J. Kerrey

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I appreciate that very much, but what we are left with, I do not know what the total number is--- seven or eight we could not agree to. We worked on a lot of them. We worked with the Senator from New York, the Senator from Arkansas and several other Senators. We are working with the Senator from Georgia right now. We are trying to accept amendments where we can. But where we cannot do it, we are left with seven or eight votes. We are going to have a Saturday session, a full Saturday session, because all Members who have amendments are going to want to come, getting back to the third person here, Mr. President, are going to want to come to the floor and present their amendments and debate their amendments. I was trying not to avoid a Saturday session but trying to come up with a reasonable way to deal with the votes. Ms. MIKULSKI addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERREY. What I would suggest is we go into a quorum call for 5 minutes, and we get the Senator from Oklahoma and the Senator from Maryland together to see if we cannot work out a time agreement where we could have these two amendments. I alert colleagues that the idea here is to try to limit the number of votes that we have. We can have debates all the rest of the day and night. We would like to stack votes. We would like to get a UC and stack votes on Monday, if the majority leader is agreeable to that.

Mr. KERREY. I spent so much time--I am trying to think what the third person is. That is the ``he'' ``they'' stuff? Mr. President, when the majority leader asked if we were ready--and we had a meeting earlier this week with the Senator from Alabama, the chairman of the subcommittee, and the question was, are you all ready to go? I am not sure he said, ``you all.'' I guess I am in the Alabama talk. He said, ``Are you guys ready to go with this bill?'' We said the only controversial thing we have got is the abortion language having to do with health insurance. If we can get a time agreement, we would be prepared to go to this bill. Last night we had an agreement. And this thing was humming along pretty comfortably. It looked like this would be the only vote, and we might be able to stack the remaining votes on Monday morning. Now it appears that it is coming unraveled. I just say it does not appear to me to be holding together much any longer. We had an agreement last night. It has broken apart. The Senator from Oklahoma wants to offer another amendment. The Senator from Maryland will offer at least one additional amendment. We are stuck with the prospect now of being here all day long, voting on amendment after amendment after amendment. And, you know, just for the lay of the land, again, we are going to go into conference with the House. I do not know what is going to come back out of conference. It is not going to be language entirely struck. We are going to have to negotiate with the House to get some kind of language. It would not surprise me if we did not come up with language that is what neither the Senator from Oklahoma and the Senator from Maryland want. I do not know. Then, the President--they already promised to veto the darn thing, not on this but because we are cutting too much out of IRS. I do not know. I say to the majority leader, in the third person here, I do not know whether or not it is advisable for us to continue on this bill. Maybe we ought to come back to the Senator and say, ``Gee, we were wrong. We thought we had an agreement. We thought we had made a good-faith effort to work with Members on a variety of other controversial amendments and have worked out an awful lot of differences.'' But it seems to me we are at a point where unless Members are enthusiastic about hanging around here all day long, voting on something that is apt to be vetoed by the President anyway, I do not know how much prospect we have for getting an agreement on this Treasury, Postal appropriations bill. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERREY. You support ``rape and incest,'' but not ``medically necessary and appropriate.'' As I understand it, the Senator from Maryland wants to offer an amendment.

Mr. KERREY. The action we took struck those general provisions. You are now saying you want to amend and require that it only be in the case of the life of the mother being in danger and rape and incest?

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I ask unanimous consent that the time on our side be controlled by the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. KERREY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KERREY. Let me say, first of all, I know my friend from Oklahoma has very strong feelings about this, and we have a different, I think, core belief. I presume earlier discussions that I had with the Senator from New Hampshire is not going to be repeated in this case. We have a different core belief, and it leads in a different direction. But the question I have is, let us presume that we go into conference and we come back out and the House language holds and health insurance is not going to be used to pay for abortions, except to save the life of the mother. I have a woman who is making $45,000 a year working for the Federal Government. She decides to take that $250 of her pay to get an abortion. What is the difference between her taking $250 of taxpayer money and using it to get an abortion and an insurance company? Are we not still subsidizing? If a military employee who is not covered by this legislation, this insurance, uses their salary, are they not subsidized as well? If you really want to eliminate all the subsidization, would we not have to go out and make sure that no Federal employee used any of their Federal salary to pay for a legal abortion?

