[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 5 (Monday, January 31, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: January 31, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
Amendment No. 1317
(Purpose: To require a report on Russian military operations in the
Independent States of the former Soviet Union)
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for
its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen] proposes an amendment
numbered 1317.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the
amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 179, after line 6, add the following:
SEC. . REPORT ON RUSSIAN MILITARY OPERATIONS IN THE
INDEPENDENT STATES OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION.
(a) In General.--Not later than July 1, 1994, the President
shall submit to Congress a report on the operations and
activities of the armed forces of the Russian Federation,
including elements purportedly operating outside the chain of
command of the armed forces of Russian Federation, outside
the borders of the Russian Federation and, specifically, in
the other independent states that were a part of the former
Soviet Union and the Baltic States.
(b) Content of Report.--The report required by subsection
(a) shall include, but not be limited to--
(1) an assessment of the numbers and types of Russian armed
forces deployed in each of the other independent states of
the former Soviet Union and the Baltic States and a summary
of their operations and activities since the demise of the
Soviet Union in December 1991;
(2) a detailed assessment of the involvement of Russian
armed forces in conflicts in or involving Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan, including
support provided directly or indirectly to one or more
parties to these conflicts;
(3) an assessment of the political and military objectives
of the operations and activities discussed in paragraphs (1)
and (2) and of the strategic objectives of the Russian
Federation in its relations with the other independent states
of the former Soviet Union and the Baltic States;
(4) an assessment of other significant actions, including
political and economic, taken by the Russian Federation to
influence the other independent states of the former Soviet
Union and the Baltic States in pursuit of its strategic
objectives; and
(5) an analysis of the new Russian military doctrine
adopted by President Yeltsin on November 2, 1993, with
particular regard to its implications for Russian policy
toward the other independent states of the former Soviet
Union and the Baltic States.
(c) Definitions.--For the purposes of this section--
(1) ``the other independent states of the former Soviet
Union'' means Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
Ukraine, and Uzbekistan; and
(2) ``the Baltic States'' means Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, Russian nationalists have been gaining
influence for some time. Not just bombastic extremists like Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, but also a large segment of the Russian senior officer
corps and foreign policy elite. This includes many who are viewed in
the West, not necessarily incorrectly, as democratic reformers. The
primary focus of these nationalists is what they call the near abroad:
the new countries formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union that
have significant Russian minorities.
The new Russian military doctrine, which Yeltsin approved after
October's violent showdown, seems to display both imperialist designs
on Russia's neighbors and deep-seated fears that the West is implacably
hostile to Russia.
This imperialist threat is more than just a paper doctrine. The
Russian military has been putting it into practice. To give you an
example, this summer, it set up a protection racket in the caucuses.
First, it gave military aid to separatists fighting the Georgia
government led by former Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze--whom the
Russian military blames for having lost Eastern Europe. Then, after
bringing Shevardnadze to the point of defeat, it agreed to save his
government in exchange for Georgia joining the Commonwealth of
Independent States. This grouping might be more accurately named the
Commonwealth of Temporarily Independent States, since many Russians
hope to use it as the vehicle to rebuild their empire.
In 1992, a purportedly run-away Russian division came to the aid of
ethnic Russian separatists in Moldova, setting up the self-proclaimed
Dneister Republic on Ukraine's western border. This sent a signal to
other near abroad countries that they, too, might be carved up if they
did not cooperate satisfactorily. It also put Ukraine in Russian
pincers, with a western front ready to be opened in the event Russian-
Ukraine disagreements turn to hostilities.
Earlier this year, the Russian military helped oust the
democratically elected leaders of Azerbaijan. First, they provided
military aid to Armenia, whose resulting military successes weakened by
Azerbaijan's government. Russia then reportedly dealt the fatal blow by
providing heavy armaments to a renegade Tajik military unit that moved
on the capital and by supporting the former communist head of
Azerbaijan in his successful effort to regain the Presidency.
The Russian military is also heavily involved in the civil war in
Tajikistan, supporting the former Communist apparatchiks against the
democratic and Islamic opposition.
The Clinton administration's response over the past year to these
Russian military interventions was to ignore them, while supporting
efforts to aid President Yeltsin's government and cooperate with the
Russian military. When it finally did turn its attention to this
disturbing trend, however, the policy the administration adopted can be
described as confused, at best.
During the Moscow summit, President Clinton compared Russian military
interventions in the so-called near abroad to United States operations
in Panama and Grenada and other places near our area. He specifically
cited as stabilizing Russia's choreography of the conflict in Georgia,
which led to an offer of protection that Shevardnadze could not refuse.
Besides asserting its claim that Georgia falls within Moscow's sphere
of influence, the humiliation of the government of Shevardnadze--whose
policies led to German unification, freedom for Eastern Europe, and the
break-up of the Soviet Union--involved a symbolism that may be lost on
the administration, but not on Russians nor their neighbors.
No doubt emboldened this Clinton doctrine, as Washington Post
columnist Stephen Rosenfeld recently described it, Russian Foreign
Minister Andrei Kozyrev clearly stated Russia's intent to reestablish a
``sphere of Russian interest.'' ``We should not fear the words,'' he
declared in a statement obviously directed at his fellow Russians and
not Russia's neighbors.
Then, just 2 weeks ago, the world was stunned with a statement
attributed to Kozyrev that Russian troops might not withdraw from
Latvia and Estonia, after all, despite an agreement signed in Moscow by
Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin reaffirming that Russian troops would be
withdrawn. While Kozyrev quickly asserted that he had been misquoted,
the view attributed to him is certainly held by many high-ranking
Russian military officials. And Kozyrev himself has advocated that
Russia has a ``special role and influence over the former Soviet
republics,'' as he put it at the United Nations in September, and he
has emphasized the role of the Russian military in exercising this
``special role.''
He followed this up in October with a warning that Russia must
intervene in the ``near abroad'' lest it risk ``losing geographical
positions that took centuries to conquer.'' This imperialist attitude
has prevailed in the Foreign Ministry since at least late 1992 when,
according to a Wall Street Journal article by James Sherr of Oxford
University, it issued a policy document advocating a ``divide and
influence policy'' using force when necessary to ``ensure firm good
neighborliness'' by other former Soviet republics and ensure that
Russia is the ``leader of stability and security on the entire
territory of the U.S.S.R.'' All of this from the ministry in the
Russian Government that has proved to be the most amenable to
cooperation with the West.
As Henry Kissinger notes in his article published in the Washington
Post recently:
The Foreign Minister of Russia has repeatedly put forward a
scheme for a Russian monopoly on peace-keeping in the ``near
abroad,'' indistinguishable from an attempt to re-establish
Moscow's domination. By its silence and repeated invocation
of an American-Russian partnership, the United States
acquiesces in these actions.
Dr. Kissinger goes on to state that:
A moderate Russian foreign policy will be impeded, not
helped, by turning a blind eye to the reappearance of
historical Russian imperial pretensions.
Perhaps we should give the administration the benefit of the doubt
and assume that it simply has not been paying attention to these
matters. While this may seem incredible, there may be some basis to
believe it.
The Washington Post has reported that a recent national intelligence
estimate forecasts the partition of Ukraine into Ukrainian and Russian
states accompanied by ethnic conflict. According to the Post, when the
NIE was circulated earlier this month, it ``shook up a lot of people''
in the administration. Perhaps White House officials or Members of
Congress who have to say on top of the full breadth of domestic and
international issues can be forgiven for being surprised by such a
forecast. But administration officials responsible for foreign and
security policy should hardly be surprised, given the many indicators
over the past 2 years. These have included calls by ethnic Russians in
Ukraine for secession or incorporation into Russia of Ukrainian
territory in which Russians predominate and the assertion of
sovereignty over the Crimea previous Russian parliament.
The first step in correcting U.S. policy in addressing these matters
is to compel the administration to study them and publicly address them
in detail.
My amendment would call for a report by mid-year on activities by the
Russian armed forces in the former Soviet republics. Among the issues
to be covered would be Russian intervention in the conflicts in
Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Tajikistan the implications of the
new Russian military doctrine for Russian relations with other former
Soviet republics.
Such a report would serve as an important input to further
congressional consideration of these important issues. I urge my
colleagues to support the amendment.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the
articles by Mr. Rosenfeld, Mr. Sherr, and Dr. Kissinger.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 25, 1994]
Be Realistic About Russia
(By Henry Kissinger)
The most significant aspect of President Clinton's recent
progression across Europe may have been obscured by the
atmospherics surrounding it. In fact, the trip ushered in an
important reevaluation of heretofore accepted premises of
American foreign policy: In effect, the president's
statements elevated the radical critique of Cold War policies
into the operational premises of contemporary American
foreign policy.
For nearly a half-century, that critique had maintained
that Soviet policies were as much caused by American policies
as by Communist ideology; that the Soviet government was
divided, just as the American government was, between hawks
and doves; that it was the task of American diplomacy to east
Soviet fears, many of which were quite legitimate; and that
an attitude of genuine cooperation would overcome Soviet
bellicosity.
As late as January 1990, these propositions were
refurbished in a Time magazine article in which Mikhail
Gorbachev was anointed Man of the Decade. Its author was Time
correspondent Strobe Talbott, recently appointed deputy
secretary of state, who argued that the doves of 40 years of
Cold War debate had been right all along and that it had not
been the West's policy that brought about the Soviet collapse
but the inherent weakness of the Soviet system; indeed, that
the collapse might have occurred earlier had Western hard-
liners not enabled the Soviet leaders to rally their people
on behalf of security.
The essence of these themes was repeated by President
Clinton on many occasions during his European trip. To
explain why he did not favor the admission of Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia--the so-called
Visegrad nations--into NATO, he argued in effect that such a
step might be provocative. The Atlantic Alliance, he said,
could not ``afford to draw a new line between East and West
that could create a self-fulling prophecy of future
confrontation. . . . I say to all those in Europe and the
United States who would simply have us draw a new line in
Europe further east that we should not foreclose the
possibility of the best possible future for Europe which is a
democracy everywhere, a market economy everywhere, people
cooperating everywhere for mutual security.''
The assumptions behind these statements challenge the very
intellectual foundations of NATO--the core of America's
postwar foreign policy. Whether the former victims of Soviet
imperialism should join NATO is a complicated question. There
are many ways to accomplish that goal, from full membership
to various levels of associate membership or, indirectly, via
membership in the European Union. On balance, I thought that,
at this moment of Russian relative weakness and East European
uncertainty, it was an opportunity to extend NATO in some
way--especially as there were many measures available by
which to reassure Russia.
But the key issue is not the timing of NATO expansion. In
putting forward the Partnership for Peace, the administration
did not just delay East European participation, it
emphatically rejected the principle despite many misleading
statements to the contrary. The Partnership invites all the
successor states of the Soviet Union and all of Moscow's
former East European satellites to participate with NATO in a
vague, multilateral entity specializing in missions having
next to nothing to do with realistic military tasks; it
equates the victims of Soviet and Russian imperialism with
its perpetrators and gives the same status to the Central
Asian republics at the borders of Afghanistan as it does to
Poland, the victim of four partitions in which Russia
participated and the route across which Russia has
historically invaded Europe.
If the Partnership for Peace is designed to propitiate
Russia, it cannot also serve as a way station into NATO,
especially as the administration has embraced the proposition
rejected by all its predecessors over the past 40 years--that
NATO is a potential threat to Russia. An official traveling
with the president's party expressed the logic behind the
administration position when he stated that Eastern Europe
would have to find security in placating its feared neighbor
by ``encouraging domestic reform in Russia.''
It is instructive to compare the current approach with that
of Dean Acheson when NATO was founded. Testifying before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the secretary of state
was asked whether the Soviet Union had reason to fear NATO.
His reply was: ``Any nation which claims that this treaty is
directed against it should be reminded of the biblical
admonition that `the guilty flee where no man pursueth.'''
No reasonable observer can imagine that Poland, the Czech
Republic, Hungary or Slovakia could ever mount a military
threat against Russia, either singly or in combination. The
countries of Eastern Europe are terrified, not threatening.
And NATO forces, doctrine and deployment are strictly
defensive. Moreover, Russia could easily be given additional
assurances, for instance, that no foreign troops would be
stationed on the soil of new NATO members.
The key question, however, is what the American theory
means for NATO. What is to be its precise role in the new
dispensation? If a security guarantee along the Polish-
Russian border creates an unacceptable dividing line, why is
the current eastern border of NATO any more pacifying? If
Russia can veto NATO membership now, when it is in need of
economic support, what will it veto when it has been
strengthened through reform and American economic assistance?
It is high time to take another look at our Russia policy,
which stakes everything on a kind of psychoanalytic social
engineering. The world evoked by Clinton's reference to
``democracy everywhere . . . people cooperating everywhere''
is decades away. In the real environment of today's ethnic
conflict and internecine struggle in the former Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe, how are security and progress to be
organized until that utopian world is reached? Can it be wise
to create two categories of frontier--those which NATO
protects and others which are refused protection--when both
frontiers face in the same direction? The practical
consequence will be to bring about an unprotected no-man's-
land between Germany and Russia, which has historically been
the cause of all recent European conflicts.
A realistic approach to Russian policy would recognize that
integrating Russia into the international system has two
components that must be kept in balance: influencing Russian
attitudes and affecting Russian calculations. The
administration deserves support in extending generous
economic assistance to Russian reform. And Russia should be
made welcome in institutions that foster economic, cultural
and political cooperation with the West. The European
Security Conference would be a far better home for this than
to invent, as the Partnership for Peace does, common military
missions within the framework of NATO whose essential
irrelevance underlines the artificially of the conception.
The administration's tendency to treat Russian leaders as
if they were fragile novices easily flustered by exposure to
their realities of international politics is an invitation to
disillusionment and misunderstanding. These are tough men who
have survived the brutal school of Communist and Russian
politics; they are quite capable of comprehending a policy
based on mutual respect for each other's national interest.
Russia is bound to have a special security interest in what
it calls the ``near abroad''--the republics of the former
Soviet Union. The test is whether the rest of the world
treats this relationship as an international problem subject
to accepted rules of foreign policy or as an outgrowth of
unilateral Russian decision-making to be influenced, if at
all, by appeals to Russian goodwill.
Perhaps the most serious misapprehension of the Partnership
for Peace proposal is that a reformist Russian government
would automatically abandon traditional foreign policy goals.
For the incentives of the most well-meaning Russian
government are quite different. Nationalism is on the rise,
and there is a great temptation to ease the pain of
transition to market economics for the Russian population by
appealing to that basic instinct.
