Sam Farr

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the House of Representatives finally passed an International Arms Sales Code of Conduct today as part of H.R. 973, the Security Assistance Act. During the 104th and 105th Congresses, I cosponsored legislation calling for an Arms Transfer Code of Conduct on international arms sales. Many of my constituents share my concern with the escalating problem of conventional weapons proliferation and the role of the United States in foreign arms sales. If we are concerned about rogue nations acquiring conventional weapons, we must establish a multinational arms sales code of conduct. If we are concerned about human rights, we must establish a multinational arms sales code of conduct. If we are concerned about national security, we must establish a multinational arms sales code of conduct. If we learned only one lesson from the fall of the former Soviet Union, it would be that the Soviet leadership chose to fuel the international arms race at the expense of their citizens' domestic tranquility. Specifically, the bill lays out four criteria for the Administration that would restrict or prohibit arms transfers to countries that: do not respect democratic processes and the rule of law; do not adhere to internationally recognized norms on human rights; engage in acts of armed aggression; or, are not fully participating in the United National Register of Conventional Weapons. The language in H.R. 973 also directs the president to attempt to achieve the foreign policy goal of an international arms sales code of conduct with all Wassenaar Arrangement (to control weapons of mass destruction) countries. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to pass comparable legislation and close the loophole on international arms sales to countries that are undemocratic, abuse the civil rights of their citizens, are engaged in armed aggression, and fail to comply with the UN Registry of Arms.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I object to the high-handedness of my colleagues of the other party who have no qualms at all about including in this bill 30, 30 provisions that legislate on the appropriations bill. Thirty. Were any of these 30 items subject to a point of order? My colleague just made only one of them, only one of them, a point of order. Just mine, just the recycling program. Mr. Chairman, if this House truly believes that the rules ought to apply to everyone, then I want to know why the Committee on Rules singled this one out. This provision was adopted in a bipartisan fashion in the committee. My colleagues did not treat the other 30 provisions like they treated this. The real reason that they are singling this out is they do not like it, they do not want to do recycling. They should tell the world they do not want it, that they do not want to bother with the program. So they certainly kind of found a way to pervert the process so they did not have to get into the issue, by raising a point of order. There are not only 30 provisions in this bill that they are about to vote on that legislate on appropriations, there are eight items that actually change existing law. None of these were subject to a point of order, just one. I do not think this point of order has merit, and I would hope the chairman would see it as a sham and reject it.

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Pastor) for yielding me this time. I want to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). As a member of the Committee on Appropriations, I was very pleased with the bill that was worked out in a bipartisan fashion. In that bill I offered an amendment, and the amendment was adopted, and the amendment requested that the House put itself into a serious mode of trying to recycle, because the recycling program that the House now has is not running very well. We are an embarrassment in the Federal system. We are really an embarrassment. All other Federal agencies operate under a Federal Executive Order 12-873 which requires all Federal agencies to implement recycling programs. The legislative branch is the only branch that is not required to participate. The reason it is not working is because it is totally voluntary here. The failure to operate the program has been pointed out by our own House Architect, his own numbers. In testimony before the Committee on Appropriations last year, he pointed out that in this House building, in our employment of the House building, and these are the 1997 figures, we employed 8,000 workers. That is quite a figure. I do not think many people realize that that many people work for the House of Representatives. Our 8,000 workers in our building generated 4.4 million pounds of waste. For this in 1997, we earned $7.51. As was pointed out earlier, people collecting bottles on the streets, almost any Girl Scout unit earns more than that in a week or a day than we earned in an entire year. By comparison, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is just down the street, in 1997 employed 7,000 workers who generated 1 million pounds of waste. And for this they earned $29,730. They produced one-fourth the amount of waste that we did and earned thousands of times more. They use that revenue for child care purposes in the Department of Agriculture. So I offered the amendment in the Committee on Appropriations. The amendment does four things: It requires the House, Members and the administrative offices, to participate in the existing recycling program. Requires them to, not just it is up to you. It tasks the Architect with developing strategies so that the recycling program is flexible, user friendly and effective. The third thing it does is require the architect to report semiannually to the Committee on House Administration and Committee on Appropriations on the status of the program, how is it working, so we can get feedback. Fourth, it dedicates the proceeds that we would earn, and they could be considerable, from this program to the House child care center. Or, we left it in the bill, as may be determined by the Committee on Appropriations. So if we want to put that money someplace else, we have the flexibility to do it. The amendment was adopted by voice vote in a bipartisan fashion. It is necessary that we have this program because you cannot run a recycling program and just let some offices do it and other offices do not. After all, it is the same janitorial staff that cleans all of these offices. So in order to eliminate the excuses of why we cannot be what we have mandated on the rest of America, why we cannot be what all other Federal agencies have done, why we cannot be what America expects us to be, we have adopted this amendment. Now, we have before us in the rule that was just adopted the ability to strike this. No other provision of this bill, they waived all the points of order for all the others except this one. I think it is kind of a mean, reckless error. What you are saying is that we can waive points of order and, my God, we do that every week here. I remember in the supplemental just a few weeks ago, we have 3,000 Soviet scholars coming to this country, that was certainly the jurisdiction of other committees, it was never heard in committee, never debated, it was just put in the supplemental, and we all support it and nobody ever raised a point of order that it was a jurisdictional issue. We do this all the time. I think it is foolish of us to expose ourselves to the public on the embarrassment of our House. I think we all agree, we ought to be doing it. There was a lot of testimonial in the Committee on Appropriations how bad the program is working and how we can do a much better job. We know in our own homes that our kids force us to do it. We participate in this stuff. We have just praised these future leaders of America who have been our pages. Why can we not demonstrate to them that there is some meaning in our words by demonstrating that we can run this House like most people run their homes, like most businesses around this country run themselves and certainly like all other Federal agencies. Mr. Chairman, I came here with great hope that we could support this bill. But with this rule that is adopted and a point of order is raised, we are going to have to urge our colleagues to defeat it, and I think it will be an embarrassment to the United States Congress.

