John Ashcroft

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent there now be a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. I rise today to state my opposition to the nomination of Ann Aiken to be United States District Judge for the District of Oregon, and to note my support for the other two judges the Senate will consider today. My principal basis for opposition to Judge Aiken's nomination is her sentencing decision in State v. Ronny Lee Dye. After finding defendant, 26, guilty of raping a 5-year-old girl, Aiken sentenced defendant to 90 days in jail, rather than substantial prison time, which was also an option under Oregon law. As troubling as this sentencing decision is, her explanation of the decision is worse. She has explained that with a jail sentence she could ensure that Dye would receive psychological counseling, but she could not guarantee counseling if he went to prison. I find this type of social engineering from the bench troubling. The focus on what best serves the convicted rapist's needs should not be the basis of a sentencing decision. I doubt that this is the kind of decision the people of Oregon want to leave to judges. This decision is not ancient history or a rookie mistake. Judge Aiken made this unjustifiable sentencing decision in 1993, in the middle of her fifth year on the bench. Let me be clear about one thing: This is not the worst nominee the President has sent to the Senate. There have been other nominees that pose even greater problems. The Senate will likely consider one in just a few weeks, Judge Frederica Massiah-Jackson of Philadelphia. Judge Massiah-Jackson has used the language's worst profanity in open court, she has demonstrated leniency in sentencing and hostility to law enforcement, and in recent weeks, she has drawn the opposition of important local law enforcement officers of the Democratic Party, like Lynne Abraham, the Philadelphia District Attorney. Ann Aiken is not as troubling a nominee as Frederica Massiah-Jackson. But that should not be the standard. We need to raise the bar on the President's judicial nominees. America deserves better. The Constitution vests the Senate with the critical responsibility to advise the President with respect to his judicial nominees and in appropriate cases to give its consent. I take that responsibility seriously. The President is capable of making quality judicial appointments and, when he does so, he deserves the Senate's consent. The two other nominees we will vote on today--Richard Story (for the Northern District of Georgia) and Barry Silverman (for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals)--both appear to be well-qualified nominees, and I plan to vote in favor of both. However, I will vote against the Aiken nomination. For me, the bottom line is this: As we embark on a congressional session in which we plan to put the emphasis on protecting families and cracking down on violent crime, we should not begin the year by confirming a judge who sentenced a child rapist to 90 days in jail. We can demand more of the President's judicial nominees. The people of this country deserve better.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to encourage my colleagues to join me in congratulating Edith Barcomb of Springfield, MO, who will celebrate her 88th birthday on November 26. Edith is a truly remarkable individual. She has witnessed many of the events that have shaped our Nation into the greatest the world has ever known. The longevity of Edith's life has meant much more, however, to the many relatives and friends whose lives she has touched over the last 88 years. Edith's celebration of 88 years of life is a testament to me and all Missourians. Her achievements are significant and deserve to be recognized. I would like to join Edith's many friends and relatives in wishing her health and happiness in the future.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to encourage my colleagues to join me in congratulating Anna Taylor of Grandview, MO, who will celebrate her 100th birthday on November 22. Anna is a truly remarkable individual. Anna has witnessed many of the events that have shaped our Nation into the greatest the world has ever known. The longevity of Anna's life has meant much more, however, to the many relatives and friends whose lives she has touched over the last 100 years. Anna's celebration of 100 years of life is a testament to me and all Missourians. Her achievements are significant and deserve to be recognized. I would like to join Anna's many friends and relatives in wishing her health and happiness in the future.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I wanted to take a moment to associate myself with the comments of the majority leader from October 21, 1997. Senator Lott has correctly highlighted the FBI's constantly shifting arguments and the Bureau's seemingly relentless attempts to grab more power at the expense of the Constitution, particularly the fourth amendment's protection of privacy and the fifth amendment's guarantee of due process. The FBI legislative proposal goes far beyond the Commerce Committee's misguided encryption legislation in further disregarding our Constitution. Instead of working with those who understand that S.909 gives the FBI unprecedented and troubling authority to invade lives, the FBI has attempted to grab even broader authority. The Senate would be foolish to pass S.909. In no way can we even consider the ill- advised FBI approach. The reach of the FBI has now extended so far that the President has taken the other side of the issue and supported a free market approach, according to his public comments delivered abroad. I can only conclude that the FBI has introduced its proposal as a ploy to make S.909 look like a reasonable compromise. The only other explanation for the FBI's proposal is that the Bureau will not be satisfied with S.909, but instead will continue to work to erode our Constitutional protections. In fact, the new proposal only draws attention to the many problems of the commerce Committee language. Neither proposal is acceptable. The issue of encryption must be revisited in a real and serious way next year, both at the committee level and in the Senate chamber, to examine the many Constitutional implications of the various proposals. I look forward to working with the Majority Leader and other Senators who have expressed interest in encryption legislation. I yield the floor. Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Jerry Hedrick as he retires from 22 years of service to Hoechst Marion Roussel, the largest pharmaceutical company in the State of Missouri. Jerry is known for his expertise in the fields of health care and public policy, and has been a mentor to many persons involved in those fields. Jerry began his career in 1975 with the pharmaceutical industry as a consultant when he joined Marion Laboratories, a predecessor company to Marion Merrell Dow Inc. and Hoechst Marion Roussel. Through Jerry's outstanding talents and dedication he has distinguished himself in the pharmaceutical industry as the vice president of government affairs for Hoechst Marion Roussel since August 1995. Upon graduation from college, Jerry worked as a teacher, and he continues to work with young people through his volunteering with the Heart of America Council of the Boy Scouts of America and the Dream Factory, an organization dedicated to granting the wishes of very ill children. I commend Jerry for the outstanding service he provides to his community. As our Nation looks increasingly to individuals to become more active in the work of the community, Jerry's commitment provides an example for others to follow. Jerry also generously gives his time to the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the Midwest Bioethics Center where he is one of the founding trustees, the Advisory Council at Emporia State University, and the American Quarter Horse Association as the Kansas State director. I have had the opportunity to work with Jerry on several occasions and have always considered him to be a person of knowledge and insight. His dedication to the advancement of health care in America is truly admirable. I urge the Senate to join me in bidding Jerry Hedrick a fond farewell, and wishing him, his wife, Bev, and his daughter, Ginger, the very best as they move on to face new challenges, opportunities, and rewards.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise to speak of the need to preserve and protect the intense vital involvement of parents in decisionmaking in local schools all across America. If America is to succeed in the next generation, we have to have the capacity to have the kind of schools that meet the needs of our students. We will have to have the ability to experiment from one school district to another. We will have to have State and local governments that can tailor the programs which they have to meet the demands of their unique settings. Sometimes when we think about achievement, sometimes when we think about success, we think it might be necessary to try and impose the so- called ``wisdom of Washington'' upon the Nation generally. But, I think that temptation ought to quickly fly from us if we would think of what would have happened, for instance, if we decided there needed to be a single uniform type of computer and we had imposed it from Washington saying there would just be one way of doing things. Maybe we would have chosen Apple computers and their way of doing things instead of IBM and their way of doing things. Or maybe we would have chosen a single software company and said that is the only way it could be handled, and we wouldn't have the flourishing and the flowering and the kind of intense opportunity and plurality for the generation of marvelous alternatives that have made America the far and away overwhelming leader in terms of the technology. I think whenever we feel that temptation to draw to Washington, DC, the decisionmaking and the prerogative of developing for the Nation a single uniform policy which would take the diversity and the creativity out of the system and would cheat America of the vital creativity and opportunity that is expressed when people at the local level are involved, whenever we have that temptation, we should think about how bad it would be in so many areas had we had that kind of policy. America's ability to flourish as a success reflects the diversity of this country and the ability of different groups of individuals to approach things differently and to do so successfully. Not only does it provide for us an energy which carries us to excellence, it also means that we don't ever have all of our eggs in a single basket. We have the capacity to meet a variety of challenges. We have innovative and creative thinking. We have the capacity to look at things from different points of view. One of the things that the President sought to bring to the United States--and I think his intention was good--was he wanted to improve education, by bringing to us national testing, testing of students on an individual basis all across America with a uniform test promulgated by bureaucrats in Washington, a single test which would, unfortunately, chart the direction of education all across the country. When you make a test, you decide that you are testing for something. So if you are going to make up a test that is going to be imposed on the country, you are going to be testing for something and you have to define what you are testing for. So the development of a test, although it might not seem to be at first blush, is really the development of a curriculum. If you decide what you are going to test for, you have to decide what you are going to teach. Once you decide what you are going to teach, you have established a national curriculum. Oddly enough, even deciding what you are going to teach probably isn't all that is controlled with the development of a test. The development of a test probably decides how you are going to teach it, because if you teach English, for instance, with phonics, teach people how letters sound together, and combinations and the like, that is one way of teaching the English language and would be tested differently than teaching the English language with the so-called whole language approach where you just