At the moment, Russian armies are in Moldova, Georgia,
Azerbaijan, Estonia, Latvia and Tajikistan, and participate
insome of the local civil wars with a strategy that seems
designed to make these new republics--all of them members of
the United Nations--rue their independence. The foreign
minister of Russia has repeatedly put forward a scheme for a
Russian monopoly on peace-keeping in the ``near abroad,''
indistinguishable from an attempt to reestablish Moscow's
domination. By its silence and its repeated invocation of an
American-Russian partnership, the United States acquiesces in
these actions.
A moderate Russian foreign policy will be impeded, not
helped, by turning a blind eye to the reappearance of
historical Russian imperial pretensions. Russia's effort at
reform cannot exempt it from accepted principles of
conducting foreign policy. It is in fact ambiguity about
dividing lines, not their existence, and ambivalence about
Western reactions, not their certainty, that tempt
militarists and nationalists.
Russia and America share a mutual interest in a stable
Europe. This can be achieved only by America's presence in
Europe, which is based on NATO. Stability in Europe requires
reaffirming the centrality of NATO rather than diluting it in
an abstract multilateralism.
The Partnership for Peace should be redefined to deal
primiarly with political, economic and cultural issues for
which the proper venue is the European Security Conference,
not NATO.
NATO, meanwhile, must face the fact that some form of
Visegrad membership is inevitable. In the wake of the NATO
summit, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has urged speeding up
the entry of these four countries into the European Union, of
which they are already associate members. Since the vast
majority of nations in the European Union are also members of
NATO, it is inconceivable that the Union will for long accept
the notion that some of its territory is not protected. At
that point at the latest, either the NATO guarantee will be
extended or NATO will fall apart.
A stateman can always escape his dilemmas by making the
most favorable assumptions about the future. The new Russian
leadership is entitled to understanding for the anguish of
trying to overcome two generations of Communist misrule and
to help in building a new society. But in pursuing that goal,
American policy must not be embarrassed to emphasize that
domestic reform, however desirable, contributes to a better
world only if Russia embraces the disciplines of a
cooperative international system as well as its benefits.
____
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 21, 1994]
Permission for Kremlin Intervention
(By Stephen S. Rosenfeld)
In Moscow, Bill Clinton pretty much handed off to Russia
the task of policing the unrest in the borderlands that
formerly were part of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin had
asked the United Nations for just such a grant of ``special
powers.'' Clinton enunciated a kind of Clinton doctrine, one
applying not to restrictive standards for American
intervention but to permissive standards for Russian
intervention.
He characterized Russia's involvement in Georgia--where in
fact the Russian army first contributed to and then exploited
the local government's duress--as ``stabilizing.'' He went on
to liken Russian involvement in such operations to American
involvement in Panama and Grenada ``and other places near our
area.''
Two standards were specified: Intervention must be
consistent with international law, and when possible it must
be supported by other nations through the United Nations or
otherwise. But Clinton then offered a broad blanket
dispensation for cases where the demise of totalitarian rule
uncorked old conflicts; this can be read to apply to almost
every little war in the Russian ``near abroad.''
The striking aspect of this pronouncement is, or course,
that Clinton is so much more clear and forthright about
Russia's intervention in situations of strife near its
borders than he is about America's intervention in situations
of strife far from its own borders.
No less striking, he is making a gesture of great deference
to Yeltsin. The Russian president is under growing pressure
from the nationalist right to conduct a vigorous and
interventionist Russian foreign policy.
Already Secretary of State Warren Christopher had observed
that the countries of the former Soviet Union were ``a long,
long ways from the United States'' and that Russia could act
to guarantee regional stability if it respected
``international norms.''
Little wonder, then, that days after a beaming Clinton came
home from Moscow, Yeltsin's foreign minister--and he is one
of the good guys--fudged an earlier pledge to pull all troops
out of the Baltics. Openly he enunciated a claim to
reestablish a traditional ``sphere of Russian interest''
(``we should not fear the words'') in the newly independent
states created out of the former Soviet Union.
This from a man--Andrei Kozyrev--who a year ago was himself
cautioning of a comeback by those with a ``fascist ideology''
and with ``a grand vision of restoring Russia in its grandeur
to the borders of the former U.S.S.R.''
Let us stipulate that it comes naturally to a country with
a long geopolitical reach (the United States) or an old
imperial habit (Russia) to assign neighborhood intervention
rights to the metropolitan power. Set aside the modest irony
of a somewhat liberal American president embracing the
Reagan-Bush interventions in Grenada and Panama. Set aside as
well the painful irony of the lapse of the American
interventionist urge in present-day Haiti. Policing what is,
whatever it is called, a sphere of interest is a familiar
geopolitical chore and far from an inherently reprehensible
one.
What President Clinton failed to fold into his remarks in
Moscow, however, is the potential dark side of the current
Russian interventionist trend. Researchers Fiona Hill and
Pamela Jewett spell it out in a new Kennedy School paper
``Back in the USSR.'' Moscow, pretending to good deeds, is
exploiting regional conflicts to destabilize its neighbors
and reestablish its own authority, they say; Washington is
``acquiescing in the de facto reconstitution of the USSR by
turning its head.''
That strikes me as an exaggerated or at least premature
conclusion. But it is no more exaggerated than the Clinton
premise that Russian interventionism is essentially a
civilizing force.
The Clinton view skips past the fact that the Russian army
is moving not in the relatively settled geopolitical
conditions of Central America and the Caribbean but in an
anything-can-happen context where no rules reliably apply.
Here civilian Russian nationalism is compounded by a
headstrong Russian army's desperate quest for institutional
survival.
Russia's policy in the near abroad is becoming more evident
and more unsettling. Clinton's responses are going to have to
be sharpened. His commitment to Yeltsin cannot be allowed to
extend to the point where the United States becomes by
default a party to the reconstruction of the Russian empire.
Clinton's approach to many tough foreign policy dilemmas is
to talk out loud about them. Let him broaden his public
address to this one.
____
[From the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 1993]
Russia's New Threat to Neighbors
(By James Sherr)
The disturbing results of Russia's elections raise an
obvious question. Could Russia once again become a danger to
others as well as to itself? The publication of Russia's new
military doctrine in November is persuading many that it
could. It is a revealing and often blunt document, leaving no
doubt that military power will remain an important instrument
of Russian policy for years to come.
Those certain to be discomfited by the doctrine--Ukraine,
the Baltic states and the former Warsaw Pact countries--must
ask whose thinking the doctrine expresses. In Mr. Yeltsin's
Russia, the military has been only one institution among
many. Despite the dramatic triumph of the nationalists,
institutional discord is likely to remain the rule rather
than the exception. Who ultimately is making military and
foreign policy decisions, and who will do so in the future?
And will the army actually be given the means to act on its
intentions?
In the nuclear sphere, these intentions are plainly
unsettling. The most striking feature of the new doctrine is
its reversal of the ``no first use'' nuclear policy which had
been in existence since 1982. Given the collapse of the
Warsaw Pact and the first echelon of Soviet military power,
the revocation of this policy is not altogether surprising.
But what is surprising is how far that revocation extends.
In the first place, Russia reserves the right to launch
nuclear strikes in response not only to a conventional attack
but also to a conventional attack carried out by a non-
nuclear state, if that state has an alliance agreement with a
nuclear state. This is a clear reference to Turkey and a
clear warning to Poland and other former Warsaw Pact
countries who see to join NATO.
Second, Russia adopts a most permissive definition of
``attack.'' It encompasses not only Russian Federation
territory, but also C.I.S. allies and Russia's forces abroad,
as well as ``actions to destroy or disrupt'' strategic
nuclear forces, the early warning system, nuclear power and
chemical installations.
Equally unsettling is the document's treatment of local
war, which the new doctrine now labels, ``the main threat to
stability.'' For one thing the focus is still largely on how
local war can escalate into general conflict. In a veiled
reference to NATO, the risk that local conflict ``might be
used as an excuse'' by ``other states'' to launch a general
war is deemed ``considerable.'' For this reason, such
conflicts must be ``localized and suppressed'' as quickly as
possible, the army must be free to operate offensively or
defensively, as it sees fit, and forces must be trained to
fight ``in any scenario where war is unleashed and conducted,
amid the massive use of modern and future weapons.''
The distinctly local aspects of the doctrine have also
raised eyebrows. Suppression of the ``rights, freedoms and
legitimate interests'' of the 25-million-strong Russian
diaspora in the former Soviet Union is defined not as a
security concern but as a military threat to Russia itself.
Russia reserves the right to maintain forces abroad and to
``terminate any unlawful armed violence'' within the C.I.S.
as a whole. Its notion of peacekeeping, in contrast to
Western practice, calls for using force to ``create the
conditions'' for peace, rather than simply to enforce a peace
once it has been reached.
The doctrine seems to give Russia's foreign policy a set of
military teeth, but the question remains of the extent to
which the defense establishment is creating its own foreign
policy. According to Russian foreign ministry sources, the
doctrine, including its political aspects, was drawn up by
the defense ministry and general staff without the
collaboration of any civilian agency. It was then
rubberstamped by the security council at Boris Yeltsin's
insistence.
Antagonism between the defense ministry and the foreign
ministry on the ``near abroad'' issues is no secret. Yet that
antagonism arose more out of a policy vacuum than a policy
difference. From the collapse of the Soviet Union to the end
of 1992, the foreign ministry focused its efforts on the
West. The army, with several hundred thousand troops in
former Soviet republics, quickly found itself making policy
by default. For its part, the foreign ministry lacked the
resources to deal with what, until recently, had been
internal matters. It also lacked the inclination. Most
foreign ministry officials believed that the economic
dependencies of the old Soviet system would pull the former
republics back in orbit around Moscow. Little policy would be
needed; still less, coercion.
The dashing of these hopes has made the foreign ministry
more realistic and has narrowed policy disagreements with the
army. A December 1992 foreign ministry document argues that
Russia must be the ``leader of stability and security on the
entire territory of the former U.S.S.R.,'' and that it should
pursue a ``divide and influence policy,'' using force where
necessary ``to achieve firm good neighborliness.''
Disagreements nonetheless remain. To the authors of the
military doctrine, Western untrustworthiness is axiomatic; to
Russia's diplomats, the West is a partner whose longing for
stability can be used to strengthen Russia's hold over the
near abroad. The army believes that Russia, as a great power,
should not shy away from brandishing swords or using them;
the foreign ministry believes that Russia must achieve its
aims with reference to ``universal principles,'' even if it
does not always abide by them. For all these disagreements,
the army has been the bad cop in a liberal foreign policy. If
military hard-liners did not exist, they would have to be
invented.
Before this month's elections the real foil to the army was
the economic radicals in Mr. Yeltsin's entourage, for the
simple reason that shock therapy would quickly bankrupt most
of Russia's remaining defense enterprises. After the
election, these radicals are seriously weakened. Yet in the
future the military will still be foiled by economic reality.
Shock therapy or not, the army is likely, in Bismarck's
phrase, to be left with ``a big appetite and poor teeth.''
Yet those, like the Balts, who have no teeth at all will
derive little comfort from that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Feinstein). The Senator from
Massachusetts.
Mr. COHEN. I have one additional amendment I can offer at this time
or later.
Mr. KERRY. I ask the Senator, is that the amendment on Germany?
Mr. COHEN. Yes.
Mr. KERRY. Does the Senator want to dispense with this amendment
first?
Mr. COHEN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, let me say to my friend from Maine that I
appreciate his holding off on that. I think it may be that we wind up
having a record vote on it. I am perfectly prepared to accept this
amendment. It ought to be that we would have enough certainty in the
reports that we get or the evaluations that we get that we should not
have to ask for this report. But the Senator, who is an expert in these
affairs, and has served both on the Armed Services Committee and the
Intelligence Committee, understands, as I have come to learn as a
member of the Intelligence Committee and also as a Foreign Relations
Committee member, that that is not true; there is no certainty. For
whatever reasons, we have had a bad history of missing certain
developments and certain trends.
So I think the Senator is wise to ask that we evaluate this very
carefully, particularly in light of the other things that we are being
asked to do with respect to the former Soviet Union, and also
particularly in light of the debate that we have just had and which
will be ongoing about the new form of NATO and the question of the
rapidity of the membership within NATO of the Eastern bloc states.
Clearly, these activities will have a bearing on all of those
questions.
So to have a solid, targeted analysis of what is going on would be
extraordinarily helpful to us. I commend the Senator for suggesting it.
Mr. COHEN. Madam President, I thank my friend from Massachusetts for
his comments. At this time, I would like to defer the question of
whether to have a recorded vote. I understand that the committee is now
faced with a proliferation of recorded votes which may take a good deal
of time tomorrow. It may be that I will simply allow it to pass on a
voice vote.
The purpose, of course, in asking for a recorded vote would be to
draw as much attention as possible to the significance of what is
taking place in the former Soviet Union. I think too much of the
Russian military's activities have been either ignored or downplayed in
order to serve our own political ends, and yet as we look to that part
of the world, it is very disturbing.
We are seeing on the political front at least a succession of
moderates who are resigning from office who see and detect a very
substantial reactionary drift. The voices of the extremists are
becoming louder. Those of the moderates tend to be drowning out. In
conjunction with that, we are seeing the military engage in what I call
the protectionist racket by bringing governments nearly to the point of
collapse and then offering protection provided they agree to join the
Commonwealth of Independent States, which is now under the control of
the Russian military.
So you see a spread of the influence of the Russian military, and we
may very well see simply a replacement of the Russian flag over states
that formerly had the banner and the flag of the U.S.S.R. flying above
them.
So the purpose of requesting a recorded vote would be to highlight
the importance that we place on following and tracking and perhaps even
having some influence, at least politically, with the direction that
the Russian military seems to be going.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, the Senator is correct. If you look at
events in Georgia and the terrible Hobson's choice that President
Shevardnadze and the people now face with respect to the presence of
the army, and you also look at Azerbaijan and Armenia, what has been
happening there, the trends are certainly worthy of significant
questions, if not deemed disturbing. So, as I say, we are happy to
proceed. I appreciate the forbearance on the issue of the vote. It may
be that we will not have as many votes backed up, but I think it would
be unfortunate if we had a series of 100 to zero votes and then had a
series of very contentious ones. So I appreciate the Senator's
forbearance.
amendment no. 1318
(Purpose: To encourage Germany to assume full and active participation
in international peacekeeping activities, and for other purposes)
Mr. COHEN. Let me say to my friend that I have another amendment, on
which I will ask for a recorded vote, which I now send to the desk and
ask for its immediate consideration.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the prior
amendment of the Senator from Maine be temporarily set aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen] proposes an amendment
numbered 1318.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the
amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 179, after line 6, add the following:
SEC. . POLICY REGARDING GERMAN PARTICIPATION IN
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS.
