[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 190 (Thursday, November 30, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17833-S17836]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CRITICAL TIMES IN AMERICA


                        The Budget Negotiations

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I wholeheartedly agree with the Senator 
from Wyoming. I have to say also that the people of Oklahoma, a lot of 
times--say you are reading these polls, and people are saying, well, we 
really do not want to balance the budget yet; let us wait until the 
President gets back; we do not want to be too harsh. There is a myth 
that is floating around that we are going to be cutting Medicare when 
in fact we are saving Medicare, and without our doing that, according 
to his own board of trustees, Medicare would go under.
  I believe that when I go back, as I do every weekend, to Oklahoma and 
I talk to what I refer to--and it has offended several people in this 
Chamber--as real people, they tell me that they do not want us to back 
down. They say that this is our opportunity to have a balanced budget.
  I can stand on the floor of this Senate and say in my honest opinion 
this is the last opportunity probably in my lifetime that we will have 
to have a balanced budget. And if we cave in now, we are not going to 
be able to have it. I do not think we will have another chance. And I 
think the President has every intention of having us cave in because he 
has a lot of discretionary programs he wants to keep funding. He is 
holding on to the past with white knuckles, to the last 30 years of 
reckless spending that has brought us where we are today, and he is 
trying to use the very sensitive argument that we cannot do this to all 
these people, that there are all these programs that are going to be 
cut, which are not going to be cut.
  I would say that if you want to make a moral issue out of this, the 
moral issue is to go ahead with this, with the Balanced Budget Act of 
1995, which passed in this Chamber and they passed in the House of 
Representatives, and get this passed because if we do not do it, we 
know what we are subjecting our future generations to. Many Members in 
this body are much younger than I am, and they have young families. I 
have grandchildren coming up now. One is due any minute now. If we do 
not change the trend that we established in the 1960's and that has 
continued until today, a person born today is 

[[Page S17834]]
going to have to pay 82 percent of his or her lifetime income just to 
service the Government.
  I do not think that is what we want. I know that is not what the 
American people want. But some people just do not want to change. Some 
people refuse to look at the elections and the postelection analyses 
and polls that said very distinctly that the American people in 
November 1994 voted for a change, a change from the Great Society 
programs of the 1960's that have been perpetuating themselves and 
growing ever since then. So I think this is the last chance we have.
  This is our last stand. I encourage the negotiators to keep that in 
mind. I am talking about Republicans and Democrats. It is too important 
to future generations.


                         U.S. Troops in Bosnia

  It is ironic now that we have two things that are going on that are 
very, very critical to all of America, not just this budget matter that 
we have been talking about--and the distinguished Senator from Wyoming 
is right when he draws the attention to the significance of what is 
going on--but something else is happening, too. My frustration, which I 
have expressed in the Chamber every day for the last several days, is 
that while the President is out rejoicing in his new posture of being 
the international peacemaker in Belfast and other places, time is going 
by and American troops as we speak are being sent to Bosnia. It goes 
all the way back to 2\1/2\ years ago when this President made a 
decision to do airdrops into Bosnia. I can remember serving in the 
other body at that time and asking the question: You are doing 
airdrops. How do you know that the stuff you are dropping is going to 
the good guys instead of the bad guys? And the response in that 
committee meeting was: ``Well, we do not know.'' There was a 
hesitation. This was the military talking: ``I am not sure that we know 
who the good guys and the bad guys are.''
  I think if you take any snapshot in the history of Bosnia over the 
last 500 years, you could come to the conclusion legitimately that the 
Serbs are the bad guys or the Croats are the bad guys or even the 
Moslems are the bad guys. If you look at what has happened in the last 
week over there, people have been killed, tortured; there have been 
uprisings. I read from several articles yesterday of the hostile area 
and what is happening over there.
  The mayor of a town not far from where the Senator was when he was 
over there said, speaking in behalf of the people--we hear a lot of the 
military, of the three known factions and of the rogue groups that are 
over there but these are civilians--he says, ``We will still fight, and 
if the multinational force tries to drive us from our homes or take 
away our right to defend ourselves, there will be no authority on 
Earth, including the Serbian authorities, that can stop us. We will not 
leave, we will not withdraw, and we will not live under Moslem rule.''
  This is coming from an area that is going to be under Moslem rule if 
this initial peace accord would take place. And you have another big 
group, too, not just those who have found happy homes and feel that 
they ought to be able to stay in those homes. You also have what I have 
been stating as 3 million, but I know the conservative figure is 2 
million, refugees that we can identify in those areas, and they are 
scattered throughout Bosnia. We have heard from all of the sources--our 
Embassy people, the military people, U.N. people, Gen. Rupert Smith, 
the British general who is in charge of the U.N. forces in Bosnia, as 
we speak--that more than 50 percent of these 2 million refugees, under 
the plan that we have here, will not be able to return to their homes.
  What does a refugee want to do? If you have peace, it means you get 
to go home. More than half of these will not get to go home. So you are 
going to have new rogue elements rising up.
  Just this morning in the newspapers--I will just read one part of an 
article here that said, ``The worst problem though is likely''--keep in 
mind this is an article that showed this morning 10 more American 
soldiers showed up. There are only 10. I understand that is not a very 
large number. But tomorrow it will be 10 more, the next day 10 more; 
then larger and larger numbers will be coming because that is the 
President's plan, as he hides over in Europe and allows more and more 
of our soldiers to go over to put us in a position where we have to 
support him to send ground troops in.

