Dan Burton

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Does the law require that?

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I am happy to yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, let me first say that I just listened with great interest to my colleague from Ohio. I think she is right on the money. I would like for my friends who are paying attention to this special order to know that this is a bipartisan concern about the circumvention of the will of the people and the will of the Congress. I think it is wrong. Mr. Speaker, there were many of us that worked on the draft legislation for the loan guaranty program with Mexico. In the draft legislation we had many conditions spelled out to protect the American taxpayer and to put in some other things that were very important to our hemisphere. I am the chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. We put things in there that we thought would put the heat on Castro in Cuba and stop Mexico from giving aid, direct or indirect aid to Castro. We wanted to put $3 billion in hard assets in American banks to protect American taxpayers against a loss or a default. All those things are circumvented by this Executive order. I think the gentlewoman is right on the money. The people of this country ought to be outraged, as well as their gentlewoman on her fine remarks. Tonight I want to talk about another subject, however, because I think it is very, very important and it bears upon the credibility of this Government and this administration. The Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Ron Brown, who is the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is once again under fire by the media for possible improprieties that took place since he became the Secretary of Commerce. However, before I get into that, I want to talk a little bit about Ron Brown's background, because I think it is extremely important that my colleagues know what this gentleman has done over the past several years. Mr. Speaker, back in the early 1990's, in 1991, Ron Brown was involved with an organization called the Chemfix Technologies Corp. The Commerce Secretary has a history of questionable business dealings. This is one of them. None of the charges have been adequately investigated by the FBI or this body regarding Chemfix or any of these other allegations I'm going to talk about tonight. We need to have answers to these questions. In 1991, columnist Michael Kinsley wrote about Brown's conflicts of interest in the Washington Post. Kinsley's allegations were followed by a television report on ``20/20.'' While chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Brown was a partner in the law firm of Patton, Boggs, and Blow in Washington, DC. This firm represented BCCI here in the United States. Brown was also a member of the board of directors of this company, Chemfix Technologies, a Louisiana-based company that helps cities dispose of sewage. Right when the Democrat National Convention was being decided, the committee was meeting to decide whether they were going to hold its 1992 convention in New York, that city gave Chemfix a $210 million contract to dispose of sewage from New York. This deal was made despite complaints from numerous other cities about Chemfix's poor operations, their past performance. Right after the deal was struck, before the convention, Ron Brown purchased 5,000 shares of stock in this company. The ``20/20'' report on Chemfix stated that the city of New Haven was so dissatisfied with Chemfix's performance that it tried to get out of the deal. Chemfix refused, and Ron Brown made $100,000 on the stock options. Brown's firm, Patton, Boggs, and Blow, also made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing Chemfix's legal work. This all happened during Brown's tenure as chairman of the Democrat Party. In responding to Kinsley's column, Brown stated that he had nothing to do with the fact that Chemfix was awarded the $210 million New York contract, and that the contract played no role in the selection of New York City as the site of the 1992 Democrat convention. Right. But as Kinsley wrote, ``There is only one reason a Louisiana sewage company would want a Washington lawyer high in Democrat politics on its board, and it's not because of his knowledge of sewage.'' That is the first time, not the first time, but it is the first glaring example of some possible improprieties on the part of Mr. Brown. Then, in 1993, a gentleman named Binh Ly from Florida came to see me to talk to me about a deal that was allegedly made between Mr. Brown and a man named Mr. Hao and the Government of Vietnam to normalize relations with that country, even though we had never had an accounting of the POW-MIA's that are still missing. Mr. Ly said that the Government of Vietnam had promised to give Ron Brown a large sum of money, $700,000, as a down payment for his influence to normalize relations with that country. Members will recall that this country had made a commitment under President after President after President since the Vietnam war that we would never normalize relations with Vietnam until we had a full accounting of all those POW's and MIA's. It still has not been done, and yet the normalization process has started because of Ron Brown's efforts. In February of 1993 Binh Ly, this gentleman I'm talking about, was interviewed by the FBI. The FBI gave him a lie detector test, a 6-hour lie detector test, which he passed. The FBI, after the lie detector test, gave him a briefcase equipped with a tape recorder and a beeper so he could tape conversations between him and Mr. Hao about Mr. Brown's activities. In April of 1993, the FBI mysteriously took the beeper and the briefcase back, claiming budget cuts, and discontinued the investigation. I might add that Mr. Ly told me that he asked the FBI ``Why are you taking the beeper back, because we are trying to get evidence on Mr. Brown,'' and the FBI man winked at him and said it was, it is because of budget cuts, and the inference was he was getting orders from the top to curtail the investigation into Mr. Brown. A grand jury investigation was not begun until after an extensive article about Ron Brown's Vietnam contacts had been published in the U.S. News and World Report in the summer of 1993. After denying, Mr. Brown, Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce, after denying that he had never met with Mr. Hao, Ron Brown admitted later that year in September, 1993, that he met with him not once, not twice, but three times, the third time being at the Department of Commerce, just like Binh Ly claimed. In October of 1993, ABC News and other news organizations reported that the FBI had obtained two notes faxed from Mr. Hao to the Vietnamese Government stating that his first two meetings with Ron Brown had been a big success, further verifying Binh Ly's statements. Also in October the New York Times reported that the FBI had uncovered evidence of wire transfers indicating that the Vietnamese Government was preparing to establish a special bank account in Singapore, backing up Binh Ly's statements that the Vietnamese Government was going to pay Ron Brown $700,000 through this bank in Singapore. They had proven, the FBI had proven, that there was a bank in Singapore, that there were wire transfers, just as Ly said, and the amount was not disclosed, but we estimated, we believe it was the $700,000 that had been promised in the agreement. In December of 1993 