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, our side is willing to accept the amendment as well. The ACIR will have the same happy ending and continue the same work started by Senator Glenn and Senator Kempthorne. I appreciate their hard work and effort.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, while it is true that we have already spent the money, I accept the amendment. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I am offering an amendment today to restructure the IRS. Senator Shelby and I closely examined the IRS during creation of the Treasury-Postal Service fiscal year 1996 budget, and during this examination, I made the following observations. IRS funding has increased from $2 billion in 1979 to $7.5 billion in fiscal year 1995, and fiscal year 1996 funding for the IRS is projected to increase by $800 million. Because of growing entitlement spending, discretionary spending will become increasingly limited. The IRS budget comprises 70 percent of the Treasury-Postal Service Appropriations Subcommittee allocation, and the committee has expressed its concern that both the IRS and other important accounts will be substantially cut because of future budgetary constraints. Due to increasing entitlement spending, Congress simply will not have the funds in fiscal year 1997 and beyond to increase the budget of the IRS. Despite an increase of $5 billion in the IRS' budget since 1979, tax returns processing has not become significantly faster, tax collection rates have not significantly increased, and taxpayer assistance activities have not significantly improved. The IRS, aware of inefficient computer systems that impede their ability to collect revenue, has asked for almost $2.5 billion since 1979 for tax systems modernization [TSM]. This funding was intended to update the IRS computer systems so that the IRS could achieve its vision of a highly efficient, virtually paper-free work environment. The desired outcomes of TSM have not been achieved, and IRS' ability to properly plan and manage this $7.5 billion tax systems modernization program has been repeatedly questioned by the General Accounting Office and the Congress. GAO recently described TSM as ``ad hoc'' and ``chaotic.'' The failure to successfully implement TSM has occurred for a number of reasons. The GAO attributes this failure to ``pervasive management and technical weaknesses'' in the IRS. Two specific possibilities that explain the failure of TSM: First, the IRS employs some 115,000 personnel and the current organizational structure seems to breed a culture which is averse to change, and the IRS has not made efforts to provide incentives to change this culture; Second, the IRS does not have a comprehensive business strategy to plan, build, and operate its information systems. Notably absent is a cost-benefit analysis and performance measure of systems. A key element of a successful TSM is taxpayer conversion to electronic filing. Because the IRS has not sufficiently encouraged the use of electronic returns, the IRS remains overwhelmed with paper returns. It processes 200 million paper returns per year, or 14 billion pieces of paper, and this number continues to grow. The dependence on paper returns contributes substantially to the IRS' inefficiency in processing returns, and the IRS often cannot retrieve documents from the over 1.2 billion tax returns in storage. According to GAO, because the IRS lacks a comprehensive business strategy to encourage electronic submissions, only 17 million electronic returns are expected in fiscal year 1995, a far cry from the goal of 80 million electronic returns by fiscal year 2001. Electronic returns are a crucial part of the conversion to a modern systems. Originally, the IRS claimed that investing in TSM would increase revenues because the increased efficiency would allow resources to be diverted to compliance initiatives. But in order to continue increasing revenue, Congress has provided additional increases for the IRS totaling $1.3 billion since 1990 for enhanced revenue compliance initiatives. Increases in revenue collection have resulted from hiring of additional call collectors, revenue officers, agents, and examination audit personnel rather that redistributed resources due to modernization. Additionally, despite these revenue compliance initiatives, audit coverage rates have declined. The failure of the IRS to implement TSM and their increased attention to compliance initiatives results in an agency that pays very little attention to taxpayer service. If people have the facts, they will pay the tax. Consequently, taxpayer confidence in the IRS's ability to provide accurate and timely information in response to their requests has continued to decline over the past 10 years. Fully modernized systems would substantially increase revenues through compliance initiatives because IRS workers could instantly access taxpayer information and identify accounts receivable, and in addition, information for audits and fraud identification would be readily accessible, Further, the Congress believes that voluntary compliance would increase if IRS employees could assist taxpayers with accurate and timely information on their accounts. A 7-percent increase in voluntary compliance is estimated to increase revenues by as much as $40 billion a year. With the successful completion of modernization, the IRS could expand its functions and perform other services that would benefit the public, in areas such as the collection of delinquent child support payments and student loans. The IRS should soon have the capability to fulfill other financial services functions besides revenue collection for the Federal Government. IRS brings in $1.2 trillion per year in tax revenue. It is an important Federal agency with the potential to be a quasi-Government agency with profit incentives while still protecting taxpayer privacy. Many changes come with modernization efforts and increased technological capability. While the Congress acknowledges the efforts the IRS has made to correct the problems identified, both the IRS and the taxpayers would benefit if restructuring of the IRS took place for the sake of expediently implementing TSM and better serving the taxpayer. amendment no. 2242 Mr. SHELBY offered an amendment (No. 2242) for himself and Mr. Kerrey. At the end of Title V, add the following new section: Sec. 2. Section 5542 of title 5, United States Code is amended by adding the following new subsection at the end: ``(e) Notwithstanding subsection (d)(1) of this section, all hours of overtime work scheduled in advance of the administrative workweek shall be compensated under subsection (a) if that work involves duties as authorized by section 3056(a) of title 18 United States Code and if the investigator performs, on that same day, at least 2 hours of overtime work not scheduled in advance of the administrative workweek.''

