Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I will add a historical note here because it suggests the global reach of what might seem to be local problems. I think it is widely agreed that it was the arrival of wheat from western New York in Liverpool through the Erie Canal that led to the repeal of what the British called the ``corn laws''--the British use the term ``corn''; we use the term ``wheat''--which kept the tariffs on wheat so that the vast landlords could remain the vast landlords. American wheat was so much less expensive that the British decided to cease all that and become an industrial nation. And then two generations later, it was the arrival in the Baltic of wheat from North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas. The prices were such that the local, aristocratical, landed gentry of Prussia simply could not compete. The next thing you know, you have enormous emigration from that part of the world to the United States through Ellis Island. These are not small events. The price of food is a very important matter. It is a tribute to American farmers that we don't think much about it any longer because it has become relatively stable. I can speak to the fact that when we began the War on Poverty, under President Johnson, we used as a measure the ``city workers food basket'', which was designed by the Department of Agriculture and measured what is necessary to raise a family of 4 in the city. We said a family needed 3 times that number. Well, this quickly became hopelessly out of date because the price of food kept going down. Now the price will go up. If those prices crash now, prices will rise later. The Senator is on to something important, and I thank him, as one Member of this body.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise, in the first instance, to commend our chairman for his commitment to restoring public confidence in the Internal Revenue Service and for the legislation he has so ably crafted and now so succinctly set forth in the opening statement of this debate, which I think will probably consume the better part of the Senate's time for this week. He, of course, stood on the shoulders of giants, you might say. In the report of the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service, ``A Vision for a New IRS,'' which was a statutory commission established in 1996, and which reported in June of 1997-- chaired by our distinguished and gallant committee member Bob Kerrey, J. Robert Kerrey, whom I will ask to manage this legislation in the days ahead, he having been the principal author here, along with his colleague from the other side of the aisle, Senator Chuck Grassley, Charles Grassley, ``Chuck'' to his friends. They anticipated the work we did, although I don't think they could have anticipated some of the things we encountered in those hearings. Those two Senators have been indefatigable in their endeavor to transform the IRS into a consumer- based agency. As two rounds of hearings held by the Finance Committee illustrate, there is much room for improvement at the IRS. There is much room for improvement in almost any of our Government agencies, but few, other than the Social Security Administration, so directly affect the citizenry, and none other has the capacity to be punitive, to extract resources, to impose fines. There is no other agency such as this. It is extraordinary, the fact that we have paid so little attention to the management of the Service. The Internal Revenue Service was created in 1862 in the administration of President Lincoln, at the time when an income tax was established to help finance the Civil War. President Lincoln signed the Civil War Income Tax Act into law July 1, 1862. However, it was not until last September, nearly a century and a half later, that the full Finance Committee exercised its oversight jurisdiction, and no credit can be too great to be given Senator Roth as the new chairman for this effort. It is our duty to know what is going on in this large public agency. It has more than 100,000 employees. In 1997, it collected $1.5 trillion and processed 210 million tax returns. We get used to these numbers, Mr. President, but to give a sense of dimension, 1 billion minutes ago, Julius Caesar ruled the Roman Empire. If that is what 1 billion minutes is, think what 1.5 trillion minutes would be. Some, mind you, contend that the IRS is out of control and somehow should be abolished. In truth, we simply need to get it under control and shaped in the mode of modern management. Last November, the Senate took an important first step to getting the agency in such a working mode by unanimously confirming Charles O. Rossotti as Commissioner of Internal Revenue. We have previously, for generations, had tax lawyers as the Commissioners. They were superb tax lawyers, gifted and committed, but not necessarily managers for the management problem that needed to be addressed. And particularly not technologies. The Service had a huge problem bringing itself along into the computer age. Vast amounts have been spent with systems that do not interact well. And now, of course, we have the year 2000 problem, which all agencies of Government face. All activities you can imagine compounding that earlier difficulty. Commissioner Rossotti has already made a visible difference. He has put in motion a plan to modernize the agency by reorganizing according to type of taxpayer, such as the individual payer, the small business, the large corporation, or the exempt organization, of which there are so many, rather than according to the simple organization of regional offices that do everything. In addition