[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 50 (Thursday, April 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3640-H3648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     PRESIDENT'S CATHOLIC STRATEGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, in the full sense of collegiality here, I 
would like to yield, and I will stay on my feet, the first 20 minutes 
of my special order to my good friend, the distinguished colleague from 
Connecticut, Chris Shays, to speak about our budget crisis and getting 
America's fiscal house in order.


                       the work ethic in america

  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding I will not 
be using the full time. I do appreciate his willingness to allow me to 
participate in your hour's time.
  Mr. Speaker, this Republican majority, this new Congress, has three 
objectives. Our first objective is to get our financial house in order 
and balance our Federal budget, and at the same time grow this economy. 
That is the first objective, and it is absolutely essential that we 
succeed in it.
  Our second objective is to save our trust funds for future 
generations, particularly Medicare, from ultimate bankruptcy. In fact, 
Medicare part B, the health services that Medicare recipients receive, 
started to go insolvent last year, not this year as expected.
  Our third objective, Mr. Speaker, is to transform our caretaking 
social and corporate, I would even say farming welfare state, into a 
caring opportunity society.
  Now, the words opportunity society are words used by conservatives 
primarily. They are great words, and are words that have existed in 
this country in particular for well over 200 years. And they are 
preceded by the word ``caring.''

  This is not a conservative agenda that throws up our hands in the air 
and says, ``You live in the cities, you were raised by a crack mother, 
you did not have much of an education. Too bad. You are on your own.''
  That is not the agenda. This agenda is an agenda that is trying to 
help people grow the seeds.
  Mr. Speaker, we have an incredible opportunity to do what we have 
failed to do for so many years. We are not looking to repeal the New 
Deal, but much of the Great Society simply did not work. Not all of it, 
but a good part of it.
  I was coming to Washington this week, I noticed on my calendar, I 
have quotes on my calendar. This one happened to have been from Ann 
Landers. I think it defines something that is absolutely essential. It 
says, ``In the final analysis, it is not what you do for your children, 
but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them 
successful human beings.''
  I look at this and say this is absolutely the center of what we need 
to do as a Government. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for 
your citizens, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that 
will make them successful human beings.
  As a moderate Republican, someone who has voted for a number of 
programs that would be part of the Great Society, I have had to analyze 
and say, where have I been doing the right thing, where I have helped 
make a difference, and where have I actually caused problems?
  If I am honest with myself, there is a part of me that recognizes 
that I could go and vote for some of these programs and say, you know, 
I have dealt with your need. I can pat myself on the back. I can go to 
certain groups and they can say, oh, isn't it nice that you care?
  Well, I would contend that some of my caring has resulted in 
caretaking, not in caring, and that what I need to truly do is be a 
caring person. And a caring person is going to do more what Ann Landers 
says, and that is what have you taught them to do for themselves that 
will make them successful human beings?
  I have made a point in the last 4 years of my 9 years in Congress of 
asking anyone who has had a difficult life, that is perceived as 
difficult, and obviously nobody walks in someone else's moccasins, all 
of us face difficult things, but people who have been raised in 
poverty, been raised by one parent in poverty, people who may have had 
an experience on drugs, a whole host of different challenges that have 
faced them, and I have said what made a difference in your life? Why 
are you the successful person you are today? What was it in your life 
that made you so successful?

  Almost to a person, it was ``Someone in my life, my father, my 
mother, my brother, my sister, my aunt or my uncle, my grandparent, 
somebody, a mentor, someone took an interest in me and taught me how to 
grow my own seeds.''
  I think of parents who are raising their children, and I think well, 
in the final analysis, it is what you did for your children or what you 
taught your children to do for themselves that made the difference? And 
to a person they would not tolerate doing something for their children 
without teaching them what they can do for themselves, making them 
independent.

[[Page H3641]]

  So I speak as someone who has been part of this political process, 
saying I feel I have done a lot of things that have made a positive 
difference in people's lives, but I have also looked and seen that 
there are things that I have not done, or things that I have done that 
have been in fact the exact opposite of what I intended.
  This may sound a little harsh, but I believe it to be true: Poor 
people do not create jobs. Poor people need jobs. And sometimes the 
people who are going to create those jobs happen to be people who are 
well-to-do.
  I went to a housing seminar and I was confronted by a group of people 
who think that we have given tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of 
the poor, which simply is not true, but that is what they think. But at 
the same time, they said to me, ``Why aren't you a stronger advocate of 
the low income housing tax credit?''
  This is a tax credit to provide housing for low income people. And I 
said to this group, think of what you are asking. It has a wonderful 
name. It is in fact a fairly effective program. But the low income 
housing tax credit is going to benefit the poor and the well-to-do. The 
people who get the tax credit are the well-to-do. So the very group 
that was accusing me of having a tax credit for the wealthy were asking 
me to vote for a tax credit for the wealthy that had an intention to 
help the poor.

  This is really what we have to wrestle with as a country. We have to 
be honest with ourselves about a lot of things. One, poor people do not 
create jobs, they need jobs. The people who can help create these jobs 
are people who have the financial resources to invest in new plant and 
equipment and invest in jobs in the process.
  There is another statement that I just have pondered a lot. I do not 
understand how people can be pro-jobs and antibusiness. How can you say 
you want to create more jobs and they you want to be against the very 
people who create jobs? The fact is, you cannot.
  Now, the Republican majority decided to do something that no other 
majority in Congress has ever attempted to do in the past. We have 
decided to get our financial house in order, and we are doing it in a 
very reasonable way. I am not saying everything we are attempting to do 
is perfect. I would not make that claim. But I have never been more 
proud to be part of a party and part of a majority than I am today.
  We are trying to slow the growth in spending so it ultimately 
intersects and is no greater than the revenue that we receive.
  Now, people say we have a revenue problem. That would be a hard one 
to understand, since revenues keep growing. We do not have a revenue 
problem, we have a spending problem. Our spending keeps going up more 
than our revenue does. It never intersects, it means that we 
continually have revenue and then an expense, and that difference is 
the deficit. At the end of each year, these deficits just keep getting 
added to our national debt. That is what I want to focus in on.
  The national debt in 1945 was $260 billion. Today it is $4.9 
trillion. But I could go back to just 1974. After the Vietnam War, it 
was only about $430 billion. $430 billion. It is now $5.2 trillion, or 
$5,200 billion. It has gone up well more than tenfold, 10 times. Not 
one time or doubled or tripled, quadrupled. It has gone up tenfold, 10 
times, in 22 years.

