Rep. McCarthy: ‘History Will Be Kind’ to John Boehner

"Before I talk about this bipartisan budget agreement, I want to thank the Speaker. I want to thank the Speaker for his career, and I want to highlight a few parts.  We've put a little video inside the conference and we've put this poster of the Gang of Seven. We are in the minority and he's the last man standing. But what was the Gang of Seven? 

The Gang of Seven was the very beginning to change Washington and clean it up.  I look around this room, I wasn't around the time either, but there was a House bank and a House bank scandal. Your predecessors probably wrote about it but they never would have known about it if it wasn't for John Boehner and it never would have been shut down. He fought and was able to be a part, a big part in winning the first majority for Republicans in 1994, and he served in leadership to do it. Everybody has stumbles but it's the character of an individual is how you handle it. John left leadership, never complained but continued to fight for the American people. Came back as a committee chairman, focused on education. You've watched it every day of his life. Just last week we passed the a deal with the scholarships for low income. He has never forgotten why he ran and he has never stopped fighting for them. Very few people in their career could ever say they fought to win two majorities. And John has. 

Now, as we go to depart, John has not given up. Yeah, we've come to a bipartisan budget agreement and it probably wouldn't be the final agreement if we could write it by ourselves, but somebody different is in the White House. We have strived in this majority within our first four months to write a budget. A budget that would put us on a new path and lots times people don't write about what we've been able to achieve. In that very first budget a lot of people criticized us, said we went too far. If you take those budget numbers for our 2011 and where we would be today -- with this budget agreement, we're below them. We've been able to achieve even with Barack Obama as president. 

So, we dealt with what's happening around the world with the foreign policy that's lacking what our military needs. We've got more than 100 members signing a letter. We've been able to fund the military in a much stronger position it needs to when we look at what the world holds, but we've been able to do it in a fiscal manner to keep us under the limits that we had in our original budget. That's an accomplishment. 

I think history will be kind to this man because he kept the word he's always said, continued to do what's right and that's what he's done. So, I want to thank the Speaker for his service."