(a) Findings.-- The Congress finds that--
(1) for more than four decades following the Second World
War, Germany was a divided nation;
(2) notwithstanding the creation of the Federal Republic of
Germany on September 7, 1949, and the German Democratic
Republic on October 7, 1949, the Four Allied Powers retained
rights and responsibilities for Germany as a whole;
(3) the Federal Republic of Germany acceded to the United
Nations Charter without reservation, ``accept[ing] the
obligations contained in the Charter . . . and solemnly
undertak[ing] to carry them out'', and was admitted as a
member of the United Nations on September 26, 1973;
(4) the Federal Republic of Germany's admission to the
United Nations did not alter Germany's division nor infringe
upon the rights and responsibilities of the Four Allied
Powers for Germany as a whole;
(5) these circumstances created impediments to the Federal
Republic of Germany fulfilling all obligations undertaken
upon its accession to the United Nations Charter;
(6) Germany was unified within the Federal Republic of
Germany on October 3, 1990;
(7) with the entry into force of the Final Settlement With
Respect to Germany on March 4, 1991, the unified Germany
assumed its place in the community of nations as a fully
sovereign national state;
(8) German unification and attainment of full sovereignty
and the Federal Republic's history of more than four decades
of democracy have removed impediments that have prevented its
full participation in international efforts to maintain or
restore international peace and security;
(9) international peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace-
enforcing operations are becoming increasingly important for
the maintenance and restoration of international peace and
security;
(10) United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
has called for the ``full participation of Germany in
peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace-enforcing measures'';
(11) the North Atlantic Council, meeting in ministerial
session on June 4, 1992, and December 17, 1992, stated the
preparedness of the North Atlantic Alliance to ``support, on
a case-by-case basis in accordance with our own procedures,
peacekeeping activities under the responsibility of the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe'' and
``peacekeeping operations under the authority of the United
Nations Security Council'';
(12) the Federal Republic of Germany participated in these
North Atlantic Council meetings and fully associated itself
with the resulting communiques;
(13) the Western European Union (WEU) Ministerial Council,
in the Petersberg Declaration adopted June 19, 1992, declared
that ``As the WEU develops its operational capabilities in
accordance with the Maastricht Declaration, we are prepared
to support, on a case-by-case basis and in accordance with
our own procedures, the effective implementation of conflict-
prevention and crisis-management measures, including
peacekeeping activities of the CSCE or the United Nations
Security Council'';
(14) the Federal Republic of Germany presided over this
Western European Union Ministerial Council meeting and fully
associated itself with the Petersberg Declaration;
(15) the Federal Republic of Germany, by virtue of its
political, economic, and military status and potential, will
play an important role in determining the success or failure
of future international efforts to maintain to restore
international peace and security;
(16) Germany is currently engaged in a debate on the proper
role for the German military in the international community
and, in this regard, on how to amend the provisions of the
Federal Republic's Basic Law that govern German military
activities;
(17) one important element in the German debate is the
attitude of the international community toward full German
participation in international peacekeeping, peacemaking, and
peace-enforcing operations;
(18) it is, therefore, appropriate for the United States,
as a member of the international community and as a permanent
member of the United Nations Security Council, to express it
position on the question of such German participation; and
(19) distinctions between peacekeeping, peacemaking, and
peace-enforcing measures are becoming burred, making absolute
separation of such measures difficult, if not impossible.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of the Congress
that--
(1) an appropriate response under current circumstances to
Germany's past would be for Germany to participate fully in
international efforts to maintain or restore international
peace and security; and
(2) the President should strongly encourage Germany, in
light of its increasing political and economic influence, its
successful integration into international institutions, and
its commitment to peace and democratic ideals, to assume full
and active participation in international peacekeeping,
peacemaking, and peace-enforcing operations and to take the
necessary measures with regard to its constitutional law and
policy and its military capabilities so as to enable the full
and active participation of Germany in such operations.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, if my colleague will withhold, I would
ask unanimous consent that with respect to the amendment the Senator
from Maine just set aside, no second-degree amendments be in order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Chair hears none, and
that is the order.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, in 5 weeks, about the time that this bill
is signed into law, the people of Germany will celebrate one of the
most important dates in German history.
March 4 will mark the third anniversary of the entry into force of
the Two-Plus-Four Agreement under which the four allied powers of World
War II gave up their special rights and responsibilities and Germany
returned to the world stage as a sovereign, full fledged member of the
family of nations.
Within months of regaining the reins of its destiny, Germany began
exercising previously unimaginable international political leadership,
as it cajoled and pressured its European Community partners and
eventually the United States into recognizing Solvenia and Coratia.
Some called it muscle-flexing. Others viewed it as a natural, if
somewhat undiplomatic, testing of the newfound possibilities afforded
by Germany's new status and abetted by German officials still heady
from unification.
Unfortunately, many Germans have not been as quick to recognize that
rights are accompanied by responsibilities--and that Germany's new
situation and status brings with it not only new opportunities but new
obligations, as well.
Principal among these is the need for Germany to join with other
nations in efforts to maintain and, if necessary, restore international
peace and security.
When the Federal Republic joined the United Nations 20 years ago, it
did so without reservation. The Federal Republic's deed of accession to
the United Nations states that it ``accepts the obligations contained
in the charter of the United Nations and solemnly undertakes to carry
them out.'' Yet, while it has contributed to U.N. peacekeeping efforts
financially and occasionally with military personnel for humanitarian
functions, the Federal Republic declared itself unable to fully
participate notwithstanding its obligations and its economic and
military resources.
Similarly, while the Federal Republic has been a faithful ally within
NATO for nearly four decades, it is hesitating now that NATO is
extending its operations eastward in accord with its new mission to
support international peacekeeping.
The same is true with regard to the Western European Union, which has
also declared its intent to support international peacekeeping
operations--ironically at a meeting at which Germany presided.
This hesitation was understandable so long as Germany was a divided
nation, lacking full sovereignty and, in the first decades after the
war, still coming to grips with the Nazi era. But Germany's situation
and status have changed, removing these impediments to the Federal
Republic's full and active participation in international military
operations.
To their credit, Chancellor Kohl, Defense Minister Ruehe, and other
prominent political figures in Germany have worked to enable the
Federal Republic to meet these responsibilities. The Chancellor,
supported by most German legal scholars, argues that the Basic Law, the
Federal Republic's constitution, permits the Bundeswehr to participate
in international military operations to a much greater extent than it
has in the past. In an effort to move Germany toward fulfillment of its
international responsibilities, he and Defense Minister Ruehe have
sought to further define the Federal Republic's constitutional policy
through both public debate and praxis. I will give you some notable
examples:
German destroyers have helped to monitor the United Nations embargo
on the former Yugoslavia, although German vessels are not engaged in
interdiction;
Some 1,600 German military personnel are in Somalia, where the UNITAF
rules of engagement exceed those of past United Nations peacekeeping
operations; and
German military personnel helped to operate NATO AWACS planes during
the gulf war and, at the insistence of the Defense Minister, have been
helping to operate NATO AWACS in enforcing the Bosnian no-fly zone.
To go beyond this marginal progress, the Chancellor has proposed a
constitutional amendment to build the political consensus needed for
full German participation in efforts to maintain and restore
international peace and security.
While these efforts by the German Government are to be commended, I
find it quite disturbing that some Germans, particularly in the
political opposition, are arguing that even if the Basic Law is
amended, Germany will for reasons of history not be able to participate
fully in international military operations.
Some have even argued that German troops cannot be sent anywhere that
was overrun or occupied by German forces during the Second World War--
an area that extends from the Atlantic to the Caucasus, from the
Maghreb to the Barents Sea--an area, moreover, which includes many of
the regions now undergoing or expected to undergo communal, ethnic, and
religious conflict. Such an effort to circumscribe Germany's
international role would essentially nullify the constitutional
amendment now under consideration.
Mr. President, Germany cannot hide from history, but neither can it
hide behind history.
We cannot accept the argument that the events of history forever bind
nations and their leaders. One of the principal reasons war has
returned to the Balkans is that leaders there insist upon dredging up
old grievances to justify digging fresh graves.
Germany--whose citizens have forthrightly grappled with the
aggression and atrocities of the Nazi era, built a solidly democratic
state, and securely anchored Germany in international institutions--
should not now invoke the past to avoid the responsibility to build a
better future.
Having worked so diligently to overcome their history, Germans cannot
now seek refuge in it nor opportunistically stoke fears abroad of
German interventionism.
Claims by some in Germany that the world community does not want
Germany to fulfill its obligations in the security sphere
mischaracterize international opinions in an effort to manipulate the
German constitutional debate, and we have an obligation to set the
record straight.
U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Ghali has clearly and forcefully
stated that the United Nations ``needs the full participation of
Germany in peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace-enforcing measures.''
The purpose of this amendment is to bolster the Secretary General's
clarion call by putting the Senate on record as favoring the full and
active participation of Germany in such operations. To the extent that
the German constitutional debate is based on international opinion, it
is critical that our views be clearly understood.
Mr. President, I would like to emphasize that this is not just a
question of obligations and burden sharing, although these are not to
be discounted. The end of the cold war and the collapse of communism
are unleashing powerful forces that, despite our best efforts to manage
them, have led and will continue to lead to conflicts in Europe and
elsewhere. Given its political, economic, and military status and
potential, Germany will play an important role in determining the
success or failure of international efforts to deal with these
conflicts.
Full German participation in these efforts is not only right, it is
absolutely needed, as the Secretary General has stated.
To the extent that Germany any longer needs to atone for the evils of
an earlier generation, an appropriate way to do so in today's world
would be to join with other nations in combating threats to
international peace and stability.
The German people must be commended for dealing forthrightly with the
evils of the Nazi era, for building a democratic state, and for
integrating Germany into an international institution designed to
strengthen democracy and international security.
I believe an appropriate response to Germany's past would be for it
to fully participate in international efforts to restore or maintain
international peace and stability. My amendment would call on the
President to encourage Germany to take the necessary measures with
regard to its constitutional law and policy and military capabilities
to enable it to participate fully in these international military
operations.
I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
As I indicated, Madam President, at the appropriate time I am going
to ask for a recorded vote on this for another reason. William Perry
will be coming before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week for
his confirmation hearings. I hope the Senate will move rather quickly
to confirm Mr. Perry.
Mr. Perry is also planning to attend an important conference to be
held in Munich beginning this Friday. I am told he will propose a major
policy statement at that important conference that is held annually. It
is important because it annually brings together all of the senior NATO
officials, and the defense ministers and some foreign ministers from
the NATO countries. Also attending will be many officials from the
Eastern European countries that are seeking membership in NATO.
The Russian defense minister has been invited. But because of the
instability that is currently taking place in that country, we do not
know if he is going to be attending the conference, although he did
have plans to address the conference.
So it is going to be a very important conference at which William
Perry will make an important policy statement.
This amendment, supported overwhelmingly by the United States Senate,
will, I think, add to the importance of what Mr. Perry will say at that
conference. It will also send a very strong signal to the German people
that as far as we are concerned, and we are part of world opinion, we
want Germany to assume full responsibility as a member of NATO and the
United Nations, and not simply hide behind its historical past and say
we really cannot be engaged in any area that we occupied during World
War II.
So for that reason, tomorrow I will be asking for a recorded vote.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, the views expressed by the Senator from
Maine I think are probably shared by the vast majority of the Members
of the Senate. There is no question in my mind that in a world that is
increasingly having to deal with issues of peacemaking and
peacekeeping, and as we increasingly try to find a more refined method
for the United Nations to be able to adequately represent our interests
and guide those efforts, you cannot have major economic powers, leading
economic powers of the world, and major powers in terms of technology
and military capacity, totally out of the mix. It is incomprehensible
if you are really going to make the United Nations the kind of entity
it ought to be.
The only question I would ask my colleague is: The Senate passed last
Friday, I believe, an amendment of the Senator from Delaware with
respect to Germany's membership within the Security Council of the
United Nations, and Japan's. And as a component of the conditions for
that membership we expressed our view that Germany must be able to
carry out the full responsibilities of membership, including
peacemaking and peacekeeping.
I would simply ask my colleague if he does not believe that amendment
does not adequately say to Germany, we are not only permissive as to
Germany's role within peacekeeping and peacemaking we are actually
encouraging, we are advocates of their assuming this role. I think that
position of advocacy was well stated. Again, maybe the Senator wants to
go further with specificity.
Mr. COHEN. Madam President, I would point out that whether or not
Germany becomes a permanent member of the Security Council my amendment
would apply. My concern is and has been for the past year with the
political debate that has been taking place in Germany in which some
have sought to exploit, if not create, fears about Germany becoming an
active participant in military peacekeeping-peacemaking operations. I
found it to be unacceptable from my perspective that we would allow a
nation as strong militarily and financially to simply pass that
responsibility to other members.
So I believe that having the Senate going on record specifically on
the need for Germany to fulfill its responsibilities will add to
Secretary-designate Perry's statement when he appears before this NATO
conference this weekend.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I know the Senator from Maine cannot
fault me for trying as manager of the bill to reduce the total number
of votes. But I cannot disagree with his judgment. If it is all right
with the Senator from Maine--I do not know if the Senator from North
Carolina wishes to address this amendment--if he does not, if it is all
right with the Senator from Maine to at least temporarily set this
aside and I guarantee him that at the appropriate time pending the only
question is whether another Senator wishes to address this issue we
will set this up for a vote as agreed upon.
Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair.
I say to the Senator from Maine that both of the amendments of the
Senator from Maine are acceptable on this side. I do not blame him for
wanting a rollcall vote on both of them. I commend him for offering
each of them.
I join Senator Kerry in suggesting that we lay both of these
amendments aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
Amendment No. 1319
(Purpose: To prohibit assistance to countries expropriating
United States citizens property)
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask
for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Helms] proposes an
amendment numbered 1319.
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 179, after line 6, insert the following:
SEC. 714. PROHIBITION ON ASSISTANCE TO COUNTRIES
EXPROPRIATING UNITED STATES PROPERTY.
(a) Prohibition.--None of the funds made available to carry
out the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended, the Arms
Export Control Act, or the Support for East European
Democracy Act may be provided to a country (other than a
country described in subsection (c) whose government (or any
agency or instrument thereof)--
(1) has before, on, or after the date of enactment of this
Act--
(A) nationalized or expropriated the property of any United
States person, or
(C) taken any other action (such as the imposition of
discriminatory taxes or other exactions) which has the effect
of seizing ownership or control of the property of any United
States person, and
(2) has not, within a period of 3 years (or where
applicable, the period described in subsection (b), returned
the property or provided adequate and effective compensation
for such property in convertible foreign exchange equivalent
to the full value thereof, as required by international law.
