John Johnston

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Of the first-of-a-kind engineering program.

Mr. JOHNSTON. We are in full agreement with that amendment.

Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 5105

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I think we are willing to accept it.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I very much appreciate the very warm and generous remarks of my colleague from New Mexico. While he is new in the chairmanship on this committee, he is not new to the committee. We have worked side by side for all of these 22 years, because New Mexico, of course, has a very vital interest in the work of this committee. The State of New Mexico can thank Senator Pete Domenici for the presence and the health and viability of much of that State's Federal presence. The Federal presence in the State of New Mexico is rather overwhelming and would not have been such an overwhelming presence but for Senator Pete Domenici. We have worked together to make that so, and it is in the Nation's interest. The national labs, particularly, are an American resource that needs to be nurtured and used and developed and continued for the benefit of this country. So we are very pleased for that. Also, since this is my last time to manage this bill for the minority, I would like to mention the longstanding relationship I have with the chairman of the full committee, Senator Hatfield, who was the chairman of this subcommittee and the ranking member. We would trade off on those roles every time the Congress would change. That was a very productive and most pleasant relationship as well. So this committee and its staff and its work are some of the most pleasant and most productive times I have had in this Congress. I thank all for giving me that chance. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with the senior Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Domenici] in presenting to the Senate the Energy and Water Development appropriation bill for the fiscal year 1997 beginning October 1, 1996. This bill, S. 1959, an original bill reported by the committee on July 16, 1996, was approved by a unanimous vote. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3816. The markups in the House and Senate subcommittees and committees occurred simultaneously, rather than our normal process or House acting first and our waiting receipt of the House bill. At the outset, I want to commend the chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Domenici. He has done an excellent job in putting this bill together, under very difficult budgetary constraints and circumstances. He is an outstanding Member of the Senate and I am pleased to work with him in connection with this bill and on other matters. I also want to thank the distinguished Senator from Oregon, Senator Hatfield, the chairman of the full Committee on Appropriations. Senator Hatfield and I had probably one of the longest running twosomes in the Appropriation Committee on the Energy and Water Subcommittee, I having chaired on and off for a number of years, and Senator Hatfield having chaired on and off for a number of years, and having rotated as ranking minority member. We. always shared a productive, pleasant, bipartisan, and always, I think, the kind of relationship that Senators seek and glory in when it is present. I treasure his friendship and appreciate the cooperation and assistance given to me. Mr. President, the Senator from New Mexico has presented the committee recommendations and explained the major appropriations items, as well as the amounts recommended, so I will not undertake to repeat and elaborate on the numerous recommendations. Instead I will just have a few brief remarks summarizing the bill. purpose of the bill The bill supplies funds for water resources development programs and related activities, of the Department of the Army, civil functions-- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Civil Works Program in title I; for the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation in title II; for the Department of Energy's energy research activties--except for fossil fuel programs and certain conservation and regulatory functions-- including atomic energy defense activities in title III; and for related independent agencies and commissions, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and Appalachian regional development programs, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Tennessee Valley Authority in title V. 602(b) allocation for the bill The Energy and Water Development Subcommittee allocation under section 602(b)(1) of the budget act total $20,308,000,000 in budget authority and $20,202,000,000 in outlays for fiscal year 1997. Of these amounts the Defense discretionary allocation is $11,600,000,000 in budget authority and $11,233,000,000 in outlays. For domestic discretionary the budget authority allocation is $8,708,000,000 and the allocation for outlays is $8,969,000,000. The committee recommendation uses all of the budget authority allocation in both categories, so there is no room for add-ons to the bill. Therefore, any amendments to add will have to be offset by reductions from within the bill. summary of recommendations Mr. President, the fiscal year 1997 budget estimates for the bill total $20,648,952,000 in new budget obligational authority. The recommendation of the committee provides $20,735,645,000. This amount is $86,693,000 over the President's budget estimates and about $800 million over the appropriations amounts for the current fiscal year 1996. The large increases in the bill over last year are principally associated with the Defense activities and related Defense programs-- what we refer to at 050 national defense accounts. Domestic discretionary spending continues to decline especially in the Department of Energy domestic discretionary functions. Mr. President, I will briefly summarize the major recommendations provided in the bill. All the details and figures are, of course, included in the Committee Report No. 104-320, accompanying the bill, which has been available since July 17.

