Mark Sanford

Mr. SANFORD

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

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. SANFORD. I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SANFORD. I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, just to respond to my colleague, I would simply say that my colleague from New York and, frankly, a lot of other colleagues both on the Democratic and Republican side of the aisle have been very consistent in their advocacy, whether it is for helping fire fighters or policemen or teachers; and I admire that. I really do. My contention and the reason I raise this point of order tonight is simply tied to a belief, again, I was outvoted on this, but a belief that our Founding Fathers set up a rule of law based on equality under the law. Any time that I see a fire fighter and a policeman and a teacher, all of whom do great benefit to our society, I also have to ask, well, does a welder do great benefit to our society, or does a private school teacher do great benefit to our society, or does a nurse working for a private hospital do great benefit to our society. I believe that they, too, help out. They are not in the public sector, but they do make a contribution to the society. So my objection is solely based on the idea of equality under the law, and that is the reason I would insist on my point of order.

Mr. SANFORD. Certainly I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order. Reluctantly, I raise it, not against the gentleman from New York (Mr. Forbes), but against the underlying amendment in that it directly amends existing law in several respects in violation of clause 2 of rule XXI specifically.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of a strong national defense, but in reluctant opposition to the FY 2001 Department of Defense Appropriations Act (H.R. 4576). A strong defense is not simply a function of how much we spend, but also of how intelligently we spend it. Depending on who's counting, the United States spends as much on defense as the next six or seven highest countries combined. The 281 billion that the United States spent on defense in 1998 was more than all of our NATO allies combined and accounted for more than a third of all world military spending. Yet today, our military faces serious problems in training, recruiting, retention, and readiness. One reason for this situation is the lack of a coherent national strategy. Our men and women in uniform have been dispatched across the globe in operations that are not in the national interest. This wears out our soldiers and equipment, and leaves the military less prepared to defend real national interests. The common lament I hear is that we are ``spreading ourselves too thin''. The lion's share of responsibility for this problem lies with the Administration. But we're spreading ourselves too thin in the defense budget process as well, and responsibility for that falls on Congress. Congress continues to spend critical defense dollars on items that the Pentagon does not want or need. For example: 1. F-15 aircraft--The Air Force requested no funds for additional F- 15 aircraft, but the House passed $400 million for 5 addition F-15E's. The Air Force has difficulty getting spare parts for the planes it already has. Building more unrequested planes only aggravates that problem. 2. Cold Weather Equipment--Congress added $24 million for Gore-Tex cold weather gear that the Pentagon did not request, at the request of a Congressman whose constituents manufacture the gear. With the recruiting problems the military has, it has difficulty getting enough soldiers just to fill out the gear it already has. 3. Wolverine Heavy Assault Bridge--The Army requested no funds for the Wolverine heavy assault bridge. In fact, although the Army received $82 million for the Wolverine for FY 2000, it did not intend to spend it on the bridge. H.R. 4576 commands the Army to spend the $82 million on the Wolverine, as well as an additional $15 million. In short, Congress is forcing the Army to spend $97 million on a bridge that it doesn't need. 4. Medical Research--The Administration requested $16.5 million for medical research in the defense bill. The Appropriations Committee reported out $252.2 million in H.R. 4576, including: $6 million for laser vision correction research, $3.7 million for nutrition research, $10 million for ovarian cancer research, $15 million for HIV research, $3 million for chronic fatigue research, and $7 million for alcoholism research. Now, some of these programs may be valid, but they are non-defense items. We have a Labor/Health and Human Services Appropriations bill that is more suitable for these programs. Hiding these items within H.R. 4576 is unfair to our taxpayers. In addition, H.R. 4576 skirted two important issues with profound budget and readiness implications: Base Realignment and Closure Commission--H.R. 4576 does not include funding for two new BRAC rounds, despite the fact that the Pentagon has estimated it has an excess base capacity of 23%. CBO estimates that two new BRAC rounds would save the Defense Department $4.7 billion by 2010, and that after completion in 2012, DOD could realize recurring savings of about $4 billion per year. Congress' inaction means that the Pentagon must continue to waste billions of taxpayer dollars maintaining obsolete bases. Aircraft--H.R. 4576 includes billions for research, development and procurement of three different fighter planes (the Navy's F-18 E/F, The Air Force F-22, and the Navy & Air Force Joint Strike Fighter) when there is not a strong consensus that all three fighters are necessary. Some defense experts say the military needs the F-18 & F-22. Some say it needs the JSF instead. Congress' answer is simply to fund all of the fighter planes in question. Now, Congress is forging ahead with funding the production of 10 F-22 Aircraft when there are indications that the program is not ready for production. In doing so, Congress takes away from aircraft (specifically bombers and unmanned aerial aircraft [UAVs]) that, while less glamorous, are a more pressing need for the military. I agree that the Congress should fund a military that is second to none. And H.R. 4576 does include several important items I support, like funding for domestic terrorism response, more decent enlisted pay, and missile defense. But it is also weighed down with too many items that are unnecessary for, and in fact, counterproductive to, our national defense. Therefore, I reluctantly oppose the bill.