have the recognition of words by rote or memorization. So when you have something like a national test proposed, you have to understand that you are talking about uniformity, that you are going to impose a single system all across the country, going to make everybody pretty much the same, you are going to deprive the system of the creativity and the vitality and diversity of what a lot of different folks can do when they are working simultaneously on a problem. Second, you are not only going to have uniformity, but you are going to determine from Washington, DC--if you have a uniform test, you are going to have a uniform curriculum. What to teach and how to teach it then becomes a uniform decision by bureaucrats. Because in order to test accurately, you have to know exactly what you are teaching and, of course, what you are teaching for will depend on how you are teaching. It troubles me to think that we might take these most fundamental decisions in education and pry them from the prerogative of parents and move them to the educators or bureaucrats of Washington, DC. As a matter of fact, the bureaucrats, educational bureaucrats, in Washington, DC, do not have a very good record. The bureaucrats in Washington, DC, run a couple school systems. We know that. As a matter of fact, they run the Department of Defense Dependent School System. A year or two ago they tried to put the so-called whole math into that system. The results were devastating. The median percentile computation scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills taken by more than 37,000 Department of Defense dependent school students, 1 year after the Defense Department introduced whole math, dropped 14 percent for third graders--this is the median percentile score--dropped 20 percent for fourth graders, 20 percent for fifth graders, 17 percent for sixth graders, and 17 percent for seventh graders. One year's implementation of a fad, of the new whole math, devastated the performance of those students. I am not sure we want to yield the control of our public schools to the Federal Government so we can have that kind of devastating impact. I sure do not. Maybe, if you think the Federal Government does things particularly well, you should look at another school system which the Federal Government runs. It is called the District of Columbia School System, where, I think, we have the highest per capita expenditure on students anywhere in the world, and we have some of the lowest achievement levels. What I am trying to say is, we do not need to forfeit to the Federal bureaucracy in Washington, DC, the decisionmaking in education of what to teach and how to teach it, and we need far less to take parents out of the equation. Some people might not understand the value of parents in education, but there has been a lot of work in the educational research area about the value of parents in education. A 1980 report in ``Psychology in the Schools'' shows that family involvement improved Chicago elementary schoolchildren's performance in reading comprehension dramatically. One year after initiating a Chicago citywide program aimed at helping parents create academic support conditions in the home, students in grades one through six ``intensively exposed to the program'' improved .5 to .6 grade equivalents in reading comprehension on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills over students less intensively involved in the program--a 50- to 60-percent better level of improvement when the parents are deeply involved. If we are going to take parents out of the equation of what to teach and how to teach and we are going to tell them, do not bother to try to get active in your schools, because if things are not working there, you would have to change the whole country in order to change what happens at your schools, and besides, all the decisions are going to be made at sort of a quasi-national school board in Washington, DC, I do not think we are going to get effective parental involvement. That is why I believe that locally controlled schools are the fundamental thing that we ought to pursue. It is not only true for Chicago schoolchildren, it has been proven over and over again in other cities across the Nation in a variety of studies. It is important that we have parental involvement. It is important that we have local determination. It is important that we not yield to Washington, DC, the capacity to impose uniform curricula and a uniform teaching methodology all across the country. It would stifle creativity. It would impair achievement in a very, very significant way. The Republican agenda for education has not been to centralize education in Washington, DC. Our agenda, as expressed in this legislative session, has been to give local schools block grants. It has been to send them the power to do what they know they need to do. I heard Congressman Goodling from the House talk about the President's plan to improve education with just one more test. We already have between three and nine standardized tests every year for every student in the country, according to USA Today. Congressman Goodling put it this way: ``If you are trying to fatten cattle, they don't get fat by weighing them one more time.'' If you are trying to educate students, they don't get smart just by being tested one more time. Students not only have the regular tests of their instructional regime, they also have these three to nine other tests which are taking instructional time. And they are telling us pretty clearly where we are educationally. We know where there is much to achieve, but weighing the cattle one more time, testing the students one more time, will not make them fatter or smarter. The truth of the matter is, the solution is to do things like the Republicans have sought to do here, which is to get more capacity into the hands of schools so that it can be devoted to students and teachers, not to the bureaucracy in Washington--a clear contrast. The bureaucracy in Washington grows under President Clinton's ability to dictate, through the backdoor of testing, a curriculum and a teaching style in uniformity across America. Under the Republican