Frank R. Wolf

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to our former colleague, Bill Frenzel of Minnesota, who passed away on November 17 at the age of 86.

Bill served in the House for ten terms from 1971 to 1991. During his time on the Hill and upon leaving Congress, he was a strong advocate for trade and economic growth.

So many of our colleagues did not have the privilege of serving with Bill. I respectfully submit this Washington Post article from November 19, 2014, on his passing.

Bill Frenzel, Minnesota Republican and Fiscal Authority, in U.S. House,

Dies at 86

Bill Frenzel, a Minnesota Republican who became a prominent

congressional authority on federal budget and international

trade issues during 20 years in the U.S. House of

Representatives, died Nov. 17 at his home in McLean, Va. He

was 86.

The cause was cancer, said a daughter, Pam Lindon.

Mr. Frenzel was an executive at his family's warehousing

operation and served in the Minnesota House of

Representatives before winning an open congressional seat in

1970. He represented his district in the Twin Cities suburbs

until 1990, when he declined to seek reelection.

By then he had become dean of the Minnesota delegation,

ranking Republican on the House Budget committee and an

influential member of the tax-writing Ways and Means

committee. On both sides of the aisle, he was admired for his

deeply researched positions on complicated fiscal matters.

``Loud and brainy, partisan and thoughtful, he puts his

stamp on every debate in which he participates,'' read his

profile in the Almanac of American Politics.

Among Mr. Frenzel's principal legislative interests were

promoting free trade and balanced budgets. He helped

negotiate the major 1990 deficit-reduction deal, a

significant achievement at a time when Mr. Frenzel had become

increasingly frustrated by what he described as the

Republican Party's ``seemingly permanent minority.''

Democrats ``think they were born to be kings,'' Congressional

Quarterly quoted him as saying, ``and that there's a servant

class, and that's the Republicans.''

In an effort to invigorate his party, Mr. Frenzel nominated

Newt Gingrich for party whip, a position that the Georgia

Republican won in 1989. Gingrich's fiery style contrasted

with Mr. Frenzel's more moderate one, but Mr. Frenzel said he

had concluded that the party ``needed to take some risks.''

In 1994--four years after Mr. Frenzel's retirement--

Gingrich led the GOP to recapturing control of the House. Mr.

Frenzel remained involved in public affairs, including in the

Democratic administration of Bill Clinton. Clinton tapped Mr.

Frenzel as an adviser on the North American Free Trade

Agreement, a centerpiece of the president's first-term

agenda, and tasked him with helping rally GOP support.

``I took a position up in the Rayburn Building and I think

I met with every member of the Republican caucus,'' Mr.

Frenzel told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. ``The idea was to

get the vote nailed down before you bring the bill to the

floor. Some of the members were difficult and slippery.'' He

continued, ``For instance, some of the members said, `We

don't think the Mexicans know anything.' We flew them to

Mexico City and had them meet with President [Carlos] Salinas

and his cabinet, who, of course, were all University of

Chicago PhDs and who bowled them over. That was very

effective.'' NAFTA was passed in 1993 and enacted the next

year.

Mr. Frenzel later served under George W. Bush, a

Republican, and Barack Obama, a Democrat, on advisory

commissions on Social Security and trade policy. He was a

guest scholar with the Brookings Institution think tank for

more than two decades and was a co-chairman of the Committee

for a Responsible Federal Government, both based in

Washington.

Years after he left office, he remained sought after for

his insider's perspective on politics.

``Republicans used to be interested in not running

continual rivers of red ink,'' he told the New York Times in

2012. ``If that meant raising taxes a little bit, we always

raised taxes a little bit. But nowadays taxes are like

leprosy and they can't be used for anything, and so

Republicans have denied themselves any bargaining power.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dr. David M. Abshire, who passed away on October 31st, 2014, in Alexandria, Virginia. I worked with David during my career in Congress and always held him in the highest regard.

David was an indispensable public servant. He began his career at West Point, from which he graduated and led a platoon in the Korean War, earning a Bronze Star for bravery. He went on to found the Center for Strategic and International Studies and lead the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress. David also served as assistant secretary of state for congressional relations and chairman of the Board for International Broadcasting under President Nixon and United States ambassador to NATO under President Reagan. He coordinated President Reagan's internal investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair as well.