                              {time}  1815

  That is a disgrace. It is just simply a disgrace. When people say to 
me that the deficits do not matter, I say I do not understand it. I 
simply do not understand how it does not matter that our national debt 
has grown 10 times in 22 years.
  I think historians will look at the Congresses of the past and, 
frankly, the White House of the past, Republicans and Democrats. Some 
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have been wanting to 
control spending. The White House never submitted balanced budgets from 
either party, and Congresses never gave back balanced budgets.
  So I basically make the argument that both parties have had their 
fingers in this mess called the national debt. But we have a party now 
in the majority that is willing to change that, willing to stop it, 
willing to slow the growth in spending so it, ultimately, in 7 years, 
equals the revenue that we receive. No more deficits; therefore, no 
increase to our national debt.
  I think historians will look at the last 20 years, will look at it 
much the way they looked at the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, 
not a particularly proud time in our history. I do not think it is a 
particularly proud time in some respects in terms of the national debt 
and what has happened to our society in a while host of different ways 
since 1974 to this year now, 1996, 22 years.
  I look at the national debt and I look at what historians will say. I 
used to just blame Republicans and Democrats, the White House and 
Congress. I have come to the conclusion that the American people have a 
lot more to do with this than I ever realized in the past, and I speak 
from personal experience on this issue.
  There was a Member of Congress who was a very liberal Republican 
named John Lindsey, and he ran for mayor of New York City. He won. This 
moderate to liberal, in fact very liberal Member of Congress, made a 
determination that he thought that the city could not afford the large 
increases in public salaries that were happening without a 
corresponding increase in productivity.
  He felt it was wrong that sanitation workers completed their work 
before 11 o'clock in the day, did not work a full 8 hours. He thought 
it was wrong that welfare workers were not working as hard as they 
should, that police and firemen simply were getting increases in salary 
without corresponding increases in productivity, and this very liberal 
Republican said, ``I am going to fight it,'' and he fought it.
  The result was that the police went on strike, the firemen went on 
strike, the sanitation workers went on strike, the welfare workers went 
on strike, the subway workers went on strike. They all went on strike. 
The city shut down.
  Did the people of New York City blame the workers for going on 
strike? No. They blamed the mayor. They thought he was incompetent, 
this incompetent mayor that could not keep the city running.
  And I draw parallels today. People are saying we cannot shut down the 
Government; our job is to keep it running. Our job is to keep it 
running in the right way but not keep it running in the wrong way.
  This mayor tried to confront that. What was the result? The result 
was that people thought he was incompetent. His polls went down, and he 
responded to the polls and the people of the city. He got the firemen 
back to work and the policemen back to work and the sanitation workers 
back to work. He got the welfare workers back to work. He got the 
subways running again, but he did it by selling the city down the 
river.

  He basically caved in. He gave up, and he got reelected. That was the 
message: Cave in, get reelected, sell the city down the tubes. This 
city went bankrupt because of what happened. The city of New York went 
bankrupt, and then again he was considered incompetent. He was 
considered incompetent when they went on strike. They liked him when he 
put everybody back to work, failing to realize that in order to get 
them back to work he basically had to agree to their side of the 
position. He basically sold out and paid them the increases in wages 
without the corresponding increases in productivity.
  I liken that to what I am experiencing today. I will not say it 
happens all the time, but when the Government shut down during 
Thanksgiving I did not want to open it up, and I would vote to this day 
to keep it shut until this generation is responsible to our children. I 
would not have increased the national debt because I think it is 
irresponsible to allow this national debt to keep growing when we have 
not controlled the growth of entitlements.
  But let me give everyone an example of a letter I received from a 
constituent, a good friend. I received a letter from a constituent 
outraged that the Government had shut down. This happened to be the 
shutdown during the Christmas holidays, not a great time to have 
Government shut down, not something I particularly liked, but I did 
know why it happened.
  It happened primarily, not entirely but primarily because the 
President had vetoed certain appropriations bills.

[[Page H3642]]

When he vetoed these bills, we ended up with no budget. When we had no 
budget, we had to shut down the Government.
  I had constituents who said, well, we should give the President a 
budget that he wants. The problem is the budget he wants, in my 
judgment, bankrupts this country. I did not feel right about that.
  But this is the argument that I was receiving from some of my 
constituents. Some of my constituents, not all but too many, frankly, 
said--one of them said, in so many words, ``Dear Chris, I have always 
liked you, I have always respected you and voted for you, but never 
again. Your job was to keep this government running. You failed in a 
very basic responsibility, and I will not only not vote for you again 
in the future, but I am going to actively work against you.''
  Now, I could have accepted all of that to that point, but then he 
gave me his big reason why. His big reason why was that his daughter 
wanted to study abroad, and she went to get her visa and the passport 
office was closed down. So basically he was saying for his daughter he 
was outraged.
  I began to think about it, and I thought, this is unbelievable. Mr. 
Rabin, the former Prime Minister of Israel, said politicians are 
elected by the adults to represent the children, and I am thinking 
about this.
  This is about his daughter, not about her getting a passport so she 
could study abroad. It is about the fact that if we continue our 
neglectful ways, our deficits will keep growing. Our debt will keep 
growing and ultimately his daughter, his precious dear daughter, will 
be paying anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of all the money she makes in 
taxes to Federal, State, and local governments. That is what this is 
about. It is about his daughter. And the fact is, he just did not get 
it.
  Now, I have to blame myself, because I am an elected official and my 
job is to help explain it and to teach and to learn and to pay the 
consequences if I am not doing the right thing. There are many 
things that we could probably be criticized for, but the one thing we 
cannot be criticized for is not wanting to do the right thing about 
getting our financial house in order. This Republican majority is 
determined to grow this economy by ending these obscene deficits that 
add to this national debt that has grown 10 times in 22 years.

  I had a number of constituents who said, ``Don't you listen to the 
polls? Don't you see what is happening?'' I am thinking, yes, I am 
listening to the polls. I see a lot of concerned and angry people. 
There is reason to be concerned. We have deficits that are growing and 
growing and growing. I am concerned.
  There is reason to be disappointed with the growth of our economy 
that is only about 1 percent a year in the last 20 years on average. I 
would contend there is a very simple reason for it. There are probably 
a lot, but one that is right out there in front, our deficits are 
taking away money that could be invested in new plant and equipment, 
and the money that is being set aside in savings, 42 percent of it is 
being gobbled up to fund the national debt.
  Why are we spending so much money of our savings to fund the national 
debt? Because our deficits keep growing and our national debt keeps 
growing.
  I want to stop these deficits. I want interest rates to come down. I 
want businesses to be able to look at the interest rates and know that 
it can pay for them to invest in new plant and equipment.
  So what about the polls? Well, the polls tells us that 47 percent 
basically say the President is right, Congress is cutting too much; 46 
percent say Congress is right, we are cutting just right or not enough.
  But they think that when we dealt with the earned-income tax credit 
we were cutting. They thought $19 billion was going to be less in the 
7th year, but the fact is the earned-income tax credit is a payment 
paid to people who work but do not make enough. They actually get a 
payment from the taxpayers, a government check. Instead of giving the 
government money, as low-income workers they actually get money from 
the Government, from the taxpayers. That is growing from $19 billion to 
$25 billion under our plan.
  The school lunch program is growing from $5.2 to $6.8 billion. That 
is not a cut; that is an increase. The student loan program is growing 
from $24 billion to $36 billion. Medicaid is growing from $89 billion 
to $127 billion. Medicare from $178 to $289 billion.
  Only in this place when we spend so much more do people call it a 
cut. But the press reports it as a cut, and the unbelievable thing is 
that they think we are cutting too much when we are spending more.
  Now, when the pollsters point out that the student loan program is 
growing from $24 billion to $36 billion, and they tell Americans the 
student loan program is going to grow 50 percent, the 46 percent that 
says we are cutting just right or not enough actually grows to 66 
percent, and the group that thinks we are cutting too much, that 47 
percent, drops down to about 33 percent.
  So one aspect of the polls is that when the American people learn the 
truth, they want us to do what we are doing. In fact, when we tell the 
American people the truth, they will tell us to do the right thing. I 
would contend that they are not really hearing or learning from what 
they hear from the press what is happening.
  Earned-income tax credits, school lunch, student loans, Medicare, and 
Medicaid are growing. Medicare is growing on a per-person basis from 
$4,800 to $7,100 in the 7th year. It is growing, in dollar amounts, 60 
percent from this year to the 7th year. Then people say, yes, but we 
have more people participating. Well, even with more people it is 
growing at 49 percent per person.

