The clerk pthe house will be in order. Mr. Doorkeeper. The doorkeeper mr. Clerk the speakerelect, Newt Gingrich representative from georgia and the escort committee. Its a whole new world. Mr. Gephardt ladies and gentlemen of the house, i first want to thank my democratic colleagues for their support and their 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. When you carry the mantel of progress, there is precious little glory in defeat. But sometimes we spend so much time talking about the winners and the losers, we lose sight of the victory we all share 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 south africa, people lay down their lives for the kind of voice we take for granted. Too often the transfer of power is an act of pain and carnage not one as we see today of peace and decency but 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 day on this very floor, we echo the hopes and dreams of our people their fears and their failures, their abiding belief in a better america. We may not all agree with todays changing of the guard. We may not all like it. But we enact the peoples will with dignity and honor and pride. And 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 not even possible. But while we may not agree on matters of party and 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. For when this gavel passes into your hands so do 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 the 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 will hold in my hand but there are some burdens that the Democratic Party will never cease to bear. As democrats, we came to congress to fight for americas hardworking middleincome families the families who are working often for longer hours for less pay for fewer benefits in jobs theyre 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. So with partnership so with partnership but with purpose, i pass this great gavel of our government. With resignation but with resolve, i hereby end 40 years of democratic rule of this house. 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 gentleman from georgia, Newt Gingrich. The speakerelect let me say first of all that i am very deeply grateful to my good friend, Dick Gephardt. I couldnt help but when my side maybe overreacted to your statement ending 40 years of democratic rule that i couldnt help but look over at bob michel who has often been up here and who knows that everything dick said was true. That this is 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 things. That in my own case, i lost two elections, and with the good help of my friend, vic fazio came close to losing two others. Im sorry, guys. It just didnt quite work out. And yet i can tell you that every time when the polls closed and i waited for the votes to come in, i felt good because win or lose, we have been part of this process. In a little while, im going to ask 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 who as an f. D. R. Democrat created modern america. And i think that john and his father represent a tradition that we all8and respect andtaju pa 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 extraordinarily generous both in his public utterance everything he and his wife did to help me, my wife and our staff make the transition. I think he worked very hard to reestablish dignity of the house, and we can all be proud of the spirit with which he led the speakership. Our best wishes go to speaker and mrs. Foley. 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 worked overtime bent over backwards and in every way helped us. I am very grateful, and this house owes a debt of gratitude to every officer that the democrats elected two years ago. Thank you. This is a historic moment. I was asked over and over how did it feel, and the only words that comes close to adequate is overwhelming. I feel overwhelmed in every way, overwhelmed by my extended family that is here, overwhelmed by the historic moment i walked stood in the balcony just outside the Speakers Office looking down the mall earlier and i was overwhelmed by the view which two men i will introduce know very, very well. Just the sense of america, being part of this great tradition. I have two gavels, actually. This one saga gavel i just got this morning done by a woman of a man of talapoosa. He cut down a walnut tree. This is a genuine georgia gavel. I am the first georgia speaker in over 100 years. The last one had a weird accent, too. Speaker chris was born in brit. His was born in britain. His parents were actors and came to the u. S. And secondly, this is the gavel that speaker martin used. Im not sure what you say about inflation of government if you put them side to side. This is the last gavel used by a republican speaker. I want to comment on the two men who served as my leader and from whom i learned so much and are here today. When i arrived as a freshman in the Republican Party deeply disspirited by watergate and the loss of the presidency, banded together and worked with a leader who helped pave the way for our great Party Victory of 19al0 and a man who just did a marvelous job. I cant speak too highly of what i learned about integrity and courage from serving with him in my freshmen term. He is with us here today. I hope all of you will recognize congressman john rhodes of arizona. Let me say also that at our request, he wasnt sure he should be here at all. He thought he was going to hide in the back of the room. Then i insisted he come down front. Somebody i regard as a mentor and i think virtually every democrat in the house will say is a man who genuinely cares about and represents the best spirit of the house. A man who i studied under and i hope as speaker i can always rely on for advice and i hope frankly i can emulate in his commitment to this institution and his willingness to try to reach beyond his personal interest and his personal partisanship. I hope all of you join me in thanking for his years of service congressman bob michel of illinois. Im very fortunate today. I have my mom and my dad are here. They are right up there, bob and kitt gingrich. And im so delighted that they are both able to be here. You know sometimes when you get to be my age you cant have everyone near you you would like to and i cant say how much i learned from my dad in serving in the u. S. Army and how much i have learned from my mother, clearly my most enthusiastic cheerleader. My daughters are here. And the person who clearly is my closest friend and my best advisor and who if i listened to her about 20 more, i would get into less trouble my wife marianne. I have a very large extended family between marianne and me and we have done our part for the washington tourist season. But i couldnt help when i first came on the floor earlier, i went around and saw a number of the young people who are here, a number of the Young Children on the floor and the number of adults who are close to 12 years of age and i couldnt help but think, sitting in the back rail near the center of the house are my, one of my nephews kevin, who is 5 and susan brown who is 6 and emily brown who is 8 and emily who is 9. They are my nieces and my nephew. I have two other nephews who are actually older who are up in the galley. I couldnt think of a bitterqztq hu way to start my speakership than to sense that these young people all around you are really