Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Excuse me. Will the Senator yield for a question on one point on my time?

Mr. BIDEN. How would the Senator's amendment pay our allies any more money than our mark, than this legislation does?

Mr. BIDEN. The Senator's amendment calls for the payment of $819 million over 2 years; is that correct?

Mr. BIDEN. Absolutely correct, but I was making the point in response to the question will there be enough money to pay our allies in the first 2 years? And the answer is yes because of the $575 million out of this bill and roughly $134 million that is owed to us.

Mr. BIDEN. I am going to explain that, I will tell you where I get the rest. I get $107 million from the money the United Nations acknowledges they owe the United States for peacekeeping, and I get $27 million for money that the United Nations owes the United States for tax equalization. That is how I get it. It is not out of the $819.

Mr. BIDEN. In three places. I get $100 million the first year, $475 million the second year on the arrearages.

Mr. BIDEN. I am delighted to yield. I want to save 4 minutes for my friend from Virginia. I have how much time?

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, to state the obvious, there are no two Senators of whom I have higher regard than the two Senators who are proposing this amendment. We use those kinds of phrases around here, but I know they both know that I mean it. Now, I have a little difficulty with their approach here, not the principle that they are proposing, because, as I said from the outset and as the chairman will tell you repeatedly, and I suspect the Senator from New Hampshire, who is on the floor, may tell you, and I know our new colleague from Nebraska will tell you, I am not one who thinks we should be attaching conditions. I am a minority in that view, along with my two colleagues, but I am not one who thinks we should be attaching conditions. So I agree with them on that. But I do think they overplay the point a bit in making it appear as though the Senator from North Carolina has in effect co-opted the Senator from Delaware into signing on to these conditions and that this is something totally new. Let me remind people of a few historical facts about conditions. I have here--and I will ask in a moment that I be able to submit this for the Record--the number of occasions on which the U.S. Congress or Republican or Democratic Presidents have withheld the payment of moneys to the United Nations that were duly owed because of policy decisions made by our Government, notwithstanding the fact that we owed it, that we would not pay our dues unless the United Nations changed their view--conditions, conditions. I will just list them all. The PLO and Palestinian-related condition that we withheld funds of $16,556,000 because we voted on this floor--I do not know how my colleagues voted, but I bet they voted the same way--we voted on this floor to say that as long as the PLO was getting a special kind of treatment in the United Nations, which we viewed to be unfairly against the interest of our ally Israel, we were going to withhold funds. That is $16.556 million. SWAPO. Remember old SWAPO? Well, we had that. You know, that was the debate relating to Southern Africa, Angola, South Africa, et cetera. We withheld $68 million. The Law of the Seas preconference, another policy dispute, we withheld $7.56 million. The South African-Israel conference, we withheld $200,000. The Kasten amendment, we withheld $1,300,000. The appropriations shortfall of fiscal years 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1996 accounts for $168.64 million, there was those--anyway I will go back over this. The deficit-reduction plan withheld $12,860,000. The Kassebaum-Solomon amendment withheld $42 million. And it goes on. Guess what? We withheld, based on conditions that this body or Republican or Democratic Presidents placed on the United Nations, $164,111,000. So of the arrearages, this body was complicit in over $100 million of those arrearages. Now, all of a sudden they look at the Senator from North Carolina and me and say, ``Oh, my lord, what are you doing? You're attaching conditions?'' Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I did not think we should attach conditions then or now. But this is not anything new. And so of the money that we say is owed--our administration says we owe $1.021 billion, and the United Nations says we owe $1.361 billion. Of that, $1.021 billion, $164 million of it is previously attached conditions. Now, I would like my colleagues who think we should not attach conditions to look at this list, stand on the floor and acknowledge why we should not have done any of this, and how they voted on it. I do not know how they voted on it. I do not even know how I voted on every one. So, I am a little bit surprised at the manner in which this argument is being presented as if oh, my lord, we are about to do this awful thing we have never done before, and the United Nations is going to crumble when we do it. That is No. 1. No. 2, how did I arrive at $819 million, to badger my friend from North Carolina to say I would not sign on to this unless it got to $819 million? The way I arrived at that number--there is nothing original on my part--I asked the administration, what do we need to pay our friends, and what do we need to meet our obligations? Let me tell you, and this gives my friend some ``agitato'' here, as they say in the Italian communities in my State, let me tell you what I understand the facts to be. Let me point out that my friend from Maryland and my friend who is the leader of this effort, Senator Lugar from Indiana, are not providing one more penny than I am providing. So this is all about principle. You ought to come and ask for all the money because you are doing the same thing I am doing, trying to get the best deal you can--not that either one of them have suggested that what I am doing is unprincipled, I just point out that their approach is no more or less principled than what I am suggesting. We are trying to get a job done. They do not provide one more penny. Now, how did they arrive at my $819 million? Why did they not arrive at $1.021 billion like they say we need? Because they know what I know, that $819 million will pay our allies. Now, let's go back and talk about how it is owed and what is owed. Peacekeeping arrears--that we acknowledge, the President acknowledges, and even if we paid more money, the President would not pay any more of it--peacekeeping arrears amounts to $658 million; regular budget arrears amounts to $54 million; arrearages in specialized agencies amounts to $254 million; and arrears to international organizations amount to $55 million. Let me repeat that now: Peacekeeping $658 million; regular budget, $54 million; specialized agencies, $254 million; and international organizations, $55 million. Now, I share the same concern my friend from Indiana does. However, if we appropriate $819 million the way the Senator from North Carolina and I are proposing, there are relatively easy conditions that have to be met the first 2 years. Let me make sure everybody remembers. The first year, we get about $100 million, and the second year we are up to $475 million. The United Nations owes us $107 million, and the United Nations will pay the United States from a tax equalization fund, $27 million. Now, you got that? I do not want to turn this into a math class but I want to be simple--these numbers are real important. Mr. President, $100 million goes out the first fiscal year this takes effect; $475 million the second year; the United Nations owes us, we say, $107 million for peacekeeping; and $27 million for the tax equalization. You add up all that money and it pays virtually every single penny that we owe to all of our allies for peacekeeping and the only thing it does not do in the first 2 years is it does not pay what we are said to owe to an international organization called UNIDO, the U.N. Industrial Development Organization, from which we have formally withdrawn. The Senator from Maryland, the Senator from Indiana, the Senator from Delaware, and the Senator from New Hampshire did not say you had to withdraw from it. The President withdrew. Ambassador Richardson delivered the papers and said, ``We're out.'' That is the only organization we do not have the money to pay but we are already out of it. So, come on. Come on. I do not like doing it this way either, but it doesn't come out the way you all are saying it comes out. Our allies have nothing to fear. They reason they are not squawking, the reason there are not yelling out there, the reason neither the United Nations nor the Secretary-General is holding a protest and jumping up and down and screaming, is because they know and we know and the administration knows that the money in year 1 and year 2 combined with the money owed us will pay the deal, will meet our obligations. Now, the last point I will raise, and I will not use all my time because others wish to speak, the last point I will raise are these conditions. Let me just tick off what the conditions are that the chairman has graciously agreed will be the ones required in the first 2 years to allow all of the money I just mentioned to be released. I may lose his vote if I keep pointing this out, but these are the facts. First, a very difficult condition in the first year, the United Nations has to acknowledge, we have to acknowledge, the President has to acknowledge that our sovereignty will not be diminished by membership in the United Nations. That is a very difficult condition to meet. Come on. Come on. That is the first condition for the first year. Then we have to get the United Nations to reduce--and they say they can do this--our regular budget assessment from 25 to 22 percent, 25 to 22 percent in year 2, not year 1, year 2. So, we have 2 years to get that done. I might add, it was Ambassador Richardson testifying before our committee that said it should be 20 percent, Madeleine Albright said it should be 20 percent, the President has said it should be 20 percent. We did not pick 20 percent out of the air. Granted, I would rather it not be a mandate, but this is not something we are making up out of whole cloth. This is what this administration thinks is a fair assessment. They do not want us to mandate it, but they acknowledge it is fair. Now, roughly $709 million in the first 2 years would be available. Another condition met which we already have unilaterally done and our allies have acknowledged is that we have been assessed 30 percent for peacekeeping. We do a whole heck of a lot of peacekeeping around the world and no one else chips in on it at all. We say that is too high, it should be 25 percent. The administration says that is not a problem, we can get it down there. So that is another condition. We only pay 25 percent, not from this point on, but from 2 years out. From that point on, 25 percent for peacekeeping. The administration says in testimony that these are easy conditions to meet. This is not something we are asking them to jump through some hoop they cannot meet. Now, when the condition of sovereignty, which is restating the obvious, when the condition of 22 percent for our annual dues, and when the condition of 25 percent for peacekeeping are met, and they have 2 years in which to meet that, all the money needed to pay all our allies, all the money we owe them will be released. So what is the deal here? Neither of my colleagues said this, but some have written that somehow I have made this pact with the ultimate enemy of the United Nations to undermine the United Nations and we are just going to rip its throat out and so on and so forth, and we compromised. And isn't that a horrible thing? Look, anybody who comes over here looking to be bathed in the waters of legislative purity, Senator Lugar's amendment does not help you a bit, because he jumps right into that swamp with the rest of us. He is not asking for the $1.3 billion that the United Nations says we owe. He is not asking for $1.021 billion, the amount the administration says we owe. He is asking for the same amount of money that the chairman of the committee and I are asking for. So much for the notion of paying everything they say we owe. Now, there is a distinction, you should be aware of when you vote. The distinction is that there are mandates in there, all of which can be met, and, in my view, reasonably can be met and should be met. I would rather not mandate them. That is the matter of principal distinction between the Senator and I. I would rather not mandate them, but they are mandated. Now, understand what the Senator from North Carolina has done here, and again I'm not being facetious when I say this, and maybe it is not helpful to point out what he has done, he has been eminently reasonable. In the first distribution scheme we had for this $819 million, in the first distribution scheme we had, the way it was laid down is there would be $100 million, there would have been $419 million, and then the remainder in the third year. I went to him and said, look, I need $475 million in that second year, and he said OK, as the final element of compromise. The reason I needed $475 million was to do just what I just laid out for you. So there is a distinction. The Senator from Indiana says it all gets paid out of the $819 million and paid out in 2 years and he is worried about our allies. I am saying we pay out the $710 million if they meet the conditions in the first 2 years and all our ally obligations are met. This is a distinction without a gigantic difference here. There is, as they might say, much ado about something, but it ain't much.