(3) the President may waive the prohibition in section (a)
if he determines and so notifies Congress that it is in the
national interest to do so. Such determination must be made
on a country by country basis every 180 days.
(b) Extended Period for Compensation in the Case of Newly
Elected Democratic Governments.--In the case of a
democratically elected foreign government that had been a
totalitarian or authoritarian government at the time of the
action described in subsection (a)(1), the 3-year period
described in subsection (a)(2) shall be deemed to have begun
as of the date of the installation of the democratically
elected government.
(c) Excepted Countries and Territories.--This section shall
not apply to any country established by international mandate
through the United Nations or to any territory recognized by
the United States Government to be in dispute.
(d) Reporting Requirement.--Not later than 90 days after
enactment of this Act, and every 180 days thereafter, the
Secretary of State shall transmit to the Speaker of the House
of Representatives and to the Committee on Foreign Relations
of the Senate, a report containing the following:
(1) A list of all countries in which a United States person
has an outstanding expropriations claim.
(2) The total number of outstanding expropriation claims
made by United States persons against any foreign country.
(3) The period of time in which each claim has been
outstanding.
(4) All efforts made on a case by case basis by the United
States government, any international organization, and the
country in which the expropriation claim has been made, to
return the property or provide adequate and effective
compensation for such property.
(e) Definition.--For purposes of this section, the term
``United States person'' means a United States citizen or
corporation, partnership, or association at least 50 percent
beneficially owned by United States citizens.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I just ask my colleagues' indulgence for
a moment, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I again thank the Chair.
Madam President, this amendment is almost identical to a Helms
amendment adopted by the Senate 92 to 4 back on September 23 of last
year. It involves the confiscation of American property overseas, which
I consider to be an outrageous set of circumstances. This amendment's
language is the exact language, as I say, as that adopted last year
with an additional requirement that the State Department report to
Congress on the status of these outstanding claims.
The State Department has sat on its hands year after year on this
question. Frankly, I am sick and tired of it. I want Congress to know
what if anything the State Department is doing when this amendment
becomes law.
Despite the efforts of Senators McConnell and Leahy, the House
refused to accept the provision adopted by the Senate last year. It was
in the foreign aid appropriations conference and the House typically
did not go along with it.
Since this provision was dropped, the Senate is obliged to address
this issue again.
I intend to be a conferee on this bill this time. I say that we will
work to ensure the inclusion of this amendment in the final conference
report on the State Department authorization bill.
For the record, let me outline the impact of the pending amendment.
It is very simple. It would cut off U.S. foreign aid money, furnished
by the American taxpayers, to any country whose government has
confiscated the property of U.S. citizens and has not returned that
property or fairly compensated the legitimate owner within a period of
3 years.
I realize that every country is going to argue that it has a right to
confiscate property for national interest reasons. But they also have
the obligation to compensate the original owner. Far too often, in too
many countries, the property rights of U.S. citizens are being violated
willy-nilly.
For years, Madam President, I have been besieged with letters from
American citizens in various countries who have had their homes or
their businesses or both confiscated around the world. Every letter
tells a similar story. When attempting to reclaim their property, they
find a deaf ear and a closed door at the U.S. Embassy. The State
Department is just not interested in helping American citizens who are
being mistreated by foreign countries. Worse, many American citizens
have told me that the U.S. Embassy plays the role of the host
government's foreign ministry. That is not an exaggeration. I have run
into it. I have checked into it, and it is the absolute truth. The
State Department aides, in fact, side with the foreign government and
not with the American taxpayers. I want to build a fire down in Foggy
Bottom. I felt this way in the previous administration, and I certainly
feel this way now. It is a perfect outrage.
Let us go back a little bit in time. Last year, along about this
time, Secretary Christopher stated at his confirmation hearing before
the Foreign Relations Committee, of which I am ranking member, that he,
Mr. Christopher, intended to have an ``American desk'' at the U.S.
State Department if, as, and when he became Secretary of State. Well,
that is a phrase he borrowed from former Senator Herman Talmadge of
Georgia. I do not know how many times I heard him on the Senate floor
say, ``What we need is an American desk down at the State Department.''
He said, ``We have a European desk, a Latin American desk, an Asian
desk, but we ain't got no American desk.'' He was right.
I applauded what Mr. Christopher said when he was bidding to become
U.S. Secretary of State. Well, I wish that he had followed up on his
pledge. But if progress on these property claims is any guide, I see no
evidence of an ``American desk'' down at Foggy Bottom today.
To put it another way, it is high time that the State Department
started putting American interests first. We do not have an embassy in
Nicaragua to kowtow to that government. We have an embassy there to
look after American interests there. We do not send ambassadors around
the world to sip tea and drink cocktails. We send them there to look
after the American people and the interests of this country in general.
I imagine that some Senators might ask which countries will be
affected by this amendment. Will it hurt a country that we like? I hope
I do not hear that, because my answer might be a little sharper than I
would want to make it, because I do not give a damn which country will
be affected. I care about protecting the rights of the American
citizens.
Some may remember that this issue first came to light with the
Hickenlooper amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act in the year 1962.
That law, while highlighting the problem of the expropriation of
American citizens' property, has been all but ignored by the executive
branch. And this is a bipartisan folly. I am not pointing fingers
simply at the present occupants of the White House. I am saying that it
has been almost a custom, a bipartisan folly, as I say, of both
administrations.
The executive branch, due to the overly broad language of the
Hickenlooper amendment, has chosen to ignore the intent of the
Hickenlooper amendment. Amendments over the years have weakened the
original amendment to some extent, because since 1962, more than 30
years ago, Presidents have exercised the Hickenlooper amendment only
two times. Meanwhile, thousands of innocent Americans have had their
property unfairly taken from them. With the language of this pending
amendment, Madam President, it will be perfectly clear to all that
foreign governments will, one, have to return expropriated properties
or compensate the owners, or, two, lose their foreign aid, which the
American taxpayers are sick and tired of furnishing anyhow. The ball
will be in the court of the foreign governments who are just now
``thumbing their nose'' at the American citizens and the United States
of America.
Now, as I said earlier, a similar amendment that I offered a few
months ago--5 or 6 months ago--was approved by the Senate 92-4. This
amendment is only slightly different in that it requires the President
to report to Congress as to the number of outstanding property claims
covered by this amendment.
Madam President, I asked the State Department last year for a list of
all the confiscation claims by American citizens in this hemisphere. I
was told in a hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee that a review
of this issue was underway, and that all U.S. Embassies would be
reporting on outstanding claims in each country. To this day, almost 1
year later, I have received no report on this matter. I have concluded
that officials at the State Department simply do not care--they do not
want to risk hurting the feelings of a foreign government. For that
reason I have added a provision to this amendment which requires the
State Department to report to Congress every 6 months on the countries
in which American citizens have outstanding claims.
My office is currently working on the expropriation claims of
hundreds of American citizens in many countries. My staff is aware of
more than 1,200 claims in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras alone. I
have done everything in my power to resolve these cases, but the State
Department almost always jumps to the defense of the foreign
government. And I cannot make progress on these cases unless pressure
is brought to bear on the offending government by the State Department.
The most direct pressure we have is U.S. foreign aid.
Let me respond to the question about how this amendment might affect
Russia. First of all, I would say that if any Senator is aware of
outstanding expropriation claims Americans have in Russia, I would be
very interested to know. They must have access to high-placed friends
at the State Department because I have asked State repeatedly for the
number of outstanding American claims worldwide--not just in Russia.
But State has refused to provide that information and that is why this
amendment requires the State Department to report on how many
outstanding claims Americans have in Russia and everywhere else.
This amendment does not cut off aid to Russia. It does not cut off
aid to any Republic of the Former Soviet Union. Under my amendment,
each of these countries has 3 years from the date its first
democratically elected government took office since emerging from
totalitarianism to settle outstanding claims.
Russia, for example, still has plenty of time to settle up with
Americans who have had their property unfairly stolen. Since Boris
Yeltsin was elected president in June 1991, Russia has time to settle
outstanding claims. This amendment simply lets these governments know
that the clock is ticking. It makes sure Russia and other countries
make this issue a priority and compensate Americans fairly--and
promptly.
Now, the Communists seized power in Russia in 1917. That was a long
time ago. After that, Lenin and his cronies quickly--and brutally, I
will add--confiscated all private property. I have no idea if Americans
lost property during that time, but if they did, I think after 75 years
these Americans sure as heck deserve compensation for it.
This year alone, Russia and the other former Soviet Republics will
receive about $2.5 billion from United States taxpayers. That's no
small change. And it's coming straight out of the pockets of hard
working Americans. If these countries don't want to make property
claims a priority, then they don't deserve our money.
Furthermore, those who are worried about the implications of cutting
off aid to a certain country should consider what happens when these
countries have no respect for private property rights. Governments
which do not respect property rights do not gain foreign investment--
thus, no amount of money from the U.S. Treasury will buy those
countries economic stability. As Andrew Carnegie said, ``Upon the
sacredness of property civilization itself depends--the right of the
laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the
legal right of the millionaire to his millions.''
Madam President, we were each elected to the United States Senate to
defend and protect American citizens. Unfortunately, many who are
serving at American Embassies around the world are suffering a severe
case of what I call clientitis, backing foreign governments instead of
American citizens. That is just plain wrong.
If this amendment is passed into law, the State Department will no
longer be able to make excuses for foreign governments as to why those
governments have not settled thousands of property claims by United
States citizens. It will be perfectly clear to all those receiving U.S.
foreign aid that there will be no more aid until all American claims
are settled.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, we are prepared to accept this amendment.
As the Senator said, it was voted on previously in the Senate and
passed overwhelmingly. That should not indicate, however, that there
are not in the language as it is currently framed certain problems that
can arise in terms of the certitude of the conditions under which a
country is going to automatically lose its entire foreign assistance
program if just one American's property is affected or if one contract
is broken or nullified. There might be significant, legitimate
questions between countries as to why a particular contract is at
issue. Those are definitional problems and those are more practical
problems.
I want the Senator to understand that I share completely with him the
notion that American interests have to be put out there in a
significant way. There is no advocate in the Senate who is more dogged
or adamant in his placing of those American interests first, and I know
this amendment is well intended and intended to assert those interests.
I know of some of the instances the Senator refers to, where we have
people who some time ago lost property in countries, and now we are
giving those countries assistance in one form or another, and these
people are desperately struggling within the eternal processes of those
countries with a thousand different wheels spinning in different
directions trying to get their property back or some compensation for
it.
So we need to make it clear that we have an expectation that American
citizens' legitimate claims are responded to. The trick is balancing
this desire in a way that does not become draconian in its
implementation. So you wind up cutting off assistance in a case where
you do not really want to, for some claim that says you ought to, but
in point of fact there are serious questions about the claim itself.
I think the Senator has tried to take care of that in a waiver that
he has allowed and, in the fact, that the President can explain the
circumstances which permit us to continue the aid.
I really wanted to cite those kinds of tensions so that the Record is
clear as to how we come at this. But nevertheless I think that the
overall intent of the Senator is sound, and it is certainly a priority
that we ought to be putting front and center in our dealings with these
countries.
So we are prepared, with those understandings, to accept this
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment of
the Senator from North Carolina?
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I have sent for some examples of the
absurd things that are going on. I had not intended to burden the
Record with those, but just to indicate that there is nothing frivolous
about this amendment. There is not the slightest intent that it be
implemented without good reason. I want to give some examples of what
has been going on, and the State Department has not lifted a finger to
correct it.
Apparently, I am going to have to look in my records because one
country seized the property of an American citizen and it is now being
occupied by the Cuban Embassy. You know that is just absolutely absurd.
But I will put those in the Record at a later time.
As to confiscations that we know of in Latin America alone, there are
50 in Honduras; there are 17 in Costa Rica; there are 790 people with
1,200 pieces of property in Nicaragua; two in Panama; two in Venezuela;
one in Argentina, and so forth and so on.
But I am not going to await the delivery to me of the information
that I frankly did not ask my staff to get up for me, but we will get
it up and we will insert it in the Record later on.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, let me just say to my friend that I hope
he did not interpret my remarks in any way as somehow indicating other
than seriousness of it because, as I said in the remarks, I have worked
with him and I am well aware of some of these egregious situations, and
I think it would be healthy if the Record reflected it.
Madam President, the point is well taken. The language does say that
all of the aid would be cut off if the nationalized or expropriated
property of any United States person--you can wind up with one
situation. I think you want to be careful to balance it. I know the
Senator does not intend for an absurd situation to be put in place. I
think he intended for us to eliminate the absurdity.
Mr. HELMS. I thank the Senator. None of us favor unreasonable
implementation of anything.
Having said what I have said in criticism of this sort of thing that
has been going on, let me say in my 21 years in the Senate, I have
hundreds of examples of where U.S. Embassies in Europe and other places
in the world have gone out of their way to be helpful to U.S. citizens.
So there are two different sides to the story, but most of what I am
talking about has happened in Latin America.
I thank the Senator and I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator
from North Carolina?
So the amendment (No. 1319) was agreed to.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. KERRY. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendment No. 1320
(Purpose: To maintain the current number of Assistant Secretaries of
State and State Department officials compensated at level IV of the
Executive Schedule)
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I send an unprinted amendment to the desk
and ask that it be stated.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is
laid aside.
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Helms] proposes an
amendment numbered 1320.
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 32, line 19, strike out ``20'' and insert in lieu
thereof ``18''.
Beginning on page 32, strike out line 21 and all that
follows through line 3 on page 33.
On page 33, line 4, strike out ``(c)'' and insert in lieu
thereof ``(b)''.
On page 34, line 19, strike out ``(20)'' and insert in lieu
thereof ``(18)''.
On page 34, line 22, strike out ``(d)'' and insert in lieu
thereof ``(c)''.
On page 35, line 5, strike out ``(e)'' and insert in lieu
thereof ``(d)''.
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, I understand that the pulse rate of the
other side begins to quicken when I call up this amendment. I hope they
will see the light, because I am perfectly willing to accept this one
on a voice vote. But if there is not that willingness, I am going to
insist on a rollcall vote.
All I want to do is put a hold on the current size of the bureaucracy
at the U.S. State Department. My amendment deals specifically with the
number of Assistant Secretary positions.
Let me go down the list and see how other Cabinet officers or
Departments handle their affairs, in terms of Assistant Secretaries.
Let us see how many employees each Assistant Secretary is responsible
for.
