Howard Berman

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. This politicizes a very important bipartisan issue.

Mr. BERMAN. I don't know if we can get the international community to do the kinds of things that can stop Iran and enforce the regime to change its behavior in this area or on the issue of terrorism or on all of the other issues that we have with Iran; but let's try a policy that's different than the one that has been a total failure for the past 5 years. We said we won't engage until they suspend. They kept enriching. We said we'll sanction all we can. We caused some annoyances. Most of those sanctions didn't work because no other country was serious about it. Now we're trying a different approach to get the world serious about it. Give it a few months to try and work. I urge that this eviscerated version of the bill that I am sponsoring in this motion to recommit be defeated and that you don't wipe out the whole State Department authorization bill and the committee's work.

Mr. BERMAN. Will the gentleman let me finish my thought?

Mr. BERMAN. I am not going to yield to you and am going to vote ``no'' emphatically on this thing. This is an irresponsible motion.

Mr. BERMAN. I object.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to strongly oppose the motion to recommit.

Mr. BERMAN. I yield myself as much time as I may consume. The gentleman has touched on a real problem. Just as he describes it, the notion of criminal aliens released because of the limitations on the time they can be held, not taken in their home country, creates a very undesirable situation in our own country. The gentleman's addition to the existing law makes a lot of sense because it's to retaliate against the officials of that government who seek diplomatic visas to come to the United States. The existing provision of law is very understandable, although I have a little concern that sometimes we're visiting on the spouse of a U.S. citizen or worker with particular skills the sins of the government on that individual or on that individual's American citizen family. But the gentleman has been very flexible in working with us on this amendment, and he is certainly trying to go after a real problem. I wish I had a better alternative than this, but military force isn't my answer. So I'm going to support the gentleman's amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, what we see in the offering of this motion to recommit is a political party or the leadership of a political party that, number one, is not serious about pursuing an effective strategy to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability and, two, that is using the pretext of Iran to strike every single provision of the bill that we have presented and that has been debated on. The very first provision in this bill is to strike all that follows after the enacting clause. Then my friend from Indiana takes a bill that I am the sponsor of, along with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and a number of people on both sides--it now has something like 155 cosponsors--to focus on the issue of refined oil products going to Iran. He eviscerates that bill by taking out every single trade sanction and all of the financial institution sanctions, so it totally wipes out the State Department authorization bill. They know that we intend to pursue the policy of seeing if Iran diplomatically, in a short timeframe, can be dissuaded from the course they are now on. If they cannot be, at the same time, we are pursuing efforts to get key countries to come together at the Security Council with a level of, as the Secretary of State said, crippling sanctions on Iran to get that regime to change its behavior.

Mr. BERMAN. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition, although I am not going to speak in opposition.

Mr. BERMAN. I have no further speakers. I support the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. The gentleman's amendment is pretty direct. It requires the President to report total cash and in-kind contributions by the United States to the entire United Nations system for the period covered by H.R. 2410, fiscal years 2010 and 2011. The amendment makes sense. It encourages full transparency in detailing the logistical and other support that the U.S. provides to critical peacekeeping operations and other U.N. activities in the support of U.S. interests. The Members of Congress have a right to know, the people of America have a right to know, and I support the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during further consideration of H.R. 2410, pursuant to House Resolution 522, it may be in order to consider amendment No. 17 after amendment No. 27.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim time in opposition to this amendment, although I am not opposed to this amendment.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I don't know that we needed to say this, but I'm glad we are saying it. It goes almost without saying that any sovereign country has an inalienable right to defend itself in the face of an imminent nuclear or military attack or threat. Nothing in this amendment prohibits or constrains Israel or the United States from discussing the nature of a threat, the logic of the timing or the nature of the response. So I find this amendment a useful contribution. In a way, it states the obvious, but sometimes stating the obvious is worth doing. I plan to support the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's amendment encourages the administration to create a Comprehensive Interagency Strategy and Implementation Plan for Sudan. I have spoken with Mr. McCaul about his proposal and agree that developing a coherent approach to the situation in Sudan is critical. The United States must make every effort to address the ongoing and interrelated crises in Sudan. The U.S. should work towards a stable and lasting peace in a region that has seen so many tragedies in recent years. I have no objection to this amendment, and I look forward to working with Mr. McCaul on this provision as the bill moves through the process. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition even though I don't oppose the amendment.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim the remainder of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. BERMAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. While the gentleman may have broken the podium, his amendment does not break the task force; it improves it. The Secretary of Defense should be a member of that task force, and this amendment simply establishes that rather than leave it to the Secretary of State's discretion. That's fine with me. I support the amendment and urge its adoption. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. BERMAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his amendment. I strongly support it. A number of immigrants to the United States from the former Soviet Union worked for decades in the Soviet-run industries, contributed to the state's social security system, and expected to receive their rightful pensions when they reached the requisite age. For a variety of reasons beyond their control, they haven't received their pensions. And some of these workers were forced to renounce their citizenship when they moved to the United States. As many of the former Soviet states refuse to pay pensions to those who are no longer citizens, these elderly individuals face a bureaucratic nightmare in seeking to reclaim their rights. This amendment expresses our sense of Congress that we should work with the former Soviet states to establish a workable system that enables the workers to claim pensions that are rightfully theirs. It is appropriate. It's right. And I support the amendment and urge its adoption.