  So in response to the polls, one, I say when the American people know 
the truth, the polls will tell us to do what we are doing. I really 
believe that. If I am wrong, I will be looking for a new job. But I 
also think something else about the polls. Sometimes at critical 
moments in our history we have to do what is right even if the polls 
tell us to do something slightly different or significantly different.
  I would make this comparison to what Abraham Lincoln found when he 
came forward and was sworn in as President. When he was sworn in as 
President, they had to sneak him into Washington. I want everyone to 
imagine what it must have been like in Lincoln's time when they 
literally had to sneak him into Washington. They had to sneak him into 
Washington because his life was threatened.
  When he was sworn in, seven States decided to leave the Union. They 
said, we are out of here. When the seven States left the Union, a lot 
of the people in the North said, what an incompetent President. 
Already, practically before he has done anything, we have lost our 
country. It is breaking apart. A lot of people in the North began to 
look with disdain at this, quote-unquote, incompetent, bumbling 
President.
  After the first few battles, and the first year and second year and 
even into the third year, as the battles continued and there was 
tremendous loss of life and some of the battles went against the North, 
a good number, there was even a greater conviction. All the powerful 
people in the North, the businessmen and women who were tied in with 
the military-industrial complex, for the most part were looking to find 
a replacement for this, quote-unquote, incompetent president.
  Abraham Lincoln could not have been listening to the polls when he 
went to Gettysburg, the greatest victory to that point, and he was 
there to celebrate the victory of the North. He went there and gave a 
speech, and part of the speech talked about the brave men, living and 
dead, who fought here. He did not say the brave northern men.
  Think of the temptation, given the polls, to rally the North against 
the South, to get them to hate the South, to get people to say, what a 
great President, he is finally getting everybody together. He could 
have unified the only people who could really vote for him, the North.
  He did not give in to that temptation because he was a great 
President. He did not give in to the polls. Had he given in to the 
polls, he would have said ``the brave northern men who fought here.'' 
He just said ``the brave men, living and dead, who fought here.''
  He knew our country, knew there were families that had to bury their 
northern son and their southern son. In

[[Page H3643]]

fact, one father during that time buried both sons in the same grave 
and the tombstone read, ``Only God knows which one was right.''

                              {time}  1830

  Mr. Speaker, I would just conclude, thank God Abraham Lincoln did not 
listen to the polls. Had he listened to the polls, we would not be one 
Nation, under God, indivisible. We would be two nations, very much 
divided. And I put the context of the debate that we are having today 
in the same context that I put back in Lincoln's time. We are doing 
what Mr. Rabin said we should do. We were truly elected by the adults, 
but we are trying to represent the children. We are trying to make sure 
that our children have a future and a country they can be proud of.
  And with that, Mr. Speaker, I just thank the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Dornan]. You were very nice to give me this time, and I 
apologize to you for going over a little bit.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, when I said to my colleague I was enjoying 
it, I truly was.


                     President's Catholic Strategy

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, sometimes when I take a special order 
because there are good folks across the country who follow the 
proceedings of this House, they will call and say, ``I enjoyed your 
words.'' They never call, and say, and insult you, and say, ``I am glad 
there was nobody there to hear you.'' I guess maybe the negative calls 
are smarter than the positive ones. They know that a million people are 
hearing you. But a lot of good people will call in and say, ``I 
appreciated what you were saying, I appreciated what Mr. Shays was 
saying, but no one was listening.''
  Now the audience averages between a million and a million and a half, 
and because of that, again as I seem to have closed out the Congress on 
the last two breaks, my special order is final tonight, and I want to 
pick up on my 5 minutes last night where I said I would read in 
totality one of the most amazing letters in American history from any 
Christian cleric or Christian leaders; in this case, they are Catholic 
cardinals, every one of them an archbishop, joined by the bishop who is 
the head of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops against Mr. 
Clinton for his veto of an overwhelming, overwhelmingly passed bill in 
both the House and the Senate, a little tighter in the Senate, but 
overwhelmingly passed here, against execution-style partial-birth 
abortion of fetuses that are children and babies in the process of 
being delivered that absolutely could live outside the womb.
  So what I have done is picked up an article that skillfully gives Mr. 
Clinton's Catholic strategy. That is the title of the article from the 
newspaper in Los Angeles, the Tidings; used to be my archdiocese 
newspaper, Mr. Clinton's Catholic strategy. It is a syndicated column, 
and it has different titles around America. I am going to read that to 
set the scene on how the Clintons think they will retake the White 
House, have 5 more years, become a rare Presidency like Eisenhower's, 
Reagan's; both had 8 years; Roosevelt's, 12 years and 82 days, small 
part of a fourth term, and Teddy Roosevelt's short term of 8 years 
because he achieved, was given the office, through the tragic 
assassination of William McKinley, and Wilson who had earned 8 years, 
World War I saving him, as it got Roosevelt a fourth term in the second 
World War I, part two of the greatest slaughter of all mankind, World 
Wars I and II. But other than Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin 
Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan, those five people, nobody in this 
century has had two terms.

  Clinton thinks the key to a second term is the, quote, Catholic vote, 
so I am going to read this analysis of what Mr. George Weigel, the 
President of the Ethics and Public Center here in Washington, DC, 
thinks is the Clinton strategy, then read an article from Jose Kennard, 
who is head in Texas of the Hispanic Caucus, and that letter was read 
in part yesterday or the day before by people on both sides of the 
aisle. I am going to read it in toto, and then I will read, as I 
promised yesterday, the full text of this amazing historical letter 
from eight princes of the Catholic Church plus the Most Reverend 
Anthony Piela, President of the National Council of Catholic Bishops. I 
will read this letter, and then I will leave it to people's imagination 
to figure out how rough this fight is going to be in the next 201 days, 
less than 200 days when we adjourn again for legislative business and 
votes on Tuesday next.
  Then I will point out how we have a serious Catholic problem right in 
this House with the numbers, and I would suggest to all of my Jewish 
and Protestant brothers, please listen intently. If you think you have 
got division and problems in your denomination, listen to how split the 
Catholics are in this House. However, not a single Republican Catholic, 
good, bad or indifferent, voted for this partial-birth execution-style 
abortion in this Chamber when it came back from Senate conference with 
the slight differences worked out.
  Before we do that, I want to take care of three housekeeping things 
here. One is the crash of Ron Brown's Air Force aircraft on my 
birthday, April 3. We had a unanimous vote for Mr. Brown, Secretary 
Brown, expressing our deep sorrow at losing for the first time in the 
line of duty a Cabinet officer in over almost a century and a half.
  I said yesterday that I thought the majority of the crew was the crew 
that had flown me and five other Members, led by Sonny Callahan of 
Alabama, to Tuzla and Sarajevo and Hungary, two of the bases in Hungary 
and to Zagreb, Croatia, and to our major air base, Aviano, in Italy. I 
was mercifully wrong, not for the four other crewmen that died, but of 
the six crewmen on that airplane, the pilot was the same as our pilot, 
Ashley J. Davis; that is a man's Ashley as in Ashley Wilkes. Ashley was 
the cocommander on our flight, on that C-43, used to be called a T-43, 
a civilian 737, and I was correct that T. Sgt. Shelly A. Kelly, who was 
the principal cabin steward for all of us in the congressional section 
up front and got to know her at Aviano, going through the PX to get 
some shaving gear. She told me a story about how on each trip she buys 
two bottles of wine, her husband is also assigned to Ramstein Air Base 
in Germany, and that he would do the same when he was on a cross-
country, they would drink one in celebration of reuniting with their 
two children, and then they would save one. And she said, ``We have 
quite a collection of wine from around the world''.
  Well, Shelly Kelly died serving her country, as did Capt. Ashley 
Davis, and I am going to fly flags on the Capitol next week for them, 
get every one of the Congressmen who were on CODEL Callahan, and fly 
flags for the other four crew members who were on the ill-fated 
Secretary Ron Brown delegation.
  I will just briefly give their names now. On our aircraft on March 1, 
2, 3, and again on my birthday, April 3, when 35 people were killed: 
35-year-old Capt. Ashley J. Davis of Baton Rouge, LA, also married with 
two children; again, T. Sgt. Kelly, Shelly A. Kelly, 36, 
Zanesville, OH, husband, two children; and the other four crew members, 
Timothy Schafer, captain, 33 years of age, just outside my own 
district, Costa Mesa, CA, 33 I said. T.Sgt. Cheryl Turnage 37, 
Lakehurst, NJ; Sgt. Robert Farrington, 34, Briarfield, AL; and the 
youngest, 29-year-old S. Sgt. Gerald B. Adlrich, from Louisiana--excuse 
me, Louisville, IL; all six of them assigned to Ramstein.