Mr. BIDEN. I yield myself as much time as I am able to consume. I think I have about 20, 25 minutes left, in that range.

Mr. BIDEN. You find it in acknowledgments. It does not have to be in the bill. They owe us $107 million for peacekeeping and $27 million for tax equalization. That is money the administration has to use to meet its obligations.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Senator.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BIDEN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BIDEN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, while we are waiting for Senator Murkowski to have his conversation, I would ask if the Chair will indulge me for just 2 minutes here. It is remarkable, quite frankly, that we have made the progress that we have as rapidly as we have. I want to publicly thank the chairman, for we both stuck with this compromise notwithstanding there are individual amendments we would have liked to have voted for. I want the record to show that the chairman did the same thing. But there is one issue which I realize we cannot resolve now, and that is this issue of whether or not we could work out the ability of the administration to negotiate how to handle the $107 million that is owed from the U.N. We cannot do that now, I agree. I just want to suggest to the chairman that although I will not change anything, that between now and the dance, now and the conference, we will be working hard with the chairman and his colleagues to see if we can figure out some solution to that. But I understand there is no commitment to that at all. As we move toward final passage, Mr. President, of this bill, I would like to acknowledge the tremendous work and help that the chairman and I have received from the staff of the Foreign Relations Committee. On the chairman's side--he will obviously thank people; and it is usually the tradition for us to thank our own staff--but I must tell the chairman that everything he ever advertised about Admiral Nance is correct, and more. I hope he will forgive me for thanking his staff first on this, but Admiral Nance and Tom Kleine, who has been sitting with the chairman the whole time, Patty McNerney and Chris Walker of his staff have been a pleasure to work with. I guess when staffers come up to the Hill they wonder whether or not they are going to get to deal with the principals. I am probably one of the principals they hope they do not have to deal with. They have seen more of me than their families over the last 4 months, but I want to thank them for their consideration. I would also like to thank the minority staff. Especially I want to thank my staff director, Ed Hall, who has had--and this is the way it works here. It is not sufficient here that the Members have a good relationship. It is also important that the corresponding staffs have a good relationship. I know that Ed Hall has an inordinately high regard for Admiral Nance. I know the feeling is mutual. I want to particularly thank Ed Hall, if you excuse the point of personal privilege here, for agreeing to stay on. He was the former chairman's and former ranking member's staff director. And I asked him to stay in that capacity for me, and he was incredibly useful to me, and, thankfully, he decided to stay on. I also want to thank my minority counsel, Brian McKeon. Brian came to work with me, I might point out, Mr. President, right out of college, I guess almost 18 years ago. While he was working with me, he went to law school at night. He was a first-rate student at Georgetown, went off to the Court, clerked for the Court, was going to practice law, and I talked him into coming back here. And I just want to thank him. He handled all of the details of this bill. I was kidding the other day, if we have an MVP on my side, it is Puneet Talwar. Puneet was the guy who, along with Tom on your staff, Mr. Chairman, got stuck with the detailed negotiations on chemical weapons, on the U.N., on everything else. And on my team, if there is an MVP, Puneet is going to get it. Mike Haltzel, a professor, has been invaluable to me on European matters. Frank Jannuzi, Munro Richardson, and Ed Levine of my staff, and Diana Ohlbaum, Nancy Stetson, and Janice O'Connell on my colleagues' staff--that is, Dodd, Kerry and Sarbanes--have been incredibly helpful to me. I also want to thank Dawn Ratliff, Kathi Taylor, and John Lis, who is one of our fellows, and also thank Ursula McManus and Erin Logan, and our interns who have given up their valuable time. Let me conclude--and I will do it now while we are waiting so that I do not take the time of my colleagues. For my colleagues who are listening, I am not holding up your plans. We cannot move anyway until the distinguished Senator from Alaska finishes his conversation with the Secretary of State. But, Mr. President, the passage today--and I am hoping and expecting that we will pass the Foreign Relations authorization --represents a significant bipartisan commitment to the United States' continued engagement in the world. First, the basic authorization legislation for the Department of State, the U.S. Information Agency, the Arms Control Disarmament Agency and the Peace Corps marks a bipartisan commitment to restore funding which will enhance our diplomatic readiness abroad. We all know that funding for foreign policy spending is the lowest it has been in 20 years. Today's action by the Senate is a heartening expression of bipartisan support for our diplomats on the front lines of American engagement abroad. We have restored full funding for the State Department's core missions, fully funded the education and cultural exchange programs, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Peace Corps, and international broadcasting. We have increased the funding for Radio Free Asia at a critical time in that region's history. We have done a great deal. Second, the Senate has passed landmark legislation that provides a framework for reorganization of the foreign affairs agency that is totally consistent with the plan announced by the President of the United States on April 18. Like the President's plan, this bill provides for integration of ACDA within the State Department within 1 year, the integration of the USIA within 2 years, and the partial integration for the Agency for International Development in the State Department. Additionally, it maintains the current structure for U.S.-sponsored international broadcasting but keeps it outside the Department of State so as to ensure its journalistic independence. Finally, Mr. President, the Senate enacted a bipartisan comprehensive package--is about to, I hope--which provides for payment of $819 million in U.S. arrearages to the United Nations. This proposal, Mr. President, will go a long way toward restoring the fiscal health of the United Nations while spurring needed reforms for that world body. Equally important, this agreement, a bipartisan plan supported by the administration, will allow us to get a very difficult and contentious issue behind us so we can move forward on the important issues on the foreign policy agenda. Ideally, we should not have attached the conditions, but I am a pragmatist and I recognize, as does the administration, that there will be no approval of U.N. arrearages in Congress absent some conditions, and the conditions which the chairman has asked for are reasonable. So we had a choice. We can continue to press unconditional payment for arrearages and let this issue fester for another Congress or agree to a reasonable set of conditions that permits us to pay our debts. I believe the action the Senate is about to take will be a correct decision, one in the best interests of the United States. It has been a long time and it is time to end the long-festering feud between the United Nations and Washington and our unpaid back dues, and it is time to bring up needed reform to that world body so it can more efficiently perform its missions. It is time to move forward together to restore the bipartisan commitment to the United States which has been part of that Nation's proud heritage for 50 years. Mr. President, the people in my State--small, I acknowledge--are used to bipartisanship. Senator Roth and I are close political allies and friends. Our lone Congressman Mike Castle, who is a Republican, our Democratic Governor, we are all used to getting things done in a bipartisan way in my State. I have always felt if that tradition could be carried back to the Senate, it would better serve our Nation. I want to say I did not doubt it, but I am sure a number of neutral observers would have doubted it, the Secretary of State is not only a friend of the chairman, so am I. The idea that Joe Biden, a Democratic Senator from Delaware, and Jesse Helms, a Republican Senator from North Carolina, could operate in this way does not surprise either of us, but I am sure it surprises the living devil out of an awful lot of other people. I am reminded of something that was said to me once by Jim Eastland. It is a true story. I was in a difficult campaign fight in the late 1980's, and I saw Chairman Eastland. I was flunking, you might say, what I call the slope-of-the-shoulder test. When you ask a candidate how they are doing in a race and they go, ``Oh, I am doing fine,'' you know they are not doing very well. I guess I had that look like I'm losing. The Chairman pulled me aside and said, ``Joe, what could Jim Eastland do for you in Delaware?'' I said, ``Mr. Chairman, in some places you would help and some you would hurt.'' He said, ``I will make a commitment. I will campaign for you or against you, whichever will help the most.'' I realize my saying nice things about the chairman may not help him, but I mean it sincerely when I say that he has been an absolute gentleman. He has kept his commitment, which I never doubted he would, and this is evidence of the fact that if reasonable men are willing to sit down and talk--we had a real sit-down meeting, when I took over this committee for the Democrats, with the chairman of the full committee, and we agreed on the broad outlines of each of our agendas. The most important one was to make the committee work and make foreign policy function and be a positive force. He has kept every one of those commitments. He has won some and lost some. I have won some and lost some. But I think the Nation is better served for it. I conclude, Mr. President, with this last comment. If Senator Helms and I had come to the floor in January and said to this body, ``By the way, by midsummer we will present to you a bipartisan plan on the floor of the five most contentious issues to face the U.S. Senate in foreign policy,'' I think you would have thought that it was time for both of us to leave because we might have been certifiable. We knew we could do that, and with the great help of the staff that I have mentioned, we have been able to do that, and with the cooperation and assistance of the administration. So I want to thank the President for committing his administration to deal forthrightly and in detail with us, and I want to thank the chairman and his staff for accommodating an arrangement by which we hammered these things out. We produced a significant package here. Neither one of us are naive enough to suggest we know what will happen, if and when it passes here, with any degree of certainty, but we each kept our commitment to one another. I think the body, based on the votes we have seen today, I hope it reflects the feeling on the part of our colleagues that we have, that a bipartisan foreign policy is in the best interests of the United States. I again thank the chairman, and I yield the floor. I will not say any more at the end of the process after Senator Murkowski comes out.