ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 21, 1996 TAG: 9611210041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
THE GEORGIA REPUBLICAN talked of working with President Clinton to balance the budget, cut taxes and improve health care.
Chosen by Republicans for a second term as House speaker, Newt Gingrich said Wednesday the GOP Congress has an ``absolute moral obligation'' to work with President Clinton and leave the campaign wars behind.
In a speech following his selection, Gingrich looked ahead to an ``Implementation Congress'' on issues such as balancing the budget, cutting taxes, attacking drugs and improving the health care system.
``We bear the unusual burden of reaching out to a Democratic president and saying, together, we can find common ground,'' said Gingrich, whose formal election as speaker is slated for Jan.7, 1997, when the 105th Congress officially convenes.
Across the Capitol complex, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota expressed a similar call for cooperation.
In his first extended remarks since the presidential and congressional elections, Daschle said: ``There really is perhaps an historic opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to work together. And our choice is really this: We can legislate, or we can recriminate.''
President Clinton, too, has indicated a willingness to work with Republicans. ``We're in this boat together, and we have to paddle it together,'' he said shortly after the voters had returned both him and the GOP Congress to power.
Gingrich's remarks were more subdued and less combative than two years ago.
Then, he had led his party to a House majority for the first time in 40 years and stood ready to lead them through an exhaustive effort to pass the conservative ``Contract With America.''
Now, the 53-year-old Georgian finds himself under lingering investigation by the ethics committee, and the run-up to his selection by the party caucus was marked by sniping from critics on both the left and the right.
On a personal note, Gingrich remarked to fellow Republicans that his father had died of cancer only a few hours earlier in the day, and on his mother's birthday. ``That makes it hard,'' he said.
Despite the changes, he won by acclamation Wednesday and claimed a triumph for himself and other Republicans.
In the congressional elections, he said, ``When it was all over, the American people, for the first time in 68 years, decided to reaffirm a Republican direction of the U.S. House of Representatives.''
Republicans ratified the re-election of their entire top leadership team, including Texans Dick Armey as majority leader and Tom DeLay as whip, and John Boehner of Ohio as head of the caucus, the senior non-Southerner in the hierarchy.
Despite Gingrich's re-election, critics claimed success in a modest reshaping of the leadership structure. Gingrich will disband an advisory group that functioned much like an inner Cabinet, reviewing each major decision. Groups of moderates and conservatives won the right to choose their own representatives to an expanded leadership group, and committee chairmen are expected to have more latitude.
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