[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 22 (Friday, February 3, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1198-H1201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


             PROS AND CONS OF PUBLIC FIGURES WRITING BOOKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] 
is recognized for 30 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, why should I yield to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Hunter]? Because he yielded to me? Why should I yield 
to the new conscience of the House who is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-guts, 
pro-defense and has been giving us a hard time and yelled at me the 
other day? Of course I yield to the gentleman from California if he 
will promise to yield to the distinguished gentleman and my pal from 
the great State of Missouri [Mr. Volkmer].
  Mr. HUNTER. I will. Just finishing my thought, I thank my friend for 
yielding.
  Mr. DORNAN. He is pro-books, too.
  Mr. HUNTER. Let me just say I hope the gentleman from Missouri writes 
a book. And I think as one Member when he writes it I am going to 
purchase that book and read it, and I will ask the gentleman from 
California to yield to him.
  Mr. DORNAN. I am now controlling the time and loving every second of 
it. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.
  Mr. VOLKMER. The gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] has been a 
good friend, and we worked together for a good many years on many 
pieces of legislation, many of which we agree on. I agree, I have no 
disagreement with Members writing books. I think the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Hunter] missed the point. The point that bothers me and 
I think we need to clear up because I have seen it in the media, I saw 
it the other night on TV, we need to clear it up: What influence did 
Rupert Murdoch have in relation to the writing of the book and to the 
book contract and how much the Speaker is going to get? I do not 
believe that Teddy Roosevelt, Al Gore, or anybody else had any types of 
contract with any types of person. Now there may not be anything wrong 
with that. I am just asking that let us get it cleared up so that we 
know there is nothing wrong with it. Let the Speaker go ahead and write 
a book, I have no objection to his writing a book. My only question is 
what remuneration is in that contract, did the things that Rupert 
Murdoch and his companies have in relation to the Federal Government as 
to the impact on writing that book.
  Mr. DORNAN. Fair question. I yield to the gentleman from San Diego 
for a fair answer.
  Mr. HUNTER. Let me just say to my friends almost every book that is 
published by a major figure is published through a major publishing 
house.
  Mr. VOLKMER. Correct.
  Mr. HUNTER. Most books that are published by a major publishing house 
are published with a book advance. I understand there is not going to 
be any advance. Most of them are published with an advance. I would say 
the gentleman is stating we should presume that there may be a problem 
because there may have been influence wielded because a Member of the 
House leadership has followed the American tradition of writing a book 
and publishing it with a publishing house, a fairly large well-known 
publishing house in the United States, somehow has something wrong with 
it, so that we should go out with absolutely no evidence of any 
impropriety and investigate that because someone is going to write a 
book.
  Now I would say that the one thing that we deal with, our tools that 
we use in this business are words, written words and spoken words. 
There is nothing more natural for a public figure whether he is 
Democrat or Republican than to write a book. And so the idea that the 
gentleman has now established a new presumption of guilt for people 
whose stock in trade is words, that when they put these words into 
books and sell them to the public the relationships that they have with 
publishers have to be examined I think does a disservice to this House 
and to all public figures who would write. I want to give that person 
on the street a chance to buy that book, and if he pays $4 out of the 
$20 cost of that book to the person would wrote it, if that is the 
Speaker of the House, then I think that is not influence.
 remembering thomas: guilt, responsibil- ity, and the child who never 
                                  was