proposals, instead of having a growing bureaucracy, you take the resource which would otherwise be sapped by the bureaucracy in Washington, and you target it on the schools, you give block grants to local schools. Another Republican initiative, the A-plus accounts, gives parents choices. Instead of taking parents out of the equation by saying we are going to have a national school board that no parent could afford to come and talk to and that would impose a uniform regime all across America, the Republican plan is to empower parents, to give parents choice. Let parents invest resources so that they can send their children to the schools that the parents choose and invest those resources absent the kind of onerous tax burdens that parents normally would have on their investments. The President's agenda is more programs, more bureaucracies, more of Washington-knows-best. The Republican agenda is a commitment to local schools, local control, local education, the creativity, the pluralism, yes, the diversity and the energy that comes when we have local schools all across America. There is an effort being made in this year's appropriations measure to harmonize the kind of demands that are being made by the administration and the items that were passed in the Senate with items that were passed in the House. I think it is fundamentally important that we protect local schools. If we are not willing to stand up to protect the local schools, the prerogative of parents to operate in those schools, to be effective there, to get involved meaningfully in the development of curriculum and the development of teaching methodology, I think we will have failed in our duty. I intend to do whatever I can, as we close this session--and I mean ``whatever I can''--to make sure we arrive at a conclusion which makes it possible for parents to continue to have that kind of beneficial impact. At the end of this year the President and his bureaucrats seem to be winning. America's children are losing. The block grants, which would have cut the Washington bureaucracy by sending more funds directly to local school districts, were all but abandoned, and I commend the occupant of the Chair for having that idea, which is one of the best ideas that has been offered to help education in this Congress in decades. Scholarships for needy children in the District of Columbia were filibustered to death. Instead of giving parents the power to help their children in education, we lost on that ground. And the President has indicated that, if we succeed on that ground, he will veto it. On Tuesday, the Senate voted to kill A-plus accounts to help parents pay for the costs of their children's education. At least the vote was to not allow that to go forward. We could not get cloture. So those who sought to reinforce the position of the President there deprived America of another opportunity for parents to be beneficially involved. We have lost on the block grants. We lost on the A-plus accounts. We lost on the scholarships for DC students that would empower parents. A final ballot remains over national testing. It is a cause from which I do not intend to waiver. I do not think Senators should pack their bags for the recess just yet. There are rights to defend. There are students whose interests are in the balance. I do not think we should sacrifice the next generation's education for a few extra days of rest at the end of this year. I certainly do not intend to do so myself. National tests would lead to a national curriculum. I think we can all understand that. The President keeps saying that the national testing system he is proposing would be voluntary. He said these will all be voluntary. Do not worry. No school district would be required to be involved in these tests. That is what he said in Washington, DC. That is what he said in his State of the Union Message. That is what he said recently. Perhaps he thought we were not listening carefully when he was speaking in Lansing, MI, on March 10 of this year, 1997. He put it this way: I want to create a climate in which no one can say no, in which it's voluntary but you are ashamed if you don't give your kids the chance to do [these tests]. Here is a President who says this is to be voluntary, but he says he wants to make it so no one can say no. When the President has the ability to control funding, and when he has the opportunity to give grants and otherwise to make favorable or unfavorable decisions about what happens in schools, I doubt seriously whether there will be a real opportunity for these to be voluntary. William Safire recently warned of the dangers of allowing the administration's testing proposal. And I quote William Safire in his editorial from the New York Times op-ed page entitled ``Flunk that Test.'' He put it this way: We're only talking about math and English, say the national standard-bearers, and shucks, it's only voluntary. I continue to quote Safire. Don't believe that; if the nose of the camel gets under the tent, the hump of a national curriculum, slavish teaching to homogenizing tests, and a black market in answers would surely follow. You know, the evils of a national test have long been understood, not just by Republicans, but by Democrats as well, because they have understood that national testing ultimately dictates national curricula. Perhaps one of the most eloquent in that respect was Joseph Califano. Joseph Califano was the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Carter administration. When Joseph Califano was asked about national tests, he warned the American people. He put it this way: Any set of test questions that the federal government prescribed should surely be suspect as a first step toward a national curriculum. . . . In its most extreme form, [Joseph Califano went on to warn] national control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas. We could have a long debate about the potential evils of national control of ideas, but it is pretty clear to me that none of us believes that Washington, DC, should control ideas. I think all of us understand that if Washington, DC, controls things, it generally does not do them