Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I do not know if we have unemployed lumberjacks in this country or not. I do not know whether or not there is unemployment in the part of the country of my colleague. I think there might be some unemployed lumberjacks in this country that would prefer creating the jobs here in the United States of America. Of course, then we have to have some environmental controls so that some of these big companies could not rape the environment.

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is simple and represents basic common sense. It also goes to the heart of the debate here today. All it says is that OPIC may not provide taxpayer backing for manufacturing plants overseas. We have heard time and time and time again in this debate that OPIC creates jobs overseas. Everyone who is supporting the OPIC authorization comes up with jobs overseas. Well, it is my contention that one cannot build factories overseas without having a negative impact on jobs in the United States. That makes all the sense in the world. Those who are listening to this debate need to listen very carefully. This is the center, the core of the debate on OPIC. What my amendment does is say that none of this money that is used by OPIC will be used to subsidize and to guarantee an investment that creates a manufacturing unit overseas. Again, by definition, that manufacturing unit will do one of two things. Opening up a manufacturing unit overseas will either reduce the number of jobs in the United States by either exporting the goods produced in those factories to the United States, or they will reduce the jobs in the United States by producing over there goods that should be produced in the United States and exported to that country, or number two, what will happen by building a factory overseas it will prevent the creation of new jobs in the United States. Either way, we do not want to have taxpayer money being used to reduce the number of jobs, to create competition for our products overseas, or to prevent, because the jobs are now being exported over there, the creation of new jobs in the United States because they are all going to another country. By the way, although we have no guarantees here, that is especially true of nondemocratic countries. Again, OPIC is offering a perverse incentive for American businessmen to go overseas to build manufacturing plants, to use slave labor or cheap labor, depending on if it is a democratic or undemocratic country, and then to reexport those goods to the United States of America. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant) was right when he was concerned about this incredible trade deficit that we have. Well, this has something to do with it. We are subsidizing people creating businesses overseas that create employment in Vietnam. Well, I have nothing against Vietnam except for the fact that it is a dictatorship and also the fact that I think we should watch out for the American people and our constituents before we watch out for creating jobs in Vietnam or any other Third World country. This is the essence of the debate on OPIC, my amendment. I understand there may be another amendment offered to my amendment, which will simply say that OPIC can move forward if it does not determine that the number of jobs will be reduced. Well, I am sorry, that is not good enough because that type of approach means that there will be no new jobs created in the United States. That means that jobs would have been created in the United States; but by saying if it does not result in a reduction then we can just see to it that no new jobs are created in the district of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo), or wherever. I do not think it is good for us to build tractor factories with taxpayer subsidies in Vietnam or anywhere else. I do not think it is good for us to even build hotels necessarily, but this amendment specifically says manufacturing units. It says it shall not be the policy of OPIC to provide taxpayer support and subsidies for businessmen going overseas. Again, why are we giving people an investment to invest in risky situations? Do we want the taxpayers to risk hundreds of millions of dollars in a risky situation when, instead, they could come to the United States. Do my colleagues know why it is not risky in the United States? It is not risky in the United States because the American people, the American working people support free enterprise, support democracy, recognize the rule of law. Now we are punishing them because they have been so good and so true and faithful to American principles and have made this a good place so we do not need to provide risk insurance for the United States. We are going to take their dollars out of their pockets, these decent, hard-working Americans, and guarantee the building of factories overseas that will compete with their jobs. This is ridiculous. Again, how this amendment is voted on and how the people will vote on the amendment that is a gutting amendment that could be offered to this is the essential part of the debate today. I hope people pay attention.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I wish the gentleman would do that on his own time. I thank the gentleman for using my time. If the gentleman wants to have good relations in this body, we do not waste each other's time. The gentleman has plenty of time to do that later on. The Manzullo amendment does not say ``net reduction.'' It just says ``reduction.'' Whether it says net reduction is irrelevant because of this point: It is all based on the analysis of OPIC, and OPIC believes in this gobbledygook that we have been hearing today that if you create jobs, or if you build factories overseas, that it will not hurt American workers because if you analyze things out to the nth degree 100 years from now, their consumers are going to have more money to buy American products because they will have good-paying jobs there to buy American products. This sort of nonsense, this sort of just pie-in-the- sky economics, liberal economics, if you will, is bringing down the standard of living of the average American working person that works in manufacturing jobs in the United States. All the examples we have heard of today hurt American workers. Again, the gentleman from Nebraska talked about, what is wrong with building a canning factory for mangos in some other country? Well, how about it? Do we not have farmers and agricultural workers that provide some sort of competition for mangos? In California, I think they actually can oranges and grapefruits. They can pineapples in Hawaii. No, I do not want to establish a factory with taxpayer-guaranteed money that will manufacture canned mangos overseas in competition with American agricultural products. It might be a little bit hard to see, but I think the American people fully understand that what this amendment does is it guts my amendment and it leaves open the subsidy of building factories and manufacturing units overseas that will destroy American jobs, either American jobs that exist, or it will destroy the possibility of creating new jobs. In fact, the gentleman from Illinois' language specifically permits there to be a subsidy for an American company if the only impact is the elimination of the creation of new jobs, as long as it does not reduce current jobs. I am sorry, but we have had an expanding population in the United States. If someone wants to invest overseas, they should be doing so at their own risk. That is all we are saying. It is unfair and a betrayal to our taxpayers to set up factories overseas guaranteed by their money that competes with their own job. Mr. Chairman, I ask for the Manzullo gutting amendment to be defeated and support for my amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, again I remind my colleagues who are following this in the Congressional Record or on C-SPAN that this is the essential part of the debate, this is the central issue, and what I think that they ought to try, whoever is listening or reading this in the Congressional Record to determine what makes sense and what does not make sense. The other side is saying, having our Federal tax dollars being used to subsidize the building of factories overseas is not doing anything to hurt American working people. Building factories, manufacturing units overseas does not hurt American working people. That is what they are saying. Now, if that makes no sense to my colleagues, I would invite them to try to look and see what is happening here. We have got some huge American corporate interests, huge, companies that are worth billions of dollars. They have got hundreds of millions of dollars invested overseas that they would like to make where they do not have to pay the salaries to American workers and they want that guaranteed by the taxpayers. That is what this is all about. They do not want to invest here. They do not want to take that money that they would invest in that lumber company in Lithuania. They do not want to set up some kind of factory in the United States that creates prefabricated walls or invests in something that deals with construction that could give jobs to the American people. They want to go to Lithuania. No, but that has no impact. Just giving them the guarantee to produce that in Lithuania has no impact on the American unemployment. Gobble- dygook. Nonsense. The Manzullo amendment is not a perfecting amendment. It is a gutting amendment. I might add the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) who unfortunately is not here with us today, I mean right now, he was with us earlier, made the point that the Manzullo amendment said that there will be no reduction of jobs, no net reduction of jobs. The gentleman from Nebraska said over and over again, no net reduction. I am sorry, but that is not what the Manzullo amendment does. It is not what it says. The word ``net'' is not in there. The word ``net'' is not in there because the Manzullo amendment is what we call a gutting amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, obviously, this lumber mill example is a very tiny, minuscule, one-half of 1 percent example of what OPIC does. When we are talking about manufacturing units, we are talking about tractor factories; we are talking about other kinds of manufacturing that are heavy, heavy manufacturing. We are also talking about other exploitation of natural resources.