Jesse Helms

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. In the natural course of things, Senator Sarbanes would be recognized if time is yielded to him. I am sure that he can get that by unanimous consent, to be charged to Senator Kerry.

Mr. HELMS. The Senator from Alaska, as far as I am concerned, can speak as long as he likes, but he has stipulated 8 minutes.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, what we are doing is alternating this side and that side. I suggest it is appropriate now for the Chair to recognize the distinguished Senator from Maine.

Mr. HELMS. Very well.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I am assuming that Senator Kerry will yield. Would the Chair recognize that assumption?

Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, let me spend just 2 or 3 minutes in respectful response to my friend from Massachusetts. His statement that the Taiwan Relations Act, which is a public law passed by the Congress of the United States, supersedes an Executive order, that is a matter of fact. The United States Congress was clear in its intent to support Taiwan's defense needs when this Taiwan Relations Act was passed. The 1982 Executive order, referring to the ability of the United States to sell arms to Taiwan, seems to contradict certain terms of the Taiwan Relations Act. Now then, section 1601 does not--does not-- repudiate the 1982 Executive order, though I confess that I wish it did. It does, however, clarify that in those instances in which the Taiwan Relations Act and the 1982 Executive order seem to contradict one another, the Taiwan Relations Act is, after all, United States law, therefore, stipulates the policy to which the United States should and must adhere. Not once--this is the point, Mr. President--not once during the course of the conference between the House and the Senate did a single Member of the House or a single Member of the Senate raise this provision as a problem. As a matter of fact, I think it is worthy of note that when the staff met preliminarily, the staff of the Senate and the staff of the House, Democrats and Republicans, the Democrats' staff members made it clear that they were not there to participate; they were only to take notes. They refused to take any action or any part in the proceedings. So that is a little bit like the fellow who killed his mother and father and asked for mercy in the court because he was an orphan. They did not participate when we wanted them to, when we were begging them to. With that said, I remind my colleagues that this provision was adopted by both Houses of Congress. Therefore, it was in both the House and the Senate bills. I also remind my distinguished colleague and friend from Massachusetts that he, himself, voted in support of this exact language during the committee consideration of the State Department authorization bill. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, on the basis that I mentioned earlier, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. To be charged to each side. Is that correct?

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time in the quorum call be deducted proportionately from both sides controlling the time. Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.

Mr. HELMS. Now, Mr. President, will the Chair review for me the unanimous consent in terms of time.