Mr. KERREY. I share the views of the chairman, and will work to ensure that the concerns of the Senator from Illinois are addressed in the conference report as well. They are indeed important issues that deserve further study.

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. KERREY. No other amendments. Mr. President, just one final statement. Earlier, I had praised all my staff except for the staff person who wrote up my document asking me to thank the staff, and I would like to now thank Patty Lynch, chief staff person for myself and the Appropriations Committee, for her fine work on this bill.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, let me alert colleagues of what is going on here. When the majority leader and the Democratic leader approached Senator Shelby and me about our bill, the first question was what sort of time agreements were we going to be able to work out? We hoped we would work out an agreement on this particular matter. Unfortunately, that is now no longer the case. So, instead of having a single vote at noon with the possibility that all of the votes--I have been working with other Members who have amendments--possibly the votes being stacked Monday morning, unless we can work out an agreement here this morning, it is possible that we could be debating and having many other amendments on abortion here all the rest of the day. Mr. President, this really is an issue about beliefs, very strongly held beliefs. If you believe that from the moment of conception you have a human being, you reach the conclusion that abortion should be made illegal. I do not know what the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma--I actually have not been on the floor engaged in this particular debate before, but I have on many occasions in townhall meetings. It is a difficult issue. I reached the conclusion that from the moment of conception, it is not human life and that, indeed, a woman should be allowed to make a choice, to make her own decision. I support legal abortion. I support the Supreme Court's decision in 1973. And thus, it seems to me, as long as it is the law of the land-- it may be that those who have strongly held beliefs that abortion should be made illegal, maybe some day they will ban abortion in the United States and make it illegal--but as long as it is legal, it seems to me our employees, if we are going to have insurance as a fringe benefit, which we do--we have insurance we provide to employees of the United States of America, those men and women who wear our uniform in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, those men and women searching for a cure for cancer out at the National Institutes of Health. Turn on your television and see the space shuttle hooking up with the Mir spacecraft, those are Federal employees. When you see Federal employees doing various things for the people of the United States of America, they are working for us. And we provide health insurance as a fringe benefit. They have a choice with that purchase whether or not they want to have a health insurance policy that provides abortion or, if it is an act of conscience, they can say, ``No, I don't want my health insurance to provide that.'' But it seems to me as long as a majority of the people of the United States of America say that abortion should be legal, that when we hire people we ought to provide them with fringe benefits and it allows them to purchase according to what they want to purchase, what their conscience says. So it seems to me this is a very straightforward issue. It should not take hours and hours and hours and hours of debate. I think both sides of this debate agree with that. If you believe abortion should be legal, then our employees should be able to have health insurance as every other employee of the United States of America does. That is why both the chairman and I found the general provisions that were attached by the House of Representatives to be incorrect. In addition, if you care about procedure, and the distinguished Senator from Wyoming earlier came to the floor talking about being frustrated because we do not get things done, one of the reasons we do not get things done is because we are always coming and attaching authorizing legislation to appropriations bills or ignoring the law of the land. The President has already threatened to veto this bill for this reason, and many others, mostly having to do with the Internal Revenue Service. This bill is likely to be vetoed anyway. I hope Members come down here to keep the House language out, as long as abortion is legal. As long as we are having to hire people to work for the United States of America, it seems to me that we should not be eliminating a legal procedure. Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERREY. Does the Senator ask me a question and expect a response at this moment, Mr. President?

