Jim Moran

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, Americans have been reading much about the violence, the sex, the vulgarity that is on the media today. It is a constant diet, and it is children that are consuming that diet. We will offer legislation to the telecommunications bill when it reaches the floor, and I would hope that my colleagues would support that legislation because what it does is to empower parents to block out programs that contain explicit violence, gratuitous sex and vulgarity, even when those parents are not able to be home looking over the shoulders of their children to see what they are watching. We require that a V chip be inserted in all new manufactured television sets. This is not a burdensome requirement when produced in quantity. It is only about $5 per television set, but it is the kind of technology we ought to use to change the diet that is poisoning the minds of our children day in and day out. Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate my colleagues' support for this measure.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the manager's amendment. Is it really too much to expect the largest economic and military power in the world to spend almost 1 percent of its budget on developing market opportunities overseas, in promoting democracy, in protecting human rights? The vast majority of the American people have no idea how little we spend on foreign aid. Now we have a manager's amendment that picked up all these little piles of amendments that were rejected by a committee that reported out a very extreme bill, they were rejected in committee, and now to get enough votes we throw them all into one package. Talk about a package that stinks, and that is entirely counter to the direction in which this country has gone from the days of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and all the way up through Ronald Reagan and President Bush. You look at the Burton amendment. The Bush and Baker administration established these overseas missions in the New Independent States. The Burton amendment requires that we gut them. In fact, you have heard from the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the chairman of the Committee on International Relations on how bad the Burton amendment is. I trust that people will recognize that that Burton amendment actually prevents us from accomplishing any of the programs we are talking about, eliminates the Micro Enterprise Program for all intents and purposes, eliminates our child survival programs, eliminates the ability to do anything more than simply write checks to foreign nations. That is not what this Congress has voted to do in the past. They voted to give more responsibility to our international executive establishment so that we could be audited and we would be accountable for what we spend. The Burton amendment prevents us from being able to do that. The Manzullo amendment, gutting the exchange programs. Anwar Sadat, F.W. DeKlerk, can you put a price tag on the value of leaders like that? And they were major participants in our USIA exchange programs. I could go down the list of these amendments. Most Members have no idea what they do. We were only just shown what they did a couple of hours ago. They are wrong, they are bad, they are inconsistent with foreign policy that has been established decades ago by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Now I would like to address the Hoyer amendment. The reason why this amendment is appropriate is that the arms embargo was never intended to apply to Bosnia. It was intended to apply when there was conflict between Serbia and Slovenia and then Croatia, and Slovenia and Croatia had the capacity, the access to arms. Bosnia never did. They never had the arms, they never had the capability for manufacturing weapons, so they have had to sit back while an aggressor came in and slaughtered them. People who would suggest that this is a civil war are simply wrong. This is not any civil war. The reality is that it is a war that was directed, conducted, initiated by Serbia to create a greater Serbia. No Bosnians have ever bent a blade of grass in Serbia, and we have a multiethnic democracy. It is not just a Moslem state as many would suggest. The head right now happens to be Moslem. The Ambassador to the United States is Jewish. The leadership of the Government is a combination of Croatians and Serbians and Moslems. They want to live together. That is why they are a threat to fascists like Milosevic and others. They do no want that to happen. They do not want a country like Bosnia to survive. The United Nations comes in, the United Nations has a mission. Not to do right, not to ensure justice is done, but to sit back and essentially observe. We created safe areas. How safe is anyone living in those safe areas? We have deserted them. They have been shelled. People have been killed. [[Page H5723]] We have more than 2 million refugees throughout Europe. We have had about 40,000 women deliberately raped as a strategy, a tactic of war. We have over 100,000 people who have been slaughtered, defenseless to defend themselves. I think we ought to lift the arms embargo, but I think we ought to do more than that. I think we ought to protect a sovereign nation. We ought to stand up for the integrity of territorial borders. That is the problem. Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to address the House for 1 further minute, because the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] asked for 3 minutes, we gave him the 3 minutes out of deference, I think maybe a third of that time. We would ask that we have that extra time.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, no one flies first class.

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

Mr. MORAN. I defer to the judgment and leadership of the chairman of the Committee on International Relations.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, speaking of behaving responsibly, would the gentleman explain what he is talking about, about a Moslem leader training with Qaddafi? I know that not to be the case. I do not know who it is you could possibly be referring to.

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

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman know of any State Department employee who flies first class, who has flown first class in a commercial airline in this administration?

