Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Not in research and development, only in promotion, which is what this bill deals with.

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I just would like to point out again we are hearing over and over again that this is in some way juxtaposing some new type of energy research with solar energy research. This debate has nothing to do with the research and development policies on solar energy or any other kind of energy except for the fact that it will take money from research and development programs across the board in energy, some of which are renewable, I might add, and take that research and development money and take and put it into a transfer program, a program that is totally designed for promotion, marketing, and commercialization. I think our Members should also be aware that the prime beneficiary of the $44 million that is being taken out of energy research and development and put into this promotion marketing commercialization effort, the prime beneficiary is not an American company but a German company, a German company, called Siemens Co., which is the leader, yes, in this type of technology, but we will be providing them funds to help them with the promotion of solar energy. Now, this is not, again, this gentleman, by the way, took great pains during the authorization process to see that solar energy research and development was protected. I happen to believe that is a very probable and potential source, a good source, of energy in the future if it is developed. We, in fact, by the way, let me also add that we also made sure that there were major cuts in fusion and nuclear energy programs. I have become the target of nuclear energy people across the country who are as mad as hell that I have cut, that Dana Rohrabacher has cut their budget for research and development in the nuclear area. The fact is we have tried to maintain a balanced research and development program.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, we specifically deauthorized the use of funds for solar technology transfer. What we tried to focus in on at the committee and subcommittee level was direct and solid research and development because that cannot be done by anybody else but the Federal Government. This indeed is taking the money, I say to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy], $44 million basically from across-the- board cuts to channel it into a program that is aimed at marketing and commercialization.

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to express my admiration for the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Klug]. Many of the things that he does, I am totally supportive of. In this case I cannot be supportive. He is suggesting in this amendment that we earmark $44.8 million for the innovative and renewable technologies transfer program. We have heard a lot of rhetoric today about the importance of developing solar energy. This has nothing to do with the development of solar energy. Zero. In fact, this will hurt the development of solar energy. What we are doing here is we are talking about a transfer program. We are talking about promotion. We are talking about marketing. We are talking about commercialization. We are not talking about research and development. In fact, we are spending $44 million, if this amendment succeeds, by taking it away from research and development. Some of that money may well come from research and development of solar energy. Being the chairman of the subcommittee dealing with this issue, I know how much money we have had to cut from the budgets of energy and environmental research in this country. The fact is we did everything we could to protect the fundamental research and what we had to do is cut programs that dealt with promotion and marketing and commercialization of which this is the perfect example. We need to focus the Federal Government effort on research and development, fundamental research and development that cannot be done by the private sector. Fundamental research in solar was protected. In fact, because it is not coming from anywhere, it is just suggested it is going to be a general cut throughout our budget in this area, this could well come from solar energy research and development money. Certainly it is going to come from somewhere. It might come from fundamental research and development in other [[Page H 6844]] type of energies that we need to do research and development on. Mr. Chairman, what in essence we are doing is taking money away from a budget of research and development that has already been strained to the braking point. We are taking money away from a budget that has already been strained to the breaking point and we are putting it into marketing and commercialization for specific interests that are involved with pushing these products overseas. I think this is green pork. What we are suggesting here by this amendment is green pork, taking the Federal Government away from its essential role on energy research and development and putting it into promotion.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to compliment my colleague, the gentleman from New York on the leadership he has provided on this issue, but also on human rights issues across the spectrum. The fact is this is an issue that should unite Republicans and Democrats and does to the degree that Republicans and Democrats in this body are aware of the human rights abuses that are going on in this world. What we are saying today is that we recognize that the Serbian oppression in Kosova is unacceptable and that we see what is going on and that we will view further human rights violations of these people as not only just a slap in the face of the Congress but an attack on the basic values of the American people. We represent, yes, the interests of the United States, but also the values of the United States, and we are demanding today by this resolution that the Serbian regime recognize it is dealing with people who have rights in Kosova and that they refrain from the terrible violations and the repression that has been going on with these people. If we do not send this message, the people there will pay a horrible price, and we are on the people's side, not the repressors' side.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this bill. This energy and water appropriations bill reflects the tough choices made by members of the Appropriations Subcommittee to put us on the path to a balanced budget in 7 years. As chairman of the authorizing subcommittee for a portion of this bill, I would like to commend both Chairman Myers and the ranking minority member, Mr. Bevill, and their staffs, for a good faith attempt to work with the Science Committee and its staff in crafting the portions of this bill that apply to programs under Science Committee jurisdiction. This year's bill was not produced under ideal circumstances. The press of legislation during the first 100 days before many of the committees were fully reorganized and staffed-up hampered the process. The result is not an ideal product but does represent an historic change in the authorization/appropriations process. Rather than take a meat-ax approach to budget reductions, the bill attempts, as we did in the Science Committee, to preserve basic research funding while terminating market and development programs that are best handled by the private sector. Do I agree with every line item in the bill? Of course not. But I see this bill as laying the foundation for a new partnership that we can build on next year. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member, the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Bevill], and the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Myers], again for the great cooperation we have had in putting this together.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to stand in support of my friend and colleague from New Mexico and everything that he stated. I would just say that there is a tragedy, an ongoing tragedy in Burma. The people of the United States have historically stood for freedom and democracy and if, indeed, we would continue this stand in Southeast Asia, many of the problems that we face today, like this refugee problem that is being expressed, talked about today, would not be confronting us. Unfortunately, what we have done in these last 4 and 5 years is we have tried our best to try to romance the SLORC regime. We have done our best, and the gentleman from New Mexico has done heroic deeds in the cause of democracy. Yet, trying to treat this dictatorship with kid gloves, trying to move them along outside of the arena of tyranny has not worked. Today we are confronted with not only a monstrous repressive regime but refugees whose lives are in our hands today. I just stand in support of my colleague's efforts and my colleague's amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I had a telephone call from an old friend who was concerned about American trade policy, and he was opposed to NAFTA, the free-trade agreement that we passed with Mexico, and that we will soon will be considering including Chile in the NAFTA agreement, and he was also concerned about GATT, the world trade agreement that we reached and we voted on late last year. His question to me was: ``How can the United States possibly compete with Third World countries? How can we compete when our labor force is paid $10 an hour, and their labor force is paid 15 cents, 25 cents, 75 cents an hour? Doesn't trade with overseas countries, especially those in the developing world, mean that the American people will