Jesse Helms

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Domenici and D'Amato in introducing the pending amendment. The United States has a stake in Mexico--as our neighbor, as a key trading partner, and as the recipient of a $20 billion loan underwritten by American taxpayers. Mexico's problems often become, in a very real way, our problems. No problem affecting our two nations is more critical than drug trafficking because it directly effects the lives of millions of Americans. At the same time, we must not forget that for many, many years, the U.S. State Department turned a blind eye to widespread drug corruption in Mexico. In its latest International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the U.S. State Department admits that in 1995 ``endemic corruption continued to undermine both policy initiatives and law enforcement operations'' in Mexico. The report adds that ``official Mexican Government corruption remains deeply entrenched and resistant and comprises the major impediment to a successful counter-narcotics program.'' So, Mr. President, it is no surprise that Mexico is the gateway to the United States for smuggling in massive amounts of cocaine and heroin. Mexico is also a major producer of methamphetamine, one of the most dangerous drugs available. Many corrupt officials in the Mexican Government have long had an open door policy for the Mexican cartel kingpins, providing protection for a price. Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo has made some positive gestures to combat drugs and drug corruption, including appointing an Attorney General from the opposition PAN party and supporting money laundering legislation. Nor is it a surprise that violent crime in the United States is increasingly linked to drugs. The Justice Department estimates that over one-third of violent crimes are committed by people in illegal drugs. Regrettably, over the past 5 years, cocaine and heroin seizures in Mexico, as well as arrests of Mexican drug traffickers, have dropped by 50 percent. Seventy percent of cocaine enters the United States through Mexico, all too often with the assistance of corrupt Mexican police officers. Drug kingpins spend an estimated $500 million annually to buy politicians and law enforcement officials. There are too many credible allegations that these officials assist kingpins' efforts to expand their power and conceal ill gotten gains. While Zedillo administration officials may not be accomplices, they are supposedly responsible for the investigation and prosecution of these drug traffickers and corrupt officials. Yet each year, in exchange for empty promises and well publicized anti-drug speeches, the U.S. administration certifies that the Mexican Government has ``cooperated fully'' in the war on drugs and continues to provide military equipment, technical assistance, and precious foreign aid. Mexico is indeed our neighbor and a sort of business partner. The State Department is obviously nervous about offending Mexican Government officials by pushing them to take strong measures to fight drugs and corruption. Foggy Bottom must get over its nervousness. The United States has no greater national interest than to protect the safety and security of American people, especially the most innocent-- our children and grandchildren. It won't help either the Mexican or American people for the U.S. Government to make the tragic mistake of providing unrestricted assistance to a corrupt, morally bankrupt 67-year-old regime. This amendment will send the message that we demand cooperation with the Mexican Government--but real, effective cooperation, not more empty promises.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Maybe the Senator would read my lips, as the statement goes. Nothing in here kicks in unless the United Nations engages in, during the fiscal year, ``* * * any effort to develop, advocate, promote or publicize any proposal concerning taxation or fees on United States persons in order to raise revenue for the United Nations or any of its specialized agencies.'' Nothing kicks in. I believe the Senator understands that. I say, again, if he wants us to eliminate UNICEF, I will be glad to do that. It would be a meaningless gesture, but----

Mr. HELMS. You did not finish reading, Senator. If you had gone ahead and finished what you were reading, you would have discovered that this whole thing is based on Boutros Boutros-Ghali's and others' recommendation that the United Nations be given sovereignty to tax the American people and other sovereign countries. That is what this whole section is.

Mr. HELMS. What line?

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, may I ask what is the pending business?

Mr. HELMS. As I understand it, at least one or maybe two other amendments have been set aside for that to be the pending business.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all necessary amendments be set aside so that I may call up an amendment.

Mr. HELMS. The answer to that is no.

Mr. HELMS. There is no intention, expressed or implicit. Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.

Mr. HELMS. Is the Senator really concerned about UNICEF?

Mr. HELMS. If so, I will be glad to exclude it.

Mr. HELMS. The answer is no.

Mr. HELMS. If the Senator wants to read the amendment----

Mr. HELMS. I ask the clerk to read the amendment. Apparently the Senator has not read it.