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, who is watching out for America? That is the question of the day. Supposedly that is our first responsibility as elected officials, watching out for the United States of America. Today, however, too many Americans with power and influence do not consider watching out for our country's interests and the well-being of our people to be their priority. Today we constantly hear about globalism, and we constantly hear the words world economy as if the development of this new world order is the goal of America's leadership. Madam Speaker, that is their goal, and sometimes that goal is antithetical to the best interests of the people of the United States. But our leaders move forward blithely as if they are part of an altruistic historic movement in which leaders throughout the planet are sheparding all of human kind into a homogenous world. It is not working according to plan. The world is not becoming this one world place where idealism reigns and people are acting together in a peaceful manner and an honest manner. It just does not seem to be acting according to their plan. The dream of our globalists is becoming a nightmare, especially for the national security interests of the American people and the potential for the spread of real democracy and individual liberty throughout a substantial portion of this planet. One of the problems the globalist dreamers in the United States refuse to acknowledge is that leaders of most of this world's power blocks are not playing the game. Surprise, surprise, surprise; those people, those leaders in other parts of the world, are basing their decisions on what is best for their own countries and their own peoples and not with some overall view of the planet. America's relations with Communist China, with the Communist Chinese dictatorship, is a disgrace. It is a total rejection of the ideals upon which our country is founded, but again reflect the ideas that are the basis of our decision-making towards China. The fact that we have treated China in a way in order to harmonize our relations with the world with a new world order in order to make China part of a world trading organization, the fact that we have treated them in this way, which is often quite irrational for the moment, has this made us and made the world any more prosperous? Has it made peace any more likely? Is China any closer to democratic reform? The answer is no, no, no; and yet we still have people here who are pushing to put China into the World Trade Organization, the equivalent of putting the local Chicago gangster into the Chamber of Commerce hoping that that would change that gangster's ways. Well, we do not need Al Capone in the Chamber of Commerce, and we do not need Communist China in an organization that will make the decisions about trade and commerce the production of wealth throughout the world. But even our relations with our democratic European allies are working against us with China, with our relations with China because we have had a decision-making process based on some sort of global concepts rather than the interests of the United States. The people of the United States are being put at a disadvantage by trade and our national security is being gravely threatened. But as I say, even our relations with our democratic European allies are working against the interests of the American people. Because as much as America's elite refuses to recognize it, our European friends are watching out for their own interests. They are not watching out for us; they are not watching out for the world. Our European allies are treating us like we are suckers, and, of course, we are. Through NATO, we are subsidizing the defense of a portion of this planet that has a higher standard of living and higher gross national product than our own. We are fighting their battles. And, while we give most-favored-nation status to developing countries like China, and actually to the detriment of our own people, our European allies through the European Union are raping other countries, other developing countries, especially in Eastern Europe. Madam Speaker, I would suggest that we need a new way of thinking in Washington that watches out for the interests of the people of the United States.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, back in the 1980's I had the honor of being one of Ronald Reagan's speech writers and worked with him closely in developing some of the ideas that were under attack then but nowadays seem to have come to fruition. And it is difficult for me to come here today and to just especially in light of what Edmond Morris has written about the President and is writing about the President, saying about President Reagan, but I think we should all remember that Ronald Reagan had a vision and set America in motion to do things that have put us in an era of prosperity and an era of peace. I was there when Ronald Reagan, for example, launched the program aimed at developing a missile defense system for the United States of America. Everybody said that it could not be done. He was ridiculed. He wanted a system that, if someone were shooting a missile at us were armed with an atomic bomb, a nuclear warhead, that we could have protected from that, thus saving millions of Americans. And they said it could not be done. They ridiculed him, and of course this weekend I am proud to announce that we have had another successful test of an anti-missile system to protect the American people, part of Ronald Reagan's dream.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin, my friend and chairman of the Committee on Science, for discharging H.R. 2607 and bringing it to the floor today. Mr. Speaker, this legislation is just one more thing that this Congress is doing to respond to the Cox Committee's report and strengthen America's space transportation industry. This bill authorizes two important offices which regulate and promote this industry and renews commercial launch indemnification authority for 5 years beyond its expiration at the end of this year. America's space transportation industry is still in its childhood as far as maturity goes. It is becoming very dynamic. We are now experiencing and witnessing many reusable launch as well as expendable launch vehicles under development that in the future will serve America well. In the future, I would hope that the government could shoulder less risk so that the industry is fully motivated to invest in more reliable and safe and reusable launch vehicles. In fact, as the reusables that are under development now and the expendables that are under development now come into fruition, as they are put into practice and they are put into service for the American people, we expect these space transportation systems to be developed and to be further improved so that indemnification will not quite be the issue that it is at this stage in America's space program. Furthermore, this legislation sets in place an independent process to advise the Congress on how the government and the private sector should share the risk in space transportation activities in the future. So we are preparing for that day when this type of indemnification may no longer be necessary. In particular, we are asking launch companies, their customers and their insurers as well, to serve and to give us input into how and when we might carefully change the current regime. By renewing the current regime for 5 years and giving industry the opportunity to shape the future, I believe we are serving the taxpayers well and giving America's space transportation companies a stable business environment so they can become more competitive and so that they can develop these new space transportation technologies that will keep America the number one power in commercial space as well as the number one power in some of the space projects that are being developed for dual use with the Defense Department and NASA as well as in the private sector. Mr. Speaker, I again thank the gentleman from Wisconsin, the chairman of the committee, for discharging this bill, and for supporting it, and for the leadership he has provided for America's space industry.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, 2 days ago, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, told reporters that he hopes the U.S. military will resume contacts with the Communist Chinese military. At the very same time that Secretary Cohen was speaking, in Shanghai, Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin was speaking to a gathering of elite U.S. corporate chairmen who were in China to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the communist takeover of the mainland of China. Jiang Zemin blatantly renewed threats by the communist regime to conquer Taiwan by force, and then he threatened the United States. ``We will not allow any foreign force to create or support Taiwanese independence.'' I have in my possession, Mr. Chairman, Pentagon documents detailing the Clinton Administration's exchange program between the United States and Communist China. It is a military exchange program. This program of military exchanges has, in effect, assisted the Communist Chinese Air Force in improving its capabilities to conduct bombing raids on Taiwan. The May 1999 Air Force exchange, and this was an exchange in May of 1999, this year, introduced the Communist Chinese, and these are military leaders in the Communist Chinese military, to our most advanced Air Force capabilities. This may eventually cause the death of Americans serving in any U.S. air or naval forces that would attempt to defend Taiwan against communist attack. This is mind boggling. I pray that those people who are listening to this or reading it in the Congressional Record or my colleagues will please pay attention. We are talking about training Communist Chinese military people in ways that will result in the death of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of American military personnel. It is outrageous. It is incredible. What can you say? What can we do to draw attention to this absolute outrage? The Chinese Communist