Henry Hyde

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of the Hyde-Barcia-Smith-Oberstar amendment. This amendment will greatly improve the bill by deleting a provision that would require the United States to subsidize abortionists and abortion lobbyists in foreign countries. That provision was adopted by a very close vote in committee; and it would overturn President Bush's benign and sensible policy, the Mexico City policy as it is called, that puts a wall of separation between U.S. family planning programs and the international abortion industry. Taxpayer dollars should not be used to export abortions. Mr. Chairman, opponents of our amendment have had some harsh and misleading things to say about the Mexico City policy. First, they say, without any evidence, that it is an anti-family planning policy; yet the Mexico City policy does not cut by one penny the $425 million the United States spends every year promoting family planning overseas. And the Mexico City policy strengthens family planning programs by ensuring that U.S. funds are directed to groups that provide genuine family planning, which is something entirely distinct from abortion. The opponents of the Mexico City policy like to call it a gag rule. They say it violates the right of free speech, although a Federal appellate court has held it is fully consistent with the first amendment. Everybody has a right to free speech, but nobody has an absolute right to Federal tax dollars. The right to free speech does not include the right to have the taxpayers buy a word processor. Organizations that work for the United States in foreign countries are our partners and our representatives in these countries. In a very real sense they are our ambassadors. Their advocacy in these countries on issues closely related to the U.S. programs they administer, as well as other activities such as the actual performance of abortions, is inevitably going to be associated with the United States. So must we use tax dollars to facilitate abortions overseas? Specifically, among the most important stated purposes of U.S. family planning programs overseas is to reduce the number of abortions by providing contraception instead. The U.S. has no obligation to administer these programs through agents who fundamentally disagree with this goal. Would we hire casino lobbyists to run an anti-gambling campaign or a distillery to run an anti-alcohol campaign? It makes no sense to hire abortionists or abortion lobbyists to run programs that are aimed at reducing abortions. Opponents of our Mexico City amendment also argue that U.S. family planning grantees should be allowed to perform and promote abortion so long as the abortion-related activities are carried out with their own money rather than U.S. grant money. This is nothing other than a bookkeeping trick. It ignores the fact that money is fungible. When money is given to an organization, it inevitably enriches and empowers all its activities. U.S. support also enhances the domestic and the international prestige of the organization by giving it an official U.S. seal of approval. And remember, the people we are trying to reach, poor women and men who have a need for family planning, are not very likely to see the organization's books, so they do not know which activities are funded from which spigot. So when the very same organization offers U.S. family planning assistance with one hand and abortion with the other, the message is the United States and its partners are perfectly comfortable with abortion as a method of family planning. The most outrageous claim made by proponents of the amendment, and this is a brand new one, as far as I can remember they have never claimed this in more than 20 years of debate about this Mexico City policy, is that it will interfere with efforts to address the HIV-AIDS epidemic. This claim is outrageously false. For one thing, the United States currently spends over \1/2\ of a billion dollars per year on fighting AIDS, $482.5 million in direct U.S. expenditures in fiscal year 2001, plus millions more in contributions to organizations such as the World Health Organization and UNDP, part of which funds anti-AIDS programs. The President's Mexico City Policy has absolutely no application to this half-billion dollars. It only applies to population assistance which is a different set of accounts from HIV/AIDS programs. The proponents of the Lee amendment argue that population assistance has an incidental effect of reducing exposure to the HIV virus because part of it pays for contraceptive devices which may prevent infection. This argument misses the whole point of the Mexico City policy. The same identical amount of money will be available for contraceptive devices with or without the Mexico City policy. The same number of contraceptives will be available for distribution. The only difference is whether we hire abortionists or nonabortionists to distribute them. There have always been plenty of organizations willing to administer U.S. programs, including hundreds around the world that are very good that are in the business of family planning, not abortion. The claim that Members have to oppose the President's pro-life policy in order to support efforts to eradicate AIDS is total nonsense. Mr. Chairman, I remind my colleagues, this amendment would make the bill abortion neutral. The amendment would not enact the Mexico City policy or any other policy on abortion. The only thing our amendment does is strike the pro-abortion language that was inserted in committee. When this bill was originally introduced, it said nothing at all about abortion. It was a foreign relations authorization bill, pure and simple. Unfortunately, supporters of an international right to abortion decided to use this bill as a vehicle for their attack on the President's authority in this area. So a vote for our amendment is a vote to restore the bill to its original abortion-neutral position. A ``yes'' vote will simply uphold the authority of the President to set reasonable terms and conditions on the distribution of U.S. foreign aid as the courts have held he has the power to do. Get us out of the abortion business. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the Hyde-Barcia-Smith-Oberstar amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts).

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor).