well. As a matter of fact, what this country has controlled from Washington, DC, has not been exemplary. It has been an example of what to avoid rather than what to embrace. When you are talking with individuals about the so-called tests which they would impose, you have to wonder whether Washington's imposition of tests would be something like Washington's attempted imposition of the standards for history, which they tried to develop at the end of the last decade and early in the 1990's. The National Endowment for the Humanities sought to develop a set of history standards telling us what we should know and what we should teach. What was interesting to me is that the standards tended to be far more politically correct than they were historically correct. When you are thinking about mathematics, I do not think we should think about that which is politically correct or historically correct. We should think about things that are arithmetically correct. But here is what happened to the national history standards. The national history standards were more interested in those who were politically correct. The standards slighted or ignored many central figures in U.S. history, particularly white males. To name a few, Robert E. Lee was left out, Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers were left out, Paul Revere was left out, so we could have many, many references to the Ku Klux Klan, so we could have references to heroes from other continents. The truth of the matter is the U.S. Senate understood what was happening there and voted against those standards. I believe that these standards were rejected unanimously in the Senate. George Will attacked the failed history standards as ``cranky anti-Americanism.'' It didn't surprise the American public. The American public has witnessed the Federal Government go awry, time after time after time on issue after issue after issue. The proponents of the proposed national tests have indicated that their interest is in the whole math curriculum. As a matter of fact, when we found out what they were talking about with the whole math curriculum we discovered they were talking about a rejection of computation. Computation is 3 times 6 is 18; 3 times 18 is 54; 4 times 18 is 72. They reject that. One whole math proponent was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as having said we can't ask students to say 6 times 7 is 42, put down the 2, carry the 4. They said that is discriminatory. Most students can't do that, they are too dumb. That is ridiculous. Our students are smarter than that. They are not that dumb. As a matter of fact, the only thing that will dumb down American education is if we have low expectations. I have studies that show when you have low expectations you get low performance. Here you have people designing the tests who want to run away from the ability of American students to compute. They want to supply everyone with a calculator so no one has to know the multiplication table and no one has to do things in his or her head. I think such dumbing down of America's educational performance would be inappropriate. Most importantly, it is fundamental that we maintain in this great land the ability of moms and dads to be at the focal point of educational policy and development and not bureaucrats in Washington, DC. It is fundamentally important that we maintain local control of education rather than Washington control. As we are working our way to see whether or not we can have an appropriations bill that maintains this balance, I want to say to the U.S. Senate that we have an obligation to stay here and work until we do protect the rights and opportunities of the next generation for a decent education by making sure that their parents are in charge, that local school boards and States are in charge, and that we don't forfeit the prerogatives of education policy to bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who would impose a kind of mindless ``dumbed down'' national curriculum which would fail to have the diversity and creativity and energy -- especially the energy--that comes from local involvement that we need. I intend to do whatever I can and everything that is possible to make sure that we protect that prerogative. I hope Members of this body and Members of the House will join me in doing so. As we are seeking in these moments to reach an agreement with the White House in this respect, I hope it will be their understanding that a plan to have a uniform stifling environment promulgated from Washington is not a plan for a prosperous America but is a plan which would pull the educational rug out from under the feet of our children and would destroy our capacity to compete in the next generation. I yield the floor.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, families are the cornerstone of America. The data are undeniable: Individuals from strong families contribute to the society. In an era when nearly half of all couples married today will see their union dissolve into divorce, I believe it is both instructive and important to honor those who have taken the commitment of ``till death us do part'' seriously, demonstrating successfully the timeless principles of love, honor, and fidelity. These characteristics make our country strong. For these important reasons, I rise today to honor Pauline and Larry Price of St. Louis, MO, who on November 12, 1997, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. My wife, Janet, and I look forward to the day we can celebrate a similar milestone. The Prices' commitment to the principles and values of their marriage deserves to be saluted and recognized.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, families are the cornerstone of America. The data are undeniable: Individuals from strong families contribute to the society. In an era when nearly half of all couples married today will see their union dissolve into divorce, I believe it is both instructive and important to honor those who have taken the commitment of ``till death us do part'' seriously, demonstrating successfully the timeless principles of love, honor, and fidelity. These characteristics make our country strong. For these important reasons, I rise today to honor Frankie and Harlan Kirk of St. Louis, MO, who on November 15, 1997, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. My wife, Janet, and I look forward to the day we can celebrate a similar milestone. The Kirks' commitment to the principles and values of their marriage deserves to be saluted and recognized.