  Much has been talked about across the country, justifiably so, about 
Mr. Brown's service to country, captain in Europe and in Korea, and all 
of the CEO's who will be so grievously missed by their families and 
their children. But here are the six great Air Force young folks: 29, 
33, 34, 35 and 37, that went down on that ill-fated flight.
  Mr. Speaker, tomorrow I will be going to a funeral for a true one-of-
a-kind, outstanding American hero, Medal of Honor winner, Vice Adm. 
John D. Bulkeley. Vice Adm. John Bulkeley became known to me as a young 
8-year-old boy, child , in 1942, 54-years ago, when as a PT boat 
commander, PT-41, he, under orders from Washington, DC and Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt, tied up again in Corregidor and Bataan was soon to 
fall; this was March 11 of 1942; and took Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then 
a four-star, soon to be a five-star. Mrs. MacArthur and their young 
son, name after another Medal of Honor winner, Arthur MacArthur, Gen. 
Douglas MacArthur of course also a Medal of Honor winner, the only 
father-son team in that hall of valor in the Pentagon, the MacAruthurs, 
young

[[Page H3644]]

Arthur MacAuthur was just a small child. I think he was under 10 years 
of age. The three of them and key staff got on PT-41, and through a 
Japanese submarine screen made it down to Mindenao and eventually to 
Australia.
  That was in the end of Vice Admiral Bulkeley's service to his 
country. Building up to then he had earned the nickname ``Wild Man From 
Borneo,'' and I will do a special tribute to him next week.
  I had the honor of spending time with his daughters and sons-in-law 
and his lovely wife at D-Day on the morning of D-Day. Clinton infringed 
upon what was to be Admiral Bulkeley's moment of memorial to all the 
people who died at sea in the D-Day invasion 2 years and 3 months after 
he had saved General MacAruthur. He commanded all the PT boats at the 
Normandy invasion, went on to be a destroyer commander and sink two 
German ships at the end of the war, but he was to throw the memorial 
wreath into the English Channel at dawn at the beginning of all the 
memorial ceremonies.
  The Congressmen that I was with were not able to go out on the ship 
except two senior Democrat chairmen, and President Clinton asked to 
hold the wreath with John Bulkeley, throw it into the water. Given his 
own lack of service and avoidance thereof three times, it was a little 
rough for Admiral Bulkeley, but in the afternoon services I asked him, 
I heard that the honor was taken away from me. He said, well, we both 
held the wreath, but God understood.
  So I will go to his funeral tomorrow morning, 10 o'clock, the 
Memorial Chapel at Fort Myer. Any naval folks in the area or Army, 
Marine Corps of Air Force, you may not be able to get in the church, 
but please come to the ceremony and send this Medal of Honor, great 
one-of-a-kind American hero; well, he is already in heaven, but give 
him a great fanfare and memorial sendoff. He was the Capitol here 
several times. I was planning a lunch with him with the freshmen, 
constructing a PT boat 41, PT-41, to present to him, and he always 
procrastinated, delay things with heroes, and suddenly they are gone to 
their regard. He was here in the crypt area, where Washington and 
Martha Washington were supposed to be interred, to put a beautiful 
ceremonial case to the Medal of Honor with the original parrot Medal of 
Honor for the great train chase in the Civil War and he was there for 
that.
  When you call him at home, he would answer the phone, ``Report.'' 
Quite a man. Served on active duty longer than any naval officer I can 
thing of, with the possible exception of our great nuclear scientist, 
the world's No. 1 submariner. But Vice Adm. John Bulkeley was either 
one or two.
  Next week I will also do a special order on one of the most infamous 
traitors in American history, Alger Hiss. Here is an article from, not 
a conservative magazine, but tries to be fair, the New Republic, April 
15 issue, Goodies from the Venona files. That is the name for some once 
top-top-top-secret Russian files. ``Hiss' Guilt'' by Eric Breindel.

                              {time}  1845

  He is the editorial page editor of the New York Post, a well-read 
syndicated columnist.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the article at this point in the Record:

              Goodies From the Venona Files: Hiss's Guilt

                           (By Eric Breindel)