People's Liberation Air Force and government air traffic control delegation visited the United States between May 9 and May 20 of this year. Air traffic control certainly sounds harmless. The Pentagon documents used to brief these Chinese visitors show that they observed or participated in advanced combat Air Force exercises with the U.S. 389th Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. They also observed fighter bomber operations at Edwards Air Force Base test center in California. At these exercises, they experienced the real or simulated flights of bombing runs and strafing runs by our most sophisticated military aircraft. Especially useful for the Communist Chinese in their potential attack by the Communist Chinese on Taiwan was the briefing they got, and these DOD documents verify this, that they were shown how the military can use civilian airfields to conduct military operations. What we see by these DOD documents is that our government, our Defense Department, showed the Communist Chinese how we would use our radar systems for air traffic control of fighter bombers at remote airfields. We showed the Communists how to use AWACs in coordinating bombing campaigns. We showed the Communists how we coordinate our AWACS with in-flight refueling for long-range missions. Mr. Speaker, earlier in this session, when I discovered this military exchange program and made it public, the Congress appealed to the Defense Department and passed legislation to end military exchanges that would benefit the warfighting skills of the Chinese military. These DOD documents prove that the Pentagon has ignored the will of Congress. Instead, they have not only jeopardized the 24 million people who live on Democratic Taiwan but this administration is in effect teaching the Communist Chinese how to improve their ability to kill America's defenders. Again, this is bizarre. It is almost surrealistic. I beg my colleagues to pay attention to this. I beg the administration to come to their senses, quit trying to treat the world's worst human rights abuser, a regime that constantly reminds us that they do not believe in anything that America believes in, hates everything America stands for. I beg them to quit trying to call these people our strategic partners and training them how to do their military. I stand ready to give my colleagues all of these documents upon request.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Recently we have, of course, seen a terrible situation where young Christians were murdered and attacked by someone down in Texas. Does the gentleman believe that perhaps some of this vitriol he is talking about could have resulted in that type of violence against Christians? We will leave that for the public.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to speak on an issue which I have, indeed, spoken about before, but I have some startling new information for the American people. It is no surprise to anyone that I am deeply concerned about America's relationship with Communist China. In this body, we have votes on the trading status with Communist China, and this administration is operating under policy guidelines that deal with Communist China in a certain way. In fact, the United States Congress, the House of Representatives, and the Senate have voted for normal trade relations, or what used to be called most-favored-nation status for China, and a majority of Members of this body on my side of the aisle have voted to treat Communist China in terms of our trade relations as we do normal trade relations with other societies; that, of course, with a large number of people on the other side supporting most-favored-nation status, normal trade relations as well. The Clinton administration has gone beyond this. Perhaps those of us in this House believe that trading relations with another country, even a dictatorship like that on the mainland of China, will in some way help that society evolve into a more peaceful, more benevolent, more democratic situation. I consider that to be wishful thinking. I disagree with that concept. I personally believe in free trade between free people, and it is better to give dictatorships and people who live under dictatorships the incentive to reform and the incentive to move towards democracy, rather than giving them the fruits of a positive trade relationship with this, the strongest economy in the world. I would treat Communist China differently than I would treat the government of Belgium or Italy or other democratic societies in trying to determine what our trade policy should be. Again, this is based on wishful thinking. However, it is beyond my realm and my ability to understand how this administration has been able to move forward with its policies toward Communist China over these last 6 years. The President of the United States has insisted time and again that Communist China be considered a strategic partner of the United States. Those are the words that this administration has insisted upon, Communist China a strategic partner of the United States. A few moments ago we pledged our allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Our flag, as I noted before we said the pledge, stands for freedom and justice. How can a country which is based not on some ethnic background, as our country has no ethnicity that we are supposedly protecting, as in other countries, their national identity stems from that, from an ethnic or racial homogeny among the people, but we have no religious belief that binds all of our people together. In fact, we have every race and every ethnic group from every part of the world, people who have come here to America; and we have every religion in America. What binds Americans together is our love of liberty and our love of justice and our love of freedom. That is the foundation, that is the basis of our country. How can we, if we believe that to be true, consider the world's worst human rights abuser as our strategic partner? Yes, having a trading relationship with a dictatorship such as China is wishful thinking. It is also exploitation on the part of various business interests in the United States, business interests that, I might add, could care less about the working people in our country, often closing up factories here in order to set up factories in China, in order to sell the products that were made in China back here in the United States because we have such a low tariff on Chinese goods, although the Chinese tariff on our goods is very high. But if we stand for freedom and justice, how can we have not just a trading relationship but a strategic partnership with Communist China? It is my contention, Mr. Speaker, that this nonsense, this almost surrealistic policy on the part of the Clinton administration, has already yielded a horrible bounty of threats and jeopardy to the United States of America. Let me make this very clear. The Clinton policy of treating Communist China as a friend, as a benevolent country, as a strategic partner, has resulted in putting the United States in grave danger. There are two things that I will talk about today. First, I have spoken about this before, and it is well known in the public, although it is being denied through the liberal media over and over and over again now, and that is, the weapons and technology of mass destruction that Communist China has managed to obtain because of our lax policies towards the Communist China regime; and number two, I would like to speak today about dramatic information that I have uncovered in Panama. During a recent trip to Panama, I spent time investigating the situation, spoke to people who were in hiding, who were afraid for their lives, spoke to others who were firsthand observers of corruption and firsthand observers of a strategic maneuver on the part of the Chinese that is moving forward and putting the United States in great danger. So I will be speaking first about the technology and missiles that have found their way and been upgraded, the Chinese missiles that have been upgraded with American technology; and then I would like to talk a little bit about what I discovered in Panama. It is most disturbing to me, Mr. Chairman, that after 2 years we still have press reports from the likes of Bob Scheerer of the Los Angeles Times. And why the Los Angeles Times feels that it has to always tout the far left line, I do not know. I do not understand that. I do not understand how a major newspaper in the United States can continually take the side of those left-wing regimes, and downplay any threat to the United States that these left-wing regimes around the world pose to the United States of America. But now, Mr. Scheerer in the L.A. Times and others in the media and this administration, through an orchestrated maneuvering, is trying to suggest that there was no validity to the Cox report and that the Chinese really have not, through underhanded means, obtained information that permits them to develop weapons of mass destruction that threaten millions of Americans. This I assert today is a truism. Over the last 7 years, the Communist Chinese have been able to obtain and start putting into their weapons systems technology that cost the American people, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars to develop. The Communist Chinese have been able to use American technology to leapfrog ahead by decades, farther ahead than what they would be if it was not for the fact that they had American technology at their disposal, which permits them to build weapons of mass destruction that threaten every American city, that threaten tens of millions of Americans with nuclear incineration. They have atomic weapons that are based on American technology, and they obtained them from the United States in some way. Mr. Speaker, I would say today that the American people need to pay attention. I would alert the American people that something is wrong with the taxpayer dollars that they have spent by the billions which are now being put in the hands of people like those who are in charge of the regime in Beijing, the Communist Chinese regime. There is something wrong when those billions of dollars that we spent during the Cold War now find their way, the technology that was developed finds its way to a power like Communist China. And