H 5370 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE May 22, 1995

LES ASPIN

(Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1

minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I come to

the well this morning for the same reason the gentleman from Missouri [Mr.

SKELTON] did, to say that this weekend

our Nation has lost a very stalwart son

and a good friend of ours. To many of

us here, he was an especially good

friend.

Les Aspin’s untimely death at the

age of 56, after suffering a massive

stroke on Saturday, underscores both

how much he accomplished and yet

how much more he could have done. In

the days ahead we are going to be reminded of those accomplishments as

we seek to send sympathy and comfort

to his family and those close to him. I

am sure that important and caring

leaders in many places around the

world will remember to say, I knew

Les, what a great job he did for this

country for so many years. Equally,

many just plain folks who knew Les

around town here or back in his longtime Wisconsin congressional district

or wherever it was will say, I knew Les.

What a great guy.

Mr. Speaker, as a classmate and a

friend for many years at college and as

a colleague here in Congress for a while

and finally as a member of the Commission on Intelligence Roles and Capabilities, which is better and properly

known simply as the Aspin Commission, which he was chairing at the time

of his death, I had the privilege and the

fun of knowing Les and working with

him. I think the statement that I read

this morning of his cardiologist and

the news accounts says it best: It says

simply, Les was an extraordinarily fine

man. For those of us who knew him in

this body, that vote is unanimous.

TRIBUTE TO A GOOD FRIEND AND

GREAT AMERICAN

f(Mrs. SCHROEDER asked and was

given permission to address the House

for 1 minute.)

Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I,

too, rise to pay tribute to my good

friend Les Aspin. This is a man who

was never about power or never about

pretense. He was about public service

and the highest quality of public service. He truly gave it his all, every single day he got out of bed. No taxpayer

could ever complain that Les Aspin did

not put his whole self into what he was

doing, no matter what it was.

We have really, indeed, lost a great

mind, a very energetic person, and a

person who did not come with a certain

ideology but came, instead, to listen to

the facts and try and do what was

right.

One of the things that he did as Secretary of Defense that probably will go

unnoticed but should not go unnoticed

is he was brave enough to start putting

some of the rhetoric aside and open the

doors for many of America’s young

women who had been waiting outside

that door to serve more fully in the

armed services. Les was the kind of

guy who would look at the studies, who

would look at the performance ratings,

who would look at the tests, and who

would say, of course, they can.

There is absolutely no reason except

bias and prejudice that they cannot

move forward. He opened those doors,

and many of the young women proudly

serving today in America’s military

can be looking to Les Aspin and saying, thank you, because he was the one

who put aside many of those superstitions and moved that forward.

But that was the kind of person who

he was. We will miss that kind of person very desperately and I will miss

him as a friend.

IN MEMORY OF LES ASPIN

f(Ms. HARMAN asked and was given

permission to address the House for 1

minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, ‘‘HARMAN, how ya’ doing?’’

That was Les Aspin’s upbeat greeting

each time we spoke.

His tennis game was not much, but

he sure was.

Loyal always to his beloved Wisconsin. A man who loved the House and excelled at the legislative function. A big

thinker on defense issues who probably

contributed more to conceptualizing

our modern defense policy than anyone

else. And a true friend.

He was certainly there for me as I

laid my plans to run for public office

for the first time in my middle age.

He helped me strategize, he reviewed

issues, he gave me credibility, and he

personally came to California to campaign for me.

After I won, he was there for counsel.

And I tried to be there for him too in

some tough times.

Through it all, he was upbeat.

Scarcely a week after his pacemaker

was inserted in 1993, Defense Secretary

Aspin testified for a marathon 10 hours

before his beloved House Armed Services Committee. Near the end, this

freshman was temporarily in the chair.

When he saw me, he laughed. ‘‘Oh,’’ he

said, ‘‘when they said there was reform

up here, I had no idea it would go this

far!’’

Aspin, I will miss you.

PERSONAL EXPLANATION

fMr. FORD. Mr. Speaker, I would like

the RECORD to reflect that on Thursday, May 18, 1995, I was incorrectly recorded as ‘‘aye’’ on rollcall No. 343, the

Neumann substitute to the budget resolution, House Concurrent Resolution

67. I should have been recorded in opposition to this resolution.

MEDICARE BUDGET CUTS

(Mr. FORD asked and was given permission to address the House for 1

minute.)

Mr. FORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today

because I am receiving a number of letters from my constituents back home

in addressing the budget cuts in the

Medicare budget, cuts as being proposed by the new Republican majority

in this Congress. As I read through all

of the letters that my constituents are

sending to me, they do not feel that it

is fair in America for the elderly to add

on an additional $1,000 in costs and additional premiums for Medicare.

It is true that we must do something

about the huge deficits that we are

faced with, but we know that we ought

to share that responsibility among all

Americans. For the Republicans to

think that children and the elderly

population of this Nation should bear

that brunt, it is wrong.

Just to share a few things with you

that I am receiving in the mail, senior

citizens are saying the need to fix Social Security and Medicare can no

longer be denied. They acknowledge

the fact that we can no longer deny it.

They say it can be done. And we as Republicans and Democrats in this House

can work together in a bipartisan spirit to do so.

I do not think that we ought to say

to the wealthy and the rich of this Nation, yes, just for your $350 billion tax

cut, we are going to increase and cut

the Medicare Program in a fashion that

will cause burden and undue harm to

the elderly population of this country.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under

SPECIAL ORDERS

fthe Speaker’s announced policy of May

12, 1995, and under a previous order of

the House, the following Members will

be recognized for 5 minutes each.

previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. K

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

fAPTUR] is recognized for 5 minutes.

[Ms. KAPTUR addressed the House.

Her remarks will appear hereafter in

previous order of the House, the gentleman from New York [Mr. O

the Extensions of Remarks.]

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

f WENS] is

recognized for 5 minutes.

[Mr. OWENS addressed the House.

His remarks will appear hereafter in

the Extensions of Remarks.]

TERM LIMITS RULING BY

SUPREME COURT

fThe SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. SCHROEDER] is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, as

many people know, the Supreme Court

just came down with a five to four decision on terms limits, saying that the