Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, Republicans have taken aim at middle- class families with proposals to cut student loans. They want to cut student loan programs to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. Student loans in this country today have made it possible for 4.5 million middle-class students to go to college. These Republican cuts will mean fewer students going to college and for those students that do go to college that are now receiving student loans, it will mean higher costs to them. In my State of Ohio, the average debt per student on student loans will increase nearly $3,100. Mr. Speaker, I wear a tie today from Lorraine County Community College in northeast Ohio. In the county which I live, in Lorraine County, 67 percent of some type of financial aid, nearly 5,000 students per quarter. At a school like Lorraine County Community College, which is an absolute jewel for Lorraine County in terms of job training and people going back to school and getting more education and people going straight from high school onto LC to go to college, Lorraine County Community College has literally thousands of part-time students, hundreds and hundreds of single parents who are students, hundreds of people from a very diverse cross section of the community. What these cuts to middle-class students mean, what these budget cuts mean on student loans is that many of these students that are now at Lorraine County Community College will be saddled with heavier and heavier debts as they are struggling to work part-time and go to school part-time and raise their children and some of them simply will give up. These cuts to middle-class students are part of the Republican Contract on America. Let me briefly discuss the winners and the losers in the Republican Contract on America. The winners are people like Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch got a $63 million tax break, Australian-born, American- naturalized-citizen Rupert Murdoch. Another winner is American billionaires who are the recipients of $3.6 billion, thanks to the Republican Contract on America, American billionaires who renounced their American citizenship and got this tax break. Other winners are people making $200,000 a year. The Republicans have called middle class not what people in my district would term middle class. Those are other winners who get a major tax break under the Contract With America. Another major winner is America''s largest corporations, which in the mid-1980's had enjoyed so many tax loopholes that many of them paid no Federal taxes. Ronald Reagan and the then Democratic Congress put on them an alternative minimum tax so those corporations at least paid some tax. That tax loophole has been recreated under the Republican Contract for America.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I would have voted ``yes'' on rollcall 280, H.R. 716. The bells in my office did not work and I did not hear the rollcall until the second rollcall, when it was brought to my attention. personal explanation

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority is at it again. They are now hitting the middle class with cuts in student aid to give tax breaks to the wealthy. I visited with students and administrators from Oberlin College, Lorain County Community College, and Hiram College in my district. The message is loud and clear: Students and parents simply cannot afford drastic increases in their debt. The Republican proposal to eliminate the Stafford Program will increase the average student debt burden up to 50 percent. This proposal sacrifices our Nation's educational future for tax breaks for the wealthiest few. Republicans also plan to eliminate campus-based aid, such as the Perkins Program, the Federal work-study, and supplemental educational opportunity grants. It is morally reprehensible, Mr. Speaker; the Gingrich Republicans want to cut student loans for the middle class in order to give tax breaks to the largest corporations and to America's wealthiest few.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, we will see, instead of running the School Lunch Program the way it has been run for 49 years to the satisfaction of almost every one in this country, we will turn it over to 50 State bureaucracies. We will lose the power buying, if you will, and some of the savings that way, particularly in the WIC program, where infant formula will cost as much as $1 billion more, several groups have estimated, because we will lose competitive bidding. We will end up in a situation where we have programs that work and instead we may turn them into programs that do not work. If something is working, certainly the welfare needs reform, but something like the School Lunch Program standing alone works. I see no reason to change it.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If the economy goes bad in a certain area, there are a lot of parents laid off, those school lunches will not be increased for those kids.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Every teacher, every PTA, every group out there, every organization, every individual that knows about this understands the mean-spiritedness of these cuts. You claim $7 billion in savings on the one hand so you can score for your tax cuts for your wealthiest constituents on the west side of Cleveland, and yet, on the other hand, you are saying ``we are not making any cuts.'' Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman would from New York [Ms. Slaughter].

