[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 45 (Thursday, March 28, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3102-S3104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   FOREIGN RELATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEARS 1996 AND 1997--
                           CONFERENCE REPORT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the conference report.
  Mr. HELMS. Now, Mr. President, will the Chair review for me the 
unanimous consent in terms of time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The agreement is 2 hours under the control of 
the Senator from North Carolina, Senator Helms, or his designee; 2 
hours under the control of Senator Kerry or his designee; 2 hours under 
the control of Senator Nunn; 3 hours under the control of Senator 
Johnston; and 1 hour under the control of Senator Feinstein.
  Mr. HELMS. That makes 2 hours on our side. That is a total of 10 
hours.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Ten hours.
  Mr. HELMS. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. President, the Senate now has before it the conference report 
accompanying H.R. 1561, which, of course, is the Foreign Relations 
Authorization Act for fiscal year 1996 and 1997.
  This bill authorizes $6.5 billion for the operation of the Department 
of State, the U.S. Information Agency, and the Arms Control and 
Disarmament Agency for 1996 and 1997. That represents a $500 million 
cut from fiscal year 1995 spending.
  After 1996, the bill authorizes funding for the State Department and 
requires the President to abolish at least one of the three 
anachronistic foreign affairs agencies: Either the Arms Control and 
Disarmament Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or 
the U.S. Information Agency.
  During the course of this debate, some may attempt to portray this 
legislation as isolationist. I hear that all the time. But you better 
not go out and ask the taxpayers of America what they think of it, 
because they do not agree with these people who cry isolationism.
  These people who oppose this bill and have opposed it will not ever, 
of course, mention that the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, 
himself proposed the abolishment of not one but all three of these 
agencies. The fact is likely to be ignored, as well, that such 
prominent isolationists as Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Larry 
Eagleburger, General Al Haig, and Jim Baker, all five being former 
Secretaries of State, support this, testified on behalf of it, and 
urged that we pare back these anachronistic, bloated foreign affair 
agencies. Of course, the media did not say much about that. They never 
do.
  This bill, of course, does not cut the muscle out of our foreign 
affairs apparatus. What it does do is cut the fat--a little bit of it--
by making deep and necessary reductions in the current bloated and 
unwieldy Federal bureaucracy that says it is dedicated to foreign 
affairs.
  This bill cuts $500 million from the 1995 spending level. I have 
already said that. I do not think that is isolationism. If it is 
isolationism, Mr. President, let us make the most of it, because if I 
could have my full way, we would cut even more deeply across the board 
and save the taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars, not only in 
terms of the State Department but all across this bloated Federal 
bureaucracy.
  This bill is simply a recognition that the U.S. Government wants too 
much money and desperately needs to reduce the $5 trillion Federal debt 
that has been piled up and will be dumped on the backs of young people. 
Simply put, the State Department can and must do more with less, and 
the greatest advocates of that have been the present Secretary of 
State, before he was instructed to take a hike, and five former 
Secretaries of State, who stood up and said, ``This needs to be done.''
  Most important, in agreeing to this conference report, the Senate has 
an opportunity to send to the President of the United States a bill to 
disestablish at least one anachronistic Federal agency and, thereby, 
save the American taxpayers $1.7 billion. It was my intent, when I 
embarked on this legislation, to do far better than that, but the 
distinguished Presiding Officer knows what happened all of last year, 
and for most of this year--it was filibustered. There were instructions 
from the White House to delay and obfuscate and not to let this bill 
pass because it will cost some bureaucrats their jobs. So they 
filibustered. And only when the Senator from North Carolina said, ``All 
right, if you are going to filibuster this bill, you are not going to 
get any more ambassadors, and you can tell your President that.'' 
Pretty soon, they said, ``Let's make a deal.'' When they made a deal, 
they got the ambassadors. But if they had not made a deal, at least to 
have a vote on this legislation, those ambassadors would still be 
sitting twiddling their thumbs.
  Let me remind all involved that Republicans were elected in 1994, in 
the majority of both the House and Senate, to cut the size of the 
Federal Government and to eliminate waste by the Federal Government. 
And this is the first piece of legislation to be sent to the President 
of the United States which will result in one agency--one anachronistic 
Federal agency--being abolished.
  I sat at home the night that the President delivered his State of the 
Union Address. I would rather be with Dot Helms than go to any State of 
the Union Address. She is a lot better company. I heard the President 
say over and over again--it was a great show, by the way--``The era of 
big Government is over.'' Do you remember him saying that? Some people 
cheered, including the few conservatives who were sitting down there. 
Well, the President will soon have the opportunity to prove that he 
meant that. But, already, the White House is sending word that the 
President is going to veto this bill, minimal as it may be.
  Mr. President, after months of foot-dragging and calculated delays, 
our friends on the other side grudgingly allowed our reform efforts to 
be voted on in the Senate and went into a conference committee with the 
House of Representatives. Mr. President, I have participated, during my 
nearly 24 years in the Senate, in a lot of conferences. But this 
conference was one of the most peculiar I have ever seen or heard 
about, let alone participated in. Prior to the convening of the 
conference between the House and the Senate, the Democrat Senators made 
three demands, and I believe the majority made every possible good-
faith effort to meet those demands. First was on the question of 
funding levels. This conference report is consistent with the Commerce, 
State, Justice appropriations bill on nearly every account. The funding 
levels contained in this bill are the best that the President of the 
United States is going to get from a Republican Congress.

