Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized as if in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I feel compelled today to make a couple of statements about the President's message last night. I am very disturbed at what is happening, and I think all of America needs to know what is going on. I commend the President on giving a beautiful, persuasive speech, as he is very good at doing. However, I suggest, Mr. President, that as we are speaking now and as time is creeping by, our troops are on their way to Bosnia. It is my understanding that the distinguished Senator from Colorado, who will be here in just a moment, made a trip over Thanksgiving, which is essentially the same trip I made the week before, into the northeast sector of Bosnia, which is the area where our troops are going to be. A number of people have gone over to Bosnia but have not gone beyond Sarajevo and do not really have a feel for the environment in which our President has this obsession of sending our American troops. Mr. President, last night he talked about morality and about what our moral obligation is in Bosnia, and the fact that we have a moral obligation to see how many people we are going to be able to save from the brutality that could be taking place there. He talked about our commitment to NATO. And I would like to throw out a couple of ideas, a couple of thoughts. Mr. President, when I went to Sarajevo it was the middle of a blizzard, a snowstorm. We had a hard time getting up there. There were not any Americans up there. There were not any Americans going to the northeast sector, that area around the Posavina corridor and Tuzla, and south of Hungary, which is an area where our troops are going to be deployed from the lst Armored Division where they are being trained for this kind of deployment. And that may be happening and is happening, I suggest, as we speak. I heard several people say that we need to wait until we have hearings and let some time go by. But each hour that goes by, the American people need to know the President has a strategy to get our troops over there, to put us in a position where we are going to have to, by denying the authorization of sending troops into Bosnia on the ground, we are turning our backs on troops who are already there. And this is a position that we are now getting into. And each hour that goes by we are getting in deeper and deeper. I can recall not being able to get up there until General Rupert Smith, who is the successor of Michael Rose as the commander there of the U.N. forces in Bosnia, he agreed to take me up. And as we went up we went over almost every square mile of that area that is called the northeast sector, where our troops are going to be deployed, not more than 100 feet off the ground--because I have a background in aviation, [[Page S 17591]] I know we were not anywhere higher than that--we were in the middle of a blizzard. Mr. President, this is not the Rocky Mountains we are talking about. This is an area of cliffs and caves. For the first time I could see why during the Second World War that they were able to withstand the very best that Hitler had to offer on a ratio of 1 to 8 because of the very unique geography we are dealing with. As I looked down I thought, there are not any roads down there, there are not any valleys, not the traditional valleys that you would have in the terrain that we think of as being mountainous terrain. And so all these tanks and all these armored vehicles would not really have any way to maneuver in that area. And, Mr. President, I think the President of the United States is putting us in a position where it is going to be too late. You know, we could come back and talk about whether or not we should send troops over, whether or not there are strategic interests as far as our Nation's security is concerned. And by that time, we are going to have our troops over there. I think the President is looking at--he has been talking about 20,000 or 25,000 troops for so long now, for 2 years, I think it is an obsession with him. He is no longer thinking of them as being faces of real human beings. I think it is a faceless gesture when he says, we want to send 20,000 American troops into Bosnia. But I went up to where the lst Armored Division was training these young men and women who will be the first to go, who I suggest--I had breakfast with many of them in the mess hall. And they are on their way to Bosnia right now as we speak. And those individuals all asked me, ``What is our mission? We don't understand what our mission is.'' Of course, I tried to be as optimistic as possible. I said, ``We're always behind our troops. Whatever happens, we're going to be supporting our troops.'' But as far as the mission is concerned, I do not know what the mission is. In the speech last night the President kept using the term over and over again--he said, ``The mission is clear and limited.'' But he never said what the mission was. It is a humanitarian mission. And I think we have about half the world that is covered with problems, with ethnic cleansing, with human rights violations. I am not sure whether we feel