lose in the long run and that our own working people will have a lower standard of living?'' Well, my answer to my friend was an answer that really has been the answer that the American people have given to this very same question for many, many years. This is not a new fear that the American people have, because the American people have had a higher standard of living and a better way of life throughout our history as compared to the working men and women of other countries. Mr. Speaker, how did we do it? How did we out-compete? How did the American worker out-compete those workers in Third World countries that were willing to work for such lower wages? The answer is we have done that because our working people and our businessmen have had the technology that is necessary to out-compete the competition, even when the labor costs are much lower. Mr. Speaker, after World War II, we experienced a major jump in our standard of living in the United States of America. Were the wages around the world, were they any higher after the end of World War II than they are today, as compared to the price of the American worker? No. Yet at the same time we experienced a major increase in our standard of living, and America was out-competing everyone throughout the planet. In fact in the 1950's and 1960's, Mr. Speaker, America was looked to throughout the entire planet as a source of goods and materials to be purchased by people for consumer items all over the world. Yet their own people were working for much lower wages. That is because after World War II, as in the time period before World War II, Americans had a technological lead on the world. It is technology and knowledge that have given us the competitive edge throughout our Nation's history. It was not the fact that our people were necessarily willing to work harder, because many people around the world work harder. Many, many people throughout the world work as hard, if not harder, than Americans, yet the American worker, coupled with technology, that work ethic that our people have coupled with technology, have made America the prosperous country that it is today and the prosperous country that it was in years past. We have had the technological edge. This did not just happen, and it did not just happen after World War II. I say to my colleagues, ``If you look back in our history, the United States was the country that developed the reaper which magnified the amount of crops that could be harvested. We were the ones that took the steam engine, which was originally developed by the ancient Greeks, and turned it into an engine for progress and prosperity, an engine for the creation of new wealth. We were the ones who developed the telegraph and the telephone.'' The list goes on, and on, and on. In fact, technological development was seen by our Founding Fathers as the means for which the United States would become that shinning city on the hill that all of our Founding Fathers wanted her to be. No other country in the world put patent protections of technological innovation into its constitution. There is no other country. Yet, if we look in our Constitution, our Founding Fathers insisted that there be a Patent Office. It is written into the Constitution. Why is that? I say to my colleagues, ``If you look back at the men who created this great democracy of ours, you will see that they had two things that they believed in. There was--well, they had many things they believed in, but the two important things they believed in in terms of government was they believed in freedom of the individual, which included peoples' religious freedom, and their rights to speak, and their rights to gather together, their rights to petition their government and to control their own destiny; they believed in that freedom, and they also believed in technology.'' Mr. Speaker, with technology and freedom, America would become an example for all the world to see, that the common man can live in decency, and can control his or her own destiny, and that our country could be an example to the world, and that instead of vast military might, that our country would have the allegiance of free people all over the world or those people all over the world who long to be free. Yes, Thomas Jefferson himself was a technologist. Those of you who visit Monticello might be impressed to see the many inventions that he himself developed to help life around that 19th century agricultural compound be more easy for the people of this compound. But Benjamin Franklin, also one of the great Founding Fathers of our country, is reowned even today for his exploration of ideas and his development of technology. These men made sure that American investors and American inventors would have the incentive to develop the technology that would be necessary to make America the example of progress and freedom that they foresaw. One of the things that they put into the Constitution, as I say, was the Patent Office, and Americans have, over our 100 year history, enjoyed some of the most extensive and strongest patent protection of any people on this planet. Now patent protection is a dull and uninteresting subject. Just like in many cases when we talk about our other freedoms, people just take them for granted. In fact it has been said ``Freedom is very much like the air, and that is the air is--you can't see it, you can't touch it, and it is very easy to take air for granted.'' That is the same way it is for freedom. Freedom is the fact that there is no someone who comes to your church every Sunday and has to approve the sermon of your minister. Freedom is that the school teachers and our university professors do not have to have their subject matter approved, because that sensor is not there. Freedom is when a person can open a book store or someone can quit his job without asking for government approval. This is what freedom is. It is the absence of the Government coming down and destroying freedom. Well, you can take freedom for granted, just like the air. But when the air is cut off, when your air is cut off for even one millisecond, you begin realizing how important air is to you, and that is the same with freedom. Once you cut it off, even for a short period of time, those people who have enjoyed it understand the importance of air and understand the importance of freedom. They go together because they can be taken for granted. But when you are denied your freedom or denied air, you understand how important they are. They are important to the life of mankind, and they are essential, freedom has been essential, to what Americans have felt our country is all about. Well, that is the same with one of our rights, one of our very fundamental rights that people have always taken for granted, and that is the right of patent protection. That means, if you come up with an idea, and you get an investor to invest in your development of that idea, you own that idea for a given period of time. In fact, you register it like a piece of property with the Government, and, when you file for your registration, the Government will peruse that, and after perusing your application, provide you what is basically a deed. It is a patent for your creation so that you and the investors in your idea can reap some profit, some benefit, from that. That is the secret of the American miracle. We provided an incentive for investors and investors throughout our history to invent the new machines, the new technology, that catapulted the standard of living of the common man. Our people were able to live decent lives and have good jobs, and they could provide for their families, and we had enough wealth in our society so we had education and an infrastructure for our people because the investors and the inventors were given the incentive to come up with the ideas that changed the condition of humankind. This has been going on throughout our history. Over the last 100 years our inventors and our investors have had the protection guaranteed that, if they would file an invention with the Patent Office seeking a patent, that no matter how long it took them to be issued that patent, once it was issued, they would be given 17 years of protection, at which time anyone using that technology would have to pay them for the right to do so. It is called royalties. Well, this has just changed. Unbeknownst to the American people and unbeknownst to most Members of Congress, there has been a dramatic change in the patent rights, and believe me, when the effect of this begins being felt by the American people, it will be as if someone is strangling them and denying them what they have taken for granted, their air, because this will have a dramatic impact, in the long run, on the standard of living of our people. We have changed the fundamental rules that have provided the prosperity and the jobs and the economic well-being that our people have learned to take for granted. Mr. Speaker, that change was put into the GATT implementation legislation. The GATT, as you are aware, is an agreement among the nations. It is a trading agreement that said these are a set of rules which will guide us, and any nation that signs onto this set of rules will be part of this global trading structure. The fundamental idea is a sound idea, and we were promised that, if we would vote for fast track--now that is a term that means we in Congress gave the right to the President to negotiate any of this agreement with GATT, and when he brought the treaty to us, we would have 60 days to look it over, and that he also agreed not to put anything into that treaty, or into that implementation legislation of the treaty, that