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I admire the Senator's tenacity, and I admire his commitment to save the American taxpayers money. His tenacity on this score has exceeded his savings. Let me explain what I mean by that. He won. If this is about deficits, he won. He was right. He saved the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. He, through his leadership, changed the way in which we used to deal with all these radios. He has won. If I wouldn't be taken out of context--he would understand the humor in this--I wish he would take that old speech and send it home and say, ``I won.'' I mean, take credit for what you did. You did a wonderful thing. You really did. You did a wonderful thing. But their ain't no more money to save. You saved it. This doesn't cost another penny. That is No. 1. This is not about deficits. It was about deficits, but you won. You did a good thing. You reorganized the radios. It is like that famous line, I guess it was President Reagan's, ``The Russians just do not know how to take yes for an answer.'' You won. And I am not being solicitous when I say the Nation owes you a debt of gratitude. Now, on the second point, your tenacity: Your tenacity is well known, but I think in this case it is misplaced. This isn't about deficits anymore. Let's talk about what it really is about. It is about whether or not Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty are anachronisms or still have a relevance--no matter how well run they are, no matter how streamlined they are, no matter how efficient they are, no matter how cost effective they are. That is the core of the debate between the Senator and I, although I suspect he would characterize it differently. I think they are vitally important. It is not communism now. It is chaos now. It is not communism. It is the threat of totalitarianism. It is not communism. It is freedom, market economies, and it is about journalistic integrity and independence. Everything the Senator said is factually correct except one thing. How do I explain it? I think the rhetorical question is: Tell me how these are independent? I will tell you: Forty years of history. All of Eastern Europe said, ``When I hear VOA, I hear the State Department. When I hear Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, I hear an independent voice.'' That is literally how it worked. I don't presume to compete with my friend from Wisconsin--and I am not being solicitous when I say this--who is a Rhodes scholar and a man of significant accomplishment, with my knowledge of history. I am not trying to play games and educate him, except I suggest to him that he ask those Eastern European freedom fighters of the past 40 years. They knew that the Federal Government paid for Radio Free Europe or Radio Liberty. Why did they listen to it and take what it said as gospel and not the Voice of America, or other pronouncements that came out? The reason was the same reason that exists today in China. We set up a thing called Radio Free Asia, the same category Radio Free Europe used to be in--still is in. What is the difference? Our Ambassador in Beijing can say with all honesty--and the Chinese Government knows that it is true--``I can't control those guys.'' What do they do? Let me give you an example of what would not happen if these radios, as we call them, were within the State Department where we moved the USIA. They would not at this moment be able to read on air the memoirs of Wei Jing Sheng, one of China's leading dissidents who is in prison. It is driving the Chinese Government crazy that the people of China can hear unobstructed his memoirs being read on air. Do you think the Secretary of State--this one or the last one--would have the nerve in the mix of negotiations with the Chinese on everything from proliferation to trade to upset the apple cart? I can see it now. Beijing picking up the phone, and saying, ``Stop, or we do the following with regard to these other negotiations.'' We have seen it happen a hundred times. But Beijing knows that the way we have set this up means that the President cannot control it. He can come up to us and say, ``Don't fund it any longer.'' Or he can try to stack the board to get people on the board who will not allow journalistic independence. But the reason why it works is that we have 40 years' experience--40 years of watching it work. The bona fides of these radios have been proven. So the Senator is correct. Absent this history, one would say this is a veil. There are only four or five veils between the radios and independence and they are nothing but veils. History indicates that they are walls, and that they brought walls tumbling down--the Berlin wall. I acknowledge that I probably feel more strongly about the radios and their independence than a majority of my colleagues. But I truly believe, Mr. President, if they were needed during the cold war, they are needed in this decade of chaos as much as they were then. Look, what happens in China, in large part, is going to be a product of what the people of China know is happening. My friend, Senator Kerry, who shares the view of my friend from Wisconsin, says, ``Look, we have CNN.'' That is true. ``Look, we have the Internet.'' That is true. They are all very positive and they are real and they are genuine, but I would argue they make my case. Because really what my friends are saying--I will speak for Senator Kerry--is that, although the radios are independent, we don't need this other independent voice now because we have this independent thing called CNN and we have this thing called the Worldnet. I say to you, things are better than they were because we do have CNN. I say to you things are better in the world in terms of the access to information throughout China because we have the Worldnet. But I say to you, we will be, in the ultimate sense, penny-wise and pound-foolish if we take what also is a proven, genuinely important, worldwide, respected vehicle called the radios and do them in. And what for? What money are we going to save? What are we saving here? Let us get this straight--not that the Senator has not been straight; he has been. But, for me, because I am kind of simple-minded, let's reorganize this and lay it out. For me, it is important to understand the pieces. The first piece of this is, the Senator says that there is all this bloated bureaucracy in this board that used to run the radios. He is right. There was leadership. We changed that. We cut these bloated salaries. We cut out the fat. We made them use the same transmitters. We consolidated the ability to transmit these messages over the air. We literally moved our operation in Europe into Prague from Germany. We did a lot of things. This bill does not change one single solitary bit of the reform that has taken place. Then my friend says we are going to spend more money. We put caps-- through his leadership--on the amount of money that could be spent in these functions. We maintained these caps. If I can find my place in my notes here, I will find out exactly what the caps are. What page am I on? The caps for RFE/RL are $75 million a year; Radio Free Asia, $22 million a year. These caps are kept on this legislation. My friend says we have created this new bureaucracy. We have created no new bureaucracy. We created this new board in 1994 through his leadership. It upsets my friend that I am not sucking that board into the State Department. There is USIA. It is sitting out here and it has, within USIA, that board. In the reorganization, led by the Senator from North Carolina, we take all the agencies that are sitting outside there and bring them into the State Department. So we take all of the USIA out except for one thing: We leave this board sitting there. We do not recreate it. We just leave it where it was, independent. But still with all the strings attached as to how much money it can spend, all the requirements for RFE and RFL regarding privatization. They all remain, but what also remains is the journalistic integrity, the inability of the Secretary of State to say, hey, don't--don't broadcast those memoirs. I am not suggesting this Secretary would say that. I do not know what she would say. But there is nothing she can do about that, or that a future Secretary can do about that. The Senator suggests there is going to be a new bloated bureaucracy. We have a thing in the law that exists right now called the Economy Act, which means that any lawyers that are needed by RFE/RFL, any lawyers needed by the board that is going to conduct overseas radios, can be lawyers that can be borrowed from the existing lawyers in USIA. There is no requirement to hire anybody new. And you have caps on what we can spend on them anyway. That is how it works right now. VOA--my friend always talks about RFE and RL, Radio Liberty. There is the Voice of America, Radio and TV Marti, and Radio Free Asia. They are sitting there. We have to privatize, under the law, RFE and RL, by the same date required in the original legislation. We kept that in. But we still have these other three major pieces out there. So the notion of the board's responsibilities rests in the management of those as well, even when privatization occurs. The other rhetorical question I would ask my friend is, he says this undermines privatization, that this proposal to privatize the European radios, which we urged in the sense of Congress in 1994, would be undermined. This provision remains intact. Moreover, the Senator is sponsor of an amendment asking for periodic reports toward this objective, which the committee included in this bill. And, as I said, the board oversees more than the European radios, so they will have plenty to do after privatization. The others are not part of the privatization scheme. Keep in mind the overarching rationale for privatization. It is, hey, we don't need this message going into Eastern Europe or Central Europe or the former Soviet Republics. I want to tell you, I sure would like that message going into Byelarus. I am glad it is going in now. I sure like the idea the message is going into Bosnia. I sure like the messages going into these former Soviet states or Soviet-client states. But I acknowledge that is a debate for another day, whether or not these radios make sense anyway. I think they make a great deal of sense. But make no mistake about it, that is the core of the distinction between what the Senator from Wisconsin and I view to be the right course of action. You notice that the Senator is always painfully honest. He points out and acknowledges he had the privatization language still in here, but he presumes it will not be privatized now that the board is sitting out here and staying out here. I would argue that the likelihood of privatization occurring is in direct proportion to how much light is shed on the process. When you have this board sitting out here by itself, justifying its existence and its actions, it is a lot more likely that we are going to pay attention to it, particularly when we have to confirm the head of the board. As a matter of fact, the whole board requires Senate confirmation. The Senate worries about the radios not going toward privatization. How many members of the board are there, eight? He is going to have eight shots, plus Mr. Duffy, who is going to be the new Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. He has plenty of chances. He has nine chances in confirmation hearings before our committee. Put the board inside and it's a different story. The other point I would like to raise--and there is so much to say on this, but you have heard me so many times I will try not to say all there is to say. The cost will go up, is the second argument. He indicates that the cost will increase by $25 to $30 million. He said the board and the radios now receive $28 million in administrative services from the USIA, the U.S. Information Agency. All this is true, but who does he think is paying the $28 million now? The $28 million that went for them administering the agency will not go to them now. The net cost to the American taxpayer will not change. Chairman Helms and I received a letter from David Burke, the chairman of the board. I ask unanimous consent it be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for streamlining her amendment. I appreciate it very much. It is acceptable to the minority. I urge its adoption.

Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I really have no question, just a statement. I thank the Senator from Alaska for the way he is handling this. I literally just got off the phone with the Secretary of State, who said, knowing you were speaking now, that when you finished, or at any time that is convenient for you, she is willing to personally assure you, and authorized me to tell you as well, that she makes a personal commitment that she will coordinate more closely with you and any Member of the Senate on Taiwan policy in a contemporaneous fashion. She is willing to assert that to you. I know no one here doubts her word. But I realize time is close in terms of the schedule here. But she is prepared and ready and willing to take your call and anxious to personally make that commitment to you. But she authorized me to be able to say what I just said on the floor. I thank the Senator for the way in which he has concluded to handle this matter, and I appreciate the Secretary's willingness to be available and contemporaneously discuss these issues with the Senator from Alaska, who, obviously, along with the Senator from North Carolina, I do not know of any two people that have shown a greater interest in Taiwan than those two of my colleagues.

Mr. BIDEN. The answer to that question is, I do not know. I did not ask her that specific question, so I do not want to give a specific answer, except to suggest to you I am confident that she would be willing to come before you in your capacity as the chairman of that subcommittee and/or you and the committee, or you personally, to indicate to you how that process of coordination would be carried out. But I do not want to put words in her mouth. I did not ask that explicit question.

Mr. BIDEN. I think that would be appropriate. I gave your staff her phone number. She is literally waiting by the phone. And I might note, Mr. President, I have not found, in my 25 years here, a more accommodating Secretary of State. So she is literally waiting for your call, as they say. If there is business we can conduct in your absence--I do not know if there is any--if there is, maybe we can do that. I ask unanimous consent to temporarily lay aside, if there is an amendment--is there an amendment at the desk?

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. That is correct.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, is there controlled time?

Mr. BIDEN. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the legislation before us. Today, the Senate begins consideration of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, comprehensive legislation regarding the institutional structure of and the funding for America's foreign policy. This bill contains much more than the usual 2-year authorization and funding for our foreign affairs agency which we attempt to bring to the floor out of the Foreign Relations Committee. It addresses two important issues which were the focus of much-heated debate in the last Congress. Specifically, this bill provides for the payment of U.S. back dues to the United Nations--I need not say a very controversial and hotly debated subject in this body--contingent, I might add, on specific reforms in that body. I note parenthetically that I spoke on Friday with the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, and he indicated to me that it was his hope and expectation that the Senate as a whole, that I in particular and the chairman of the full committee, Senator Helms, would be pleased with a number of the reforms he has initiated consistent with what he indicated he would do. Hopefully, they will be acted upon by the General Assembly this summer. But whether they are or not, the back dues are contingent upon specific reforms in that body. Additionally, the bill establishes a framework for the reorganization of U.S. foreign policy agencies, which is, in my view, totally consistent with the plan announced by the President of the United States in April. The bill, Mr. President, that we have before us is not only complex and wide ranging, in that it covers more than one specific subject, but it is also the product of what I think most people would acknowledge is a serious bipartisan effort on the part of the chairman of the full committee, members of the subcommittee in the majority, members of the subcommittee in the minority, and me as the ranking member of the committee representing the Democratic position. In addition to that, the administration has been part of this lengthy and very detailed negotiation for the past several months. Last Thursday, after a markup that lasted less than 3 hours in the Foreign Relations Committee, the Committee on Foreign Relations voted overwhelmingly, 14 to 4, to report this bill, with a majority of the members on each side of the aisle voting in favor of it. I am grateful to the majority leader, Senator Lott, and to the chairman of the full committee, Senator Helms, for working together to bring this bill to the floor so promptly. The bipartisan cooperation on this bill thus far is a testament to the commitment of both the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Republican leadership, along with the administration, to attempt to construct what we all talk about a lot but seldom occurs: a truly bipartisan consensus on American foreign policy. This bill is quite detailed, so with the indulgence of my colleagues, I will take, which is the norm around here and the requirement, a few moments to explain, as the Democratic manager of the bill, what its major provisions are. First, the bill contains the basic authorization legislation for the Department of State, or, put in everyday parlance, money, the money for running the Department of State and our suggestion, as all authorizers do, to the appropriators as to how much money we should be spending. First, it contains the basic authorization legislation for the Department of State, the U.S. Information Agency, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Peace Corps. The funding levels in the bill closely reflect that of the President's budget. The total amount authorized for fiscal 1998 is $6.1 billion, as compared to the President's request of $6.2 billion. In fiscal year 1999, and this is a 2-year authorization, the amount provided in this bill is $5.9 billion. This modest reduction represents the reduction in the international organization account consistent with the administration's commitments. During debate on this legislation, I will explain that in more detail. Within this framework, we have provided, first, full funding for the Department of State's core activities; that is, the diplomatic and consular programs, salaries and expenses, and protection and maintenance of our embassies--full funding. It provides 99 percent of the funding for the U.S. Information Agency's diplomatic programs; full funding for our exchange programs, the Fulbright program and others; and full funding for international broadcasting. It provides full funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, a bipartisan operation that has had very great success; full funding for the Peace Corps and the Asia Foundation; and $819 million over 3 years to pay our U.N. arrears. After several years of reductions in spending for diplomatic readiness, I am heartened we are restoring funds to the international affairs account, particularly to the core activities of the State Department. Although the cold war has ended, Mr. President, the need for American leadership in world affairs has not. Our diplomats often represent the frontline of our national defense, and with the downsizing of the U.S. military presence overseas, the maintenance of a robust and effective diplomatic capability has become all the more important, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a vast majority of people who study the issue. Despite the reduction in our military readiness abroad, the increased importance of diplomatic readiness to our national security has not been reflected in recent Federal budgets. According to a study of the Congressional Research Service prepared earlier this year at my request, foreign policy spending is now at its lowest level in 20 years. Stated in 1998 dollars, the budget in the current fiscal year is $18.77 billion, which is 25 percent below the annual average of $25 billion over the past 2 decades, the past 20 years, and 30 percent below the level of 10 years ago, which was very near the end of the Reagan administration. Mr. President, I emphasize, again, that this is a lot of money, but out of a $1.7 or almost $1.8 trillion budget and in light of the fact we are the world's only superpower it is a small percentage. To continue to reduce our commitment to foreign affairs at a time when we are necessarily reducing our military activity abroad, our military presence abroad, seems to me to be counterproductive. It seems to me that in the former Soviet Union, the former Soviet states, the newly independent states, we should be having an increased diplomatic presence there. We should be opening consulates; we should have a robust economic presence there; and yet, as a matter of fact, we have been cutting back. This bill reverses that trend. Let me put it another way. This halts the trend of downward movement and recognizes our need to engage the world with diplomacy and our foreign policy, not with our military. So I am pleased that we are reversing the hemorrhaging of funds away from foreign policy, according to this bill. Second, the bill provides a framework for the reorganization of the foreign affairs agencies that is consistent with the President's announced plan on April 18. The backdrop for this, I know the Presiding Officer knows very well, is that the world has changed drastically. The world has changed drastically, as we all discuss and talk about, but we have not reorganized the foreign policy establishment in our country. We have not reorganized our foreign policy apparatus. Although it made a great deal of sense, in my view, in the past years to have, for example, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency separate and apart from the State Department and our Agency for International Development separate and apart, and other departments separate and apart, it seems to me, and it seems to most observers, including the administration, that it no longer makes sense. Here the credit must go to the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He has been consistently advocating a major overhaul of the State Department, as well as these other agencies, in terms of consolidation. I might add that there are provisions in this legislation that, obviously, I should have said at the outset that I don't like. There are provisions I would like to change. For example, I think we should be funding more money for the United Nations, although I acknowledge the amount we funded can get the job done. I think we should be making additional changes and giving greater flexibility to AID than we do in this legislation. The fact of the matter is, this is a product of a compromise on three major, major, major initiatives. As a consequence of that, neither Senator Helms nor I got all that we bargained for in this. That is the nature of compromise. So this has been a very important element of this whole package