Mr. KERREY. That is correct, Mr. President.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I come to the floor to support this amendment. I must confess that at first I thought it was a terrible idea. I thought the Senate Ethics Committee ought to complete its work and then let us make a decision about whether the work was worthwhile. I was concerned that the rhetoric was getting partisan. I was concerned as well that Senator Packwood could be tried in a court of public opinion as opposed to allowing the facts to determine guilt or innocence, and I believe the charges of sexual misconduct necessitate special protection for those bringing the charges. I have listened very carefully and particularly to the arguments of the Senator from Nevada, [Mr. Bryan], who has made five very compelling arguments. First, he observes that every case this century which resulted in a Senate proceeding first had a public hearing, and every case which reached the final, serious investigative stage had a public record. This is our unbroken precedent. Second, the Senator from Nevada points out that a justifiable reason must be there for not holding public hearings in this case. Except that if the Senate does not want to hold public hearings because it deals with sexual misconduct, there is not one. Since none of the alleged victims are unwilling to endure cross-examination, our concern does not stand as an excuse. Third, he makes a legal point that this is a case of first impression because, for the first time in Senate history, these are alleged victims, citizens who came forward and filed sworn charges against a U.S. Senator for actions against them. Fourth, the Senator from Nevada points out that he is concerned that the credibility of the Senate itself to deal fairly and openly with the discipline of its Members would either be greatly enhanced or irreparably damaged. Mr. President, he is unquestionably right. The integrity of the Senate is far more important than the risk of embarrassment to any Member. Fifth, he believes that hearings would provide a valuable opportunity to evaluate the witnesses firsthand, not just read a written statement. This last point made me believe that Senator Packwood----

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, this is a rather simple change and I think it is a very important change in our law governing all ethics cases including the one involving Senator Packwood. The simplicity and brevity of this proposed law compels me to read it in full: The Select Committee on Ethics of the Senate shall hold hearings in any pending or future case in which the Select Committee, first, has found, after a review of allegations of wrongdoing by a Senator, that there is a substantial credible evidence which provides substantial cause to conclude that a violation within the jurisdiction of the Select Committee has occurred, and second, has undertaken an investigation of such allegations. The Select Committee may waive this requirement by an affirmative record vote of a majority of the members of the committee. This proposal deserves the support of any who are concerned about the integrity of this institution, the Senate, as well as the integrity of one of our Members, Senator Bob Packwood. One stands accused of misconduct by citizens. He has not been convicted and deserves to be treated as innocent until a judgment is rendered. The other will stand accused of impeding the chance for justice to be delivered if we vote no on this amendment. Mr. President, H.L. Mencken said that ``Injustice is not so difficult to bear as it is made out by some to be; it is justice that is difficult to bear.'' Let us vote yes with this truth in mind.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. The newspapers today are reporting conflicting information about the CIA inspector general's initial investigation into CIA involvement in murder and human rights abuses in Guatemala. This is an important topic, Mr. President. Following our hearing on this topic in the Intelligence Committee yesterday, I feel obligated to tell the Senate about this investigation and my concerns with it. This is an important topic because it centers on trust, the trust related to secrecy. We the effected policymakers--The President and Congress--ask the CIA to collect information covertly. Sometimes we also ask the CIA to undertake covert action in support of U.S. policy, covert action which is supposed to be deniable. To accomplish these tasks, we permit them to operate in an environment of secrecy. However, with secrecy comes trust. We trust they will not abuse secrecy by using it to cover mistakes or actions which contradict the U.S. law or American values. To be sure they will not, Congress set up the oversight committees to check what CIA is doing, in particular, in secret. We check by looking and asking. When we ask, we trust the answer we are getting is true. The law says it must be true, and that the two oversight committees must be kept fully and currently informed. Were we so informed about the CIA's human rights record in Guatemala? Clearly, the answer is no. That being the case, the question then occurs, did CIA employees intentionally withhold information from Congress with the intent to deceive or mislead Congress? That is the core remaining issue in my mind. Let me review where the investigation process stands right now, so colleagues, perhaps, have a better understanding, if asked, about the reports in the paper yesterday and today. The report presented yesterday to the Intelligence Committee, the report of CIA IG Fred Hitz, is the first of six reports ordered by President Clinton on the Guatemala-United States human rights relationship. A second CIA IG report on the cases other than the murders of Michael Devine and Efrain Bamaca will be completed by the end of August. A Defense Department report on defense relationships in Guatemala will be ready at about the same time. A State Department report on these cases will be ready in mid-August. A Justice Department report is in final draft and could be out this week. [[Page S 10770]] All these reports will be reviewed by the President's Intelligence Oversight Advisory Board, which is committed to reporting the results of its own investigation to the President by October 1. So there is more information coming. The reports in the press are not the final chapter. We, the Congress, are the jury, and the jury is still out. Let me review what we do know: First, we know the CIA IG is doing its investigative job well. Fred Hitz' investigators have uncovered new data and organized it with great coherence. It is only because of their complete