Mr. HELMS. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. President, the Senate now has before it the conference report accompanying H.R. 1561, which, of course, is the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal year 1996 and 1997. This bill authorizes $6.5 billion for the operation of the Department of State, the U.S. Information Agency, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for 1996 and 1997. That represents a $500 million cut from fiscal year 1995 spending. After 1996, the bill authorizes funding for the State Department and requires the President to abolish at least one of the three anachronistic foreign affairs agencies: Either the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or the U.S. Information Agency. During the course of this debate, some may attempt to portray this legislation as isolationist. I hear that all the time. But you better not go out and ask the taxpayers of America what they think of it, because they do not agree with these people who cry isolationism. These people who oppose this bill and have opposed it will not ever, of course, mention that the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, himself proposed the abolishment of not one but all three of these agencies. The fact is likely to be ignored, as well, that such prominent isolationists as Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Larry Eagleburger, General Al Haig, and Jim Baker, all five being former Secretaries of State, support this, testified on behalf of it, and urged that we pare back these anachronistic, bloated foreign affair agencies. Of course, the media did not say much about that. They never do. This bill, of course, does not cut the muscle out of our foreign affairs apparatus. What it does do is cut the fat--a little bit of it-- by making deep and necessary reductions in the current bloated and unwieldy Federal bureaucracy that says it is dedicated to foreign affairs. This bill cuts $500 million from the 1995 spending level. I have already said that. I do not think that is isolationism. If it is isolationism, Mr. President, let us make the most of it, because if I could have my full way, we would cut even more deeply across the board and save the taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars, not only in terms of the State Department but all across this bloated Federal bureaucracy. This bill is simply a recognition that the U.S. Government wants too much money and desperately needs to reduce the $5 trillion Federal debt that has been piled up and will be dumped on the backs of young people. Simply put, the State Department can and must do more with less, and the greatest advocates of that have been the present Secretary of State, before he was instructed to take a hike, and five former Secretaries of State, who stood up and said, ``This needs to be done.'' Most important, in agreeing to this conference report, the Senate has an opportunity to send to the President of the United States a bill to disestablish at least one anachronistic Federal agency and, thereby, save the American taxpayers $1.7 billion. It was my intent, when I embarked on this legislation, to do far better than that, but the distinguished Presiding Officer knows what happened all of last year, and for most of this year--it was filibustered. There were instructions from the White House to delay and obfuscate and not to let this bill pass because it will cost some bureaucrats their jobs. So they filibustered. And only when the Senator from North Carolina said, ``All right, if you are going to filibuster this bill, you are not going to get any more ambassadors, and you can tell your President that.'' Pretty soon, they said, ``Let's make a deal.'' When they made a deal, they got the ambassadors. But if they had not made a deal, at least to have a vote on this legislation, those ambassadors would still be sitting twiddling their thumbs. Let me remind all involved that Republicans were elected in 1994, in the majority of both the House and Senate, to cut the size of the Federal Government and to eliminate waste by the Federal Government. And this is the first piece of legislation to be sent to the President of the United States which will result in one agency--one anachronistic Federal agency--being abolished. I sat at home the night that the President delivered his State of the Union Address. I would rather be with Dot Helms than go to any State of the Union Address. She is a lot better company. I heard the President say over and over again--it was a great show, by the way--``The era of big Government is over.'' Do you remember him saying that? Some people cheered, including the few conservatives who were sitting down there. Well, the President will soon have the opportunity to prove that he meant that. But, already, the White House is sending word that the President is going to veto this bill, minimal as it may be. Mr. President, after months of foot-dragging and calculated delays, our friends on the other side grudgingly allowed our reform efforts to be voted on in the Senate and went into a conference committee with the House of Representatives. Mr. President, I have participated, during my nearly 24 years in the Senate, in a lot of conferences. But this conference was one of the most peculiar I have ever seen or heard about, let alone participated in. Prior to the convening of the conference between the House and the Senate, the Democrat Senators made three demands, and I believe the majority made every possible good- faith effort to meet those demands. First was on the question of funding levels. This conference report is consistent with the Commerce, State, Justice appropriations bill on nearly every account. The funding levels contained in this bill are the best that the President of the United States is going to get from a Republican Congress. Second, despite receiving no input whatsoever--not a syllable--a bipartisan attempt was made to work out an acceptable compromise on population funding. That not being possible, the entire issue was then set aside for later consideration. Finally, the Democrats demanded that no more aid provisions be included in the final conference agreement. Again, the majority agreed and obliged. Except for the Peace Corps and some antinarcotics funding, there are no foreign aid authorizations in this bill. Important provisions necessary to bring peace in Ireland and to end the embargo of Armenia are included. What do you know? Despite all of these concessions that we made, when the conference began, not one Senate Democratic conferee--except for John Kerry of Massachusetts, with one brief visit by the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Pell--attended any meeting of the conference. Senator Pell just visited briefly one time, and John Kerry was there for a while. Now, the conference met on five separate occasions over a period of 2 weeks, and never did any other Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee even set foot in the room. Mr. President, the Office of Management and Budget recommends that the President veto this bill when it is presented to him. According to an OMB statement, one reason the President should veto the bill is because ``it fails to remedy the severe limitation on U.S. population assistance programs placed in the fiscal year 1996 foreign operations bill.'' Do not be deceived by the words ``population assistance program.'' It has nothing to do with assisting the population. It has everything to do with unborn babies that the Federal Government wants to finance to be killed. Now, I suggest, however, that if the President agrees with OMB, then he should not have signed the foreign operations bill if he did not approve of the abortion-related provision in that because it is strange indeed that the President would veto this bill because it does not fix a problem that he, himself, the President, created when he signed the appropriations bill. So that is the inconsistency that we have run into all along. Mr. President, the distinguished occupant of the Oval Office apparently wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Further, the Office of Management and Budget recommended to the President