that we--or the President feels that we--have the resources and the military assets to go out and take care of all these problems. Obviously, we do not. We are operating on a defense budget now that is down comparable to what it was in 1980 when it could not afford spare parts. Yet we are taking on all these humanitarian problems around the world. I had occasion to talk to James Tayrien. James Tayrien is from Poteau, OK. He would be one of the first ones to go. I came home and talked to his mother, Estella, down in Poteau. She asked me the same question. I cannot answer it. It is very easy to get engaged in these things and send troops in, but it is hard to bring them out. Look at Vietnam. It was very easy to send them in. Look at the other cases that we have. Mission creep. If there was ever a classical environment for mission creep, that is it over in Bosnia. In fact, we have already crept. The mission was to be peacekeeping. Now it is peace implementation. There is a big difference, Mr. President, between peacekeeping and peace implementation. Peace implementation is the recognition there is no peace to keep right now. The President last night said, of course, the war is over. The war is not over. We went up there. We were in Tuzla. We could hear the firing, the firepower that was going on. It has not stopped. And we are dealing with three major factions over there. And I suggest to you that one of the factions was not in Dayton, OH. Milosevic does not speak for the Bosnian Serbs. It was my experience--and I see the distinguished Senator from Colorado is here. He is the only other Senator or House Member, to my knowledge, who has been in the northeast sector, in the Tuzla area. The point I am trying to get across here is that those people who are around that peace table are not speaking for the factions that were firing guns as we were up there just a couple weeks ago. I mean, they are up there. They could be Croats. They could be Serbs. They could be Bosnian Serbs. They could be Moslems. We do not know who they are. They could be any of these rogue factions. We hear a lot about the major factions that are over there. We know that three major factions have fired on their own troops just to blame the other side for sympathy. Anyone with that mentality is going to be firing on American troops. But we do not say anything about the other rogue factions, such as the Black Swans, the Arkan Tigers. We have Iranians. We have all kinds of factions up there, more than just three major factions. I would like to ask the Senator from Colorado, if that is the same environment as I have just explained that he experienced just this past week? I am sure he would have rather been doing something else on Thanksgiving. But it is my understanding he was up in that northeast sector during Thanksgiving. Is that correct?

Mr. INHOFE. Let me ask the Senator from Colorado, since this was about a 10-day period between the time I was in the northeast sector of Bosnia, south of the Posavina pass and south of Hungary and north of Tuzla, if he did have occasion to speak to any of those who were in command up in Tuzla, such as General Haukland?

Mr. INHOFE. This is the question I was going to ask the Senator. Even last night we talked about 12 months. When the Senator and I sat next to each other at the Senate Armed Services Committee, when we had Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvili, and we asked the question that they had written up, ``Are you going to commit yourself to 12 months, to a time period after which we withdraw and we come back?'' they said, ``Yes, we are absolutely committed to that.'' Did you find anyone, who were the military people, either with NATO, the United Nations, with any of our NATO partners, or anyone up there in the Tuzla area who felt there is even a remote idea or notion we could be out of there in a 12-month period as far as achieving peace?

Mr. INHOFE. That is exactly what they thought 10 days prior to that time. I have these horrible visions of what happened with Somalia. I can remember when we were trying to bring our troops back from Somalia, and we sent resolutions to President Clinton month after month to bring our troops back from there. It was not until 18 of our Rangers were murdered and the mutilated corpses were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu that the American people finally woke up and said, ``We want them back. We don't have strategic interests there that are worth this kind of a sacrifice.'' I see similar things like this are happening over there. When you talk about the morality of the issue and the fact that we are, in a sense, rewarding those individuals who are guilty of the most serious war crimes, because we are now saying we are on their side and we are doing this, this is something that I think we need to talk about before a decision is made that we are going to go along with this, because I see that happening. I see discussions taking place in this Chamber and outside the Chamber, ``Well, let's wait until we have some hearings. Let's wait until this,'' and as this is happening, our troops are being deployed over there.

