[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 3 (Friday, January 5, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H325-H327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE BUDGET DEFICIT AFFECTS REAL HUMAN BEINGS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I hope more than the citizens of Missouri
stay tuned to the proceedings of this House tonight via the courtesy of
C-SPAN, Mr. Speaker, to hear the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Hancock]
give what will probably be one of the more enlightening 30-minute
special orders on taxation destroying this country and what we are
doing here.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, I just called my home, and my daughter-in-
law is still waiting patiently for the baby that we thought was coming
a few hours ago, not here yet. If she makes it past midnight, it will
be on the birthday of her daughter, Haley. That is No. 10 for my Sally
and me. I really believe with all my heart, Mr. Speaker, that that is
what we are fighting for here, for my three beautiful Griffin
grandchildren out in California, Kevin, Colin, and Erin. Their mom is
Robin. They married a Griffin. I call them my in team here and in
California; No. 3 will join Haley and Robert K. Dornan III. Then there
is my youngest daughter, with beautiful Liam Christopher Dornan Penn,
the only redhead in the gang of 10. Four of my five were redheads. He
is something really special.
Then there is, what have I got, 1, 2, 3, 4, then there is the
original 3, the Colbins live out here in Virginia, Ricky, my first
grandson, Tara, my first granddaughter, both of them soccer stars,
Anna, another soccer star coming up, all of them exceptional students.
These are names and faces of human beings that, pardon me for using an
overworked word, I have bonded with all of them. They know me almost as
well as they know their parents. They think their grandmother, my
Sally, is the most world-class person to ever love a grandchild. They
are real human beings. They are real human beings, and I cannot put an
insufferable $5 trillion, soon to be $6 trillion debt before we begin
to reverse this, on their back.
{time} 2215
I said earlier that the whole debate here in its simplest terms is we
won the day on the 7 years. It will be a 7-year balanced budget plan,
no matter what Clinton and the gang at the White House does. But we
should not be passing out medals on our side because this side wants to
spend $13 trillion. They cannot throw off that tax-and-spend mindset
that was locked in during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's days. He is not a
hero of mine, the way he is of our hard-charging Speaker. He began this
lunge towards socialism, and on this side we do not want to spend $13
trillion over the next 7 years. We want to spend $12 trillion.
Do you see what we are fighting here about, all the citizens in
America, Mr. Speaker, that follow the proceedings of this House? $13
trillion, $12 trillion. $12 trillion is a bloody disgrace. It is too
much government.
Although my heart goes out to any Government worker who is proud of
their job, selected to be a civil servant, and feels they are
contributing to a better life in this country, and wants to be on their
job, and there was never a doubt for an instant they would not be paid.
It was all this dislocation of steady money coming in, and mortgage
payments. And I understand that, I am making mortgage payments and a
car payment. I understand that the banks will not wait. We have taken
care of that here today.
But remember this: All this angst about civil servants, and I turned
on the network news tonight and here is this psychiatrist saying the
civil servants are underdoing trauma, psychological disorder, they are
going to need counseling, and some of them will have to be put under a
suicide watch. Then they showed clothes testing at a burning manikin,
and somebody came right out and said that the Republican part of this
House, usually they like to focus in on the 73 freshmen, as though they
are aliens that came to this place, they are going to cause children to
die.
So for the next 2 minutes let me tell you what I saw in Germany and
in Hungary over the last 4 days at the railheads: People on the Federal
payroll, and not all of them so young, men and women, who are going to
Bosnia and an uncertain mission. They are freezing. And one of the
greatest writers, and I will put his articles in about the land mines,
Col. David Hackworth, the highest decorated living American, as good a
writer as he is, he did not have it correct here.
He talks about the land mines, and then he says they are going to
ship their equipment down there, hunker down, ride down and meet up
with their equipment.
They are not. These young men and women stay with their vehicles,
their Bradleys, their Abrams tanks, their Humvee vehicles, and I never
saw so many complicated armored systems as in this 1st Armored
Division, whose beautiful pin I am wearing, Old Ironsides. They stay
with their equipment, fingers cold, lashing it down, riding on the
trains. The women rightfully complaining about no porta-potties,
talking about how the men have a different way to go out in the field.
Mr. Speaker, let me put about six articles in the Record here that I
was going to use in my special order. Think about these young men and
women during the break.
[From the Army Times, Jan. 1, 1996]
Going to Bosnia a Good Way to See Danger, Grow Old Fast
(By David H. Hackworth)
Tuzla, Bosnia.--This place ain't exactly happy valley.
After months of catching Serb cannon fire and hard fighting
in the nearby mountains, things are grim. The war has left
this city of about 110,000--mainly Muslims--bent, broken and
bleak.