no amount of words, it is hard to even describe the process of the mangling of the language and word games that is being played by this administration in order to call China our strategic partner; to call Communist China, the world's worst human rights abuser, our strategic partner. This has resulted in several things. Number one, this body had to act on its own to force the Clinton administration to discontinue military exchange programs with the Communist Chinese regime. Let us make this very clear. Communist China is the world's worst human rights abuser. It is a Communist dictatorship. Their leadership still claims to their own Communist congresses in Beijing that the United States is the enemy and that they will destroy us. But yet we have had a policy in the last 5 years of military exchanges in which we are teaching them our military secrets and we permit their top military brass to observe our troops and how they act and the game plans that we use during our warfare, our potential warfare with any adversary. At the same time, we have been taking these military exchange programs, and what have we been doing? We have been teaching the Communist Chinese how to run a logistics system, how to supply troops in the field, how to transport troops. This we are doing with the military of the world's worst human rights abuser, a country that threatens our own national security. What sense does that make? The people of Tibet are still suffering under a genocidal policy by the Communist regime in Beijing. There are Muslims in the far reaches of western China who are also suffering a genocidal attack. Believers in God, Christians, who refuse to register with the government are being brutally suppressed, thrown into concentration camps, they call it the laogai system of prisons. Now we hear that a Buddhist sect made up of middle-aged and senior citizens of China who practice nothing more than kind of a breathing exercise, an exercise program in the morning that helps the soul as well as the body, even this little Buddhist religious sect is now coming under severe repression. This is not a normal regime. This is not like Belgium or the Netherlands or even Mexico, which is struggling to try to have free elections. There are no free elections, there are no parties, there is no freedom in China. But yet we are training the military in China on how to be more effective. And what will that military do? It will either be used to repress their own people and participate in destroying the culture and the people of Tibet or these other repressed minorities in China, or it will be used in aggression against their neighbors. Already Burma has become nothing more than a fiefdom for China. We see in the Spratly Islands the Communist Chinese trying to bully their neighbors and grab these islands so that they can control the Malacca Straits where so much of the world's commerce goes through that one little strait there in South Asia. They may use that military training that we are providing them in that type of activity. Or they may use the military training that we are providing them to kill Americans. This is insanity. It is an insane policy to call this type of regime our strategic partner. And it is threatening the lives and the well- being of millions of Americans. Every time we turn around, we are finding out that our country is more in jeopardy because of conscious decisions on the part of the Clinton administration to treat Communist China as a benevolent power. This is not only insanity, this is a crime against the American people, especially against the youth of our country. The American people who are trying to raise their family sacrificed, America sacrificed during the Cold War. America sacrificed in order to make a more peaceful world and to protect the cause of human freedom. And yet now with the Cold War over, we are finding that our young people, our children, are going to be in as great a danger 10 years from now as they were at the height of the Cold War. Why is that? Because we have a policy that makes no sense, that is contrary to our interests in dealing with a regime on the mainland of China that hates everything that the United States stands for. Let me make this clear about the regime that controls the mainland of China. These are gangsters, these are people who hate the United States of America because they believe that we are the only power that stands in their way of their destiny. Just as Japan during the 1920s believed that it was the destiny of Japan to control all of Asia and into the Pacific Basin, the Japanese knew that the United States was the only power that stood in their way, that we were the only ones that could stop them from their destiny, these militaristic gangsters who ran Japan at the time. That same attitude now is what we find in Beijing. When we let their scientists go to our laboratories, when we train their military, they do not say, Oh, the United States of America must be our friends. Otherwise they would not be so open. They are not saying that. They are saying, The United States of America is weak. They are saying that the people of the United States of America are permitting weapons technology to come into our possession and we hate them. That must mean the Americans are cowards. That is what is going on. We are laying the foundation for a bitter future for our young people, because 10 years from now when the Communist Chinese have taken the technology that they have stolen from us and obtained through our openness with them, they will be put into weapons systems that will threaten the lives of our young people when they reach adulthood. And sometime and someday in the future we will send an aircraft carrier into the Pacific and thousands of American lives will be lost if we get into a confrontation because the Chinese will have the technology to sink our aircraft carriers and murder our military personnel. And when we look back, we will find that that technology was developed by the American taxpayers during the Cold War and offered on a plate to the Communist Chinese. This is a sinful policy. It is sinful because it ignores the fundamental values of our country and it is sinful because we the Government, and we are the Government, the United States of America, we the people, we are supposed to be watching out for the people's interest, especially the interest of future generations of Americans. This acknowledgment of the type of technological disaster that we are in right now started 2 years ago. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, which is my primary responsibility here in the House of Representatives, I went to a meeting of aerospace workers to find out what projects they are working on and to get a firsthand look and feel for our aerospace industry in the United States. During that meeting, one of the employees of the aerospace industry that I was talking to was talking about the project that he had just been involved in; he had just come back from China. He was saying, Congressman, those Chinese rockets, they do not even work. They do not have right-stage separation technology. We are trying to put our satellites up with those rockets and they will not work and they can only carry one payload. They can only carry one satellite. So I have spent the last year over there helping them try and correct these problems. I could not believe what I was hearing. Finally when he was done, I said, Let me get this straight. Your company has used this technology that we paid for, that the taxpayers paid for, you are using that technology and your expertise and your company, every means that your company has, to improve the capability and the reliability of the rocket systems over in China? He says, Why, yes. Their stage separation, he repeated that, they do not have the exploding bolts, the stage separation that they need and they blow up right after it takes off. I looked at that aerospace worker and I said, You know, I think it is a good thing when Communist Chinese rockets blow up. And all of a sudden he said, Oh, you are thinking about the national security implications. And I said, Yes. Yes, I am. I am thinking about that. It is something we should think about. He said, Do not worry. We have a waiver from the White House. Well, that made me feel real good about that. I spent the next 6 months, Mr. Speaker, researching this issue. I went to the major aerospace firms and talked to them. I went to the subcontractors. I went to the aerospace employees, and I researched this issue myself before I made a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. What I found was a verification that our companies, some of our major corporations, were over in China providing them with the technology they needed to make sure their rockets did not explode when the stages separated, to make sure that the rockets in China could carry more than one payload. When we are talking about payloads, we are not just talking about a peaceful satellite here. If you can carry more than one satellite, you can carry more than one warhead. More than one warhead means if they send a missile to the United States that does not explode because the stage separation now works with American technology, that it can carry two atomic bombs, or three, or four, and wipe out tens of millions of people in the United States rather than just a million people. This was not a secret to this administration that this was going on. In fact, when alarm bells went off, this administration put their thumb right on top of those civil servants throughout the administration who were supposed to be watching out for our security. We found that especially to be true in how this administration has been running our national laboratories. For those who do not understand, we have laboratories where we have developed these weapons of mass destruction that can either be used to protect freedom and preserve the peace or if that technology gets into the hands of monsters like Hitler or the militaristic Japanese or the Communist Chinese regime in Beijing, those weapons would threaten humankind. Because China has to be told that they are our strategic partner, we had a policy of letting these scientists from the People's Republic of China do their experiments in our laboratories, in our weapons