Proceedings in the House MONDAY, January 15, 1979. This being the day fixed by the 20th amendment of the Constitution and Public Law 95-594 of the 95th Congress for the annual meeting of the Congress of the United States, the Members-elect of the House of Representatives of the 96th Congress met in their Hall, and at 12 o'clock noon were called to order by the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Hon. Edmund L. Henshaw, Jr. The former Chaplain, Rev. Edward G. Latch, D.D., delivered the following prayer: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.— Psalms 46: 1. O God, our Father, who is the refuge and strength of Your people in every age and our refuge and strength in this present hour, we pause in Your presence as we open the first session of the 96th Congress to offer unto You the devotion of our hearts and to dedicate our thoughts and actions to the welfare of the people of our beloved Republic. Aware of Your presence help us to accept our responsibility to lead our Nation into a larger good for our citizens and for the people on our planet. Amid the voices which call us to lower our high ideals may we feel the power of Your presence and the life of Your love. With Your Spirit may we make this a great year in the life of our Republic. We call to mind the lives of two of our Members, Leo J. Ryan and WILLIAM A. STEIGER who have gone home to be with You. For their devotion to duty and their love for our country we thank You. Comfort their families with the strength of Your Spirit. We pause to remember the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the contribution he made to his people and to the life of our Nation. Lead us all into a deeper understanding of Your message to us. Walking with You in ever greater trust may we go forward to build upon this planet an order of life in which justice and truth and brotherhood shall prevail for the good of all Your children and the glory of Your holy name. Reverently may we offer together this familiar and heart warming prayer. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever. Amen. Mr. ZABLOCKI. Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged resolution. The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: HOUSE RESOLUTION 12 Resolved, That the House has heard with profound sorrow of the death of the Honorable WILLIAM A. STEIGER, a Representative from the State of Wisconsin. Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate and transmit a copy thereof to the family of the deceased. The resolution was agreed to. Mr. BOB WILSON. Mr. Speaker, under leave to extend my remarks in the Record, I include the following: BILL STEIGER: A STORY THAT SHOULD Have Been Told (By David S. Broder) It is a cliche in the political-reporting business that every one of us carries around in his head a list of stories that he would have given his eyeteeth to have written. Some are scoops on which you were beaten. Some are exposes for which you wish you could claim credit. But the most uncomfortably remembered stories are those where you might have said-but did not-that somebody is doing a helluva job in public office. BILL STEIGER had done that kind of a job ever since he came to the House of Representatives in 1966 as a 28-year-old freshman Republican from Oshkosh, Wis. He died last week, after a heart attack, at age 40. The sense of personal loss that I share with his other friends and admirers is compounded by the regret that this column was not written earlier-not for STEIGER's sake, but for the greater credibility that it might have had with the young people for whom he had a special concern. They are awfully cynical about politics and politicians these days. On the college campuses that I have visited in the past few weeks, the students are very familiar with the real names and cases of Congressman Kickback and Senator Shakedown, and they ask, in world-weary voices, why the voters re elect such men and why Congress seats them. They don't ask about the Steigers of the world—and for a good reason. We haven't told them nearly as much about them. And we should have. STEIGER was 13 when he learned that he had diabetes. He lived as long as he did by injecting insulin twice a day. Despite it, he was unstinting in the energy that he poured into politics and public office. By the time he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, his friend and classmate, John Bibby, recalls, "BILL has done so much in campus politics and state and national Young Republican politics that our professors discussed things with him as they would with a political pro." He was graduated in June 1960, and the next November was elected to the state Assembly. There, he became a leading proponent of a state open-housing law that was finally passed in his third term. It was a strange issue for a man from a district that then included only 189 nonwhites, but STEIGER was never a parochial politician. In 1966, he ran against an incumbent Democratic congressman who had opposed federal open-housing laws and tried to make that an issue against STEIGER. The voters were wiser than the opponent thought, and gave STEIGER the first of his seven House victories. During his House service, Republicans were always in a minority. In that situation, it is easy and tempting to vote against every program not desired by the dominant interests in your district. STEIGER did not do that. He took the far harder course of searching out ways to shape basic legislation and push national policy in directions that he thought it should go. In doing so he became, as his Wisconsin Democratic colleague, Rep. David R. Obey (a legislator of comparable quality), said, "the Republican who was the most effective bridge between the parties in Congress." Working with Sen. Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (D-N.J.), he devised the compromise that permitted passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. Working with Sen. Spark M. Matsunaga (D-Hawaii), he succeeded in 1971 in legislating the end of the draft and the start of the volunteer Army. Working with then-Sen. Walter F. Mondale (D-Minn.), he was instrumental in gaining passage of the program providing legal services to the poor. STEIGER was a reformer who understood the importance of knowing the rules. He was an "institutional man," devoted to the House and to the Republican Party. His respect for them made him willing to work long hours against great odds to improve their functioning. As his reputation inside Congress grew, so did the opportunities to cash in by accepting lucrative outside job offers. Another friend, Rep. Barber M. Conable, Jr. (R-N.Y.), recalls that STEIGER turned down an industrial-foundation post that would have doubled his congressional salary and provided financial security for his wife and young son. Instead, he stayed at his work. In leading the successful fight this year for reduction in capital-gains taxes, over the opposition of President Carter and the Democratic congressional leadership, he won acclaim from financial circles that managed to overlook his earlier constructive work in the social-policy area. Methodically, as always, STEIGER used his new role as a sought-after speaker on the national GOP fund-raising circuit as a way to mobilize support for his next major goal: the nomination and election of his friend George Bush to the Presidency. |