       Earlier this month, the National Security Agency released 
     another batch of Soviet intelligence cables intercepted 
     during the Second World War and decrypted under the auspices 
     of the long-secret Venona project. The cables in question, 
     which span a three-year period (1943-1945), were dispatched 
     to Moscow from New York, Washington and various other North 
     American stations.
       In serious quarters, the authenticity of the Venona cables 
     has not been challenged. Even hard-left historians long 
     committed to the innocence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg have 
     accepted them as genuine, despite the fact that the 
     intercepts prove the guilt of the Rosenbergs and their 
     confederates.
       The intercepted messages show that Moscow, had at least 100 
     American agents providing Soviet intelligence with classified 
     information during the war years. Even now, many of these 
     agents remain unidentified--due both to the use of 
     ``covernames'' and to Washington's failure to fully crack 
     Moscow's code. But it's plain that most of the spies were 
     members or close associates of the American Communist Party. 
     And this puts the lie to the ancient claim that American 
     Communists were merely New Deal idealists--``liberals in a 
     hurry''--who didn't constitute any sort of fifth column.
       The single most interesting document in the new Venona 
     batch is a March 30, 1945, Washintgon-to-Moscow message 
     concerning an agent whose covername is ``Ales.'' The 
     accompanying NSA glossary--prepared for internal use only, 
     long before there was any indication that the intercepts 
     might be released to the public--explains that ``Ales'' is 
     ``probably'' famed State Department official and ostensible 
     martyr of the American left, Alger Hiss. Among Hiss 
     apologists, much will likely be made of the ``probably.'' But 
     careful perusal of the document--and the relevant 
     corroborating evidence--demonstrates beyond doubt that Hiss 
     was indeed a Soviet agent. In fact, almost everything in the 
     message conforms to representations about Hiss made by 
     previous sources, including Whittaker Chambers, the 
     journalist (and Soviet agent) who first exposed him.
       The cable in question was sent to Moscow by ``Vadim''--or 
     Anatoli Gromov (actual surname Gorski)--the NKVD's station 
     chief in Washington, D.C. (The NKVD was the forerunner of the 
     KGB.) ``Vadim'' reports on a ``chat'' between ``A'' and 
     ``Ales'' [Hiss]. According to the codebreakers, ``A'' is 
     Iskhak A. Akhmerov * * *. As an ``illegal,'' Akhmerov wasn't 
     attached to an official Soviet mission. He lived in 
     America--mostly in New York and in Washington--under 
     various false names, assisted by forged documents.
       Akhmerov, it should be noted, was first identified as 
     Hiss's control-agent by ex-KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky in the 
     latter's 1990 memoir. Gordievsky, the KGB's London station 
     chief, defected to the West in 1985; he'd served as a British 
     mole in Soviet intelligence for the prior eleven years. In 
     his book, KGB: The Inside Story, Gordievsky recalls having 
     attended a training lecture early in his KGB career delivered 
     by Akhmerov. According to Gordievsky, the ``silver-haired'' 
     Akhmerov, who seemed to be in his 60s, discussed Hiss and 
     other American agents he'd controlled. Gordievsky--who did 
     not have access to the Venona cables when he produced his 
     memoir--reports without reservation that Alger Hiss's Soviet 
     codename was ``Ales.'' In a 1989 essay in The New York Review 
     of Books, intelligence historian Thomas Powers likewise 
     declares that Hiss was known to Moscow as ``Ales.''
       Akhmerov, meanwhile, also turns up in ex-nkvd General Pavel 
     Sudaplatov's 1994 memoir, Special Tasks. It seems the high-
     level ``illegal'' had direct responsibility not just for 
     Hiss, but also for Michael Straight, a young aide to Interior 
     Secretary Harold Ickes. Straight, a former owner and editor 
     of the New Republic, knew his Soviet control-agent as 
     ``Michael Green.'' Akhmerov also came to supervise Elizabeth 
     Bently--later an FBI informant--who knew her control only as 
     ``Bill.''
       Gordievsky maintains that Akhmerov also managed to develop 
     a secret relationship with Harry Hopkins, FDR's top 
     lieutenant and closest political confidante. This claim 
     provoked considerable controversy when KGB: The Inside Story 
     first appeared. Indeed, the British historian Christopher 
     Andrew--who co-authored the book with Gordievsky--prevailed 
     upon the latter to depict Hopkins as an ``unconscious rather 
     than a conscious'' Soviet agent, implying that Hopkins merely 
     saw Akhmerov as a useful back-channel to Stalin.
       The Venona documents, however, suggest otherwise. In one 
     cable--released late last year--``deputy'' is the covername 
     for a Soviet agent who says he attended a May 1943 meeting in 
     Washington, D.C., at which only two other parties were 
     present. American archival records demonstrate that the 
     meeting in question did, in fact, take place: the attendees 
     were FDR, Churchill and--yes--Harry Hopkins. The decrypted 
     cable makes reference to Roosevelt, to Churchill and to 
     ``deputy.'' The latter, apparently, briefed Akhmerov in 
     detail directly after the session.
       The meeting itself focused on an issue of enormous 
     importance to Moscow: whether or not--and when--the Western 
     allies would open a second front in the war on Hitler. 
     Information about how Churchill and Roosevelt saw this matter 
     certainly wasn't meant to reach Stalin--not by a back-channel 
     and not by any other path.
       ``Vadim's'' March 30, 1945, summary of Akhmerov's ``chat'' 
     with ``Ales''--who is identified specifically as a State 
     Department official--confirms Chambers with respect to 
     important details. The Washington-Moscow cable explains that 
     ``Ales'' has been working with the ``Neighbors continuously 
     since 1935.'' The codebreakers determined that 
     ``Neighbors''--a term which appears regularly in the Venona 
     intercepts--denotes a Soviet intelligence organization other 
     than the NKVD. The contest in which it is used in other 
     messages indicates that ``Neighbors'' refers to the GRU--
     Soviet military intelligence.
       Chambers consistently described himself as a GRU--rather 
     than NKVD--agent; and he claimed, by extension, that Hiss, 
     too, was affiliated with the GRU. On this point, many will 
     recall a ridiculous 1992 attempt to ``exonerate'' Hiss--
     trumpeted by The New York Times and the New Yorker--that came 
     crashing down when Russian historian Dimitri Volkogonov, 
     who'd announced his inability to locate archival material 
     implicating Hiss in espionage, admitted that he hadn't 
     examine any GRU files. (Volkogonov,

[[Page H3645]]

     a serious scholar, appears to have been misled by a Hiss 
     acolyte affiliated with The Nation, long America's leading 
     forum for Alger Hiss apologia.)
       The key point is that Chambers--even on the issue of which 
     Soviet intelligence service employed Hiss--is vindicated by 
     an internal Soviet cable. Also noteworthy is ``Vadim's'' 
     report that ``Ales'' had worked as an agency ``continuously'' 
     since 1935. Chambers testified repeatedly that Hiss began 
     providing information for transmission to Moscow in 1935. To 
     be sure, Chambers also told authorities that he couldn't be 
     sure whether or not Hiss continued to spy for Moscow after 
     1938, which is when Chambers himself broke with the communist 
     underground. Judging from the 1945 cable, Hiss--undeterred by 
     Chambers's defection and unaffected by the 1939 Hitler-Stalin 
     Pact--served the Soviets at least through the end of the war.
       The newly released document explains specifically that 
     ``Ales''--``for some years''--functioned as ``the leader of a 
     small group of Neighbor's probationers, for the most part 
     consisting of his relations.'' Insofar as the term 
     ``probationers'' translates as agents, it would seem that 
     Hiss was running a small GRU agent-group dominated by 
     ``relations,'' i.e., family members.
       Chambers--like Elizabeth Bentley--insisted to the FBI that 
     Alger's brother, Donald Hiss, was also a Soviet agent; 
     Chambers further claimed that Hiss's wife, Priscilla, was a 
     communist who assisted her husband's espionage activities by 
     copying classified State Department documents. Once again, 
     therefore, Venona buttresses Chambers's testimony as well as 
     Bentley's.
       The March 30, 1945, cable refers to ``Ales's'' role as a 
     member of the U.S. diplomatic team at the Yalta summit, which 
     took place earlier that same year. Hiss, of course, was part 
     of the American delegation at Yalta. This, in fact, is why 
     the FBI focused on him shortly after Igor Gouzenko--a code 
     clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa who defected in 1945--
     told Canadian and British security officials that Moscow had 
     its own agent in Washington's Yalta delegation. Gouzenko 
     identified the agent in question as an aide to Secretary of 
     State Edward Stettinius. Hiss, though several levels beneath 
     the Secretary of State in the bureaucratic pecking order, did 
     enjoy a notably close working relationship with Stettinius. 
     The two men even called each other ``Alger'' and ``Ed.''
       According to the decrypted cable, ``Ales'' went on to 
     Moscow after the Yalta summit. Here a single question seems 
     central: Did Hiss, in fact, head to Moscow after Yalta? The 
     answer is yes.
       Actually, only four Americans who weren't U.S. Embassy 
     staffers did so; most, like President Roosevelt himself, 
     managed to avoid the grueling trip through wartime Russia. 
     The four who traveled to Moscow--all of whom flew on the 
     Secretary of State's plane--included Stettinius himself, two 
     career diplomats and Hiss. None--apart from Hiss--can 
     plausibly have been ``Ales.''
       The chief significance of the ``Ales'' document consists 
     not in the fact that it proves Hiss's role as a Soviet 
     agent--only the willfully blind still believe in Hiss's 
     innocence. What's important is that the intercepted cable 
     provides strong new evidence that Hiss continued to serve 
     Stalin long after Whittaker Chambers severed his own ties to 
     Moscow. Alger Hiss, it's now plain, was still a Soviet agent 
     in 1945--the year he traveled to Yalta and organized the 
     founding session of the United Nations in San Francisco. No 
     wonder, then, that the young soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko--
     in a rare moment of post-war Soviet-American cooperation--
     told his U.S. counterparts in the summer of '45 that Moscow 
     wouldn't object to the appointment of Hiss as Secretary-
     General of the U.N.'s founding conference. The gesture, 
     obviously, wasn't as generous as it appeared.