Mr. BERMAN. I yield myself 2 minutes, Mr. Chairman. Let me just lay out this Office of Global Women's Issues. First of all, by law, by virtue of the Helms amendment and the Siljander amendment and the Leahy amendment, it cannot and, by practice, it does not and has no intention of serving as a vehicle for either abortion policy or coercive abortion. What does it do? It is dedicated to ensuring that women around the world can realize their potential by fully participating in the political, economic and cultural lives of their societies. Women around the globe, and the gentleman from New Jersey knows this, women are bought and sold like commodities and trafficked across international borders for sexual exploitation. Young children are married off to men old enough to be their grandfathers and have their education and childhood abruptly ended. Girls have their bodies mutilated in the name of culture or tradition, leading to complication in childbearing and lifelong pain and incontinence. Young women are slain by their own families for perceived and sometimes fictitious infractions, simply because they are viewed less as human beings and as symbols of human honor. Women who become infected with HIV, often because of the infidelity of their spouses, are shunned, lose their livelihoods or do not have access to the medicines that could prolong their lives and prevent transmission of the virus to their children. I say to the gentleman, these causes and these concerns that I have mentioned have always been at the forefront of the gentleman's own concerns, and to hold this entire bill and this office hostage to a desire to change abortion law I think is unfair. I scrupulously avoided and the committee Democrats scrupulously avoided any effort to change that law in the other direction, and I think it is wrong to try to hijack this bill to hold it hostage for those purposes. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, could I ask if the gentlelady is finished. Our side has the right to close. Then since I'll be the only speaker and I have the right to close--

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, up to 5 minutes. I rise in opposition to the amendment. I share a lot of the ranking member's concerns, fundamentally, about the countries named in her amendment and about the issue of proliferation. But there are sort of three different levels on which I think her amendment raises serious doubts and causes me to want to oppose it. The first is the assumption that withholding assessed contributions produces the actions we want. We've had test cases of this. Wouldn't it have been great if the money we withheld from the U.N. population planning account had stopped coercive abortions in China? Wouldn't it be great if the dues we are assessed to pay to the United Nations had resulted in the kinds of reforms that eliminated the questionable contact that the minority rightfully points to? There is a real challenge to this assumption that the withholding is what achieves the goal. We can wish it a lot, but it didn't always happen. Secondly, there are some specific categories of programs here that are involved and should be mentioned because, in some cases, they make some sense. The technical assistance provided by IAEA is constructive and supportive of a number of humanitarian needs, such as the eradication of the tsetse fly in numerous African countries, the fruit fly in Panama, improving cancer diagnosis and treatment in Tanzania, Niger, Mali, Zambia and the Central African Republic, improvements in agriculture in groundwater tracing. These are the kinds of programs that are involved. Once in a while there may be a project such as in Iran or Syria that may provide a small amount of useful experience in general nuclear science and radiology. But the most important part is to the extent that some of these programs are about enhancing safety. The U.S. is totally free on the board to vote against those projects at the Board of Governors, and does so. The U.S. already denies extra budgetary funding for technical cooperation projects for state sponsors of terrorism, which the countries the gentlelady mentioned are. However, the proposed amendment mandates the withholding, not of the voluntary contributions, not of the extra budgetary support, but of the U.S. regular dues to the IAEA. So what does it do? It hampers the Agency's primary function, which is the inspecting and safeguarding of nuclear material in foreign countries. This is cutting off your nose to spite your face. The IAEA's technical assistance program is funded entirely from voluntary contributions. The program that, understandably, concerns the gentlelady is not from the assessed contributions. It's from the voluntary contributions. The amendment is not focused on the voluntary contributions. It's focused on the assessed contributions. So what will we do? We'll end up cutting the funds that would otherwise be used by the IAEA to ensure that states are not diverting nuclear material from peaceful to military purposes--pretty serious concern--inspections that are in the direct national security interest of the United States. That's what we're cutting. So that's why I think the amendment, not by its intention, and not even by its focus on these programs, we could live without those programs, but its focus on cutting the assessed dues to the most important functions for the United States of the IAEA makes no sense, and I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. BERMAN. I do.