the Federal prosecutor conducting the investigation in Miami, the grand jury investigation, attempted to terminate the investigation without even calling Binh Ly to testify. We contacted him and said that Binh Ly should testify because he was the principal witness, so the special prosecutor put Binh Ly before the grand jury only when he was ordered to do so by his superiors. This was clearly not a very aggressive prosecutor. I might add, this prosecutor was not the local U.S. District Attorney in Miami, whom you would normally think would conduct the grand jury investigation. It was a special assistant to Janet Reno, the Attorney General, who was ordered to go down there and conduct the grand jury investigation. They then said to me and other Members of Congress, they did not say Ron Brown was innocent. They said they did not have enough evidence, in their opinion, to indict him. Because they said they did not have enough evidence to indict him, then he was able to keep his job as Secretary of Commerce and everything went on as usual. The fact of the matter is, this Congress has never had a complete report on that investigation by the Justice Department. Now that we have a majority in this Congress on the Republican side, we are trying to get a complete documented report from the Department of Justice on the entire investigation, starting with the FBI. We are going to continue to work on that until we get to the bottom of it. Now we come to the latest allegations that have been in the paper this past week. These are pretty damning as well. These latest allegations are about a lady named Nolanda Hill and Ron Brown, and are very serious and demand a very thorough investigation. In a nutshell here is what happened. A company owned by Nolanda Hill defaulted on a $40 million debt that the Federal Government inherited, the taxpayers inherited, from bankrupt savings and loans. At the same time, that same company was paying $12,000 a month to another company that was co-owned by Nolanda Hill and Ron Brown, so while taxpayers of this country, and the same company that was in bankruptcy, she was paying $12,000 a month to another company in the same office that was owned by her and Ron Brown. The second company, First International Communications, was located in the very same office as the company that defaulted on the loans. Now let us talk about First International Communications. In the 1980's Ron Brown and Nolanda Hill formed a partnership. They named it First International Communications. Nolanda Hill owned a second company named Corridor Broadcasting. Corridor Broadcasting borrowed $26 million from two savings and loans in Texas and New Mexico to buy two television stations, one here in Washington, DC, WFTY, Channel 50, and the other in Needham, MA, WUNI, Channel 27. Corridor also borrowed an additional $23 million from another savings and loan. Nolanda Hill's company, Corridor, eventually defaulted, as I said, on both of the loans, the savings and loans failed, and the $40 million in bad debt was inherited by the taxpayers, the Federal Government. Interestingly enough, Corridor Broadcasting, Nolanda Hill's company, and First International Communications, the partnership between Nolanda Hill and Ron Brown, as I said, were in the same office. Ron Brown has stated repeatedly that he never invested any of his own money in First International. He also stated many times for the record that there were never any ties between Corridor Broadcasting and First International. However, it was just revealed this month that First International's only substantial source of income was the $12,000 a month in interest payments coming from Corridor Broadcasting on a loan of $875,000. Here you have Ron Brown saying there is no connection between the two companies, and yet there was a loan from one to the other and the defunct company that was in default to the taxpayers to the tune of $40 million was paying $12,000 a month in interest to the other company, while Ron Brown said there was no connection. In other words, at the same time that Corridor Broadcasting could not afford to repay $40 million in debts that had been inherited by the taxpayers, it could still afford to pay $12,000 a month in interest to Nolanda Hill and Ron Brown. Ron Brown's lawyer has recently stated that Ron Brown did not know that First International had made a loan to Corridor Broadcasting and was not directly involved in First International's operations. Here are some questions that need to be answered: If Ron Brown was one of the two partners in the firm, how could he be ignorant of the firm's sole source of income? It is beyond comprehension. If Ron Brown did not invest any of his own money in First International, what was the purpose of including him in the partnership? Was it to use his influence, first as chairman of the Democrat Party and then as Secretary of Commerce? Three. Where did the $875,000 come from that First International loaned to Corridor Broadcasting? Nobody said where did that $875,000 come from? Where did it come from? It has been alleged, as I said before, that the Government of Vietnam wanted to pay Ron Brown $700,000 for his influence to get the embargo on Vietnam lifted, and according to the FBI, there was an electronic transfer from the Government of Vietnam to this bank in Singapore, and here all of a sudden we have a mysterious $875,000 turning up that was invested into this corporation. And Ron Brown said he does not know anything about it. If Corridor Broadcasting could not afford to repay the taxpayers of this country, the Resolution Trust Corporation, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, how could it afford to pay $12,000 a month in interest to Secretary Brown and Nolanda Hill? Let us talk further about Ron Brown and this possible payoff that we were talking about. Ron Brown was nominated to be Secretary of Commerce in December 1992. He was confirmed by the Senate in January 1993. He owned a share of First International Communications throughout 1993, although he did not pay anything for it, but he owned a share in it. He did not pay anything for it. Listen to this. He owns a share in it and did not pay anything for it, yet he received roughly $135,000 in payments from First International in 1993. That is a pretty good investment. It didn't cost you anything and you get $135,000. This was the year that Corridor Broadcasting's loans were finally written off by the Federal Government. So while Corridor Broadcasting is going down the tubes, First International, which is getting $12,000 a month in interest payments, paid him another $135,000. In December 1993, he sold his share of the company back to Nolanda Hill because of the bad publicity, and, get this, he did not pay anything to own part of the company, but he got between $250,000 and $500,000 for his one share of stock. He got $135,000, then when he sells his share of stock back, he gets almost half a million dollars with no investment. However, it has just been revealed that in 1994, Nolanda Hill spent an additional $190,000 paying off personal debts of Ron Brown. Their attorneys state that this was part of the transaction in which Secretary Brown liquidated his holdings in First International. So we have got $135,000. We have got between $250,000 and $500,000. Now we have another $190,000. And all this with no investment. It is unclear if this $190,000 was part of the payment listed on Secretary Brown's 1993 financial disclosure statement