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I have seen it. Every speaker that comes up uses the CRS report.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, all of us agree the welfare system needs major changes, but I have not met anybody in my district, students parents, teachers, school administrators, cafeteria workers, that think that we need to radically change the school lunch program. Earlier this week I visited Tennyson Elementary School in Sheffield Lake, OH, east of where I live in Lorain County. I was taken around this wonderful little school by a couple of young men, 9-year-olds, third graders, named Will Emery and Zach Russell. I also met with Jennifer, Kelly, and Sarah Ward, three sisters at the school, and lots of other children; Mrs. Urmston, the principal, some people on the school board, administrators, and others. It is clear. Every one of them said: Do not mess with the school lunch program. It works. We do not want any changes in the school lunch program. Unfortunately, Republicans in this radical proposal do not see it the same way in their move toward their extremism. I would like to put on this board, add to this board what the school lunch cuts will mean in Ohio, another 13,400 children will lose their school lunches as a result of this Republican extremism.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield, the President has a 6.5 percent increase built into his budget. There is no----

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The fact is that with inflation, with more children in the program, with bad years that can happen when parents are laid off in a school district, that there will not be enough money for school lunches.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. There is an overall cut in nutrition funding. That money can be in at least one of these nutrition programs, children nutrition programs.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The fact is you talked, the Republicans over and over and over again take credit for $7 billion in savings.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Where in the legislation does it say 4.5 percent? If the gentleman would yield? It does not. It is a number that you have manufactured to try to hide the cut in school lunches and cut in child nutrition.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The fact is you claim $7 billion in savings so you can fund tax cuts for millionaires, not deficit reduction.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Will the gentleman let me finish a sentence?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. No. Overall in the child nutrition program. Children, it is not necessarily a national recession or children falling from another planet. It is a plant closing in a community when a lot of parents all of a sudden are out of work and there is no help for those families, they turn to the school lunch program.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I visited or 2 days ago I visited in Sheffield Lake in Lorain County in my district the Tennyson Elementary School to see the School Lunch Program up close and to talk to students and teachers and parents and administrators and cafeteria people. I was taken around by a couple of third graders, Will Emery and Zach Russell, and met with lots of students, Jennifer Ward and her two sisters, who had some things to tell us, with Mrs. Armstead, the principal, and with several other people that all agreed on one thing. People, whether it is from a PTA or from school administrators or teachers or parents, the one thing they agree on about the School Lunch Program is that if it ain't broke don't fix it. And perhaps I shouldn't use grammar like that talking about a grade school, but when you think about all the talk, that the Republicans say it is block grants and the Democrats say that these are very real cuts as they are about nutrition programs for children and about school lunches, the fact is, as my friend from North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton] said a few minutes ago this has been a program in existence for 49 years. It works. There is simply no reason to fix something that is not broken. It is a government program that works. It is for the future of our children. Why mess with it? Why make these radical, divisive kinds of changes that Republicans are suggesting about school lunch? It simply doesn't make sense. pressler amendment

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I would like, Mr. Speaker, to shift gears and talk about another matter, different from the school lunch issue that people have been debating tonight. In 10 days, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, is coming to Washington to meet with the President. Business Week magazine reports that one of Bhutto's key goals in courting President Clinton is to ease enforcement of the Pressler amendment. The Pressler amendment, Mr. Speaker, prevents Pakistan from obtaining 60 F-16 fighter jets. The Pressler amendment made good sense when it was enacted, and it makes better sense today because of the political and social upheaval that is wracking Pakistani society and threatening the stability of the Bhutto government. Pakistan is in a chaotic state. Just in recent weeks, we have witnessed: The murder earlier this month of two American diplomats in Karachi; A show trial in which two Christians, one of them a 14-year-old boy, were sentenced to death for blasphemy against Islam and narrowly escaped Pakistan with their lives; and A stunning piece of journalism by the New York Times Pulitzer Prize- winning reporter, John Burns. Mr. Speaker, I will include in the Record the article from the New York Times by Mr. Burns. At considerable risk to himself, John Burns has traced a good deal of the world's terrorist activity to the University of Dawat and Jihad in Peshawar, Pakistan. Roughly translated, it