for the chairman of the committee. Like the President's plan, the bill that we bring to the floor today provides for integration of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency within the State Department within 1 year and ensures that the arms control function is maintained in a position of prominence within the Department of State. When I went months ago to negotiate or lay out how I would like to proceed and was willing to proceed with the chairman of the full committee, I indicated to him that I would work in a bipartisan way to deal with the reorganization, deal with the United Nations and deal with the funding of the State Department, assuming that he was not using this reorganization and other methods as merely a means for us to withdraw from the world. He not only indicated that it was not his objective, he has followed through and has shown it was not his objective, evidence the fact that we essentially fully fund the State Department for the next 2 years and he has agreed to significant latitude for the State Department in the bill and its reorganization efforts, compared to the bills he has introduced for the last 2 years. So, like the President's plan, the bill we bring to the floor today provides for the integration of not only ACDA, but also the U.S. Information Agency [USIA], into the State Department. It provides for a 2-year transition for that to occur and creates a position of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Again, I indicated that my concern was that as we bring these specialized agencies of significant consequence into the State Department, where they have never been before, that they be brought in at a level commensurate with their significance, that they not be subsumed in the State Department and essentially lose their visibility and significance. It seems to me, Mr. President, arms control will be the single most important element of American foreign policy over the next two decades. For it to be taken out of its independent status and subsumed into the State Department would be a mistake. What we do is we establish in this bill a position of prominence for the person who heads ACDA, as well as for USIA, and we create the position of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. There is only one difference in that it integrates the Office of Public Liaison and Legislative Affairs into the State Department within 1 year. The reason for that is, we think, quite simple. It is nothing complex. We think it can be done quickly and that it saves bureaucracy and it saves money. Additionally, this bill puts some flesh on the bones of the President's plan with regard to international broadcasting. The President's plan was virtually silent on this question, stating only that ``the distinctiveness and editorial integrity of the Voice of America and the broadcasting agencies would be preserved.'' That is just what we have done here. This bill just holds and protects that principle by maintaining the existing Government structure established by Congress in 1994 consolidating all U.S. Government-sponsored broadcasting. I might add, this was a money-saving effort led by the Senator from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold. He has succeeded, at least in large part, in one of his objectives, which was to save the American taxpayers a great deal of money. We have eliminated a bloated bureaucracy. We have consolidated services, we have consolidated technical capability, and we have preserved the integrity of the radios. By radios I mean Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty--the things that Lech Walesa said helped bring down the Berlin Wall more than anything else. We established Radio Free Asia and Radio Marti and TV Marti relating to Cuba. All of these maintain their journalistic integrity because of their editorial integrity. So we have done, I believe, what the administration indicated it wished to do; that is, maintain the distinctiveness and editorial integrity of these radios as well as the Voice of America. This bill upholds and protects that principle. As I said, what we have done is consolidated from 1994 all the U.S. Government-sponsored broadcasting, that is Voice of America, Radio and TV Marti, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Worldnet TV, under the supervision of one oversight board known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors. That has been done. Importantly, however, the board and the broadcasters below them will not be merged into the Department of State where their journalistic integrity would be questioned and greatly at risk. The radios will, however, continue to play an important role in advancing U.S. foreign policy objectives. The board will have what I call a dotted line relationship with the State Department in that the new Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, the same function now performed by the Director of USIA, will have a seat on the board. Additionally, the Secretary of State will provide foreign policy guidance to the board and will be consulted about additions or deletions of language services currently performed by the radios. Like the President's plan, the bill maintains the Agency for International Development, that is AID, as a separate agency, but provides for its partial integration into the State Department. This has been the most controversial part of all of this, I might say, Mr. President. There is a constituency that has a very solid case to be made--I think a very strong case to be made--suggesting that the expertise buildup by AID, headed now by Brian Atwood, and by many other distinguished persons before him, is unique in that it is the outfit that literally goes out and provides for digging the wells, bringing the water, and bringing the new projects to those areas that need the help. It was very important that we not take that expertise and merge it into the State Department, get it lost with every other GS-15 or 17 or 12 and lose the distinctive nature of those experiences. There is a difference between those who do foreign policy and those who dig wells. It is this distinctive nature--the ability to produce and deliver services--that says we, the United States of America, through our aid program, are going to assist populations in need. But it has been, I think, a legitimate concern, in light of the new world we now face, that there be more policy sway on the part of the person dealing with the foreign policy of America--the Secretary of State. We have tried to accommodate that, Mr. President. Just as the President announced, the AID administrator will be placed under the direct authority of the Secretary of State and, consistent with the plan's objectives of improving coordination between the regional bureaus at State and AID, the Secretary of State will have authority to coordinate this aid policy. This is causing a bit of a flap, though. This has been the single biggest thing that, to the average American and I suspect the average Senator, sounds merely like a giant bureaucratic snafu in that somebody's turf is being stepped on and somebody else's turf is not being accommodated, et cetera. It is more than that. It is more serious than that. But I suspect we have not heard the end of what we attempted to do in this legislation. The concept of aid coordinators, that is, having aid coordinated by the State Department, is not new in this legislation. Since the early 1990's, the State Department has had such coordinators that have supervised the aid programs in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Under the leadership of President Bush and, prior to that, under the leadership of the Democratically controlled Foreign Relations Committee, we first had a thing called the SEED program and then the President expanded that, President Bush expanded it into the Freedom Support Act. That aid program involved deciding how much aid would go to the Ukraine, how much aid would go to Russia, et cetera. And we set up a special coordinator within the State Department to do that. So this is not a new notion we are applying here. This legislation, quite frankly, is modeled on that concept. Indeed, the language we use here is borrowed directly from the Freedom Support Act. But nonetheless we are going to hear more about this because some of my colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, have very, very strong views about this. I suspect we will be debating this aspect of the reorganization more than any other. Two other issues bear emphasis and belie any charge that we are micromanaging the reorganization of the State Department. First, unlike the bill reported by this committee in the last Congress, this reorganization bill does not--and I thank the chairman for doing this because it is one of the major disagreements he and I had--this bill does not, as the last bill introduced in the Congress did, mandate specific reductions in budget or personnel. Instead, it requires only a periodic report on savings that are achieved. Second, the committee has provided no directives--none--on the promised reinvention of the State Department itself. Let me be clear about this. The President's plan stated that a central element in the plan would be an ``intensified, comprehensive internal reform program at State.'' In other words, the reorganization of State by itself. Again, for my colleagues listening to this, there are basically three pieces to this reorganization. One is you have the State Department sitting here and then you have these very important agencies, USIA, AID--I think those are the acronyms --U.S. Information Agency, the Administration for International Development and the Arms Control Disarmament Agency. For historical reasons, they had all been, if you will, satellite agencies outside the direct, immediate control of the State Department, although all related to the State Department. That is one big piece. What do you do about that matrix? There is a second big piece here. The second big piece is, within the State Department, how many Undersecretaries of State do you have? How many Assistant Secretaries of State? What do you do in terms of how they relate to one another? How many personnel should be in the field and not in the field? How many consulates should you have and not have? These are all very important decisions. That is part of this $6.1 billion we are giving them to run this year and $5.9 billion in the second year of this 2-year authorization. We do not fool with that. We do not micromanage that. We respond to the concerns of the last administration and this administration. We say, ``Look, you present us with a plan. You come up and you go ahead and reorganize that. We're giving you authority to go out and do it. You do it.'' We are not micromanaging, but we are going to deal with this big, controversial subject that has been sort of rattling around for the last decade. We are going to take AID, ACDA, and USIA, and we are going to merge them in varying degrees into the State Department. There are those who are going to come out on the floor and say that Senator Helms and I are into micromanaging the State Department's day- to-day activities. That is simply not true. That is not what we are doing. But we are tackling the one issue no administration has really been able to successfully deal