  This article puts it away for any intelligent thinking person. Alger 
Hiss, who is in his 80's, going to take a life of lying to his grave 
with him, kind of the counterpart to Admiral Bulkley. He was a Russian 
spy in the 1930's. He was the Secretary-General of the founding 
convention for the United Nations in San Francisco. He was at Yalta in 
a room alone with Stalin, Churchill, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
passing everything he could to the most evil regime in terms of killing 
human beings and torturing them than any regime in the world including 
Hitler. American boys and allied men and women died all over this 
planet to shut Hitler down in 12 years but Stalin had 29 years to kill 
and murder and tear that country apart and the issue is still in doubt 
whether the great Russian people can ever re-find their religious roots 
or seek the free enterprise, free market system they are fighting to 
achieve without crime completely swallowing them. They went from 
serfdom right into Communist slavery and American traitors like Alger 
Hiss helped extend that agony and he has his, I do not even want to 
call them liberals, they are beyond that, they are rock hard radical 
leftists still in a sense fellow travelers still running around the 
country trying to express doubt about his guilt from Ivy League 
colleges to great universities on the west coast. Unbelievable. Alger 
Hiss is guilty. It has never been said clearly on this House floor. I 
am going to ask other Members to join me and see if we can do an hour 
on that.
  Now the theme from here on, this amazing historical letter. I am 
going to give the signatures first before I read George Weigel's column 
and the resignation from all positions of responsibility by Jose 
Kennard in Texas.
  Signing the letter besides the aforementioned Bishop Pilla is Joseph 
Cardinal Bernardin, archbishop, Chicago; James Cardinal Hickey, 
archbishop of Washington, DC. I will read it the way they signed it 
because they took the traditional placing of ``Cardinal'' instead of 
the middle name and they put it at the beginning, so I should read it 
the way they did it.
  Cardinal Bernard Law, archbishop, Boston; Cardinal Adam Maida, 
Detroit; Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, Philadelphia; Cardinal Keeler--
who spoke from the pulpit about this driving a so-called Catholic U.S. 
Senator to get up and remove herself from the church--Cardinal Keeler 
of Baltimore; Cardinal Mahony, Los Angeles; Cardinal John O'Connor, my 
good friend up in New York.
  Before I get to that letter, listen to this, Mr. Speaker. Here are 
George Weigel's words:
  ``Has your diocesan newspaper editor been invited to interview the 
President? Has Hillary Rodham Clinton made an appearance at your local 
Catholic orphanage? Has your bishop been brought to the Oval Office to 
discuss welfare reform?''
  Or I might add the minimum wage.
  ``Do you detect a far milder, less confrontational State Department 
attitude toward the Holy See, the Vatican, at last September's world 
conference on women at Beijing?
  World Conference on the culture of death.
  ``Did you notice the President invoking a conversation with the Holy 
Father when he made his case for sending U.S. troops to Bosnia?''
  Boy, did I ever and could not find out if it was even true.
  ``Has Mrs. Clinton been spotted arm-in-arm with Mother Teresa on the 
front page of your local daily?
  ``To borrow from medievals: We may be reasonably sure that this is 
about substance, not accidents.
  ``Actually, that pun is philosophically misplaced. For the substance 
of Clinton administration policy, which has put it at cross-purposes 
with Catholic teaching on a host of issues, hasn't changed all that 
much. But the accidents--the appearances, or as the TV folks say, the 
images--have been retooled more extensively than the 1996 Ford Taurus.

  ``And the reason why is self-evidently clear: The President is 
seeking re-election and his handlers have concluded that the Catholic 
vote is the key to his success. Thus the administration and the Clinton 
re-election campaign have been aggressively conducting Operation 
Catholic Seduction for months.
  ``On the face of it, it seems a rather brazen strategy.''
  This is a month before the veto on execution style abortion, by the 
way.
  ``This is, after all, the President whose very first acts in office 
were to sign executive orders widening the availability of abortion-on-
demand and lifting the ban on fetal tissue research. This is the 
President whose surgeon-general, the unforgettable Joycelyn Elders, was 
known for mocking a, quote, celibate, male-dominated church, unquote.''
  Attack on Catholicism.
  ``This is the administration that vastly expanded foreign aid funding 
for Planned Parenthood,'' the world's largest abortion provider.
  ``This is the administration that hired Faith Mitchell.''
  What a first name.
  ``You don't know Faith Mitchell? For shame. She was the State 
Department official who, during the administration's battle with the 
Vatican over a universal, quote, right to abortion, unquote, at the 
1994 Cairo world population conference, said that the Clintonistas, 
quote, suspect that the pope's opposition to the Clinton position has 
to do with the fact that the conference is really calling for a new 
role for women, calling for girl's education and improving the status 
of women, unquote.''
  In other words, Faith Mitchell said that the Vatican was really 
trying to

[[Page H3646]]

crush women and hold them down. That is why we objected to that 
disgrace in Cairo.
  Weigel continues:
  ``This is, to make an end of it, the President whose own ambassador 
to the Vatican, a former Democratic mayor of Boston,'' I will put his 
name in, Ray Flynn, ``said he was embarrassed by the, quote, ugly anti-
Catholic bias shown by prominent Members of Congress and the 
administration, unquote.''
  Thank you, former Mayor Ray Flynn, Ambassador Flynn.
  ``Given this history, Operation Catholic Seduction set something of a 
record in campaign chutzpah.'' You have to go to a good Yiddish word to 
convey that hubris. Chutzpah.
  ``Imagine James G. Blaine, fresh from denouncing Rum, Romanism, that 
is, Catholicism, and Rebellion in 1884''--he lost, of course--
``inviting Cardinal Gibbons to tea and pleading his undying affection 
for Pope Leo XII. But President Clinton, whose political skills no one 
should deny, can count. Catholics are heavily represented in the States 
the Clinton-Gore team has to win in November: California, and the big, 
electoral vote-rich states of the Northeast and Midwest.
  ``The Clinton handlers also know that, in the 1994 off-year election, 
the Catholic vote went majority Republican--for the first time in 
history--and the result was that the Democrats lost control of the 
House of Representatives for the first time since Dwight D. Eisenhower 
was resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. Fool me once, shame 
on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