  Mr. DORNAN. Reclaiming my time, if the gentleman will stay--the snow 
is not due until after midnight--through my special order, I am going 
to read an article appearing in America's No. 1 liberal political 
newspaper, the Washington Post, on abortion, by an excellent Washington 
Post staff writer, Phil McCombs. Now, if I were to write a book today 
it would be on the premiere core central issue of all the social 
issues, the issue that I believe is tearing apart families in our lower 
income categories and families in our higher income categories, and 
that is the destruction of innocent life in the womb. And if the 
gentlemen, Mr. Hunter and Mr. Volkmer, my good pro-life friends stay 
and hear this article, this column today that I am going to read, I 
think you will both realize that there are lots of subjects that still 
need to be written about in depth with great compassion and feeling.
  I think that I hear Mr. Volkmer's point clearly that if a publishing 
house has business before this great House and Chamber, then we have to 
look at those relationships. I think our dynamic Speaker is willing to 
do that.
  Let me reclaim my time. May I ask the gentlemen to trade places 
because I want that lectern and then stay around if you want to comment 
later.
  First of all, let me ask the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter], 
``What are you, about 6 foot 2?'' I am so tired of people coming up to 
me and saying, ``My Gosh, you are 5 inches taller than I thought you 
were.'' It goes on regularly. I do not know whether it is my voice 
sitting in for Rush Limbaugh or something about here. But a Member 
finally taught me something. He said, ``I notice, Bob, that you will 
bring up the lectern, put the mike down,'' and I guess in that way I 
look like I am 5 foot 3. Sonny Bono is about 5 foot 4 and look how he 
comes across. They said, ``If you drop it way down, pull the 
[[Page H1199]] mike up, then you look like John Wayne, 6 foot 4.'' So 
from now on, low lectern, reading glasses, recapture my mother-given 
height. My mom's birthday would have been yesterday, 95 years old. She 
was a great Douglas MacArthur fan. She had gone on a vacation to the 
1928 Olympics where my dad was an assistant boxing coach. They had 
already been engaged 5 or 6 years. They got married the next year. I 
hope that we will see a carrier named after Douglas MacArthur. Yes, 
give me back my book on MacArthur, ``Remembrances.''
  Now, let me get deadly serious. In today's Style section of the 
Washington Post is a column called ``Remembering Thomas.'' Above it, it 
says with an exclamation point and underlined, ``Oh, Man,'' with an 
exclamation mark. And that is underlined. Then it goes on ``Remembering 
Thomas, Responsibility, Guilt and a Child Who Never Was.'' By Phil 
McCombs, Washington Post staff writer.

       This year's March for Life in which 45,000 abortion 
     opponents picketed the Supreme Court, didn't have an 
     emotional impact on me that these events often do. I was on 
     my way out of town on business, and scarcely noticed.
       Looking at the news report later, it seemed that everyone 
     had been on his or her best behavior.

  Now a footnote: One of the stations, I think it was ABC, reported 31 
people were arrested during the march. They conceded to my daughter-in-
law, Terri Ann Dornan, that they were mistaken. The arrests were at a 
different location and no part of the march. So the Washington Post 
columnist with a different objective here corrects that. Peaceful 
march. I was leading the march with the great Roger Cardinal Mahoney of 
Los Angeles.

       The abortion opponents were making it plain that they 
     oppose the use of violence to close clinics.

  That was the principal thrust of my speech before those 45,000--I 
thought it was more, like 55,000-60,000 people. And it goes on:

       And after counterdemonstrations by abortion rights 
     advocates, as we're careful to call them, were rare.
       It's all a little confusing to me. I do not know anyone 
     who--in his or her heart--doesn't hate abortion. And it seems 
     odd to see Christian conservatives so eager to force their 
     will through the armed authority of the State when they 
     already have at hand the far more powerful weapon of prayer.
       Anyway, I like prayer. It is all I have left.
       And pain.
       When the abortion was performed, I was out of town on 
     business too. I made sure of that. Whatever physical, 
     emotional and spiritual agony the woman suffered, I was not 
     by her side to support her.