At the Commerce Department, each Assistant Secretary is responsible
for 6,372 employees; at the State Department, each Assistant Secretary
is responsible for 702 employees; at the Defense Department, each
Assistant Secretary has responsibility for 34,141 subordinates; at the
State Department Assistant Secretaries are responsible for 702.
At the Justice Department, each Assistant Secretary, or equivalent,
is responsible for 4,660 employees; and I repeat the State Department,
702 employees.
The Treasury Department, each Assistant Secretary is responsible for
25,247 employees; and I repeat that the State Department, each
Assistant Secretary is responsible for 702.
I ask unanimous consent that this table be printed in the Record at
the conclusion of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Mathews). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
(See Exhibit 1.)
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the amendment now pending is not punitive.
It simply authorizes the Secretary of State to operate with the same
number of Assistant Secretaries and equivalent paid positions as Mr.
Christopher had when he was first appointed Secretary of State. I might
add, Secretary Christopher is operating with two additional Assistant
Secretaries, two more Assistant Secretaries than he had during his last
tour of duty with the Carter administration.
When Warren Christoper and his Deputy Secretary appeared before our
committee for their confirmations about 12 months ago, they promised--
and this is a matter of record--they promised to dedicate themselves to
the implementation of what they called a ``broad-based reorganization.
* * * which would reduce excessive layering'' of bureaucrats
``within''--I inserted the word ``bureaucrats''--``layering within the
State Department and streamline the bureaucracy.'' The President,
himself, proclaimed last February that ``it was time to shift from top-
down bureaucracy to entrepreneurial government that generates changes
from the bottom up.'' To even my surprise, I found myself falling in
step with this kind of talk. I was, of course, disappointed as the
months passed and we pulled off pages of the calendar and we found
that, after all, it was just plain rhetoric.
But a year ago I told Secretary Christopher if he was serious about
streamlining to count me in. The price was that I would hold him to his
promise. That is what I am doing here right now.
So, here we go with another full load of rhetoric for the past year.
When the State Department transmitted its official request for
authorization to our committee, the broad-based reorganization sure was
broad based, broad at the top, broad at the sides, and broad in the
middle. That is the way the bureaucracy has always been. The
proliferation of bureaucrats, and especially top level positions at
State, was astounding to anyone who was keeping an eye on it.
Let me quote President Clinton's statement, found in the National
Performance Review, page 23. He said:
First, we must cut the waste and make government operations
more responsive to the American people.
Anybody who did not say amen to that rhetoric was just off the wall.
Of course all of us agreed to that.
Then the President continued:
It is time to shift from top-down bureaucracy to
entrepreneurial government that generates change from the
bottom up.
But, as I have indicated just a moment ago, this same administration
that wanted to shift from top-down bureaucracy requested a 33-percent
increase in bureaucrats, specifically the Assistant Secretary-titled
positions at the topmost layers of the State Department bureaucracy.
This ballooning, in the overall spectrum, may not make a lot of
difference when you are talking about a $4.4 trillion Federal debt and
all of that. But if you are not exercising good stewardship with
smaller things, then you end up with that kind of debt and you end up
with that kind of annual deficit. That is what is wrong with this
Government today. The State Department almost alone in the bureaucracy
has insisted on having more striped pants guys strolling up and down
the corridors of the State Department. This ballooning translated into
an additional 6 Assistant Secretary titles, all of whom would be
politically appointed positions.
The State Department also requested an additional 5 positions to be
compensated at the executive level IV rate, and that costs, salary-
wise, about $115,000 a year a person, not to mention the additional
salaries for the new staff and all the accompanying administrative
expenses.
Again, I acknowledge that in the overall spectrum what I am talking
about is not much money. But it is the principle of the thing. The
State Department's request would have cost the American taxpayers
another $1.3 million in new salaries alone, not to mention the
additional duplicative administrative support expenses and additional
staff positions associated with setting up all of these new bureaucrats
in office.
Let me give an example. When the South Asia Bureau was created by the
State Department a couple of years ago, the State Department study
estimated that each new bureau with management and administrative
personnel and staff and equipment, space and supplies, et cetera, et
cetera, would cost the taxpayer at the minimum $2 million more each
year.
That mushrooming effect is certainly apparent now.
The distinguished Democratic Senators on our committee had a
difficult time supporting their own administration on this one back in
July. The Foreign Relations Committee rejected the bloated
administration request but unfortunately passed a provision giving the
administration two more Assistant Secretary titles and two more paid
positions than they now have.
If I understood the President and the Vice President and the
Secretary of State correctly over the past 12 months, and I think I
have understood, they have said over and over and over, this is not the
time for more bureaucracy. They have said one way or another at one
time or another--all of them--that this is the time for belt tightening
and streamlining, and certainly I agree with that.
Again, let me read from the National Performance Review, page 83,
where President Clinton was quoted as saying:
In short, it's time our Government adjusted to the real
world, tightened its belt, managed its affairs.
Our committee withstood a 17-percent decrease in funding in staffing
support in the last 12 months. The pending amendment does not require
that the State Department take any sort of staffing decrease. This
amendment is fair and reasonable. I know we are going to hear arguments
against it, but I do not think they will withstand close examination.
This amendment gives the State Department precisely what they are
working with at the present time. We do not cut anybody. We do not
eliminate any jobs. I would like to, but I know the facts of life. But
we are not increasing it. We do not propose to increase. We are going
to let them stay with the bureaucrats they now have.
Let me tell you, Mr. President, I have looked over the personnel
graphs of the high-level executives in other Federal agencies. At
present, as I said at the outset, there is already one Assistant
Secretary for every 700 or so State Department employees. When you
compare that to one Assistant Secretary for every 34,000 employees at
the Department of Defense and one Assistant Secretary for every 25,000
employees at Treasury, it is strikingly obvious that the State
Department ought to quit while they are winning and stop pushing for
more and bigger bureaucracy.
Let me be clear about this. This amendment does not affect any sort
of congressionally mandated Assistant Secretaries. It does not direct
the Secretary of State to create or maintain or abolish or modify any
existing Assistant Secretary position. It does not cut into the State
Department's current management structure, and it does not eliminate
any existing political appointee positions. Instead, this amendment
holds the State Department to the promises of its own administration
during these austere economic times.
Exhibit 1
EXECUTIVE PAY PLANS BY LEVEL--FEDERAL AGENCIES
[Executive Level IV=Assistant Secretary/AS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of positions
by level
---------------------- Total AS:Employee
II III employees ratio
I IV V
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agriculture.............. .. 1 ... ... 6 125,765 ,
Commerce................. .. 1 ... 6 1 38,232 1:6,371
Defense.................. 1 5 2 27 2 921,817 1:34,141
Justice.................. 1 2 3 21 13 97,878 1:4,660
Labor.................... 1 1 ... 12 2 17,299 1:1,441
Energy................... 1 1 1 16 .. 20,681 1:1,292
Education................ 1 1 ... 10 6 5,095 1:509
HHS...................... 1 1 ... 14 1 129,144 1:9,224
HUD...................... 1 1 ... 11 .. 13,389 1:1,217
Interior................. 1 1 ... 9 9 80,894 1:8,988
State.................... 1 2 5 24 .. 16,885 1:702
Transport................ 1 3 4 7 1 69,971 1:9,995
Treasury................. 1 3 4 7 1 176,729 1:25,247
Veterans................. 1 1 2 10 .. 268,943 1:26,894
SecDef................... 1 2 2 16 1 , ...........
Air Force................ .. 1 ... ... .. 196,009 ...........
Army..................... .. 1 ... 6 1 306,914 ...........
Navy..................... .. 1 ... 5 .. 285,600 ...........
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source:
A. U.S. Office of Personnel Management and ``Policy and Supporting
Positions'', Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate,
November 10, 1992.
B. Office of Personnel Management, March 1993.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, since I understand that there will be no
inclination on the part of the other side to accept this amendment, I
ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a
sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. HELMS. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, my friend from North Carolina has indeed
accurately read the mood. There will need to be a vote on this.
I would like to ask my colleagues to think carefully about the
comparisons that the Senator has asked us all to make and also to
examine very carefully what the State Department does and what the
Assistant Secretaries are asked to do, particularly in this new world
of the post-cold-war so-called order, better described as a disorder,
really.
My colleague from North Carolina has been quick to point out that at
the Commerce Department there are 6 Assistant Secretaries overseeing
6,372 people; in the Defense Department, 27 overseeing 34,141, and so
forth, and has repeatedly pointed out that in the State Department,
Assistant Secretaries oversee only 702 people. I think it is admirable
that there are only 702 people. The functions of the Commerce
Department and the Department of Defense, particularly in view of the
latter's involvement with managing millions of people in uniform,
really do not relate to the responsibilities and duties of the State
Department.
I respectfully submit that the qualifications and the rigorous
examination and the backgrounds of the people that we ask to go into
the State Department are significantly different from those who make up
the 34,000 people within the Defense Department, most of whom are at a
different tier within the bureaucracy and perform far more ministerial
and bureaucratic functions. But in the State Department, we have a
cadre of people who have been brought in with a large portion of them
with significant language skills or skills they gain once they are in
the Department, with doctorates, master's degrees, and significant
graduate education, law degrees, because we are in fact talking about
diplomacy measured against administration of certain kinds of
functional duties within departments. It is a very different job to be
sitting on a desk and evaluating what is happening in the Middle East
or what is happening in Africa or what is happening in Latin America
and to be able to make judgments about a whole set of interests:
International narcotics trafficking, international terrorism,
international crime, global environmental issues, the problems of
various conflicts, civil disorder, the peace process, the interests and
rights of citizens under international law, the problems of emerging
nations in development, the administration of aid programs,
developmental loan programs. There are many totally different kinds of
decisions that we are asking people within the State Department to
either make or to evaluate which are just night and day differentiated
from the other bureaucracies that my colleague has articulated.
Moreover and significantly--I hope my colleague is listening in the
cloakroom because I would like him to know or at least to reflect on
the fact because I believe he does know it--the Secretary of State has
already ordered significant cuts within the Department. You cannot come
out here and just say, ``Well, we should not have three additional
Secretaries at the Assistant Secretary level to better manage affairs
of a Department,'' when the Department is already making significant
cuts. A 14-percent cut in administrative costs from fiscal year 1994 to
fiscal year 1997, and that is in line with the Department's 1994 budget
that represents a 3-percent reduction in administrative costs. There
will also be a reduction in personnel.
So my colleague is coming to the floor and asking us to micromanage
the Secretary's choice of what he would like at the top level in order
to be able to better manage this overall Department.
Somehow my colleague is suggesting that we in the Congress are better
equipped to tell Secretary Christopher he should not have 20 or 21
Assistant Secretaries to better feed information to him; he ought to
have just the 18 that have been there; I might add, in a world that is
totally different from the world in which we have just been living. It
is one thing to contemplate the kinds of decisions the State Department
had to make in a world where you had the Soviet Union against the
United States and most of the world's foreign policy decisions were
divided in East-West terms. Most of our focus was divided in East-West
terms.
I might add, Mr. President, during the time that we were so focused
and most of the energy of these good minds was trying to figure out
East-West, we were in fact missing an awful lot of the North-South and
South-East, and so forth. But be that as it may, you had a more simply
defined diplomatic equation.
I do not think anybody is going to come to the floor of the Senate in
1994 and suggest you have an easily definable diplomatic equation
today. In fact, one of the things that has struck me in the course of
my travels to various countries in the course of Senate business is the
degree to which we could actually use more input, not less--the degree
to which we are being taken to the cleaners in the foreign marketplace
because we do not have enough people in our foreign commercial service
or because we do not have enough oversight or because we do not have
enough people to enable our businesses to jump through the export
hurdles or jump through the access hurdles in these countries, and we
are denying ourselves jobs in this country.
My colleague from North Carolina would be one of the first people to
come to the floor and say, ``I want the people of North Carolina to be
working.'' I know in the triangle down there around Raleigh-Durham they
have one heck of a complex of technology and universities and health
care not unlike that which we have in Massachusetts. Those folks could
use more assistance from an Assistant Secretary who is dealing with
exports, which is precisely what Secretary Christopher wants to do.
Secretary Christopher, whose words were quoted by the Senator from
North Carolina about what he wants to do with the Department, came to
the Senate in his confirmation hearings and said, ``I think we ought to
have an America desk in the State Department--an America desk, a desk
in our embassies that is geared to try to put people in the United
States to work by taking advantage of these new opportunities in these
foreign markets.
Mr. President, I was just in Hong Kong meeting with our foreign
commercial service personnel. We have a couple of Americans there, just
a couple. They were telling me they are working from 6 in the morning
until midnight every day, and there is so much to do they are missing
opportunities to get contracts for American businesses. They cannot
keep up.
We could be harnessing billions of dollars of contracts, I am
certain, all through Asia, Europe, and other places if we had a greater
ability to help our companies find out what business is being offered,
what are the terms of the requests for proposals, when will they be
due, how many companies can compete, how do you get into this business,
who is going to help me get the export licensing, how do I learn how to
do this when I have never done it before? A host of midsized and small
American businesses could double their business tomorrow if we were
willing to put two people to work. They would pay for themselves in 1
week. They would probably pay for themselves in 1 day, but I will give
them 1 week, Mr. President. We are sitting here micromanaging two or
three positions for the Secretary of State, who wants to engage in that
kind of enterprise.
Now, we are not talking about the management of the employees of the
IRS. My colleague cites the Treasury Department as an example of a
whole lot of employees and just one or two managers. Well, the IRS
lends itself to that kind of management. Most of these people are
working on computers. Most of these people are moving paper or
processing documents in a fairly formatted, regimented way.
That is not diplomacy, Mr. President. It takes an Assistant Secretary
of State to go to a particular country with the imprimatur of his
office or her office, Secretary or Assistant Secretary of State to be
able to sit down with leaders of other countries and proffer either the
early grounds of a treaty, the early terms of an international trade
agreement, the early terms of a nonproliferation agreement, or a
hazardous waste agreement.
More and more of the world is international. More and more of the
dealings of the world are going to be trying to create an international
playing field where we understand the rules of engagement between
ourselves and other countries. You cannot become Fortress America,
putting your head in the sand and believing that somehow, because we
were No. 1, we have a birthright to be No. 1. You do not have that
birthright. You have the birthright to compete and the birthright to
have opportunity and the birthright of equal opportunity in a country
unparalleled to be able to go out and compete. But if we sit here
ignoring what the real world is doing and stripping our ability to be
engaged by taking these kinds of positions away, I think we are just
denying ourselves the opportunity to put our birthright to its best
advantage.