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. In his directive granting the United States Information Agency independence, independence which would be eliminated by this bill, President Eisenhower empowered it to explain imaginatively the correlation between United States policies and the legitimate aspirations of other people of the world. Now is not the time to tear the United States Information Agency from that appointed task. President Eisenhower knew what he was doing. He would vote against this bill, but he would certainly support the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Ackerman].

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentleman [[Page H5679]] from New York [Mr. Ackerman] because it addresses one of the most egregious aspects in this bad bill. The problem with the proposal to gut the Agency for International Development, the United States Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency by putting them into the State Department is that it compromises the mission of every one of those agencies. The mission of the State Department, my colleagues, in diplomacy. That is not the mission of AID, USIA and ACDA. The mission of the United States Agency for International Development is to maximize the economic and the human potential of everyone around the world and, by doing so, create market opportunities for American industry. The mission of the U.S. Information Agency is very simply truth, not truth that complies with State Department policy that is politically oriented, that is acceptable, but simply, plainly credible truth. That is what the USIA delivers around the world. And the mission of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency is to save us expenditures and arms procurement by enabling us to control the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Of all the times in history to think about gutting the mission of the Arms Control Disarmament Agency, when we know how able dictators, tyrants, crazy nuts around the world have access to lethal weapons, and we are going to gut the mission of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency? Of all the times to gut the mission, to compromise the mission or the Agency for International Development. Consider the fact that as we move into the next millennium, the 21st century, there will be five new human beings born every second of every day, and three of them are going to go hungry, without adequate housing, without decent medical care. The Agency for International Development can enable them to become not desperate, hostile people, but constructive members and contributing to a world of peace and economic and social stability and, by doing so, create markets throughout the world for the American economy. That is what the Agency for International Development does, and let me quote just from the New York Times here on USIA.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. This side would much appreciate the Chairman cooperating.

Mr. MORAN. Can the Chairman assure us that we will get a Democratic amendment, at least one Democratic amendment considered tomorrow.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the Chairman that is the reason for the inquiry because that may very well take up the full space of the 1 hour and 45 minutes which means that there would be two Republican amendments. There would not be the opportunity for any Democratic amendment to be offered, if that were the schedule. That is the concern of the minority side.

