[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 26 (Thursday, February 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2428-S2430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                            P.S./WASHINGTON

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, for more than 40 years, since I was 
a young newspaperman in suburban St. Louis, I have written a weekly 
newspaper column on the topics of the day.
  I hope my colleagues will find the newspaper columns I wrote in 
January of interest, so I ask that they be printed in the Record.
  The columns follow:

                    The Value of the Carter Missions

       There has been some editorial sniping--as well as criticism 
     from political leaders, most of it not in public statements--
     about former President Jimmy Carter's efforts in North Korea, 
     Haiti and Bosnia.
       ``We can have only one person making foreign policy for the 
     United States--and that should be the President, is the 
     argument.
       What these nay-sayers miss is the reality that Jimmy Carter 
     does not make any pretense of speaking for the United States. 
     If he were to travel abroad and claim to speak for the 
     President when he has no authorization to do so, that would 
     be wrong.
       In the case of Haiti, he went on the mission at the request 
     of the President.
       But Jimmy Carter is a person of international stature who 
     can do more to bring people together than any person other 
     than Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali of the United 
     Nations.
       Carter is regarded as well-motivated and not trying to 
     promote any private agenda or any national agenda other than 
     helping to bring about a world of peace and stability.
       When he has gone at the request of other nations to be an 
     observer of elections, where countries are moving to 
     democracy, there has been no criticism.
       When he helps bring the two sides of a civil war together 
     in Liberia in Africa, no one pays any attention.
       At the Carter Center in Atlanta, he gets people from 
     various nations together to discuss frictions and hopes, and 
     there is hardly a paragraph in any newspaper about it.
       But when he moves onto a more
        visible problem, then the critics emerge.
       Part of this is because foreign policy has not been a 
     strong suit of President Clinton. He is better at foreign 
     affairs than he was a year ago and a year from now he will be 
     still better.
       It is difficult to move from being Governor of Arkansas to 
     overnight being the most influential person in the world on 
     foreign policy.
       Because of a partial foreign policy vacuum in the current 
     administration, some believe that the visibility of a former 
     President doing creative things causes Clinton political 
     embarrassment.
       My strong belief is that President Clinton should continue 
     to welcome Jimmy Carter's leadership, as he does that of the 
     United Nations Secretary General, but simply make clear that 
     ordinarily Jimmy Carter is acting on his own, not speaking 
     for the United States.
       [[Page S2429]] Whether the former President's activities in 
     Bosina will produce long-term gains is still unclear. But 
     they have done no harm, and may do great good.
       In North Korea and Haiti there is no question of the 
     significant contribution of Jimmy Carter.
       With the possible exception of John Quincy Adams, no former 
     President has served as effectively as has Jimmy Carter. I 
     would also give high marks for post-president leadership to 
     Thomas Jefferson and Herbert Hoover--Jefferson largely 
     through correspondence and Hoover in a variety of public 
     endeavors.
       My hope is that Jimmy Carter will ignore the critics and 
     continue to serve the cause of world peace.
       We are indebted to him.
                                                                    ____