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of my time.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul). (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I speak in defense of millions of people who are offended by having their tax dollars coercively spent to facilitate abortions, and that is the state of the bill now with the Lee amendment. My amendment strikes the Lee amendment and makes this bill abortion neutral. I have heard people argue, debate abortion, and say that government ought to keep its hands out of this decision. They ought not to be involved in abortion. That is what we are trying to do. The Lee amendment provides that money, millions of dollars can go to organizations that facilitate abortions, that propagandize for abortions, that lobby to change the laws of countries that are antiabortion and that perform abortions. And it is wrong. Our country, this Congress, the President, are all entitled to specify the terms and conditions under which our tax dollars are being granted to nongovernment organizations to spend. We can tell them what to spend it for because it is our money, and that has been held constitutional by the courts. If my colleagues want the citations, I have them here. Now, abortion is not family planning. Family planning is helping you get pregnant or keeping you from getting pregnant. It is not killing an unborn child after you become pregnant. That is abortion. You can call it reproductive rights if you want, but it is abortion. It is killing a life once it has begun. Mr. Chairman, a lot of people do not want their money facilitating that practice overseas. No family planning dollars are going to be lost. Four hundred and twenty-five million dollars of your tax money and mine will go for family planning, and every penny of it will be spent. It will be spent providing family planning, not abortion. And that is as it should be. We invite a veto from the President. The President has reestablished the Mexico City policy, which is we do not subsidize organizations that propagandize, that lobby, that perform abortions. If this Lee amendment stays in the bill and if the Hyde amendment is defeated, we are inviting a veto of a very good bill. That is a shame. Secondly, this amendment, the Lee amendment, does not belong in this bill. This bill is an authorization for the State Department, not a foreign aid bill. It properly belongs as an amendment on a foreign aid appropriation, not in this bill. Mr. Chairman, money is fungible. If we provide millions of dollars to international planned parenthood, sure, they are spending their own money on abortions, but we free up their money. We make it available to them by providing our money for other purposes. So the notion that we are telling an organization how to spend its own money is nonsense. The gag rule, nobody is being gagged. If you want to talk about abortions, talk away, but not on our dime, not on tax dollars provided by this Congress. That is the difference. I heard my friend, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), talk about how important family planning is. I do not doubt that. He talked about all kinds of millions of people who cannot sustain a decent standard of living, that is fine. We provide family planning, and whether Planned Parenthood spends the money or other organizations, the money will be spent for family planning. Whatever good can come of that will come of that whether the Hyde amendment is there or not. Mr. Chairman, I plead with my colleagues, support the Hyde amendment. Help this bill get passed to where the President will sign it and do not, do not saddle people's consciences and souls with the fact that my colleagues are coercing tax dollars to facilitate organizations that preach and promote abortion. It is just wrong. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am advised that there are more Members that want to speak on this, and, at the same time, I am reluctant to open the floodgates, so I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes on each side.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon).

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, the amendment made in order by this motion would require the creation of a special office in the Department of State to carry out negotiations with North Korea. It mandates that the person appointed to that office, and I quote, must oversee discussions and negotiations with North Korea regarding missile proliferation and other matters. It does not mandate negotiations, and that is what the gentleman said we want. It does not do anything except say hire somebody and give them a title and he should oversee negotiations. This is micromanagement gone mad. We should not be telling a new State Department, a new administration what personnel it should have and what they should do. There will be somebody overseeing negotiations in North Korea. It may be the Secretary of State who is a general of some accomplishment. It may be the Deputy Secretary of State. It may be an Assistant Secretary of State. It may be lots of people. But to set up a special office and give him a title and he is to oversee discussions and negotiations is micromanagement, and the administration should be given the opportunity to do this in its own way. If we do not like what they are doing, we can criticize it. But to micromanage the Department of State and tell them they must hire somebody, give them the title, and then he should oversee negotiations is just a tad arrogant. I would trust Secretary Powell to do the right thing. So I hope my colleagues will vote this down. We can pass this bill and get on to other matters.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, we have no objection to this amendment. If the gentleman wishes, we gladly accept it.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. HYDE. Yes, I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor).

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady).

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 1646, the Clerk be authorized to correct section numbers, cross-references, and punctuation, and to make such stylistic, clerical, technical, conforming, and other changes as may be necessary to reflect the actions of the House in amending the bill.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Yes, I can give that assurance to the gentleman.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent during further consideration in the Committee of the Whole of H.R. 1646, pursuant to H. Res. 138, that it be in order at any time for the chairman of the Committee on International Relations or a designee to offer en bloc a set of amendments comprising amendments numbered 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25 and 26 printed in House Report 107-62 or germane modifications of any such amendment; that amendments en bloc pursuant to this order be considered as read, except that modifications be reported, be debatable for 40 minutes, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on International Relations, or their designees, not be subject to amendment and not be subject to a demand for a division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole; that the original proponent of an amendment included in such amendments en bloc may insert a statement in the Congressional Record immediately before the disposition of the amendments en bloc.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?