       The worst problem though is likely to be minefields. There 
     are believed to be millions of mines of all shapes and sizes 
     in the Tuzla region. There are mines everywhere. And neither 
     side has maps. We have to move one centimeter at a time.

  This is a quote from the lieutenant colonel who works directly under 
General Haukland, the Norwegian general that I talked to in Tuzla. He 
also said that in the past 3 weeks his men have demined nearly 300 
yards of road. Heavy snowfall will only complicate the problem. This is 
the very ground that I stood on 3 weeks ago in the Tuzla area. There 
are only two Members of Congress who went up into that area, Senator 
Hank Brown from Colorado and myself. We stood there. And I can tell you 
that there are mines there. These reports are accurate. That is where 
we are going to be having some 25,000 Americans up in that region.
  Yesterday we showed a map--and I said, I do not know who did the 
negotiating for the United States of America--where we ended up with 
the northeast sector, the most hostile area. But that is where we are. 
And we are there very clearly today.
  So, that is what we are faced with. And I think it is time to draw 
some other lines, too. I know that the President is over in Europe 
right now, believing that we are going to end up being able to vote to 
support his program.
  Let me just serve notice to the U.S. Senate at this time, there are 
not going to be any free rides on this deal. A lot of people are 
saying, well, let us have a weak resolution or wait until we have so 
many troops over there and say we are going to support our troops. Sure 
we are going to support our troops. But now is when we can make a 
decision and say, ``Mr. President, you are wrong. We do not want you to 
send ground troops into Bosnia.''
  There is going to be a recorded vote. We might as well know it. By 
the way, I went back and did some research just this morning. If you 
remember back in 1991, when George Bush was President of the United 
States, George Bush wanted to send troops into the Persian Gulf. We all 
recognized that we did have strategic interests in the Persian Gulf. 
Our ability to fight a war was dependent upon our protecting those 
interests in the Persian Gulf.
  There are no strategic interests in Bosnia. But I would like to read 
some things. I am reading this for one reason; that is, that there was 
a lunch that took place just a couple days ago where the President 
talked to the Democrats of this Senate. And the word I got is they are 
all going to line up, that they all agreed that they would support the 
President in sending ground troops in.
  Mr. THOMAS. Will the Senator yield for a minute?
  Mr. INHOFE. Yes.
  Mr. THOMAS. This has been an interesting process. Certainly everyone 
subscribes to the notion that the President has some authorities--in 
the case of emergencies and in the case of war. But it seems to me that 
the Congress also has some responsibilities as representatives of the 
people. It seems to me what has happened is when we get into these 
situations, like in Bosnia--it has been going on now for 3 years--and 
then there comes, ``Well, we're going to have a peace agreement, so we 
can't talk to you about it until we get a peace agreement. We don't 
want you to get involved here until there's a peace agreement.'' Then 
when there is a peace agreement, the answer is, ``Well, we've already 
got a peace agreement, so there's nothing for you to do.''
  Does it strike the Senator that we are essentially being left out of 
any decisions, those of us who represent our States?
  Mr. INHOFE. That is exactly what is happening, I would respond to the 
Senator from Wyoming. I am particularly sensitive to this because I 
serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Let us take this out of a 
partisan realm, because I opposed--it was George Bush, not Bill 
Clinton, who originally sent troops into Somalia. I was opposed to it 
at that time. It was supposed to be, as I recall, a 45-day humanitarian 
mission to open up the routes so we could send humanitarian goods in. 

