[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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