David was a man of moral strength and character. He will be deeply missed by his family, friends and community. David is survived by his wife Carolyn, five children and 11 grandchildren.

I respectfully submit David's obituary from The New York Times and ask my colleagues to join me in honoring David's life and accomplishments.

[From The New York Times, Nov. 3, 2014]

David M. Abshire, Who Helped Reagan Through Iran-Contra Scandal, Dies

at 88

(By Douglas Martin)

David M. Abshire, who led respected research groups and

held high government posts but made his most visible mark by

helping President Ronald Reagan navigate the political storms

of the Iran-contra scandal, died on Friday in Alexandria, Va.

He was 88.

His death was announced by the Center for the Study of the

Presidency & Congress, a Washington group he helped lead.

Reagan sought out Mr. Abshire in December 1986. He called

him in Brussels, where he was the United States ambassador to

NATO, and asked him to accept a cabinet-level job as

coordinator of the White House's response to multiple

investigations of the administration's secret sales of arms

to Iran, despite an embargo on such sales.

There were allegations that United States officials had

hoped the arms sales would secure the release of several

hostages being held in Lebanon by a group with ties to Iran,

which would have been another violation of policy. Proceeds

from the sales were to be used to finance the anti-Communist

insurgents in Nicaragua known as contras--aid that Congress

had expressly forbidden.

Reagan asked Mr. Abshire to handle all requests and

obligations stemming from investigations in both the House

and the Senate and from an independent commission headed by

John Tower, a former senator from Texas.

``What we wanted was someone who would come and could

immerse himself in all the details of this Iran controversy--

the dates, when the arms went, who said what on which date,''

Patrick J. Buchanan, then the White House communications

director, said in an interview with CNN in 1986. ``It really

is a detailed job, and the rest of the White House staff,

which was not involved in the controversy, has to get on with

the budget, has got to get on with the State of the Union. We

simply don't have the expertise.''

In a profile in 1987, The New York Times said the job could

leave Mr. Abshire in a ``potentially tricky position'' and

raised the possibility that he could turn up an incriminating

``smoking gun.''

Mr. Abshire accepted the post on the condition that the

administration would be forthcoming. He told The Times that

he regretted suppressing information about military

incursions into Laos and Cambodia during the Nixon

administration, when he was assistant secretary of state for

congressional relations.

``That,'' he said, ``was an example of how not to do it.''

In his first meeting with Reagan, recounted in his 2005

book, ``Saving the Reagan Presidency: Trust Is the Coin of

the Realm,'' Mr. Abshire told the president that it was

unwise to keep insisting that the United States did not trade

arms for hostages. He pointed out that two-thirds of the

public believed that the administration had made such a deal.

``Dave, I don't care if I'm the only person in America that

does not believe it--I don't believe it was arms for

hostages,'' he quoted Reagan as saying.

But in a dozen meetings with the president and in others

with the first lady, Nancy Reagan, Mr. Abshire pressed his

case for admitting what seemed obvious to him and to many

others. He also released thousands of unedited documents to

investigators, handled press relations and signed off on the

president's speeches about the subject.

On March 4, 1987, with evidence of the arms deal mounting,

Reagan admitted in a speech to the nation that he had learned

he was wrong. ``What began as a strategic opening to Iran

deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for

hostages,'' he said.

Mr. Abshire soon resigned, feeling he had finished the job

90 days after taking it. Reagan largely escaped personal

blame and saw his approval rating rise from 46 percent to 64

percent in less than two years.

The Washington Post in 2006 called Mr. Abshire the

``judicious convener and manager of the A-list powerful.'' In

1962, he joined with Adm. Arleigh Burke to start the Center

for Strategic and International Studies, originally as an

affiliate of Georgetown University. Distinguished foreign

policy figures like Henry A. Kissinger, James R. Schlesinger,

Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft have been senior

advisers and adjunct fellows there.

Mr. Kissinger, at a colloquium in Mr. Abshire's honor in

2006, said that Mr. Abshire had a knack for getting people to

do what he wanted, ``making you feel that he's doing you a

tremendous favor for giving you that opportunity.''

From 1999 to 2012, Mr. Abshire was president and chief

executive of the Center for the Study of the Presidency &

Congress. More recently he was vice chairman. He served on

government task forces and policy study groups and wrote

seven books. He headed Reagan's foreign affairs transition

team after his election in 1980, and was often mentioned as a

candidate for national security adviser in Republican

administrations.