to establishing programs to improve the treatment of taxpayers, such as problem-solving days and extended telephone service, Commissioner Rossotti has done two things very specifically addressed to the concerns of the Finance Committee. He has appointed former Comptroller General Charles Bowsher to conduct an independent review of the IRS internal Inspection Service. It was remarkable that the Comptroller General, after 15 years of dealing with the Congress' often unfortunate demands on the General Accounting Office, came back to public service to do this. A more qualified person you could not imagine. Secondly, and again an achievement of some considerable measure, Mr. Rossotti has persuaded Judge William Webster, formerly the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and prior to that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to look into the activities and the operations of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service. This is, obviously, a troubled branch of the agency. We do not associate the Internal Revenue Service with men in body armor carrying automatic weapons, breaking into offices and telling everyone to freeze, if you will. Yet, we heard testimony that could not be doubted that just such things are happening, and they need to be very carefully controlled and obviously have not been. How widespread that behavior is, we do not know. But we will learn from Judge Webster, and not a moment too soon. The legislation before us represents a second major step. It would establish an Internal Revenue Service oversight board consisting of six private citizens, a representative of the IRS employees' union, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Commissioner of the IRS itself. The board will be responsible for certifying the strategic direction and goals of the agency, while the Commissioner will continue to manage all day-to-day operations. The Finance Committee specifically voted to include the Secretary and a union representative on the board, making the composition of that board identical to that of the House bill reported out of the Committee on Ways and Means, which passed the House of Representatives by an extraordinary vote of 426-4. But now it should be clear in anticipation of some amendments, not necessary but in anticipation of the possibility, it should be clear that if this board is to have any stature within the Government and with the public, the Secretary of the Treasury must be on it. That is basic management practice. As Senator Breaux aptly stated during the Finance Committee markup, it is also far better to have the union working cooperatively on the inside rather than working in opposition on the outside. I would also point out that the bill includes a number of provisions to create flexibility for the Commissioner in the area of personnel. In recognition of the great disparity between the salary structures in Government and those in the private sector on parallel activities, the legislation provides a streamlined process by which the Commissioner can appoint up to 40 individuals designated critical technical and professional positions for up to 4-year terms at an annual compensation equivalent to the pay of the Vice President, currently $175,400. The Commissioner can go out and find this person to do this particular job and make it a 4-year appointment. Persons who obviously are in the private sector will come into Government at not too large a sacrifice, and for most it would be a considerable one. I do not want to use the word ``sacrifice''--lachrymose, perhaps--just a large reduction in income for the kinds of persons that will be sought after, but not so large that they cannot manage the transition. Other provisions will permit the establishment of a new performance management system focused on individual accountability and will allow for the creation of an award system to provide incentives for and recognition of individual group and organizational achievements. Additional measures call for the termination of IRS employees for violations committed in connection with the performance of their official duties. The bill contains two provisions of special interest to this Senator, the first of which Senator Kerrey and I particularly supported, and Senator Roth mentioned in his opening statement. It would require the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation to provide an analysis of complexity and administrability issues associated with all pending tax legislation. Many of the problems faced by the IRS arise from the Tax Code itself. One of the clearest visions of the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service was simplification of the tax law which says it is necessary to reduce taxpayer burden and facilitate improved tax administration. One has to note, regrettably perhaps, that our proposal for simplification goes on some 511 pages. This is a pattern we have gotten into which we ought to avoid. If enacted, and this bill will be enacted, it will be the 64th public law to amend the Internal Revenue Code since the great Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1986, led by Senator Packwood, we greatly simplified the Code. We lowered tax rates, we broadened the base, we got rid of all manner of absurdities and irrational provisions in the Code. The core group, as we called ourselves, would meet each morning in Senator Packwood's office and talk about the day's plans. It would be my particular job to provide a reading from the Wall Street Journal. I would find--never failed--an advertisement somewhere in the Journal of that day talking about mountain sheep or billy