what this is best what its all the Different Things that make politics cynical and nasty, 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 a free representative selfgft work and the ulti rea for selfgovernment work and the ultimate reason for doing this is these children and the country they will inherit. We are starting the 104th congress. For 208 years, we gather together, the most diverse country in the history of the word we send all sorts of people each of us could find at least one member we thought was weird and ill tell you, if you went around the room, the person we chose to be different would be dicht for virtually every one of us. Because we do lou allow insist upon the right of the free people. Brian lamb at sea spwrb span wrote to me friday a phrase that was so central to the house henry clay always preferred the house. He was the first strong speaker. He preferred the house to the senate, although he served them both. He said the house was more vital more active, more dynamic and more common. This is what he wrote, often there is 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 belonging to the lower classes of society. Now if you put women in with men, i dont know that we have changed much. But the word vug gar had a very particular meaning and its a meaning the world would do well to study in this room. You see, he was an arist row carat, he lived in a world of kings and princes. The folks who come here come here by the one single act that their citizens freely chose them and i dont care what your ethnic background whether youre 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 tryin to argue and talk and as dick said, to have a great debate, to reach great decisions, not through a civil war, not by bombing one of our regional capitals. Not by killing a half million people. Not by having snipers. 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. And so here we are as commoners together to some extent democrats and republicans, to some extent liberals and conservatives, but americans all. Steve gunderson today gave me a copy of the portable Abraham Lincoln and suggested there is much for me to learn about our party but i would also say as i have all since the election, it doesnt hurt to have a copy of the portable f. D. R. This is a great country a great people. If there is any one fact or act of my life that strikes me as i stand up here as the first republican in 40 years to do so when i first became whip, in 1989 russia was beginning to change. The soviet union as it was then and into my whips office came eight russians and a lithuanian. Members of the communist party, newspaper editors, and they asked me what does a whip do . They said, you know, in russia we have never had a Free Parliament since 1917 and that was only for a few months so what do you do . And i tried to explain as dave bonior or tom delay might now and its a little strange if youre from a dictatorship to explain you are called the whip, you dont really have a whip, you are elected by the people you are pressuring. You have to somehow find democracy is hard. Its frustrating. And so we came in the chamber and the lithuanian was a man in his late 6os and i allowed him to come up here and sit and be speaker and its something many of us have done with [closed captions brought to you by circuit city intel. ] s. Remember, this is the very beginning, he was almost in tear c and i said, ever since world war ii i remember what the americans did and i have never believed the propaganda. 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. It was one of the most overwhelming, most compelling moments of my life. Its something i couldnt help think of when we were here with president mandela and i went and saw ron dellums and thought of his great work with freedom and that sense of emotion when you see something so totally different than you expected. Here is a man that reminded me that while president s are important, they are in fact an elected kingship. That this and the other bod a cross 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 chairkl ter is the key to leadership and we have to character is the key to leadership and we have to deal with it. He preached about a spirit of reconciliation and he talked about caring about our spouses and our children and our families because if we are not prepared to model that, beyond just having them here for one day, if we are not prepared to care about our children and we are not prepared to care about our families then by what arrogance do we think we will transcend our behavior to care about others and thats why with congressman gephardts help we have established a Bipartisan Task force in the family, we have established a principle that we are going to set schedules we stick to so families can count on times to be together, build around the School Schedules so that families can get to know each other and not just on cspan. 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 that if you take the time we spent in the last congress where we had one more and then one more. At one. We had a 45minute vote that you literally can shorten the business and get people home if we can be strict and firm. I say that with all of my colleagues i hope paying attention because we in fact are going to work very hard to have 17 minutes and its over. So leave at the first bell, not the second bell, ok . This may appropriate to say on the first day because this will be the busiest day on opening day in congressional history. I want to read justpp c the contract with america, as a partisan act but to remind all of us what we are about to go through and why because those of us who ended up in the majority stood on these steps and signed a contract, and here is 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 Auditing Firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of congress for waste fraud or abuse. Third, cut the number of committees and House Committee staffs by a third. Fourth limit the terms of all committee chairs. Fifth, ban the casting of proxy votes in committees. Sixth require Committee Meetings to be open to the public. Seventh, require a 3 5 majority vote to pass a tax increase. Eighth guarantee an honest accounting of our budget by a zero base line budgeting. I told dick if i had to do it over again we would have pledged within three days we would do these things. We have 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 within the first 100 days of the 104th we shall bring to the house floor the following bills, each to be given fill and open debate clear and fair vote, and each to be immediately available for inspection. We made it available that day. We listed 10 items. A balanced Budget Amendment and lineitem veto, to stop violent criminals, emphasizing among other things and effective and enforceible death penalty. Third was welfare reform. Fourth was protecting our kids. Tax cuts for families. A stronger national defense. Raising the Senior Citizens earning limit. Rolling back government regulations. Ninth was common sense legal reformpd tenth was congressional term limits. Our commitment on our side and i think we have this absolute obligation is first of all to work today until we are done. That i know will inconvenience people. They have families and supporters but we were hired to do a job and we have to start today to prove well d