is the University of the Community of the Holy War. It is simply a school for terrorism. According to Mr. Burns, ``Just about everyone has a hidden Kalashnikov assault rifle.'' The university is a haven for Muslims militants from throughout Asia and the Arab world. The University of Dawat and Jihad is under investigation as a possible training ground for terrorists who have struck in the Philippines, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and now investigators believe the World Trade Center bombing in New York 2 years ago. Burns says that the area in and around Peshawar represents, ``One of the most active training grounds and sanctuaries for a new breed of international terrorists.'' According to high-ranking U.S. diplomats, students are taught that the Islamic renaissance has to be born out of blood and by only striking at the West will Islam ever be able to dictate events in the world and events have intelligence reports in recent years have suggested that militants trained here have taken part in almost every conflict where Muslims have been involved. For instance, the Philippines, where there was an attempt on Pope John Paul II's life; the Middle East; of course, Bosnia; Tajikistan; and certainly in Kashmir, where the Kashmiri Pandits have been the target of ethnic cleansing carried out as part of a campaign of terrorism. Pakistan supporters cite the threat posed by Islamic terrorists as a reason not to pressure from us the Bhutto government. But then they turn around and say that Pakistan is a stable government and that the extremists represent only a tiny fraction, a tiny minority of the population. Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that supporters of Pakistan can have it both ways. We should insist that Prime Minister Bhutto stand up to Islamic extremists and repeal the biasphemy laws that are the method of choice for abusing the human rights of Christians and abusing the human rights of other Pakistani minorities. We should insist that Pakistan bust up the terrorist network operating on Pakistani soil, a network that is spreading violence and frustrating political solutions throughout South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and even here in the United States. We should insist that Pakistan crack down on extremists. And, Mr. Speaker, in closing, until Pakistan demonstrates that it is ready to participate in the world community as a responsible player, any consideration of waiving the Pressler amendment must simply be out of the question. The article referred to follows: [From the New York Times, Mar. 20, 1995] A Network of Islamic Terrorism Traced to a Pakistan University (By John F. Burns) Peshawar, Pakistan, March 19.--Glimpsed from a taxi, there is nothing obviously sinister about the University of Dawat and Jihad. Like much of the sprawling Afghan refugee camp that surrounds it, the campus crouches unobtrusively behind high walls of sun-baked clay. Beyond a guardhouse, clusters of young men in Afghan tribal garb move about languidly. The scene could be anywhere in this tense and often lawless region along the frontier with Afghanistan. There is no police presence for miles around, and no sign of any other Government authority. In the bazaars that line the road running past the university, the name of which translates roughly as ``University of the Community of the Holy War,'' just about everybody has a hidden Kalashnikov assault rifle, and a sharp eye for anything deemed intrusive, especially Westerners. But nothing in this atmosphere of suspicion and imminent violence compares with the university, which for years has had a reputation as a haven for Muslim militants from Arab and Asian countries. Now, top Pakistani police officials say, it is under investigation as a possible training ground for terrorists who have struck in the Philippines, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and even, investigators now believe, in the 1993 explosion of a 500-pound bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center in New York that killed six people and wounded more than 1,000. This weekend, American investigators were working behind the scenes here with Pakistan's intelligence services, scouring for links to the bombing as well as the recent attack on Americans by gunmen who leapt from a taxi 12 days ago in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, shooting to death two Americans who were driving to work at the United States Consulate. Officials interviewed here said today that the questioning of six suspects captured a week ago has led to further arrests. A top police official said details of the newest arrests would not be made known for ``a couple of days.'' ``But,'' he said, ``these are not innocent citizens, I can tell you.'' So feared has the university become that even men reared in the harsh gun culture of the Afghan frontier wilt at the sight of its gates. ``Don't go in there, sir, it is too dangerous. They can kill you,'' said Syed Gul, the taxi driver, watching anxiously in his rearview mirror for any sign that a black pickup truck idling at the campus gates might decide to give chase. Mr. Gul, one of 1.5 million Afghan refugees living around Peshawar, then sped away from the campus at Babbi, 20 miles east of Peshawar. With its obsessive secrecy and hostility to outsiders. Al Dawat, as it is known, remains little but a name to most people in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. But what has not been so much of a secret is that Peshawar, and the wild valleys and passes of the tribal areas along the Afghan border, have emerged as one of the most active training grounds, and sanctuaries, for a new breed of international terrorists fighting a jihad--a holy war--against Governments and other targets they regard as enemies of Islam. Until the 1990's, Peshawar received scant notice among known terrorist training centers like Beirut, Teheran