       I turned my face away. My behavior was in all respects 
     craven, immoral.
       For some instinctual reason, or just imaginatively, I've 
     come to believe that it was a boy, a son whom I wanted killed 
     because, at the time, his existence would have inconvenienced 
     me. I'd had my fun. He didn't fit into my plans.
       His name, which is carved on my heart, was Thomas.
       My feelings of responsibility and guilt are undiminished by 
     the fact that the woman had full legal authority to make the 
     decision on her own, either way, without consulting me or 
     even informing me. In fact, she consulted in an open fashion 
     reflecting our shared responsibility, and I could have made a 
     strong case for having the child. Instead, I urged her along 
     the path of death.
       And skipped town.
       It's not a lot of help, either--emotionally or 
     spiritually--that the high priests of the American judiciary 
     have put their A-OK on this particular form of what I 
     personally have come to regard as the slaughter of innocents. 
     After all, it's the task of government to decide whom we may 
     or must kill, and not necessarily to provide therapeutic 
     services afterward. In the Army I remember being trained at 
     public expense in the ``spirit of the bayonet,'' which is, 
     simply put, ``to kill.'' The spirit of abortion is the same, 
     in my view, though the enemy isn't shooting back.
       I feel like a murderer--which isn't to say that I blame 
     anyone else, or think anyone else is a murderer.
       It's just the way I feel, and all the rationalizations in 
     the world haven't changed this. I still grieve for little 
     Thomas. It is an ocean of grief. From somewhere in the 
     distant past I remember the phrase from Shakespeare, ``the 
     multitudinous seas incarnadine.''
       When I go up to the river on vacation this summer, he won't 
     be going boating with me on the lovely old wooden runabout 
     that I can't bring myself to discard, either.
       He won't be lying on the grass by the tent at night, 
     looking at the starry sky and saying, ``What's that one 
     called, Dad?''
       Because there was no room on the Earth for Thomas.
       He's dead.
       The latest numbers show abortions in America have been 
     running at about 1.5 million annually. That's a lot of pain.
       Secular men's groups have tended to be focused on the ``no 
     say, no pay'' issue. ``These men feel raped,'' says Mel Feit 
     of the National Center for Men. ``They lose everything they 
     worked for all their lives. In many cases they had an 
     agreement with the woman not to have a baby and when she 
     changes her mind they call me up and say, `How can she do 
     this to me? How can she get away with it?'' Feit plans to 
     bring suit in federal court.
       In more interested in the traumatic pain that many men, as 
     well as women, often feel after an abortion. A healing 
     process of recognition grieving and ultimately forgiveness is 
     needed.
       ``There's a lot of ambivalence for men when they get in 
     touch with their pain,'' says Eileen C. Marx, formerly 
     communications director for Cardinal James A. Hickey of 
     Washington and now a columnist for Catholic publications. 
     ``They didn't have the physical pregnancy, so often they feel 
     they're not entitled to the feelings of sadness and anger and 
     guilt and loss that women often feel.''
       She tells of one man, a friend, whose wife had an abortion. 
     ``He pleaded with her not to have it. He said his parents 
     would raise the child, or they could put it up for adoption. 
     The marriage broke up as a result of the abortion and other 
     issues. He was really devastated by the experience.''
       Marx has recently written about a post-abortion healing 
     ministry called Project Rachel, in which more men are 
     becoming involved--husbands, boyfriends and even 
     grandfathers. There are 100 Project Rachel branches, 
     including one in Washington.
       I found it helpful just talking with Marx, a caring person, 
     on the phone, though it was a little tough when she mentioned 
     being pregnant and hearing the heartbeat and feeling ``this 
     wonderful celebration of the life inside you.''
       She said not to be too hard on myself, that healing is 
     about forgiveness and God forgives me.
       I said sure, that's right, but some things are still hard.
       Like looking in the mirror.
                              {time}  1550