with. And that is, what do you do about these three very important agencies that have very important constituencies and very important functions? We are taking them--they have been out there by themselves now for a number of years, with good reason--and we are merging them, in light of this changed world, into the State Department. We are doing that. We are doing that, in my opinion, for several reasons. I will tell you my motivation for doing it. First, internally handled, I am not sure how it would ever get settled in the administration. The constituencies are significant. The bureaucracies are real. They are important. Second, I worried that if we were essentially just going to use this as an excuse to eliminate their functions, we would be doing a great disservice to the Nation. Senator Helms agreed. Senator Helms said, let us bring them into, in commensurate positions of responsibility and authority, the State Department. So we are doing that. But even within that, we leave a great deal of flexibility for the Secretary of State and the President of the United States. Mr. President, I believe I speak for the chairman when I express my hope that the type of reform effort that the President has indicated he wishes to undertake--that is the actual reorganization of the State Department itself, which we do not do--my sincere hope that he will in fact vigorously pursue the long overdue internal management reform needed because the State Department's problems could be compounded by the absorption of two new agencies unless reforms are made. So the irony here is, Mr. President, we are subsuming these organizations into the State Department, and now it is real important that the internal management and reforms within the State Department take place because, if there is difficulty in terms of organizational structures at State now, they are going to be compounded by bringing in these additional agencies. We leave all of the aid personnel outside here. We take policy and we put it in, but the personnel, the people who actually go out and make sure the water goes to the village, their unique capability stays out here as an independent agency. So the point is that we are giving the State Department and the President ample opportunity to do what they say they needed. And I believe the administration--the administration; Freudian slip--my administration, in effect, on the floor that I have to deal with is the majority party. The majority party, led by Senator Helms, has given a great deal more flexibility than they intended to give for the administration to be able to do that. Obviously, the administration would prefer, as a matter of principle, passage of legislation that delegates broad authority to the President to reorganize the whole shooting match. Well, in a perfect world I would prefer that as well. The truth of the matter is, it is not a perfect world. My team does not control this place. The other team controls this place. They have very different views. And I think we have worked out, in light of that, a very, very important compromise that is consistent with the overall objective the President has stated. But under the administration's approach, which is basically just delegate, the only moment for congressional action would be a resolution of disapproval of a plan. What the administration wanted, and if I could have waved a wand--put it another way; if I had 51 votes--I might attempt to accommodate their wish. But what the administration wanted was that they send a plan to us when they have the opportunity to go through it and vet it. They will say, ``This is our reorganization plan, including the whole shooting works. Now, you, the Congress, either approve or disapprove it.'' You can only--excuse me, you have to disapprove it. If you do not disapprove it, then it becomes law; it is changed. If you disapprove it, it has the benefit, if you are a President, of allowing you to get your plan passed with only one-third of the Congress plus one voting for it, because we can come along and get 51 votes and say, ``No; we don't like the plan you submitted,'' and disapprove it. The President then vetoes our disapproval of his plan. Now we have to override his veto. So we come back up here and we have to find a supermajority if we do not like the plan. So it is not something Congress would usually buy on to, any more than administrations like to buy on to giving up any prerogative, and one of their prerogatives is to reorganize the executive branch. They do not like the fact that we are doing part of that for them, which is understandable. If I were President, I would feel the same way, or if I were the Secretary of State, I would feel the same way. Conversely, Congresses are not real crazy about offers made to them that allow Presidents essentially to control the agenda, control the outcome by only getting one-third of the Congress plus one person to vote with them. So here we are. I now am joining the chairman of the full committee in preferring that Congress should place its positive stamp on the President's plan rather than having the chance only to give a stamp of disapproval and to be overridden by one-third plus one. In general terms, the committee's approach does not provide any less flexibility to reorganize. To be sure, the committee locks in the date for ultimate integration of the two agencies in question. And we are only fully integrating two agencies, USIA and ACDA. And it speeds up the partial integration of AID into State. Within those broad outlines the administration has considerable flexibility to implement the thousands of decisions required under reorganization. Ultimately, Mr. President, the administration will have to return to the Congress for certain authorities to carry out the complicated integration of two large agencies into the State Department. However, I would be surprised if the administration contends that this requirement to return to Congress is unduly burdensome. I hope the administration will work with the committee on this procedure. If the administration is committed to the reorganization outlined by the President's April 18 statement, as I believe it is, then it should have no trouble implementing the legislative framework laid down in this bill. Finally, Mr. President, the bill provides for the payment of U.S. arrearages to the United Nations. Now, in my almost 25 years of being a U.S. Senator, there is little that generates as much enthusiasm for debate than when we talk about paying arrearages to the United Nations. Maybe when we talk about the question of abortion more vigor is displayed on this floor, but only abortion and a few other issues raise the combative instincts of my colleagues more than paying back U.S. arrearages. Now, the proposal contained in our bill, this bipartisan proposal, led by my friend from North Carolina, I believe will serve three important purposes. One, it should finally end the long festering feud between the United Nations and Washington about our unpaid dues. Second, it should bring much needed reform to the world's body so that it can more efficiently perform its missions, missions which we acknowledge in this legislation that we support. Third, it should, I hope, restore some of the bipartisan support in Congress for the U.N.'s system, support that has existed for most of the U.N.'s 50-year history. The agreement before the Senate will allow us to pay $819 million in arrears to the United Nations over a 3-year period contingent upon the United Nations achieving specific benchmarks, to borrow Chairman Helms' expression. Now, the payments are broken down as follows: In year 1, we will pay $100 million. I might add, even if we wanted to pay more, the budget agreement we passed does not accommodate us paying any more than that, so even if we wanted to pay all the rest, the Congress and the President have limited us to what we can pay under that budget agreement. Now, in year 2--and this was a significant compromise, and he is on the floor, and I want to publicly thank him for accommodating my request on this--in year 2, we pay $475 million, assuming the benchmarks are met. In year 3, we will repay the remaining $244 million. The significant feature of this payment scheme is that it will allow the administration to pay off virtually all our arrears in the first 2 years for the two most important accounts, which are the regular and peacekeeping budgets. With these two accounts current, our diplomats will have the leverage they need to push through the tough reforms that are needed. Let me mention a few of the particularly noteworthy benchmarks, again using the chairman's term. The plan calls for a two-stage reduction in our regular U.N. assessment rate from 25 percent to 20 percent. Now, I have been criticized a great deal for going along with this, as my friend from North Carolina, I suspect, has been criticized for going along with paying the arrears. I am told, ``Joe, as a supporter of the United Nations how can you possibly insist that the U.S. portion of the United Nation's regular dues be reduced from 25 percent to 20 percent?'' And I say I would rather just pay our arrears and then negotiate that. But on the issue of what should we pay, Mr. President, I would respectfully suggest that if the meeting in San Francisco organizing the U.N. were today rather than 50 years ago, we would not be sitting down with economic giants like Japan and the European countries and others and saying, ``By the way, we should pay 25 percent.'' I argue it made sense after World War II when we were the only economic power left standing in the world. We are not the only economic power left standing in the world. I want to pay our fair share. I do want to carry our burden. But I am hard pressed to see why I am doing such a terrible thing, siding with the chairman, saying our numbers should get down to 20 percent from 25 percent. As I said, I challenge anyone to tell me why you think there would be a consensus in the world that we should pay 25 percent if we were starting from day one. Now, agreed, admittedly, the chairman and I do not agree on how we should go about this. I would like to pay the arrears, not make it conditional and negotiate our dues because this is a little bit heavy handed, but I am a realist. Politics in the best sense of the word is the art of the practical. We have to get 51 votes to get this thing moving. The chairman and I have to make compromises. He has come a long way. I am willing to go a long way because I think this meets the most important requirement. I hear people telling me now, and I see my friends on the floor, saying, ``Joe, this is great. You worked out this compromise with Senator Helms, but if you got him to compromise this much, if you were just a little tougher you would have gotten a billion 300 million for U.N. arrears.'' First, they do not know my friend like I do. We have worked together for almost 25 years. We came here at the same time. Second, it is amazing how people in hindsight say, ``Hey, this is great, this is great. We are moving along in the right direction.'' This is the end of the road, this direction. As I told the chairman, he came up to that $819 million, and the administration says they can get the job done with that--it is a bottom-line number with me. If we go to conference and the House