Mr. INHOFE. Let me ask the Senator from Colorado----

Mr. INHOFE. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Did the Senator from South Dakota have a further unanimous-consent request?

Mr. INHOFE. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, just a couple of other things I wanted to ask the Senator from Colorado. In that there is a 10-day timeframe from the time he came back and the time I was over in that area, a concern was expressed to me at that time--and keeping in mind that the lines we have now seen on the map near Tuzla, which I am sure the Senator has had a chance to discuss, there is a problem that there are approximately 3 million refugees, if you count them from all throughout that area that those lines on the map are going to preclude at that time, they said more than 50 percent of them would not be able to return to their homelands. Their concern was that this is going to increase the number of rogue elements that were there, that anyone who thinks there is a peace accord, first thing a refugee wants to do is go home. The fact that they would not be able to return home would increase the number of rogue elements that are around or that join other elements. The second thing is their concern over what we refer to, and the administration refers to, has never really been defined as systematic violations. There are two ways we can get out of this. One is, 12 months goes by; and the other is if there is a systematic violation, meaning one of the major factions [[Page S 17593]] is violating the peace accord or whatever accord it is they have initialed and they are proposing to sign. The fact that there is no way for the military, the soldier in the field, to know if there is an uprising of some type or a conflict, whether that is a systematic violation or maybe just some rogue element that is firing upon troops--did they express that concern when you were there?

Mr. INHOFE. Certainly in a 12-month period, if we are, in fact, committed to a timeframe--and I do not know from my reading and, of course, my experience in the military, of any time we have gone into hostile conflict with a time-oriented departure--it is always a function or an action, something that has taken place. It was General Huptmann, I believe, who used this analogy, and maybe he used it with you. He said, ``Twelve months is like putting your hand in water for 12 months and you take it out and look down and nothing has changed.'' Twelve months in the Balkans does not mean anything. If we are going to be out in 12 months, those individuals that would be warring factions would be in a position to start up again.

Mr. INHOFE. I think the Senator from Colorado is being very conservative when he quotes the figures of the administration of $1.5 to $2 billion. I have seen figures up to $4.5 to $6 billion. I recall not too many weeks ago the administration came to this body for a $1.4 billion supplemental appropriation to take care of some of the past humanitarian gestures that were forecast to cost a third or a fourth of that amount. It is hard to talk about dollars when we are talking about human lives. My concern is if we are concerned, as the President indicated he was last night, about NATO and the integrity of NATO, where is NATO going to be if we go in there and start this thing, the body bags start coming back to America and people start getting concerned as they were as the incidents of Mogadishu? Then we cut and run, which surely we would do at that time. Then, where is NATO and the integrity of NATO?

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, this is truly a historic time. Some of us have been working on this idea of balancing the budget for many, many years. When I look over and see the two very distinguished Senators from Nebraska, I want to remind them of another great Senator from Nebraska in years past. His name is Carl Curtis. Carl Curtis, back in 1972, came to me as a member of the Oklahoma State Senate and he said we want to get a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution passed. He said, of course if that happens we have to have the States ratify it. He had an idea. This came from the genius from the State of Nebraska, I say to the two Senators from Nebraska. He said we should preratify a balanced budget amendment. Go to the States and get two-thirds of the States or three-fourths of the States to preratify a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I introduced a resolution in the Oklahoma State Senate. It passed. We became the first State to preratify a balanced budget amendment. I remember the argument at that time. At that time the total national debt was $400 billion and there were radio and TV ads and they were stacking hundred-dollar bills up--at that time I believe the Empire State Building was the tallest building--and they were stacking $100 bills up and they said that is the size of the national debt. Of course we know today that was just a drop in the bucket. That is how significant this thing is. That is how long many of us have been working on it. This is truly the opportunity that we have to do it. The Senator from Indiana just a few minutes ago made a statement that rang a bell. He said this is a moral issue. I think we should look