laboratories. Over and over again, we have found during this investigation, we have found that those people who sounded the alarm, career civil servants, civil service people, were repressed by this administration, were told to shut up or get out. We have had hearings on this and documented this over and over again. Now, what has this resulted in? What are we talking about here? We are talking about missile technology, and we are talking about technology that has permitted them to build weapons that can kill millions of Americans, probably the size of that little desk down there, that little table right there, put into a Chinese rocket that can kill millions of Americans, or millions of Tibetans or millions of Japanese or millions of South Koreans. That technology has been taken, obtained from the United States, from our scientists and now is in the hands of a regime that is in the middle of committing genocide in Tibet, repressing their own people and involved in a great military expansion, a country that is being provided by our own policies with 50 to $60 billion of hard currency surplus because we are permitting them the trade status of a benevolent, friendly country. We will pay dearly for this nonsense. Our young people will face a threat that they should not have to face because of this indefensible, totally indefensible policy. But it is worse. Mr. Speaker, after my investigation into the original charges about the use of technology to upgrade and to perfect Communist Chinese rockets, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) were made the heads of a select committee; and they conducted their own investigation with people with much more expertise than I have. Specialists went in and confirmed this horrible, horrible transfer of technology to the Communist Chinese. And now the Clinton administration and the news media is trying to get the American people to relax, forget about it, pretend it does not exist. In fact, Robert Scheerer of the L.A. Times is trying to claim it never happened. Yes, the Communist Chinese just simply found the plans for the W-88 warhead, atomic warhead. They found those plans under their pillow one night because the tooth fairy must have left it there. I am sure that is what must have happened. It was either the tooth fairy or it was a policy by this administration that ended up with a transfer of that technology. The American people can decide which one of those scenarios actually happened. By the way, this is not the first time such things have happened. There have been transfers of technology in the past. There are reports that in the 1930s, Howard Hughes designed a fighter aircraft that was a superior fighter aircraft for its day and that our Government did not follow through on his offer to produce these fighter aircraft. The story is that the Japanese got a hold of the blueprints for that and Howard Hughes was the one who actually designed the Japanese Zero, which resulted in the death of so many Americans during World War II. I do not know if that is true. I have heard that report over and over again. It may not be true, but we do know that Hughes Electronics certainly is one of the companies that has been involved in transferring rocket technology to the Communist Chinese in order to perfect their rocket systems. Also, some people do not know that during the post-war period after World War II, the English decided to prove to Josef Stalin that they were his friends and so the English shipped to Joe Stalin, this bloody dictator in Russia, they shipped to him a complete Rolls Royce jet engine which at that time was the utmost, that was the ultimate in all weapons technology, a jet engine for an airplane. Know what? That did not make Josef Stalin any more benevolent. It did not make Josef Stalin more inclined to trust the West and become more democratic and open. No. Josef Stalin used that jet engine, that Rolls Royce jet engine, not to build passenger planes that could help tie Russia with the rest of the world. Josef Stalin used that Rolls Royce engine, which was copied, every little bit of it, and mass produced in Russia. He used it in the MiG fighters that shot down American planes in Korea. Josef Stalin launched a war in Korea and used the technology that the English had given him to produce airplanes that we could not shoot down, and thousands of American lives were lost because of it. The British just thought that they were trying to do something that would prove that they were friendly. When will the free people of the world understand that when dealing with a gangster or a bully or a dictator, we must do so from strength or that dictator will perceive a weakness? The Communist Chinese regime is no more benevolent, no more peaceful today. In fact, there are signs that it has become worse in these last 10 years. With all due respect to my colleagues in this body that vote for Most Favored Nation status over and over again, I think the Communist Chinese would have to bomb the capitol of the United States before they would quit voting to provide this very lucrative trade status to the Communist Chinese regime; and the Chinese continue, as I say, their aggressive action. About 6 months ago, I flew over the Spratly Islands. It took me 2 years to get to the Spratly Islands because our State Department did not want me to see what was going on there. What was going on there? The Chinese communists are taking the islands. These islands are just about 100 miles off the Philippines. Yet they are 800 miles off the coast of China, and the Chinese communists are building fortifications. When I finally got out to the Spratly Islands, I was in an old C-130, an old propeller-driven airplane that the Philippine Air Force provided me; and as soon as we got through the clouds, there were three Chinese war ships right there in the lagoon of, which is one of the Spratly Islands. Not only were there three Chinese war ships, but the Chinese construction workers were feverishly trying to complete a fortification on those islands. We could see their welding torches. Even as our plane dipped down to take a low pass over those islands, we could see the torches at work, and they were building their fortifications. This is very similar, very similar, to the situation in the 1920s and 1930s when the Japanese fortified the Pacific Islands, and in this case the Chinese are trying to grab these islands from the Philippines, a democratic country with very little military, trying to grab these islands in order to what? In order to bracket the water passages between the mainland of China and the Spratly Islands, which will then give them a strangle hold on 50 percent of the commerce of Asia, a strangle hold and also a grip on America's ability to defend Asia. Something else is going on right now, and this is where I would like to lead in to my talk on Panama. The Communist Chinese regime is also involved in a strategic maneuver. Here is our strategic partner involved in a strategic maneuver. One would think if they were our strategic partner that maneuver would be something that we would like, because they are our partners, are they not? No, they are involved in a strategic maneuver to strangle the United States of America, and it is very clear that they have targeted areas in which the United States is most vulnerable. The Panama Canal happens to be one of those areas. Let me make clear, Panama is where the two major oceans of the world come together, the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. It is where the two great continents of the Western Hemisphere come together, the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. This is one of the choke points of the world, this, and the Suez Canal and the Straits of Gibralter; this and the Molucca Straits near the Spratly Islands. What do we find? What do we find? We find that the United States of America has removed all of its military personnel from Panama. I was down, as I say, in Panama a very short time ago, a month ago; and I was shocked to see ghost towns in what had been only a short time ago American military bases. Panama, of course, has no military of their own. They have no military, and they have always relied on the United States military to protect the canal against any type of aggression. So when I traveled to Panama, and having been there many times in the past and seen many American military persons there to protect Panama and protect our national security interests and protect the canal, I was shocked when I saw they were gone. They are all gone. It is like this hall of Congress now. I am the only Member standing here. When one goes down to Panama where there used to be tens of thousands of American troops, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Army, they were always there; they are gone, and there is no Panamanian military force to take up the slack. Now, what does that mean to us? Well, that means to us that there is a vulnerability there. There are two vulnerabilities: number one, there is a war going on next door in Colombia and already the narco terrorists, who are allied with Fidel Castro and the people who hate the United States, already those guerrillas have infiltrated into the Panamanian military. There is nothing standing between them and the Panama Canal. That alone should cause alarm bells to go off because the Panama Canal is vulnerable to sabotage. I will not go into detail, but it is incredibly vulnerable to sabotage. What concerns me more is the overwhelming evidence of a Chinese presence and even domination of Panama in the Panama Canal, something that is in the process of happening. That, to me, was even more frightening because I know that we can blink our eyes and this magnificent achievement of the United States, a canal between the two oceans, something that we rely on in times of international emergency so we can send our ships from one ocean to the other and take off days, actually a week, of travel around the Horn in South America, that that Panama Canal now is totally vulnerable and is slowly coming under the domination of the Communist Chinese. Now, let me say what I mean. There is a company called Hutchison Whampoa, run by a man named Li Ka-Shing. He is part of the clique, he is part of Beijing's inner circle, he is a front