was not required by the treaty. What happened was, a provision was snuck into the GATT implementation legislation last year that was not required by the treaty itself, and although it is very difficult for the American people to understand the ramifications of this very small part and this very complicated issue of patent protection, they will feel the consequences unless we correct this misdeed that has taken place in this body. What happened was that in the implementing legislation we changed the rules so that now, when an American inventor applies for a patent, he applies. In the past, no matter how long it took him to get his patent, he would have 17 years as soon as the patent was issued. He would have 17 years of protection. Now what will happen after the GATT implementation legislation is put into effect, is that when the patent applicant files, the clock starts ticking. Those people who put this change into the law thought, ``Well, gee, we are going to make it sound like we are actually expanding the patent rights of the American people,'' and so the clock starts ticking and it is all over in 20 years. Now if the average patent does take only 19 months, which some people are claiming, then that would be a good deal for the American people. But what has happened is that the American people, and even the people who passed the laws, have been given misinformation about the patent process itself. Significant patents, whether it is the laser, or whether it is plastic bottles, or whether it is technology that will make us more competitive with the rest of the world, breakthrough technologies, take not just 19 months, not just 3 years, not just 5 years. Most of the major technologies that have given us our competitive edge in world competition, most of these have taken 10 to 15 years and often longer to have a patent issued. Now what does that mean? That means we have, in reality, dramatically reduced, if not eliminated, the patent protection of America's inventors and investors. If someone comes up with a breakthrough technology and it takes them 15 years in order to get that patent issued, he is at the mercy of the bureaucrats at the Patent Office. He is at the mercy of international, multinational, and foreign corporations who might try to put legal hindrances in the way of issuing that patent. He is at the mercy of those people because the clock is ticking and it is on his time. That person, who could develop the technology that would make us competitive with mainland China or make us competitive with Asia or Europe in the future, that technology will not have anywhere near, if any, of the protection that past inventors and investors had in the United States of America. What we have seen in this body is a change of law which was difficult to understand, but it will have major ramifications. What will that mean? What will this change of law in the patent law mean? And, by the way, it was not required by GATT, and they wanted to give us only a few days to consider the whole GATT implementation legislation. So they broke their word to us by putting something into this treaty that was not required for us to vote on, but yet it was put in because they knew that this was the way they could sneak it past this body, and what does it mean? It means that billions of dollars that should be going into the pockets of American inventors in the form of royalties for multinational and foreign corporations now will stay in the pockets of those multinational and foreign corporations because we have so dramatically reduced the patent protection for significant technological developments. We are talking about billions and billions of dollars that should be going to Americans, that will now stay overseas. Worse than that, we are reducing the time in which our inventors and investors can control the technology that they have created. Thus foreign interests, multinational corporations and foreign corporations can now use the technology after a few short years that would have had 17 years of protection, and what will they be using it for? They will be using it to out-compete the American people. Mr. Speaker, what we have done is, as we are entering this new era of technological development in the world, this new era when genius will be so important and creativity will give us the edge, we have disarmed our own people. We have basically put ourselves at the worst competitive advantage, because what we have done is taken our greatest asset, our creative people and our investors in new creative ideas, and we have taken away their incentive and taken away their protection. This will result in foreign corporations not paying royalties and foreign corporations using our technology against itself. It is the biggest ripoff in American history. Yet it continues to this day. I have submitted a piece of legislation, H.R. 359, which has 177 cosponsors. That is 177 of my colleagues; I managed to speak with them, and talk to them personally, and to get their attention, because there are many, many issues of importance here on the floor of the House that divert peoples' attention. This is only a small issue to most people, and it is hard to understand. Yet 177 of my colleagues have signed on as cosponsors to my bill, H.R. 359, to restore the American patent rights to what they were before the GATT ripoff was implemented late last year--177. In the Senate, Senator Dole has cosponsored a similar bill that, if passed, will do the same thing, which will restore American patent rights. That is S. 284. Senator Dole and I, all we want is basically not to see a diminishing of the patent rights that Americans have enjoyed for many, many years. Mr. Speaker, as of yet we have not been permitted, my legislation has not been permitted, to come to this floor for a vote. Now what is Congress all about if you have 177 cosponsors, and by the way, for those of you who do not understand this, this is an enormous number of colleagues to join together, both Republicans and Democrats, on one piece of legislation saying we want this to be passed. I have not been on a bill that had so many cosponsors before. Yet it is being hindered; there are roadblocks being put in the way of the bill which prevent the legislation from coming to a vote on the floor. Now why would this happen? Why would someone be so arrogant enough to say, ``Well, you may have 177 co-sponsors, but you're not going to get your vote on the floor because my point of view is more important than 177 of my colleagues''? Well, what has happened is one Congressman, one Congressman who is the chairman of an obscure subcommittee, which my piece of legislation must go through before it comes to the floor, the one person, the chairman, is opposed to it. His name is Carlos Moorhead, Carlos Moorhead of Glendale, CA. Mr. Moorhead refuses. He will not be satisfied with voting against my legislation. Instead, Mr. Moorhead is holding it up in subcommittee, refusing all of his colleagues the right to make the decision. Now you might ask what is his motivation. We in the House of Representatives always take for granted that the motives of our colleagues are good motives, and let us examine what is the possible good motive for someone wanting to--what I believe to support is a dramatic reduction in American patent rights. Why would someone do this? Well, it is the belief that some people have that American patent rights have been too strong because we are out of sync with the rest of the world, and thus we are out of sync with the rest of the world. This is an attempt by the head of the Patent Office, Bruce Lehman, and Mr. Moorhead, and several others in this town, who believe that our rights, in terms of our economic rights and our patent rights, should be harmonized with the rights of other people in the world. In other words, they are seeking to implement an agreement that Mr. Bruce Lehman, head of our Patent Office, made with the head of the Japanese patent office. I ask, ``You understand what's happening here?'' They are harmonizing America's economic rights, our fundamental patent rights of our citizens, harmonizing it with the Japanese by what? By lowering the standard that our people have enjoyed, the rights of our people. If we are going to harmonize our rights, our economic rights, especially our patent rights, with other countries, especially countries like Japan who have no love for individual freedom whatsoever, we should be harmonizing them upward toward us, rather than them bringing our system down toward them. But these people believe that, if you have a harmonization, and our patent rights are similar to the Japanese patent rights, that it will be better for a world trading system. Mr. Speaker, that is absolute nonsense. This is the equivalent of someone telling us, as Americans, that we have too many human rights, and in fact the Bill of Rights is way out of sync with all of the other democracies. Thus, what we are going to do is harmonize our individual rights by diminishing the Bill of Rights by two or three amendments. What would the American people think about that? What would they think about it? They would reject it out of hand if they were given the choice. What has happened here is an issue of vital importance to our prosperity and the well-being of our people. A very complicated issue has been determined by some power brokers behind the scenes, and they are preventing this house from voting on a piece of legislation that would negate a back-room deal that they made with the Japanese. In the long run, what will this do? Well, I can tell you that in the short run it has already had a horrible impact on our