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the Senate floor today, joined by my friend from our neighboring State of Arkansas, Senator Tim Hutchinson. As the 21st century approaches, Senator Hutchinson and I both share a desire to see the United States maintain its position as a world leader--a world leader that emphasizes opportunity and freedom. A strong America abroad preserves the safety of our citizens at home and helps advance the ideals of liberty around the world. The United States is involved internationally in very substantial ways, and in some of those settings it is my fear that, instead of exhibiting strong leadership, we have demonstrated that we are incapable of demanding integrity and of requesting that others deal with us honestly. We are in the waning moments of a summit meeting between the President of China, Jiang Zemin, and President Clinton. Summit meetings can be very important times. They can provide opportunities for the United States to demonstrate leadership, to demonstrate a commitment to freedom and integrity in international relationships. Or they can do the converse and they can demonstrate that America will not demand integrity, will not demand a commitment to freedom and fair play. Summits can indicate that America does not have the kind of care for the rights of individuals generally around the globe that we would be known for historically in this country. When we have summit meetings, we need to advance America's security and economic interests. Summit meetings should be times of structural advance for the United States, when we put in place the kind of framework that will result in our country being stronger--the kind of framework that will preserve our security and advance freedom around the world. If statesmanship is not present, summits can become transactional rather than address the critical structural issues in a bilateral relationship. We have seen that during the United States-China summit this week, where the President of the United States has been eager for certain businesses to sell their goods to China, and has, in this particular summit, made it possible for the Chinese to gain access to some of the most important and sensitive nuclear technology in the United States. But the real issues in United States-China relations, however, have been deferred. Critical national security challenges, a staggering trade deficit, and an appalling human rights record in China all took a backseat to business contracts. Summits can turn into shallow media events when the critical bilateral issues are ignored. The United States-China summit was worse than just a shallow event. Unfortunately, it was an event which demonstrated that we were willing--in order to acquire certain business contracts--to look past what ought to be clear, structural issues that ought to galvanize our attention. China did not come to the summit to make real concessions on any front, and we responded with accommodation and appeasement. We agreed to have the summit anyway, in spite of the fact that China didn't come to provide genuine progress for the people of China or for the people of the United States. Whenever we don't achieve structural change, such as progress in our trading relationships, which would be a reduction in tariffs or nontariff barriers from China; whenever we don't see an improvement in the human rights situation in China so that personal freedom is advanced; whenever we don't have a clear record which demonstrates that China will cease proliferating nuclear and chemical weapons and mass destruction technology--we have lost the ability to advance our nation's fundamental interests and we have traded principle for a few commercial contracts. The real opportunity of summitry is the opportunity for structural change--not of transactions alone. It is an opportunity for statesmanship--not just salesmanship. I don't think it is wrong for the President of the United States to want to sell our goods abroad. But when we sell our goods and our principles along with them--the kind of commitment we have to freedom, the kind of commitment we have to integrity, the kind of commitment we have to stopping the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons around the world--I think the price is too high. I think we will have to ask ourselves when we look at the record of this summit, ``Has this been an exercise in statesmanship, or has this been an exercise in salesmanship?'' If it has just been an exercise in salesmanship, what have we sold? Have we bartered away our credibility, our commitment to freedom and liberty, and our demand for fair and balanced trade? Have we compromised our position when it comes to combating the proliferation of chemical and nuclear weapons? In my judgment, I think we have to ask those questions very, very soberly. Did the summit advance America's economic and security interests? Did it put United States-China relations on a firmer footing by addressing the critical issues in our bilateral relationship, or was it centered around accommodation and big-ticket commercial deals? Have we, instead of engaging in statesmanship, just found ourselves engaged in salesmanship and perhaps selling some of the things which we hold most dear in the process? My distinguished friend from Arkansas has shared many of these same concerns about our policy towards China. Senator Hutchinson has looked at this situation. He has grasped, I think, what is happening pretty well. Senator Hutchinson, is there any indication that the administration's China policy is defending American security, economic, and human rights interest? Or has this been something that simply ended up as being a transactional experience where we sold some goods and apparently were sold a bill of goods in return?