or Tripoli in the search for groups who hijack aircraft, assassinate public figures, and plant bombs. But the two terrorist attacks involving American targets, have swung the spotlight on this ancient city at the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, where violence and intrigue are as much a part of the city's legacy as the towering battlements of its 19th-century fort. Investigators, including a 50-member team from the F.B.I., are working in the knowledge that almost all the groups that have punctuated life in Karachi with drive-by shootings and mosque bombings have ties to Peshawar, either to the Arab-led terrorist underground or to gangs of gun-runners and heroin- traffickers who are based in the frontier province's tribal districts, historically ungovernable areas along the border with Afghanistan. In the World Trade Center bombing, the clues being followed by the investigators are clearer. Beginning last weekend, Pakistani police working with officials of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. began a round of arrests in Peshawar that have flowed form the discovery that Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, a prime suspect in the New York attach, used Peshawar as a base for several years. He was seized in a joint American-Pakistan's capital, on Feb. 7, and immediately deported to face trail in New York. Raid in Islamabad shakes militants The arrest of Mr. Yousef in Islamabad set off a chain of events that has rocked the Peshawar underground and resulting this weekend in the issuing of a police alert for two men identified as Abdul Karim and Abdul Munim, who the officials said are Mr. Yousef's brothers. The six men seized a week ago are being held at a jail at Adiala, outside Islamabad, on suspicion of involvement in the World Trade Center bombing and a botched attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his visit in January in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. They included three Arabs, an Iranian, a naturalized Pakistani born in Syria and a native-born Pakistani. Nervousness among American officials over the possibility of revenge killings led the top diplomat at the United States Consulate in Peshawar, Richard H. Smyth, to announce on Friday that the American Club in the city, long a favorite gathering place for diplomats, relief workers and others, would be closed temporarily, as would the American school. Similar steps were taken in Karachi. The risks for Americans seem unlikely to diminish, at least in the short run, especially if Pakistan follows through on another move that top officials here hinted at today--closing Al-Dawat University. ``It has to go,'' one official said, noting that the questioning of Mr. Yousef, and of others seized since, have confirmed that his links in Peshawar were mainly to an Afghan group headed by Abdul Rab Rasool Sayyaf, the university's founder. Mr. Sayyaf, a militant Muslim with strong anti- American leanings, established the school and recruited its staff and students in the mid-1980's. In many ways, Al-Dawat serves as a symbol for the events that turned Peshawar into a terrorist haven. The a law-abiding reputation, going back to the days when Britain, as the colonial power in what was then India, fought fierce battles against the Pathans who dominate both sides of the border with Afghanistan, and eventually allowed them a broad degree of autonomy. In the idiom of 19th-century Britain, ``the frontier'' became synonymous with fierce warriors, banditry, and a culture of guns and revenge. a flood of arms after soviet sweep But the uneasy balance with the border tribes that was achieved by Britain, and later Pakistan, tipped after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. The huge amounts of weapons and money that the United States, Saudi Arabia and other nations poured into supporting Afghan groups established in Peshawar unleashed new levels of lawlessness on the frontier. This anything-goes atmosphere encouraged large numbers of foreigners--mainly Arabs but also Asians, Europeans and some Americans--to volunteer to fight with the Afghan guerrilla groups. According to a high-ranking Pakistani military officer, 25,000 of these volunteers were trained with assistance from Pakistan's military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, during the 1980's. Some died in Afghanistan, and some went home after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989, but others remained in and around Peshawar or across the border in Afghanistan, ``looking for other wars to fight,'' as the Pakistan's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, put it in Karachi last week. According to Western diplomats familiar with the investigations, current American estimates of the number of Arabs, Asians and others currently active in terrorist groups with bases here run to about 1,000. Of sanctuary inside Afghanistan, with Afghan armed groups that have Muslim fundamentalist leanings, including Mr. Sayyaf's. Police officials in Peshawar said this appeared to have been the pattern with Mr. Yousef. ``He'd stay here for a few days, then disappear into Afghanistan for months, then come back,'' the official said. Others are said to have taken refuge in what are known here as the ``inaccessible'' areas of the frontier, meaning regions where no Pakistani laws apply. But a large number, according to diplomats and police officials, still live in and around Peshawar, using as cover some of the 18 Arab educational and relief organizations that registered with the Pakistani authorities during the Afghan war, among them the Al Dawat University. ``Some of these organizations actually do what they are supposed to be doing,'' one diplomat said, scanning a list of the groups. ``But others are just fronts for terrorism.'' Another high-ranking diplomat said that Pakistani officials had been aware for years that at Al Dawat