society. What has happened is that American investors now, unlike last year and the year before and the hundred years before that, American investors now are not certain that they will have the 17 years that they used to have to recoup their investment. Already American investors in the venture capital industry are hesitating about investing in new capital because--our investing new capital in new technology because they realize it might take, the process of getting a patent might take 15 years or 20 years for new technology to get through, and they would have no time to recoup their investment. This makes--I will tell you, when Americans do not invest in new technology, we are at the mercy of other countries like the Chinese and the Japanese who are willing to put money into their--from their government into government-created technology. What is happening is if we permit this change in the patent law to continue, MITI, which is an organization in Japan which directs their investment, will be directing their investment in technologies to destroy our economic competitiveness, and at the same time, on our side, we have eliminated the incentive for American investors and inventors to invest in new technology. This is total insanity. It is a formula for disaster for the American people, and, on the face of it, it is a ripoff of American patent rights. I am hoping that my colleagues, and I have 177 already as cosponsors, will join with me and insist that we have a direct vote on the floor, and that if Carlos Moorhead, the chairman of the subcommittee that is holding this up, does not want a vote on the floor, then he can express that. If he opposes the vote, that is fine, but he should not have the power to stop a vote on the floor. A chairman of a subcommittee who prevents a bill, even if he disagrees with it, from coming to a vote, is doing a great disservice to the American people and the cause of democracy in a situation like this. I would hope that Mr. Moorhead understands that in good faith, if he disagrees with the idea that we should maintain our level of patent protection, that he can vote against that. He can vote against my piece of legislation that would restore patent protection. But he should not prevent the rest of us from voting. Adding insult to injury, recently something just happened that might indicate even worse things about the plans that these people have for American patent protection. While my legislation has not been permitted to come to the floor for a vote, there is another piece of legislation that went through Mr. Moorhead's committee. It was a piece of legislation that only had two cosponsors. It was H.R. 1733. The American people should know what was in this piece of patent legislation. This piece of patent legislation, which Mr. Moorhead already had hearings on in his subcommittee, states the following: That if someone files for a patent, an American inventor files for a patent, even if it is not issued, after 18 months that patent will be published for the world to see. Is there anyone who cannot see the implications for this? This is the equivalent of erecting a huge neon sign over the American Patent Office saying to the rest of the world, ``Come and steal America's technological secrets.'' Because even before the patent is issued, it will be published, and I can tell you the Japanese and the Chinese and everybody else who want to copy American technology, will be in line at the Xerox machine in order to get their copies, and then running back to their offices to use the fax machine in order to get those plans to their own industrial leaders to copy America's technological genius. We are talking more than a ripoff here. We are talking about wholesale robbery of America's inventions. We are talking about an invitation by our Government to do so. What will this mean to the American people? What it will mean is that American workers, who have always enjoyed the competitive edge because we have had the machines that permitted us to work better and to produce more than the competition who might have had workers that would work for lower wages, slowly but surely you will see our competitive edge erode, and the standard of living of our people, now in decline, will turn into a tailspin. I say to you today that we owe it to the American people to see that our country remains the No. 1 technological power in the world. What that means is we owe it to our inventors and our investors to provide them an incentive to invest their time and their resources in the technologies we will need to maintain the standard of living of our people. This is a difficult issue to understand. But what should not be difficult for people to understand is there are forces in this world today that not only do not care about the standard of living of the American people, but see it as a negative, because the standard of living of the American people gives high hopes to their own people. The other people, people in other countries, want to live at higher standards of living because the American people do. We should not be destroying the American dream for the citizens of the United States. We should be extending the American dream so that people everywhere, in every country, know that they too, with freedom and technology, can improve their lot and provide for their families. We stand at a crossroads because we are in a new era of human history. The cold war is over. We are now entering an era of global competition. It is imperative that we restore the patent rights of the American people, because in this new era of global competition, our very lives and our standard of living depend upon it. I would ask my colleagues to join me in supporting 359, and would ask that the subcommittee chairman who is holding this bill up permit it to come to the floor; and if he opposes it, to honestly state his opposition, but to let the rest of the Members of Congress have a say and let them express themselves as well, and give the Members of Congress a chance to vote up or down in front of the American people on this issue, that may be complicated, but is so vital to the standard of living and maintaining the well-being of our citizens throughout this country.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Budget have until midnight tonight to file the conference report on the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 67), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Horn amendment to cut $99 million in wasteful, duplicative spending for Navy facilities in San Diego that already exist in Long Beach, CA. This amendment is much more important than just saving $99 million. The $99 million is just the first year downpayment of what is going to be close to $1 billion in spending before the Navy is through. This is the key vote on saving taxpayers money. If this money is appropriated there will be hundreds of millions to follow; none of which is needed. In addition to saving money the Horn amendment also saves the environment. At the appropriate time during debate in the House I will ask permission to insert in the Record at this point a letter signed by the Surfrider Foundation of San Diego County and five other organizations that raises critical questions about the environment effects of this proposed $1 billion in construction. At the very least I urge my colleagues to vote to delete these funds from this year's bill to allow full consideration of the impact on the environment of these massive construction projects. Vote ``yes'' on the Horn amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, it is my understanding that the committee is authorizing $100 million in fiscal year 1996 for developing and testing reusable launch vehicle technologies in support of the NASA-led X-33 advanced concept technology demonstration x-vehicle program.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, it is also my understanding, Mr. Chairman, that the committee's support for a cooperative DOD reusable launch technology effort is based on a clear set of policy goals, namely that: First, military space assets are increasingly vital to the warfighter, and therefore inexpensive, reliable, and frequent access to space is vital to national security; second, while an evolved expendable launch vehicle program will provide a near-term, incremental improvement in space access, foreseeable military and commercially competitive requirements for space launch can be best and most economically satisfied by fully reusable launch systems; and third, reusable rocket technologies also show great promise for space sortie and other global reach aircraft missions which could be performed by RLV-based transatmos- pheric vehicles.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to engage the distinguished chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee in a colloquy. First of all, I would like to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], and the former chair of the subcommittee, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] for their support for continuing development of reusable launch vehicles. This technology development will be pursued in cooperation with and support of NASA's Reusable Launch Vehicle Program. As you know, this activity will be managed by the same DOD team which has so capably run the DC-X project, which had another very successful flight on Monday.