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I wish to be heard on the point of order.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this rule. I do so because the Committee on Rules specifically singled out one little provision in the bill and subjected it to elimination. The whole rest of the bill is safe. Any points of order against any problems in this bill are waived, except for one, just one. It is about whether this House ought to recycle. The Committee on Rules arbitrarily and with little regard simply waved their hand and said, no, the House will not recycle. This is what the effect of the rule is: We cannot adopt a mandatory recycling program. There is no recognition that the House already has a recycling program, and that it did not work. There is no recognition that the Committee on Appropriations accepted this language, and they accepted this language because they realized that it did not work, and they accepted this language in a bipartisan way because they realized that this is one part of the bill where we can make some money. The debate here tonight is about how we cut the costs. This is the one part of the bill that allows us to earn something for the trash that we produce. There is no recognition that everyone else in America has to recycle except the House of Representatives. What is so hard about recycling? What is so threatening about recycling, that this body has to strike it from this bill? What is it about recycling that scares the majority party about separating paper waste? You would think we were trying to talk about a tax increase, the way they are reacting on it. All we are asking is to recycle trash so that the House can conserve resources, reduce costs, and earn some money. The language in question says that the money earned, that the money earned from this will go to help underwrite the activities and operations of the House day care center. So by leaving this language exposed, we not only admit our reluctance to recycling, we deny our children access to better quality care. The rule stinks, and I ask for a no vote.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, my colleagues should wake up and smell the coffee. That Juan Valdez, who is in all our homes, on our television sets, telling us about the virtues of Colombian coffee, and we see him in those advertisements in every grocery store promoting that coffee, where do my colleagues think that money comes from? It comes from the Colombian Coffee Growers Association. And why are they doing it? They are paying to promote their product. Not a brand name but a generic name. Well, what is wrong with us doing the same thing? How are we going to sell agriculture around the world? We produce in agriculture, which is essentially if we really look at this, a lot of small farmers getting together and promoting a product. They have to, under this program, come up with 50 percent of the money. The Federal Government comes in only after they have initiated it and they do a match. Remember Riuniti Wine that was advertising all over America a few years ago? Where do my colleagues think the advertising for that came from? Marketing promotion from Italy to get Americans to drink Italian wine. Now, we export $60 billion worth of food around the world. Why do my colleagues think people buy our food? Because we help promote it, just like anyone would sell anything else. Well, this is the program that helps promote it. Only this program does not allow, as the author of the amendment indicated, big corporate agriculture to benefit. This program ties it to small- and medium-sized companies. He says this is big corporate welfare. Well, there is no big corporate welfare in the Seed Trade Association, in the Asparagus Association, in the Kiwi Commission, in the Prune Board, in the North American Blueberry Council, in the Catfish Institute, in the Apple Association. That is not big corporate welfare. Last time I checked, these products were being grown by small farmers, and they are trying to get their products sold. Now, why is it good for America? Because the one area where our balance of trade is strong is in agriculture. We export $60 billion and we import $30 billion. We cannot say that about any other industry in America. We are actually selling more than we are taking in. That is what it is all about. Well, this is the program that helps do it. Why would we want to undermine that program? A lot of the data being quoted is old data. In the last few years we amended this program and we said participants had to come up with a match, they had to be for small businesses, they cannot be those big conglomerates, and so we have limited the amount of funding that can be given to anybody. This helps sell American agriculture. It is the only way we are going to be able to sell it. Support this program. It is not big corporate welfare, it is small American farmers being able to sell their product abroad. I ask for a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, on June 12, residents of the Central Coast of California were devastated to learn that Christina Williams hadn't returned to her family's home after walking the dog. Seven long months later her body was found less than three miles from her home. I was