man, and his company is a front for the Chinese Government. The Chinese Government, in fact, owns over 30 percent outright of his company. This company is tied, not closely but tied totally within the small circle of elite of the Beijing regime. This company now has won the contract which provides them control of all of the port facilities on both ends of the canal. Now, to be fair about it, there are some other new port facilities further away that are being built but on both ends of the canal, directly outside of the canal. Those port facilities are now under control of this Communist Chinese front company. Now, how did that happen, and what does that mean? When I went to Panama, the first thing I did was try to go down to those areas that are now under lease arrangement. By the way, it is not a 10-year lease, not a 25-year lease. The lease is giving them up to 50 years of control of these strategic positions on both sides of the canal. By the way, the lease agreement also gives them concessions on certain ways of how the Panama Canal will be run, the piloting of the ships, et cetera. They are also in negotiations and are trying to, and I am not sure if this is part of the lease or not, to get control of one of the air bases in Panama, the Howard Air Base, as well as some of the other military facilities that we left behind. Now, how did that happen? What has gone wrong here? What is happening? How can a country that is considered to be belligerent, and many people are trying to have a realistic policy, considered to be belligerent and hostile to the United States, end up with a commanding position in the Panama Canal and a position to dominate this strategic waterway? How did that happen? Where was our intelligence? Where was the NSA? Who were they listening to? Where was the CIA? I think the CIA and the NSA probably did their job. The trouble is that they are reporting to the Clinton administration; and everywhere in the world where we look, where America's national security has been put in jeopardy by the Communist Chinese, the fingerprints of the Clinton administration are all over the crime scene. The people who are supposed to be protecting our interests are not protecting our national security interests. So I went down and I met with the ambassador, the ambassador to Panama from the United States. I asked the ambassador, I said, Mr. Ambassador, how did they get this contract? I said, In fact, I have even heard that there might have been some bribery involved here. He says, oh, we do not know if there is any corruption involved in this. I said, what do your intelligence reports say? He said, what intelligence reports? I said, what does the NSA say when they are listening in on the conversations involved with the people involved in these negotiations? Well, I do not know, I have not seen those reports, if there are any. What does your station chief, the head of the CIA there, what does he say? I have not seen any report by him. This is the most important thing that has happened in the past 10 years in Panama, and the ambassador has not bothered to read the intelligence reports of how that contract came into being. So I said, well, Mr. Ambassador, this is really an important thing. Do you not think you ought to check up on it? And he says, oh, I guess maybe I should. Well, come to find out that there are certain people who work for the government whose job is not to see any evil, not to go looking for those reports. Our ambassador to Panama happens to have been who? It happens to have been the man who was the chairman of President Clinton's reelection campaign in Florida the last time around. I am not saying that he has done anything corrupt or wrong, I am just saying that he has not looked at these intelligence reports, and he is a political appointee who is highly politically involved with the President's personal political ambitions. Somebody is not watching out for the national security interests of the United States. So I went out after meeting the ambassador. By the way, the CIA station chief was conveniently not available when I was in Panama, conveniently not available. So I went out to try to find things on my own. I am sorry to report today to my colleagues and to whoever is listening or reading the Congressional Record on this speech that I was able to find out information that has indicated to me that the lease arrangement, the contract arrangement with this Communist Chinese front company was obtained through bribery of high-level Panamanian officials. I talked to people who were directly involved with the negotiations, directly involved with the bidding process, and I was told, and these people are afraid to say so publicly, but they told me privately that there were bribes in the millions of dollars that were paid to the former president of Panama, Balladares, for the lease agreement with the Hutchison Whampoa company, and it was again repeated to me over and over again that Hutchison Whampoa did not offer the best bid for those port facilities on either side of the Panama Canal, yet they were awarded that lease agreement, and the only explanation is that millions of dollars of bribes were provided to high-level Panamanian officials. President Balladares, who was president at the time and recently stepped down, it is important for us to note that the Panamanian Constitution prevents a president of Panama from running for reelection. President Balladares wanted to change the Constitution so that he could run for reelection. The Chinese certainly bankrolled that campaign, and guess who was down there running the referendum to try to change the Panamanian Constitution so this man who helped give away the Panama Canal would have the right to run again for office? Who was down there running that campaign for him? James Carville, that is who. Who is he? Every time you turn around, the President's inner circle is involved with something that is undercutting America's national security. I am recommending to our colleagues that we pay attention to Panama. Up until now, the reason these things are happening is that we have left it to the administration, and Panama has been off of the radar screen of the United States of America. It cannot be. If we let foreign policy be the purview only of the government and only of the executive branch, our country will suffer, as it has been put in great jeopardy by our relations with Communist China. Just one other note. When I went to Panama, the head of the Panamanian CIA, that is their central intelligence agency, was in hiding. Her name was Samantha Smith. Samantha Smith was in hiding, and our embassy did not know where she was, they did not know what was happening, how to get hold of her. There was no report on Samantha Smith, of how we could talk to her. The head of the Panamanian CIA was in hiding for this reason, because there had been information that she had been involved in a smuggling ring of Communist Chinese aliens, Chinese residents of the mainland of China, who had paid $30,000 a head to President Balladares of Panama in order to go through Panama into the United States of America, hundreds of them. This woman, the head of the CIA, was the one who signed off on this operation. But she had signed off on it because her president had ordered her to sign those documents, those requests from these Chinese coming from the mainland. First of all, I want to know who these people were, who these Chinese were who could afford to pay $30,000 to be smuggled into the United States through Panama. Chinese farmers do not have that kind of money. I do not know if they are saboteurs, I do not know who they are, but I want to know who they are. The head of the Panamanian CIA, when she realized she was going to be the fall person, she was going to be blamed when this became known, went into hiding. Guess what our? Our embassy just could not find her. They had not had contact with her. But guess what, within one day, I found her. Within one day, I had a meeting with this head of their Panamanian intelligence. She just told me everything about how the President had forced her to sign these documents, ordered her, even above her objection; and how these Chinese would come in, these illegal Chinese would come in, land in Panama, and there would be a special escort officer that would take them on the second floor at the airport in Panama and take them around, and then take them where she did not know; and how she had protested to the President, but the president of Panama, Balladares, had ordered her to do so. This is the man who also, fascinatingly enough, provided the contract for Hutchison Whampoa, the Chinese front company that now controls both ends of the canal. Let me tell the Members something that I consider to be even another little bit of evidence that we should not miss. Supposedly, our government has been negotiating with the Panamanian government, the government of Balladares, for what? We have been negotiating to try to maintain some type of military presence in Panama to protect the Panama Canal. Polls indicate now that from 70 to 80 percent of the Panamanian people love the United States and want to see a military presence of the United States in Panama. We left. They told us to leave, and we left. Now they know we have been serious all these years, that we believe they have the right and freedom to control their own country. We are not like Russia, China. If the people do not want us, we do not stay there and brutalize the people in order to maintain our military bases. We got out. That just reconfirmed for the people of Panama, hey, the Americans are good people after all. They really do believe in democracy. We want them back. Although the polls showed 70 to 80 percent of the Panamanian people wanted us there, our State Department could not negotiate a contract and a deal that would permit us, an agreement that would permit us to have an American military presence in Panama. They could not do it. Something is wrong. Something is wrong here. Of course, it was President Balladares who was the head of that country, and of course our own ambassador had not read any of the intelligence reports. I do not guess he has read any intelligence reports on any instructions Balladares might have had with those negotiators, or any