Mr. JOHNSTON. If the Senator will yield. Mr. President, I cosponsored a bill on this subject matter filed by my colleague, Senator Breaux, a few years ago. Does this differ in any way from that?

Mr. JOHNSTON. That was this session?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Is it the same as we had a few years ago?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Well, Mr. President, I commend the Senators for proposing this legislation. Being one of these recipient States of this waste, who has never been able to control this situation, I commend them for coming up with a solution that I believe will work. Of course, the minority will enthusiastically accept the amendment. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. If I may follow further on the example you mentioned, South Korea. If you turn the clock back to 1962, when General Ne Win took control, he had control for over a quarter of a century. At that time, Burma was a relatively prosperous country. South Korea was not prosperous and was----

Mr. JOHNSTON. A totally repressive regime. The same, I think, would be said for our friends, the Taiwanese.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Will my friend from Kentucky yield for a question?

Mr. JOHNSTON. In that same July meeting of the European Union, did they not reject sanctions against Burma?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Can the Senator name me some examples of where that has happened, other than South Africa?

Mr. JOHNSTON. I say other than South Africa.

Mr. JOHNSTON. But the whole world was united.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President and Members of the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, by big majorities, we have in recent years voted, first, to lift the sanctions against Vietnam, and then to open diplomatic relationships with Vietnam because we believe it is important to engage Vietnam not only in civilized discourse, but to bring them into the community of nations. We have had that debate, and this has been successfully completed as far as those of us who wish to engage Vietnam are concerned. How do we complete the circle? How do we help Vietnam become the kind of nation we want it to be? Or to put it another way, what do we want Vietnam to do? I think if there is one thing we want Vietnam to do it is to follow the rule of law, to be a law-abiding country rather than to be a Communist country. The two are at opposite ends. To be Communistic is not to be a rule- of-law country. To be a rule-of-law country is the opposite. So what we have done here is, working with the Vietnamese, to authorize AID to spend up to $1.5 million, not in aid to Vietnam but to give to the American Bar Association, the American Law Institute, and the U.S.- Vietnam Trade Council to help send experts to help Vietnam develop the rule of law. Not one cent of this goes to the country of Vietnam, Mr. President--not one cent. What we will do is what we did with Eastern Europe, and as a matter of fact this initiative, which was my initiative in the committee, is patterned after that which we had for Eastern Europe. After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, they found that they had no legal system in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, et cetera. And the American Bar Association sent over lawyers and judges and others, many of them contributing their time, to help them develop a legal system, a commercial code, a bankruptcy code, a criminal code-- all of the codes; and then to train the judges to help run the system. That is what we want to do for Vietnam. The Vietnamese have welcomed this. I spoke to the United States-Vietnam Trade Council. I said the thing you can do to best ensure investment in Vietnam, to ensure you will be brought into the community of nations, is to develop a legal system to follow the rule of law. They were willing and now are anxious to have this kind of aid. Within the last 2 weeks, a group of legal scholars from Vietnam were here in Washington and I visited with them, including the head of the Vietnamese bar association as well as Vietnamese judges. They are eager and anxious to learn how to put together a legal system modeled on the American system. If there is anything we want for Vietnam, how can anyone in this body be against Vietnam adopting the rule of law? How can anybody in this body be against training Vietnamese judges to follow the law, Western-style law, propagated by the American Bar Association? I just do not understand. The reasoning seems to be this. Vietnam is a repressive regime, says my friend, Senator Smith. Therefore, do not give them aid in following the rule of law. That does not compute, to say you are repressive therefore we are not going to help you be less repressive; you are repressive, therefore we are not going to give you and your citizens legal protection. It does not compute. Let me also say the whole predicate for this, which is the so-called Brooke amendment, which says you do not give foreign aid to a country that owes you money--in the first place this is usually waived. It has been waived for a broad number of countries: Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Nicaragua, a host of African countries, Eastern European countries. Beyond that, the good news is on the $150 million that is owed by the Vietnamese--which, by the way, was incurred largely before this regime came in--we have come to closure and agreement, as I understand it, on all but about $8 million of that $150 million. And there has been a commitment to settle the whole thing. The Vietnamese are trying to do what they can. They have agreed to resolve and most has been resolved. And even when it is not resolved, with other countries it is waived. But besides that, it is not foreign aid. The question is will it help Vietnam? You bet it will help Vietnam. It will help make Vietnam a law-abiding rule-of-law country. And that should make it easier for companies to invest there. What is wrong with that? Do we want this Communist country to stay Communist? Or do we want them to have a legal code? It is as simple as that. For the life of me, I do not understand the reasoning that says it is wrong to help Vietnam follow the rule of law. I think that is a non sequitur and I hope the Senate will roundly reject the Smith amendment.