Mr. HELMS. I will say, Mr. President, in response to the Senator, I think he is on a fishing expedition and he is not going to catch any fish. But UNICEF cannot now borrow money, according to my understanding. Is that correct? So that question is moot. I do not know what the Senator from Vermont is talking about. If he wants to exclude UNICEF for some personal reason, I will be glad to exclude it.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, with all due respect to the able Senator from Maine, whom I do respect, I have a problem with his amendment. His amendment is based on the premise that the United States should wait until a future time--nobody knows when--a future time to impose tougher sanctions against the illegal SLORC regime in Burma. The Cohen amendment for conditional sanctions provides for a ban on new investment only ``if the President [of the United States] determines and certifies to Congress that, [at some future date,] the Government of Burma has physically harmed, rearrested for political acts, or exiled Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or has committed large-scale repression of or violence against the democratic opposition.'' Mr. President, the Government of Burma, the SLORC, S-L-O-R-C, as it is known, has already done enough to Ms. Suu Kyi, has already committed large-scale repression and violence, not only against the democratic opposition, but against the people of Burma. We know there is forced labor in Burma. There is no question about that. We know that Burma is the source of more than 60 percent of the heroin finding its way into the United States, and we know that the SLORC regime is implicated in this trade. No question about it. However, we know that the people of Burma elected the National League for Democracy overwhelmingly in elections 6 years ago, and that it has been straight downhill ever since that time. The Cohen amendment also provides a waiver to the administration. I have to ask the question--I do so with all respect--are we serious or are we not serious about Burma? I support Chairman McConnell and my other distinguished colleagues who have said, enough is enough. Let us stop allowing U.S. investment to prop up the SLORC regime's repression. I hope that colleagues will vote in that direction when the vote is taken. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor. Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. HELMS. That is right.

Mr. HELMS. That is right.

Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.

Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair. The pending amendment is based on S. 1519, to which I have just referred, and it, like S. 1519, prohibits all U.S. voluntary contributions to the United Nations if the United Nations should make an attempt to levy a direct tax on the American people. Furthermore, the amendment requires the President of the United States to certify to Congress that no United Nations agencies, including the UNDP, are concocting any sort of scheme for a direct tax on the American people. I am very pleased and honored that the present majority leader of the Senate, Mr. Lott, and the chairman of the Commerce, State and Justice Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Gregg, have joined in offering this amendment. If I could ask whoever is in charge of focusing the television cameras, I hope that they will focus on the chart at my side. You will see the bureaucracy of the United Nations. You will also see how we have entitled it. We call it ``The United Nations: One Big Mess.'' That is precisely what it is. The United Nations is an enormous and unwieldy maze of independent fiefdoms whose bureaucracies are proliferating almost by the hour and whose costs are spiraling into the stratosphere and whose missions are constantly expanding far beyond their mandate. Worse, with its unyielding growth--just look at this bureaucracy, if you will--worse, with its unyielding growth and its misguided ideology, the United Nations is rapidly transforming itself from an institution of sovereign nations into a quasi-sovereign entity itself. This unchecked transformation and the Clinton administration's unwise over-reliance on the United Nations, obviously represents a threat to American national interests. That is the reason I am standing here on this floor with this chart right beside me. Mr. President, the 53,000--count them--53,000 international bureaucrats at the United Nations would find it worthwhile if they would spend just a few minutes reading the Constitution of the United States of America. Despite what these bureaucrats may hope and desire, the United Nations, not being a sovereign entity itself, cannot-- cannot--levy taxes. We could be grateful that it is not a world government. You see, the United Nations exists to serve its members, of which the United States is one. The United States is also the most generous member of the United Nations--not the other way around. Yet, when you look at this chart--I wish that the thousands of people looking at this chart on television at this moment could have a chance to examine it line-by-line. But judging from it, this insatiable U.N. bureaucracy has for 50 years now been impervious to any kind of real reform. It has grown and mushroomed ``like Topsy.'' That is why, from the standpoint of the U.N. bureaucracy, new taxes on the American people by way of international airline tickets, financial transactions, postcards sent from overseas--all of these and others--would provide a seemingly endless stream of resources from which, Heaven forbid, an ever-increasing number of new U.N. programs and new personnel and new bureaucrats could be undertaken. Mr. President, if the Secretary General and his allies at the United Nations develop a program, and should they make the mistake of persisting in this U.N. tax scheme, there could very well be the 1996 version of the Boston Tea Party. This time it would be, I guess, in New York Harbor--because working Americans are already overtaxed beyond belief. Today, the visible--the taxes that we can see--the visible tax burden for the average working family is a whopping 34.6 percent of their total income. Tax Independence Day, the day upon which American citizens stop working for the Internal Revenue Service and begin working to feed and clothe their families, is now May 7, a full week later than when Mr. Clinton took office. In addition to this tax burden, every man, woman and child in the United States now owes an average of $19,494.49 as their share of the $5,173,226,283,802.71 debt. It should be no surprise, therefore, that the watchdog group known as the Americans for Tax Reform--a good group of people--and 14 Governors around the country, all Republicans, I might add, support the pending amendment. The prohibition on U.N. taxation upon which this amendment is based speaks for itself. Yet the Secretary General and U.N. bureaucrats continue to raise the specter of more and more taxes on the American people. So I guess it might be said that I am here today to try to help the American people make clear that even the consideration of U.N. tax authority is totally unacceptable. I do not want to hear any more about it, and I made that clear to Boutros Boutros-Ghali as nicely as possible. Passage of this amendment would send a clear message to Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the entrenched bureaucracy at the United Nations that what is necessary at the United Nations is real reform, not the taxation of the American citizens. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, this amendment is cosponsored by the distinguished majority leader and the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire, Senator Gregg. Mr. President, on January 15 of this year, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, while speaking at Oxford University over in England, of course, outlined a series of revenue- raising options to pay for the United Nations' day-to-day activities. Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali then went on the British Broadcasting Corporation suggesting that the United Nations should be allowed to collect taxes directly from American citizens and citizens of all other sovereign nations so that the United Nations ``would not be under the daily financial will of member states.'' There was quite a tempest about that idea, and it was not in a teapot. Let me say at the outset that I know Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, not well, but Dot Helms and I went to New York and had dinner with him and his wife and another friend of ours and his wife, and we had a very enjoyable evening. Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali has his own ideas about things, and I have been known to have my own ideas about a few things. It is in that context that I want to comment a little bit about the Secretary General's proposed scheme. Absurd as it is, it is not an isolated one. James Tobin, an international economist, back in 1976 proposed a U.N. tax on currency transfers, and Gustave Speth, present Director of the United Nations Development Program--and all through the bureaucracy, here and there, we always use initials, and that is UNDP--the U.N. Development Program has called for a ``global human security fund'' financed from global fees such as the Tobin tax on speculative movements of international funds and international tax on the consumption of nonrenewable energy and a tax on arms trade. I am not making that comment just idly. That is an exact quote of what Mr. Speth proposed. It is no coincidence that 1 week after Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali made his chilling announcement about the need and desire for giving the United Nations power of taxation, the former distinguished majority leader of the Senate, Bob Dole, and Senators Kerry, Shelby, and I introduced what was then S. 1519, which was a bill to forbid any U.S. payments to the United Nations if the United Nations attempts in any way to levy taxes on the American people. All right. So, Mr. President, the pending amendment--by the way, what is the number of the amendment?