contact that he might have with the Communist Chinese. All I know is, we are depending on an administration to defend our country, to make sure our children are not put in jeopardy, and that administration is treating the Communist Chinese as a strategic partner, and we are being put in danger. We have to reverse this situation. It is up to the Congress of the United States to act, and it is up to the American people to demand action and to get involved in this process. If we want our children to be safe, we cannot do so by giving the Communist Chinese leverage on future generations of Americans. We will not be safe if the Communist Chinese have weapons based on American technology that could murder tens of millions of our people. That is not the kind of world we want to leave our children. In 10 years, that is the kind of world they are going to have, unless we act. The first step, we have to quit treating Communist China as a friend and be realistic. I am not saying we should go to war with them. We should not. But we must be tough and we must be strong, and we must demand a trade relationship that is mutually beneficial, and certainly not one that gives them $70 billion in hard currency and puts the American people out of work. I am introducing legislation today, and I have approximately 25 cosponsors at this time. I am introducing legislation now. I ask people to call their Congressman to join the resolution, the Panama resolution, offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher). That is me. I am asking them to call their Members of Congress and ask them to join me in a resolution that does three things in Panama. Number one, it asks the new government that defeated the Balladares regime, President Moscoso, who is a woman, a wonderful person and a ray of hope for the United States government, that we do our best, and we call on President Moscoso to cancel this lease with this Chinese front company, cancel it, and to investigate how that lease came about. That is what we are asking the President of Panama to do in this resolution. We are asking also that the United States move forward with an investigation, as well as with the government of Panama, into these charges of corruption on how that lease was issued in the first place. When they cancel this lease, we are asking that they institute a new system that is open and fair and transparent, as they say, so there will be honest bidding for those port facilities in the Panama Canal. Also, we should investigate how that last contract happened. Number three, we should negotiate with this new government in Panama, President Moscoso, some type of arrangement where we can work together with Panama for the security of Panama and also the security of the Panama Canal. These are things that we need to do. It is part of my resolution. As a sense of Congress, we are calling for those things. I would hope that all of my colleagues come back here next week and that we get a number of cosponsors on this, and that this moves through the system very rapidly. We need to send a message to this administration, to the people of Panama, and to the Communist Chinese that Congress will not permit the security interests of the United States to be jeopardied because of some fantasy by the President that we are in a strategic partnership with the communist regime in Beijing. Mr. Speaker, I would like to leave people with this one thought. My father was a marine pilot. He was a 20-year career man, a lieutenant colonel. When I was a young boy we lived in Japan, and my father flew intelligence missions along the Chinese coast. We lived in a small compound outside of Iwakuni, Japan, which is a Navy base there. My father would fly, along with other pilots, right along the coast and photograph the coast of China. This is in the 1950s. He did so at great personal risk. In fact, my next-door neighbor, this is when I was 10 years old, my next-door neighbor was shot down by a Communist Chinese plane. Thank God that that person was not shot down and murdered by the Communist Chinese plane, and there was not any question, they were not using American technology to shoot down our neighbors, this American pilot. In the future, when they shoot down American pilots, that we will haunt us, did we provide the technology necessary to kill those Americans? I remember that very vividly. I remember the tears and the sorrow of my next-door neighbor, my playmates, and the sense of hopelessness of the wife who was now left with the two children, on her own, to raise these kids and live her life without a loving husband. I remember that very well. I also remember that when a few years later my father, he is passed away now, perhaps one of the great things he did for our country was that he helped develop the Navy way of dropping the atomic bomb. To make this clear, what happens is before, if you drop a bomb from a plane like this, a small plane cannot do it because it will blow up the plane. But my father developed the system that the plane goes down, a small jet aircraft can come down like this and loft the bomb ahead as the plane pulls around and heads in the opposite direction. That was a most important development, because after that was perfected, America's aircraft carriers became strategic weapons, and the formula in the Cold War changed dramatically in favor of the United States because we now could deliver nuclear weapons throughout the world. That did not just happen. My father was taken out of a hospital bed when he described that to a general and given command of a squadron of hotshot pilots, that they were going to develop that as soon as they could, perfect that system with all speed because it meant so much to the security of our country. He put his team together. During that time period, they worked and they pushed the limits and they pushed beyond the limits in order to perfect that system so that other American pilots would be safe when they delivered their weapons. My mother told me something recently. When my dad passed away about 11 months ago, at the funeral my mother told me how during that time period my father was operating in total secrecy, as was his whole operation, and four young pilots lost their lives in developing this system, four young pilots who were pushing the envelope beyond what they could, flew too low, flew too fast, lost their lives. One of these young pilots who died, my mother remembers going to his home and his wife was there, and it was their first wedding anniversary, and they stood there, my mother and my father, telling this young wife, the candlesticks on the table, that her husband would never come home and they were never able to tell that wife why her husband had died. The mission was top secret. They could not let her know that her husband died developing a system that was so important to the national security of our country, because it was that secret. I do not know who that man was. I do not know the names of the people who died during the Cold War like that. But there were many of them. My next-door neighbor in Japan, these four young men, they died protecting our country from communism and especially from the Communist Chinese. We do not know their names and we owe them a great deal. It is up to us to keep faith with those people. We cannot let our country be in jeopardy after they paid so much of a price, so dear a price for our security. And to let some fantasy like a strategic partnership with the Communist Chinese put our country in jeopardy when so many people have sacrificed for our safety is a sin against our people.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I would like to comment on the NASA portion of this bill, and specifically about an amendment this was discussed a few minutes ago. Let me say that I appreciate the predicament my friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), is in. In February, President Clinton submitted another in a string of budgets that cuts NASA. And even that small cut that we are talking about depended on billions of dollars of phony taxes and other gimmicks that the President knew would never become part of the law, thus putting the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) in a very bad situation. And while they pretend to honor the spending caps from the 1997 budget agreement, the administration ends up bashing the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) for cutting NASA while the administration itself is being irresponsible in the way they propose their budget. Let us remember this. Three years ago the President submitted a NASA budget that predicted a billion dollars less for fiscal year 2000 than the amount for NASA contained in this fiscal year 2000 appropriation bill. So I do not think that President Clinton has much of a position to attack the gentleman from New York on the effort he has made in trying to make some sense out of this appropriation bill. The total funding level for NASA in this bill should be higher. I believe it should be higher. Unfortunately, it is not. I am sure the gentleman from New York would like it to be higher if it could be. In May, the House passed a 3-year NASA authorization bill which gave NASA a slight increase for 2000. In that context, I support many of the priorities for NASA within this bill. I note that funding for space transportation technology was actually increased, and one of the few areas in NASA to receive an increase, I might add. I am happy that the chairman was able to add back $400 million for NASA's excellent space science programs in full committee. I appreciate the plus-up for space solar power, for example, which is an important research area. And I strongly agree with the committee's report language on space station commercialization, which supports the Committee on Science's long-standing attempts to push NASA in this direction. While I am sure the gentleman from New York and his colleagues will work hard to improve NASA's funding in conference, I will have to support the efforts of the gentleman from California (Mr. Rogan) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Bateman) to restore funding for research and technology as far as the space science and aeronautics part of this budget. The amendment offered