Word: congressmen
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...scene was remarkable: the President of the United States was about to be lectured on morality while a national television audience looked on. It unfolded in the White House Roosevelt Room, crowded with top Administration aides, some 30 Jewish leaders, a sprinkling of Senators and Congressmen. Reagan's deceptively gentle antagonist was Elie Wiesel, 56, a survivor of Nazi death camps, who was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement for his life's outpouring of books that detail the savagery of the Nazis and the suffering and courage of their victims...
That same decidedly Reaganesque social ease made a great impression on the four Congressmen, including Speaker of the House Thomas (Tip) O'Neill Jr., who were invited to a meeting with Gorbachev in the Kremlin two weeks ago. One of the visitors, Republican Congressman Silvio Conte of Massachusetts, made detailed notes about the Soviet leader that make him sound remarkably like Washington's own Great Communicator. Gorbachev's greeting to his visitors, noted Conte, was almost fulsome. He had been well briefed by aides, and spoke through an interpreter from color-coded typed notes. He made his points firmly, often...
...negotiations on the budget for fiscal 1986. "The timing was very awkward," said one official. "It added a complication at a very delicate moment." It came during a week in which Reagan threw in the towel on restraining middle-class entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, leaving Congressmen groping with illusory savings and phony numbers (see following story) in their efforts to pretend to cut the deficit...
...prepared on Social Security when the questions started. "Who are the trustees?" a man asked Kingston, a Republican congressman who represents 29 counties in the coastal Georgia area around Savannah. After Kingston started trying to explain who the Social Security trustees are, the man quickly interjected "are they congressmen or banks?" Kingston said he wasn?t exactly sure who the trustees were, but he would find out. He moved on to the next slide to explain that Social Security's Trust Fund would be depleted by 2042, but then 75-year-old Roy Goodman asked, "why so many different dates...
...perhaps even slightly frightened. There was no discussion of Social Security or foreign policy being shown that day. Instead, a long and protracted cross-examination of several unwitting targets was being conducted, targets whose defensive replies did nothing to soften the inflammatory questions being thrown at them from indignant congressmen...