pleased to become an original cosponsor of H.R. 1915, a bill that to provide $2 million in competitive grants to the States to improve the reporting of unidentified and missing children. In order to receive a grant, a state would report to the National Crime Information Center and (when possible to law enforcement authorities within the state) information on every deceased unidentified person, including dental records, x-rays and fingerprints. The states would then enter the National Crime Information Center registration number or other identifying number, on the unidentified person's death certificate. This simple cross-referencing of missing persons files against unidentified persons files will bring closure to thousands of families who anxiously await information on their loved ones. In California alone, there are over 25,000 missing person files, and only some 1,800 unidentified persons files. While Christina was found close to home which made identification easier, there are thousands of families in California who teeter on the edge of the chasm of hope and despair who will benefit from passage of H.R. 1915. I urge my colleagues to pass H.R. 1915 in memory of Christina Williams.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 111.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I think this debate is all framed in the sense that we are all here to try to make a better America. Well, a better America is not just the Social Security program, it is the totality of what we try to do here. A lot of that totality is regarded in quality of life. If one wants to have a better quality of life, which requires that one has healthier communities and strong economies, one has to remain competitive in the world, when America remains competitive in its research. I guess if we go through all of the research projects that we do, we would find that there are some that we like and some that we do not like. Certainly the gentleman from Oklahoma, who is a doctor, would agree that if we cut out medical research, one, we are not going to be competitive with the rest of the world and two, we are not going to provide for a better quality of life. The same is true with agriculture, this research issue, the ozone issue. It is a big issue in the world. It has become the number one issue for one of our competitive agricultural countries, Australia. They grow the same crops that we grow, only in reverse seasons. They are competitive in markets that we are in. They have made ozone one of the biggest issues in the country. They have made it a national policy. They have a saying there, slip, slop, slap. Slip on a T-shirt, slap on a hat, and slop on some lotion before you go outside. It is that big and that is everywhere, on billboards and everything. So the issue about research and quality of life and agriculture is that our bodies are what we eat. If we do better research in agriculture, we are going to be eating healthier foods and living healthier life styles. So I wish that the gentleman would really not attack agricultural research as some kind of big pork that is in here just for Members. This country was based on land grant colleges, on universities that were based on studying agriculture, training people for agriculture. We still honor those with research programs, and I can tell the gentleman the research that we are doing in our area is really a cutting edge issue. So I mean there has been a debate here, because this process of bringing in, as the gentleman told the desk, 114 amendments to an appropriations bill after never attending any of the hearings that the Committee on Appropriations had, if each Member offered, I just figured it out, if each Member, 435 of us, if each of us offered 114 amendments on an appropriation, we would have 41,590 amendments offered here. Mr. Chairman, the process does not work when we do it that way. So yes, there has been criticism of sort of the number of amendments and the style which the gentleman is going about, but in the end this bill, which I was involved in the markup and attended all of those hearings because I am a member of the committee, this bill really is about trying to make for a healthier America, trying to make for a more competitive agriculture, a more environmentally friendly agriculture, a healthier food product, all of the things that make America the great place in which we live and respecting our heritage in that. So yes, the gentleman is getting some negative responses to his amendments for the same reasons that I have indicated. I stand opposed to this amendment and to the others that the gentleman is offering.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. I am glad to hear that. I want to ask one question of the gentleman. I sit on the Committee on Appropriations. I have not sat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies before. We had dozens and dozens of hearings. We asked Members to come before the committee. We debated these items because that is the way you put together a budget. To my recollection, the gentleman never came to one of the committee hearings. He never suggested in a letter to the committee that we cut any of these programs. This is the first instance of his litany of cuts that we are faced with.