at what we are faced with and what the President is faced with, his temptation to veto this Balanced Budget Act of 1995, to look at it as a moral issue. I had occasion to be at the national prayer breakfast where we had several foreign visitors coming in, and one from Moldavia, a former Soviet State, came in very proud. He was smiling. He said: ``Senator Inhofe, how much in America do you get to keep?'' I said, ``I am sorry, I do not understand what you are saying.'' He said, ``Well, how much in America do you have to give the Government so you can keep something?'' Then I knew what he was talking about. He was talking about how much do we pay in taxes. I gave an answer I would be embarrassed to share on the floor because I am not sure how accurate it is, because he said in all pride they have a system over there in Moldavia where they work for about 3 months and they have to pay the Government--he said, ``We pay the government 80 percent of what we make,'' and then with the pride showing through in this new-found democracy and free economy he thought they had, he said, ``We get to keep 20 percent.'' We look at that in this country, how could they be so proud of being able to keep just 20 percent? But the fact remains that someone born today, such as my three grandchildren, if we do not do something to change this course, then that person is going to have to pay 82 percent of their lifetime income just to support Government. Mr. President, I will conclude by sharing an exciting experience I had a year ago yesterday, November 17, 1994. I was sworn in as a Member of the U.S. Senate. That happened to be my 60th birthday. I thought a year ago, how in the world could I ever top this? What do you do for an encore? You are sworn in as a Member of the U.S. Senate on your 60th birthday. I say, what are we going to do for the 61st birthday? Yet, something much more exciting happened on my 61st birthday yesterday. We passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1995. This is the act that is going to take our kids out of bondage. As difficult as it is, and I heard it demagogued around this Chamber that we will be slashing programs. We know we will not slash programs. We know we will be increasing Medicare, for example, at a greater rate of growth than the President himself had suggested before. I think clearly right now the ball is in the court of the President. We have passed it in the House. We have passed it in the Senate. It is now up to the American people, because we know one thing about our President, he does listen very carefully and watch the polls. If it becomes very evident to him that this is the last opportunity we have to commit ourselves in America to a balanced budget, as I believe this is our last chance, then, I think he may not be doing as he said, and will sign the Balanced Budget Act of 1995. I thank the Senators from Nebraska for allowing me to move ahead. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, let me thank both Senators from Nebraska who have been kind enough to allow me to have a little time. I appreciate it very much. I will try to return the favor some time. Madam President, I have a feeling that this is a historic moment right now, that we may not have any more votes, and we may be leaving all of this up here and going back, hopefully, for the Thanksgiving holidays, in which case I have a couple of comments I want to make. They are not really exactly on the focus of today, but I will also go back and wind up with some thoughts I have on this subject. There have been some rumors--and I always hate to talk about rumors on the floor of the U.S. Senate--that have come from so many different unrelated sources, and I am concerned that during the period of time that we will be in the Thanksgiving recess, there may be some agreement reached and our troops may be deployed to Bosnia. This concerns me very much, and this is not a very appropriate time to bring it up. But I do think that we need to get on the record and remind the President that this Senate passed, just 2 days ago, a strong sense-of-the-Senate amendment to the DOD appropriations bill which says that we, Mr. President, want you to come to the Senate and to the House of Representatives for authority to send troops into Bosnia. It was a very similar situation that the President of the United States at that time, George Bush, faced back in the early nineties when he wanted to send troops to the Persian Gulf. He did not want to come to Congress. He felt it was necessary and that we had vital national interests in the Persian Gulf and we had to go. Yet, he did not want to do that and take a chance of being turned down. So we have a similar situation today. I can remember talking to one of the generals training over at the 1st Armored Division in Germany. Those are the troops that were going to go to the Persian Gulf. Now he is training the troops that would go to Bosnia. He related to me an experience of sitting and listening to the radio, hoping, and praying that George Bush would take this to Congress to get authority. They did not want to be sending their troops into a hostile area without the American people behind them. I see exactly the parallel situation here. I certainly hope that the President will