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Senator. I see that our time is fast fleeting. I thank the Senator for making the case against China's human rights record. There are other points to be made about the inequities in the relationship between the United States and China. Not the least of those is trade. The average tariff that China has on our goods is about 23 percent. The average United States tariff on Chinese goods is about 4 percent. That it is basically a 6-to-1 ratio. And as a result there is a staggering trade deficit with China. The Chinese citizens do not buy nearly as much from us as other countries do. The average Chinese buys 10 dollars worth of United States goods every year compared to $1,000 for the Taiwanese, $550 for every South Korean. Our trade deficit with Japan is troubling, but it only grew by 10 percent between 1991 and 1996. The United States trade deficit with China grew by more than 200 percent during that same period. But as important as trade and human rights are, there is another important issue: the national security of the United States. China has been the worst proliferator of weapons of mass destruction technology, according to a CIA report. Today's Washington Times headline reads, ``Clinton Jiang Reach Nuclear Accord.'' This is an accord which is designed to give China the very best of the nuclear information we have in this country, much of it sponsored with taxpayers' dollars as a result of governmentally assisted research. And not far from the ``Clinton Jiang Reach Nuclear Accord'' headline is, ``China Aided Iran in Chemical Arms.'' This second article talks about a report from our Government that indicates that China has helped Iran develop a chemical weapons capacity--weapons of mass destruction for the kind of Third World rogue regime that we find in Iran. To see these things juxtaposed on the front page of a newspaper sends a chill, and it should, through my spine. To think that we are signing high-level nuclear accords with governments that are helping terrorist states like Iran acquire weapons of mass destruction technology is incomprehensible. To have that article right there, the nuclear accord, right beneath the story on China aiding Iran in the development of chemical weapons, is a dramatic illustration of this administration's failing China policy. The CIA report released this past summer said that China was the worst proliferator of weapons of mass destruction technologies in the latter half of 1996. A greater degree of caution is needed in dealing with such governments. U.S. credibility was at stake in the nuclear cooperation debate. What kind of leadership are we providing to the rest of the world? Other countries will not take their responsibility to restrain proliferation seriously if the United States enters into nuclear cooperation with the world's worst proliferator of nuclear and chemical weapons technologies. I thank the Senator for coming to the floor. If there are other questions or comments, I invite them.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Senator. I have to say in response to the Senator that the contrast between the rights of man in America and the kind of lip service given to freedom by the Chinese leadership could not be more striking. When asked about the nature of liberty, Chinese President Jiang said that liberty, in and of itself, is not an absolute, that it is a relative thing. He analogized it to Einstein's theory of relativity. For President Jiang, liberty is something that can grow or shrink depending on the need, or the circumstance of the moment. Freedom might be something to be cherished; it might not. In contrast, the United States of America was founded on the concept in our Declaration of Independence that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. And this means a couple of things. One, that these rights are not relative, they are not adjustable; they are immutable, they are unchangeable--that these are given to us by God. It also suggests to us that they are given to everybody because it is the Creator that gives the right. It is not even governments which give rights. Rights are something that we are given by virtue of being created, and these rights are for the benefit of people all across the globe. We have on the one hand a Chinese leader that would have total latitude to adjust rights based on a theory of relativity. That is precisely what is happening in China. Someone being an accessory to Christianity, helping a Christian, finds himself in jail for an indeterminant length of time; someone who not only is not engaged in domestic unrest or criminal activity, but is just assisting other people in their own ability to recognize the existence of a Creator in accordance with their beliefs. In China, accessories to Christianity are criminals. That is the extent to which liberty can be withheld or granted in China, and that makes it very difficult to deal with such a goverment. The administration invites the Chinese delegation to the United States and we talk to them about human rights issues. While those officials are here in this country, it is very easy for them to make commitments to human rights in China. Since rights are relative, promises can be made now, but when the delegation returns to Beijing, the commitments take on new meaning. The truth of the matter is that I think America has it right about rights, that rights are something granted by the Creator, guarded perhaps by government, sometimes threatened and taken away by government. But rights are something we have because of our creation and our existence. They are not relative. They are not dependent upon whether someone thinks the condition is favorable to the rights of man. These are things which we are born with, we are created with. They are inalienable. They are immutable. President Jiang often says the right thing on human rights. Even China's constitution provides for fundamental human rights. China signed the U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights this week. Signing documents is painless, but if you really believe that rights are relative, that circumstances determine rights, what does the signature mean? It means that the rights will be granted so long as we want them to be granted. The 1996 State Department human rights report says, ``All public dissent against the party and government was effectively silenced by intimidation, exile, the imposition of prison terms, administrative detention, or house arrest. No dissidents were known to be active at year's end.'' Now, that is a sobering concept, when our own State Department says, ``No dissidents were known to be active at year's end.'' That has a very sobering tone. I believe that we ought to demand and expect a better human rights record from the Chinese Government.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Senator.