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Will the Senator yield at that point?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Cohen amendment. I was part of a group that perfected an amendment and put out a ``Dear Colleague'' letter. It was similar in many respects to the Cohen amendment. It had some significant differences, and we had a broad support I believe for that amendment. But, Mr. President, we have determined--Senator Nickles and I, and other supporters of this amendment--that the differences between the Johnston-Nickles amendment and the Cohen amendment were not sufficient so as to divide our forces. And we believe that essentially this amendment incorporates what we think is the central thrust of our amendment. So, therefore, we support it, and I urge my colleagues to do so. Mr. President, this is a difficult question. No one defends the SLORC, the group that is running Myanmar, or Burma. It is true they are a bad regime. They are not an Iran in the sense that they do not practice state terrorism. They are not a Nazi Germany in the sense that they engage in genocide. But they are plenty bad, Mr. President, and we do not defend them. The question is: Would it be effective to do what Senator McConnell has proposed? Would it be effective? Would it help achieve the end? Mr. President, I think it would do precisely and exactly the opposite. Mr. President, to cut off American participation in Burma--not foreign participation but American participation--would be exactly the wrong thing. First of all, it is no sanction because Americans are less than 10 percent of foreign investment in Burma today and the total of foreign investment is less than Burmese send back--Burmese expatriates from around the world send back to their own country. The reason for this is because under the former leader of Burma, General Ne Win, who was there for over two decades, Burma was one of the most hermetically sealed countries on the face of the Earth. People did not go outside Burma. People did not come inside Burma. It was a totally closed not only economy but society that practiced the most cruel kind of repression; no doubt about that. It has only been in the last few years, Mr. President, that Burma has opened up at all. They have begun to let a little bit of light in. Indeed, Unocal, which is an American company, is in there together with Total, which is a French company, to develop the gas fields. Actually they want to send the gas to Thailand. The Thais are very strong supporters of this, as you might suspect. And the question is: Is it good to have an American company, or would it be better to have Total, the French company, have the contract? Really that is the question proposed by the McConnell approach. I submit it is better to have an American company there. Mr. President, I talked to the President of Unocal. He personally have been talking to these people in what we call the SLORC, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, the group that is running Burma. Whether or not he has been successful, or whether or not he is beginning to be successful, you can argue. But I can tell you, Mr. President, that the President of Unocal --an American--it is better to have him in there than to have only the French because the French and the Europeans have never really helped on human rights matters. I mean they never helped on China. They never helped on other countries around the world. It is always the United States who does the propagation of democracy and human rights. We have a Louisiana company that has a subcontract there. The South Koreans are ready, willing, and able. And, as a matter of fact, it is grooming to take their place in Burma. I ask you, Mr. President. Do you think that the South Koreans are going to be in talking about human rights and democracy? Mr. President, it is much more likely that Americans will do so. When you have a country that has been so sealed off from Western influences, from civilizing influence, from moderating influences all these years, it is important to let the light in--the cleansing light of democracy, the cleansing light of Western civilization, the dynamic forces of the free market. It is better to let those in. Then you have something with which to sanction. If, just as they are letting the light in, you suddenly shut the light off, there is neither a sanction to be had nor a loss for the Burmese in continuing with their course of conduct. My colleague from Kentucky says that there has been no improvement at all; that they have not responded at all. Mr. President, I would say that is debatable. We asked the Burmese to do a couple of things, both of which they did. We asked them to release Aung San Suu Kyi. They did, as my colleague from Kentucky says. She is not under house arrest. She stays at home because it is the safest place. Maybe so. But we asked them to do that, and they did that. She is not in prison. That is not much but it is something we asked