               Inching Toward a Balanced Budget Amendment

       The nation is inching toward having a balanced budget 
     amendment to the U.S.Constitution, and that is good news for 
     the generations to come.
       We have been living on a huge credit card and when the time 
     comes to pay for it, we say blithely: ``Send the bill to our 
     children and grandchildren.'' It is morally indefensible.
       Both political parties share the blame.
       For 26 years in a row we have been spending more than we 
     take in, and we are already paying for it. A New York Federal 
     Reserve Bank study shows that between 1978 and 1988 the 
     deficit cost us 5 percent of our national income. The 
     Congressional Budget Office suggests that the loss of 1 
     percent of our national income means the loss of 600,000 
     jobs.
       The deficit has eaten away at our savings, sending interest 
     rates up, reducting our productive capacity because it makes 
     investment too expensive, ultimately reducing the growth of 
     our national income. As late as 1986, the average 
     manufacturing wage per hour was higher in the United States 
     than any other nation. Now 13 nations have exceeded us.
       Studies indicate that between 37 percent and 55 percent of 
     our trade deficit has been caused by the budget deficit. That 
     means that the single biggest cause of sending our jobs 
     overseas has been the budget deficit, but the issue is 
     complicated enough that it is not generally understood.
       The General Accounting Office in 1992 reported that if we 
     continue on the course of deficit spending we would have a 
     gradual decline or stalemate in our standard of living, but 
     if by the year 2001 we would balanced the budget, by the year 
     2020 the average American would have an increased income of 
     36 percent.
       Worst of all, the history of nations is that if we continue 
     piling up debt, eventually we will do what
      the economist call ``monetizing the debt.'' That means that 
     to ``solve'' our problem we will start printing more and 
     more money and our dollars would be less and less 
     valuable. Among other things, that would devastate all 
     private savings as well as things like Social Security.
       On top of all that, more and more of our debt is owed to 
     other nations. We now owe more than $800 billion to people 
     outside the United States and that makes our international 
     situation somewhat precarious. The greater our debt, the less 
     independent we can be. It's true of a family; it's true of a 
     country.
       It now looks like the proposal, narrowly defeated in the 
     past, will pass. It has been advocated by many people over 
     the years, the first being Thomas Jefferson.
       It will include a provision that if there is a 60 percent 
     vote of the House and Senate, we can have a deficit, for 
     there are years in a recession or war when it may be 
     necessary.
       Today interest spending by the federal government is 
     ballooning, squeezing out our ability to respond to great 
     needs. In 1949 we devoted 9 percent of the federal budget to 
     education; today it is 2 percent. In 1950 we were paying 
     interest on the debt of World War II and we spent $5.8 
     billion. This year we will spend more than $300 billion.
       To their credit, President Clinton and a bare majority in 
     Congress reduced the deficit in 1993, but that was only the 
     first step needed.
       If we adopt the balanced budget amendment and it is 
     approved by 38 state legislatures, we will all have to 
     sacrifice a little.
       But I face a choice of sacrificing a little, or harming the 
     future of my three grandchildren. I don't have a difficult 
     time making that choice, and I don't believe most Americans 
     do.
                                                                    ____


                     Cultural Chasms That Divide Us

       Madeleine Doubek, political editor of the Daily Herald, the 
     widely circulated newspaper based in the northern and western 
     Chicago suburbs, noted that at a recent news conference I 
     answered a reporter's question by saying: ``We have to reach 
     . . . across the borders of race and religion and ethnic 
     background and economic barriers. We have to communicate to 
     people in the suburbs that they have something at stake in 
     the fate of those who are less fortunate in our society.''
       She called me and asked whether that implied racism and 
     classism in the suburbs, and I responded that it did.
       I do suggest that those evils are a monopoly of the 
     suburbs. Prejudice rears its ugly head in the central cities, 
     and in the rural areas, as well as in the suburbs.
       But there has been a flight from the problems of the 
     cities, a flight to better schools and less crime. Sometimes 
     those two understandable causes have also been confused with 
     flight from African Americans and Latinos.
       But whatever the cause, the result is a growing gulf 
     between urban America and suburban America, and that's not 
     good for anyone. We don't want this nation to develop into a 
     Bosnia or Northern Ireland. The harm that comes from the 
     deepening divisions in our society should be obvious.
       What can we do about it? More specifically, what can 
     suburbanites and all of us do about it? Let me suggest a few 
     things:
       (1) Religious institutions play a powerful role in American 
     life. Ask the question at the appropriate meeting, or to the 
     right people, what your church or temple is doing to bring 
     greater understanding across the barriers that divide us. I 
     would be interested in hearing of specific
      actions that are planned or are being taken.
       (2) Rotary Clubs, business and professional women's groups, 
     teachers' associations and other civic and business-related 
     groups can sponsor programs that help to create greater 
     sensitivity. The myths that are believed about another race 
     or religion or ethnic group often can be demolished in this 
     type of setting. When business and professional people 
     understand that it is good economics not to discriminate, 
     everyone wins.
       (3) Individuals can make sure that their children are 
     exposed to people of differing cultural backgrounds in a 
     positive way. Too few white families have ever had an African 
     American or Latino or Asian American family to their homes 
     for dinner. Too few African American families have ever had a 
     white family to their home for dinner. The same can be said 
     across too many ethnic and religious barriers. What seems 
     like a small thing for your family to do can be immensely 
     important for the future of your children, and the future of 
     your community and our nation and our world.
       I spoke at three events honoring Martin Luther King Jr.'s 
     birthday this year, and what disturbed me about two of them 
     is that I spoke only to African Americans.
       Dr. King wanted us to reach out to one another, understand 
     one another, and replace hatred and prejudice with love and 
     understanding.
       That message is needed in the suburbs, but also in our 
     cities and rural areas.
       ``One nation, indivisible'' we recite when we say the 
     pledge of allegiance to our flag.
       Do we mean it? Are we willing to do concrete things to make 
     it a reality?
                                                                    ____