Even though the guns are now silent, few people smile. Most
act like they had too much local plum brandy the night before
and are wearing a head-throbbing hangover. All are waiting
for the Yanks to kick-start them out of their misery and into
the good life provided by Marshall Plan-type underwriting.
But the ``Amerikinci'' are slow in coming. So far, only a
few dozen aircraft have landed at the airbase that sits just
south of the city. These planes are bringing in the vital
technicians who will lay the logistic base to support our
20,000 U.S. troopers.
The warriors will not come by air. They'll ship their heavy
stuff by rail from Germany to Hungary. After the peace accord
is signed, they'll marry up with their gear and roll in over
120 miles of rugged road--locked, cocked and ready.
Once on the ground, America's Task Force Eagle will be the
Tuzla high sheriff, with the mission of keeping the Serbs and
Muslims from going back to blowing each other away.
It's too early to tell if this can be done without a few
High Noons. I have a gut feeling that the main Bosnian
combatants will cool it and wait out NATO's one-year say. One
Muslim says that if his folks ``are not armed,'' the war will
start again just as soon as NATO leaves, and his side will
lose.
The way it looks now, except for hit-and-run attacks by
small bands of crazies, the big killers will be the mines,
the bad roads and the many drunken Bosnian drivers.
No one knows how many mines are scattered across this
savaged land. United Nations reports say there are over eight
million mines and booby-traps in Bosnia alone.
I spent two days with Swedish mine-clearing team working 10
miles out of Tuzla clearing a field of widow-making anti-
personnel mines, a dangerous and painstaking duty.
[[Page H326]]
With the care of brain surgeons, eight men clear about 20
square yards on a good day. One man works about one square
yard at a time.
First he sweeps with the mine detector.
Then he gets down on his knees and cuts all the vegetation
with his clippers and gingerly probes every inch of dirt with
a two-foot ice pick or bayonet, looking for the plastic mines
the detector doesn't pick up.
When these brave men find a mine, they carefully dig around
and under it to make sure it's not booby-trapped. Then they
disarm it. Not work for the fainthearted. Each man is a hand-
picked volunteer.
Their captain, Thomas Stenberg, says, ``They must have the
right attitude.'' Boy, do they ever, and they don't even get
extra pay!
The roads here are narrow, muddy roller coaster. In many
places, the mines have not been cleared on the sides of the
road.
Two weeks ago, a civilian tractor hit a mine where
Stenberg's team is working, killing four people. Their
clothes are still hanging in the bushes where the blast blew
them.
Bosnian drivers are always in a hurry. They haven't gotten
the word about drinking and driving, either, so too many
blaze along these death roads ripped out of their gourds.
I'm not sure troops will accomplish much during their one-
year tour here, other than facing a lot of danger and growing
old fast.
I'll bet this futile mission would be scratched if Clinton
and the Capitol Hill gang sending them came in with the
advance party and worked the trenches and roads for 30 days.
As a matter of fact, I think you could eliminate war
entirely if the Doles and Clintons led the first wave.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, here is a particularly thoughtful statement
by Col. David Hackworth:
The brass decided early on that the best way to prepare for
the coming mission is relentless training. Task Force Eagle
has spent months rehearsing the details of this plan--even
down to the level of briefings to journalist. ``I war-gamed
what questions the press would ask, wrote them down, took
them to the division public-affairs officer and we went over
them,'' says Lieutenant Colonel Kooyman. Leave nothing to
chance, and avoid a failure like Somalia.
That's the idea, anyhow. The old army way of doing things--
``stay loose and expect the unexpected''--won't hack it in
Maj. Gen. William Nash's outfit. But I'm not sure what this
kind of zero-defect mentality will do to soldiers in the
First Armored. Murphy's law applied to combat says that
nothing ever goes according to plan. My gut tells me these
men may be trained in a way that could hurt them on a future
hot battlefield where they'll have to think on their feet--
where they can't pull out the plan and consult Annex A. A
CO's worst nightmare is to watch his warriors lose their
hard-gotten fighting skills in peace enforcement missions
like Bosnia. But this may be the price of post-cold-war
soldiering.
And how about this analysis of the vicious cold our men and women
will face.
[From the USA Today, Jan. 2, 1996]
For Troops, Beat the Cold--Army Taking Extreme Measures
(By Jack Kelley)
Posavina Corridor, Bosnia-Herzegovina.--They jump up and
down, skip back and forth, shadow box with the wind.
They are U.S. soldiers trying to stay warm in this region
of Bosnia about 30 miles north of Tuzla. Part of a 60,000-
soldier NATO team sent to enforce a negotiated peace in
Bosnia, they are finding that weather is the greatest
obstacle to a mission accomplished.