presentation of the cases that we, Senators, are able to isolate and ask the hard questions. Second, we know the oversight task of Congress is made more difficult by attitudes of resistance at CIA. Third, we know the trust which we grant with the right to secrecy is at risk. Last, we know the CIA effort in Guatemala probably was not worth the loss to the Agency and the United States of being associated with these cases. But there are some key facts we do not yet know. We do not know yet whether or not the withholding of information was a violation of law. There is no question information was withheld from Congress. Was the withholding done with the intent to mislead Congress? There is a question of what happened to the victims? Who killed Michael Devine and the other American victims? Who killed Efrain Bamaca? Indeed, I think it is important that colleagues understand the investigation ordered by the President is not directed to answer those particular questions but directed, instead, to discover whether our agencies had any involvement with it. The last question is whether or not the U.S. Government agencies contributed to or abetted any of these crimes, even indirectly. All this is done with the purpose of trying to discover what we can do to prevent events like this in the future. It is not just a simple exercise. It is an exercise that must go forward successfully if the people are to trust that the right of secrecy, the granting of secrecy is deserving of that trust. In his initial report, Inspector General Hitz has recommended structural changes and cultural changes in the Agency, and Director Deutch has responded forcefully. The changes will come: the structural soon, the cultural over time, because Director Deutch's concept of management accountability will permit no less and because Fred Hitz's display of the facts is so clear and complete. But the questions of why these events occurred, and what CIA officials at the time intended as they wrote reports to Congress and responded to congressional inquiries--these questions are unanswered. It falls to us, Congress, to apply our judgment and experience to answer them. No one at CIA or elsewhere in the administration can do it for us. This investigation is about trust in the way we collect intelligence. Sometimes we concentrate so exclusively on the problems in the intelligence community that we forget why we are doing this. Very simply, there is valuable information out there in the world that is someone's secret. This information is not publicly available. The intelligence community collects that information and combines it with other, perhaps publicly available information, to turn it into understanding. That way, they can do what they get paid for: getting the right information to the right person at the right time so as to improve that person's chances of success. Worth asking is who is that person, the recipient of the right information? First, we have the national policy customer, seeking success in a policy decision. It is the President, the National Security Council, the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury. And it is the Congress, too, as we ponder policy decisions, the latest of which for all of us, has been the situation in Bosnia. It is the military, seeking success in battle, or in protecting our forces, or in preparing a operations plan, or making a weapons acquisition decision. It is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it is a pilot or squad leader in a dangerous overseas deployment, and all the military in between. The intelligence support to these customers cannot be too good, and I know that is Director Deutch's commitment, too. Next, it is law enforcement, seeking success in arresting a terrorist who has killed Americans or in preventing drugs from coming to this country. Next, we have economic customers like the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Agriculture as they seek success in insuring fair trade practices around the world toward American products and services. Intelligence ought to be an essential contributor to success in all these areas--we certainly pay enough for it. We should task intelligence, resource intelligence, and grade intelligence on the basis of threats, and we should rank order the threats: First, we should task intelligence to know most about the threats that could take away America's freedom and independence. Second, we should task intelligence against the threats to American lives, with higher priority to the threats that can kill many Americans, such as the nuclear weapons still in Russia, and lower priority to the threats that can kill fewer of us. These are difficult things to do, to establish these kinds of priorities. But it does fall to us to establish these threats, otherwise it will be difficult for us to make assignments to the intelligence community as to what we, indeed, need in order to make good decisions. Third, we should task intelligence against the threats that can take away American livelihoods, the threats to our jobs and our way of life. The new threat environment is a challenge for all of us who came up in the world of one large superpower threat. Information technology poses another challenge: the sheer amount of information has increased geometrically, but our human capacity to know has expanded more modestly. Through the noise of information overload, the intelligence community must deliver that key secret fact, and make it useful to the customer. So effective dissemination is a challenge. The technology of collection poses yet another challenge. It is expensive, the lead times are long, and the targets may change before we are done. Most important, with satellites we very often have significant uncertainties about whether or not a launch will be successful, or the lifespan of the satellites themselves. We need significant amounts of efforts in research and development to explore new technologies, but we also need to pay our employees and run our current operations, and money, we all know, is tight. We need to explore dual use of intelligence technologies because if the private sector buys some of these things for their own different purposes, the unit cost to the intelligence agency will decrease. But we have to ensure we don't lose sensitive sources and methods in the process. Secrecy poses yet another challenge. With the passage of the Soviet threat, a threat that could extinguish our national life, secrecy is less acceptable and should be fundamentally challenged. We still need some secrecy. We could not otherwise collect and safeguard other people's secrets. But we should challenge blanket secrecy wherever we find it, and we should support Director Deutch's declassification efforts. Secrecy connotes trust, Mr. President, as I said at the beginning. We trust people, when we grant that trust, to do the right thing in secret. To me, that is the core issue in the Guatemala case and I hope my colleagues will avail themselves of the opportunity to look at the inspector general's report. The facts are quite disturbing and, I believe, precipitate the conclusion that, though we may not have been intentionally misled, the agency is going to have to change its behavior in order for us to be able to continue to trust that they are following our laws. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise this evening to speak in opposition to the Dole-Lieberman legislation. Mr. President, its intent, to change the direction of the United States policy in Bosnia, is good. For me, the language of this legislation is too ambiguous. To make a case it is ambiguous, Mr. President, I need only summarize the arguments of four Senators, myself included, two of them in favor of the bill and two of them against. Senator Moynihan argued in favor. He wants the U.S. to stay involved because he believes it is in our interests to do so. Senator McCain argued, as well, in favor. He wants the U.S. to become less involved because he believes that Americans do not see our interests sufficiently engaged to commit ground forces. Senator Exon, on the other hand, argues against. He is against it because he wants the United States to stay more involved, and he believes it is in our interest to do so. I am here this evening arguing against, for the same reason cited by Senator McCain when he declared his support, which is that I am one of those who do not want the United States to take the military lead, because I do not believe it is in our interest to do so. Mr. President, this has become one of those great polarized debates where if you declare you are opposed to this legislation, people immediately say, well, [[Page S 10645]] you are for doing nothing. I received calls into my office today from people who were saying, if you are not for Dole-Lieberman, you are for genocide. That is how this argument is being framed here in America, unfortunately, at this moment. I do not argue that we should become uninvolved. The United States cannot afford to turn its back on the events in the Balkans. Americans are appalled by what we see there, and thank God we are. Ethnic cleansing, intentional killings and terrorizing of innocents, and arrogant disregard for international law, all of these have provoked us to the point that some of our citizens believe it is time for America to choose sides and enter this war on behalf of the Moslem minority. Unfortunately, too many commentators and observers who want to pursue a unilateral course of action try to leave the impression that those who prefer an alternative would like the United States to do nothing. The United States must lead, Mr. President, in a clear, defined, and in this case, limited way. For the past 4 years, beginning with the careless diplomatic recognition in 1992 of Croatia and Bosnia that led to a grisly and hate-filled war with Serbia, we have been trying to exercise leadership. After ignoring or not hearing the warning signals coming as early as 1988 from knowledgeable sources that ethnic hatred would erupt after the Communist grip was loosened, our first action, one of diplomacy, probably made matters worse. Still, we did not walk away from our responsibilities. We helped negotiate an end to the fighting between Croatia and Serbia. After the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina voted for independence, Bosnian Serbs formed an insurgent government. Thus began a bloodthirsty move to control territory by means of a cruel device known as ethnic cleansing. While we recognized the deep and longstanding hatreds, we could not stand aside, Mr. President, and have not stood aside for the last 4 years. Our response has been in part humanitarian, with relief flights, medical care, and international efforts to break the siege on the city of Sarajevo. Our response has also been diplomatic, with round after round of discussions, the most notable of which were led by former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Our response, Mr. President, to be clear, has also been military. Americans, though we have withheld support for Americans going in on the ground, peacekeeping forces, our sailors are in the Adriatic, our airmen in Avellino, Italy, and our soldiers in Macedonia have been regularly and daily risking their lives. Those who say that the United States has made no military commitment have to devalue the lives of those who, in fact, are regularly out there on behalf of the United States of America and on behalf of those who are being terrorized in Bosnia, risking their lives. If we measure success as an end to the violence and killing, there is no question, Mr. President, that we have failed. If success is measured as a reduction in both, we have not failed. That we have not turned our backs should likewise be apparent. This is not Nazi Germany where we ignored the overwhelming evidence that something terrible was going on. We have ignored nothing; its just that nothing we have been willing to try has stopped the killing. We are frustrated by apparent impotence. We want success like we had in the Gulf War or Haiti or even for a while Somalia. We want this thing to be over. We want to be free of the images like the 20-year-old woman who hanged herself after being driven from what we called a safe haven in Srebrenica. We want to be free of what seems to be a policy that stumbles blindly down one diplomatic path after another tripping wires that explode into more and more killing. The Dole-Lieberman legislation is a response to that frustration. The goal of this proposed law is to change the course of our currently policy something I wholeheartedly agree needs to happen. Specifically, the law proposes that we do two things: direct the President to lift the current arms embargo which has had the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for one side--the Bosnian Government--to fight for their country, and bring about the withdrawal of the United Nations peacekeepers. If this resolution encouraged the multilateral lifting of the arms embargo, and if it authorized the President to deploy U.S. forces to lead an orderly and honorable withdrawal of the United Nations, I would support it. But according to the news of the past week, British and French forces in Bosnia are more aggressive than ever before. The British have