  Second, despite receiving no input whatsoever--not a syllable--a 
bipartisan attempt was made to work out an acceptable compromise on 
population funding. That not being possible, the entire issue was then 
set aside for later consideration.
  Finally, the Democrats demanded that no more aid provisions be 
included in the final conference agreement. Again, the majority agreed 
and obliged. Except for the Peace Corps and some antinarcotics funding, 
there are no foreign aid authorizations in this bill. Important 
provisions necessary to bring peace in Ireland and to end the embargo 
of Armenia are included. What do you know? Despite all of these 
concessions that we made, when the conference began, not one Senate 
Democratic conferee--except for John Kerry of Massachusetts, with one 
brief visit by the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island, Senator 
Pell--attended any meeting of the conference. Senator Pell just visited 
briefly one time, and John Kerry was there for a while.

[[Page S3103]]

  Now, the conference met on five separate occasions over a period of 2 
weeks, and never did any other Democratic member of the Foreign 
Relations Committee even set foot in the room.
  Mr. President, the Office of Management and Budget recommends that 
the President veto this bill when it is presented to him. According to 
an OMB statement, one reason the President should veto the bill is 
because ``it fails to remedy the severe limitation on U.S. population 
assistance programs placed in the fiscal year 1996 foreign operations 
bill.''
  Do not be deceived by the words ``population assistance program.'' It 
has nothing to do with assisting the population. It has everything to 
do with unborn babies that the Federal Government wants to finance to 
be killed.

  Now, I suggest, however, that if the President agrees with OMB, then 
he should not have signed the foreign operations bill if he did not 
approve of the abortion-related provision in that because it is strange 
indeed that the President would veto this bill because it does not fix 
a problem that he, himself, the President, created when he signed the 
appropriations bill. So that is the inconsistency that we have run into 
all along.
  Mr. President, the distinguished occupant of the Oval Office 
apparently wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Further, the Office 
of Management and Budget recommended to the President that he veto the 
bill because it terminates the Agency for International Development's 
housing guarantee program. Now, what OMB kept secret, though, was the 
fact that this program is the international equivalent to the U.S. 
savings and loan bailout just a few years ago. The General Accounting 
Office, when recommending the termination of this program reported: 
``We estimate that the cost to the U.S. Government of future loan 
default from the existing portfolio of loans is likely to be an 
additional $600 million.''
  That is on top of the $400 million already lost, Mr. President. Yet, 
AID and others in this administration, have been struggling for more 
than a year to keep this sorry program alive. I suspect that when the 
American people learn--if the media will dare let them know about it--
that Congress has passed and the President has vetoed a bill that would 
save $1.7 billion and abolish one of those temporary Federal agencies 
created in 1950--in the 1950's, at least-- I think the American people 
are going to have a definite reaction. By the way, Ronald Reagan used 
to say, ``There is nothing as close to eternal life as a temporary 
Federal agency.'' He was right about that. We are trying to do away 
with one of them. We are not get getting anywhere much. But we will 
see.

