[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 11, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1910
 
                SPEAKER'S ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING COMITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Deal). Under a previous order of the 
House the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues who may be listening in their 
offices, and anyone who reads the written Record, or the million and a 
half people, Mr. Speaker, that follow the proceedings of this Chamber 
by C-SPAN, electronic means, may not have seen that the Speaker made an 
announcement from the chair yesterday restating the policy of this 
House concerning comity or the decency or prevailing feeling of good 
will among House Members here and the courtesy that we extend to 
elected Members of the other body, the U.S. Senate, not just those who 
served here, but those who got elected directly there, have been 
expanded, and this is a tradition that has never really come up before, 
to include the White House.
  I am going to respect the Speaker's wishes yesterday, but I want to 
put this in a little context, because I spoke before high school 
government and economics classes at one of my high schools in my 
district, Laura High School, yesterday morning. And I have been back to 
my district the last four weekends in a row. I can also add that coming 
home last week I came through Oregon, I am going up to Santa Barbara 
all day Saturday next, and in just the last few weeks I have been in 
Illinois and Florida and Pennsylvania, just last week campaigning for 
candidates of my party, or in the case of Pennsylvania for all of the 
candidates that were up for reelection yesterday in Pennsylvania. And 
questions are coming up regularly about the President's character. They 
are asking if we are going to discuss it on the House floor. And I told 
them that I had promised not to discuss the President's character until 
I had talked to our Parliamentarian.
  Tonight they came to me when they saw I was signed up for 5 minutes. 
I told them I was speaking on Haiti, so there was no problem. But this 
is probably the first time that this rule has had to be enforced this 
strenuously on a sitting President in over 100 years, maybe since the 
ill will and lack of comity when the word ``treason'' was screamed back 
and forth in this Chamber. And it was this very Chamber that opened up 
in 1857, so it was in this very great hall that charges of treason were 
going back and forth, building up to the War Between the States, the 
Civil War.

  So let me read the Speaker's words, both for myself to listen to and 
for the million and a half audience who have missed the beginning of 
yesterday.
  This came after 2 minute speeches. One was by the gentleman from 
Florida [Mr. Goss] on my subject tonight, Haiti. Then Mr. Thomas of 
Wyoming spoke on gun control. Then Mr. Lamar Smith of Texas got up and 
put an article in the Record that he said was an article the likes of 
which he had never seen before concerning a sitting President, titled 
``The Politics of Promiscuity.'' But it was about policy more than it 
was about character, and he put the whole article in. As I understand 
from the Parliamentarians, no more articles should be submitted or will 
be put in that discuss the President's character.
  Then Mr. Montgomery led the Pledge of Allegiance. Then Mr. Ballenger 
of North Carolina got up and spoke about Robert Bennett being hired to 
defend the President on a whole range of charges.
  Then the Speaker got up, and sitting where you are he stood, Mr. 
Speaker pro tempore, and said the following: The Chair, that is the 
Speaker, my good friend, Tom Foley, ``wishes to remind Members that 
comments regarding the President of the United States are covered by 
House rules of comity, and Members should avoid any references to the 
President that involve suggestions of a personal character.''
  I had to read that twice. The Speaker did not mean issues of 
character. He meant suggestions that involve a characterization of a 
personal nature. But this is all about character and separation of our 
tripartite system of government. But I think we can get by without 
discussing the latest headlines of the last week and stick to policy.
  The Speaker finished saying, ``The Chair wishes to allow reasonable 
latitude for debate on subjects of personal interest.* * *'' Now as I 
have said many times, I have nine grandkids, God willing more to come, 
and it is a personal interest to me how somebody speaks about drug use, 
and then what is on the public record, or how they speak about sexual 
promiscuity and put Joycelyn Elders and Christine Gibbe in office, and 
how this impacts on the high school kids that I visited with yesterday.
  The Speaker finished, ``Members will observe the rules of comity with 
regard to the President,'' and it goes without saying the Vice 
President, ``Members of the other body, and their fellow Members.''