Mr. FARR of California. I would just like to ask the gentleman, did he charge for delivering those babies?

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, for the other gentleman who was talking about trying to bring us back to last year's budget, as we told him in the initial discussions, there have been $6.4 billion below what we spent in agriculture last year. This bill is way under. In fact, it is 31 percent less than what was spent on agriculture last year. I think that we met the mark, and these amendments are essentially a filibuster tactic that are frivolous.

Mr. FARR of California. If the gentleman will yield further, there is a process here, and I think what is disturbing the House is that we try to honor that process. I do not think by bringing 114, as you have stated, amendments to the floor is a process that we use very often, if ever, and certainly I have been here a short while and I have never seen it used before.

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. I rise as a new member of the Committee on Appropriations and of the Subcommittee of Agriculture, first of all to tell them how much I appreciated the leadership that was given in this markup by the chairman, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen) and also by our ranking member, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). I represent a productive part of our country. We produce about 84 crops, which no other State in the United States produces that many as are produced in my district, about $2.5 billion in agricultural sales. And most of it does not receive any help from the Federal Government. But they are interested in research and they are interested in sort of cutting-edge issues. I would just like to point out, for those that are interested in these budgetary issues, that this markup is about a 1.8 percent increase over last year's discretionary money. Now, remember, last year we had a lot of agricultural debate on the floor because we were putting money into supplementals, into emergency aid. If we take the total amount that was spent last year on agriculture and we look at the amount that was spent this year, we are $6.4 billion below what Congress spent last year, or about a 31 percent cut. So this is a very, very, very tight budget. And I might add, as tight as it is, it still ranks number four of all the appropriation committees in the amount of spending it does. Why? Because in America we created the Department of Agriculture when President Lincoln was here, and he indicated that we needed a department that essentially had a little bit for everybody in America, kind of a consumers department. So the department has all the rural America issues, which are as true today as they were a hundred years ago. Rural America always needs more help. We have all the commodities programs. We have all the foreign sales programs, whether we are going to have commodities abroad. And I know there will be Members up here attacking the fact we put taxpayers' money into foreign sales. But my colleagues, wake up and smell the coffee. Every day we have Juan Valdez telling us to drink Colombian coffee, and we do. Why? Because that country puts money in advertising in America and Americans buy it. So we do a little quid pro quo in the same way. We take money here and we take products and try to get them to sell abroad. Why? Because we export four times more than we import. Our balance of trade is in the plus in agriculture. We produce more agriculture in America than Americans can consume, so we need to export it, and people want it. And we ought to be proud of it, because it is a labor-intensive industry that is the heart of our country, and it has been the number one production in America historically and today more than ever. So, with this tough budget that we have adopted, we also left many programs on the table, the conservation program, farm land protection. There is no money in here. We have got to get that before this is over. Also left on the table, we cut wetlands reserves. We left on the table environmental quality initiatives. We left on the table, more importantly, about $120 million to fully fund all the nutritional programs we need in America. This is a very tight appropriation, too tight for many people and not tight enough for others. But I do not think we will ever find an appropriation that has had more bipartisan support than this one does, and I think that is attributable to both the leadership on the other side of the aisle and on our own side.

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying about there being a special God for children. Certainly we would like to think that someone is watching over our young people, protecting them from harm. But, tragically, we know this is not the case. Our community in the central coast of California lost a beautiful 13- year-old girl last year. That forever changed the lives of the Williams family and the thousands of local volunteers who donated thousands of hours searching for us. As innocently as many of our children do every day, Christina took the family dog for a walk on June 2, 1998. Seven months later, her parents' worst nightmare came true when her body was discovered January 12, 1999 three miles from the Williams home. The day Christina Williams' body was found was one of the darkest days I have seen on the central coast of California. Her family and friends said good-bye and vowed never to forget their daughter, sister, and friend. We had to learn to turn our anger and pain into a mission to make our community a safer place to raise our children. From our effort can hopefully come a larger recognition/ realization that if we lose one of our children to violence, our society is morally weaker, for we can only imagine the potential that a child had to offer that society. I wear this ribbon as we observe National Missing Children's Day. I am wearing this white ribbon as a symbol as we observe National Missing Children's Day. I extend my heartfelt condolences to the family of Christina Williams and to each and every parent and family who has lost a child and pledge my efforts to be a protector of our nation's children.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, if that is the case then I would suggest within his authority as chairman of the Committee on Resources that the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) may want to just limit this then to Federal properties and not to State and local properties or private properties.

