Howard Berman

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. This amendment, as I understand it, is not restricted to diversity cases; and what is the logic of restricting it to diversity cases if a case is frivolous?

Mr. BERMAN. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to pay tribute to Mario and Madeline Jason, who have given tirelessly of their time and resources to Shaarey Zedak Congregation of North Hollywood and the Jewish community of joined the congregation at Shaarey Zedek, they have been committed to the growth of the synagogue and the cause of Jewish education. It is the efforts of people such as the Jasons that has guided the Orthodox Jewish community of North Hollywood to such remarkable growth in recent years. For example, the Jasons have been closely involved with the development of Jewish day schools in their neighborhood. They have done so both as devoted Jews and parents who enrolled their three children in Emek Hebrew Academy. In addition, the Jasons' two sons, Howard and Mark, attended Valley Torah High School. Today the Jason children--who are in their mid and late 20s--remain passionately involved with Judaism and the Jewish community. Their parents taught them well. There is another side to the Jasons, one that further illustrates their zest for life. Since 1984, when he sold his business, Mario has become a noted sculptor whose work has been exhibited in 14 galleries across the United States. Madeline, who has a degree in education from Cal State Northridge, today works at her alma mater as administrative assistant for the summer academic program for elementary school students. She also volunteers as a docent at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in saluting Mario and Madeline Jason, who have worked tirelessly on behalf of Shaarey Zedek Congregation and the Jewish community. They are a shining example to us all.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton], the ranking member of the committee.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Under the theory that inaccurate statements should be refuted as quickly as possible, I ask everyone to read the waiver section of section 501. There is an automatic deduction unless the President certifies as to chapter 7 only, not chapter 6, operations, that the activity is of such importance to the national security the United States will undertake the activity unilaterally, unilaterally. Not in our strategic interest. Not in our national interest. Unilaterally. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Leach].

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey].

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is addressed to section 501 of the bill. I am not going to spend a lot of time talking about the amendment because I am not going to ask for a recorded vote on the amendment, but for the reasons I will state, I believe in and of itself section 501 as put forth in this bill is reason enough for every Member in this Chamber to oppose this legislation. Section 501, if it were ever signed into law, would totally wipe out--let me repeat that--totally wipe out every single regularly assessed peacekeeping operation now incurred or which may ever in the future be incurred by the United Nations. Let me repeat that one more time: Not one single current U.N.- assessed peacekeeping operation now in place would continue if section 501 were to pass, because section 501, by requiring an automatic offset. For every dollar that is spent on U.S. voluntary contributions, incremental costs to U.N. peacekeeping activities would be deducted from our assessment. We would pay zip, zero, nothing to the United Nations for the regularly assessed peacekeeping operations. They would fall apart. They would end. I say this in the context of trying to explain the kinds of operations we are talking about. We are talking about U.N.-assessed peacekeeping operations which, as the chart next to me shows utilize, of all the operations and the forces utilized, only 1.4 percent are American Forces. We are talking about a U.N.-assessed contribution that we pay that was legislated by the bill that the majority last year passed and was signed into law by President Clinton, that unilaterally reduces our assessed contribution from the extraordinarily high 31 percent to the 25 percent that we regularly pay for all other U.N. dues. We are talking about a series of operations, and I want to just tell you the kinds of operations we are involved in, that will be eliminated if this were to happen. We are talking about the peacekeepers on the Golan Heights that help preserve the peace between Israel and Syria. We are talking about the U.N. peacekeepers on the Kuwait border, not American, mind you, who continue to constrain Saddam's ability to threaten his neighbors. We fought Desert Storm, Saddam still survives. Are we going to walk away from that Kuwait border before he is in full compliance with the U.N. resolutions, before it is clear that we have an Iraq that no longer has any aggressive intentions on its neighbors? We are talking about U.N. peacekeepers who have been for 30 years in Cyprus to help prevent war between two NATO allies, Greece and Turkey. In former Yugoslavia, the United Nations is providing critical humanitarian assistance and helping prevent the conflict from spreading to other parts of Europe. In Mozambique, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Namibia we have U.N. observers. Out of the total forces I have just talked about, 1.4 percent are American Forces. The rest are other countries' contributions through the assessed contribution scheme. Now, these issues were raised in the Committee on National Security, and I want to take one moment to just compliment the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter], because one other part of title IV which was clearly unconstitutional on its face has been deleted by virtue of an amendment passed unanimously last night. But 501, while it does not raise constitutional problems, is the most foolish, self-defeating kind of provision we could want to adopt. When we raised these issues in the Committee on National Security, people scrambled around, they made an adjustment, they added a waiver. What kind of waiver did they add? They added a waiver that said that we will not deduct those voluntary contributions that the United States now pays, those incremental costs, if the President can certify, and only if the President can certify, that those chapter 7 operations, there is no waiver for chapter 6 operations, those chapter 7 operations he would have undertaken on his own. What foolishness that waiver is. That waiver, talk about enforcing a boycott against Iraq. By definition an economic boycott enforced by a blockade cannot be done unilaterally. One has to get Turkey to stop letting Iraq use its pipeline for oil. One has to bring in the multilateral nations.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume up to 5 minutes. (Mr. BERMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to the previous order of the House, I offer amendment No. 13, as modified, which is at the desk.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Gejdenson].