  What a courageous column, Phil.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a good friend, gone to his eternal reward, a good 
man. We were in the Watts riots together. Sixty-five, I bumped into 
him, 3 years later in Vietnam was a correspondent for CBS Radio. Gosh, 
am I going to forget his name? I guess I am--Bill--Bill Stout, Bill 
Stout. He told me that every time he drove up Hollywood Boulevard he 
looked up at the old medical building at the northeast corner of 
Highland and Hollywood Boulevard, right by the famous footprints in 
front of the Grauman's Chinese Theater, and he said, ``On a certain 
floor my son died.'' When he wrote this column for the L.A. Times he 
said, ``Twenty-two years ago,'' so now it must be 35 years ago. ``I've 
never gotten over the pain. It wrecked my marriage, and I know my son 
died up there in the hands of some abortionist, on the floor, 
wherever.'' And Bill Stout was a proud mainstream liberal, as I am sure 
Phil McCombs is.
  We are not going to get away from this abortion debate, Mr. Speaker. 
It will come back this summer. We are going to try to roll back all 
those obnoxious, in our face, Executive orders from Clinton on the very 
anniversary, the 20th anniversary, of the Roe versus Wade decision, a 
decision built on a lie, entrenched in a lie.
  Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe in that case, never had an abortion, 
never was raped, lied here way through it. Young Sarah Weddington, a 
brilliant red-haired lawyer that carried the case, told her, ``Don't 
tell the world you weren't raped.''
  Norma McCorvey has had three daughters. They still are estranged from 
the mother because she tried to kill all three and did not make it, had 
them all. She travels broken, on drugs, off drugs. She is out there 
being used by the pro-abortion, multibillion-dollar industry.
  But guess what happened yesterday, Mr. Speaker? Yesterday morning, 
Clinton asked everyone at the prayer breakfast to pray for him, but he 
had put in our face within that very 1-day period an abortionist to 
replace the Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders. This is a male version of 
Joycelyn Elders and worse. She was a doctor, but she never said she 
performed abortions, and guess what? I hope the Senate is going to not 
only reject Dr. Foster, Clinton's nomination, but will do what 
[[Page H1200]] we already warned Clinton in writing we were going to 
do, roll the Surgeon General back into the Assistant Secretary for 
Health in Health and Human Services where it always was.
  Our friend, Ronald Reagan, made a mistake, Duncan. He promised the 
Surgeon General job to two people. They said, ``Mr. President, we 
already have a Secretary of Health, and it's the same job.'' So our 
friend, out of his simple honest mistake, split the Surgeon General 
away from the Assistant Secretary of Health and gave it to Dr. Koop. He 
did not shave his beard. He brought back the white uniform. And we had 
an Amish pseudo-admiral which is what he looked like. Koop then threw 
up his hands on pro-life, this brilliant Philadelphia surgeon who made 
a well-deserved, sterling reputation for separating twins, Siamese 
twins, some of them joined at the brain, and then became sort of 
brilliant on antismoking, but sort of an apologist for the so-called 
pro-choice movement because he said all was lost.
  With columns like Mr. McCombs', Mr. Speaker, all is not lost.
  Now, is Clinton going to be the President 2 years from now? No. I 
said that in a 1-minute this morning. No way.
  Here is the book, ``The Agenda.'' Read ``Inside the White House,'' 
Duncan, and then read the new book that is on the front page of the 
Washington Post called ``First in His Class.''

                              {time}  1600

  If you read just these three books, you will see that sometime this 
summer, late summer, when the Watergate stories are exploding across 
America on alternative media; that is, radio and television talk shows, 
on the front page of our biggest newspapers, all the other 1,750-some 
papers, he cannot survive this. He will resign. And when the Post, the 
same paper that Mr. McCombs is a staff writer for, makes a calculated 
decision to bring down the White House again, as they did, for good or 
wrong with Nixon--he did it to himself--they are going to wreck this 
Presidency and they are not doing it to help us, Mr. Hunter, they are 
doing it to get a big headstart on the Presidential season that is 
already beginning.
  So the Post will have in the White House someone that they accept 
philosophically, and that way they will not see him bringing down the 
White House and adding another 20 Republicans from that side of the 
aisle over to this side of the aisle; people who will become 
Republicans.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I just want to say that I stayed on the floor because I really 
appreciate the words of the gentleman
 and the wisdom of the gentleman, my great friend from California. This 
is a house of mechanics, word mechanics. That is what legislation is. 
There is probably no one more proficient in reminding us that we are 
not just mechanics, but we are holders and transferrers, if you will, 
of values, the values of our constituents. And in this area, this area 
of pro-life, there is a great, great need for people who have voices as 
articulate as the gentleman who is speaking right now, the best speaker 
in the House of Representatives. I want to thank the gentleman.