Mr. President, I will tell you, as a Senator, when I have gone to
these countries and met with their Presidents and their foreign
ministers and their defense ministers, we have been able to get
business done. We have been able to talk about things that are of
interest to our countries and find avenues of opportunity that will put
Americans to work and, indeed, meet the security interests of our
Nation. Person after person I hear say, ``We have not seen an Assistant
Secretary of State or anybody from your administration over here,'' or,
``We have never met,'' or, ``Gee, do you think we can get in to see the
Secretary or Assistant Secretary at some point so we could make our
points about why we are pursuing a certain policy?''
I would respectfully suggest to my colleague, that I share his desire
to reduce the bureaucracy. I think bureaucracy in our own Government is
the enemy, and we have too much of it. You can point to the Agriculture
Department as an example where we have more bureaucracy, more
bureaucrats than there are farmers in America. It is ridiculous. But
the administration is cutting the State Department's midlevel
bureaucracy.
Lest my colleague doubt that, let me be very, very precise in the
numbers. Under the Secretary of State's reorganization plan, the
Department has already reduced the number of Deputy Assistant
Secretaries and Deputy-Assistant-Secretary-equivalent positions from
roughly 120 down to 76. So my colleague is complaining about adding two
or three people, and it is not even fixed that they are going to be
added. It simply gives the Secretary the permission to do it, gives him
the permission at the upper level to set up a chain of command which
allows the Secretary the capacity to make the judgments the Secretary
needs to make to move the decisionmaking process, to engage people in a
field like exports, which is particularly one of the assistant
secretaryships we are talking about. And the Department cut underneath
that level from 120 to 76. This represents a cut of 37 percent of the
Deputy-Assistant-Secretary-equivalent positions.
Let us repeat that. We are talking about allowing the Secretary of
State to organize his Department as he wants, to streamline
decisionmaking, and to implement the cuts he is trying to make. We
should not micromanage or second-guess or undermine the Secretary's
ability to be able to do that, particularly when you measure it against
the fact that the Secretary has done precisely what the Senator from
North Carolina wants and what he says the Secretary said he would do in
the course of his confirmation hearings. He has cut the number of
Deputy Assistant Secretary and DAS-equivalent positions from 120 to 76.
In addition, the Department has made a number of other position
changes, and those have been spread throughout the Department through a
process of absorption.
I think my colleague knows negotiating the agreements in this new
world is not easy.
If we are going to get other countries adhering to our standards on
working out agreements, you have to have somebody who has the stature
within the Department to be able to engage in the discussions that lead
to those treaties, or agreements.
I think that for us to sit here and suggest to the Secretary that he
cannot have somebody to help him open up the export markets of the
world and in a sense have an America's desk that is engaged in opening
up job opportunities for North Carolina and Massachusetts, is to deny
the State Department one of the most important tools of guidance that
the embassies have. We should remember that most of these other
Departments that operate in our embassies are precisely that. They are
in the Embassy; the Commerce Department, ExIm, the others. It is the
Embassy and the Secretary of State who have the best handle on the
levers that are available to help create the maximum opportunity in any
particular country. In fact, it is the ambassadors who, working with
the Secretary, can best balance the other policy interests of a
particular region of the world or a particular country in the effort to
help our companies compete against other countries that are not bashful
about putting their government officials in those countries and
spending more sums than we are in an effort to advantage their workers
and their companies.
It is time for the United States of America to wake up. If we are
going to put American citizens first and American interests first. You
are not going to do it with a State Department that is shrinking by the
day and whose capacity to be able to pursue some of these interests is
diminished.
I am for getting rid of the bureaucracy at the lower level. But that
is not what Secretary Christopher is asking for in these two or three
positions which will help him to streamline and effect the overall
changes that he seeks to effect in the Department.
Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, wonders never cease. I do not know what
amendment the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts has been talking
about. But he sure as heck has not been talking about mine, not the one
that is pending. He got his figures all jumbled up. I do not know who
wrote that thing for him. At one time he said Deputy Secretary, at
another time he said Assistant Secretary, and so forth. He may have his
staff correct the copy in the Congressional Record so it will be in
order.
Let us review the bidding on what this amendment actually does, not
what Senator Kerry says it does.
First of all, this amendment gives the State Department absolutely
the same number of Assistant Secretaries and absolutely the same number
of executive level IV pay positions as it has now.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, will my colleague yield?
Mr. HELMS. I did not interrupt my colleague.
Who has the floor, Mr. President?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. HELMS. I sat quietly while the Senator engaged in a friendly
diatribe, and now I want to refute it a little bit.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, will the Senator just yield for a question?
Mr. HELMS. Will the Chair please inform the Senator who has the floor
once more?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I know nothing in the rules of the Senate
that do not allow me to ask the Senator if he would yield for a
question. He can say no.
Mr. HELMS. I did not say there is.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from North Carolina choose to
yield for a question?
Mr. HELMS. Not now. I did not interrupt the Senator. I beg his
indulgence because he was saying Helms is against the building trade.
That was the implication of what he said. He brought into this the
Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. But I will tell you one thing
about most of the businessmen from all over the country who come to me
for help. They never say anything at all about what help the State
Department gives them. It is the Commerce Department officials who they
mention--not these people stationed over there in the embassies.
So it is a lot of baloney to say that, boy, these ambassadors are
doing a great job. Some of them are. But I tell you the businessmen in
my State and other States who come to me I have called many times
overseas, I have written many times overseas and it is not the
bureaucrat in the State Department who renders the help. It is the
people from the Commerce Department who are stationed in the embassies.
So let us get that straight. I am not going to sit here and take a
lot of baloney about what I am trying to do and what this amendment
tries to do, because the amendment speaks for itself. I am perfectly
capable of speaking for myself. I do not need the Senator from
Massachusetts to speak for me. I do not try to speak for him.
I know that he is very sensitive about any suggestion of criticism of
his administration, yet he was one of the most critical of the previous
administration.
The present bill which gives the State Department 26 executive level
IV pay positions and 20 Assistant Secretary title positions, and what
was the figure per person--it cost $125,000.
By the way, so the Senator will know what I am trying to do, let me
read you a little explanation that the American taxpayers understand. I
put it in the Record every day the Senate is in session. At the close
of business on Friday, January 28, Mr. President, the Federal debt
stood at $4,512,950,244,156.40. That means that on a per capita basis,
every man, woman and child in America owes $17,310.16 as his or her
share of that debt.
That is what prompted this amendment. If you do not exercise good
stewardship on small things, you are not likely to do it in overall
things.
This amendment does not eliminate even one existing Assistant
Secretary position. To hear the Senator from Massachusetts tell it--I
did hear him, I heard every syllable when I was in the Cloakroom--we
just propose mayhem. Now anybody knows that is not so. It does not
require the Secretary of State to establish any particular bureau or
any Assistant Secretary to accompany any bureau. We are not
micromanaging.
I am trying to be a little faithful to what the American taxpayer is
putting up with in terms of the deficit spending of this Government.
All congressionally mandated Assistant Secretary positions have been
retained under this amendment. And the original administration request
included 24 Assistant Secretary positions and 29 executive level IV
positions. So let us review the bidding again.
The proliferation of bureaucracy throughout this Government and at
the State Department is nothing new. I complained about this when the
Republican administrations were in office.
Let me share with you the comments of former Secretary of State Dean
Rusk on this topic, as recorded in ``Annex H--Streamlining the Policy
Process,'' which is a section of ``State 2000,'' a report by the State
Department Office of Management Task Force from January 1993. Mr. Rusk
testified in 1963:
I would say * * * that inside the Department of State, our
principal problem is layering.
``Layering'' is the word that Warren Christopher used approximately a
year ago at his confirmation hearing.
Let me continue to read from Annex H of ``State 2000'':
The major causes of layering are the proliferation of
bureaus, bureau-equivalents, independent and semi-independent
offices, deputy assistant secretaries and deputy assistant
secretary equivalents, and staff for seventh-floor
principals.
That means the seventh floor of the State Department.
Continuing:
The larger the number of organizational units, the more
participants there are on any given policy issue.
They like to sit around, look important, and take up time.
This increases the number of clearances and lengthens the
time required to make a decision.
When Dean Rusk made this criticism in 1963, the Department of State
had 21 bureaus or bureau-equivalents, 6 independent or semi-independent
offices, 46 Deputy Assistant Secretaries or Deputy Assistant Secretary
equivalents and a fairly modest number of staff aides serving seventh-
floor principals.
Let me continue from the report:
Today there are 32 bureaus or bureau-equivalents * * * and
18 of these are assistant secretary positions with full
bureaucratic regalia. There are * * * 14 independent or semi-
independent offices, 121 deputy assistant secretaries or
deputy assistant secretary equivalents and considerably
larger staffs for seventh-floor principals * * * In addition,
a number of the bureaus, bureau-equivalents and independent
offices were established by Congress * * *
And that is the Lord's truth. I insert that parenthetically.
Continuing:
The growth can be attributed, I believe, to Parkinson's
Law.
That is an understatement, Mr. President.
Justified or not, new units and positions contribute to the
problem of layering and need to be reassessed in light of our
changing diplomatic requirements.
I ask unanimous consent that at this point in the Record the table to
which I am referring be printed.
There being no objection, the table was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bureau or Ind. office DAS or
Year equivalent equivalent
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1963............................. 21 6 46
1992............................. 32 14 121
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, this, according to Annex H--Streamlining
the Policy Process of the U.S. State Department, from State 2000,
which, as I said earlier, is a January 1993 report from the office of
management task force. That report recommended a new decrease--yes, I
said it correctly; it recommended a decrease in the bureau positions or
bureau-equivalent positions.
Read the amendment. I am not even saying a decrease. I am saying to
hold it where it is. I am not micromanaging anything. I am just saying
let us not push this debt any higher.
As the administration requested, the task force did not recommend an
increase in positions as this bill provides, nor did the task force
recommend a 33-percent increase in Assistant Secretary positions. This
amendment, Mr. President, eliminates layering, and it eliminates
bureaucratic growth.
I say again that it is not exactly correct to get up and say this
amendment is against full participation in world trade. If you turn our
businessmen loose from a lot of the bureaucratic controls, we will see
how they function.
But never a day passes that I am not in contact with somebody
overseas, seeing if I cannot get somebody in the door. Most of the
time, I do not talk with the Ambassador. I talk with the Department of
Commerce or sometimes the Treasury Department representative in the
embassy in question. The Senate can do what it pleases, of course, but
I want it to vote on the amendment as it is, not as Senator Kerry
described it.
I yield the floor.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the amendment of the Senator is precisely
as I have described it. The Senator says it leaves the situation
exactly as it is today. It does not. It, in fact, cuts three existing
executive level IV positions. So the Senator can stand here and say one
thing, but saying it does not make it true. The fact is that the
numbers here are three less than the Secretary currently has in the
full paid positions.
Second, the Senator read a number of numbers of Deputy Assistants,
but he took it from the old book. The Senator has made much of how
important it is that we talk about reality here. The reality is that
there are not 121 Deputy Assistant Secretaries. Let us understand this.
Deputy Assistant Secretaries--they have been cut. They have been cut by
Secretary Christopher, and they are down to the number of 76.
So the Senator can come here and offer an amendment to cut a status
which does not exist and rail against a status that does not exist, and
then come to the floor and say Senator Kerry is incorrect. But he
cannot support it. He never addressed the question of how many Deputy
Assistant Secretaries are now within Secretary Christopher's
reorganization. The number is 76, not 121.
Moreover, when the Senator talks about we have to get rid of this
layer that Dean Rusk talked about, that is precisely what Secretary
Christopher is doing.
When you get rid of the 120 down to 76 Deputy Assistant Secretaries,
you are stripping away a layer and you are getting rid of the in-
between layers so that the people at the top layer can make decisions
and be directly engaged with the decisionmaking process without the
interference of layers.
So, let us try to deal with reality.
I want to report from our committee's markup, and this is the
testimony of Assistant Secretary Wendy Sherman. I quote her line 10 of
the testimony in the Foreign Relations Committee.
There were 120 Deputy Assistant Secretaries and Deputy
Assistant Secretary equivalents. We have tried to move that
down to about 76 Deputy Assistant Secretaries, a substantial
cut of 28 percent of the positions, and 37 percent of the
Deputy Assistant Secretary equivalent positions.
We will save an additional 50 percent or more personnel in this
process, and the Senator is right. It is a very difficult process, one
that has to be driven very hard.
Now, let me continue further on bureau consolidation from the
testimony in front of our committee, again, Assistant Secretary Wendy
Sherman testifying:
We had when we came in 30 bureaus and bureau equivalents.
We have reduced those to 29. We had 12 independent units
reporting to the Secretary when we came in. That is now
reduced to 7, almost a 50 percent reduction in the
independent units reporting to the Secretary.
That is what Secretary Christopher is trying to do.
My colleague comes here and reads Dean Rusk who has not been in the
State Department with all due respect for how many years and is not
there today, and that is not what we are addressing.
So, Mr. President, I want to make it clear. If the Senator wants to
back it up with facts, then let us do that, but let us not do it on the
basis of just someone's assertion.
Now, my colleague also says that this does not have anything to do
with business, and he does not know how it is going to help business.
Let me say to my colleague that we represent sections of our States
that are very similar. North Carolina has done an extraordinary job of
building up its technology capacity, its educational capacity, its
export ability, and indeed the triangle is renowned and greatly
respected across the country.
Those folks in that triangle will be benefited by having the ability
to get into the export marketplace, and any one of them can tell you
horror stories of what happens because of the export licensing process
or the restraints on access.
The Secretary has determined that he wants a high-level person within
his Department focused on export controls so that the United States is
not always playing catchup in the marketplace, but rather we are ahead
of the curve helping our businesses get in there, managing the commerce
and other efforts within the Embassies and doing a much more effective
job of helping our companies to find export opportunities or to reduce
the restraints that exist at this point in time.
I say to my colleague with all due respect that the Secretary
deserves the opportunity to indeed peel away the layers but to
guarantee that when he is busy as he is in shuttle diplomacy or greatly
in demand for the President at a summit, or whether it is Russia or
Belgium, or wherever, that the people are there underneath him but
immediately reporting to him who are empowered to do the business of
this country and to get things done.
If we were not peeling away these other layers, I would stand here
with my colleague and join him, and when he says I am sensitive about
criticism being directed at this administration, I have directed
criticism at this administration. I think the record is very clear that
on a number of occasions in the course of the last months in more than
foreign policy efforts or other efforts I have been willing to
criticize where criticism is necessary.