them to do, and they did it. We asked them to release the Members of Parliament. Most of them have been released. Several hundred have been released. There are a number which remain in prison. They say there is no Member of Parliament in prison, and rather cynically they are able to justify that by saying they decertified those Members of Parliament. So I do not mean to make the case that the Burmese are responding completely, or responding in good faith, or that there is great reason to hope. But, Mr. President, there is some progress and some measurable progress where there was none before. When Ne Win was running that country, you could not even get American news media in; a member of the news media. Now, Mr. President, there is at least reason to hope. My friend from Kentucky says Aung San Suu Kyi, that brave woman who did in fact win the election, has backed his position. Mr. President, I tried to read everything that she has said. I stand second to none in my admiration for her. She is a very brave woman. She has risked her personal safety to stand up for freedom and democracy in Burma. And I hope eventually that she will be successful. But I am not aware--I was going to ask my colleague from Kentucky--if she has endorsed the specific language of the McConnell amendment. Has she endorsed this specific language?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for responding on that. I think the answer to my question is--and I think the Senator was honest in saying--that Aung San Suu Kyi has neither seen nor endorsed this language, that she in fact endorsed sanctions, as the Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen] has in his amendment. It is sanctions. One of the central questions is this. I made up a little poem. I am not as good at poetry as the Senator from Maine is, but my little poem is this: A sanction will not a sanction be if it hurts the sanctioner and not the sanctionee. What that means is if all you do is cost American jobs and influence by substituting, for Unocal, Total, a French company, when Unocal is trying its best to influence the SLORC, influence the government, doing what it can, and all you are doing is getting the Americans out and putting in the French, getting the Americans out and putting in the South Koreans, then I submit that is no sanction at all. Now, we are told by my friend from Kentucky that there is precedent for this because we have taken unilateral sanctions against Iran and Libya and Cuba. First of all, I think these three countries are greatly distinguishable, the first two practicing terrorism all around the world, and in the case of Cuba, shooting down American planes over international airspace. Whatever else you may say about Burma, they do not practice state terrorism, nor do they threaten their neighbors. Moreover, my friend from Kentucky says that sanctions sometimes work and sometimes do not, and he talks about the example of South Africa. They did, in fact, work in South Africa where you had a united world. The whole world was united against South Africa. In the case of Burma, the United States, to my knowledge, has not one single ally. The nations of the area, the ASEAN countries, actively oppose sanctions and actively hope that we will engage Burma not just because they want to trade with Burma, and they do, but because they believe that the best way to sanitize that regime, to encourage a dialog, to bring democracy to Burma is by beginning to engage that country. The European Union 2 weeks ago voted not to impose unilateral sanctions. Not even the Danes, whose diplomat there died in prison under very suspicious circumstances, are willing to engage in sanctions against Burma. The Cohen amendment seeks to have our administration get other nations of the world to engage in multilateral sanctions. Multilateral sanctions will work. If we can engage the other countries of the region and of the world to cooperate with us in sanctions, that, in fact, will be a sanction and will not be what we call friendly fire. Friendly fire, as we found out in Desert Storm and as we have always known, never hurts the other side. It hurts yourself. It decreases our influence with Burma. So, Mr. President, I strongly urge that we pass the Cohen amendment and that we seek to help bring democracy to Burma. Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair. Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, there is no peer in the Senate, in fact, in the country, of the Senator from New York in his knowledge of history. Therefore, I wonder, what is the basis of this hope that other countries, particularly Asian countries, would join in a unilateral action started by the United States? Can the Senator tell me, outside of maybe the South African situation, where we have had luck with having others joining us unilaterally? If we cannot get the Europeans to join us with Libya, an international terrorist organization, Iran, the same, and Cuba, how in the world are we going to get them to join with sanctions against Burma?

Mr. JOHNSTON. The difference between our treatment of the three is that we isolated Burma, and General Ne Win isolated himself, whereas, because of the cold war, we embraced the Taiwanese, we embraced the South Koreans. Today, having been isolated for over a quarter of a century, Burma continues to be the same country it was, maybe only worse than 30-odd years ago, whereas South Korea and Taiwan have developed into thriving, prosperous democracies. Now, does the Senator see any lesson to be learned from this difference in treatment?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Will the Senator yield on that point?