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, it seems that some Members in this body are still living in the period of 15 years ago, and they are using the SDR rhetoric, that is the ``same dumb rhetoric.'' The fact is that times have changed. We can no longer depend on mutually assured destruction to prevent a holocaust of our citizenry if a nuclear missile lands in a city in the United States of America. When we had one enemy or two enemies, yes, mutually assured destruction worked. Today missile proliferation and nuclear proliferation means that in a few years we could face the scenario where a missile would be launched by an Iran or a Libya or some other country, maybe Afghanistan. Some people in Afghanistan will get their hands on a surplus Soviet missile and we could do nothing but sit back and listen to the same dumb rhetoric about hot school lunches and tell our people, well, I am sorry, we gave in to people who are more concerned about school lunches at the moment than we were about protecting our country against a holocaust that would cost millions of American lives. SDI is not what it was 15 years ago. Now, for just a few billion dollars, we could actually implement a system that will protect us with the Aegis cruiser system from a missile attack from Iran. We should do that. That is what we should do. It is not time to defend SDI; it is time to implement it.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the passage of the GATT implementation legislation late last year was supposed to put into place the legal framework for trade policy that was required by a trade agreement that had been hammered out among the various nations of the world. That was what it was supposed to be. The only problem being a major change in the U.S. law was snuck into the implementation legislation, even though it was not required by the GATT treaty. So what I am talking about tonight is something that was snuck into law late last year and is just now being implemented as the law of the United States of America. What was this mysterious provision that magically appeared in the GATT implementation legislation? Oh, it was nothing more than just a little old change in the patent law, just a little change in the patent law that if allowed to stand will cost American inventors and American investors billions of dollars, if not corrected. Something may be happening that is very sinister here in Washington, DC, or it might be very innocent. Whatever it is is going to result in the transfer of billions of dollars from one set of pockets to the other set of pockets. Why was this change, this change that actually redirects the money flow, why was it accomplished through the GATT implementation legislation? This Congressman, along with a majority of my colleagues, voted for the GATT fast-track authority. What that did, it gave the administration the [[Page H5900]] right to negotiate this trade agreement, which would then be voted on as a single vote. It would be all or nothing. The implementation legislation would be presented to us, it would be one vote, all or nothing, and we could not vote to amend what was presented to us. This arrangement was made to ensure that the trade agreement would not be amended to death, and that our negotiators could actually go and negotiate with our foreign trade potential partners, and that, basically, was a good idea, as long as everyone kept their word. The understanding, of course, was that the only changes that would be made part of the GATT implementation process would be changes that were required by the treaties that had been negotiated with our potential trading partners. There would not be anything else in the GATT implementation legislation, so we could vote on it up-or-down. Congress and the American people were lied to, and we were betrayed. I personally feel betrayed, because I voted for fast-track authority for GATT. GATT did not require our country to diminish the patent protection enjoyed by our citizens. Yet, it was placed in this bill in hopes of passing this major change in patent law without full debate, without full scrutiny. This Congressman was even denied the right to even see the language of the proposed legislative change until shortly before the vote was scheduled. I am an elected representative of the people. I asked for weeks to see the legislative language. I was denied the right to see that until it was sent to Congress itself. Adding insult to injury, under fast track, Congress was supposed to have 60 days to examine the proposal and then to vote on it. This administration submitted GATT to Congress only a few days before a scheduled recess, which put us in the position of voting for all of it or none of it, with little time to consider the detail. This was either smart or it was sneaky or it was sinister, depending on one's perspective. Luckily, the administrator was forced to stand off, which gave us some more time. We had to come back to vote on the GATT later on. What is the major change that was in GATT which eventually was voted on and made into law? What is this change that I'm talking about that was snuck into GATT, but not required by our trade negotiations? Americans traditionally have been blessed with patent laws which protected our inventors and our investors. This protection of patent rights ensured that our country was in a position, over our country's history, in the forefront of technological change. Patent protection was considered so vital to our country's well-being that it is put right into our Constitution. Very few countries can say that their Founding Fathers were so committed to technological change in the advancement and well-being of the common man that patent protection, patent laws, the actual insistence that there be a Patent Office, was put into the Constitution of our country at our country's founding. This could explain why the Americans were in the forefront of things like the reaper, which helped us bring in crops so well that we fed our people better than any other country in the world; the telegraph; telephones; steam engines; trains, and the list goes on and on. The secret, perhaps, is that we had the protection of those inventors and investors who were behind them, we had that protection in law, up until it was secretly changed by the GATT implementing legislation. If an American inventor applied for a patent, no matter how long it took the Government to issue that patent, once it was issued to the inventor, it might take 10 years, it might take 5 years, it might take 15 years, but once it was issued, the inventor and the investor owned that invention for 17 years, so there was a profit motive, and they had control of the technology they had developed for 17 years. That is the secret behind the genius of our people. We have built it into our country's laws. We have protected their rights to own what they have created. However, the GATT laws changed that. The GATT law changes that dramatically. The change is designed, incidentally, to appear to be of little consequence. In fact, it appears to elongate the time of patent protection. Now, after the GATT changes are in effect, when an inventor files, if his patent is issued immediately, he will have 20, not 17 years but 20 years, of full protection. However, as the law now reads, after 20 years he is done. He does not have patent protection. Remember, before it was only 17 years. That would be really great if patents were issued immediately, but they are not issued immediately. In fact, almost every technological breakthrough that has changed the lives of mankind that have been based on patents issued to Americans have taken years and years, sometimes more than a decade, sometimes more than 15 years, to issue. Thus, the patent holder, under those laws, under the old laws, still had 17 years worth of protection. Under the new law, his or her patent rights would be virtually destroyed and meaningless. Under the new provisions, the real patent time is dramatically, dramatically reduced for people who are inventing important technology. What does that mean? Again, it means billions of dollars that should be going into the bank accounts of American inventors and American investors will now end up in the bank accounts of multinational and foreign corporations. It also means that technology Americans have invested in and that Americans have created will not end up being used against us by our competitors, because the length of real patent protection has been drastically reduced. It is, in short, one of the greatest ripoffs in history. That is what just happened in slow motion and quietly and part of the GATT implementation legislation, and something that, unless we act, the perpetrators of this crime will get away with. Why was it done? What was the excuse? Certainly, it could not have been the excuse that we are going to put this into the law, and it is going to rip off the American people. No one would have agreed to that. We have to admit that some of the people who voted for this and supported it probably do honestly believe that it will have a positive effect, and the positive effect that has been heralded by those who believe it and those who do not believe it, who are just using it as a cover, the positive effect is called harmonization of patent law. Yes, the United States, Japan, and Europe have different kinds of patent law. We have different laws to protect other rights as well: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press. There are different laws protecting rights in the United States, and we pride ourselves in having stronger protection of our rights in the United States than do other countries. However, Bruce Lehman, head of our Patent Office in the United States, has decided that harmonization of patent law is really an important thing in and of itself, it will be something that is very good. In doing so, because he