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of Chairman Archer's efforts to reform the estate tax. And I say reform, rather than repeal, because at the heart, that's what I think we're talking about here. I'm sure Chairman Archer would disagree emphatically with my point. But given the way our political process works, I think that today's vote represents the starting point in negotiation over the estate tax. By staking out a position of repeal, as it works its way through the political body, what we're really talking about is change. And the question I think we all need to ask ourselves is to what degree. While I am in favor of this vote because it stakes the position of the need for change, the reason I don't think that I would ever be in a position to support total repeal of the estate tax is tied to three things: history, the value of work and the belief in meritocracy, and, finally, the power of compound interest. When you look through the pages of history, you see that anytime there's been extreme disparity of wealth, you've seen political problems. In short, the Banana Republics of South America are demonstrative of the fact that a few families holding all the wealth doesn't lend itself toward democratic rule. In fact, if you stop and think about it, would it be good for our form of government, if out of the 270 million people that make up America, 99 percent of the wealth was held by four families? I think undoubtedly, most people would say no, not a chance. And that illustrates the point that I think intuitively all of us know--that extreme wealth concentration isn't good for our form of government. Two, I'd say there's a real value to work and meritocracy. I think that one ought to put on their jeans and go to work. It's good for the individual and it's good for society as a whole. In fact, Republicans have repeatedly made that very argument when they talk about welfare recipients. Our Founding Fathers were very deliberate about not having kings and queens, and yet if you have a couple of families that can hand on huge levels of wealth, tax free, generation after generation, what you develop is an aristocratic class that does nothing more than eat from silver spoons and play polo. I think the reverse would be good to have a merit-based system, wherein one can go out and earn as much money as they're able over the course of their lifetime with very little from the standpoint of government regulation or government taxation interfering with those efforts. Beyond a certain point though, families ought to be brought back to a neutral starting zone, with each new generation given that shot at making it to the top. I say that as one who's voted to cut virtually every form of government spending. Unfortunately, Congress as a whole is not willing to do that, and we have to pay for those government services that people so consistently vote for around this place. I'd rather not see the burden on the shoulders of people working and striving to develop new things. I'd rather see that, again, at the end of the day after one has succeeded, without government taxing them heavily on their rise to the top. Which brings me to my third point, the power of compound interest. I do think the estate tax needs to be substantially reformed, and I'm talking about a very large limit here. One ought to be able to hand off perhaps $250 million or $500 million tax free to their children, should they so choose. But you shouldn't have a Bill Gates level of wealth that's $50 billion handed tax free to the next generation. For this family, within a couple of generations, compound interest could concentrate perhaps a trillion dollars of net worth. So in the end that's where I am. Let's substantially repeal the estate tax; let's reform it mightily, raising the limit in excess of $100 million of tax free inheritance, to be handed on from one generation to the next. But let's not completely eliminate it, because extreme concentrations of wealth handed tax free from one generation to the next is not only bad for the individuals in question, but certainly bad for our system of government.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I was rated in the top five free traders in the 105th Congress; and yet, I reluctantly oppose PNTR for China, for a couple of different reasons. First of all, we have a mechanical problem. And that is, if my colleagues look at WTO, it is a rule-based system. And yet, look at the dispute over hormone beef. Look at the dispute over bananas with EU. And what we see is another culture that has democratic governance, that has intellectual property rights, that has a rule of law, that has property rights, has basically said, we are just going to ignore the rules of WTO, we are going to ignore our agreement with America because we want to. And if we have that kind of disagreement within a culture that is very similar to our own, can my colleagues imagine the disagreement that we will find in a culture that is very different. In fact, history suggests that that inclination is right, because the 1998 USTR's Foreign Trade Barriers Report said that fully 400 of 1,200, one-third, of all products that were in the 1992 agreement between China and America were still subject to nontariff barriers. So what we are doing here is we are dropping a 400-pound gorilla in the swimming pool, and it will have implications for WTO itself. Also, we have a problem in that any time with the Cox report that we have a country engaged in espionage to steal our nuclear secrets, I do not know that that deserves award. That does not make common sense to me. And three, and most disturbing to me, is that, if we look in the South China Sea, I think we see a trend toward if not expansionism, certainly bullying. If we look at Mischief Reef, if we look at Spratly Islands, if we look at how in 1997 China moved an oil drilling rig into what was clearly territorial water of Vietnam, if my colleagues look at their behavior toward Taiwan, if we look at their taking of the Paracel Islands in the 1970s from Vietnam, we see a trend that is disturbing. So I will admit that is a very blunt instrument, but is the only instrument that I have to use as a legislator in signaling displeasure toward China's behavior. We also need to look at OPEC and other arrangements that help companies to go to China and displace them.