and other training centers, youths were being taught that Muslims had a duty to join in an international brotherhood that could avenge the humiliations Muslims are said to have suffered at the hands of the west. ``They are taught that the Islamic renaissance has to be born out of blood, and that only by striking at the West will Islam ever be able to dictate events in the world, as events have been dictated up to now by the West,'' the diplomat said. a flow of guerrillas to other conflicts According to the diplomats, intelligence reports in recent years have suggested that militants trained here have taken part in almost every conflict where Muslims have been involved. The diplomats said Muslims trained here have fought in places including Mindanao, the largest of the Philippine islands, where Mr. Yousef is said to have had links with a Muslim insurgency; the Indian-held portion of the state of Kashmir, where 500,000 Indian troops and police officers are tied down by a Muslim revolt; the former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan; Bosnia; and several countries in North Africa that face Muslim rebellions, including Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. Like previous Pakistani Governments, Ms. Bhutto's has responded to Western pressures cautiously, fearing a backlash from powerful Muslim groups within Pakistan. But many senior Pakistani officials resent Western pressures, saying that the terrorist groups that became established here got their start under politics that the United States and other Western countries eagerly supported, so long as the target was the Soviet Union. ``Don't forget, the whole world opened its arms to these people,'' one senior official said. ``They were welcomed here as fighters for a noble cause, with no questions asked. They came in here by the dozens, and nobody thought to ask them: when the Afghan Jihad is over, are you going to get involved in terrorism in Pakistan? Are you going to bomb the World Trade Center? ``The Afghan War was a holy war for everybody, including the Americans, and nobody bothered to think beyond it,'' the official said.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was in Twinsburg, OH, in my district, Ohio's 13th District in northeast Ohio, visiting the community center and meeting with parents, children, teachers, and nurses and talking about the Women, Infants and Children's Program and the School Lunch Program. Some of the people I met with, some of the parents, were unemployed. Most of them were working part-time or full-time, generally for minimum wage. Often many of these parents, basically all of those parents' children were getting school lunches, because their income was not high enough that they paid full price for these lunches. Those parents, those teachers, those children, especially those nurses, could simply not understand why extremists in this body, in Congress, want to cut school lunches, want to cut senior nutrition, want to cut programs like Women, Infants and Children; Programs that have been in effect, in terms of the School Lunch Program, for literally five decades, started by Harry Truman in 1946. Other programs, like WIC, that have been in effect and working for a couple of decades. Programs that help young people grow, help pregnant women, help those children with nutrition and counseling. The WIC program, especially. And this was what was called a WIC center in Twinsburg. The WIC Program is not just a giveaway program. It is a program where working class mothers come in with their children, come in while they are pregnant and get some nutritional supplements and are counseled, generally less educated women are counseled about nutrition while they are pregnant to make sure they have a healthy baby. The, after the baby is born, for the next 5 years they come into WIC regularly and are counseled about nutrition and can get immunized, either there or are directed where they can get immunized in the first 2 years of the baby's life; all the things that we need for the future of this country. These people did not understand why the extremists in Congress want to make these cuts. What they did understand is that School lunches, Children's nutrition Programs, programs like counseling for WIC, immunizations, all these things are the investment for the future and they make sense for this country. They do understand that, OK, we might save a few dollars making cuts now, but in the end, long term, we will pay more money for welfare for children as they get older and have bad nutrition and did not have the advantages when they were younger. They are more likely to be on welfare and more likely to be in prison. And these young families did understand that. That that simply is bad public policy long term. I am a deficit hog. I voted for budget cut after budget cut after budget cut in this body. But we should not be stupid about it. There is no reason to make cuts that affect our children and affect our future the way that cutting school lunches and cutting programs like WIC and nutrition programs like that would mean. Three weeks ago this body passed an increase in military spending of $3.2 billion. The extremists here are cutting nutrition, children's long-term-for-the-future programs on the one hand and increasing military spending $3 billion on the other hand, for a military in a country where our military budget is larger than the next nine countries in the world. Yet we are increasing military spending, cutting school lunches and WIC Programs, and at the same time the extremists in this body want to see major tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers. Just recently the Republican leaders in the Committee on Ways and Means have called for an end to the alternative minimum tax. You may remember about 10 years ago President Reagan and most of the country were outraged that many large corporations in this country were