believes this, he agreed to put this change into our patent law, a change which eliminates the time certain of protection of American patent holders. He did this in agreement with the Japanese, who were insisting upon this, and it was part of a verbal agreement, and yes, an agreement that was made in writing which has to be passed into law by Congress, but instead of going to Congress openly, he decided ``Oh, well, I will fulfill my part of the bargain,'' which he had no right to make for the American people. Without the passage of Congress, he decided just to slip it into the GATT implementation legislation, so we would either have to accept that or we would have to vote down all of the changes in trade law that were encompassed in the trade negotiations, and we would have to suffer the consequences of a major disruption of trade in the United States. What did Bruce Lehman, our negotiator, get in return for basically eliminating the rights that Americans have enjoyed for over 100 years in terms of their patent--their for sure time of patent protection? In exchange for it, we got the right to file in Japan, to file for a patent in Japan in English. We got that right. We also got an agreement from the Japanese who, in good faith, promised our negotiator that ``We will indeed improve our patent system so that the average patent in Japan, if you agree to make your changes, so that you no [[Page H5901]] longer have this 17 years of protection, we agree that you will have a patent system in Japan to work with in which the average patent will be issued within 3 years.'' This deal reflects an almost criminal naivete. To cover up this absurd acquiescence to the Japanese interests, we have seen underhanded tactics being used to pass this legislation, and we have seen representatives from our government lying to the American people about what this is all about. Mr. Lehman himself has been claiming that the average time to issue an American patent is only 19 months. Thus, if the average patent is issued in 19 months, and you have said it is 20 years, you have 20 years, after all, of patent protection from the time of filing, then actually the average person has more time, more patent protection, than he would have had we kept the law the same. Mr. Speaker, this is not true here, what Mr. Lehman is saying about 19 months, the average time, and it will not be true in Japan. The American people are in the process of having their patent rights ripped off. Yes, 19 months is an average for something in our Patent Office. It is the average Patent Office action, although American businessmen all over this country are repeating the phrase that it only take 19 months for a patent, average patent, to be issued. That is, pardon the pun, a patent lie. The fact is that it is not 19 months for a patent to be issued in the United States, it is the 19 months that is an average patent action, meaning an action by the Patent Office. This includes the action on totally inconsequential patents, things that make no difference to anyone's lives, that are applied for in the hundreds, if not thousands, by businessmen, like the stripe on the bottom of a toothpaste tube. There is a lot difference between talking about patenting the stripe on the bottom of a toothpaste tube and getting it approved in months, as compared to patenting a laser, which might take decades. There is also another factor. Not only are they inconsequential patents that he is putting into the mix, but Mr. Lehman has been including patent rejections, meaning it is not 19 months for the average patent to issue. It is 19 months for the average action to take place, and those actions include inconsequential patents and rejections of patent requests, which also can be made in a very short order. This type of absurdity with averages, Mr. Speaker, as they say, statistics can lie, and liers can use statistics. After altering my fellow Member's opinion on what they were being told, as to what the effect of this law would be, I moved forward to try to move forward with a provision and changing of our law that will bring back and restore the patent rights of the American people that were ripped off as part of the GATT implementation legislation. My fellow members, we were sometimes unaware of what was going on in GATT, and some of them that were aware, when they talked to the so- called experts, were given these phony statistics and had no idea of the details which we are talking about tonight. Well I authored the legislation, H.R. 359, to restore the American patent rights of the American people, and my colleagues from both parties, I have substantial support from both parties, rallied to the cause. One hundred seventy members from both parties have cosponsored H.R. 359 to restore American patent rights. A sister bill to the one that I am talking about was introduced by Senator Dole in the Senate. Thus we are poised, ready to take back the rights that were stolen from the American people. Yet there has been no action. Here we are in June, no action has been taken on H.R. 359, which has had more cosponsors than almost any bill like it in history. Now, why is it? Why is it just sitting here? Why has not it been acted upon? Well, it is because of the opposition of one Member of this body, one Member, the gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead], the chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Properties, to which this bill was assigned. He has refused even to hold a hearing on this piece of legislation. ``Not enough time to hold a hearing.'' Well, some of those opposing my bill, they, and maybe the gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead], is in the situation, maybe he is not, but there are some people who opposed this piece of legislation because they believed there is a bigger problem in the United States than simply protecting the patent rights of our people. There is an issue called the submarine patent issue, which has to be dealt with, and perhaps the gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead] is more concerned about dealing with that problem than in dealing specifically with my bill that deals with patent protection for the American people. Just to give you a short background on the submarine patent issue, the idea is, and there are some indications that some inventors have manipulated the system over at the Patent Office to elongate the time that it takes for their own patent to be issued. Now, almost every patent or inventor that I know does everything that he or she can possibly do to get that patent issued immediately because change in our society is so rapid that if you have an invention now, you want to get it issued to you so you can start making a profit on it, and nobody, nobody is going to invest in your new technology on a patent pending. They are waiting until after you have been issued the patent. But some inventors, it is claimed, and it is possibly true, that there are some inventors who have been ripping off other corporations by basically playing the system, and so that they are not issued the patent and they elongate the time so when they are issued the patent, they have 17 years from that moment, which is longer than they would have otherwise. Mr. Lehman claims there are hundreds of such cases. Unfortunately, he has not been able to prove that. There are some cases like that. Many of the examples he and other people in the Patent Office have given, in fact, are not cases of submarine patents, but are cases where the Government has, in fact, delayed the issuance of the patent, and sometimes for national security reasons, and not the patent applicant himself. But I have been bent over backwards because I am concerned only about maintaining the 17 years of protection that is traditional for American patent applicants. So I have stated time and time again in meeting after meeting with the gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead] and others, Mr. Lehman and others, people representing industry, I have said I will put into my legislation anything that we can put in that legislation that will solve the submarine patent issue as long as it does not diminish the 17 years of guaranteed protection that our American inventors have enjoyed, and, you know, no one has ever come back to me with any suggestions, which means that in my way of thinking that perhaps that issue is being used as a cover, as an excuse to diminish the time of patent rights and enrich multinational and foreign corporations by billions of dollars that they would not have otherwise. The submarine patent issue is based on the idea that someone is playing the system at the Patent Office, which means the correction could be made simply by reforming the way the system works at the Patent Office, the way decisions are made at the Patent Office, the way the structure is set up by the Patent Office, which can be done by administrative reform and in no way does it mandate the diminishing of the intellectual property rights enjoyed by the American people. I happen to believe that most people using the submarine patent argument are honest. They truly believe that this is the reason why that we have to bring down the number of years of patent protection, but again there are many people who are using this as a front to take away patent rights and take away property rights when the real solution could be done administratively without diminishing people's property rights at all. So there my bill sits. There sits my patent bill, H.R. 359. The gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead] claims there is no time for a hearing. Yet my bill has 170 cosponsors. And last week, the gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead] had a hearing in his subcommittee on another patent bill that was quickly put together that has two cosponsors, two. And what did that bill do? H.R. 1733, what did it do? What did the bill that [[Page H5902]] is moving through the system accomplish? I will tell you what it does. It mandates that once an American files an application for a patent, that 18 months after that application is filed, whether or not the patent is issued within that 18 months, that patent application will be published for the world to see. This is before a patent has been issued, American inventors will see their creations published for the world. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand the result of that will be the stealing of American technology by foreign interests and also by large corporations here. This, by the way, interestingly enough, why would anybody, why would anybody be stupid enough to come up with an idea about letting the world know all of our secrets of our technological creativity of our people even before the patents are issued to protect them? Why would they do this? Well, this was another one of the demands that the Japanese had made to Bruce Lehman, and, you know, if we are going to have a harmonization and a goodwill between our countries, we have got to make sure that we have an understanding with Japan because, after all, it is our best trading partner, our biggest trading partner. What we are talking about is a sign that says when a patent application is put into place, a sign that will be raised, a huge neon sign 18 months later that says, ``Come and steal me. Anybody in the world, here is something of value, come and copy it.'' There is something sinister happening here in Washington, or there is just something stupid happening here in Washington. The American people are about to become victimized in one of history's greatest ripoffs and they do not know what is coming down. They cannot see it happening. It is complicated; and it is a very complicated issue, and that is what all of these experts have been relying on. But the Japanese and the Chinese, they are going to know; they know exactly what is happening. I will tell you that if the bill that the gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead] is pushing through his subcommittee now passes and that every American inventor who applies after spending years trying to create new technology, if immediately after 18 months that this is published for the world, even before the patents are issued, before any kind of semblance of protection is granted, I can tell you that our Japanese and Chinese friends will have many people stationed here in Washington, DC. They will have offices right near the Patent Office because they will go there, and when it is published, the Japanese and Chinese runners will run to their offices, and the copy machines and the Xerox machines will be running, and the fax machines with overseas transmission lines to fax this material over to these other countries who are our competitors and trying to destroy us economically will be waiting for the good news of what new things, what new things, what new creations have Americans come up with today? Does that not make you feel good? Something is happening. Something is happening. Something sinister or something stupid. We are entering into a new technological age, and our government is destroying our greatest asset, the creative genius of our people. We are giving it away for some feather-headed notion that we are going to have global harmonization of patent rights and that is going to make us all love each other and we can operate in goodwill. If we told the American people at any time that we wanted to have harmonization of the individual rights of our citizens to pray and to speak and to assemble and the other constitutional rights that we have, and we had some feather-brained government official making a deal with the government of Singapore or some other country, whether Japan or any other country, say, ``By the way, the American people are just going to have to give up these rights that they have been talking about for so much. They are too individualistic. We need a new global concept of human rights to make sure wherever you go, people have the same human rights, so from now on the American people are going to have to accept the same human rights level and the same rights, political and social rights, that they would have if they lived in Singapore.'' Do you think the American people would stand for that? Do you think anybody but a lamebrain would even think about offering that to the American people? Well, somebody might offer it to them, but they might have some other motives in mind. Maybe they do not like the American people. Maybe they do not want the American people to have the rights that they have had fundamentally, both economically and politically, because they do not like America because of what America stands for. Well, that is that what is happening here today. We are entering into a technological age, and our creative people are losing the fundamental rights that they have had as Americans. The investor who invest in new technology are finding that their investment, they will lose control of that investment of the product, of that investment, just like the inventor, and that their competitors, after a much shorter period of time, will end up using that technology against them and, in fact, their competitors will learn every detail of what they have created with their investment and their time and their energies even before it is granted a patent. How can we look into the future and say that in this new technological era we are going to change the rules in a way that diminishes the incentive of our people to invest in technology? Our biotech industry has invested tens of billions of dollars. Yet we are now going to tell our biotech industry whatever they come up with they are not going to have; if it takes them 10 years to get through the system, and sometimes it takes 15 years for them to get issued a patent, ``Oh, I am just sorry, that means you are only going to have 5 years' or 3 years' worth of protection, even though you have invested billions and billions of dollars.'' What kind of effect will that have on America's future and our ability to lead the way, to keep and remain the technological leaders? The biotech people will get ripped off, they know that, just like every other American inventor will get ripped off, and thus they will not invent, and thus they will not invest, because the system has changed fundamentally. Well, will these people, whoever they are, whether they are stupid or whether they are sinister, will they get away with this? Well, I do not know. But I can assure you this, the American people are going to hear about this. I am going to talk about it. We have got 170 of my colleagues who have joined with me, and Senator Dole who has joined with me in the Senate, to correct this horrible legislation, to restore American patent rights to what they were. We will not permit the gentleman from California [Mr. Moorhead], one man, to make the decision for this whole body on an issue of this magnitude. I call the system that would permit one man to make that decision for all of us a system that does not function for the people. I would call it an abuse of power if one individual tried to prevent the entire body from having a chance to vote on and to discuss this issue on the floor. We Americans are respected because of our courage, our strength, but also one word that always comes to mind when people talk about the United States of America is creativity and ingenuity. You know, Thomas Jefferson himself was an inventor. Visit Monticello. See those things that Jefferson did. What did he do? He thought of new ways to save labor and to make life better without having gone to spend as much time and effort. What about Benjamin Franklin? We know about Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was one of the premier inventors of his time in the world. He was also there at the Declaration of Independence, and he was there when our Founding Fathers put together that fundamental document of law that has served us so well, the Constitution of the United States. It is no coincidence that technologists, that people who look to the future, were the people who wrote the Constitution of the United States of America. It is up to us to carry on that tradition. Those people talked about individual rights. They talked about freedom. They talked about the dignity of [[Page H5903]] the common man and that we would be a society that would be so prosperous that even the common man could own the product of his labor, could live in peace and harmony with his family. Unlike the other societies in Europe and in the vast stretches of Asia, tyranny would not reign in America because we believed in freedom and individual rights. Part of freedom and individual rights is the right of people to control their own creations, at least for a period of time in which they own that which they created. It is a precious right and as important to our society as any of the other rights Americans have enjoyed over these two hundred years, and now we have an unelected official, Bruce Lehman, making a secret deal with the Japanese, a deal that means that patent rights forever will be diminished for the American people, and we are supposed to accept that this will just be slipped through the system on a piece of legislation, the GATT implementation legislation in which it had no right to be in in the first place, and we had to vote yes on everything unless we wanted to say no in order to get that one little piece out. This is a crime in progress. It is a rip-off of historic magnitude, and I can swear to you tonight they will not get away with it. We will alert the American people. This Congress is alerted to it already, and one man will not stand in the way.