``Bosnia adds new meaning to the word `cold,' '' says Pvt.
Michael Ready, 23, of Chicago. He apologizes for not
enunciating his words, explaining that his mouth is too cold
to speak.
``This feels like one of those bad Chicago cold spells,''
he manages to say. ``The kind we get once in a hundred years.
But here it's happening every day.''
Winter storms closed down Tuzla air base for four days,
delaying the arrival of thousands of troops. Snow is masking
dangerous land mines. The cold is causing concern about
hypothermia.
How cold is it? It is not the coldest winter in Bosnia's
history. But it is the kind of raw, wet cold that makes ice
form around the rim of the eye- and mouth-holes of wool caps.
In December, Bosnia got up to 12 inches of snow. The
temperature barely topped 20 degrees during the day; winds
made it seem like 5 degrees below zero. At night,
temperatures dipped to minus 20.
And the worst may be yet to come: TV Tuzla, the main
government-run television station, is forecasting a colder
than normal winter. It says wind-chill temperatures will hit
below zero at least one day almost very week.
``The weather has become our No. 1 enemy,'' says Pvt. Adam
Seegraves, 25, of Riverside, Calif. ``Our tents are frozen.
We've been living in the Humvee (military vehicle) for two
days.
``You start asking, `What am I doing here?''
The U.S. military has not encountered such cold since the
Korean War, when many casualties were blamed on the bitter
winters. The temperature often fell to 35 below, exacerbated
by a wind unbroken by a stark landscape.
About 7,000 troops were out of action because of frostbite
or stomach ailments.
U.S. Army officials, who insist that the weather has had
only a minor effect on their four week-old mission, are
quietly ordering new measures to avoid cold-weather injuries.
Among them:
Rotating soldiers at checkpoints every thirty minutes
instead of every hour.
Installing kerosene heaters in nearly all tents and
underground bunkers.
Serving two hot meals a day instead of one and boosting
calorie counts from 2,000 to 3,000 a meal.
Issuing a second pair of cold-weather boots so soldiers can
dry out the first pair while wearing the second.
Ordering soldiers to oil their weapons and other equipment
to prevent them from rusting.
We're constantly checking the soldiers for cold,'' says
Sgt. Robert Butcher, 30, of Clarksburg, W.VA. ``It outweighs
all other missions. The weather can wipe out a considerable
amount of troops.''
In the Army, cold-weather injuries are considered a command
failure.
As a result, soldiers have been issued waterproof coats,
pants, and boots and even body suits made with 1\1/2\ inches
of insulation.
Still soldiers complain that their large rubber boots,
jokingly called Mickey Mouse boots, do not live up to
expectations. Manufacturers say the boots are made to
withstand temperatures to minus 140 degrees.
Many soldiers have begun taking matters into their own
hands. They've written home asking family members to send
boots, extra socks, long underwear and hot chocolate.
While on guard duty or patrol, they're standing on sand
bags or wooden planks to keep their toes from going numb. At
the risk of being punished for breaking regulations, they are
filling their water canteens with hot coffee or soup. Some
are even sneaking into officers' quarters at night to use
heated restrooms instead of outside latrines.
At least one soldier is bringing her kerosene heater into
the latrine with her.
``The main game here is survival,'' says Pvt. Cindy
Cunningham, 20, of Oklahoma City, her breath causing a cloud
of vapor. ``This feels like the North Pole.''
Despite the complaints, no one has been seriously injured
by the cold. There have been a few close calls.
Last week, troops underestimated the cold when they began a
three-day mission to rescue a U.S. helicopter. The chopper,
which had mechanical problems, had made an emergency landing
near the Serb-controlled city of Banja Luka. One soldier
almost died after being outdoors for three days in below-
freezing temperatures.
But Serb residents came to the troops' rescue, giving them
coffee, soup, and wood to build fires. They even allowed the
troops to sleep in their barns.
The weather also is affecting mine-clearing operations,
says U.S. Maj. Gen. William Nash. Nearly all the estimated 6
million mines in Bosnia are buried beneath the snow,
officials say.
``We just can't see what we're doing.'' Nash sighs.
The result is danger:
During the weekend, Spec. Martin John Begosh, 24, of
Rockville, Md., became the first known casualty of the
Bosnian peacekeeping mission when his Humvee hit a
snowcovered mine. Begosh, who suffered leg injuries, is in
stable condition.
Last week, soldiers at the Tuzla air base unknowingly set
up their tent 8 feet away from a mine. Several walked within
inches of the mine for two days before it was discovered and
destroyed.