or if it was in addition to that amount. Here are some questions: If Secretary Brown did not invest any of his own money in First International and most of its ventures were total failures, how could his shares be worth almost a half million dollars? Everything was a failure. He put no money into it. How could it be worth a half a million dollars? Did Nolanda Hill repurchase these shares at fair market value, or was this a gift to Secretary of Commerce Brown? Three. What was the total amount Secretary Brown received from Nolanda Hill? Was the $190,000 Nolanda Hill used to pay Ron Brown's debts part of the money reported on Secretary Brown's financial disclosure report for 1993 or was it in addition to that amount? Four. If Ron Brown did not invest any money in First International, then all the money he was paid when he divested himself should be considered a capital gain. Question: Did Secretary Brown pay capital gains taxes on all these funds, including the $190,000 paid to him last year to pay his debts? There is another corporation in this same office, a third one, called Know, Inc. Nolanda Hill owned a third company, Know, Inc. Oddly enough, Know, Inc. was in the same office as Corridor Broadcasting and First International. In 1992, Nolanda Hill loaned Ron Brown $78,000 through this third corporation. We have got $135,000, he got $190,000 and he got somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000. Through this third corporation he got $78,000 so he could pay off another debt. According to the Washington Post, Brown needed to repay a debt to the National Bank of Washington before his Senate confirmation hearings began. Nolanda Hill--now, get this--she loaned him $78,000 to pay off his debts. And now Nolanda Hill later forgave the debt and did not require Ron Brown to pay it back. So here he is now. He has got $135,000, $190,000, probably a half a million dollars, and now he has got $78,000 in a note that is forgiven. All with no investment. Questions: If Nolanda Hill could not afford to repay the taxpayers any of the $40 million she owed, where did she keep coming up with all this money for Ron Brown? Did Secretary Brown report this $78,000 as income on his financial disclosure statement? Did Secretary Brown report this $78,000 on his income companies, if they were all located in the same office? Could it have been to shield herself from paying off legitimate debts that the taxpayers are now paying to the tune of $40 million? The FDIC announced this week that they are launching an investigation of Nolanda Hill's defaulted loan. In addition, 14 Senators have written to Attorney General Reno to ask for a thorough investigation of this entire matter. A thorough investigation of this whole mess is absolutely necessary and an independent counsel is probably necessary. Congress in my opinion must also continue to investigate all of these nefarious activities or apparently nefarious activities of Ron Brown that have taken place for the last 5 or 6 years that have garnered him probably millions of dollars. I would just like to say that we have tried for the past couple of years to get an independent counsel to investigate the allegations of the Vietnamese affair and we have done that without success. We have brought to the attention of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, and I believe that the gentleman is already looking into this and hopefully we will have a very thorough investigation not only into these latest allegations against Ron Brown but also into these others. I hope the FDIC and the Internal Revenue Service will take a very close look at his ethics reports as well as his income taxes, because if all of that stuff is on his income tax reports, he must have paid a heck of a lot of money in the last couple of years.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I understand guerrilla tactics. See, some of my good friends are smiling on that side of the aisle. I remember when we were in the minority. Sometimes there were closed rules and sometimes the rights of the minority--we were then the minority--were violated, and we had to do something. So I understand that. I understand that. But our side has pledged and the Committee on Rules chairman has just stated that we wanted to be as fair as possible and have open rules. And toward that end, you have an open rule before you right now and there has been debate going on ad infinitum on this particular piece of legislation. But let me just tell you, I serve not only on the old Committee on Government Operations, but also the Committee on International Operations, the former Committee on Foreign Affairs, and it has been my observation, and I think the observation of everybody in the majority, that every single dilatory tactic that can be employed is being employed to slow down the progress on the Contract With America. It is very evident. And I think anybody who watches the deliberations of this body knows that every one of these tactics are being employed. Every one of these tactics are being employed, not because you have alternative ideas that are good for America but because you do not want the Contract With America, which is supported by probably 75 percent of Americans, to be heard on this floor. The American people need to know that, and they will know that, the people of this country will see that very, very clearly. So I would just like to say to those of you who suffered in this last election and do not apparently have any ideas with which to do combat with the Contract With America that it would be in your interests to let open rules come down in an orderly manner, and conduct the business of this House. If you do not do that, we are going to get the Contract With America to this floor, and they are going to be voted on. If we have to stay here every night for months on end, we are going to get that done. And the American people, when they see the tactics you are employing to slow down what they wanted and what they elected us to do, it is going to cost you even more dearly in 1996.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, that was a great speech, but actions speak louder than words, and anybody watching these proceedings knows what you are doing.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I would not yield. I would just like to say that if we accept the amendment, there is no necessity to waste the House's time on two votes that are not necessary to drag this thing out. The people of this country want us to get on with the Contract With America, and I wish the minority would let us do what the people of this country want, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If I may reclaim my time, I would just like to say it has just been brought to my attention that the gentleman's amendment was not presented before the committee, but I would like to say, and I do not want to prolong this because we have to get on with the business of the House, if an amendment----