inserted two batteries of artillery into the Sarajevo area. The French conducted a massive mortar attack over the weekend. According to news reports, the French responded to the death of two of their soldiers by using a one-bomb airstrike Sunday against the house of a Bosnian Serb leader in Pale. Now that our allies are committed and actively engaged, it is not the time for us to pull the plug on them. They should get to vote on withdrawal. If they choose it, we should lead it. Let me explain why I cannot vote for this legislation in its current form. First, it suffers from the same defect as the administration's: It is ambiguous about purpose and objectives which, of course, encourages Senators to vote ``aye'' and explain their vote anyway they choose. Second, it may prohibit the United States from honoring its commitment to provide ground support for the evacuation of United Nations peacekeepers. Such a prohibition may broaden the appeal in the Senate; it does not broaden our appeal in the world. Defining an objective in the former Yugoslavia is neither morally easy nor objectively precise. Defining an objective forces us to decide if we are going to establish a principle which allows us to lead but does not require us to take the lead with our Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps in every world dispute, violent outburst, or tragedy involving human rights abuses. I believe we must establish such a principle. As difficult as it may be to weep for rather than fight in every battle, to do otherwise would be a mistake. The principle should be: only if the interests of the United States are at stake should we take the lead with our military forces. What we are witnessing in Bosnia is a civil war with the potential of spreading to other Balkan countries. The combatants, and especially the Serbs, are guilty of gross violations of human rights and the laws of war. The Intelligence Committee, in fact, intends to hold open hearings on this very subject. But we are not witnessing the Holocaust or the rise of the Fourth Reich. Such references exaggerate and do not help us decide what we must do. Our interests in Bosnia include the following: First, prevent the conflict from spreading to other areas. Second, preserve the territorial integrity of a nation recognized by the United Nations. Third, prevent ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses. Of these three, only the first qualifies as a vital interest. If either Greece, Turkey, or Russia became directly involved, we would be at war. The second and third are more limited, and for obvious reasons more difficult to limit. Indeed, some would risk a larger war in order to satisfy their desire to do something--almost anything--about them. I believe we should limit this risk. Again, saying we are not going to take sides in a war to preserve Bosnia's territorial integrity or to prevent ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses does not mean we should stand aside and do nothing. Before we rush to judge the United Nations peacekeepers harshly we should remember and pay tribute to their bravery. It is not their fault that diplomats and political leaders have issued hollow threats or passed toothless resolutions. It is not their fault that a so-called dual key mechanism that was devised as a safety check has provided more safety to the Bosnia Serbs by denying much needed and oft-requested NATO airplanes to United Nations forces so they could carry out their mission. The broad consensus required to keep the United Nations together works fine if there is a peace to maintain. If peace breaks down and force is needed, this broad consensus is no match or substitute for individual courage and a military code of honor. Both of these [[Page S 10646]] are what is needed to end the violence in Bosnia. And, it will take courage on the ground to seize and hold territory; bravery from the air can only support, not secure the victory. Two examples of courage were reported by New York Times writer Mr. Roger Cohen on July 16, 1995. Mr. Cohen's story reveals two important truths. Our United Nations peacekeepers have been very brave and we will need such bravery on the ground if we are to persuade the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Government to negotiate an end to their fighting. In March, 1993, Lieutenant General Phillipe Morillon, who was the commander of United Nations forces in Bosnia, went to Srebrenica when it was under attack by Bosnian Serbs. He declared he would not move until the survival of its people was assured. In Mr. Cohen's words: ``It was an irrational act. Confronted by this stubborn general, the Bosnia Serbs desisted from their onslaught and Srebrenica survived for another 28 months.'' When it fell 10 days ago, almost no stubbornness was revealed to the Bosnian Serbs by the Bosnian Government troops who were armed and outnumbered their attackers. They did not fire a shot. On May 27, 1995, the day after NATO air strikes near Pale, the Bosnian Serbs began taking hostages and using them as human shields. Faced with the prospect of killing United Nations peacekeepers the U.N. high command decided not to order further air strikes. Lieutenant Gilles Jarron, a member of the French Foreign Legion and a U.N. officer in Sarajevo, show no such reluctance. Along with 11 other Legionnaires he defended a U.N. weapons collection site in a Serb-held suburb. Eighty Serbs armed with rocket-propelled grenades and a T-55 tank gave the peacekeepers 5 minutes to give up. But, according to Mr. Cohen: Lieutenant Jarron called his commanding officer. There was little question the legionnaires would all be killed in any battle. The last order he received from Colonel Jean-Louis Francheschini was, ``From this moment on, make sure that every French life is paid for dearly by the Serbs. Every evening, as the stand-off wore on and the Serbs failed to carry out their threats, the soldiers read each other the code of the Legionnaire: The mission is sacred. You execute it to the end, at any price. In combat you act without passion or hatred. You respect your defeated enemy. Never do you abandon your dead, your injured or your arms. This is the behavior that wins wars. That seizes ground and holds it. Air strikes alone will not work. President Clinton's air strategy will likely fail. According to the President: The only thing that has worked has been when they thought we would use disproportionate air power. This allowed us to move their heavy weapons into pools. If we adhere to this tougher policy, we can be successful at negotiating. In an account of the battle that occurred on Mount Igman over the weekend, again