that he veto the bill because it terminates the Agency for International Development's housing guarantee program. Now, what OMB kept secret, though, was the fact that this program is the international equivalent to the U.S. savings and loan bailout just a few years ago. The General Accounting Office, when recommending the termination of this program reported: ``We estimate that the cost to the U.S. Government of future loan default from the existing portfolio of loans is likely to be an additional $600 million.'' That is on top of the $400 million already lost, Mr. President. Yet, AID and others in this administration, have been struggling for more than a year to keep this sorry program alive. I suspect that when the American people learn--if the media will dare let them know about it-- that Congress has passed and the President has vetoed a bill that would save $1.7 billion and abolish one of those temporary Federal agencies created in 1950--in the 1950's, at least-- I think the American people are going to have a definite reaction. By the way, Ronald Reagan used to say, ``There is nothing as close to eternal life as a temporary Federal agency.'' He was right about that. We are trying to do away with one of them. We are not get getting anywhere much. But we will see. Let me take a moment to recognize the valuable work that has been performed by other of my colleagues on this side of the aisle who served as conferees on this bill-- Senator Hank Brown, Senator Coverdell, Senator Ashcroft. Most important, I want to pay my respects to the distinguished Senator from Maine, Ms. Snowe, who chaired the International Operations Subcommittee and who has worked faithfully side by side with me and others to move this bill forward as best we could in the face of a total blockade by the other side. Senator Snowe is most knowledgeable about the intricacies of the State Department and the international operations budget. Well, Mr. President, here we are. We are now at the point, as the saying goes, where ``the rubber meets the road.'' A vote against this conference report is a reaffirmation of the status quo which has contributed so much to the $5 trillion Federal debt that has been run up by the Congress of the United States. Do not blame any President, Democrat or Republican. The damage was done right here and in the House of Representatives. This is where that $5 trillion debt was run up because we could have stopped it. Those of us over the period of the last 23 years and 3 months, as far as I am concerned, who tried to hold down the spending were described by the liberal media as being tight-fisted and ultraconservative. But I think the young people, when they realize what the Congress of the United States has done in dumping this $5 trillion debt on the American people, are going to have a small revolution of their own. I hope it will start in November among those who are 18 or older. By the way, Mr. President, back in February 1992, I realized that nobody was paying much attention to the Federal debt which at that time stood at about, as I recall, $3.5 trillion. I think it was February 22 or 23 that I decided to begin making a daily report to the Senate on the Federal debt as of the close of business the previous day. On Mondays the report, of course, was for the close of business the previous Friday. One day I went into the Cloakroom where Senators were awaiting a rollcall vote that had been scheduled by unanimous consent. I got to thinking about how big $1 trillion is. I went in, and I said, ``Fellows, how many million are there in a trillion?'' I had all sorts of guesses. These are the folks, myself included, who have been here when this debt has been run up. Only one of them, as I recall, had the vaguest notion of how many million there are in a trillion. Finally one of them got out a piece of paper and scribbled it down. He said, ``There are a million million in a trillion.'' What do you know about that? Now we owe 5 million million dollars--``we'' being the coming generation, in the main. I think that is a criminal act on the part of the Congress of the United States--to run up that debt for these young people to pay. In any case, a vote in favor of this pending conference report will be a vote to cut Federal spending by $1.7 billion for the American taxpayers while shutting down at least one anachronistic, wasteful, bloated, antiquated agency. I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. HELMS. That makes 2 hours on our side. That is a total of 10 hours.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask that the Chair lay before the Senate the conference report to accompany H.R. 1561, the State Department Authorization bill.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, in many ways this farm legislation is historic. In my 23-plus years as a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I have never been faced with so many changes in the overall structure of American agriculture--and, in large measure, for the better most of America and the farmers of this country. I doubt that anymore seriously imagined that this Congress could succeed in streamlining agriculture programs and increasing the effectiveness of agriculture. This bill includes reforms to most of the major commodity programs, including peanuts, cotton, dairy, feed grains, and wheat. In my home State of North Carolina, agriculture has long been a leading industry, providing jobs and economic opportunity for countless small family farmers and their communities. This legislation will give North Carolina's farmers stability for at least next 7 years while removing the strong arm of government controls over our commodity programs. It will ease the strain on rural America. Mr. President, I applaud the two chairman for undertaking these market-oriented reforms that will unquestionably help the family farmers adapt and adjust to 21st century. As a former chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I know and understand the difficult and painstaking process that has consumed weeks and months. I am convinced that this farm bill will help farmers become more productive, and will continue to save tax dollars and it will improve the rural environment. At a time when the Federal debt has climbed beyond the 5 trillion dollar mark, Congress owes it to the farmers and taxpayers of this country not to enact a meaningless temporary solution, but to establish a sound new policy of agricultural reform. That is what happened, and I, for one, believe both Agriculture Committees, House and Senate pursued the real reforms that were needed. In that, I am proud of the peanut farmers of my State and other States for embracing a no net cost program and sacrificing close to $500 million out of their pockets to contribute to balancing the Federal budget in 7 years. In order to save the peanut program we all had to sacrifice, but in the end, this bill retains the peanut program and reforms it to make it more efficient for the farmers and less costly for taxpayers. This bill offers a future to the farmers of America, who can now wake up everyday and knowing what their future payments will be. The taxpayers will know how much of their money will be spent. U.S. agriculture now has a future--our farmers have a future.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum with the time to be charged proportionately.

Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, this has been cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the conference report occur at 9 p.m. tonight, with the time between now and the vote to be divided as follows: Senator Biden, for up to 20 minutes, and all remaining time under the control of Senator Dole, the majority leader, or his designee.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays. I thought they had already been ordered.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the majority leader has suggested that in order to enable Senators to get home a few minutes earlier, that we start the rollcall vote immediately, but to run it on for there to be plenty of time for Senators to arrive. So I make that unanimous consent request.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with.