Military officials also are encountering another unexpected
problem. Nearly a dozen soldiers who neglected to turn off
their kerosene heaters at night before falling asleep have
set their tents on fire.
Some, dismayed at the whining, insist that their colleagues
need to toughen up.
They point out that temperatures soared to nearly 60
degrees last month and that many soldiers walked around in T-
shirts and short pants.
``The kids from Georgia and Alabama aren't used to this
snow, but most guys aren't complaining,'' says Air Force
pilot Capt. Dennis Davoren, 30, of Chicago. ``As long as
you're busy, you don't think about the cold.''
In preparation for the Bosnia mission, many soldiers
trained for two weeks in the icy Austrian Alps. They seem
eager to beat the cold.
``There's no reason for a soldier out here to be getting
cold,'' says Sgt. Michael Campbell, 28, of Benson, N.C., on
guard duty in a driving snow storm outside Tuzla air base.
``We trained. We conditioned ourselves. If we hadn't, it
would have broken us down.
``Most people can handle this.''
But try telling that to Bosnian, Serb and Croat Soldiers
who found it so cold here that they stopped fighting in the
winter months during their four-year war.
``You Americans must respect the weather,'' says Serb
commander Mladen Vujicic, his face red with cold at a nearby
checkpoint. ``The American soldier should fear it more than
us. You cannot beat it.''
TV Tuzla is already predicting that one of every two of
Tuzla's 160,000 residents, and some NATO peacekeeping troops,
will catch a flu or virus this winter.
Residents are even using a slang word to describe the
weather: hafifno, which roughly
[[Page H327]]
translates into an English four-letter word. U.S. troops are doing the
same.
``It's going to be a long winter,'' says Sgt. Jason
Borgeson, 23, of Windsor, Conn., on guard duty here.
``We'll be fighting an enemy we can't control.''
Mr. DORNAN. And then, Mr. Speaker, the horror of millions of land
mines. Please read this from the truth seeking Washington Times.
[From the Washington Times, Jan. 3, 1996]
The Horror of the Land Mines
(By Tom Evans)
American troops in Bosnia will face land mines. The folks
at home who are sending the troops ought to be sure they
understand what that means, Unfortunately, we as a nation
have had all too much experience.
Thirty years ago the Viet Cong frequently buried mines in
populated areas where American troops walked. Troops were
often funneled into columns by narrow rice paddy dikes and
trails.
The most commonly used enemy mine in my battalion's area of
operations was called the ``Bouncing Betty.'' It bounced
waist-high before exploding. To teen-age American Marines and
soldiers it was the most demoralizing type of mine. And it
was American-made. We had supplied them to our allies, the
South Vietnamese army, but the Viet Cong captured them.
American Marines were forever bitter toward their allies for
that.
In the area we called the ``Street Without Joy,'' a few
miles northwest of the imperial capital city of Hue, mine
detectors were rarely used on operations until somebody
stepped on a mine. We assumed it was because the patrol
just moved too slowly behind an engineer sweeping the
long-handled dish along the ground. In fact, there as a
joke in the Marine infantry. Question: What's the best
mine detector the Marine Corps has? Answer: The Model PFC,
one each.
The first American I saw killed stepped on a ``Bouncing
Betty'' mine. He was Bernard Fall, a civilian author and one
of the foremost Western authorities on Vietnam at that time.
Almost 20 years later I found a photo in the National
Archives of Fall taken moments after he died in February
1967. The picture, taken by a combat photographer, would
never have been taken of a serviceman, but Fall was a
civilian. The picture was so terribly graphic that it was
marked ``Not To Be Released For Publication.'' Since it was
declassified by the time I saw it, I planned to order a copy
and someday show my then-1-year-old son what war really
looked like. But I never did.
Unfortunately, I witnessed other mine incidents also. Some
of the victims lived, at least for a while. There were three
sounds we came to dread: the ``ca-rumph!'' sound of the mien
explosion; the call ``Corpsman [or medic] up!''; and if the
young, shocked Marine was still alive, sometimes ``Mother!''
or ``Mama!''
Recently I attended my Vietnam battalion's reunion. Some of
us discussed the terror of walking down a path that might be
mined. Usually the earth is an infantryman's friend. He digs
a fighting hole--the deeper he digs, the safer he is. But
with mines, the earth is the enemy.
A machine gunner in our unit stepped up onto a rice paddy
dike on a bounding-type mine and froze when he heard the
click. An engineer disarmed the mine underneath his foot, and
Reader's Digest wrote up his story. But his story of survival
was one in a million.
Also, there is no enemy to fire back at when a mine
explodes. The nearest villagers might suffer the
infantrymen's wrath.
When we send troops into Bosnia and say they will be
exposed to land mines, we should know what they are getting
into.
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