come to Congress and not use an opportunity when we might be on recess to deploy troops to Bosnia. Not too long ago, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, we had Secretary Christopher, Secretary Perry, and General Shalikashvili. I asked them the question, after they defined the mission the United States has in Bosnia. The mission was twofold: First, to contain a civil war to the former Yugoslavia, and second, to protect our position in NATO and the integrity of NATO. I felt--and I think several other people who have spoken on this floor feel the same way--that those two missions are not worth the loss of one life. Shortly before, General Rose--Michael Rose, who is the commanding [[Page S 17431]] general of the U.N. forces in Bosnia--had made a statement that if America gets involved and sends troops over to Bosnia, we will lose more lives than we lost in the Persian Gulf war, which was 390. I asked the question to all three of these top officials representing the President of the United States. I said, ``Is that mission worth the loss of 400 or more American lives?'' Secretary Perry said, ``Yes.'' Secretary Christopher said, ``Yes.'' General Shalikashvili said, ``Yes.'' I think there is the honest difference of opinion, and we need to see how that opinion is shared by the American people and by both Houses of Congress. I certainly admonish the President if, during this period of time, if the temptation comes to deploy troops, to think of the troops going over there without the American people behind them.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator for yielding. I probably will not take that much time. But, Mr. President, I have been sitting here and listening and watching. And it has been really enlightening to me to see what is going on and how the debate has been going. When I go back to Oklahoma and we have townhall meetings and I talk to people back there, the ones I have been chastised about for referring to as the ``real people of America,'' they ask the question over and over again, ``Senator, why don't you just do it? All this talk about balancing the budget. Why don't you just do it? We have to do it. We have to live with a balanced budget. Why not do it?'' Because every big spender around, every liberal in Congress says he or she wants to balance the budget, and yet when it comes down to getting the opportunity to actually do it, we do not do it. I hope those people who ask that question at the townhall meetings are watching carefully tonight, because now you know why it is so difficult to do something that seems so easy back home. The second thing is listening to some of these speeches--I do not mean this in a demeaning way or insulting way to anyone, but I really feel that so many people right now are trying to hold onto the past with white knuckles. Those individuals who rejoiced back in the 1960's when Government took greater control of our lives cannot believe that times are changing and that the people are no longer going to tolerate that. If you stop and analyze the elections of 1994, it is an overwhelming revolution at the polls. And who was defeated? All you have to do is get the ratings. You know, people know who the big spenders are and who they are not. The National Taxpayers Union, many others, have ratings. Those individuals who lost at the polls in 1994 were the ones who were the big spenders. This revolution started, really, back in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. Of course, he did not have the support of Congress, so he could not get the things done he wanted to. I will always remember looking at television on the Wednesday morning after the election, that landslide election when Ronald Reagan won in 1980, and it was the defeated person who had run against him. He was on the ``Today Show,'' and he made a statement I will always remember. He said, this is a quote, ``I cannot believe the people of America have so overwhelmingly repudiated classic liberalism.'' And that is exactly what happened. But the problem is we never were able to carry out those programs, because we had a hostile and a liberal Congress. That is changed now. That is all changed. For all those of you are who sitting around here wringing your hands saying all these bad things are going to happen, all these people are going to be cut when, in fact, they are not going to be cut, all these horrible things we have been listening to tonight, just stop and think of it in this context: In 1993, we passed--at that time, President Clinton had control of both the House and the Senate--and we passed the largest single tax increase in the history of public finance in America or anyplace in the world. Those are not the words of conservative Republican Jim Inhofe; those are the words of the Democrat leader of the Senate Finance Committee, the chairman at that time. So I suggest that if anyone was opposed to that great tax increase that [[Page S 17292]] even now President Bill Clinton says was too great of a tax increase, if you are opposed to it, then you should be for these tax reductions now. For all practical purposes, all we are doing is repealing part of the damage we did to the American people in 1993. So I wind up--my colleague, who I respect so much, from Minnesota, Senator Grams, made a talk and he ended up quoting Winston Churchill, and I think I will do the same. I can tell you folks on the other side of the aisle that the people of America know better. They do not want the patterns of the past. They realize we have to do something. Winston Churchill said: ``Truth is incontrovertible, panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may destroy it, but there it is.'' And that is what we are going to learn tonight. I yield the floor. the need for privacy protection