Mr. HELMS. If the Senator will yield, if he has no objection, I wish he would make me a cosponsor of his amendment.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I think so often of that November evening long ago, in 1972, when the television networks reported that I had been elected as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina. I remember well the exact time that the announcement was made and how stunned I was. It had never really occurred to me that I would be the first Republican in history to be elected by the people of North Carolina to the U.S. Senate. When I got over my astonishment, I thought about a lot of things. And I made some commitments to myself one of which was that I would never fail to see a young person, or a group of young people, who wanted to see me. I have kept that commitment and it has proved enormously meaningful to me because I have been inspired by the estimated 66,000 young people with whom I have visited during the 23 years I have been in the Senate. A large percentage of them are greatly concerned about the total Federal debt which back in February exceeded $5 trillion for the first time in history. Congress created this monstrous debt which coming generations will have to pay. Mr. President, the young people who visit with me almost always like to discuss the fact that under the U.S. Constitution, no President can spend a dime of Federal money that has not first been authorized and appropriated by both the House and Senate of the United States. That is why I began making these daily reports to the Senate on February 25, 1992. I decided that it was important that a daily record be made of the precise size of the Federal debt which, at the close of business yesterday, Wednesday, July 24, stood at $5,173,226,283,802.71. On a per capita basis, the existing Federal debt amounts to $19,494.49 for every man, woman, and child in America on a per capita basis. The increase in the national debt in the 24 hours since my report yesterday shows an increase of more than one billion dollars ($1,562,134,965.80, to be exact). That one-day Federal debt increase involves enough money to pay the college tuitions for 231,633 students for 4 years.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from Colorado [Mr. Brown] is an important step for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe who seek to ensure their security and sovereignty as full members of the NATO Alliance. As an original cosponsor of this legislation when it was introduced in June--the last foreign policy initiative authored by Senator Dole before he left the Senate--I am pleased to be a cosponsor of Senator Brown's amendment. This legislation serves to correct the terrible injustice perpetrated at Yalta half a century ago, when for reasons of political expediency artificial divisions were imposed on Europe, subjecting countries with democratic traditions similar to those in Western Europe to decades of communist domination. In the years since the Iron Curtain was lifted from the European continent, many countries in Central and Eastern Europe have made dramatic progress in resurrecting their democratic histories and instituting reform measures that solidify their commitment to the democratic ideals espoused by members of the NATO Alliance. I firmly believe that enlarging NATO to include those countries which are capable of contributing to the Alliance is in the interests of the United States. Our country knows too well the danger of allowing a security vacuum to persist in this region and should work actively to encourage closer ties between the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the West. Since they regained their freedom, many countries in this region have worked diligently to implement the democratic and free market reform measures which were essential to reversing years of ill founded communist policies. The Brown amendment establishes a program that will assist these countries as they prepare for the rights and responsibilities of full NATO membership. The Brown amendment recognizes that Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary and Slovenia have made the most progress in implementing important reform measures such as establishing a free market economy, instituting civilian control over the military, and introducing the rule of law. These three countries are designated as eligible to receive the NATO transition assistance already appropriated in this bill. Let us show our friends in Central and Eastern Europe that we will never again abandon them to the forces of dictatorship and tyranny and that we will work side by side in partnership to create a lasting free and democratic Europe. I urge my colleagues to support the Brown amendment. the nato enlargement facilitation act of 1996