[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 137 (Monday, October 5, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H9350-H9351]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       CONGRESS MUST PROVIDE LEADERSHIP ON FOREIGN POLICY MATTERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, as the Congress moves forward via the 
Committee on the Judiciary's impeachment hearings, it is useful to 
understand that this administration's shortcomings are not confined to 
extramarital affairs. Six years into this administration, our country 
is in jeopardy. With little awareness by the public, we are facing a 
multitude of critical national security threats and foreign policy 
debacles.
  My fellow Americans, mistakes being made today imperil our children 
and future generations. The sad fact is that this administration has no 
credible foreign policy. Our weakness and vacillation emboldens tyrants 
throughout the world from China to Afghanistan to North Korea to Serbia 
to Cambodia to Iraq. It encourages these regimes to, not only brutalize 
their own people, but to create regional instability, to threaten 
Americans, and to threaten others as well with terrorism, and, for the 
first time, to develop and deploy technologies that directly threaten 
the continental United States.
  How many Americans know that Communist North Korea is the largest 
recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Asia? In fact, Communist North Korea, 
this brutal regime that starves its own people to develop weapons of 
mass destruction, this Stalinist regime that threatens the stability of 
Asia is perhaps one of the top five recipients of foreign aid in the 
world.
  How many Americans know this? How many Americans know that we have 
given into that regime into blackmail from that very same regime, and 
that is why they are receiving that foreign aid?
  How many Americans know that, on the day that President Clinton 
visited Communist China, that that dictatorship tested a new rocket 
engine for a missile that can hit the United States? There was no 
response from President Clinton or his entourage, yet they knew that 
that engine was being tested.
  This is the same brutal regime that represses religious believers and 
democratic reformers, the same regime that gets a preferential trade 
status enabling it to flood our markets to the tune of a $60 billion 
trade surplus a year, which they then use to build weapons that may 
someday attack Americans.
  As I speak, the select committee of the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Cox) is finding more and more evidence that the Clinton 
administration has permitted the transfer of American technology to 
upgrade Communist Chinese missiles and other weapons systems.
  How many Americans know that, due to this administration's determined 
opposition, that our country has no missile defense system to stop a 
missile whether it is from China or elsewhere from hitting the United 
States?
  How many Americans know that the Taliban extremists in Afghanistan, 
who are like the Nazi's were to Jews, the Taliban are to women 
throughout the world, how many people know that this group, the 
Taliban, who are the largest exporters and suppliers of heroin in the 
world and have made their country into a safe haven for anti-American 
terrorists, that this bad bunch has had the tacit support of the 
Clinton administration?
  How many Americans know that, due to the Clinton's administrations 
nonsensical military deployment and other

[[Page H9351]]

policies, that our military is now at its lowest rate of readiness 
since before World War II?
  All of this adds up to reckless incompetence or worse. The world 
economy is sinking. This administration has done everything in its 
power to tie our national well-being to the crooks and tyrants 
throughout the world who would drag us down all in the name of creating 
a global economy.
  Going into the next Congress, we have got serious work to do. If the 
President and his staff are incapable of providing the leadership this 
country needs to keep us safe, to ensure our prosperity, then we must 
step forward, and Congress must stand up and take the leadership role.

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