cuts that number, I am not voting for this. And the chairman did not like going up that high but he is sure going no higher, unless I misread him. So people say, ``Well, Joe, you are forcing the United Nations to make these decisions. It is not fair.'' Well, I remind them, can the United Nations take another year, can we handle another year of nonpayment without doing permanent damage or additional damage to our status within that agency, which I think is an important agency? Everybody tells me it is important this get done. I asked those folks who now are saying this is not enough, I asked them, you figure out how to get 51 votes for something more than that, and if you do not get 51 votes and this carries over for another year, what damage have we done? If damage would be done by not paying the disputed amount between $819 million and what others say we owe, if damage would be done by that, how much damage would be done if this thing goes over another year? I respectfully suggest, a lot more damage by not acting. And, by the way, I have had this conversation with the President of the General Assembly and with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. They both want action now because they say what our fellow nations in the United Nations are wondering, are we ever going to pay? Do we think we have an obligation? This, at a minimum, establishes that. It is very important, very important. We may have a slight disagreement, my friend from North Carolina and me, but I see the United Nations as a valuable tool. I do not want to be sending U.S. troops everywhere in the world where there is a need for international action, where there is a need for the world to respond so it does not blow out of control. I do not want to do that. The United Nations can be and is a very valuable adjunct and tool. I do not want to see it come apart. To me, this is the single best way to meet our foreign policy needs now. It is important we act now. Let me mention a few of the particular noteworthy benchmarks beyond moving from 25 to 20 percent. The plan also requires that the United Nations make a commitment that the United States be reimbursed for support we provided for the peacekeeping operations, something that is very important to the chairman. Some of my colleagues, all of whom I respect, will come to the floor and say, ``Well, you know, Joe, look at what our share of the world's resources are and look at what our share of the world's economy is and look at what our share of our involvement in the United Nations is, and it really should be 25 percent.'' I say, does the rest of the world take into consideration the billions of dollars American taxpayers are paying to keep peace in the world? How about Korea? How about Japan? How much do they pay? How about the billions of dollars we have committed in Bosnia? How about the billions of dollars we have committed around the world? Now, I am not asking the United Nations to credit us for that. I do not know how they would calculate that. I am asking them to recognize it. I am asking, by us coming up with these arrearages, to stop the bashing, to stop the U.S. bashing, as well as, hopefully, to stop the U.N. bashing. This is a time for us to take advantage of the institutions in the best sense of the word that exist to maintain world peace without our having to be the world cop. In addition, the plan calls for a number of budgetary and oversight reforms that promise to improve the efficiency both at the U.N. Secretariat and in its largest specialized agencies. I say again to my friend who is on the floor, he may have been off the floor earlier, I spoke with Kofi Annan on Friday. I suspect the Senator may have, as well. He indicated he appreciated our efforts. Obviously, he would like more. He said something interesting. He said that he was hopeful that you, Mr. Chairman, and I would be pleased with the reforms he has already suggested and that he hopes the United Nations will act upon this year prior to--prior to--commitments mandated by us in these benchmarks. He did not get specific about each, but I am sure, knowing him as I do, he is committed to reasonable reform just like every other major business in the world is reforming and every major governmental institution is reforming and streamlining. I believe that it is the intention of the Secretary-General to do the same thing. The end result will be to increase the efficacy of the United Nations and the fairness of those nations that contribute to its function. There are many of my colleagues that will look at the list that I mentioned here today and wonder why such detailed restrictions are attached to the payment of this money. In an ideal world, as I indicated in committee, I indicated to the chairman, and I indicate now, I would prefer far fewer restrictions. I support the United Nations with all its flaws because I believe, more often than not, it advances our national interests by providing a forum for combating problems that no single nation can address on its own, or at least no single nation can efficiently address on its own. We should not have to be the nation to address problems solely on our own. Placing conditions on U.S. payment is not unprecedented. Congressional pressure has often been an important catalyst for change in New York. For example, were it not for the efforts of our former colleague, Nancy Kassebaum--and everybody thinks of Nancy Kassebaum as a supporter of the United Nations and looks to Senator Helms as the person who stopped all these payments to the United Nations, Senator Nancy Kassebaum, now Nancy Kassebaum Baker, when she was a leader on this floor--her efforts required that the U.N. system would have to adopt a consensus-based budgeting process. Were it not for her efforts, that would not have occurred. Were it not for the initiative of Congress in 1994, then under Democratic control, in fairness to the chairman, there would be no inspector general at the United Nations. That was a condition we placed. That was a Democratically-controlled Senate, that was a Democratically-controlled committee. So this notion of benchmarks is not an unprecedented notion. What is unprecedented is the Senator from North Carolina saying, ``I will sign on to pay our arrearages.'' That is the unprecedented part, from my standpoint, and the benchmarks that he has insisted upon, I cannot look him in the eye and say that they are not reasonable. I would prefer not to have them, but they are not unreasonable. I would prefer to do it another way, but they are not unreasonable, and consequently I am supporting him because this is all part of an overall agreement to deal with the entire foreign policy of the United States of America. Mr. President, the achievements I mentioned earlier, the inspector general and others, were reasonable conditions. So, too, are those contained in the Senate bill now before the Senate. The original plan offered by the majority, in my view, did not meet the same standard, but as a result of good faith negotiations with the majority, we now have a set of conditions, which the administration, including our Ambassador to the United Nations, our former colleague and now Ambassador Bill Richardson, believes are achievable. Mr. President, I am often asked what it takes to be a U.S. Senator, and I say it takes two very important things: One, you have to be an optimist. If you are not, you are in the wrong business. It is not the place to be. The second thing it requires, I think, is that you be a pragmatist, because we have to achieve a consensus in this body. We represent over 250 million people with very different views. We represent very different constituencies and very different ideologies. Pragmatically, we have to get to the point where we get 51 votes. I recognize that no plan to pay our U.N. arrearages can get through a Republican-controlled Congress without some of the conditions that are on here. Again, I think the ones that remain are not unreasonable. I believe it is important to get this issue behind us and move toward a bipartisan foreign policy. This legislation should contribute considerably to straightening out our relations with the United Nations. For those colleagues on my side of the aisle who remain unconvinced, let me state clearly that the administration was involved every step of the way in the U.N. negotiations, and it has signed off on every element of this U.N. package and supports the proposal as the best deal that can be achieved, because they believe, as I do, that we must put this behind us. So I don't want to hear that the chairman did this by fiat, or the chairman--which he is capable of doing--got the ranking member in and convinced him, or has mesmerized him into changing his view. That is not true--possible, but not true. That is not what happened. The administration was either in the room or informed of everything we have done on this point. They, like me, believe that this is the best we can get and that it can get the job done. Now, I say to some of my colleagues, very bluntly--I will state it on the record--they say that they think the administration is wrong as well. Well, look, I have to sign on with some team here, you know. They are the ones running the show. They are the ones with the expertise. They know a lot more about what is needed to satisfy the 150 some nations of the United Nations. I take their word for it and I believe they are correct--substantively correct--that it can be done. The administration doesn't love this; I don't love it; the chairman doesn't love it. But that's what this legislation is about. That is why we have a Congress. That is how it is supposed to work to arrive at a consensus. Let me conclude by saying, Mr. President, that I have been here a long time. I have worked on a lot of big bills. I have been, like the chairman of the committee, in the majority and the minority. I like one better than the other. I have been both places, and I have been in both places twice. As I said, I have had the responsibility on my side of the aisle of shepherding through some very comprehensive legislation, not the least of which was the crime bill. But I think if the chairman of the committee and I stood here in January, the first week we were in session, and said that Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Joe Biden of Delaware are going to sit down in a room over the next 5 or 6 months and work out an entire package on how to deal with all this--when is the last time we passed an authorization? It was in 1994. That was the last time we passed any legislation to pay arrearages. It was the last time we got any consensus on how to reorganize. Well, we have done that. We both may be wrong, but we have done it. We have brought to the floor a comprehensive package. So that I don't confuse anybody, the most important thing to me is, first of all, to maintain my principle, and, second, to maintain the commitments I make. There are going to be amendments on this floor that I would like to vote for. For example, my friend from Indiana, Senator Lugar, one of the most informed men in the United States of America on foreign policy, believes, as I do, that we should dedicate more than $819 million toward paying our arrearages. As a matter of fact, I am the guy who called him when I thought my friend from North