Mr. MORAN. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I have asked unanimous consent to inquire of the chairman of the Committee on International Relations the schedule for tomorrow so that we understand what amendments might come up. I would like to inquire of the chairman of the Committee on International Relations the implications of the decision to rise at this point. I understand that there is an hour and 45 minutes left of debate. We have at least three Democratic amendments scheduled: the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer], the gentleman from California [Mr. Berman], the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Andrews]. However, with an hour and 45 minutes tomorrow, it is conceivable that, particularly if the chairman was to oppose the Burton amendment, that the chairman might have two amendments in succession which would preclude the ability of the Democrats to offer any of our amendments. I would like some assurance from the chairman that the Democrats will be able to offer an amendment after the subsequent Republican amendment to this bill.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as an independent agency and to urge that we consider how important arms control continues to be for our national security. This is also the conclusion of a recent editorial from the News & Observer, from Raleigh, NC. H.R. 1561 would abolish this small federal agency which has proven itself to be an economic bargain. Not only does the operation of the agency come with a modest price tag of under $50 million, its efforts have saved the Government millions, if not billions, of dollars in defense outlays over its 30- plus years of existence. I urge a ``no'' vote on final passage of H.R. 1561. We should not merge ACDA and the other separate foreign service agencies with separate missions into the State Department. The U.S. ACDA is pursuing the biggest and broadest arms control and nonproliferation agenda in history. As the following article makes clear, now is not the time to be dismantling the agency that is charged with getting these agreements negotiated, implemented and verified. [From the News & Observer, May 30, 1995] Foreign Policy Meddling A proposal to reorganize foreign affairs agencies has consequences beyond mere streamlining. Some in Congress would like excessive control over foreign policy, a bad idea in today's unstable world. Overhauling the nation's foreign policy agencies, as proposed by Senator Helms, seems on first glance to make sense. Separate organizations tend to be inefficient, and as long as the rest of government is being ``reinvested,'' foreign affairs shouldn't be exempt. But a closer look unveils flaws in the proposal, which is advanced in pending legislation in both the Senate and the House. For one thing, the assorted foreign services agencies don't all have the same mission; merging them into the State Department risks diluting their influence in the sea of a single mighty bureaucracy. In a recent visit to The N&O, John Holum, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, made a strong argument along this line for preserving his office as a separate expert voice. As Holum pointed out, the agency's advocacy of arms control and nonproliferation is crucial in the face of new threats from the spread of weapons. His worry, and it comes across as legitimate, is that the arms-control quest could become secondary to the State Department's concerns for smooth diplomacy and maintaining good relations with other countries. [[Page E1162]] His reasoning tracks the case others have put forward for retaining the independence of the two other agencies that Helms wants to consolidate: the U.S. Information Agency, which uses cultural, educational and broadcast means to explain the United States to people overseas; and the Agency for International Development, which distributes foreign aid. Another cause for skepticism is that the proposed reorganization is bound up with an attempt by Helms and his like-minded colleagues to limit greatly the president's discretion in foreign policy. While Congress of course should have a say, carried too far this becomes a dangerous proposition that baffles the country's friends and foes alike. Yet some members of Congress have gone haywire lately in trying to impose a host of foreign policy directives on the Clinton administration, all the while seriously cutting foreign affairs budgets. These measures are especially dubious when they originate with lawmakers who, like Helms, yearn to dismantle the multinational, cooperative efforts that are crucial to international stability. For the sake of peace in the world, Congress in this instance needs to step back.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to pay tribute to Vice Adm. Thomas J. Kilcline, USN [Retired] on the eve of his retirement from his position as president of The Retired Officers Association. Because of his many accomplishments, I consider it appropriate to formally recognize him for his more than 50 years of service to this Nation. Admiral Kilcline was born in Detroit, MI, on December 9, 1925. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1943, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1949, and was designated a naval aviator in November 1950 after which he flew with VR-5 until 1953. Admiral Kilcline attended the Naval Postgraduate School and later Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a masters degree in aeronautical engineering in 1956. He then joined Heavy Attack Squadron Nine, serving on the Saratoga and Ranger. In 1959, he was assigned to the staff of the commander Sixth Fleet. He completed the command and staff course at the Naval War College and in 1962 completed test pilot school. He was later assigned as coordinator of test programs for all attack aircraft at the Naval Air Test Center. In January 1965, Kilcline reported to Heavy Attack Squadron Eleven [VAH-11] aboard the Forestall. He commanded an RA5C squadron deployed to the Vietnam theater. He returned to the staff of the commander Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet in August 1967, and a year later was assigned as operations officer and later executive officer aboard the U.S.S. Ticonderoga [CVA-14] during operations off