part of that great heritage. I also want to take just a moment to thank speaker foley who was extremely generous in his public utterances and everything he and mrs. Foley did to help mary ann and me and our staff make the transition. I think he worked very hard to reestablish the dignity of the house and i think we can all be proud of the reputation he takes and of the spirit with which he led the speakership and are best wishes go to speaker and mrs. Foley. [applause] i also want to thank the various house officers who have been just extraordinary. I want to say for the Public Record that faced with a result none of them wanted in a situation i suspect none of them expected that within 48 hours every officer of this house reacted as a patriot and worked overtime, bent over backwards, and in every way helped us and i am very grateful and i think this house owes a debt of gratitude to every officer that the democrats elected two years ago. [applause] this is a historic moment. I was asked how it felt an the only word that comes close to adequate is overwhelming. I feel overwhelmed in every way overwhelmed by the georgian to came up, overwhelmed by my extended family that is here overwhelmed by the historic moment when i stood in the balcony just outside this because all those looking down the mall this morning early and i was overwhelmed by the view which the two men i introduced know very well. It is a sense of being a part of america, being part of this great tradition. I have two gavels, the cap and to use one that was appropriate. This is a georgia gavel that i just got this morning done by Dorsey Newman of tallapoosa decided the gavels he saw on tv were not big enough or Strong Enough so he cut down a walnut tree in his backyard and made a gavel and sent it appear so this is a genuine georgia gavel. Im the first georgias bigger in over 100 years. The last one had a weird accent, too, speaker chris was born in britain and is family were actors and he came to the u. S. Secondly, this is the gavel that speaker martin used. Im not sure what it says about the inflation of government when you put them side by side but this is the gavel used by the last republican speaker. I want to comment for a minute on two men who served as my leaders and from whom i learned so much. When i arrived as a freshman there was a Republican Party dispirited by watergate on a loss of the presidency but banded together and worked with a leader who helped pave the way for our great Party Victory of 1980 and a man adjusted and marvelous job and i cannot speak to highly about what i learned about integrity and leadership encouraged him serving with him in my freshman term and easier with us again today. I hope all of you will recognize congressman john rhodes of arizona. [applause] let me say also that our request, he was not sure he should be here at all and he thought he would hide in the back of the room and i insisted he come down front. Somebody who i regard as a mentor and virtually every democrat in the house will say was a man who generally cares about and loves the house and who represents the best spirit of the house, the man who i studied under and i hope as speaker, i can always rely on for advice and who i hope frankly i can emulate and his commitment to this institution and in his willingness to try to reach beyond his personal interests and personal partisanship. I hope all of you join me in thanking him for his years of service, congressman bob michael of illinois. [applause] i am very fortunate today that i have my mom and dad here. They are right up there, bob and kit gingrich, and i am delighted they are able to be here. Sometimes when you get to my age, you cannot have everyone near you you would like to. I cannot say a much i learn from i dad in his years of serving in the u. S. Army and how much i learned from my mother who is my most enthusiastic cheerleader. My daughters are here up there kathy and her husband and jackie and her husband. And the person who clearly is my closest friend and best advisor and if i listened to her 20 more, i would not get in trouble, my wife marianne. [applause] i have a very large extended family and they are virtually all intent and weve done our part for the tourist season. I could not help when i first came on the floor earlier and i went around and saw a number of the young people who were here the children on the floor and the young adults who are close to 12 years of age [laughter] i could not help but think that sitting in the back rail near the center of the house are one of my nephews, kevin who is five and susan who is six and emily who is eight and lauren who is nine. They are all back there. They are my nieces and nephew. I have two other nephews who are older in the gallery. I could not help but think that the way i want to start the speakership and talk with every member that in a sense these young people you see around you i really what this is all about, much more than the negative advertising and Interest Groups and all the Different Things that make politics all too often cynical and nasty and sometimes plain miserable. What makes politics worthwhile is that the choice as Dick Gephardt said, between what we see so tragically on the evening news and the way we try to do it is to work very hard to make this system of free representative selfgovernment work. The ultimate reason for doing that is these children and the country they will inherit and the world they will live in. We are starting the 104th congress. For 208 years we gather together the most diverse country in the history of the world, we send all sorts of people, each of us could find at least one member we thought was weird and if you went around the room, the person would be different for everyone of us. Because we do allow and insist upon the right of a free people to send an extraordinary diversity of people here. Brian lamb at cspan read to me friday a phrase from de tocqueville that is essential to the house. Henry clay always preferred the house. He was the first on speaker and he preferred the house to the Senate Although he served in both. He said the house is more vital and dynamic and comment. Often, theres not a distinguished man in the whole number. Its members are almost all obscure individuals whose names bring no associations to mind. They are mostly village lawyers men in trade, or even persons along into the lower classes of society. If you put women in with men, i dont know that it we would change much but the word volcker in that time had a particular meaning. It is a meaning the world would do well to study in this room. You see ,de tocqueville was an aristocrat who lived in a world of