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I will not yield.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, it should be apparent to every Member of this body that the chairman of the committee who is handling this bill agreed to accept the amendment that was just voted upon, they agreed to accept it. And then they allowed the minority 20 minutes to debate it after having said they would accept it. Once again, they said they would accept the amendment, and then the minority called not only for a rollcall vote but also a quorum call. This is a deliberate attempt on the part of the minority to drag this debate out, to hold up the Contract With America, and the people across this country are not going to accept it. They are going to know it. I do not want to belabor this and take the full 5 minutes, but I just want to say to my colleagues in the minority: If there is a need for a vote on an amendment, let us vote on it. I would just like to say to my colleagues, do not use these kind of tactics when we accept the amendment. If we accept the amendment, let us get on with the business of the House and the Contract With America. If you do not have anything to say, do not drag it out. I would like to point out one more time the committee chairman and the committee said they would accept the amendment. There was no controversy about the amendment. There was no need for debate. There was no need for a vote. And yet they called not only one vote----

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Briefly I would be happy to yield to my colleague.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the people of this country spoke last November. But it is apparent to anyone who is paying attention to what is going on in this House that the Democratic Party is doing everything they can to derail the Contract With America. They are proposing hundreds of amendments to slow down the process. All I want to say is that it is the Democrats to come down here and complain about what the Republicans are doing after the way they have run this House for the last 40 years.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, tonight I was going to take a 1- hour special order to talk about Whitewater, the Arkansas Development Financial Authority, and possible involvement by Members of the White House in these endeavors. However, because of the parliamentary debate that has taken place on the floor today, and because I want to make sure I comply with parliamentary procedures, I have decided to defer my special order until next Wednesday, at which time I will go into that, and make sure we comply with our great Parliamentarian's rulings.

Mr. BURTON

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, this is a very good bill. It takes a giant step toward relieving the burdens that we have unduly placed on cities and States around this country. It is a great step in the right director. There is, however, one part of the bill that I think needs addressing, and toward that end the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh], the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Chrysler], and myself have an amendment we are going to propose tomorrow which we think is very important. We want to make sure when we stop these unfunded mandates, that we do not give an advantage to the public sector over the private sector. So wherever there is an undue advantage given to the public sector because of this legislation over a private business that is in competition with the public business or public utility, we ought to make sure there is parity. We are going to propose this amendment tomorrow. We think it addresses this problem. If we do not get it passed tomorrow, I implore the chairman of the Committee on Government Operations to look at this legislation which we will introduce later on in the session. Mr. Chairman, I hope you will take a hard look at that.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Oh my. I will get into that more at length later, and I thank the gentleman.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin] for yielding, and I do not want to prolong the discussion, but what I think would be helpful for the American people is if maybe we could have some debates, not the English style debates we were talking about, where we could get two people on the gentleman's side and two on our side to come down and to debate at length the subject of the economy and how we are going to deal with it. One of the things that I was going to take issue with and will be when I have my special order here in a few short minutes was the issue of interest rates that the gentleman from California talked about. When Jimmy Carter was President, interests rates went to 21.5 percent----

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Because the inflation rate got out of control, and Mr. Volcker thought he had to do that to choke off inflation, and, when President Reagan came in and cut the top tax rate, which is not talked about very much, we ended up with seeing interest rates going down dramatically along with inflation. So, when we start talking about, and the Democrat minority starts talking about, interest rates being out of control because of our policies, which we are talking about right now, I think we need to look at history and see that the real problem that was created as far as interest rates and inflation last time occurred primarily under Democrat administrations.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. That was a fact.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Nominally? Twenty-one and a half percent?

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say to my colleague and the gentleman from Illinois, what I'd like to do, if we could, is maybe we could sit down at some point and decide on the two or three topics, and come down with two Members on each side, and have some real, in-depth debates that the American people, who may be tuning in, can watch and get both perspectives.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call this entire body's attention to the accomplishments of a young man from my district. Bobby Cave is 15-year-old freshman at Greenwood High School, Greenwood, IN, and his parents are Mr. & Mrs. Robert Cave. On Sunday, January 8, Bobby won the national Punt, Pass & Kick championship before a national television audience. Mr. Speaker, Punt, Pass & Kick is an annual football skills competition which gives thousands of youngsters ages 8 to 15 a chance to participate in a healthy and competitive environment. It has been going on for many years, and in fact, a member of my staff twice competed in the competitions more than 15 years ago. Mr. Speaker, Bobby Cave has proven himself to the Nation with his football skills, and in the process he has represented my district and my State in a very positive manner. I am very proud of Bobby and would like the entire U.S. Congress to recognize his accomplishments as well.