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Vento) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in total opposition to this bill because there is absolutely nothing out there that is broken that needs fixing. This addresses a problem that does not exist. Let me say I know something about this issue because I own land that is designated by this. I own an inholding in the University of California property in Big Sur, California. We are proud of this designation. One cannot get a designation unless the landowner, in this case it would be the Federal Government for National Parks or for Bureau of Land Management lands, or in our case a private owner, has to request the nomination. That is the only way it can come is from the owner of the land to say we would like to participate in the program. The program is essentially an international way of being able to have a common database about measurement of environmental factors, so that we can see whether there are like kind of factors around the world, there are like kinds of problems or are the problems that are developing in an area significant to that area. To go out and say that we should have congressional approval for these designations is so ludicrous. I mean, why do we not have congressional approval and oversight for accreditation of universities? That is not done by Congress, or by any government. Why do we not have the AAA, the guides that go around and say that one can sleep in these hotels and motels, we do not have any congressional oversight of that. We do not have any congressional oversight of TV Guide or the motion picture movie ratings. We do not have any oversight of the Good Housekeeping or Consumer Reports Magazine. We do not demand that we have to look at these things. Why? They are not a problem where one wants to involve congressional action in this thing. To say that we should have Congress telling our local communities and States that they cannot have their property so designated, I think, is totally wrong. It is a usurpation of local control. If the chairman would like to have Alaska properties and have Glacier National Park and have the Denali National Forest exempted, then he can do that for the State of Alaska, but for California we have community local water districts in Marin County; we have private lands in California; we have State parks in California. All of those requested to be part of this system because we want to be better informed, we want to be educated. We are not part of this flat earth society that is afraid of learning about something. So this bill would deny our ability to get that nomination because one would have to go through this incredible congressional process. We cannot even pass legislation here to keep the country running. How are we going to make decisions on whether somebody should be able to voluntarily be placed in an international information system? This is a ludicrous bill. Please defeat it.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I implore my colleagues to not commit the United States to a flawed policy with a flawed process. It is a flawed policy to commit the United States to a missile defense policy that hasn't been proven technologically feasible. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of our nation's highest military leaders, said ``the simple fact is that we do not yet have the technology to field a national missile defense.'' It is a flawed policy to commit the United States to a missile defense policy with an open-ended price tag. Since 1962 we have spent $120 billion to develop missile defense system. We paid $67 billion for the failed ``Star Wars'' initiative. In the last 10 years we have put some $40 million into the program. At $4.2 billion this year, missile defense is the largest single weapons program in the defense budget. What about our other defense priorities? It is a flawed policy to maintain a defense posture at the expense of all other domestic priorities. We have not yet saved Social Security, we have not reduced class size, we have not provided for health care for all Americans. In our zeal to protect our democracy we are actually jeopardizing our democracy by failing to protect our domestic tranquility. I urge the defeat of H.R. 4.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I first want to say how proud I am as a new member of the Committee on Appropriations of the work that our House did. If my colleagues notice, the conference committee, the leadership in that conference committee, was certainly on the House side, and I appreciate the work on it of both sides of the aisle. This is the first spending bill that we have voted off the House floor this year, and I think it reminds me of that old adage that is in a song that says, ``You can't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need.'' There are a lot of political needs out there in this country and across the world, and Congress does not have always a good record of getting the money to the people. I have agreed with some of those who point out the wrongs in this bill. There are certainly some wrongs. And they have an option of voting to recommit. But the politics of compromise is that along with the bad comes the good, and we have to weigh our judgment on how we are going to vote. Is there more good in this bill than bad? And we have been hearing people emphasize what they think is the bad. Let me emphasize what I think is the good. Certainly, a long overdue pay raise for our military and the Coast Guard; $1.1 billion for Kosovo refugees; $900 million for U.S. tornado victims in the FEMA account; $687 million in Central America, and I visited there, for school building and road development and debt restructuring; and $10 million relief for the Colombians after that horrible earthquake