A letter and package from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch was good therapy for the illness which has kept me from the Herald office for several weeks.
The letter offered the senator’s best wishes for speedy recovery and explained the package – a copy of the Congressional Record for Oct. l, 1982. This should have more than passing interest to Daily Herald readers because it reprints several Herald articles on balanced budget issues.
I’m quite familiar with the “CR.” It’s a record of congressional proceedings – bills introduced, debated, passed, rejected or whatnot, in other words, it chronicles what the senators and congressmen do and say.
Reading the Record has been part of my “retirement” job as l’ve written for the Herald and B0 other papers of Scripps League Newspapers, Inc., the last three years.
Frequently a lawmaker reads into the Congressional Record a newspaper article or editorial to support his or her position on an issue, usually from one of the metropolitan dailies – The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, to name a few. Some of the smaller papers are recognized also, but far less frequently.
Thus it was worthy of note that on Oct. 1, when the House was preparing to vote on the Senate-passed Balanced Budget Amendment authored by Senator Hatch, the Utahn introduced not one but the seven selections from the Herald into the Congressional Record, saying he “wanted my colleagues to benefit from them.”
The Record, of course, goes to all members of Congress. certain other government officials. and subscribing newspapers, libraries, universities, etc., across the country.
Reprinted from the Herald were:
– Three editorials of 1982 essentially taking the position that if it takes a Constitutional Amendment to force Congress into fiscal responsibility, then let’s have it.
– And a four-part 1981 series which I authored on the sad story of the national debt, At that time the debt was surging toward the $1 trillion mark. That’s a thousand billion bucks – about $4,415 for every man, woman and child in this land of the free. The figure has shot upward considerably since then.
The series stressed that only eight times in the past half century has Congress balanced the budget. America was 200 years accumulating a national debt of a half-trillion dollars. But it passed the $l trillion mark in just seven more years during peacetime and in a period of relative prosperity.
Even in the face of the dark budget-debt picture, the House refused in October to follow the Senate’s lead and defeated the Balanced Budget Amendment. Where can we turn now for fiscal discipline by the big spenders?
In any case, The Daily Herald, headed hy Publisher Bye Jensen, can take a bow for the three-and-a-half-page broadside in the Congressional Record. That’s good recognition.
In my years of reading the congressional proceedings, I recall very few similar “spreads” from a single newspaper, large or small.
I was especially pleased that Senator Hatch saw merit in my four articles on the national debt which the Herald and a number of other Scripps League Newspapers published. The series, you may recall, won a George Washington Honor Medal presented by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.
The Herald has been recognized with reprints in the Congressional Record many times through the years – but never in such impressive dimension as this last one. Our thanks to you, Senator Hatch!