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I came down here tonight to talk about the Whitewater-Vince Foster-Arkansas Development Financial Authority debacle and how it pertains to the Clinton administration and in particular, to Bill and Hillary Clinton, the President and the First Lady. But before I do that, I feel compelled to respond a little bit to my Democratic colleagues who have been down here maligning the new Republican leadership about our economic policies and how we are going to deal with the financial problems of this country over the next 5 to 10 years. First of all, let me say that we have been in power about a week to 10 days. You cannot expect everything to be accomplished in the first 10 days. After all, the Contract With America which we promised the American people before the election we will deal with is going to take a hundred days, and for us to do everything the Democrats are talking about today on the floor is virtually impossible. It is going to take a little bit of time to illuminate the American people as to where the cuts are going to take place and how extensive they will be. Now, it is true that we are going to have to reduce over the next 5 to 6 to 7 years the cost of Government by about $1 trillion to $1\1/2\ trillion. That is doable, although my Democratic colleagues would lead us to believe it cannot be done without a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. We have a lot of Government agencies that can be done away with. We have a lot of Government agencies that can be reduced. The bureaucracy in this country can be cut dramatically. On the first day of this session we reduced the congressional committee staff and the congressional budget by a third. That was just on the first day. So it can be done, but it is going to take time to go through each one of those agencies, each area of government, and cut the largesse that has been put on those budgets over the last 40 years. They have had control since 1954. They have had one House continuously since 1954 and both Houses for most of that time. So for us to turn around the runaway government that has caused these huge deficits and the problems facing this country is going to take more than 4 or 5 days. Make no mistake about this, I say to my colleagues and to anyone else who may be paying attention across this great land of ours, we are going to reduce the size of Government. We are going to reduce taxes. We are going to pass a constitutional amendment that is going to say that if we raise taxes again, we are going to have to have a 60-percent vote, not 51 percent but 60 percent, because we do not want every Congress coming in here and saying on a whim that they want to raise taxes again, which has been the case for a long, long time. We are committed to streamlining Government and getting Government off the American people's backs as much as possible, and that includes the private sector, the entrepreneur, the businessman who creates these jobs in this country, as well as the cities and States that have been crying for years, ``The Government in Washington tells us to do something and then doesn't give us the money to do it, so what we have to do is raise taxes at the local level, property taxes and sales taxes and State income taxes, to pay for it.'' So we have been putting undue burdens on local and State governments without giving them the wherewithal to deal with it. What we want to do is reduce these Federal mandates and allow States and local governments to deal with their problems themselves, closer to the people, where they can do it better and more efficiently. And all these things we are going to be talking about in the weeks and months to come. Chairman Kasich of the Budget Committee has said time and time again on national television that we are going to create a bank account, if you will, where we make the cuts in Government spending first and put it in the bank, and then we use that to spend in other areas where it is absolutely necessary, where we can make cuts, like cutting taxes. We are not going to do the spending first; we are going to do the cutting first. That is something that is new and revolutionary in this body because every time in the last 40 years, when we wanted to do something, we just raised taxes; we did not try to cut Government, we did not try to cut the bureaucracy, and we did not try to cut sector. My colleagues indicated in their comments just a few moments ago that we had to create jobs, and the implication was that Government had to help in creating jobs. Government has been the problem in stopping job creation by loading on the backs of private business people more costs and more Government mandates that they have to pay for. If a businessman in Ohio or Indiana or California is told by the Federal Government he has to do something, and it is going to cost money, that money does not come from heaven. He has to pay for that some way. The way he pays for it is by raising the price of his product. We are now in a global marketplace, a global economy. You can get people to work in Mexico for $1 an hour, including fringe benefits. So the American entrepreneur, when the Federal Government adds a mandate on his back that is going to cost money, it puts him in a less competitive position with that businessman in Mexico, who has a great advantage already at the beginning because of wage rates and other things that the Mexican Government does not require that we do. So every time our Government adds more requirements on private business in this country, it costs them money and it ends up costing jobs. So the things that they are doing over there by adding mandates and Government controls on business ends up costing Americans jobs and drives American industry out of the country where the cost of doing business is less and the American jobs go with it. So what we want to do as a new Republican majority is reduce those mandates on cities and States, reduce those mandates and controls on the private sector so we can unchain the free enterprise system, so we can be competitive in any world market competition with Japan, with Taiwan, with Korea, with England, with France, with Germany, any country. And that is going to be good for America. It is going to cause a burgeoning economy, a growing economy in the years to come. Less Government, less taxes, less Government interference, and less Government control means a stronger economy in the long term. And that is anathema to the more liberal element that believes more Government is better. They have believed for 40 years that the way to get things moving in the right direction is to sock it to the rich and give it to the poor. And the implication was that if you have money, that is bad, and we are going to take it from the rich and give it to the poor, and that redistribution of wealth is going to solve the problem. The fact of the matter is poor people don't create jobs. A man who doesn't have anything doesn't go out here and create jobs. You have to have something to invest for plant and equipment. So we have to make sure when we cut taxes, we cut it fairly, not just for the poor and the middle class, but for the people who have the wherewithal to create jobs as well. They are the ones who make the capital investment for economic expansion and more jobs. So we shouldn't have this class warfare they have been talking about for 40 years, rich against poor, because we are all in this boat together. And if we help the businessman, if we cut, for instance, capital gains, it helps everybody. It helps create jobs because there is more money for investment in new capital goods and equipment and plant expansions. So I really kind of get upset when they are attacking various classes in our country and, in effect, attacking the very system itself which we call free enterprise, because free enterprise is the way you create jobs and economic expansion, not by more Government, not by more taxes, and not by more regulation. When they start talking about Social Security, for anybody who may be paying attention that is a senior citizen, we have already said that Social Security is off the table. There are no cuts in Social Security planned, and so when they start talking about that, they are creating a red herring. I think that is pretty much what I wanted to say about my colleagues. As I said during a small colloquy with my Democrat counterparts, I hope we can have some real honest debates, maybe during special orders, in the weeks and