Vietnam. He then became program manager for acquisition and support of the RA-5C aircraft, Naval Air Systems Command. In October 1970, he was named director of liaison with the House of Representatives under the Navy Office of Legislative Affairs. From August 1972 until May 1974, Kilcline was commanding officer, Naval Air Station, Patuxent River, MD. He was then assigned as director of aviation officer distribution, aviation captain detailer and later, assistant chief of Naval Personnel, Officer Distribution and Education. In August 1975, he assumed command of Naval Base Subic Bay with duties as commander in chief Pacific representative in the Philippines and commander U.S. Naval Forces, Philippines. He became chief, Legislative Affairs in February 1978 and in July 1981, was assigned as commander Naval Air Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, He retired from the Navy in 1983. His awards include the Distinguished Service Medal; the Legion of Merit with three gold stars; the Bronze Star; the Air Medal; and awards from the governments of the Philippines and the Republic of Vietnam. Following retirement, Admiral Kilcline formed a military and congressional consulting firm [[Page E1106]] which he disestablished when he became TROA president in December 1986. Through his stewardship, The Retired Officers Association played a pivotal role in convincing Congress to enact several legislative initiatives to maintain readiness and improve the quality of life for all members of the military community--active, reserve and retired, plus their families and survivors. I won't describe all of his accomplishments, but will briefly focus on a few to illustrate the breadth of his concern for military people. Under his direction, TROA supported strengthening the underpinning of the Montgomery GI Bill and thus provided a solid foundation for our Nation's future leaders by placing the wherewithal for a college education on the horizons of more than 1 million young men and women who otherwise might have been denied that opportunity. He was ever mindful of the adverse effects on morale and retention caused by broken commitments and inadequate compensation and forcefully championed the causes of fairness and equity. His leadership efforts to preserve the long-standing commitment to lifetime care in military health care facilities, to fight perennial threats to retiree cost of living adjustments and to provide adequate military pay raises are some of his other significant contributions. Most recently, he fought and won the battle for a transition plan that provides a comprehensive benefits package for those personnel and their families who are forced out of active service as a result of the force structure drawdown that, hopefully, is in its final stages. One of Tom's added strengths has been his lovely wife of 44 years, the former Dornell Thompson of Pensacola, FL. Dornell has stood steadfastly at his side, championing the cause of military people, particularly their families and survivors, everywhere. For these contributions, we owe her a debt of gratitude, as well. Tom and Dornell live in McLean, VA. They have had four children: Captain Tom, Jr., an F-14 pilot now in the Navy Chair at the National War College; Lieutenant Patrick, lost in an F-14 accident off the U.S.S. Constellation, Lieutenant Kathleen, a navy doctor killed in an auto accident; and Mary, wife of Commander Bob Novak, a P-3 pilot assigned as a program manager in the Naval Air Systems Command in Washington, DC. I wish to extend my heartfelt appreciation for his numerous contributions to military people everywhere and my best wishes for continued success in all of his endeavors.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to pay tribute to Vice Admiral Thomas J. Kilcline, USN (Retired) on the eve of his retirement from his position as President of the Retired Officers Association. Because of his many accomplishments, I consider it appropriate to formally recognize him for his more than 50 years of service to this Nation. Admiral Kilcline was born in Detroit, MI, on December 9, 1925. He enlisted in the United States Navy in 1943, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1949, and was designated a naval aviator in November 1950 after which he flew with VR-5 until 1953. Admiral Kilcline attended the Naval Postgraduate School and later Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a masters degree in aeronautical engineering in 1956. He then joined Heavy Attack Squadron Nine, serving on the Saratoga and Ranger. In 1959, he was assigned to the staff of the Commander Sixth Fleet. He completed the Command and Staff Course at the Navel War College and in 1962 completed test pilot school. He was later assigned as coordinator of test programs for all attack aircraft at the Naval Air Test Center. In January 1965, Kilcline reported to Heavy Attack Squadron Eleven (VAH-11) aboard the Forestall. He commanded an RA5C squadron deployed to the Vietnam theater. He returned to the staff of the Commander Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet in August 1967, and a year later was assigned as operations officer and later executive officer aboard the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) during operations off Vietnam. He then became program manager for acquisition and support of the RA-5C aircraft, Naval Air Systems Command. In October 1970, he was named Director of Liaison with the House of Representatives under the Navy Office of Legislative Affairs. From August 1972 until May 1974, Kilcline was commanding officer, Naval Air Station, Patuxent River, Maryland. He was then assigned as director of aviation officer distribution, aviation captain detailer and later, Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel, Officer Distribution and Education. In August 1975, he assumed command of Naval Base Subic Bay with duties as Commander In Chief Pacific Representative in the Philippines and Commander U.S. Naval Forces, Philippines. He became Chief, Legislative Affairs in February 1978 and in July 1981, was assigned as Commander Naval Air Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. He retired from the Navy in 1983. His awards include the Distinguished Service Medal; the Legion of Merit with three