by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Bateman) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Rogan) restores funding for the scientific analysis of data that we have gotten back from programs like Mars Pathfinder and Lunar Prospector. I think that is very admirable. Where do they get this money from that they are trying to restore this? They get it from the bloated budget, what I consider to be a bloated budget, of the Environmental Protection Agency by eliminating that or by reducing it by just over 1 percent. And I think that is a very reasonable, reasonable change, and what they are trying to do for space science and aeronautics is a very positive step. Speaking as former chairman of the authorizing subcommittee that oversees EPA, I know that under this administration EPA has become somewhat of a rogue agency. For example, EPA has published regulations based on phony science and helped negotiate the Kyoto Protocol even after the Senate unanimously advised the administration not to do so. So I would think taking one percent from the EPA and putting it into space, science, and aeronautics, as the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Bateman) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Rogan) are suggesting, is a very reasonable thing to do, and I strongly support that amendment. While understanding that the gentleman from New York (Chairman Walsh) has to oppose this amendment in order to defend his bill, I do congratulate the chairman for the good job that he has done. I also know that we would not be in this predicament if it would not have been for the fact that the President of the United States has acted irresponsibly in developing this part of the budget.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, as we vote today for or against the appropriation that will pay for the State Department's operating expenses, I would like to draw the attention of my colleagues to an ongoing controversy concerning the State Department's dealings with the Taliban regime that now controls Afghanistan. The Taliban, I remind my colleagues, have been ruling most of Afghanistan with an iron fist. They are competing with the SLORC dictatorship in Burma for the role of the world's largest producer of heroin. They are harboring anti-American terrorists like Osama bin Laden and other murderers who have killed and maimed Americans in attacks like those on American embassies in Africa. The Taliban fanatical leaders are waging a psychotic war of terror and repression against anything that they deem Western and have singled out women in Afghanistan as the targets of their medieval wrath. In short, they are to women what the Nazis were to Jews in the 1930's. Specifically, they are a monstrous threat to the freedom and well-being of tens of millions of women who live in Muslim countries around the world. Now here is the kicker. Under the Clinton administration, the Taliban has established control over most of Afghanistan and has wiped out its opposition. Rather than being a force to combat the expansion of the Taliban, it appears that the United States under this administration has acquiesced to Taliban rule and even undermined the resistance to the Taliban. In short, it appears that the United States may have a covert policy of supporting the Taliban. As a senior member of the Committee on International Relations, I requested documents well over a year ago that would confirm or lay to rest this suspicion about possible U.S. support for the Taliban. I repeatedly requested Assistant Secretary of State Rick Indefurth and other State Department officials formally and informally, officially and unofficially, to provide the documentation. The chairman of the Committee on International Relations, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), joined me in this request. Secretary of State Albright made a commitment to the committee during a hearing that documents would be forthcoming, and that was November of last year. After over a year of stalling and foot dragging, a year of either cover-up or incompetence, the State Department finally turned over a small batch of documents a couple of weeks ago, and only, by the way only then, after the chairman, Chairman Gilman, threatened to subpoena. Mr. Chairman, the paltry packet delivered from the State Department contained for the most part photocopies of newspaper articles about Afghanistan. This arrogance should be noted as we vote for the State Department's budget. This thumbing their noses at Congressional oversight cannot and should not be tolerated. This is an issue of utmost importance, and at this point, Mr. Chairman, I insert into the Record a letter that I sent yesterday to Assistant Secretary of State Indefurth: Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, August 3, 1999. Hon. Karl F. Indefurth, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Department of State, Washington, D.C. Dear Secretary Indefurth: After over a year of requesting documents and information concerning the Administration's policies and activities concerning Afghanistan and the Taliban, your office transmitted an envelope with pitifully few documents. Most of those documents were photocopies of newspaper articles. You may think this is funny, Mr. Indefurth. It is an insult to me as a senior member of the International Relations committee, it is an insult to Chairman Gilman who joined me in this request, and it is an affront to the Congress. Your actions suggest a disdain for Congress' oversight responsibility. Let me again remind you, I have asked for all documents concerning administration policy toward Afghanistan and the Taliban, including cables and diplomatic correspondence with American diplomats engaged in foreign policy initiatives and analysis. Chairman Gilman joined me in that request over six months ago. In November of last year, Secretary Albright promised the Committee that the requested documents would be forthcoming. As far as I am concerned, you are in contempt of Congress in both a legal and personal sense. There is no excuse for the delays and stonewalling instead of providing information requested by a legitimate Congressional oversight committee. There are only a few explanations for your continued intransigence in meeting this lawful request for documents and information. All of those explanations reflect poorly on you, Secretary Albright and the Administration as a whole. Incompetence may be a reason, raw arrogance may be a reason. However, it is also possible, considering other actions taken by you and the Administration, that what we see is a reflection of a coverup of a covert policy supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Considering the Taliban's assault on human rights, especially those of Afghan women, the charges of a convert policy of support for the Taliban deserved the utmost clarification by your office through the documents I requested. Instead, we've had delay and obfuscation. Taliban's current offensive aimed at destroying the last remnants of resistance to their tyrannical rule, makes your actions even more questionable. This letter will be sent to every member of the International Relations Committee and will be made part of the Congressional Record. Upon return from the Summer break, I will be asking that subpoenas be issued and that prosecution for contempt of Congress be considered. Sincerely, Dana Rohrabacher, Member of Congress. At this moment the Taliban are on an offensive that it is attempting to wipe out its last resistance, and that is about 10 percent of the country that now is in the Panjer Valley and that has resisted the Taliban efforts, and that is under a man named Commander Massoud. This is a life and death struggle. Thousands of people are being killed. Unfortunately, the people of Afghanistan who fought so bravely as friends of the United States and helped us end the Cold War, we now have deserted them; and it is possible that we are actually helping their oppressors. Unfortunately, it appears that the Saudis and the Pakistanis have sent foreign troops into Afghanistan with the acquiescence of the United States. I hope that the people of Afghanistan understand that as this offensive against Massoud and the Panjer Valley goes forward this is their chance to rise up against the Taliban and to win their own freedom, because I am afraid that as long as this administration is in Washington, D.C., that we will not be taking those efforts to support the freedom-loving people of Afghanistan who stood with us against the Soviet Union; and instead it is possible that we have a covert policy of supporting the Taliban control, which would be a monstrous violation of the principles of freedom and justice for all that our country supposedly stands for. So I would ask my colleagues to pay attention to this, and I would ask the State Department to please provide the documentation that I have been trying and I am asking for for over a year, when the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) has been asking for it for over a year and not to arrogantly thumb their noses at us by sending us newspaper clippings in response to our request for official documents.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the point of order is such that it seems to me that by being a little heavy-handed here, we are undermining this process.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International Relations, a veteran, and a great leader in international relations in this Congress.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson), a distinguished colleague who spent 6 years as a prisoner of war, a man who was a pilot, a man who fought for his country and a man who has a unique opinion on this issue that we are discussing today.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) who represents thousands of Vietnamese Americans who know full well what repression their family members live under in Vietnam. (Mr. DAVIS of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute, and I understand that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane) will also yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) one of the most distinguished and ferocious champions of human rights in this body. (Mr. SMITH of New Jersey asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)