  ``Does Operation Catholic Seduction have a chance?''
  Does it, Mr. Speaker?
  ``It's already working in some quarters. One bishop, fresh from an 
encounter with the President in the Oval Office, reportedly told a 
friend, you know, he speaks our language on a lot of issues, quote-
unquote.
  ``Perhaps he does. But there is abundant evidence that this President 
has a genius for suggesting one thing when you're in the room with him 
and doing something else after you leave. Moreover, shared but highly 
contingent judgments on welfare reform do not trump the encyclical 
evangelium vitae''--getting the word out on life, preaching life--
``which poses a fundamental and unambiguous challenge to the 
administration.''
  It is coming up, that challenge by every single cardinal in America.
  ``Given what seems to be the Republican instinct for suicide''--I 
hear you, George, it is there--``Operation Catholic Seduction may be a 
sideshow by the fall. But it's going full blast, just now. And it's 
having an effect on experienced people who ought to know better.''
  Well, Operation Catholic Seduction may have come to a screeching 
halt. I do not know, but I believe Jose R. Kennard of El Paso, TX, is 
probably a loyal Hispanic American and a good loyal Roman Catholic. He 
writes to Clinton April 12, 6 days ago.
  ``Dear President Clinton:
  ``Wednesday evening when I learned that you had vetoed the partial-
birth abortion bill, I felt stunned and angry. But mostly, I felt 
betrayed.
  ``Betrayal is a strong word. However, President Clinton, this is the 
anguish that I and many Democrats across the Nation feel now. As a 
dedicated Democrat, I believed Bill Clinton during the primary campaign 
in Texas in 1992, and in the general election as our nominee when you 
vowed to protect the rights of individuals and to forge an era of the 
New Democrat. An era that would avoid extremism of either side. I 
campaigned for that Bill Clinton and stood proudly in the cold in 
Washington at your inauguration when you gave your message of hope for 
those who had no voice. But last Wednesday, with your veto, you ignored 
the rights of innocent little children and literally sentenced them, 
thousands probably before this madness is brought to an end, to their 
deaths.
  ``Unlike the debate over abortion that has been ongoing for decades, 
this procedure is clearly the brutal taking of a human life.''
  I want to repeat that line, Mr. Speaker. This partial-birth, 
execution-style procedure is clearly the brutal taking of human life.
  ``The right-to-choose position of the Democratic Party has largely 
been driven by the belief that a fetus cannot survive outside the 
mother's womb. But in this case, medical evidence is clear that these 
babies could survive but are destroyed in the most vicious and inhumane 
way possible. Our society demands that even dogs be destroyed in a more 
humane fashion.
  ``For what purpose, Mr. President, did you do this? To satisfy a 
minority of extremists whose votes you would have gotten anyway? And 
please, consider again your rationalization that you acted, quote, to 
protect the safety of the mother, unquote, when the bill permitted an 
exception if a doctor deemed the procedure necessary to save a mother's 
life.''
  That is never going to happen, because you do not protect any 
mother's life by holding a baby in the birth canal, Mr. Speaker, and 
killing it, and exaggerating in extremis the birth process for the 
mother. What an absurd thought. And that was made on the Senate floor 
and shut up one of the lady Senators when Bob Smith of New Hampshire 
asked her how that helped the mother to delay the birth and hold the 
baby in the womb so you could kill it and not be charged with 
infanticide 60 seconds or 5 seconds later.

  Back to Mr. Jose Kennard's letter:
  ``You know full well the bill would not have received the support of 
the Council on Legislation of the American Medical Society--and it did 
receive that--and 73 Democrats in the House if it did not.''
  ``Mr. President, with all due respect, there is no valid reason for 
your action, ethically or politically. And, it is certainly 
inconsistent with other positions you have taken.
  ``Your presence and comments in Oklahoma last week on the anniversary 
of the bombing tragedy--which will be tomorrow--reflected your deep 
concern for those who perished, especially the children. Yet, you 
signed the death certificate on Wednesday--Easter week, Easter 
Wednesday--for countless, equally innocent children. Several weeks ago 
I saw you visibly shaken when speaking of the mass murder of children 
in Scotland. You had a chance, with your vote, to prevent a much 
greater tragedy. Mr. President, you choose instead to trade those 
future lives for votes that you perceive are crucial for your 
reelection.''
  What does it profit a man to regain the White House even than 
jeopardize his immortal soul. Those are my words, Mr. Speaker.
  Jose continues:
  ``In the past 3 years I have seen you time and time again speak out 
to the thousands, maybe millions, of young Americans who have been lost 
to the streets in a life of murder, destruction and mayhem, drugs and 
disease. You have pleaded with them to have respect for human life. 
But, with this veto, you did the opposite. And we, as party officials, 
have been put in the untenable position of having to live with that 
decision.
  ``Mr. President, I cannot and will not support this action. 
Therefore, I cannot in good conscience support your candidacy.
  ``As I contemplated this matter over these past days, I was reminded 
of the words of the late President John F. Kennedy when he said: Quote, 
sometimes party loyalty asks too much, unquote.''
  It is unbelievable that his nephew Joe voted for this partial-birth, 
execution-style abortion.
  ``Thus, it is with regret and sorrow that on this date, April 12, 
1996, I have submitted my resignation as a member of the Texas State 
Democratic Executive Committee and the Chair of the Mexican-American 
Caucus. I have informed our State Chairman, Bill White. While I do not 
intend to actively support or vote for any Republican or Independent 
candidate, I will be asking other Democrats to consider withholding 
their support of your candidacy while continuing to support Democrats 
for other offices.
  ``Very truly yours, Jose R. Kennard, State Committeeman, District 
29.''

                              {time}  1900

  Mr. Speaker, let me see if I can get through the Cardinals' letter. 
This is dated on my 41st wedding anniversary, my wife's birthday, April 
16, two days ago.
  ``Dear President Clinton: It is with deep sorrow and dismay that we 
respond to your April 10th veto of the

[[Page H3647]]

Partial-Birth,'' and I add execution style, ``Abortion Ban Act.'' Your 
veto of this bill is beyond comprehension for those of us who hold 
human life sacred. It will ensure the continued use of the most heinous 
act to kill a tiny infant just seconds from taking his or her first 
breath outside the womb.''
  Mr. Speaker, when did we ever believe that eight Catholic Cardinals, 
what in my faith we call Princes of the Church, two liberals, a couple 
of moderates, and the rest generally conservative on theological 
issues, all of them united, and they are deadly serious on this.
  Clinton with his 4 year Jesuit Georgetown education; I had 7 years of 
Jesuit education. I asked my pal, Cato Byrne, what is his thinking 
there? As they say to people in the conservative wing of the Republican 
Party, where else are they going to go if we pick a pro-choice Vice 
President candidate? We always say we man the phone banks, we energize 
a lot of races across this country. Not a single pro-life person lost 
at the Governor, House or Senate level in 1994.
  Cato Byrne told me the analysis is that Clinton said we not only need 
them, sure they will be with us if I accept this ban, but we have to 
have them energized. They are our core base, like the homosexual 
activists. They are our fund raisers, they are our phone bank people.
  What a role of the dice he made here. I will read the words of one 
Bishop, all the Bishops are unified, 300 them, but eight Cardinals.
  ``It will ensure the continued use of the most heinous act to kill a 
tiny infant just seconds from taking his or her first breath outside 
the womb.''
  ``At the veto ceremony you told the American people that you `had no 
choice but to veto the bill.' Mr. President, you and you alone had the 
choice of whether or not to allow children almost completely born to be 
killed brutally in partial-birth abortions. Members of both Houses of 
Congress made their choice. They said no to partial-birth abortions. 
American women voters have made their choice. According to a February 
1996 poll,'' it is only 2 months ago, ``by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & 
Associates, 78 percent of women voters said no to partial-birth 
execution style abortions. Your choice was to say yes, to allow this 
killing more akin to infanticide than abortion, to continue.
  ``During the veto ceremony you said you would ask Congress to change 
H.R. 1833 to allow partial-birth abortions to be done for ``serious 
adverse health consequences to the mother.'' You added that if Congress 
had included that exception, everyone in the world will know what we 
are talking about.''
  ``On the contrary,'' the eight Cardinals say, ``Mr. President. Not 
everyone in the world would know that `health' as the courts defined it 
in the context of abortion means virtually anything that has to do with 
a woman's overall `well beginning.' For example, most people have no 
idea that if a woman has an abortion because she is not married, the 
law considers that abortion a `health' reason.''
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to jump to the signature page. ``Writing this 
response to you in unison is on our part virtually unprecedented.'' I 
believe it is unprecedented, not virtually.
  It will, we hope, underscore our,'' the Cardinals and all the 300 
Bishops, ``resolve to be unremitting and unambiguous in our defense of 
human life.''