months to come, so the American people can see very clearly where both sides are coming from. But in closing on this section of my special order, let me just say that we want to unchain the free enterprise system, we want to reduce the tax burden on American citizens, we want to reduce regulation on the private sector so they can be competitive in the world marketplace, and if we do those things, then this country is going to be much, much better off. And the thing that my Democrat colleagues fear absolutely the most is that this revolution that took place on November 8 will continue into the next election and the next election and the next election, because their philosophy is not what the American people want. And I think that is one of the reasons why you hear them squealing so much right now. comments on whitewater Now, let me talk about something that is very, very important that deals with a different subject, and it has to deal with the President of the United States and Whitewater, the Arkansas Development Financial Authority, and a lot of other things. Before we adjourned last November, I discussed several aspects of the Whitewater investigation and other related scandals surrounding President Clinton, in special orders. I said at that time that many, many questions remained to be answered, and that congressional hearings were the only way to get those answers. As we begin this new year and new session of Congress, the questions are still unanswered, and the need for hearings into possible illegal activities by the President and First lady and others need to be answered, and we need these hearings. The necessity is greater than ever. Today I am going to discuss some of the most noteworthy controversies that were created and discussed last year and that came to light. Then I will discuss some new revelations and new events that unfolded during the recess over the Christmas holiday. In the coming weeks I will be taking time on the floor to discuss a number of these areas in much more detail. First of all, let me talk about Vince Foster. He is the fellow who was the counsel to the President, assistant counsel to the President, who was found dead out at Fort Marcy Park. There is a lot of questions concerning his death. The evening of Vince Foster's death at Fort March Park, the White House chief of staff, Mack McLarty, ordered Vince Foster's office sealed. He said it should be sealed to protect everything in there because there may be some investigation concerning his death. His office was not sealed. Instead, three White House officials searched his office in the middle of the night and removed many files from his filing cabinets, and these documents were taken away. The three officials who went into his office in violation of the what the chief of staff, Mr. McLarty, said was going to be done, were Bernie Nussbaum, the President's counsel; Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, I don't know what she is doing in there, Margaret Williams; and special assistant to the President, Patsy Thomasson. It was later revealed at last August's congressional hearings before the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs that Bernie Nussbaum gave one of the files concerning Whitewater to Margaret Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff. After checking with Hillary Clinton, Ms. Williams locked the file away upstairs in Hillary Clinton's personal residence, and several days later it was given to the President's personal lawyer. When the President's First Lady was asked about this, she said it was locked away in a file and we didn't look at it. Now, that bothers me. I am not certain that they would take that out of his filing cabinet in violation of what Mack McLarty requested and what the FBI and police would request, put it in her filing cabinet upstairs, and then she says she didn't look at it. Two days later Bernie Nussbaum went back into Vince Foster's office and conducted a second search of his office, and he told the Park Police and the FBI to sit on chairs outside the office so they couldn't see what he was Here are some questions that need to be answered in hearings before the Congress. Why did Bernie Nussbaum, Ms. Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, and Patsy Thomasson, the chief personnel officer at the White House, remove files from Mr. Foster's office in the middle of the night after the office was ordered sealed? What documents were they searching for and what documents did they take out, and did they destroy any of those documents? Why weren't the Park Police and the FBI given immediate access to Mr. Foster's office? Why didn't the White House give them access to all of the documents to help them in their investigation? Why were the Whitewater files locked up in the personal residence after they were taken from Mr. Foster's office? And have investigators from the independent counsel's office been given access to all of those files? We may never known, because we don't know what was taken out of there and if any of them were destroyed. Here are some new developments. One of the projects that Vince Foster was working on was preparing 3 years of overdue tax returns for Whitewater Development Corp. He was assistant counsel to the President and was in the process of preparing tax returns for 3 years of overdue taxes for the White Water Development Corp. He had no business doing that while he was in the White House. Nevertheless, he was in the process of doing that. We can assume that these were among the Whitewater records removed from his office by Mr. Nussbaum. The President's deposition, the President gave a deposition concerning Mr. Foster given to the independent counsel, which was released as part of the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs report. And in his deposition, President Clinton said he was not aware that Vince Foster was working on tax records for Whitewater. Vince Foster was the associate counsel to the President. He was working in the White House. His responsibilities were to do what the President wanted. And yet he was working on 3 years of back tax returns for Whitewater, the President was involved in Whitewater, and he said he didn't know anything about it. The question is how could the President not know that his personal friend was working on a project of that importance? Whitewater had become a major scandal at the time and was consuming everyone's attention at the White House. Yet the President said under oath he didn't know anything about it. Now, there was a briefcase I want to talk about. Six days after Vince Foster's death, White House officials informed law enforcement officials that they had searched Mr. Foster's briefcase in the White House office. They found a suicide note written on a sheet of legal size paper torn into 27 pieces with 1 piece missing. The pieces of paper had no fingerprints on them. Torn into 27 pieces and no fingerprints on it. I don't know how that happens, but I guess it does. Two earlier searches turned up no such note. Now, get that. Two earlier searches of the office and briefcase turned up no such note, yet 6 days later they found this note torn into 27 pieces with no fingerprints on it. Here are some questions. How can a piece of paper torn into 27 pieces of fingerprints, at least a smudge on one of them, how could two previous searches of his briefcase have missed such a note? Here are some new developments. New and very serious questions have surfaced