[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 134 (Thursday, September 18, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H7872-H7874]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BOSNIA TODAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey
(Mr. Smith) for 30 minutes.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, last week Congressman Trent
Franks and I had an important meeting with Reis Emeritus Dr. Mustafa
Ceric, the former Grand Mufti of the Islamic community of Bosnia-
Herzegovina.
Dr. Ceric is internationally recognized and renowned as a man of
peace, a leader in interreligious dialogue. For example, in 2008, he
led the Muslim delegation to the Catholic-Islamic Forum,
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and he did that kind of work on many, many occasions.
Last week, we talked about Bosnia since the conflict and the genocide
of the 1990s, about where Bosnia is today and where it needs to go.
{time} 2045
I would like to share with my colleagues what Reis Ceric had to say.
Dr. Ceric briefed and updated us on Bosnia's struggle to hold itself
together, build its economy, and integrate into NATO and the European
Union.
He talked about a country where, 19 years after Srebrenica and the
horrific genocide that occurred there and the Dayton Peace Accords,
ethnic divisions remain strong and, in many ways, have hardened as a
generation has grown up in a system that classifies people into one of
three ethnic communities--Bosniak, Serb, or Croat--and in a system that
diminishes the rights of anyone that doesn't belong to one of those
communities, including Jews and Roma.
In Bosnia today, only ethnic Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats can be
elected to the legislature--the House of Peoples--or to the Presidency.
This structurally-embedded discrimination is a legacy of the Dayton
Peace Accords brokered under American watch.
While this design was probably necessary at the time to stop the
genocide and aggression, in today's time and expanding Europe, it
clearly violates our basic values of freedom and equality.
As a result, in Bosnia today, all persons are not equal and--based on
race, religion, and ethnicity--entire segments of the population are
excluded from full political participation.
The Dayton Peace Accords were a tourniquet to end the genocidal
conflict in 1995. However, that is all they were really intended to be.
Dayton was never intended to operate as Bosnia's Constitution,
certainly not for 19 years.
As a result of Dayton's severe limitations on its democracy, Bosnia
cannot be fully integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures. Without
amending the Dayton Accords to respect basic human rights and political
rights of one person-one vote, Bosnia will never even be a candidate
for the European Union.
So a question mark hangs over Bosnia's future, as ethnic activists
continue to agitate to partition the country and threaten daily to
secede, taking large swaths of ethnically-cleansed territories with
them. Such action might lead to a revival of hostilities.
What further aggravates the condition is a sustained campaign of
mischaracterization and outright denial of genocide by some government
officials of the Republika Srpska, the smaller of Bosnia's two
entities.
Milorad Dodik, the President of the Republika Srpska, is publicly
calling for the naming of public squares, roads, and boulevards after
indicted war criminals such as Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic; yet
Dayton provides no mechanism by which Bosnia, Madam Speaker, can be
fully democratized.
Significant leadership by Bosnian leaders is going to be absolutely
necessary to break through the stalemate created by ethnic interests,
and, of course, the United States must do its part to ensure that the
Bosnian dream of a robust democracy, respect for the fundamental human
rights, and rule of law is reached. I respectfully submit that delay is
denial and that the Bosnians deserve better.
Madam Speaker, the United States has a special responsibility to
Bosnia. We could have done more for them in the 1990s. I know, I was
here.
I held hearing after hearing, traveled to the former Yugoslavia
repeatedly, joined by other colleagues like Frank Wolf, trying to get
this country to stand up and assist those who were being victimized by
an invasion; instead, we left it to the Europeans in the 1990s, and,
unfortunately, it was a train wreck.
We could have lifted the arms embargo on Bosnia earlier, which may
have prevented the genocide.
I would note, parenthetically, that I was the sponsor of legislation
to lift the egregiously-flawed arms embargo that hindered both the
Croats' and the Bosnians' ability to defend against aggression.
Only after the tragic and preventable Srebrenica genocide in early
July 1995--and thanks to the leadership of some of us in the House and
Senate--did our government swing into action and broker the peace deal.
Bosnians, Madam Speaker, of every ethnicity and faith look to the
United States to help move the country forward. I agree with Reis Ceric
that, without American leadership and help to evolve the Dayton Accords
toward a democratic constitution, the situation will likely fester and
get worse.
Madam Speaker, in the 1990s, throughout the darkness of the Balkan
war, Reis Ceric was a powerful, persistent, reasonable, and dynamic
voice for peace, human rights, the rule of law, and accountability for
genocide.
Reis Ceric is a good friend of mine and truly an inspiring man of
God.
Tax-Payer-Funded Abortion
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I would like to address
another issue before the House today.
Madam Speaker, 5 years ago, about 5 feet from where I am standing
right now, President Obama told lawmakers and the American public in a
specially called joint session of Congress on health care reform that,
``Under our plan, no Federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.''