Mr. ASHCROFT. The expanded trade didn't expand his rights very effectively. He is free, and has to be outside of China to be confident of his ability to continue to speak freely.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. Wu is a person who speaks with some experience as it relates to the human rights situation in China because he spent some considerable time in Chinese jails as a result of speaking openly, didn't he?

Mr. ASHCROFT. Is this because he attempted to rob a bank, or launched an assault on the Government?

Mr. ASHCROFT. During the time when he was in prison, was there expanding trade or contracting trade with the United States?

Mr. ASHCROFT. So for telling the truth in China, he spent 19 years in Chinese prisons.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, may I inquire as to the state of the business of the Senate?

Mr. ASHCROFT. May I inquire when that expires?

Mr. ASHCROFT. I ask unanimous consent that, joined by my colleague from Arkansas, Senator Tim Hutchinson, we be allowed to speak in morning business for 25 minutes.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I yield myself so much of the 10 minutes I use as I had allocated to me in the unanimous-consent agreement to make an explanation of why I intend to vote against the Interior appropriations bill. Mr. President, the House voted on July 10 to cut off funding for the National Endowment for the Arts for fiscal year 1998. It was expected that if we would come to Washington to reduce the size of Government, we would at least stop funding the kind of offensive art that has been the subject of so many disputes that have attended the existence of the National Endowment for the Arts. Senator Helms and I offered an amendment to eliminate funding for the NEA, but it did not pass in the Senate. The Senate voted on September 17 to increase the NEA's current $99.5 million budget to $100 million. Then on September 30, the conferees to the Interior appropriations bill provided $98 million for the NEA for fiscal year 1998. So the House voted zero; the Senate voted an increase to $100 million; and we have compromised on $98 million. That simply does not reflect the kind of discipline the American people expect at a time when we are taxed at the highest level in history. Americans spend more money in taxes now than ever before in the history of this country on a percentage basis. Congress should not be in the business of subsidizing speech, of saying to one artist, ``Your art is good,'' and to another artist, by implication, since it did not qualify for the Federal funding, ``Your art is bad.'' I do not believe Congress should be telling people what to like and what not to like. The genius of a democracy is not the values of the central Government imposed on the people. The genius of a democracy is the values of the people imposed on the central Government. Congress has no constitutional authority to create or fund the NEA, and in my judgment it is wrong for us to continue to fund it. Although funding for the NEA is small in comparison to the overall budget, elimination of this agency sends the message that Congress is taking seriously its obligation to restrict the Federal Government's actions to the limited role envisioned by the Framers of the Constitution. Nowhere does the Constitution grant any authority that could reasonably be construed to include promotion of the arts. This is a time when we have a high demand on our citizens for taxes, and for us to take money to promote the notion of art that someone in Washington thinks is great and to try to impose that on the people through the so-called ``governmental seal of approval'' is an inappropriate expenditure of public resources. I am particularly disappointed because we have a situation where the Congress of the United States could have compromised at least far more substantially to protect the people and did not. The House at zero, the Senate at $100 million, the compromise at $98 million. That is simply an inappropriate way for us to conclude, and for that reason I intend to vote against the National Endowment for the Arts as part of this bill, and I will vote against this bill. I yield the floor.