recently about Mr. Foster's briefcase. Independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, who I think is doing a very good job on this case, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr is questioning witnesses before a grand jury right now about this matter. According to press reports, two of the rescue workers who were the first ones to arrive at the scene told the FBI that they saw a black briefcase in Mr. Foster's car at Fort Marcy Park. The park police reported no briefcase when they searched his car. The two rescue workers were George Gonzalez and Todd Hall. They told the FBI about the briefcase last March. Questions: Did the briefcase in Mr. Foster's car belong to Mr. Foster? If so, how did it get from his car at Fort Marcy Park back to the office? Three, why did the park police say they found no briefcase in Mr. Foster's car? And four, why did Independent Counsel Fiske at that time make no mention of this controversy in his report? The FBI interviewed these rescue workers a full 3 months before the report was issued. So that briefcase was in that car and it was Mr. Foster's briefcase, and they found a suicide note 6 days later in the office. And it is the same briefcase. It did not just fly there. Somebody had to take it there. That needs to be looked into by a congressional hearing as well as the special counsel, the independent counsel. Destruction of documents in Arkansas. In March 1992, during the Presidential campaign, the New York Times published a groundbreaking story on the Whitewater Development Corp. and the Clintons. Three employees of the Rose law firm, where Hillary Clinton was employed, three employees of the Rose law firm have reported that they were summoned to the Governor's Mansion by Hillary Rodham Clinton and were given records that they were told then to shred back at the law firm. They reported making at least six other trips to the Governor's Mansion during the campaign. The shredding began after the New York Times article and ran up through the election. The New York Times article implicated the President and the First Lady in Whitewater. They took these files back from the Governor's Mansion to the Rose law firm for shredding on seven different occasions. One employee said a conservative estimate would be that there were more than a dozen boxes of documents that were ultimately shredded and destroyed. In 1994, a part-time courier for the Rose law firm, a man named Jeremy Hedges, told a grand jury that he was told to shred documents from the file of Vince Foster, the man found dead at Fort Marcy Park, who was assistant counsel to the President. This guy at the Rose law firm, this young man was told to shred Vince Foster's files. This occurred after Special Counsel Robert Fiske announced in January that he would investigate Foster's death. That appears to be obstruction of justice. Here we had a possible suicide or murder case that was going to be investigated by the independent counsel or the special counsel and after the fact the Rose law firm started shredding Vince Foster's files. What were they shredding down there, why? Mr. Hedges said that he knew they were Mr. Foster's files because they had Vince Foster's initials on all of them. Here are some questions: Why were documents destroyed in Arkansas during the 1992 Presidential campaign after the New York Times reported that Hillary and Bill Clinton were involved with the Whitewater mess? We have other reports that indicate that the Whitewater files that Hillary and Bill Clinton were involved in were taken from the Rose law firm over to the Governor's Mansion before the campaign and then documents were taken back to the Rose law firm after this report by the New York Times and shredded. It appears they were the same documents, but we cannot prove that. Two, did these documents contain crucial information about the Whitewater scandal that were needed by Federal investigators? One would guess that they probably did, but we do not know that for sure. Three, why were more documents destroyed in early 1994, after Mr. Fiske announced he would investigate the death of Vince Foster? Why did they start destroying all his files at the Rose law firm? And four, what documents were destroyed? And I am not sure we will ever know the answer to that one. But we do know that they were really destroying documents down there out of the Governor's Mansion after the campaign and after Vince Foster's death. That would lead one to believe that they had something to hide. Now, Paula Casey, a conflict of interest. In 1993, Paula Casey was appointed by Bill Clinton to be the U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, AR. She had worked on his campaigns, and her husband had been appointed by Governor Clinton to close friend. Just before the election, the Resolution Trust Corporation sent the first of two criminal referrals concerning Whitewater to the U.S. attorney in Little Rock to investigate. It named the Clintons as potential beneficiaries of a check kiting scheme. Here we have this friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who is the U.S. attorney down there in Little Rock, and she had this referral from the Justice Department saying they should check this out, because there was a possibility of them being connected with a check kiting scheme. Paula Casey, friend of Bill Clinton, who was the U.S. attorney, then let the referral sit on her desk for 9 months and did not do anything about it. She did not investigate. Why did she not do that? In October 1993, the Resolution Trust Corporation sent a second criminal referral regarding Whitewater to the same attorney down there, U.S. attorney, Paula Casey. This one alleged that Madison Guarantee Savings and Loan illegally diverted $60,500 to Bill Clinton's 1984 campaign for Governor. So here is a second referral in a different case where there were funds diverted to Bill Clinton's campaign in the amount of over $60,000 illegally. In October 1993, the pressure got pretty hot, because Paula Casey formally and secretly, without telling anybody, declined to investigate the matters brought in the first referral. She said, I will not investigate them. Later that month, the RTC's referrals were reported in the press. When this happened, Paula Casey finally recused herself. So she refused to do anything, but then finally, when the press got onto it, she said, I will not get involved. I am going to recuse myself and let somebody else handle this. Here are some questions. Paula Casey was a friend and supporter of President Clinton. He gave her her job. He gave her husband a job at the State. So why did she not recuse herself from this entire matter at the very beginning, when she got that first referral from the Justice Department? She waited 9, 10 months before she did anything. She had a clear-cut conflict of interest, but she did not do anything for darn near a year. Second, how much more evidence could have been uncovered if an impartial prosecutor had been investigating this matter for the 9 months that the referral sat on U.S. Attorney Paula Casey's desk down there? And three, has Paula Casey been disciplined for her actions by the Justice Department? That is a question we ought to pose to Janet Reno, because Paula Casey certainly should be taken to task for not doing her job and letting this thing lay for at least 9 months. Let us talk about another friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dan Lassiter. Dan Lassiter was a