goats, or what have you, in which it would say ``losses guaranteed.'' Such were the provisions of the Tax Code at that time--you made money by investing in activities that lost money. We cleared all that out, or thought we did, and we brought rates down and hoped they would stay there. This will be the 64th law since that time amending and complexifying. I recall last year we passed a bill, 802 pages, called the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, and the only copy on the Senate floor was here at this desk. The copy for the chairman was spirited away to be examined in the Budget Committee for violations of the Byrd rule, as I recall. And Senators would come up and ask the Senator from New York if there were certain provisions in the bill. They had no way of knowing because there was no copy on the floor. This sort of analysis will take time to do it, but 20 years from now we may look back and think that one of the most important provisions that was contained in this measure was the report by the Joint Committee on Taxation of the complexity of a tax measure, and how well, in fact, the IRS could handle its administration. Because if we failed to simplify the Code, we failed to address the heart of this problem. Complexity contributes to taxpayer frustration, obviously, and to tax evasion, as well. We look forward to working with the chairman to try to reduce tax evasion, which is a much larger matter than we have tended to assume. Commissioner Rossotti, in his testimony before the Finance Committee on Friday, stated that tax evasion is now at an estimated $195 billion a year. If we were to do no more than collect half the taxes now owed and deliberately not paid, our revenue situation would be profoundly changed. And that can be done, and I think Commissioner Rossotti intends to at least attempt it. We are talking about laws here. If we are a nation of laws, not only do taxpayers have rights, but they have responsibilities. Both should be pursued with energy and effectiveness. A second provision has to do with the so-called year 2000 problem or the century date change, as Commissioner Rossotti terms it. The IRS has had some well-publicized difficulties with its computer modernization efforts. These problems have been exacerbated by programming changes required by the Taxpayer Relief Act last year and by the year 2000 problem. It is beginning to sink in that we have a real problem here. Our majority leader and the minority leader are much to be congratulated. We have now created a special committee on this matter with our distinguished colleague, Senator Bennett, as the chairman. This is not a problem in the ordinary sense, a difficulty to be looked after or endured. No. The General Accounting Office testified before us September of last year that the computer conversion problem could be catastrophic. The whole system could crash. We are not alone in this regard. The IRS is just another large information center dependent on information processing which it cannot do if the computers are not changed in time. The adjustments are not that complicated but the pressure of time is extraordinary. I recently had the occasion of introducing the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, our distinguished Chairman Arthur Levitt, who was nominated for a second term. We were talking while we were waiting for the hearing in the Banking Committee to begin. He mentioned this issue and said that for the banks and such he is responsible for, if they do not get this done it is terminal. Not just that the profits drop a bit or some activities can't survive--it is terminal. The Defense Department has unimaginable difficulties. They will get it done or they hope they will get it done, or our missiles won't be aimed in the right direction, things like that. And the Commissioner has asked that some of the provisions in this bill be delayed not for a long time but until after the year 2000 so he can have the year 2000 problem solved before he puts in these new provisions. It is a very reasonable, orderly, sane recommendation and we would be disorderly not to heed it. He has already sent us a six-page letter that tells us when he can have this provision in place, when he can have that provision in place. He knows what he is talking about. I hope we will listen. Two final points: The bill requires the Joint Committee and the Treasury to study the issue of taxpayer confidentiality. We must strike a balance between taxpayer privacy on the one hand and the ability of Government to function on the other. In our hearings we have had a matter where IRS officials, faced with specific charges, will often seem evasive or unresponsive in their answers. What they are doing is responding to the law that forbids them to discuss things they know, but which are confidential. Some balancing of that is in order, and I hope we can see it brought about. Finally, Mr. President, a comment on the cost of the legislation. Through the ingenuity of the chairman, we have fully funded this measure for the first 5 years of its operation. It is underfunded by $10 billion in the second 5 years. We hope to do something about this. I think it is unseemly of us to bring tax reform legislation to the Senate and fully ignore the fact that we aren't paying for it. We can pay for it; it is not an impossible sum, and it is surely incumbent upon the committee and the managers of the legislation to see if we can't find that extra $10 billion.