That was September 9, 2009. In an eleventh hour ploy to garner
support from a remnant of pro-life congressional Democrats absolutely
needed for passage of ObamaCare, the President issued an executive
order on March 24, 2010, that said:
The Affordable Care Act maintains current Hyde amendment
restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those
restrictions to newly-created health insurance exchanges.
It turns out, Madam Speaker, that those ironclad promises made by the
President himself are absolutely untrue.
Agree or disagree with public funding of abortion--and a significant
majority of Americans oppose it--but no one likes to be misled. Today,
as I think many of my colleagues know, a growing number of Americans
are recognizing that abortion is violence against children and hurts
women.
Abortion methods rip, tear, and dismember or chemically poison the
fragile bodies of unborn children. There is nothing benign,
compassionate, or just about an act that utterly destroys a baby and
often physically, psychologically, or emotionally harms the mother.
At its core, Madam Speaker--and this has been missed by many,
especially in the media--the Hyde amendment has two parts. It prohibits
funding for abortion, but it also prohibits funding for any insurance
plan that includes abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest, or to
save the life of the mother.
Remember, the President stood here and then, in his executive order,
said that the act maintains the Hyde amendment restrictions governing
abortion and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health
insurance exchanges. That is what the executive order said, and yet,
now, we know that is absolutely untrue.
A comprehensive Government Accountability Office report released this
week documents massive new public funding for abortion in the
President's new health care law.
Like so many of the President's promises that litter the political
landscape, GAO has found that, in 2014, taxpayers are funding over
1,000--let me repeat that--1,000 ObamaCare health plans that subsidize
abortion on demand--even late-term abortion--decimating the Hyde
amendment that the President said he would honor.
Again, if you fund the insurance plan, the purchase of a plan, it is
a violation of the Hyde amendment that the President said that he would
extend to the newly-created health insurance exchanges.
According to the Government Accountability Office, in their findings,
every ObamaCare taxpayer-funded health insurance plan in my own State
of New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Hawaii pays for
abortion on demand, every one of them.
In New York, a whopping 405 out of 426 ObamaCare plans subsidize
abortion on demand. In California, it is 86 plans out of 90; in
Massachusetts, 109 out of 111; in Oregon, 92 out of 102; in Washington,
23 of the 34 plans; and so it goes.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, their April
2014 estimate, Madam Speaker, between 2014
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and 2024, taxpayer subsidies to buy ObamaCare health plans will total
$855 billion, making taxpayers unwittingly, wherever they live,
complicit in abortion.
GAO has also found that even an accounting trick embedded in
ObamaCare requiring premium payers to be assessed a separate, monthly
abortion surcharge is being completely ignored. The surcharge would
have added some modicum of transparency so individuals would know
whether they are purchasing a pro-life or pro-abortion health insurance
plan.
Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska summed up the plain meaning--the
absolutely plain meaning--of the law when he said that you have to
write two checks, one for the abortion coverage and one for the rest of
the premium.
According to the GAO, none of the 18 insurance companies they
interviewed are billing the abortion surcharge separately. None. So
much for the rule of law.
Last year, Members of Congress and some staff were barred from any
further participation in the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan,
the FEHB, and compelled on to ObamaCare exchanges.
After months of misinformation, obfuscation, and delay, I finally
learned that, of the 112 plans offered on the exchange for my family,
103 of those plans pay for abortion on demand, a clear violation of the
Smith amendment, a Hyde-like amendment that I first sponsored on the
floor back in 1983 and has been the law of the land for all of these
years, except for 2 years during the Clinton administration.
Madam Speaker, Americans throughout the country have raised very
serious questions that they find it nearly impossible to determine
whether the plan that they are purchasing finances or subsidizes the
killing of unborn children--there is little or no transparency--hence
the request by several Members of Congress, including our distinguished
Speaker, Speaker Boehner, that the Government Accountability Office
investigate.
As the November 15 open enrollment approaches for ObamaCare, we have
no reason now to believe that the President's promise of this most
transparent government in history will give consumers basic information
about the abortion coverage.
First, we were told it wouldn't be in there--again, a promise made
right from this podium, Madam Speaker--and then by way of executive
order; and, now, we can't even find out, clearly and unmistakably,
which plans include abortion and which do not.
To end President Obama's massive new funding of abortion on demand,
Madam Speaker, last January, the House of Representatives passed my
bill--a totally bipartisan bill--overwhelmingly known as the No
Taxpayers Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure
Act.
Madam Speaker, when our friend and colleague on the other side of
this building, Harry Reid, was a Member of the House, he was as pro-
life as Henry Hyde. Now, as a majority leader, he refuses to even allow
H.R. 7 and its companion bill offered by Senator Wicker to come up for
a vote.
With respect to the distinguished Senator and on behalf of the
weakest and the most vulnerable, the unborn children and those who will
be hurt by abortion--their moms--I respectfully ask that he reconsider
and post the legislation for a vote.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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