multimillionaire in Arkansas. He was a friend and political supporter of Bill Clinton's. He contributed substantial amounts of money to Clinton's campaign for governor, and he took the Clintons to several events around the State over a period of months and years on his own private plane. Lassiter's investment company, Lassiter and Company, received millions of dollars in bond business from the State of Arkansas. Question: Why did Mr. Lassiter's company receive the lucrative bond business from the State. Did Governor Clinton use his influence to steer these contracts to Mr. Lassiter because he was a friend? It was well-known in Arkansas at that time that Dan Lassiter was involved in drugs, in cocaine. He was the subject of a joint Federal/State criminal investigation. In 1986, he plead guilty to Federal drug charges. Despite the seriousness of the charges, he spent less than 6 months in jail out of a 30-month sentence, and that was spent not in jail but in a halfway house. He never went to jail. In 1990, after he got out of the halfway house, Governor Clinton pardoned him. Questions: Why did Bill Clinton pardon Dan Lassiter? Was it because Lassiter had been a reliable contributor to this campaigns? Was it because Lassiter loaned Bill Clinton's brother Roger $8,000 to pay off a drug debt and gave him a job? Bill Clinton's brother Roger got $8,000 from Dan Lassiter to pay off a drug debt. All of these questions need to be answered in hearings. Here is a little bit more on Mr. Lassiter. Last September, the Albuquerque Journal published a major expose about political interference in the investigation of Dan Lassiter and Roger Clinton. The article quotes former Lassiter employees at the Lassiter company as telling the FBI that they left Lassiter and Company between 1982 and 1985 because of the pervasive drug use at the company. The article reported that the FBI received sworn statements from Lasater employees that there were company Christmas parties where cocaine was served in ashtrays. They had it sitting all over the house. Bill Clinton and Lasater were very close friends. They went to a lot of parties together and a lot of functions, social functions together, so this was not a distant relationship. The FBI and Arkansas State Police were cooperating in a joint narcotics investigation. State Police Investigator ``Doc'' Delaughter, and I hope everybody gets this, State Police Investigator ``Doc'' Delaughter told reporters that the investigation was closing in on Lasater. He said, ``Moneys could have been seized and planes could have been seized because we had evidence that cocaine was being used on these planes.'' Bear in mind the President flew around in a lot of these planes during several of the campaigns and on personal trips. Cocaine was being used on these planes, and they could have been seized and moneys could have been seized during the investigation. Delaughter also told the Albuquerque newspaper that the investigation was frustrated by interference by high ranking State officials appointed by Governor Clinton. Delaughter said that he twice briefed State Police Director Tommy Goodwin over the phone about the investigation. Goodwin took the calls in the Governor's personal office. He was talking to him about this drug problem and this investigation, and Goodwin, Tommy Goodwin, who was the State Police Director, he took those calls in the Governor's personal office. It is not known if Bill Clinton was in the room, but you would assume if it was the Governor's personal office he probably was there. This investigation involved Bill Clinton's brother Roger. Delaughter told the newspaper that he was prohibited by his superiors from interviewing Dan Lasater or Roger Clinton. The FBI did finally interview them, but Delaughter was told not to interview Roger Clinton, Bill Clinton's brother, or Mr. Lasater. A second State investigator, a man named Larry Cleghorn, was asked about political interference in the investigation of Lasater. He said this: ``You have to understand that we were in a State agency and our Governor was Bill Clinton. We just got done putting his brother in the penitentiary. Lasater was one of the Governor's big friends.'' The State agents alleged that the State's part of the investigation was shut down prematurely for political reasons. Lasater did eventually plead guilty to drug distribution, despite the interference by the State administration in the investigation. That was because the Federal investigation was ongoing as well. Here are some questions: Did then Governor Clinton's political appointees interfere in the investigation? It would appear they did. In fact, I think it is almost as clear as the nose on your face that they did. Two, if they did, were they ordered to do so by Governor Clinton? If that is the case, there was an obstruction of justice. Three, was Governor Clinton present in his office when the State Police Director was being briefed in the case of Clinton's brother? Four, was Governor Clinton monitoring this case, which involved his brother and his friend? Five, are these matters being investigated by the Justice Department or the Independent Counsel? And I believe the Independent Counsel is probably looking into all of this, because I have great confidence in Mr. Starr. come we will be continuing our investigation, my staff and I and others here on Capitol Hill, even though we have not had hearings, into Whitewater, the Arkansas development financial authority, the drug trafficking that was taking place and drug use, pervasive drug problem that was taking place at the hands of Mr. Lasater. We will be looking into all aspects of this investigation and trying to report this to my colleagues. I'm going to make a ``Dear Colleague'' for all the freshman Congressmen, both Democrat and Republican, who came in, so they can be kept abreast of what is going on. The fact of the matter is these questions must be answered. A lot of people across this country are saying, you know, we ought to forget about Whitewater, we ought to forget about these investigations and go on. But the problem is no one is above the law, whether it is the fellow who sweeps the streets or sets pins in a bowling alley, if they still do that, or delivers papers, or the President of the United States. If the President was involved in any kind of coverup regarding Whitewater, if there was any destruction of documents at the hands of the President or the First Lady that would obstruct the investigation into Whitewater, if the President did something to stop an investigation into drug dealing in Arkansas because this guy was his friend, if there was campaign money being given to the President's campaign that was illegal, that was being diverted through the Whitewater Development Corp., those are criminal violations. I don't care who it is, they should be investigated thoroughly. If somebody violated the law, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, no matter what their station is in life. For that reason, we will continue our investigation. We will try to force hearings here on Capitol Hill. I believe there will be hearings. I believe Mr. Starr will continue his investigation of this. Hopefully, we'll come to some kind of a conclusion within the next year. But make no mistake about it, my colleagues, we will be continuing special orders down here covering this and other topics related to Whitewater, and I hope my colleagues will pay particular attention, because it is very, very important.