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, unbeknownst to most Americans and many of my colleagues, a provision was snuck into last year's GATT implementing legislation that dramatically reduces the certain patent protection enjoyed by Americans, American investors and American inventors for over 100 years. It was a rip-off of the control and benefit of technology that was created by our own people and by the technology that was created by the investors who helped finance that technology. I have a bill, H.R. 359, with 168 cosponsors, to restore America's patent rights before the damage is done. Well, while my bill is being held hostage and prisoner by the subcommittee, and no one has been able to hold a hearing on my bill with 168 cosponsors, adding insult to injury, another bill has been heard, and what does this bill do? This new piece of patent legislation, and get this, Mr. and Mrs. America, said, ``If our inventors file for a patent, 18 months after they file, whether they are issued or not, the patent, the patent is published, meaning the whole world is going to get to see what our inventors and investors have come up with even before the patent is issued.'' It is a come in here and steal our technology bill. That piece of legislation has to stop. Restore American patent rights to the American people.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, have no doubt about it, this amendment would gut the reform that the Republicans have brought to the foreign policy establishment of this country. The American people voted for change. We have come forward with a bold plan of reform, and what we have now is an attempt to derail that reform, to study it to death. In answer to some of the arguments that have been made, whether it is arms control or whether it is AID policy, or whether it is communications policy, these are not separate efforts. These are not things that operate and should operate independently of a global strategy. These are part and should be part and parcel of a global strategy, part of the same effort. This is what is behind our whole reform proposal to take arms control, AID decisions, and communications and put them into the State Department so that we can have what this country needs, and that is bold leadership on the part of the executive rather than what we have had in the last 10 years, which is quite often nothing more than an attempt by people who hold executive power to reach a consensus among independent agencies. The fact is that if we are going to be efficient in the post-cold war world we need to make sure that our organizational structure is more efficient, and is operating with decisive leadership, which is exactly what you cannot have when you have different agencies operating independently. What we are trying to do is consolidate, reform, and restructure the foreign policy apparatus of the United States in order to bring down costs and to make the system more efficient. What this amendment would do is prevent that reform, and maintain an ineffective status quo. We need to provide American ambassadors, for example, more flexibility in their decisions with lower budgets, because they will have lower budgets. If we do not restructure at a time when we are bringing down the budgets of our foreign policy establishment, if we do not give them more flexibility, we are going to end up with a worse foreign policy apparatus. We need to change the way our foreign policy establishment has been doing business because this is a different world. And there is no way that you can force these types of reform decisions to be made than to force this type of restructuring by a reform process. Again what we have here is a proposal to study our reform measures to death. Instead it is time to act decisively, time to move forward, time to [[Page H5676]] change the status quo, and not sit back in indecisive studying of the problem.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time in order to answer the question, we are bringing down these budgets, and by restructuring we are forcing those people, those managers within the system, to be more efficient, to make decisions that will make their operation more effective within decreased budgets. The fact is that in the post-cold-war world we need some restructuring, and we perhaps need our ambassadors in foreign countries to be able to operate a little bit more independently even though their budgets in foreign countries will be less than what they were 10 years ago at the height of the cold war.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There is a reform plan.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, will wonders never cease, where my colleague from Georgia and I are standing together on an issue in this body? Let me note that the cold war is over. I would not have supported this amendment if it had been 10 years ago. I believe that now is the time for us as a Nation to seriously consider what our policies are around the world in a different light than what we did 10 years ago during the cold war. This amendment puts Congress squarely in the decisionmaking process. My good friend, the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter], just suggested there is a process that is taking place right now, but it is just not codified. It is not set down solid in legislation. Well, I believe that now that the cold war is over we can afford to take this decisionmaking process about what kind of countries that we will be dealing with, especially arming to the teeth, what kind of countries we will be selling our sophisticated weaponry to, is a decision in which the Congress can play a legitimate and verifiable role, and that we can be held accountable to our own people for the moral basis of the decisions that are being made by our Government in this area. When the cold war was on, we left these decisions up to the President of the United States, and I supported that, because we were up against an enemy that wanted to destroy our country. I was, as many of you know, a member of President Reagan's staff for 7 years. I felt it appropriate that the President had the right to counter Soviet moves that were aimed at putting us in a vulnerable situation to a military threat, without necessarily having to come to Congress and have the issue debated on for weeks. We are not in that situation today. In fact, during the cold war, human rights were secondary in many of the cases in our dealings with foreign countries. In many cases, if we were not dealing with such a hostile and horrible enemy as the communists, we should have been ashamed of ourselves in dealing with the tyrants we were dealing with. But just like in the Second World War when we allied ourselves with Stalin, we allied ourselves in the cold war against the communists with some unsavory characters. That is no longer the case. The cold war is over, and today human rights should play a more important role in our decisionmaking process than it did when we were under attack. If a country is crucial to our national security, even besides the fact we are not in the cold war, this amendment provides us the ability to say well, you may not be up to our democratic standards, and indeed we want you to be more democratic and respect human rights, but we will put you on an exception list. You are acceptable because you are crucial to the national security interests of the United States. I would imagine we might debate countries like Saudi Arabia, who I believe is crucial to the security of the United States, and other kingdoms where people in those countries are more inclined toward having a kingdom than a democracy. That would be a legitimate decision we could make. I have no doubt this Congress is capable to working with the President to determine which nondemocratic countries are crucial to our national security. This gives the President in fact leverage even in those countries to secure more human rights for their people, when now the President cannot just say well, the Congress is forcing me and thus have a dialog with these countries. Now, I may, as I say, disagree with the proponents of this amendment on many issues in terms of what countries we are dealing with, but the principle is sound. Let me say this in terms of the practicality. When Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, we decided we were no longer going to be just anti-Communist and support anti-Communist regimes. I believe that was the turning point in the cold war. When Ronald Reagan made human rights and democracy the issue against the Communists, when he turned away from just supporting dictators who are anti-Communist but instead went to the people of then the Soviet Union and other countries under Communist domination and said we in the West do believe in democracy and we are willing to support those people who are struggling for freedom, and we established the National Endowment for Democracy, that is when the cold war turned around. In the long run, that proved the downfall of communism. It was the practical thing to do. In the short run, it gave us some problems, because there were some anti-Communist dictatorships which basically were on our side. This too will be practical if we have guts enough to stand for our principles.