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I appreciate very much the statement just made by the majority leader. What he has been hearing is the same thing that I have been hearing. I think a lot of us, Madam President, have been distressed by reading some of the polls that might imply that there is a deadlock, and somehow the Republicans have something to do with it, when, in fact, we have come up with a solution, the solution that was a part of the mandate of the election of 1994. They told us in loud and clear terms as Republicans took control of both the House and the Senate, that we are tired of business as usual, that we do want less Government involved in our lives. We want to change that trend that has existed since the 1960's. I am very proud to announce here today that in our partly closed offices around the State of Oklahoma and here in Washington, that we have been watching very closely as the calls come in. The calls have come in, and the very first 6 hours after supposedly the Government shut down, 98 people called in and said that they thought the President was right; but 611 people called in--almost an 8-1 ratio--and those 611 people said ``Don't give in.'' We made ourselves clear in November of 1994: If the Republicans cannot do it, you know the Democrats will not do it. Do not cave in at this time. We want a balanced budget. The Republicans have offered a balanced budget. Every Democrat I know of has stood on this floor and said we all want balanced budgets, but when it gets right down to it, they really do not want balanced budgets. They want business as usual. We have offered a balanced budget. We have sent all this to the President. It is in the President's court now. It is hard for me to understand what is going to happen. I encourage all of my Republican colleagues to listen to the loud and clear message that we are getting from Oklahoma, a very wise State. That is, stay the course. The same as Mr. Ham said, who wrote to our majority leader, Bob Dole, that he quoted a few minutes ago. I have no intentions of caving in. This is the last opportunity we will have to actually achieve a balanced budget in America. We are going to do it. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, while I was presiding, I was desirous of responding to some of the things that had been said about the subject of this morning's business by a number of the Members of the Congress, specifically one from North Dakota. During the course of his remarks, he talked about a plan, about the fact that the Republicans have talked about the plan that we had that we are going to discuss, that we have sent to the President that will reach a balanced budget in a period of 7 years, as if somebody else had a plan. I suggest that there is no other plan. If there is a plan, I have not seen it. The Senator was talking about repeating some of the things that had been said over and over again having to do with reducing Medicare in order to give tax breaks to the rich. I want to say, every time I hear that, that the Republicans had no intention at any point of reducing Medicare. The Republicans gave a program that would have the effect of increasing Medicare by approximately 6.4 percent each year. That would be if a person were getting the maximum Medicare, as accorded today under the current law. That person would receive $4,800 a year. At the end of the 7-year period, that same individual would be getting $6,700 a year. There is no way to say that that could be considered as a cut in Medicare. To say over and over and over again, with redundancy that is unbearable, that the Republicans are going to try to use cuts in Medicare--which I just talked about, that there are no cuts in Medicare--to give tax breaks to the rich is being unreasonable. Mr. President, 90 percent of the tax breaks that would come from a $500 tax credit per child would go to families under $100,000 of income. But I want to get down to the point where he was talking about our Nation's defense. He was talking about the Senate bill that was too high, talking about the appropriations bill that was actually some $7 billion more than asked for by the military. I think we all know, being realistic, that when there is a Democrat in the White House, the military is going to be influenced by what that Democrat or a Republican in the White House might want. We saw what happened back in the 1970's when we had a Democratic President in Jimmy Carter, and we saw our defense budget going down, going down and, of course, the social programs going up. Until such time as 1980, we did not have enough money for spare parts, and we found it necessary after 1980, up to 1985, to increase spending on defense by about 40 percent. We