His job as assistant secretary of state under President

Richard M. Nixon was to be a liaison to Congress. Nixon then

appointed him chairman of the Board for International

Broadcasting, overseeing Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

As NATO ambassador, Mr. Abshire helped parlay the

deployment of American Pershing II missiles in Europe into a

treaty limiting intermediate-range nuclear weapons there.

David Manker Abshire was born in Chattanooga, Tenn., on

April 11, 1926. An imposing figure at 6-foot-4, he never lost

his courtly Tennessee drawl.

He graduated from the United States Military Academy at

West Point in 1951 and, as a platoon leader in the Korean

War, was awarded a Bronze Star and other decorations for

bravery. He earned a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown.

Mr. Abshire, who died in a nursing home in Alexandria, is

survived by his wife of 56 years, the former Carolyn Sample;

his son, Lupton; his daughters, Anna Bowman, Mary Lee

Jensvold, Phyllis d'Hoop and Carolyn Hall; and 11

grandchildren.

Reagan was not the first president to ask for Mr. Abshire's

help in dealing with a crisis. In his memoir, Mr. Abshire

wrote that Nixon had asked him to join his staff to fight the

threat of impeachment during the investigations of the cover-

up of the Watergate break-in. He tactfully said no.

He recalled that when a relative expressed amazement that

he had turned down a president, he replied: ``I don't believe

he's telling the truth.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Virginia Delegate Vincent F. Callahan, Jr., who passed away on September 20th, 2014, at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Virginia.

Vince represented Virginia's 34th District in the Virginia General Assembly for nearly four decades. During his tenure on the Appropriations Committee, he worked tirelessly on important regional projects for his constituents in McLean and Arlington. He was always willing to work across the aisle to find compromise and get things done.

Vince's many legislative accomplishments include supporting the growth of George Mason University and the Dulles Corridor, as well as securing state funds for public spaces, like Wolf Trap. The northern Virginia we know today would not exist if it were not for Vince and his outstanding statesmanship in the Virginia General Assembly. The region owes him a debt of gratitude for his faithful and effective service.

Vince was a man of strong convictions and the highest moral character. He was a true Virginia gentleman, family man and a loyal friend; he will be sorely missed by his family, friends and community. Vince is survived by his wife Yvonne, eight children, 22 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

I respectfully submit Vince's obituary from The Fairfax Times and ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Vince's life and achievements.

[From FairfaxTimes.com, Sept. 26, 2014]

Callahan's Legacy Burns Bright

Fairfax County lost one of its true statesmen--and untold

amounts of institutional knowledge--when longtime state

legislator Vince Callahan died last Saturday from

complications related to West Nile virus.

Callahan, who represented McLean in the Virginia House of

Delegates from 1967 to 2008, will best be remembered as

someone who cared deeply about Northern Virginia and spent

more than half his life fighting for his district, his

constituents and for Virginia.

It's hard to travel through Fairfax County today and not

see Callahan's fingerprints on many key institutions and

roadways. He was critical in drumming up dollars and support

for George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community

College; many Fairfax residents could locate either school on

a map. He championed Wolf Trap National Park for the

Performing Arts when many others viewed the project as a

waste of money and land. He was instrumental in establishing

Georgetown Pike as a scenic byway, fending off intense

pressure to four-lane the road through Great Falls and parts

of McLean.

He also played a lead role in establishing the Dulles Toll

Road, erecting sound walls along Interstate 495 and sparking

commercial development on the Dulles corridor.

Callahan's list of accomplishments goes on and on, fueled

mostly by a calm, inclusive leadership style rarely seen in

today's General Assembly.

In an era of partisan bickering and political gamesmanship,

Callahan built his career on putting people ahead of party

and solving old problems rather than creating new ones.

He was keenly aware that he worked at the behest of those in

the 34th House district--not the other way around. A lifelong

Republican, he went to Richmond each winter focused on

improving the lives of his constituents in McLean, Arlington

and other parts of Virginia. That often meant crossing the

aisle and working with Democrats to pass critical

legislation. It also meant standing up to lawmakers in his

own party when they were pushing policy harmful to his

district.

In the midst of yet another expensive, attack-oriented

election cycle, Vince Callahan's passing should serve as a

reminder that there's always going to be a place for people

with firm spines, positive ideas and good intentions.