  I have to go back to our beloved State of California, but I want to 
thank the gentleman for all the time he has taken over many, many years 
in talking about this issue. I am also reminded when he put 40 hours in 
an airplane going to Somalia and back to give a full report to every 
family member who had a beloved one who had been killed in Mogadishu, 
and performed such a wonderful service in doing that. I have to take 
off, but your words are very eloquent today. I hope that Americans 
listen.
  Mr. DORNAN. While 1,300,000,000 listeners and watchers of C-SPAN are 
watching us, I might use this opportunity to tell them something. The 
newly named National Security Committee--you and I preferred the old 
title, maybe both, Armed Services and National Security--has come down 
to 5 subcommittees. Our great chairman, Navy Capt. Floyd Spence, of 
South Carolina, is no longer able to take a subcommittee. He will be a 
shepherd, shepherding his five Napoleonic marshals, his subcommittee 
chairmen. You have the most important preferred subcommittee, you are 
the chairman of the Subcommittee on Procurement. Herb Bateman, of 
Virginia, has the great area where the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan and U.S.S. 
Harry Truman will be built. He has the Readiness Subcommittee. He would 
have been chairman of Merchant Marine and Fisheries Subcommittee if we 
had not done away with it, which I agreed with. Then Curt Weldon, of 
the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has R&D, which I am on, and you 
have been the ranking member in the past. I am chairman of the 
Personnel Subcommittee. Joel Hefley, of Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD, that 
great part of the Colorado Air Force Academy, is the fifth marshal for 
installations.
  The five of us, together with our two Committees on Intelligence that 
have national security responsibility, and I got first pick there, 
Chairman Dornan of Technical and Tactical Intelligence, Jerry Lewis, 
our colleague, the chairman of the other, including human intelligence, 
and the CIA. Of our seven national security subcommittees, who dreamed 
on the night of November 8 I would be chairman of two out of seven, and 
you would have the most important one, to modernize our service with 
Comanche, V-22, Arleigh Burke destroyers, and these new carriers.
  We have a battle on our hands in an approaching bankrupt nation to 
live up to the preamble of the Constitution to provide for the common 
defense.
  All five of us chairmen voted yesterday to take defense above $200 
million out of a simple line-item veto. I noticed Floyd Spence was with 
us and many of the members of Armed Services, now National Security. We 
have a tough fight ahead of us.
  If you are not in a rush, just listen to this from Bob Woodward's 
book, ``The Agenda.'' Because of the new rules protecting, not Al Gore, 
not the Supreme Court Justice, the Chief Justice or the Associates, but 
only the Presidency of the United States, I will be very careful how I 
read this on the House floor. I will use expletives deleted.
  Here is page 287 in ``The Agenda,'' ``Inside the White House,'' by 
Bob Woodward, who really along with Carl Bernstein together as 
investigative reporters caused the resignation of the one and only 
President in American history, Richard Nixon. And I for one have never 
said Mr. Nixon had not created his own fate.
  In the middle of page 287 it says, Clinton speaking to Mr. Kerrey, 
Kerrey says, ``The Constitution gives you the option, but I wouldn't 
take it.'' And you will have to read the book to see what they are 
talking about.
  Clinton again pleaded with Kerrey that he needed his vote for the 
largest tax increase in all of recorded history of man and womankind.
  ``My Presidency is going to go down,'' he said sharply, by now 
shouting. Kerrey shouted back, getting fed up, ``I do not like the 
argument that I am bringing the Presidency down.''
  This is a man who joined the Navy Seals. That is like being a 
paratrooper like you, Duncan, being a fighter pilot, being a special 
forces sniper, a commando, or a marine going behind the enemy lines for 
weeks at a time. A Navy seal is the best of the best. It is like 
carrier landing at night. This is slightly built, thin panther like Bob 
Kerrey, who left a leg in Vietnam, and if he gets elected President can 
put himself in the gallery as a Medal of Honor winner and then can run 
down and talk about himself.
  He says, yelling back, ``I don't like the argument I am bringing the 
Presidency down.'' Clinton shouted, ``Defeat would be precisely that,'' 
if that huge tax increase went down. Kerrey could not flee from 
responsibility. Kerrey bellowed, ``I really resent your argument that 
somehow I am responsible for your Presidency surviving.''
  Clinton, with one of the most common, foul expletive deleted words in 
the English language, ``expletive deleted you,'' Clinton yelled.
  Bottom of the page, 287. I turned to 288 when I was reading this a 
few months back, and I expected to see Navy seal Kerrey returning the 
compliment about engaging in activity with yourself. But Kerrey felt he 
always tried to be respectful of the Commander-in-Chief. But he also 
wanted to defend himself. So he continued shouting back.
  Clinton pressed only two things. He had to have Kerrey's vote. ``I 
need it,'' he said at one point plaintively. He 
[[Page H1201]] said if Kerrey denied him the vote,
 Kerrey would wreak national havoc.