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am happy to; yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes. I am not surprised. We pay our bills--or we ought to pay our bills. As I said, it would be unseemly to bring a measure of this kind to the floor saying, ``Let's manage these matters better,'' and not manage to pay for it. That is welcome news, and the Senator has my cooperation on that, to be sure. Finally, Mr. President, I am going to ask Senator Kerrey to manage the legislation on our side. As I said, he was co-chairman of the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service. Their superb report, ``A New Vision for the IRS,'' which was issued last June--11 months ago--has led to the work we are doing now, which we bring to the floor with pride and with the expectation that we will be successful. On that note, sir, I yield the floor. Mr. JOHNSON addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will my friend yield for a quick question?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. No.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I couldn't agree more. The EU should be extending membership to Turkey, in my view. Why not? When Europe was in ruins we went to rescue them by creating NATO. Now, by God, it would be not too much to hope that their precious Common Agricultural Policy might be adjusted to include Poland, if it costs them a little. It would cost them a great deal more if instability returns to Europe.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. On the southern flank.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, with a measure of trepidation I hear the former Secretary of the Navy refer to me as a distinguished colleague, I certainly am honored to be with him in this debate, I say that I completely agree. Just the fact of NATO's guarantee of the borders of these three countries gives them an advantage over the rest of Eastern Europe. That is formidable, among other things. Could I just take a moment to agree that the idea that Turkey can't get into the EU is appalling. When we were fighting in Korea in the first real war of the cold war, the Turks were there.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. That the Senator from Virginia was in.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. In the brief period that I will be speaking, I would like to concentrate on the central issue: the dangers of nuclear war in the years ahead. Earlier, in an address to the 150th anniversary gathering of the Associated Press, I cited a comment made last autumn by Richard Holbrooke, the American diplomat, now temporarily in private life. Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the Dayton agreement regarding the former Yugoslavia, commented that ``almost a decade has gone by since the Berlin Wall fell and, instead of reaching out to Central Europe, the European Union turned toward a bizarre search for a common currency. So NATO enlargement had to fill the void.'' As if this were an accidental policy that derives from the unwillingness of our European friends--some of them our NATO allies--to engage in the more serious work of bringing the once more independent republics of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland into the European Union, a common market from which their economic development can grow, that being clearly the single most pressing concern they have in the aftermath of the half century of a Stalinist economy imposed upon them with the same results for them--not quite so bad, but bad enough--that Russia itself experienced. The disaster of this era for the Russians cannot be exaggerated. I say to my dear friend from Delaware, who has been so generous in letting us speak on these matters, Murray Feshbach has recently established that the life expectancy of Russian men dropped from 62 years in 1989 to 57 years in 1996. There is no historical equivalent. A century ago, a 16-year-old Russian male had a 54 percent chance of surviving to age 60. Two percent less than had he been born a century ago. Such has been the implosion of Soviet society--in every respect, including the nuclear one. Now, earlier on in a statement, I remarked, and I will take the liberty of remarking once again, that the origins of NATO seem very distant to most Members of the Senate. That age seems like another era. And in a sense it was another era. But there are a few witnesses from that era who are still active and who still speak. George Kennan, who conceived the whole idea of containment, of which NATO was an expression and perhaps the most important one, George Kennan has said NATO expansion, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Soviet Union, he says, would be ``the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era.'' ``The most fateful error.'' Paul Nitze, who was the principal author of NSC-68, the national security directive written in 1950, which established the American policy of containment, recently wrote to me to say, ``In the present security environment, NATO expansion is not only unnecessary, it is gratuitous. If we want a Europe whole and free, we are not likely to get it by making NATO fat and feeble.'' In my remarks to the Associated Press, I simply said that expanding NATO at this time, and particularly should we move up to include the Baltic States, which we are pledged to support, would put us at risk of getting into a nuclear war with Russia: wholly unanticipated, for which we are not prepared, about which we are not thinking. Professor Michael Mandelbaum, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said ``that is not hyperbole.'' That is what we are dealing with here. And the reason, NATO expansion is viewed throughout elements of the Russian political system as a hostile act. Some think of it as a hostile act they could live