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. When the gentleman talks about Haiti, he talks about a United States decision that we went to the United Nations and obtained authorization for under chapter 7. It is an incremental cost. There is nothing in 501 that would do anything about who pays for that. What would happen is every dollar of that would deduct and wipe out the peacekeeping costs for every regularly assessed operation which we supported in the United Nations. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Wynn].

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Sawyer].

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, to try to put the debate in perspective of the language in section 501, if 501 had been in place in 1990, $60 billion that we spent in incremental costs on Desert Storm, $60 billion that was authorized by the United Nations because we went to the United Nations and got them to authorize it, would have been deducted and wiped out every peacekeeping cost for the next 50 years, even though the vast majority of that money was reimbursed by other countries. This inflexible, silly language makes no provision for costs that are reimbursed for other countries that have to be reimbursed for the United States. Second, yes, we can construe U.N.-authorized operations and attribute percent of the costs. It does not cover what is wiped out. You have wiped out U.N.-assessed costs where after this fiscal year we will only pay 25 percent. The other costs are operations we want to help ourselves diplomatically, politically, and militarily in terms of enforcing embargoes we got the United Nations to authorize so other countries would help us, help us. Penny-wise, pound-foolish, this amendment. Finally, to remind Members, nothing is undertaken by the United Nations unless the United States decides it. If we do not like a specific U.N. operation, whether it is Somalia or Haiti, fight on that issue. Do no wipe out all of the good because of one thing you do not like. It is the end of the cold war. We are at a point where America's security environment is more complicated than ever, and we are asked with this language in 501 to choose isolationism. This so-called National Security Revitalization Act is billed as a cost-saving move to limit foreign adventurism, but its effect would be to undermine our national security by gutting our ability to use the United Nations as a tool to pursue U.S. interests. Vote for the amendment. Defeat the bill. H.R. 501 is wrong.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of our time.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I have one question. I assume this is not within the 10-hour limit?

Mr. BERMAN. I withdraw my reservation of objection, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding. I was not planning to speak. I will simply say I accept the offer as appropriate given the inadvertence of what happened. It does not deal with the fundamental problem of a 10-hour time limit.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, in 1939, the leader of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, continuing a tradition of 20 years of Republican isolationism that started after the end of World War I, Senator Arthur Vandenburg said: We cannot be the world's protector or the world's policeman. The price of such assignment would be the jeopardy of our own democracy. Let us avoid entanglement in any chain of circumstances which may be too strong for us to break. Seven years later, as the new leader of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party, the one that has dominated the Republican Party for the last 50 years, Senator Vandenburg said: If World War III ever unhappily arrives, it will open new laboratories of death too horrible to contemplate. I propose to do everything within my power to keep those laboratories closed for keeps. There are two ways to do it. One way is by exclusive individual action in which each of us tries to look out for himself. The other way is by joint action in which we undertake to look out for each other. The first way is the old way, which has twice taken us to Europe's interminable battlefields within a quarter of a century. The second way is the new way in which our present fraternity of war becomes a new fraternity of peace. The issue in sections 501 and 508 and title IV, of H.R. 872 no matter how many times it is denied, is do we continue with the internationalist perspective, or do we force ourselves into an isolationist, ``either do it alone or don't do it at all'' perspective. The National Security Revitalization Act is a rash and reactive attempt by a Republican congressional majority to supersede presidential prerogatives in the conduct of U.S. foreign and defense policy. Though aimed at circumscribing President Clinton's authority, its unintended consequences will come back to haunt future presidents, regardless of their party. It is Congress' role to question particular programs and policies of the executive branch, and it is imperative that the executive branch consult with Congress early and often on national security affairs. But the sort of partnership between the executive branch and the Congress necessary to the advance of American national interests cannot be based on hamstringing Presidential prerogatives. Vote ``no'' on H.R. 872.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. They are all pre-filed, as I understand it. They are all pre-filed.

Mr. BERMAN. Excuse me. The gentleman is stating it correctly: to be subtracted from the agreed upon time, 5 minutes on the amendment of the gentleman from Ohio, 5 minutes on the amendment of the gentleman from New York, and can I suggest an additional 1 minute for an amendment from the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Skelton] that is noncontroversial? And this will all come off of titles III, IV, V, and VI?

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, under the reservation of objection, if I might, I just want to make sure I understand. We have a bipartisan agreement on the remaining time in the 10 hours. It has been modified to provide an additional 10 minutes, 5 minutes to discuss--divided equally to discuss----

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, would it be appropriate for the gentleman from New York to reoffer his unanimous-consent request at this particular time?

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.