that they had. There is also money in here for other great causes. There is $574 million for U.S. farmers hit by low commodity prices. There is a lot in here to like even for nondomestic emergency funding. Credit Union Liquidity. Public Broadcasting: There is money in here for National Public Radio. Mortgage Insurance Limits: There is money in here for mortgage insurance limits. House Page Dormitory: For the pages' dormitories for these pages that serve us, so they can have a decent place to live. Japanese Reparations: There is money in here for Japanese reparations. The list goes on and on for good things to support. Postal Service. Indian Affairs. Russian Leaders: The agreement establishes a pilot program within the Library of Congress to bring up to 3,000 emerging Russian political leaders to the United States for up to 30 days each. The Senate is transferring $10 million of its own funds to finance the program during 1999. Religious Freedom. Export Controls. Drug Trafficking. National Commission on Terrorism. Pan Am Trial. I urge my colleagues to make a sufficient vote, vote ``yes.'' Mr. Speaker, this is a difficult and emotional time for the world community and me personally. We have found ourselves faced with unconscionable atrocities in Kosovo and no easy way to stop them. We all wish that we were not faced with the need to make choices such as those we face in Kosovo, we wish to options available were different. However, I believe we do not have the option of standing by and letting the genocide continue. My outlook on humanity has been shaped by my national service in Colombia with the Peace Corps. During my time in Colombia I gained an appreciation for other cultures and an understanding that, no matter what your nationality or ethnicity, we are all human. We all deserve the right to basic freedoms. We all deserve the right to be safe in our homes and not be fearful of our government. We all deserve the right to expect that we will not be forced out of our homes and country. We all deserve the right to live freely. The international community has been attempting to reach a diplomatic end to Slobodan Milosevic's terror of the non-Serbian population in Yugoslavia for years. The Rambouillet accords offered Mr. Milosevic one last opportunity to stop the genocide in Kosovo and avoid international conflict. With his refusal, the international community was faced with the awful decision of sitting by and allowing Milosevic to continue displacing, terrorizing, and murdering Kosovars, or take action to stop him. I have had many sleepless nights thinking about the situation in Kosovo, recalling what I saw first hand in Bosnia and imaging the plight of the Kosovars. I believe that chosing to act was the right decision. I do not feel the United States could have, or should have, stood idly by while people in Kosovo continue to lose their homes, their families and their lives. Whether or not you agree with my position, I want you to know that I don't take it lightly.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Ed Hastey upon his retirement after 46 years of public service. Ed brought a new philosophy to the management of public lands in California and Northern Nevada through his astute leadership. His guidance has set a high standard for the stewardship of the 16 million acres of public lands managed by the California State office of the Bureau of Land Management. Born in Pacific Grove, Ed is a fourth generation Californian. He joined the Bureau of Land Management in 1957 after service as a paratrooper in the Army Airborne. In the mid-1960's, Ed worked as an engineer building campgrounds, public access routes and other facilities throughout the state and was active in resolving personnel management issues in support of his employees. Ed then went to Washington, DC, serving first as a budget officer, then as assistant director and finally as associate director of BLM. When Ed was tapped to be California State Director, he began building the coalitions that have resulted in effective land use planning that now safeguard California's diverse natural resources. In 1991, Ed founded the California Biodiversity Council, bringing state and federal agencies together to collaborate on resource management. Ed directed a land exchange and acquisition program in cooperation with the State and private land conservancies which has protected the King Range National Conservation Area; the Carrizo Plain; the Santa Rosa Mountains; the Cosumnes Preserve; and Headwaters Forest. He headed a four-state oversight management group on the threatened desert tortoise to facilitate the species recovery while minimizing the impact on public land use. Ed planned and implemented the California Desert Plan, coordinating with hundreds of organizations and agencies as well as thousands of interested citizens. Nearer home, Ed participated actively in the acquisition of 8,000 acres at the former Fort Ord Army base, opening it up to the public for parkland and wildlife habitat. Ed Hastey's approach has been that of developing local solutions tailored to particular regional needs. His contributions have merited many awards including the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award, the highest honor in the elite Senior Executive Service; two Presidential Meritorious Service Awards; and the Departmental Distinguished Service Award. Ed, you have my heartiest congratulations on your retirement! Your family--your wife Joyce, your sons Robert and Michael, and your grandchildren--will be pleased to take advantage, along with you, of the public spaces you have worked so hard to protect.

Mr. FARR of California

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the committee Point of Order

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.