do not want that to happen again, and yet we have seen during the course of this administration cuts in our defense budget to the extent that right now we are where we were in 1980. This concerns me, because right now there is a crisis that is taking place and a decision that has been made by this President to send up to 25,000 troops on to the ground in Bosnia. You can talk about doing this and act like the budget is going to remain static during this time, and yet the foreign policy of this administration has put more and more money into humanitarian gestures, Mr. President, to the extent that he has had to come back to this Congress for emergency supplementals. This is the position we have found ourselves in: We have a Republican-elected House and Senate. We have control. The Republicans gained control in the 1994 elections. And yet we have a President who sends our troops off on humanitarian missions, having no relativity to our Nation's defense. We sent them off to Somalia. Of course, our troops went to Somalia in December under the last month of the Bush administration. And yet, once that humanitarian mission, as described by President Bush when we sent the troops over to Somalia, was over, we time and time again pleaded with President Clinton to bring our troops back from Somalia. There was no mission there that related to our Nation's security interests. Yet, he did not bring them back and they did not come back until 18 of our troops were murdered in cold blood and dragged through the mud through the streets of Mogadishu. [[Page S 16974]] What we do not want to happen in Bosnia--if you look at what the administration has done to our military--is for them to come back and say we need another billion dollars. They came back for a $1.4 billion emergency supplemental just to cover these humanitarian missions in places like Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and other places. And we are in a position where we did not have a voice in making the decision to spend that money on humanitarian missions, money we have to borrow from future generations, because we are borrowing this money. Yet, we cannot deny the President his request for emergency supplementals, because if we do that, he will take it out of the operating account of our existing military, and, of course, we are down now to a bare bones military system. I think what is happening right now in Bosnia has a far greater significance than what we have been talking about in just the cost. I had occasion to spend 6 months in Bosnia. I did it all in 4 days. It was the most miserable 4 days I ever spent. But I learned something while I was there. I looked around and I saw a country that had been pounded and pounded. Yet, we are not real sure who is doing the pounding all that time. We have three warring factions in Bosnia. We have the Croats, the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian Moslems. Yet, while the peace talks are going on, I suggest to you that some of the parties causing the problems over in Bosnia are not at the peace table. So here we are faced with a dilemma where we are going to have to make decisions as to what is taking place over there, and we are going to try to stop the President from sending 25,000 ground troops in there where, certainly, there will be many, many deaths. I will wind this up by only repeating the words of the commander of the U.N. forces in Bosnia, that British general, Gen. Michael Rose, who said, ``If the Americans send troops into Bosnia, they will sustain more losses than they did during the Persian Gulf war.'' That was 390 losses. I remember when I asked Secretary Christopher and Secretary Perry, ``Is whatever we are doing over in Bosnia significant enough-- whatever mission that is--for the loss of several hundred--specifically over 400--American lives?'' They said, ``Yes.'' So I think there is the basis of the difference of opinion. Is the mission of containing a civil war and of protecting the integrity of NATO worth several hundred American lives. I say, ``no.'' That is another debate that is going on now. I would like to advise the President that it is my intention to introduce legislation that is going to make it more difficult for him to send troops into Bosnia on the ground. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Does the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. I do want to respond. I hope I have made it abundantly-- --

Mr. INHOFE. Would the Senator yield for a couple of minutes, and before yielding, would the Senator read a statement from the registered nurse I discussed yesterday? I want to have that read before I make a comment.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator would not mind reading the statement of Brenda Shafer.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I hope the Senator from Pennsylvania was listening when I said I mean nothing personal about it. I have a great deal of respect for him. When I talk about being thankful that I was not a lawyer at this time, I was talking about looking for ways, loopholes around this thing, so this procedure can take place. I acknowledge to the Senator that on two occasions in my 60-year life I have needed lawyers and I was thankful to have them at that time.