Carolina and I could not work out an agreement, and said, ``If I introduce an amendment to raise the arrearages, will you vote for me in committee?'' But then the chairman came along and said, ``I will agree.'' I ended up voting against my friend from Indiana in the committee to raise the number higher. I did that because I made a commitment. This is an overall package, all of this. It is not fair for me to say to the ranking member or to the chairman, who has made significant concessions from his former positions, I want to take this one piece out of the overall agreement and still keep the agreement, any more than it would be fair for him to go into a committee and vote to reduce the number from $819 million to $600 million. He will not do that to me, and I will not do that to him. This is not a matter of us making a personal deal. This is meeting the commitment given to us by the Senate: Can we put together a bipartisan consensus on this? I want to announce to everybody that I am probably going to be casting votes here, and I will state why at the time--they may say, ``How can Biden vote that way?'' If it stood all by itself, I probably would not vote that way. But I believe the package we brought for the Senate's consideration is serious, balanced, important to the foreign policy of this Nation, and workable. I will stick with it. It is not a perfect bill. Like any document that is the result of negotiations between two opposing parties, it represents compromise and it contains some elements that neither of us like. But it represents, in my judgment, an incredibly constructive compromise. I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. President, unless my friend from North Carolina wishes to take the floor, I have nothing further to say. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, with your permission, rather than immediately comment on the same subject matter, I ask, as we used to say in the Senate, a point of personal privilege. I would like to comment on a story that was published in my hometown newspaper that is the antithesis of problems relating to juvenile delinquency. It is a story about a family I am very close to. I should say at the outset I am prejudiced in this regard. I have a very close relationship and high regard for the father and mother of this family, and three of the four children in this family have worked with me and are friends of my children. One of them is in this Chamber today at my request as an employee of one of our colleagues from Florida. Mr. President, I want to tell this story because we rarely get a chance to share with our colleagues the kind of story I am about to share and, I might add, that in my almost 25 years in the Senate I have only done this on one other occasion, but I think it is just remarkable. The story is about a family named Kimmel, the Kimmel family. Going way back, I didn't practice law with but practiced law in adjoining suites to Mort Kimmel and knew his wife Marsha. We go back now about 30 years. Mr. President, it is the kind of story which I rarely share but my reluctance to discuss this in a public forum was increased initially because the individuals involved were such close personal friends, Mort and Marsha Kimmel and their family. I have known Mort and Marsha, as I said, for 30 years and the children have worked with me on my campaigns and have been friends with my children as well. They are among the most giving and caring people I know. A story appeared on the front page of our largest statewide newspaper entitled ``Triumph of the Heart.'' I will ask at the appropriate time it be printed in the Record. It is a picture of my buddy, Mort Kimmel, and his wife and his four children. I will explain that in a minute. It is focused on a young man named Larry Spiller who is, in fact, the nephew of Mort and Marsha Kimmel. It is really a story about Larry Spiller and his aunt and uncle and his cousins who welcomed Larry into their home and into their hearts after a severe family tragedy. I think it holds some lessons for what we all say we value but few of us practice. It is a story of selflessness, of sacrifice, and, most of all, of what being family, in my opinion, is all about. On New Year's Eve, in 1987, the Spiller family got on an airplane-- mother, father, and three children--to head to a ski trip in Vermont. Larry's father had a commercial pilot's license. He was instrument- rated but got caught while flying the family up to Vermont, after one stop and then taking off again, in a wind shear 90 feet before the runway as they were landing and the plane crashed. Larry's mother and father both died in the crash, and Larry's two brothers were mortally injured. This young man, Larry Spiller, was then 8 years old. He was the only survivor. And because he happened to have switched seats with his mom just before they attempted to land--he had been riding in the copilot seat, and his mom wanted to get up front to help his dad because of the weather--and he was seated in a seat where his back was to the pilot, I expect and most people think that is the reason why he survived. Well, what happened was, on that awful day, there was a meeting shortly thereafter that took place in another family, and that is in the family of the brother-in-law, the family of the partner, because Larry's father and my friend, Mort Kimmel, were law partners. But Larry's father happened to have a mother who was the sister of my friend, Mort Kimmel. And so Mort and Marcia Kimmel and their three young children-- Wayne, who is now 27, Michelle, who works here in Washington, who is now 24, and Karen, 18--held a family meeting and they made a very fateful decision. They made a decision to bring Larry into their home as another son, another sibling--no holds barred, absolute, total, equal. Karen, who is now 18 years old, on her own volition gave up her bedroom for her cousin. That was her idea. And many other personal, what appeared to be sacrifices were made through the selfless acts of the three children and the mother and father. It is the kind of selfless family decision that is so often talked about, that we see in the movies and we see glorified, but so seldom do we know of it occurring. Because we all have a tendency to rationalize when that kind of thing happens, even though it is your sister's child who survived. I can picture thousands of good people rationalizing, ``Well, wait, we only have so much. If we bring in Larry, then what about our three children? And maybe it is best for * * *'' and so on and so forth. As the Presiding Officer knows, the ability of the human mind to rationalize is mind-boggling. But they made no rationalization. They, in a genuine family decision involving all three of their children, decided that there was only one course of action. There were adjustments and sacrifices for everyone involved. But for the Kimmels, that is all part of being a family. You hear a lot of talk these days about family values, but the Kimmels and Larry Spiller, that young 9-year-old boy at the time, have lived out what in reality is an old-fashioned notion, that families are there for one another. We have an expression in my family. After my wife and daughter were killed, I came home from the hospital, my two sons were in the hospital, and my sister had already moved into my house. She didn't ask anything--my younger sister and her husband. We have an expression in our family: If you have to ask, it's too late. Well, they didn't have to ask; they just decided and they acted. Whether it involves taking in an orphaned child or bringing in an elderly parent or grandparent in your home, providing a sibling or an aunt or an uncle a place to get back on their feet on solid ground after a period of rough going or ill health, these sacrifices are all examples of what we mean by family. Make no mistake about it: These decisions are not easy. But family values, real, practice-what-you- preach family values, don't always make it easy for us to make decisions. And they are not always convenient. Family is, rather, about commitment. And the Kimmel family is a living testament to that commitment. Let me tell you what the article was about. I will not go on much longer. The article is focused on how this young man, Larry Spiller, who is now graduating from one of the finest high schools in Delaware, about how well he has done in this family. He has excelled both academically and athletically. This young man made all State in both baseball and basketball, did incredibly well in school, and will be attending Cornell University. Like so many other great schools, it is very difficult to get into, and his family has every right to be proud of this young man. It would have been easy for a 9-year-old child, I can tell you from experience, having been tragically robbed, in this case of his entire immediate family, to let that tragedy define his life. No one would have begrudged him that. That happens to a lot of people whose lives have been scarred by tragedy. And it would have been equally understandable had Mort and Marcia Kimmel and their children allowed Larry to slip into that kind of thinking or allowed Larry to slip through their fingers and allowed the tragedy to be the focal point of their lives. But that did not happen. They all grieved, of course, and still do. But they have been able to move on, to live their lives as a dynamic family, each of them involved in school and sports and civic activities. They proved that while bad things do happen to good people, good things happen, too, especially when you make up your mind not to let the bad experiences define and dominate your life. Last summer, young Larry turned 18 and received the bulk of his parents' estate. It was a substantial sum of money for a young man just beginning to make his way in the world. It could make Larry's life a lot easier in the coming years. But, instead, Larry Spiller and the Kimmels have used the money to establish the Kimmel-Spiller Charitable Foundation to help sick children and those facing injuries and disabilities. In the newspaper interview that I will submit for the Record, he, young Larry, who was graduating, as I said, was asked what he had to say about this. He said, ``There is really no need for me to have all that. I want to work for my own money as a lawyer, which I will probably do, and my parents''--he refers to Mort and Marcia as his parents--``will support me through college. It could help other people.'' How many young kids, with that kind of a capability, that kind of money, would say, ``You know, there is really no need for me to have it; I'll work for my own money; I'll be able to do it''? Larry goes on to say in that article, ``I'm lucky to be here. I'm lucky I could just move into another family and be so stable. I was always happy to have a second chance.'' Larry Spiller and Wayne and Michelle and Karen Kimmel, the other children, and their parents, Mort and Marcia Kimmel, are a very special family, and in their story lie some valuable lessons for all of us. It is not easy to be a family. The decisions aren't always painless decisions. Sacrifice almost always goes with love. But when love is there, anything can be overcome. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Wilmington News Journal about Larry Spiller and his family be printed in the Record.