  I had six Democrats tell me last Thursday that they thought we would 
invade Haiti to get the scandals off the front page of the paper. I 
thought they were kidding. And then I saw they were not laughing. And 
then they said rather cynically it worked for President Reagan. I guess 
they meant the tragedy of the 220 Marines, 17 Navy, and 4 Army soldiers 
all being blown up in the barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983; 2 
days later we liberated the Island of Grenada. That was a policy 
problem. President Reagan took his lumps on Beirut, pulled out. Grenada 
was a totally different issue. And they also said it worked for 
President Bush. I did not know President Bush was down in the polls all 
that much. But I guess they meant the recession was deepening, and so 
we went to war with Iraq, to liberate Kuwait. After the liberation, his 
ratings were up around 90 percent. I do not for a moment share that 
view, and think they were being cynical in the extreme. Both Grenada 
and Kuwait were in the United States national interest.
  But they said to me quite seriously they thought that we would have 
to go into Haiti, and that it might be driven by the scandals. I do not 
think anybody in the administration, and here is Bob Dornan defending 
the Clinton administration, would be that cynical. I do not think they 
would sacrifice one combat man or combat woman now that we are putting 
women in harm's way to up the President's machismo factor.
  However, I think we are heading toward a policy that will squander 
the lives of Americans to reinstall Aristide as President of Haiti. 
This very day, and I only found this out on the phone 10 minutes ago, 
members of Haiti's Parliament, which was democratically elected on 
December 17, 1990, voted in a new President with Cedre's blessing. A 
United States embassy spokesman in Haiti said it was the act of a 
desperate regime. That may prove to be true, but we do not know now.
  There has to be some sort of democratic center in Haiti. There is in 
every country. Aristide, however, is not that center. Neither is the 
military. There is a man, or in these days a woman somewhere that wants 
to say here is where the democratic center is, and I do not mean the 
political center. I mean the center of gravity in this country is here.
  Mr. Speaker, I say with clearness and with as much forcefulness as I 
can muster, and I have been to Haiti three times in my life, and I know 
how this country suffers, Aristide is anticapitalism, anti-American, 
antireligion, anti-Christian, anti-Catholic. This fallen-away Catholic 
priest is anti-Catholic. He has dabbled in voodoo and is not worth the 
finger of a single American fighting person, let alone putting somebody 
in a wheelchair, let alone as Aideed caused 18 of the best Rangers and 
Delta Force special ops guys to come home in caskets from Mogadishu. 
Aideed today rules the roost in Mogadishu. What did we accomplish?
  I have spoken to the fathers and mothers, I have the sister of one of 
the men killed in the gallery with his wife, Keith Pearson and Keith's 
sister.
  What do we tell parents if they die in Haiti? When the Marines went 
in 1915 they stayed 19 years and they did not come out until 1934. We 
can have a get-in policy just like that. It is the get-out policy that 
is tough.
  I will do an hour tomorrow on Haiti without any references to Clinton 
policy in the past, but what might happen in the future; 1 hour on 
Haiti and I will read. Let me close on this, Mr. Speaker. Here is a 
letter that I got from a young businessman in Haiti who is back in the 
United States.

       Dear Congressman: I will never forget the morning you rode 
     through the streets of Port au Prince with me during the 
     riots. Your interest was most appreciated.

  I visited his fabric factory with 100 men and women at work in good 
working conditions, no sweat shop, U.S. Standards.

                              {time}  1920

  He said:

       Our factory was nationalized after Aristide came to power. 
     I lost everything. All I brought back, Congressman, was a 
     couple of bullet wounds. No, it is not safe for American 
     business. We may have 100,000 Haitians coming to New York and 
     to Florida. I say, take off the sanctions. If we do not, we 
     have to let people in.

  And we had better do something about finding the democratic center, 
and it is not this phony anti-Christian ex-priest Aristide, not worth a 
single American life.

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