[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S18037]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, in a few moments, I will make a motion to 
proceed to the consideration of calendar No. 195, Senate Joint 
Resolution 31, regarding a constitutional amendment prohibiting the 
desecration of the flag. By a previous order, at 5 o'clock today, we 
will resume consideration of H.R. 1833 regarding partial-birth 
abortions and the pending amendments thereto. I assume we will have 
rollcall votes throughout today's session in regard to either of these 
matters.
  Just for the information of my colleagues, on the tentative schedule, 
we would like to finish the constitutional amendment on flags and 
complete action on the partial-birth abortions bill and consider any 
available appropriations conference reports between now and sometime on 
Friday.
  Next week, the State Department reorganization bill will come to the 
floor, S. 1441, unless we reach some agreement prior to that time. We 
have been trying to reach an agreement here for several weeks, and we 
have had no success. I think the chairman of the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee, Senator Helms, has been very patient, and I am 
determined to bring the bill up again. If we cannot get the votes, we 
cannot get the votes. So we will start that up on Monday.
  In addition, next week we will have available appropriations 
conference reports. We hope to have a welfare reform conference report. 
We also will take up H.R. 660, the fair housing exemption bill. There 
will be a short time agreement.
  Next week, we will bring up the resolution on Bosnia, and I hope we 
might complete that under some time agreement. But that should come 
next week. We are still working on the language, as we have indicated 
in the last couple of days. That language has now been, I think, 
submitted to a number of our colleagues. We hope we can reach some 
agreement. We do not expect everybody to support the resolution. Some 
people have different views and different motives, but we hope that we 
can pass a resolution that indicates our strong support for United 
States forces, notwithstanding our strong disagreement with the 
President's Bosnian policy, which we have said from day one, the past 
30 months, it has been bipartisan--we voted time and again to lift the 
arms embargo, to give the Bosnians a chance to defend themselves. Had 
we done that, we would not be talking about sending 20,000 American 
troops to Bosnia. The President has repeatedly rejected the bipartisan 
view of the House and the Senate, and he has indicated that troops will 
go notwithstanding any opposition from Congress.

  I hope we can work out some resolution that would support the forces 
and let him proceed with his commitment, even though we may not share 
his view on either the agreement in Dayton or the Bosnia policy.
  One thing we hope to achieve is an exit strategy. It is our view that 
unless we have some exit strategy, we are not certain how long American 
Forces and other forces might be there. We believe it is very important 
that the Bosnians be armed and trained so that in 6 months, 8 months, 
or a year, we will be able to leave that part of the world and come 
back and bring our forces back to America, and the Bosnians will be in 
a position to defend themselves. It sort of all gets back to what we 
have been talking about in the last couple of years. We should have 
lifted the arms embargo in the first place. They would be in a position 
today to defend themselves, and we may not be asking Americans to make 
these sacrifices. That will come up sometime next week.

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