  ``I have got the responsibility for me,'' the Senator replied. ``I 
have got my vote. My vote matters. I vote based on what I believe is 
right. Always have. I don't particularly in big issues like this like 
to shave my vote. So that is where it is.''
  ``Fine,'' Clinton said bruisingly. ``OK, if that is what you want, 
you go do it.''
  They both crashed their phones down. Clinton was irate. He turned to 
his advisers after the conversation and said, ``It is going to be a 
no.'' Clinton was wrong. Kerrey voted yes later. He made a speech on 
national television why he didn't want to bring the Presidency down, 
why he would vote yes. This is just the end of 1993.
  And then Senator Bob Kerrey extracted from the White House the 
promise to be made chairman of a commission on our impending fiscal 
disaster. He did a good job chairing that committee.
  My colleague from southern California Chris Cox, was on it. Ask 
Congressman Cox about that commission. They just turned in their 
report. The media did not give that report proper attention. It got 
short shrift. The report said if this Chamber doesn't complete our 
Contract With America, stay focused on these fiscal issues while we 
still, after April or May, handle the serious cultural meltdown and the 
destruction of the American family, the garbage that Hollywood is 
pumping into our culture, I don't know what we can do about that except 
plead with their good common sense, but we can do all of this in this 
House. And if we don't, Senator Kerrey said there will only be 3 line 
items on the budget in about 20 years. We will close down all the 
courts, let all the Federal judges go, including the Supreme Court. No 
more Federal marshals, no FBI, no Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast 
Guard, no antinarcotics program.
  That will solve that debate. There will only be three things left in 
the budget, just three: Interest on the national debt, which will then 
be way over $10 trillion; Social Security, which will create a 
generational war, because only the people who have aged past my age a 
little bit will be reaping way beyond what they put in the system; and 
the third category is Medicare and Medicaid.

                              {time}  1610

  Health care, Social Security, interest on the debt. Is that where we 
are headed?
  As I said this morning, Mr. Speaker, Bob Kerrey carrying the banner 
of the great Democratic Party, the oldest in the Nation's history, 
Thomas Jefferson's party, the least government is the best government, 
that is why they still sit to the treasured right although we switched 
on committees, that party with Bob Kerrey at its top is going to make 
an exciting campaign next year.

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