with; some think it is a hostile act they will have to defend against; and they have said if they have to defend their territory, they will do so with nuclear weapons; it is all they have left. Their Army has all been disintegrated--not entirely, but they remark in a December 17 National Security memorandum signed by Mr. Yeltsin, that stretches of their borders are undefended. Their Navy is rusting in a seaport, nominally part of the Ukraine. They have nuclear weapons. After all we have gone through to achieve rational nuclear postures: a no-first-use policy, graduated response to threats, only resorting to strategic nuclear weapons at the very last moment when no other options are available--that is gone. We are back to the hair trigger that we knew when I was a young person in this Government, in this city, when we could imagine having use air-raid shelters. We could imagine it, because we could remember the Second World War. I was called back into the Navy in 1951, briefly, as it turned out, but found myself in Bremerhaven, in the submarine pens there that the Nazis had built. The British finally got a bomb through one, but never did during the war. We were sent on an expedition to Berlin. We had the practice of sending American officers on trains through Soviet-occupied Germany to establish the fact that we had the right to do so. I arrived in Berlin, and it wasn't there. Just ruined rubble; early in the morning, a few men stumbling out of a few bars, lost to the world. We knew what war meant, and we can imagine what nuclear war means. We just had dropped two bombs on Japan. From the time of President Eisenhower, we have been negotiating ways to control atomic weapons-- and we had success. Those early arms control agreements, apart from the agreement President Kennedy reached on atmospheric nuclear testing, those early agreements typically just ratified the increases in nuclear weapons that each side wanted, but we got the START agreement and we reduced our nuclear arsenals. The START Treaty, negotiated with the Soviet Union, was signed by four entirely different countries, because by the time it was finished the Soviet Union had disappeared. Russia has not yet ratified START II. The idea of START III, to reduced deployed nuclear weapons ever further, hasn't even begun. They haven't ratified START II, not least because of NATO expansion. I don't claim to know what the actual decisions in the Duma are, but that is what one hears, and one can imagine it. Tomorrow there will be a report by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, an American group, principally, that has won a Nobel Prize on the issue of preventing nuclear warfare. They will publish a report in the New England Journal of Medicine which says that the danger of nuclear attack continues and may even be thought to escalate. The New York Times reports this in the terms we have been speaking about on this floor, the exact same terms, with no idea that was coming. It says, ``Russia's Disarray Brings a Nuclear Risk to the U.S., Study Says.'' The Physicians write, ``Although many people believe that the threat of a nuclear attack largely disappeared with the end of the cold war there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Each side routinely maintains thousands of nuclear warheads on high alert. Furthermore, to compensate for its weakened conventional forces, Russia has abandoned its no-first use policy.'' Madam President, that is all I and my friend from Virginia has said on this floor this week of debate and when the expansion of NATO was debated a month ago. Suddenly we have it in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, saying to those who think this threat is behind us. Indeed, it is ahead of us, and we must be very careful, so careful, about what we do. That is why so many of us, starting with the great men--Kennan and Nitze--who conceived the strategy for the cold war, which we won, are saying, ``Don't do this.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article from the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I conclude by saying, I just happened 20 minutes ago to be speaking to our revered former majority leader, Howard Baker, who was in the Capitol to testify before the Finance Committee. I said I was coming over to offer this amendment. He and Sam Nunn, Brent Scowcroft, and Alton Frye have said, ``Don't do this.'' He said with respect to Russian nuclear weapons; they have them, but they don't know how many they have and they don't know who controls them. The whole situation of command and control is very limited and weak and uncertain. Not many years ago, after the end of the cold war, Norway put up a rocket for purposes of research which put the Russian on nuclear alert. They had 15 minutes to decide whether to go to launch on warning. It was that close. We were that close to nuclear war. We will be closer in the aftermath of NATO expansion.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I send to the desk an amendment for myself and Mr. Warner and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair. Executive Amendment No. 2321 (Purpose: To express a condition regarding the relationship between NATO membership and European Union membership)

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Is the Senator aware of how little time I have to respond? He put that question on his time?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes, I do. I am very much aware of that. But I am also aware, on December 17, in the context of NATO expansion, a formal document was put out saying, ``we may not have much else but we do have nuclear weapons.''