able, through all kinds of use of accountants and lawyers and all their tax breaks and loopholes, literally to avoid paying any Federal tax and sometimes actually getting the government to pay them money through some rebate programs. Many large corporations fell into the category. So Congress and President Reagan enacted something called the alternative minimum tax to make sure that every large corporation in this country did, in fact, pay some corporate income tax to the Government. They want to eliminate that alternative minimum tax. On the one hand we are increasing military spending, we are eliminating a tax on major corporations-- these are corporations that cutting Nutrition Programs and School Lunch Programs and WIC Programs. In the other end of that, they want to give capital gains tax breaks which will go to the richest 1 or 2 or 3 percent in this country, in large part. The great majority of capital gains, 87 percent of capital gains cuts, go to the wealthiest people in this country. This whole Contract With America disturbs me, Mr. Speaker, because it is transferring money from the middle class to the rich. It doesn't make sense and I ask for the defeat of the rescission bill this week.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, two American diplomats lie dead and another seriously wounded after Wednesday's brutal attack in Karachi, Pakistan. These Americans were gunned down when their vehicle stopped at a traffic light on Karachi's busiest road while the employees were en route to work in the service of the United States. Mr. Speaker, Karachi is a city out of control, and Pakistan's continuing support of international terrorism has come home to roost. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has run just today an article that first appeared in the Washington Post in which Karachi is described as a ``city of violence,'' where Islamic militancy is the rule and not the exception. Mr. Speaker, this tragedy illustrates our need to stop terrorism no matter where it occurs. If American citizens in Pakistan are not safe when they are representing their country, then we must demand protection. If the Government of Pakistan cannot ensure their protection, we must take action to protect them ourselves. [From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mar. 10, 1995] Pakistan-Based Group Trains Holy Warriors (By John Ward Anderson and Kamran Khan) Karachi, Pakistan.--On the third Thursday of every month, a bus with about two dozen young men pulls away from a secret rendezvous point in this port city and travels 600 miles north to a base in Afghanistan, where the men spend 40 days in basic training for a worldwide holy war. The camp, just north of the Pakistani border town of Miram Shah, is operated by Harkatul Ansar (Movement of Friends), a radical group headquartered in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, that is sworn to fight for the global supremacy of Islam. Since 1987, more than 4,000 militants--including Pakistanis, Indians, Arabs from several countries and a small number of Americans--have been trained by the group in making bombs, throwing hand grenades and shooting assault weapons, members of the group said. ``Ours is a truly international network of genuine Muslim holy warriors,'' said Khalid Awan, who joined Harkat, as the group is popularly known, after receiving his master's degree in economics from Pakistan's Punjab University. ``We believe frontiers could never divide Muslims. They are one nation, and they will remain a single entity.'' Harkat is one of the largest and most militant Islamic groups operating in Pakistan, which critics complain has done little to keep radical Muslims from using its soil to launch terrorist attacks. Pakistant's reluctance to crack down was spotlighted last month when Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, suspected mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, fled here as a world-wide dragnet tightened around him. Yousef was arrested Feb. 7 in Islamabad when U.S. officials led Pakistani police to the guest house where he was staying. Pakistan has been a haven for armed Islamic militants since the early 1990s, when dozens of fundamentalist groups and thousands of soldiers who had fought a jihad, or holy war, to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan began searching for new theaters in which to wage battle. The groups have continued to thrive here and in Afghanistan because of the easy availability of cheap and sophisticated weapons--many can be traced to more than $1 billion per year the United States gave to Afghan militias based in Pakistan during the war against the Soviets--and because large tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier are unpatrolled and lawless. Politicians in Pakistan have been reluctant to launch a committed effort to shut down the groups because they have the support of the country's powerful Muslim clergy. The groups openly raise funds and recruit members. ``The government at the highest levels is sufficiently frightened of these people, but its ability to crack down on them is very limited,'' said a Western diplomat in Islamabad. ``No, they are not doing enough but it's not a lack of will-- it's that the government here is not terribly efficient.'' Observers say Pakistan has put itself in the difficult position of allowing the groups to operate in the country to fight against Indian troops in the disputed region of Kashmir, and at the same time trying to prevent the groups from using Pakistan as a base for operations against other countries. The Pakistani government did not respond to requests to provide a spokesman to answer detailed questions. In a brief telephone interview, Foreign Secretary Najamuddin A. Sheikh said the fueled by sectarian clashes between Pakistan's majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims. Often, he said, the extremism is