gold stars; the Bronze Star; the Air Medal; and awards from the governments of the Philippines and the Republic of Vietnam. Following retirement, Admiral Kilcline formed a military and congressional consulting firm which he disestablished when he became TROA president in December 1986. Through his stewardship, The Retired Officers Association played a pivotal role in convincing Congress to enact several legislative initiatives to maintain readiness and improve the quality of life for all members of the military community--active, reserve and retired, plus their families and survivors. I won't describe all of his accomplishments, but will briefly focus on a few to illustrate the breadth of his concern for military people. Under his direction, TROA supported strengthening the underpinning of the Montgomery GI. Bill and thus provided a solid foundation for our Nation's future leaders by placing the wherewithal for a college education on the horizons of more than 1,000,000 young men and women who otherwise might have been denied that opportunity. He was ever mindful of the adverse effects on morale and retention caused by broken commitments and inadequate compensation and forcefully championed the causes of fairness and equity. His leadership efforts to preserve the long-standing commitment to lifetime care in military health care facilities, to fight perennial threats to retiree Cost of Living Adjustments and to provide adequate military pay raises are some of his other significant contributions. Most recently, he fought and won the battle for a transition plan that provides a comprehensive benefits package for those personnel and their families who are forced out of active service as a result of the force structure drawdown that, hopefully, is in its final stages. One of Tom's added strengths has been his lovely wife of 44 years, the former Dornell Thompson of Pensacola, Florida. Dornell has stood steadfastly at his side, championing the cause of military people, particularly their families and survivors, everywhere. For these contributions, we owe her a debt of gratitude, as well. Tom and Dornell live in McLean, Virginia. They have had four children: Captain Tom Jr., an F-14 pilot now in the Navy Chair at the National War College; Lieutenant Patrick, lost in an F-14 accident off the USS Constellation; Lieutenant Kathleen, a navy doctor killed in an auto accident; and Mary, wife of Commander bob Novak, a P-3 pilot assigned as a program manager in the Naval Air Systems Command in Washington, D.C. I wish to extend my heartfelt appreciation for his numerous contributions to military people everywhere and my best wishes for continued success in all of his endeavors.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of last words. I rise in support of the Bereuter-Obey amendment and against the amendment by my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith]. Mr. Chairman, there are two very fine Vietnamese restaurants in Arlington, Cafe Saigon and Nam Viet. They are owned by a Vietnamese gentleman who served South Vietnam in the army. In fact, he was imprisoned afterward, tortured. I met with him in my office, as he is a constituent, on Friday. He showed me dozens of pictures. One of those pictures was of the chief of intelligence for the South Vietnamese army, who is a very wealthy man now. He is a consultant to the Vietnamese Government. He showed me any number of other pictures of people who had been very active in high- ranking positions for the South Vietnamese army who had been considered enemies of the people on the fall of Saigon but are now very much a part of society and the economy. He showed me pictures of him standing in Hanoi, pictures of him standing in every place that we would have thought was off limits. He explained that he was able to travel anyplace. He went over there because he has helped to set up an orphanage for Vietnamese children, particularly the Amerasian children, the children of American GIs, who had been orphaned who are left in Vietnam, and he told me, Mr. Chairman, that the real need is for American involvement, not for us to turn our backs and continue trying to punish Vietnam. He felt his country and his people had been punished enough, that it is now time for healing, it is time for people like him and others like him to participate in Vietnam's economy. He feels very strongly that the people who are living in very difficult conditions in refugee camps ought to be repatriated back to Vietnam to see, as he did, the changes that have occurred in Vietnam, to realize that time marches on, that the Vietnamese people now are far more focused on the future, a fairly bright economic future, than they are obsessed in the past. There seem to be more people in this country who are looking upon Vietnam with the blinders of the past than there are in Vietnam itself. This body time and again has made wrong decisions with regard to that country. That country has suffered a great deal. I do not want that country to be a Communist nation, but when you trace the history, we were in many ways complicit with what occurred. I am not going to go through a whole history at this point, but I think we would be far better off taking a constructive role, helping Vietnam develop a free enterprise economy, develop a democracy at some point, [[Page H5544]] which I think is possible, and work with them to show them how important protection of human rights is to us and should be to them. We can only do that when we have face-to-face contact with the Vietnamese people. That is why the Bereuter-Obey amendment is the appropriate, constructive one, and I think the Smith amendment, with all due deference to my friend from New Jersey, is focused too much in the past and past bigotries and does not take into consideration the enormous progress that has been made in the last few years.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, is the gentleman aware, with all this talk of downsizing, that we hear about the downsizing efforts that worked, but the majority of corporations who have downsized in fact have failed? Their product, the quality of their product, has been reduced as well as their profits? I just mention that. The downsizing by itself is not necessarily the ultimate objective.