[[Page S17835]]

  Then, of course, he went out of office. President Clinton came in. 
And each month--and the Senator from Wyoming will remember this because 
he and I were both serving in the other body when this happened--each 
month we sent a resolution to the President saying, bring back our 
troops from Somalia. We did not have any strategic interest there that 
related to our Nation's security. And he did not do it. And he did not 
do it. And he did not do it. It was not until 18 of our Rangers were 
brutally murdered in Somalia and their corpses dragged through the 
streets of Mogadishu that the people finally stood up and said, ``We 
have had enough,'' and we brought them home.
  I do not want that to happen in Bosnia. But the Senator is exactly 
right, the President sends these troops all over the world. Then he 
comes back for an emergency supplemental. That puts us in the position 
that, if we do not vote for the emergency supplemental which might 
violate everything we are trying to do with our budget balancing 
effort, he will take the amount of money out of the existing military 
budget, which is already down to the bare bones anyway. We went through 
this in this Chamber just a few weeks a ago, a $1.4 billion emergency 
supplemental to take care of all these Haiti and Somalia episodes.
  Now there is some talk about the cost of this war in Bosnia. They are 
trying to say it is between $1.5 and $2 billion. The cost figures that 
I get are far greater than that. There have been many people who have 
evaluated that and come up with figures from $4.5 to $6 billion. So 
there is a dollar consideration here as well as a human life 
consideration.
  The Senator is exactly right, we are being put in a situation where 
the people of this Nation cannot be heard in decisions as critical as 
risking American lives in a war-infested place like Bosnia. We are 
irrelevant. It does not matter what we say or do. This is what the 
President apparently is telling us.
  But I was going to go back in history to 1991 just for a moment to 
read some of the arguments that I heard from the other side of the 
aisle. I repeat again, there are not going to be any free rides on this 
thing because we are going to have recorded votes. I will not mention 
the names of all of them because I do not think doing so would serve 
any useful purpose, but these are mostly in the leadership of the 
Democrat side, those who I understand are going to be supporting the 
President in his effort to send 25,000 or more troops into that war-
infested area.
  ``Some argue that we must go''--this is 1991. This is when we had 
security interests in the Persian Gulf. ``Some argue that we must go to 
prevent a coalition from falling apart. I disagree. The use of American 
military should not be a substitute for the weakness of any coalition. 
America is not 911 for every problem.'' I would say there is no more 
accurate statement that could describe what has been happening up in 
Dayton, OH, for the last several weeks.
  Here is one here. It says, ``The worst-case scenario''--again 1991, 
Democrats arguing against sending troops into the Persian Gulf. ``The 
worst-case scenario could have us losing thousands and thousands of 
young Americans. The worst-case scenario could have us bogged down for 
months and months and maybe years. This is not an easy war to be 
fought. And this is not a war that ought to be fought.''
  If there is any war that should not be fought, it is the war in the 
Balkans. We do not even know who the good guys and the bad guys are. If 
this were a snapshot in history, 50 years ago it would be the Croats, 
not the Serbs, that would be the bad guys. And you could go to any 
other time in history and find that to be true.
  This is another prominent Democrat who made this statement on the 
floor of this body. ``I cannot back a policy I believe is ill-advised, 
when Americans' lives hang in the balance, just for the sake of 
displaying a united front.''
  Is that not the argument we have been hearing? We have to have this 
united front, we have to protect the integrity of NATO at any cost, 
particularly American lives, at any financial cost. We heard yesterday 
the distinguished Senator from Alaska talking about that so far we have 
funded 70 percent of the cost of the efforts over there in the Balkans, 
and yet we are farther away than anybody else in the alliance.
  Here is one that I think is one of the best. It says, ``But do these 
goals''--1991--``qualify as a sufficient reason to suffer the tragic 
loss of American life, especially before we have exhausted every 
available alternative? My deep conviction is no, no they do not. I 
cannot look my 17-year-old son and my 19-year-old daughter in the eye 
and say, `Moving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, obtaining the necessary 
oil from the Persian Gulf, protecting our allies or saving jobs is 
worth your life.' I cannot say that. If at this time I cannot say that 
to them, how in good conscience can I say it to a mother or a father? 
How can I say it to a sister or brother?''
  I came back from that northeast sector of Bosnia, around the Tuzla 
area, and I stopped on the way back at the 1st Armored Division 
training area in Germany, where I think the Senator from Wyoming has 
been. And he probably talked to some of the troops, as I did.
  I went by and had breakfast in the mess hall with these guys and gals 
who were being trained in that 12-by-6 mile box that they said is 
supposed to emulate the terrain of Bosnia. It did not look anymore like 
the terrain of Bosnia than the hill around Washington, DC does. But 
they are out there training. They are getting good training. They are 
preparing themselves mentally to be deployed, but they are saying: ``We 
haven't been told yet why we're going.''
  I think in all fairness to the officials and those officers who are 
in charge over there--and I have the utmost respect for General Yates 
and General Nash--that they themselves do not have a clear 
understanding of what their mission is.
  The President, in his very eloquent, persuasive speech 3 days ago, 
said we have a clear and concise mission, but he never told us what 
that mission was. He never told us what the rules of engagement were. I 
do not think--I suspect--our own troops, the ones over there today, do 
not really have a well-defined understanding of what our rules of 
engagement are.
  We hear about the conditions under which we can withdraw, like 12 
months, a time condition, systemic violations. What is a systemic 
violation to a corporal out in the field who gets fired upon? Does that 
firepower come from a Serb element or from a Croatian element, or maybe 
from one of these rogue elements or a Moslem element? He will not have 
any way of knowing, and yet that could, in fact, be a systemic 
violation, because a systemic violation--which they have not yet 
defined--I have to assume it is something systemic, meaning the entire 
element is acting as a group--whether it be the Croats, Serbs, or 
Moslems--and are breaking the peace accord.
  Well, I do not think there is any way of determining how that could 
be enforced.
  Mr. THOMAS. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. INHOFE. I will yield.
  Mr. THOMAS. I was struck by your quotation on the necessity to 
maintain the alliance. I was, as you pointed out, in Bosnia about a 
month ago. Seven of us went to Sarajevo. We also met in Brussels with 
the NATO group, and all 16 of the Ambassadors were there, as a matter 
of fact. Each of them stood up in order and almost as if by pushing a 
button said, ``Why, we just can't do this without the leadership of the 
United States.''
  The President is now in Europe. I guess I would say, what would you 
expect Europeans to do with him there? Of course, they will applaud the 
United States taking the burden, paying the major part of the bill and 
the major part of having troops on the ground. I think it is a very 
thoughtful way of promoting this idea.
  We were also struck about this very same question. Here are our U.S. 
soldiers. They are going in there, according to the plan, to be 
peacekeepers. So then what happens if you are attacked by an armed 
group and you respond? The notion is, and I think properly, that you 
can respond to defend yourself. We asked the general of the European 
group what happens if there is an organized effort. ``Well, then we 
leave, because we are not there to fight the war.''
  It is very indecisive in terms of what they do. And I agree with the 
Senator 