encouraged in religious schools, which receive millions of dollars a year in state funding and are prime feeders for militant Islamic organizations. Sheikh, the Foreign Ministry's highest-ranking civil servant, said Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has proposed registering the schools as one way to moderate them. India has long charged that Pakistan is involved in ``state terrorism'' by arming, training and funding Muslim insurgents waging a brutal civil war in Kashmir. In 1993, the United States warned Pakistan that unless it stopped supporting Kashmir insurgents, the country would be put on the U.S. list of terrorist states. Since then, say U.S. officials, Pakistan has significantly reduced its role in the conflict. Last month, during a state visit by Bhutto to the Philippines, President Fidel Ramos protested that Pakistanis were fighting alongside Muslim extremists battling for autonomy against his government. Russia has charged Pakistanis are aiding the separatist battle in Chechnya. Following complaints by moderate Arab governments in Egypt, Algeria and Jordan that Pakistanis were involved in extremist movements in their countries, Pakistan asked Afghan aid groups--many were really fronts for militant organizations-- to leave. That forced some groups underground and pushed others into Afghanistan. ``They have a right to protest, but we have our duties to perform as Muslims,'' said Tariq Cheema, 26, a member of the radical Markaz Dawatul Arshad organization, which aims to establish ``the rule of God'' throughout the world. While conducting street-corner recruiting in Karachi, Cheema passed out a list of names and addresses of 56 Markaz members killed last year during fighting against government troops in Tajikistan, the Philippines, Bosnia and Kashmir. Since the end of the Afghan war in 1989, Pakistani officials estimate at least 10,000 Islamic militants have been trained by various groups in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. ``Arabs run exclusive training camps for the recruits of Middle Eastern origin,'' a leading member of Harkat claimed, adding the instructors are Sudanese, Egyptian and Libyan veterans of the Afghan war. ``We only go to those camps for advanced military training that involves operating antiaircraft guns and tanks'' and laying land mines, he said. Funding often comes from Muslims who think moderate Arab governments are becoming too Westernized. ``Funding for our organization largely comes from Saudi Arabia, where several philanthropists are not happy with the way the country is governed by the ruling family,'' said a Markaz activist. A Harkat official said his organization's largest donor is a group of Muslim merchants from India who now live in England.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I visited three elementary schools in my district, Hamilton and Homewood in Lorain, OH, and Franklin Elementary in Elyria. I talked with students, parents, cafeteria workers, teachers, and administrators about school lunches. The school lunch program, they told me, begun in 1946 by Harry Truman, is a Government program that works. They simply said ``Don't mess with it.'' Almost one in three children in the Lorain and Elyria public school systems, middle American cities, certainly qualify for some type of assistance in school lunches. That is good, sound, fundamental policy. It helps the kids, for sure. For some of them it is the most nutrition they will get in a day. Just ask some of the physicians and nurses in Lorain County whether they think the school lunch program is a good investment. I am a budget deficit hawk, but cutting school lunches for working- class and poor kids, Mr. Speaker, simply goes too far. Republican extremists last week, though, increased military spending by $3.2 billion, and Republican extremists announced that they will pass a capital gains tax break for the wealthiest 1 percent of our society. Mr. Speaker, this is extremism. It should be rejected.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, once again the truth is revealed. Republicans want to cut Social Security today, and then abolish Social Security tomorrow. Listen to this editorial from American Civilization, the rule book for the extremist wing of the Republican Party. As we bury the rest of the welfare state in preparation for the 21st century, it is time to slay the largest government entitlement program of all, Social Security. The Republicans say they will not cut Social Security and Medicare. Then when they get caught they admit they want to. Then they deny it, then they admit again they plan to cut Social Security and cripple Medicare. The Speaker should come clean on Social Security before he accuses others of lying about it. In the one chance this year to save Social Security from major cuts, every Republican but six voted against an amendment to exempt Social Security. Social Security is a covenant between the American people and the Government. It should not be violated.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I am not a lawyer, but you can drive a truck through that kind of language, and anybody that feels harmed or hurt in any way by a regulation, whether it is a business that is trying to run around a regulation and wants to dispose of waste in Lake Erie or an environmental group that thinks they have been wronged by a regulation, they always can find a way to fit their complaint into that language and open this back up. There will be plenty of rules and regulations suggested or handed down by agencies that will go through all of taxpayers more money, and it is simply not being honest with the public to say that it is not really going to cost more money, because in the end it is going to cost government a whole lot more money. It is going to mean more judicial review, more expense, more litigation, more government, more bureaucracy. It simply does not make sense.