princes and kings and the folks who come here come here by the one single act that they are that their citizens freely chosen and i dont care what your ethnic background or ideology is or whether you are younger or older, i dont care whether you were born in america or you are a naturalized citizen every one of the 435 people have equal standing because their citizens freely sent them and their voice should be heard and they should have a right to participate and it is the most marvelous act of a complex, giant country trying to argue and talk to have a great debate and reach great decisions not for a civil war, not by bombing one of our regional capitals, not by killing have a million people, not by having snipers. Let me say unequivocally, i condemn all acts of violence against the law by all people for all reasons. This is a society of law and a society of civil behavior. [applause] so here we are as commoners together, to some extent democrats and republicans, to some extent liberals and conservatives, but americans all. Steve gunderson gave me a copy of the portable abraham lincoln. He suggested i should learn about our party but i would also say that it does not hurt to have a copy of the portable fdr. This is a great country with great people. If there is anyone factor or act of my life that strikes me as as as i stand up here as the first republican of 40 years to do so, when i first becamewhip in 1989, russia was beginning to change, the soviet union as a was then. Into my office came eight russians and a lithuanian. They were members of the communist party, newspaper editors and they asked me what does a with do. They said in russia we have never had a Free Parliament since 1917 and that was only for a few months. What do you do . I tried to explain. Its strange if you are from a dictatorship. You dont really have a whip. If you pressure people too much they wont reelect you, its a democracy thats hard. Its frustrating. We came in the chamber and the lithuanian was a man in his late 60s and i allowed him to come up here. He came out of the chair he was almost in tears. He said, you know, ever since world war ii ive remembered what the americans did and ive never believed the propaganda but he said i have to tell you i did not think in my life that i would be able to sit at the center of freedom. One of the most overwhelming compelling moments of my life. And what struck me as something i couldnt help but think of when we were here with president mandola and i went over and saw ron and thought of the great work ron had done to extend freedom o across the planet and that sense of emotion that you see something totally different than you expected. While president s are important they are in effect an elected kingship. But this and the other body across the way are where freedom has to be fought out. And thats the tradition i hope that we will take with us as we go to work. Today we had a bipartisan Prayer Service. Frank wolf made some very important points. He said we have to recognize that many of our most painful problems as a country are moral problems. Problems of dealing with ourselves and with life. He said character is the key to leadership. And we have to deal with that. He preached a little bit i dont think he thought it was preaching, about a spirit of reconciliation. And he talked about caring about our spouses and our children and our families, because if were not prepared to model that beyond yust having them here for one day. If were not prepared to care about our children and families, by what arrogance will we transskend our behavior to care about others . Thats why with congressman again harts help we have established a Bipartisan Task force and the family. We have established the principle that we are going to sit schedules to stick to so families can get to know each other and not just on cspan. I will also say [applause] i will also say that means one of the strongest recommendations of the bipartisan Family Committee i dont want this to be seen as gingrich acting as a speaker on his own here is that we have 17 minutes to vote. They pointed out if you take the time we spend in the last congress where we had one more and then one more and one point we had a 45 minute vote that you literally can shorten the business and get people home if we will be strict and firm. I say that with all of my colleagues i hope paying attention because we are in fact going to work hard to have 17 minutes and its over. So leave at the first bell not the second bell. Ok . [applause] this may seem particularly inappropriate to say on the first day because this will be the busiest day on opening day in congressional history. I want to read just a part of the contract with america not as a partisan act but to remind all of us that what were about to go through and why. Because those of us who ended up in a majority stood on these steps and signed a contract and heres part of what it says. On the first day of the 104th congress the new republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms. Aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American People and their government. First, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the congress. Second select a major independent auditting firm for waste fraud or abuse. Third, cut the number of house committees and cut Committee Staff by a third. Fourth, limit the terms of all committee chairs. Fifth, ban the casting of proxy votes in committees. Six, require Committee Meetings to be open to the public. Seven, require a three fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase. Require an honest accounting of our budget. I told dick last night if i would to do it over again we would pledge within three days we will do these. So weve got ourselves in a little bit of a box. I carry the tv guide version of the contract with me at all times. We then said thereafter within the first 100 days we shall bring to the house floor the following bills to be given full and open debate, a clear and fair vote, to be immediately avable for inspection. And we listed ten iteles. A balanced Budget Amendment and line item veto. To top violent criminals. Third was welfare reform. Fourth protecting our kids. Fifth tax cuts for families. Six a stronger national defense. Seventh was raising the Senior Citizens earning limit. Eighth rolling back got regulation, nine commonsense legal reform. And ten congressional term limits. Our commitment on our side and i think we have this absolute obligation is first to work today toward this and i know this is going to inconvenes people as families and supporters. But we were hired to do a job and we have to start today to prove w