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Does it occur to him that that passage in the Foreign Relations report referred to economic cooperation between France and Germany, the Schuman Plan?

Mr. MOYNIHAN

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce with my colleague Senator D'Amato, and with Senators Mikulski and Snowe, legislation important to ensuring that women with breast cancer and cervical cancer will receive coverage for their treatment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a successful nationwide program--National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program-- that screens low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. However, CDC's program does not have funding to treat these women after they are diagnosed. The women eligible for cancer screening under the CDC program are low-income individuals and yet are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid coverage. They do not have health insurance coverage for these screenings and for subsequent cancer treatment. From July of 1991 to March of 1997, the CDC program provided mammography screening to almost 600,000 women and diagnosed nearly 3,500 cases of breast cancer. During this same period, the program also provided over 700,000 pap smears and found more than 300 cases of invasive cervical cancer. The CDC screening program has had to divert a significant amount of time and funding in order to find treatment opportunities for the women found to have breast and cervical cancer. The lack of subsequent funding for treatment has, therefore, jeopardized the programs' primary function: to screen low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. Currently, the program screens about 12 to 15 percent of all eligible women. A recent study conducted at Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation and the University of Michigan School of Public Health on treatment funding for women screened by the CDC program found that, although funding for treatment services were found for most of these women, they often experienced time delays. In addition, during the search for treatment funding, the CDC program lost contact with several women. The study also found that the sources of treatment funding are uncertain, tenuous and fragmented. The burden of funding treatment often fell upon providers themselves. The uncertainty and delays worsen the stress of coping with cancer. Some women, upon learning that they have cancer, must hold lunches and bake sales to raise funds to cover their needed treatment. Our legislation would provide treatment coverage for the women screened and diagnosed through the CDC program and who are uninsured. States will have the option to provide this coverage through its Medicaid program. If a state chooses this option, they will receive an enhanced match for the treatment coverage, similar to the federal match provided to the sate for the CDC screening program. Mr. President, the Senate has approved this proposal in the past. A similar provision was included in the Senate version of last year's Balanced Budget bill. It is my hope that the Senate will again support this important legislation.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, in the foreseeable future the central strategic object of the United States and the world will be that of controlling the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in the Near East, in South Asia, in East Asia, and the control of them in Russia itself. If we can have the cooperation, however tacit, of the Russian Government in these affairs, we have great hopes and possibilities. If we were to have their hostility, their opposition, it could be ruinous to the world. We are talking about nuclear war and biological and chemical war. That, in my view, is what is at issue in this decision we are about to make and the amendment I have offered. I thank the Chair for its courteous attention. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will my friend yield?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I remind the Senate that Mike Mansfield was in the Navy at age 14 and the Marines at age 17.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I just ask my friend, and I know he will be aware of this, on January 16 this year, the President and the Presidents of the three Baltic States signed the U.S. Baltic Charter of Partnership, which states that the United States welcomes and supports the efforts of the Baltic States to join NATO, states that could only be defended by nuclear weapons.