after the French had taken two casualties, the French launched an attack and included the use of 122 millimeter mortars, 84 rounds launched into Serbian positions. And those who observed it said that ground attack was more impressive and did more damage and did more good for our cause than all the airstrikes together thus far in this war. I fear that a tougher air policy, in the absence of a tougher ground policy, will make matters worse once again. At this stage we are inching close to a declaration of war against Serbia, an action we must not allow to happen unless and until we intend it. When we threatened air strikes on February 9, 1994, which did lead to the withdrawal and turning over to the United Nations of mortars, artillery pieces and other heavy weapons within a 12.4 mile range of the center of Sarajevo, the Bosnian Serbs were wary of testing NATO's mettle. Our warnings of air strikes were repeatedly vetoed by Mr. Boutros-Ghali, the U.N. Secretary General, who is ultimately in command of the more than 20,000 European and other peacekeeping troops in Bosnia. Seeing that NATO's mettle was soft, the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Government have both retaken their weapons and have resumed heavy shelling of Sarajevo, Gorazde, Bihac, Zepa, and Srebrenica. This time we are told things will be different. There is good reason to believe they will be different. First, the Rapid Reaction Force-- formed in response to the taking of hostages in May--has begun to demonstrate a resolve the Bosnian Serbs have not seen from U.N. forces. Importantly and correctly the French and the British are taking the lead in this effort. The French have lost 44 soldiers in Bosnia. They do not want to withdraw. We have lost none, and we do. The moment when the U.N. is moving stronger forces into the heart of the conflict is precisely the wrong moment to pass a law which would compel U.N. withdrawal. Second, the President has pressed for different operating procedures when carrying out NATO air attacks. NATO is asking that U.N. ground commander in Bosnia, General Rupert Smith, alone be given the authority to request these attacks from Admiral Leighton Smith, the NATO commander for this area. This would mean that neither General Janvier, the U.N. Commander for all forces in Bosnia and Croatia, nor Secretary General Boutros-Ghali would have the power to veto this request. Of course, airstrikes should not occur at danger-close distances to U.N. peacekeepers, and it should be easy to transmit this information to strike pilots. But the dual key will hopefully be laid to rest. As we debate this resolution tonight, and as the intensified fighting around Bihac makes more likely a renewal of open warfare between Croatia and Serbia, I am hard pressed to consider a better course of action than continuation of an even stronger U.N. presence. It is apparent that none of the parties is yet ready to negotiate seriously: all of them believe they can achieve their aims on the battlefield. Outside support is already getting through to the combatants, even to the Moslems. The flow of weapons will grow to a flood when the embargo is lifted, and all the parties will be much better armed. The departure of the U.N. will mean no international effort to get food to besieged areas and no international witnesses to war crimes. Most importantly, it will mean no international effort to halt or contain the fighting and America's principal interest here is to contain the war. A weak, passive United Nations--and I refer to its political leaders--has done a mediocre job in accomplishing these tasks, not just in Bosnia but throughout Yugoslavia. You can be sure in the absence of the U.N., these tasks would not get done at all. It is too easy for us to vote out of frustration and send the message, get the United Nations out of Bosnia and let them all fight it out. But think what the situation of civilians would be in a no-holds-barred war involving Serbia and Croatia as well as Bosnia. No option is ideal. There may come a time in fact when the Dole-Lieberman legislation is precisely what this country ought to be doing. There is pain and risk involved in all of the options. But in looking at those options, a larger, better armed, more aggressive UN force, backed by NATO airpower not subject to a dual key, is the best course of action. Now the United Nation's spine is being stiffened by the increased commitment of two of our oldest allies, who have already made significant sacrifices but are willing to do more. Now is not the time for unilateral United States action that would force them out and leave the Bosnians, and many others in the former Yugoslavia, without aid or witnesses, defenseless in a brutal ethnic civil war. I will vote against the legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I yield the balance of my time.

Mr. KERREY. I yield the remainder of my time to the manager of the bill.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, what we would like is 15 minutes to the side under the control of myself, Senator Robb, and Senator Nunn.

Mr. KERREY. I thank the Senator from California. I will try to summarize in a brief fashion. Again, I believe we need to change courses. This is very much about us deciding whether or not we have the capacity in 1995 and the decision to impact our future. Can we change our future? Can we change the way the future looks in America? There is no question that this budget resolution will change the future in that our deficit will be gone. But, Mr. President, it does not do it in either a fashion that I can comfortably say is fair, because it reduces, in my judgment, taxes unnecessarily and inadvisedly. It does not give us the hope that we are going to have the capacity to reverse another trend, and that is the decline of wages, salaries, and benefits of working Americans, and the trend toward increasing the concentration of wealth. I am prepared to make difficult decisions. I am prepared to join with the Republicans in changing the course of this country, in saying that we are going to do the difficult and not the easy things. I regret very much that this resolution did not survive as a bipartisan resolution. I understand that there was great enthusiasm to put an even larger tax cut and lock it in. I regret that the conference yielded to that demand, if not threat, and produced, in the end, a budget resolution that will have no bipartisan support. I think, as a consequence, Mr. President, we will have a much more difficult time persuading Americans that we can change course and that we need to change course as soon as possible. I yield the floor.