               Religious Zealotry Can Turn Good Into Evil

       There is much that is good about people who have religious 
     beliefs and practice their religion, however imperfectly we 
     all do it. But religion can be abused when people are too 
     zealous--and can be abused when there is a shell of religion 
     that translates into hostility to others.
       Almost all religions, if not all, suggest that we should be 
     concerned about those less fortunate. According to a poll 
     conducted for the Center for the Study of American Religion 
     at Princeton University, those who attend religious services 
     weekly in the United States are significantly more likely to 
     think seriously about their responsibilities to the poor.
       Many other examples of the good that religious belief 
     provides our society should be given.
       But when people are so zealous that they kill people at 
     abortion clinics, or try to impose their beliefs on others, 
     then what is good can become an evil. Many of the most bloody 
     wars have been conducted in the name of religion, usually 
     simply used as a tool by ambitious rulers, but sometimes out 
     of genuine belief by the leaders.
       There is also the problem where faith has almost diminished 
     to nothing, except hostility to others who do not share the 
     same religious heritage.
       My impression is that most of those involved in the 
     violence of the Protestant-Catholic struggle in Northern 
     Ireland are not necessarily people of deep religious 
     commitment, but people who have grown up with one heritage 
     and have learned to hate the other side.
       During my years in the Army I was stationed in Germany, and 
     I remember the young German who told me with great pride that 
     no one in his family had married a Roman Catholic for over a 
     century. I asked what church he attended, and he told me that 
     while he was proud of being a Protestant, he didn't attend 
     any church.
       But he had learned to hate.
       Hitler had only nominal Christian ties. He believed little, 
     and practiced nothing in the way of religion, but his 
     religious heritage somehow left him with a hatred of Jews.
       In Bosnia, nations with strong Orthodox ties are generally 
     much more sympathetic to the Serbian cause than other 
     nations, not for genuine religious reasons but for heritage 
     reasons. Serbia is largely Orthodox Christian.
       Muslim countries believe that the reason Europeans and 
     Americans have not responded more to the plight of the 
     Bosnian Muslims is precisely because they are Muslims. I do 
     not believe that is true for the United States, but 
     unfortunately it contains some truth for the more tradition-
     bound European nations, even though the actual practice of 
     religion is much less evident in Western Europe than in the 
     United States. The 
     [[Page S2430]]  empty shell of Christianity too often only 
     has hostility toward non-Christians.
       One of several good things about what we did in Somalia 
     (incorrectly labeled a disaster by those who look at it 
     superficially), in addition to preventing starvation by 
     hundreds of thousands of people, is that a nation labeled by 
     the world as Christian/Jewish, the United States, came to the 
     rescue of a people almost totally Muslim. How would we have 
     looked if the world's most powerful nation had done nothing 
     about massive starvation in a desperate country! But many 
     Muslim nations were permanently surprised that we responded.
       The lesson of history is that the genuine practice of 
     religion is wholesome, good for the individual and good for a 
     community and nation. But extreme caution is in order when 
     leaders try to impose their beliefs on others through 
     government.
       And the ``stop'' sign should go up when political leaders 
     who share a heritage call on others to hate or kill those who 
     do not share the same faith.
     

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