  Let me take a moment to recognize the valuable work that has been 
performed by other of my colleagues on this side of the aisle who 
served as conferees on this bill-- Senator Hank Brown, Senator 
Coverdell, Senator Ashcroft. Most important, I want to pay my respects 
to the distinguished Senator from Maine, Ms. Snowe, who chaired the 
International Operations Subcommittee and who has worked faithfully 
side by side with me and others to move this bill forward as best we 
could in the face of a total blockade by the other side. Senator Snowe 
is most knowledgeable about the intricacies of the State Department and 
the international operations budget.
  Well, Mr. President, here we are. We are now at the point, as the 
saying goes, where ``the rubber meets the road.'' A vote against this 
conference report is a reaffirmation of the status quo which has 
contributed so much to the $5 trillion Federal debt that has been run 
up by the Congress of the United States. Do not blame any President, 
Democrat or Republican. The damage was done right here and in the House 
of Representatives. This is where that $5 trillion debt was run up 
because we could have stopped it.
  Those of us over the period of the last 23 years and 3 months, as far 
as I am concerned, who tried to hold down the spending were described 
by the liberal media as being tight-fisted and ultraconservative. But I 
think the young people, when they realize what the Congress of the 
United States has done in dumping this $5 trillion debt on the American 
people, are going to have a small revolution of their own. I hope it 
will start in November among those who are 18 or older.
  By the way, Mr. President, back in February 1992, I realized that 
nobody was paying much attention to the Federal debt which at that time 
stood at about, as I recall, $3.5 trillion. I think it was February 22 
or 23 that I decided to begin making a daily report to the Senate on 
the Federal debt as of the close of business the previous day. On 
Mondays the report, of course, was for the close of business the 
previous Friday.
  One day I went into the Cloakroom where Senators were awaiting a 
rollcall vote that had been scheduled by unanimous consent. I got to 
thinking about how big $1 trillion is. I went in, and I said, 
``Fellows, how many million are there in a trillion?'' I had all sorts 
of guesses. These are the folks, myself included, who have been here 
when this debt has been run up. Only one of them, as I recall, had the 
vaguest notion of how many million there are in a trillion. Finally one 
of them got out a piece of paper and scribbled it down. He said, 
``There are a million million in a trillion.'' What do you know about 
that? Now we owe 5 million million dollars--``we'' being the coming 
generation, in the main.

  I think that is a criminal act on the part of the Congress of the 
United States--to run up that debt for these young people to pay.
  In any case, a vote in favor of this pending conference report will 
be a vote to cut Federal spending by $1.7 billion for the American 
taxpayers while shutting down at least one anachronistic, wasteful, 
bloated, antiquated agency.
  I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, since last year we have been working hard to 
reform the foreign policy bureaucracy--to save the taxpayers nearly $2 
billion and to get our foreign policy machinery working smoothly. This 
bill takes a big leap forward in that direction.
  And, this bill does even more. It supports numerous U.S. foreign 
policy goals--from Europe to Asia--at a time when our interests are 
being challenged around the globe.
  In addition to State Department reorganization, this bill has many 
other important provisions including:
  The Humanitarian Aid Corridors Act, which prohibits U.S. aid to other 
governments does not block U.S. assistance to needy populations;
  Full funding of the administration's request for assistance to 
Israel;
  Funding for the International Fund for Ireland and provisions to 
encourage recipients to use business practices consistent with the so-
called MacBride Principles;
  A mandate for the establishment of Radio Free Asia and the beginning 
of broadcasts into China and other Communist countries in Asia;
  Prior notice of Security Council votes on U.N. peacekeeping 
activities and a limitation of the U.S. assessment percentage for U.N. 
peacekeeping to 25 percent;
  Authorization for the Bosnia and Herzegovina and self-defense fund to 
provide $100 million to arm and train Bosnian Federation Forces.
  The list goes on and on. The Point is that no matter how hard the 
administration tries to muddy the waters with its long list of 
objections--no matter how much rhetoric administration officials spew 
forth--it is clear that the Clinton administration is more interested 
in protecting the foreign policy bureaucracy and promoting the status 
quo, than protecting and promoting American interests.
  We've heard the administration's objections, but let's look at the 
facts. This bill is silent on abortion. With respect to Vietnam, the 
Congress is only requiring that the President certify that his own 
stated criteria have been met before relations with Vietnam are 
upgraded. This legislation supports U.S. foreign policy interests and 
only limits bureaucratic redundancy and inefficiency. This bill allows 
our limited foreign aid dollars to go further.
  Mr. President, to threaten to veto this bill is irresponsible. To 
actually veto this bill is inexcusable.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time in 
the quorum call be deducted proportionately from both sides controlling 
the time.
  Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.

[[Page S3104]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may 
proceed for up to 5 minutes as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HELMS. To be charged to each side. Is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair. I thank my distinguished colleague 
from North Carolina.

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