But I ask my colleague to focus on the fact that this is pennywise
and pound foolish when you measure what we will gain for it. For about
$230,000 or so for two Secretaries, we are going to forgo conceivably
millions and perhaps billions of dollars of contracts or the
opportunity for them, and that is documentable.
Moreover, we cut $333 million from the State budget, and we cut
another $170 million from the USIA budget, for a total of roughly $500
million from the level of the President's request, which is a real cut
beneath this year's level because the President's request was a freeze.
So we are talking about a real cut in the Department's budget of $333
million, and we are talking about two or three positions that the
Secretary of State has determined would make a difference in his
ability to be able to manage and further cut the affairs of the
Department or personnel places in the Department.
My colleague said he is doing this only to come and deal with the
$4,512,950,000,000 debt, and so forth.
I applaud that, and I hope he will join me and other colleagues in
voting for an additional $45 billion of cuts that we are bringing to
the floor shortly which we proposed.
Let me show two charts, if I may, and I hope my colleague will take a
look at these two charts. This chart, if I could show my colleague and
perhaps have his attention.
Mr. HELMS. Just a minute.
Yes, I would be glad to give the Senator my attention.
Mr. KERRY. This sheet of paper, which I have shown my colleague, and
I will make a copy of it for him, shows the current organization of the
Department of State. This is what you have--a huge page of blocks of
people reporting and layers. This is what the Secretary of State has
done to this chart. Here is the comparison. It is highly simplified,
highly streamlined. The Secretary has gotten rid of several layers.
So I hope my colleague will look at the difference between these two
charts. That is a streamlining, and the Secretary, I think, deserves
the right to complete the job and to finish that streamlining process.
My colleague says that this is not micromanagement. Let me
respectfully disagree with my colleague and say why it amounts to
micromanagement.
If the Secretary were not cutting at all, if we were not cutting, and
we came to the floor and mandated some cuts, I would say to my
colleague that is proper. We ought to do that. But we have done that.
We have mandated $333 million of cuts.
Moreover, the Secretary is proactively cutting and getting rid of
almost 38 percent ot the Deputy Assistant Secretary level positions. It
seems to me that it is completely micromanaging to tell him that he
cannot have two or three positions to be at a level that he wants them
at in order to be able to better manage the Department. To deny him
that right is to micromanage.
When the Secretary of State takes the number of DAS or DAS-equivalent
positions from 120 down to 76, but we say he cannot have 2 or 3
Assistant Secretary positions that he wants, I cannot think of anything
that is a more classical definition of micromanagement.
I understand what my colleague is trying to do. I think it is
laudable that he wants to reduce the budget, but I believe in this
effort we have in good faith brought serious cuts to the floor of the
Senate. They are not without pain. They are not without dislocation.
And I would hope my colleagues would give the Secretary the tools to
address the needs of the post-cold-war world with some discretion
rather than our sitting here and tying his hands completely.
Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Drogan). The Chair recognizes Senator
Helms.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, again, I am obliged to wonder what
amendment the Senator from Massachusetts is talking about. He is not
talking about my amendment.
Furthermore, I wish the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts
would send one of his aides to a telephone to ask the State
Department--if you would listen to me, please--ask the State Department
if one position, if one job, if one person has lost his job in all of
this elimination of Deputy Assistant Secretaries.
Now, it is true enough that he has done away with a bunch of titles.
But he still has the people there in another capacity. If the Senator
doubts that, telephone to ask the State Department whether or not I am
accurate about that. I do not know whether he wants to do that or not.
My amendment does not undermine or seek to at all impede the
authority of the Secretary of State. I repeat, all it does is maintain
what he already has. Our committee, including Mr. Kerry, voted to
maintain the statutorily mandated positions, and that is how you define
micromanagement. He voted for micromanagement. My amendment and my
position in committee and my position now is to give the Secretary the
judgment and let him make the judgment call on these things.
I do not know what the Senator from Massachusetts is talking about.
And I must respectfully say that I do not think he does, either.
Mr. PELL addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes Senator Pell.
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I realize that questions like this look
different depending on the holder's position, as they say, it is in the
eyes of the beholder.
Well, in this case, is it micromanagement or not? In my
view, it is micromanagement. I think we should let the Secretary, if he
chooses, have any number of Assistant Secretaries or cut them, either
way.
I feel particularly strongly on this, because many years ago not
enough attention was being given to the 70 percent of the Earth that
was covered by the ocean. I can remember arguing with Dean Rusk at
several meetings and in several Congresses about the necessity of
having a bureau that would focus on the oceans, which is now expanded
to include scientific affairs on ocean and environmental affairs.
I think sometimes when Congress wants to underline that point, as
they have on a couple of occasions, that should be permitted. I think
to take this power away from the Secretary would be a mistake. And, as
fond as I am of the Senator from North Carolina, I must regretfully
disagree with him on this matter.
Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes Senator Helms.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, Senator Pell has stated it correctly. He
stated that it is his opinion. He carefully delineated between what is
fact and what is opinion. Now, that is the reason I respect Senator
Pell. I have enjoyed working with him on the committee.
But, when we start saying that another Senator has done so and so and
he is taking on the whole business future worldwide of the United
States of America, that is when I have to protest and that is when I
say, ``Read the amendment.''
I accept Senator Pell's opinion as his opinion. I appreciate his
comments because he is a thoroughbred gentleman.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Let me ask my colleague, without losing my right to the
floor, a question or two.
Does the amendment of the Senator from North Carolina cut the number
of Assistant Secretaries that are in the bill today? A very simple
question. Does it cut the number that is in the bill today?
Mr. HELMS. Well, what do you mean by cutting? Are you talking about
what the bill specifies or what the Secretary of State has now?
Mr. KERRY. My question to the Senator from North Carolina is: Does
the amendment of the Senator from North Carolina cut the number of
Assistant Secretaries authorized in the bill that is on the floor? It
is not very complicated.
Mr. HELMS. Yes, it is complicated, because I want to know what you
are talking about. Are you talking about people on the job or people
proposed or what?
Mr. KERRY. Let me ask the question again so it is very clear.
Mr. HELMS. No, it is not clear.
Mr. KERRY. Does the amendment of the Senator from North Carolina seek
to cut the number of positions that are authorized in the bill on the
floor?
Mr. HELMS. Oh, that is a different thing.
Mr. KERRY. No, that is the same thing I have been talking about.
Mr. HELMS. No, it is not. We are not talking about anybody on the
job. We are talking about what has been proposed by a majority of two
on the Foreign Relations Committee, are we not?
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the last time I looked, this is a country
that works by a majority. A majority, indeed, voted to do this, and it
is in the bill.
My question to the Senator--and I think he has answered it
affirmatively --is that the amendment that he is proposing seeks to
undo what the Foreign Relations Committee has approved; correct?
Mr. HELMS. That is not the same question the Senator asked. But the
answer to that question is yes.
Mr. KERRY. That is precisely the point.
Mr. HELMS. No, it is not.
Mr. KERRY. Now, when the Senator says that somehow he does not know
what amendment I am talking about because his does not do what I am
talking about, that is precisely what I am talking about.
Secretary Christopher has asked for those people. Those are an
authorization at the request of the Secretary of State. Now, the
exchange is this: the Foreign Relations Committee took those additional
positions and gave them to the Secretary, recognizing that we had cut
$333 million elsewhere in the Department's budget and recognizing that
the Secretary was going to cut many other positions to make up for
those two.
So, in effect, I am talking about the amendment of the Senator from
North Carolina. I am saying that the U.S. Senate should not deny
Secretary Christopher the right to the two people or three people he
has asked for to help him effectively manage the State Department,
particularly when you bear in mind the steps already taken to delayer
the Department if you can put it that way.
Now, is it not accurate, I ask the Senator from North Carolina, that
he does not want Secretary Cristopher to have the additional positions
he has asked for to help him manage the Department in the way the
Secretary has said he needs them?
Mr. HELMS. I certainly agree to that. And I think the majority of the
American people, the taxpayers, would agree with it.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, this is really the nub of it. The Senator
has acknowledged that he is trying to micromanage the Secretary's
Department. The Secretary has come to us and said, ``I need these three
positions.'' He has also said to us, ``I am cutting all these other
positions,'' a 37 percent cut.
You tell me the American people are going to rise up and say, ``Mr.
Secretary, with all your years of experience and with all the difficult
issues you have to face, we don't like it that you are cutting 50
people and putting three of them in a new position?''
I do not believe that. The American people would be proud of the fact
that $333 million are cut in this bill. I think they would give the
Secretary of State the discretion to put three people into important
positions.
Now, what are those positions? Well, refugees. We have an increasing
problem with refugees--refugees from Haiti, refugees coming out of
Mexico or illegal aliens, refugees out of China. The Secretary is
inundated with the problems of refugees. He wants somebody in his
office reporting directly to him who can help discern what our policy
ought to be with respect to it and to implement it.
Mr. President, this is an amendment that seeks to tell the Secretary
of State he cannot manage his own office. We are going to tell him how
many people he can have, even though he is busy cutting the entire
Department.
I think it is wrong. I think it is penny wise, pound foolish, bad
policy, and it simply should not be agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from North
Carolina.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, there he goes again. He said, ``Cut 50
people. Cut 50 people.''
No way. The Secretary has not eliminated one person. He has
eliminated 50 titles. I ask--if the State Department gives a different
report now than the report they gave to us, I want to check up on that,
too.
I remind my colleague, in committee I proposed eliminating all
congressionally imposed assistant secretaries, and allow the Secretary
of State to reorganize as he wished, using fewer people. The majority
of members of the committee rejected that amendment and mandated--I am
sure it was at least five assistant secretaries. It may be more than
that, but it was at least five.
Now, who is micromanaging? Not this amendment. Not the Senator from
North Carolina.
I wonder if the chairman seriously wishes to repeal the requirements
to have statutorily created Assistant Secretary positions. Chairman
Pell and the manager of the bill on the other side refused to give the
Secretary authority to organize without mandated offices.
Micromanagement is what the other side did. They are pointing fingers--
and saying ``micromanagement''--at me. No way. I
just want to cut the cost of operating the State Department. That
always raises the hackles of some people in the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me say to my colleague--and we do not
need to go back, and back, and back, and back and forth. I know he is
earnest about wanting these changes and I have joined him in trying to
get some of the reduction because there is too much bureaucracy. But
let me tell my colleague exactly where we are in this. We just checked
up and I want him to understand.
The Senator from North Carolina and I both know that you cannot take
a Foreign Service Officer and summarily fire him or her without cause.
You can take them out of a position, but you cannot remove them from
the service unless they are bought out or they leave. That is
happening.
So, the Senator is correct in saying that not every one of these 50
has gone from the Department. Some have, however. The Senator says to
me he wants me to tell him if one person has left? And the answer is
yes.
Let me be precise. The Deputy Assistant Secretary positions, the
majority of them were filled by career Foreign Service Officers. So you
can eliminate the layer but, absent cause, those folks go off into some
other area of the Department unless they leave. The political
appointees are all gone. The political appointees who were there under
the other party left. Those positions have been eliminated. So there is
an elimination of real people and positions.
Second, the Department is now eliminating 391 positions in this
fiscal year. Real people going out of the door. The Senator from North
Carolina has intelligently helped the Secretary to be able to do this
through an amendment which gives the Secretary further ability by
offering him what we call RIF, reduction in force, authority. So the
Secretary has now, if we pass this, additional authority to be able to
reduce positions.
So I would say to my colleague, this is an improvement. We are seeing
genuine movement. And really I come back to the argument I made before.
We do not need to beat a dead horse here, but I do think when you
measure this good record of genuine attrition and loss of personnel and
movement and the elimination of the bureaucracy itself--the elimination
of the positions so a whole layer is stripped away, as I showed the
Senator in the chart--I think you are on the right road. I think to say
to the Secretary, ``You cannot manage the sort of decisionmaking part
of this,'' is a mistake.
I would simply, respectfully maintain that position. It is my
judgment and my opinion it is based on the facts, and I emphasize
facts, that I have laid before my colleague and the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from North
Carolina.
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, this may be one of those times--I ask the
Senator if he is familiar with the poem, The Blind Men and the
Elephant, about the blind men of Indostan. They were asked to describe
an elephant. One of them put his hand on the side of an elephant.
``Surely he is built like a wall.''
Another put his hand on the leg and he described him in some other
fashion.
And then another one, the third one, put his hand on the trunk, and
said ``Surely the elephant is built like a snake.''
But I will say this. The Senator from Massachusetts has acknowledged
that nobody has been fired indiscriminately--or discriminately, for
that matter. And all of this Assistant or Deputy Assistant Secretary,
or whatever that layer is, they have been RIF'd, they have been
retired, they have been kept on in another capacity. And all of that is
going on all the time in the Government, throughout the Government, no
matter who is President, no matter who is Secretary of Commerce or
Treasury or Attorney General or Secretary of State.
So I am not willing, yet, to confer sainthood upon Secretary
Christopher. He is a nice guy and all of that, but I do not know that
he has done anything remarkable to any great extent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me just say to my friend, the Secretary
of State will be delighted to hear that he is at least eligible to be
judged for sainthood. I thank the Senator for saying he has not done it
yet. But ``yet'' means there is the possibility.
Mr. HELMS. Did I say statehood?
Mr. KERRY. Sainthood.
Mr. HELMS. That is right. I do not want to consider him for sainthood
today. Talk to me tomorrow about that.
Mr. KERRY. I thank the Senator.
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I appreciate and sympathize with the
Senator's desire to streamline the Department's operations. Indeed,
there is no disagreement about that goal between myself and the Senator
or for that matter between the Senator and the Department itself.
Shortly after taking office, Secretary Christopher announced a major
reorganization at the Department, in large part to streamline its
operations.
But what I think we have here is an unwarranted attempt at
congressional micromanagement of the Department of State. Let's look at
the overall picture.
President Clinton has proposed and the Department is implementing a
14-percent cut in administrative expenses from fiscal years 1994 to
1997; in line with this objective, the fiscal year 1994 budget request
represents a 3-percent reduction from the 1993 baseline levels. In
addition, the President has mandated a 4-percent cut in personnel over
3 years from fiscal years 1993 to 1995.
The committee cut $333 million out of the Department's fiscal year
1994 budget request. Moreover, with the exception of U.S. contributions
to International Organizations and Peacekeeping activities, which are
not really funding for the Department's operation in any event, the
Department's budget is frozen into 1995.
At the same time that these cuts are being made, the committee has
recommended that bureaus established by Congress in law remain so, and
I support that position. Bureaus such as South Asia and Oceans and
International Environmental and Scientific Affairs were created
specifically to address issues that had not received sufficient
attention at the Department. But given these congressionally mandated
positions, I do not think we should add insult to injury by unduly
limiting the Secretary's ability to establish bureaus that he believes
are necessary.