[[Page S17836]]
that certainly you can say that the goal is well defined but, in fact, 
it has not been well defined.
  Mr. INHOFE. The Senator from Wyoming, since he was in the Sarajevo 
area, I am sure observed the same thing I did. Keep in mind, this is 
the area where there has been fighting only in the last week, since 
this accord, if that is what it is, has been initialed.
  The problem that I see over there is that there is no way to define 
who the other side is in Sarajevo. In Sarajevo, we have a convolution 
of parties that have come in and taken up the vacuum that has been left 
by the pounding of the various dwellings--the single-family dwellings 
and apartment buildings--in Sarajevo. The true inhabitants of those 
dwellings, those wonderful people who were there during the winter 
Olympics, are not there anymore, and the ones who are in there now are 
refugees. We do not know where they came from. We do not know if they 
are Serbs, Croatians, or any other, perhaps rogue, element. So it makes 
it that much more difficult.
  Before yielding to the Senator from Georgia, let me just make one 
other comment about something that the Senator from Wyoming said. He 
used the term ``peacekeeping.'' I suggest to you now that they are not 
using peacekeeping. If there is ever a classic area for mission creep, 
this is it, because we have already crept from peacekeeping to peace 
implementation.
  There is a big difference between peacekeeping and peace 
implementation. Peacekeeping is an assumption that there is peace to 
keep. We know there is not peace to keep. The President stood and he 
said the war is over, we are in a cease-fire. I stood in Tuzla and 
heard areas where the war is not over. There is firing up there. The 
President has not been there so perhaps he does not know and perhaps 
his advisers are not adequately advising.
  Before we go back to a budget discussion, I want to state again what 
I stated yesterday. I may be one last Senator standing alone, but I am 
going to fight with every fiber of my being to stop the President from 
this obsession he has been living with for a year and a half, and that 
is to send American troops on the ground in Bosnia.


                               Conclusion

  I am very concerned with the discussion we were having earlier about 
what is happening in our budget battle. I guess I will sign off by 
stating at least my position.
  We passed a good bill, the Balanced Budget Act of 1995, through this 
body and through the other body. It is one that is consistent with the 
mandates of the election of 1994, and I do believe that we have done a 
good job.
  I certainly encourage the President to use the guidelines he 
committed to during the last CR--that is, a balanced budget in 7 years 
using real numbers--and come up with something that is acceptable.
  At this point, I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia [Mr. Coverdell] is 
recognized.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak as in morning business up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  The Senator should be aware, under morning business, the Senator has 
5 minutes.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Unanimous consent is approved for 10 minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

                          ____________________