  Overwhelmingly the Episcopalian Bishops, the Board of Governors of 
the Southern Baptists, and every other denomination will weigh in in 
the majority on this. Jewish Orthodox Rabbis have already condemned 
this.
  This whole page, page 2 of the 3 pages, I do not have time to read, 
it is hard hitting language. I am coming back to the well to read this 
entire letter at the beginning of a special order. But I want to close 
in about the minute I have left with this.
  We have a Catholic problem in this House, Mr. Speaker. We have 129 
Catholics here, almost 30 percent, 29.4 percent of the House. That is 
beyond the 23 or 24 percent American average. This is the biggest 
denomination of Christians, by a long shot, in this House, 128.
  Fifty-seven are regularly pro-life; 59 are regularly pro-death. 
Twelve are all over the place. All 12 voted against partial-birth 
execution-style abortion, as did all 57 pro-lifers. Of the 59 who have 
been pro-abortion for the last year and 3 months, 26 we won back. But 
that leaves 33 Catholics, every one of them a Democrat, who are subject 
to this letter from the eight Cardinals just as much as President 
Clinton is.
  Two of them are running for the Senate with Catholic in their bio; 
one of them has already been banned from speaking in New York City high 
schools. I guess I figured he lost it all anyway. Three Republicans who 
regularly vote abortion did absent themselves. Out of courtesy to them 
I will not mention their names. Thank heavens they did that.
  We got back a Catholic doctor from the heartland of America. One 
Senator was notably absent. We got back Joe Biden. God bless you, Joe. 
you have been through a lot in life with family and your own surgeries. 
You are back.
  But here are 10 Catholic Senators with beautiful Polish names, mostly 
Irish-American names, and one of them is running for reelection in the 
senate, three are running for reelection. The whole Boston delegation 
of Catholics is torn apart by this. We won back a lot of Good Democrats 
on this one vote.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to put this list in the Record at the end of 
my speech. Then I will come back for page 2, as a matter of fact, all 
three pages, next week.
  Mr. Speaker, Let people who care get the Congressional Record of 
Jimmy Doolittle's Bombing Tokyo Day, April 18th, 54th anniversary.
  Get this Record and read these Catholic names and pray for these 33 
people that would not come home and think they no more than Mother 
Theresa, the Vicar of Christ of Earth and every single Catholic 
Cardinal in America.
  Mr. Speaker, the documents referred to follow:
         National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Office of the 
           President,
                                   Washington, DC, April 16, 1996.
     President William Clinton,
     The White House,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear President Clinton: It is with deep sorrow and dismay 
     that we respond to your April 10 veto of the Partial-Birth 
     Abortion Ban Act.
       Your veto of this bill is beyond comprehension for those 
     who hold human life sacred. It will ensure the continued use 
     of the most heinous act to kill a tiny infant just seconds 
     from taking his or her first breath outside the womb.
       At the veto ceremony you told the American people that you 
     ``had no choice but to veto the bill.'' Mr. President, you 
     and you alone had the choice of whether or not to allow 
     children, almost completely born, to be killed brutally in 
     partial-birth abortions. Members of both House of Congress 
     made their choice. They said NO to partial-birth abortions. 
     American women voters have made their choice. According to a 
     February 1996 poll by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, 
     78 percent of women voters said NO to partial-birth 
     abortions. Your choice was to say YES and to allow this 
     killing more akin to infanticide than abortion to continue.
       During the veto ceremony you said you had asked Congress to 
     change H.R. 1833 to allow partial-birth abortions to be done 
     for ``serious adverse health consequences'' to the mother. 
     You added that if Congress had included that exception, 
     ``everyone in the world will know what we're talking about.''
       On the contrary, Mr. President, not everyone in the world 
     would know that ``health,'' as the courts define it in the 
     context of abortion, means virtually anything that has to do 
     with a woman's overall ``well being.'' For example, most 
     people have no idea that if a woman has an abortion because 
     she is not married the law considers that an abortion for 
     ``health'' reason. Similarly, if a woman is ``too young'' or 
     ``too old,'' if she is emotionally upset by pregnancy, or 
     if pregnancy interferes with schooling or career, the law 
     considers those situations as ``health'' reasons for 
     abortion. In other words, as you know and we know, an 
     exception for ``health'' means abortion on demand.
       You say there is a difference between a ``health'' 
     exception and an exception for ``serious adverse health 
     consequences.'' Mr. President, what is the difference--
     legally--between a woman's being too young and being 
     ``seriously'' too young? What is the difference--legally--
     between being emotionally upset and being ``seriously'' 
     emotionally upset? From your study of this issue, Mr. 
     President, you must know that most partial-birth abortions 
     are done for reasons that are purely elective.
       It was instructive that the veto ceremony included no 
     physician able to explain how a woman's physical health is 
     protected by almost fully delivering her living child, and 
     then killing that child in the most inhumane manner 
     imaginable before completing the delivery. As a matter of 
     fact, a partial-birth abortion presents a health risk to the 
     woman. Dr. Warren Hern, who wrote the most widely used 
     textbook on how to perform abortions, has said of partial-
     birth

[[Page H3648]]

     abortions: ``I would dispute any statement that this is the 
     safest procedure to use.''
       Mr. President, all abortions are lethal for unborn 
     children, and many are unsafe for their mothers. This is even 
     more evident in the late-term, partial-birth abortion, in 
     which children are killed cruelly, their mothers placed at 
     risk, and the society that condones it brutalized in the 
     process.
       As Catholic bishops and as citizens of the United States, 
     we strenuously oppose and condemn your veto of H.R. 1833 
     which will allow partial-birth abortions to continue.
       in the coming weeks and months, each of us, as well as our 
     bishops' conference, will do all we can to educate people 
     about partial-birth abortions. We will inform them that 
     partial-birth abortions will continue because you chose to 
     veto H.R. 1833.
       We will also urge Catholics and other people of good will--
     including the 65% of self-described ``pro-choice'' voters who 
     oppose partial-birth abortions--to do all that they can to 
     urge Congress to override this shameful veto.
       Mr. President, your action on this matter takes our nation 
     to a critical turning point in its treatment of helpless 
     human beings inside and outside the womb. It moves our nation 
     one step further toward acceptance of infanticide. Combined 
     with the two recent federal appeals court decisions seeking 
     to legitimize assisted suicide, it sounds the alarm that 
     public officials are moving our society ever more rapidly to 
     embrace a culture of death.
       Writing this response to you in unison is, on our part, 
     virtually unprecedented. It will, we hope, underscore our 
     resolve to be unremitting and unambigous in our defense of 
     human life.
           Sincerely yours,
         Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago; James 
           Cardinal Hickey, Archbishop of Washington, D.C. ; 
           Bernard Cardinal Law, Archbishop of Boston; Adam 
           Cardinal Maida, Archbishop of Detroit; Anthony Cardinal 
           Bevilacqua, Archbishop of Philadelphia; William 
           Cardinal Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore; Roger 
           Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles; John 
           Cardinal O'Connor, Archbishop of New York; Most 
           Reverend Anthony Pilla, President, National Conference 
           of Catholic Bishops.
       List is as follows:

                   Pro-Abortion Catholics in Congress

       Pastor, Becerra, Eshoo, George Miller, Pelosi, Roybal-
     Allard, DeLauro, Kennelly, Pete Peterson, McKinney, Durbin, 
     Evans, Gutierrez, Visclosky, Baldacci, Joe Kennedy, Markey, 
     Meehan, Luther, Vento, Clay, McCarthy, Pat Williams, 
     Menendez, Pallone, Hinchey, Rangel, Velazquez, DeFazio, 
     Coyne, Reed, Gonzalez.

                          ____________________