Let us transfer this situation to a congressional office. We are all
facing constraints on our office expenses which we accept grudgingly.
But I don't think any of us would simultaneously accept a numerical cap
on the number of legislative assistants we could have, while at the
same time being told what some of their responsibilities must be. But
that, in effect, is what this amendment would do.
Moreover, it is simply wrong to think that this amendment will result
in a cost savings. It will not. As I just said, this committee cut $333
million out of the Department's request. The President's budget calls
for reductions in both funding and personnel. Any additional Assistant
Secretary positions will have to be accommodated within these
constraints.
So what then does this amendment accomplish? To my mind, it prevents
the Secretary and the Department from carrying out a plan with the goal
I believe we should all support: to make the Department a more
effective, responsive, streamlined organization. I urge my colleagues
to oppose this amendment.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, if the Senator from Ohio is offering an
amendment, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be temporarily
set aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Chair
recognizes the Senator from Ohio.
Amendment No. 1321
(Purpose: To impose sanctions against any foreign person or United
States person that assists a foreign country in acquiring a nuclear
explosive device or unsafeguarded nuclear material, and for other
purposes)
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for
its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Glenn] for himself, Mr. Pell,
Mr. Helms, Mr. Riegle, Mr. Simon, Mr. D'Amato, Mr. Akaka, Mr.
Campbell and Mr. Kerrey, proposes an amendment numbered 1321.
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the
amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under
``Amendments Submitted.'')
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, going back to my first days in the Senate,
way back when I was first sworn in in 1975, I started making inquiry
about who was looking into matters dealing with nuclear
nonproliferation because, having been through a couple of wars, it is
hard to envision the horrors that nuclear war would bring upon us and
the rest of the world. It turned out that no one was really doing quite
as much in that area as I thought they should. There were some people
who were looking at some things.
But I have been involved with this matter of nuclear nonproliferation
ever since those days and in fact passed, in 1978, the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Act of 1978.
One of the earliest actions I took on the Senate floor--in fact I
believe it was one of the first amendments that dealt with any money--
was to try and get a bit more funding for the International Atomic
Energy Agency which was running out of money to pay their inspectors
back in those days, in 1975 and 1976.
I think we got $1 million at that time, $1 million to help the IAEA
put their inspectors out there on what is admittedly a thin red line, a
very thin line of safeguards around the world. It is mainly an
information-gathering agency.
Mr. President, we have passed a number of pieces of legislation
through the years. This is another one that I send to the desk today.
This amendment is, in substance, the same bill that passed the Senate
three times in 1992 but, for various legislative reasons between here
and the House, it has not yet been enacted. But in 1992, it was passed
on April 9, on September 18 and October 8, each time by unanimous
consent. No one in the Senate disagreed with what we were trying to do.
What this amendment is designed to do is help take the profits out of
nuclear proliferation. Specifically, the amendment expands Presidential
authority to impose sanctions against companies that engage in illicit
sales of nuclear technology and requires new sanctions against
countries that traffic specifically in bomb parts or critical bomb
design information. That seems so fundamental that it is no wonder we
have passed this unanimously on three previous occasions.
The sanctions provisions include a ban on Government contracting with
firms that materially and knowingly assist other nations to acquire the
bomb and contain additional severe penalties against nations that
traffic in bomb parts or critical bomb design information.
The amendment also contains a sense-of-the-Congress resolution that
the United States pursue some 24 reforms to strengthen the
implementation of safeguards administered by the IAEA, the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
I am convinced that this international agency needs the support and
cooperation of all nations as it undergoes many reforms in the wake of
the lessons of Iraq and the new challenges from growing commercial uses
of bomb-usable nuclear materials, as well as watching what is happening
in the breakup of the old Soviet Union where nuclear material and
nuclear know-how can be found scattered among some of the newly
independent nations.
The amendment also contains a sunshine provision to require the
public disclosure of nonproprietary data on United States nuclear-
related exports, basic information about the implementation of United
States nuclear sanctions policies, including demarches the United
States has both received and sent relating to nonproliferation, and a
summary of the progress of the former Soviet Republics, which I
mentioned, in implementing their nonproliferation commitments.
The need for this legislation arises from three quarters. First,
proliferation remains a profit-making activity for all too many people
and companies both here and around the world. The temptation to go for
the profits as opposed to what might be in the greater interest of the
greatest number of people around the world is sometimes ignored.
Second, although the IAEA is gradually responding to the many new
challenges it is facing, both from the global plutonium economy and
from clandestine bomb programs, America must do more to encourage other
nations to support and strengthen the agency as it grapples with these
problems in the years ahead.
Third, for too long Congress and the American people have been in the
dark about illicit deals involving commodities that can contribute to
the ability of other countries to build nuclear explosive devices. My
amendment would help to keep us all better informed about such
developments.
Might I add in that regard that the IAEA is basically an information-
gathering agency so that it can keep the world informed about what is
going on and about such developments of which I am speaking today.
Mr. President, I am very pleased and honored that this bill enjoys
the original cosponsorship of the distinguished chairman of the
Committee on Foreign Relations, my friend Claiborne Pell, whose
steadfast support of this proposed legislation in 1992 was in large
measure responsible for its passage not once but three times by
unanimous consent of the Senate.
I also add with regard to Senator Pell, when I first came to the
Senate, I was on the Foreign Relations Committee for a number of years,
back in those days when we were passing some of this early legislation
with regard to nuclear nonproliferation, and I know of no one in the
U.S. Senate that has been more steadfast in their support of trying to
cut down on the proliferation of these weapons of mass destruction
around the world.
Senator Pell deserves a great deal of credit for that, and I am glad
to recognize him today since he was in large measure responsible for
the passage of this particular piece of legislation on three different
occasions as it went through the Foreign Relations Committee and, of
course, he is chairman of that committee. I am very happy to have
worked with him for all these years, and I look forward to working with
him on these things in the future.
I am also pleased the amendment is cosponsored by Senators Helms,
Riegle, Simon, D'Amato, Akaka, Campbell, and Kerrey of Nebraska. I
encourage all of my colleagues to join me in this effort to revitalize
these key elements of our nonproliferation strategy. Early enactment of
this legislation will make the world a safer place for future
generations.
Mr. President, I believe this has been cleared on both sides. It has
passed before. I believe it has been cleared on both sides. I hope we
will adopt it by unanimous consent again today.
I urge adoption of the amendment. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on this amendment?
Mr. PELL addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, first I just wish to thank the Senator from
Ohio for his very kind remarks. Second, far more important is his
support of this measure. This is an important measure. It may somewhat
reduce the dangers to our grandchildren and great grandchildren and
should be adopted once again. I hope it will finally be implemented.
Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate is considering today the
Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994.
Mr. President, this bill is a cooperative effort dating back to the
last Congress. Following passage of the Chemical and Biological Weapons
Control and Warfare Elimination Act in the last Congress, the Senators
from Ohio and North Carolina, Mr. Glenn and Mr. Helms, and I realized
that some serious updating of existing legislation setting forth
sanctions for nuclear misbehavior was recognized. The Glenn and
Symington amendments which had proved to be critically important
deterrents to nuclear proliferation needed to be both broadened and
toughened to reflect the continuing need to rely upon the application
of sanctions and the threat of application of sanctions deter potential
miscreants. Moreover, unless the nuclear provisions were updated, we
would have been in a situation in which the deterrents to chemical and
biological weapons misbehavior were greater than those for nuclear
misbehavior.
Accordingly, the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Glenn] authored S. 1128, the
Omnibus Nuclear Proliferation Control Act. This bill in its final form
late in the session had been carefully worked out with the Bush
administration, approved without dissent by the Committee on Foreign
Relations and approved without dissent by the Senate three times.
Unfortunately, for reasons having nothing to do with the nuclear
bill, it failed to gain passage in the House when, in the waning hours
of the session, wrangling doomed a redrafted Export Administration Act,
to which it was amended.
Senators Glenn, Helms, and I recognized the critical importance of
that effort and it has been reintroduced in this Congress as S. 1054
and has won the full support of the Clinton administration. The
amendment under consideration today is comparable to the current
legislation, that is an updated version of the 1992 final text so as to
be acceptable as possible to both House and Senate.
Mr. President, this excellent legislation's primary author is Senator
Glenn, who is a former member of the Committee on Foreign Relations,
and presently chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
The senior Senator from Ohio has labored tirelessly and effectively to
solve problems of nuclear proliferation since he came to the Senate
more than 19 years ago.
I am pleased, as is the Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Helms], to
have shepherded this legislation through the Committee on Foreign
Relations last year with a strong Pell-Helms amendment added in markup
to strengthen existing law regarding illicit weapons-related transfers
and nuclear detonation added in markup.
The administration is currently developing its own nonproliferation
policy. I firmly believe that this legislation, establishing a strong
sanctions regime, would be an integral part of an effective new policy
and would once again demonstrate U.S. leadership in the effort to curb
nuclear proliferation.
The act applies to nuclear proliferation some of the same approaches
taken in comprehensive chemical weapons legislation, the Chemical and
Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991, which I
authored with the Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Helms].
The main purpose of the act is to create strong barriers against
illicit exports that would help nations to acquire nuclear arsenals.
Accordingly, the bill targets persons and firms that materially and
with requisite knowledge contribute through the export of goods or
technology to the efforts by any individual, group or nonnuclear-
weapons state to acquire unsafeguarded weapons-grade uranium or
plutonium or to use, develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire a
nuclear explosive device. Those engaged in such activities would lose,
with certain specified exceptions, the right to sell to the U.S.
Government for at least a year. Banks, insurers, and other financial
institutions that willingly back this dangerous nuclear traffic could
also be penalized.
In addition, the bill prohibits U.S. support for multilateral aid
that would promote the acquisition of unsafeguarded nuclear materials
or the acquisition of nuclear explosive devices; provides expanded
presidential authority to impose economic sanctions against foreign
firms under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act; and
requires that the President ban Export-Import Bank credits to countries
that willfully aid and abet other countries in the acquisition of
nuclear explosive devices or weapon material.
Moreover, the bill authorizes payment of rewards for information
useful in halting nuclear proliferation; eliminates Pakistan's special
exemption from Glenn/Symington amendments of the Foreign Assistance
Act; and, requires recipients of United States arms to comply with
their nonproliferation commitments.
At the time of approval of this legislative initiative by the
Committee on Foreign Relations, the Senator from North Carolina [Mr.
Helms], and I authored an amendment substantially expanding and
toughening the sanctions that would be applied against nations
transferring or receiving nuclear devices and the means to make them.
At present, section 670 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
provides for a cutoff of military and economic assistance, except for
humanitarian aid, to any nation that transfers a nuclear explosive
device to a non-nuclear-weapon state that either receives such or
detonates one.
Our experience in recent years has demonstrated that section 670
provision should be made to apply to components and design information
as well. Moreover, the Iraq experience and other problems have made it
abundantly clear that the list of sanctions must be more far reaching
so that no nation could doubt the severity of the price to be paid for
nuclear misbehavior. Under these new sanctions any nation giving the
wherewithal for a nuclear device to a nonnuclear-weapon state or any
such state receiving such help would become a pariah among the world's
nations so far as the United States was concerned. I would hope other
nations would follow our lead, as they have before in proliferation
matters.
The new country sanctions would consist of a ban on all foreign
assistance except for humanitarian aid, on arms sales and arms sales
financing, denial of U.S. Government credit or other financial
assistance; opposition to multilateral bank assistance; a ban on bank
loans except to buy agricultural commodities and a prohibition on
exports to the sanctioned nations.
Mr. President, the headlines of the past few months, or even weeks,
bear stark witness to the continuing and urgent problems of
nonproliferation. Currently, the refusal of the North Koreans to agree
to the inspections necessary for the reassurance of the nations
concerned by the prospect of yet another maverick nations seeking
nuclear weapons.
We still face the possibility of serious nonproliferation problems
emanating from the former Soviet Union, with particular regard to
Russia and Ukraine. I think that progress is being made in both nations
with the strong backing of the Clinton administration and the Congress.
Nonetheless, the possible diversion of highly enriched uranium, weapons
grade plutonium, key components, scientific knowledge, or the
scientists themselves remain threats of major significance.
There remain nations throughout the world who are committed to the
attainment of a nuclear weapons capability as we should be to thwarting
them. Our efforts to this end are in our own vital national security
interests, but they also protect our friends and allies, as well as
innocent peoples throughout the world.
Some believe that the best way to deal with potential proliferation
is through cajolery and sweet talking. There is place for diplomacy.
But it can well be backed by the kind of big stick provided by this
legislation. We should make it clear that there will be rewards for
those who help in the cause of nonproliferation. At the same time,
there must be severe punishments for companies and corporations that
misbehave.
Mr. President, the Symington amendment was conceived and enacted
nearly two decades ago. It was followed by the Glenn amendment, the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1968, the Pressler amendment, and now
the Omnibus bill. It is true that they have not saved the world from
nuclear proliferation. Nonetheless, they have stopped proliferation in
many cases, averted it in others, and slowed it in still other cases.
Most importantly, they have helped create a climate in which the spread
of nuclear weapons is anathema and those who seek such weapons are
beyond the pale.
With this legislation, more effective barriers to the spread of
weapons that can destroy civilizations will be created. There will
remain more to be done later. For now, we must not do less.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I want to inquire of the Senator from Ohio
if I am identified as a cosponsor of his amendment.
Mr. GLENN. Yes.
Mr. HELMS. I wanted to be sure about that. Of course, we have no
objection on this side.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there is no further debate, the question is
on agreeing to the amendment.
The amendment (No. 1321) was agreed to.
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the
amendment was agreed to.
Mr. KERRY. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agree to.
Mr. KERRY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me say that we will shortly propound a
unanimous consent request with respect to votes tomorrow, but I would
put Senators on notice that there will be two votes at least tomorrow
morning beginning at approximately 10 o'clock in the morning subject to
final confirmation from the leaders. This is a good time still for
those who have amendments who want to make sure they do not run up
against the barrier tomorrow to come to the floor. We would like to try
to dispose of several amendments, if possible, or at least have the
debate, if possible, and lay down a few if they need record votes
tomorrow. So I ask colleagues, if they are listening or are here, to
come to the floor so we can proceed to do that so everybody has ample
opportunity not to run up against tomorrow night's deadline.
Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Mississippi.
Mr. HELMS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. LOTT. I will be glad to defer to the Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. HELMS. I have one amendment on behalf of Senator Hatch, if the
Senator will yield to me 1 minute.
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