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

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, we are all familiar with the human emotion that some people have that when someone is down, they come and kick them again, kick them again. It is called bullying in most circles, and it has been going on toward Federal employees for the last several months. Here we have an example at the State Department, people who work very hard, people who have to have specialized training, go to the Foreign Service school, have devoted their careers to peace and diplomacy, and now we have a bill that substantially cuts personnel, and their compensation, and their ability to operate. We have another amendment on the floor just to show the American people we are going to kick them again for good measure, and now we have a secondary amendment that says, ``Let's kick them a third time.'' Mr. Chairman, it is not based upon any kind of analysis of how the State Department might better operate, how we might better ensure the spread of democratic values, the preservation of human rights, the development of free-enterprise markets for our businesses in the United States. Those are all the objectives of State Department personnel. They are really the principles upon which this country was founded. The people in the State Department believe very strongly in those principles. Why are we doing this? It is not based upon any kind of organization analysis. We are doing it to punish people in the State Department because they fit into the larger context. They are part of the Federal bureaucracy. We did a little analysis and found that the Federal bureaucracy has been used in derogatory terms 388 times since January. That cannot be any accident, and it is no accident that at every opportunity some people are going to try to gain political benefit among their constituencies by kicking Federal employees when they are already down, and that is what this amendment is all about. Mr. Chairman, it is disappointing. I know that it is what a lot of people out there would like. But it is going to hurt us. As my colleagues know, there is a book that has been written by Secretary McNamara, and there have been any number of books written about the tragedy of Vietnam. As my colleagues know, when the decisions were being made to get into Vietnam, the person who had been the desk officer who knew the most about Vietnam was selling refrigerators and air conditioners in New York City because he had been a victim of the McCarthy purge. The State Department has been kicked as a scapegoat in previous years, particularly during the 1950's, and it cost us. To some extent it cost us 58,000 lives in Vietnam. It is going to cost us in terms of democratic values. We are trying to spread throughout the world in terms of development of free-enterprise markets. We are trying to create in terms of protecting the human rights of people who live in oppressed societies throughout the world. [[Page H5457]] Those are the people who will pay for this kind of piling-on, bullying tactic against Federal employees who work within the State Department. There is no loss; in fact, there is a lot of political gain, for people who offer these kinds of amendments, but they are not constructive amendments. They are destructive amendments, and I would urge my colleagues to vote against this particularly destructive amendment, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank my very good friend from Florida. Mr. Chairman, this amendment was proposed without having done the analysis necessary to determine the ramifications of this amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would shut down 160 overseas posts and radically reduce the presence at the remaining missions overseas. It would close half of the 14 domestic passport [[Page H5459]] agencies. It would eliminate 5,700 positions, including 3,500 Americans and 2,200 Foreign Service nationals, and it would stop the investments that have been made to restructure and streamline both the overseas and the headquarters operations. The State Department tells us that this funding level, which is $227 million below the President's request, which was already a cut, and it is $625 million below the President's request for fiscal year 1997, would completely undermine the Department of State's ability to field a comprehensive overseas diplomatic platform for other Government agencies. And anyone that has been overseas knows how many other Government agencies are dependent upon State Department funding and could only be viewed by our allies as well as our adversaries as signalling a dramatic retreat by the world's last remaining superpower. Mr. Chairman, I know the direction that we have been going for the last few months, and I know that many times we do not let the facts stand in our way. But these are facts that we need to be aware of before we take such destructive action as is envisioned by this amendment.

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

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the Republican isolationist foreign aid bill, called the American Overseas Interests Act of 1995, because this bill proposes deep cuts in our foreign assistance budget and takes away the independent responsibilities of the Agency for International Development, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the U.S. Information Agency. Mr. Chairman, now is not the time for the most powerful and influential country in the world to go back to the isolationist days of the 1930's. Before World War II there were 18 nations with more military and geopolitical influence around the world than the United States. Today there are none. In fact, it is strong American leadership during and after World War II that has resulted in the world becoming safer for democracies and the fact that we have far fewer dictatorships, that we have more freedom of the press; that, in fact, the economies around the world are trading with us, providing markets for us. That is why the United States should not shrug its shoulders of world leadership. In fact, we should seize this opportunity and not turn our back on a half century of the kind of leadership that our predecessors have shown in this body and throughout the world, the kind of principles that opposed people, economically and politically oppressed people, have yearned for. They would not have achieved that economic American leadership. The end of the Soviet Union, a world map dominated by democracies and American allies, expanding trade markets, free elections in South Africa; we could go down a list that would last all day, of the things that have been achieved because of American leadership throughout the world. This bill undermines America's leadership in the world. It cuts development aid that in fact is creating markets for us today. It will reduce our ability to deal with the deteriorating environmental conditions, the rising migration pressures, all the kinds of crises of inadequate food and medical care that we read about. With very little investment, we have made an enormous difference in people's lives. Mr. Chairman, now is not the time to cut the budget for the U.S. Information Agency, because we play into the hands of dictators and people who would like to control the press of their own countries. It is not the time to cut the Agency for International Development, when we have a 95 percent repayment rate for small loans that are provided to the poor. It is certainly not the time to cut the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, when we see the kinds of disasters that are occurring, whether it be chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, that present a threat to all of us. We ought to move forward, not backward. This bill brings us backward. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.