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment that I think is in the best interests of the United States military, and I say that for many different reasons. But one of the reasons I would say that is that when the American taxpayer buys this helicopter, not this helicopter, but the model that it represents, this is a UH-68 Blackhawk Helicopter, is it runs somewhere between $8- and $10 million a copy. That is when they buy them. Now, at the end of the cycle, when the Army is through using them, rather than selling the wheels or selling the motor or selling the frame or selling the whole thing, it is given away. It is given away to other pieces of the Federal Government, it is given away to State or local governments. I think that in this era, which has been talked about through the course of this debate, of scarce military dollars, the military needs every dollar they can have. Rather than continuing to give these dollars away, why does the military not keep it? The origins ever the program behind giving this helicopter and other things away made a lot of sense 50 years ago, because in the wake of World War II we had all kinds of things out there. So the idea was let us give some of this stuff away. What is interesting is by the Department of Defense's own estimates, roughly, approximately, $350 million a year gets given away through this program. Now, that is, if you assume that this helicopter is worth $1. If it is, in fact, worth $10, we are talking about $3.5 billion a year that is given away out of the back door of DOD to other agencies, State, local or Federal. Now, to give you an idea of scale, the Law Enforcement Support Program takes 5,000 orders a day. It gives away, as I said, that amount of money. Over the last two years, they have given away, given away, 253 aircraft, including 6 and 7 passenger airplanes, Blackhawks, Hueys, MD-500s and Bell Jet Rangers. They have given away 7,800 M-16s, they have given away 181 grenade launchers, they have given away 1,161 pair of night vision goggles. That is a lot of things, and that is just part of the list. To give you another idea of scale, the State and Local Law Enforcement Equipment Procurement Program sells at reduced prices a number of things within the DOD inventory. I went down their Web page. If you look on the Web page, you will find things like wristwatches, stopwatches, compasses, lubricating oil, commercial automobile oil, camping and hiking equipment. The point of all that is to say this is not used stuff. It is not used, like the helicopter. It is brand new stuff that is still sitting in its case. It has market value. It could be sold at an open auction, and those dollars could be used by DOD for procurement and they could be used for training. So I offer this amendment because it stops money from being siphoned off from defense. It, secondly, helps to create a clear budget. If we are to make good decisions in government, they rest on reality. Budgets have to show reality. Unfortunately, current budgets do not. What they do is they overstate the cost of defense, and they understate the cost of other Federal agencies, and understate the cost of state and local government. The third reason I offer this amendment is because it is in the best interest of the taxpayer. That is why it is supported by the National Taxpayers Union, that is why it is supported by Citizens Against Government Waste. They do so because if something is given to you, you oftentimes treat it very differently than if you have to pay dearly for it. To give you an idea of the kind of excesses that occur in this program, for instance, 60 Minutes did a special about 2 years ago about a small rural county in central Florida that, through this program, among other things, had been given 23 helicopters, an armored personnel carrier, and two C-12 airplanes. As it turned out, that county was using it as a revenue source. They would keep the stuff for a couple of years and then they would sell it on the open market, making hundreds of thousands of dollars for that county. If it is not used that way, frankly, it is used strangely. I went to a county in South Carolina where the chief of police was taking helicopter lessons in a helicopter that would run $1,500 an hour. It did not cost the county that much because they had been given the helicopter, but it did cost the taxpayer that much. Another reason I offer this is if it is not used that way, the equipment sits idly by. I flew into a small county airport in South Carolina surrounded with a number of large Air Force and Navy airplanes, and I said to my brother, what is the trouble with these airplanes? They were given to the county through this Federal program and, as he explained it, the county accepted it not because they had any use for it, the equipment had been sitting there for years, but because they could not afford not to take it since it was given away. I think this amendment makes common sense. I would urge its adoption. It is about priorities. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would not dispute any of the things about this program of having great value to local law enforcement. The simple question I would ask is one of priorities. It is one that I am trying to teach my young boys, and that is right now given what we have talked about in this debate, which is the scarcity of dollars in the Department of Defense, we simply have to set priorities. We cannot do both, and that is why I think these dollars ought to be retained within DOD.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I would just make the point that, whether Republican or Democrat, a theme that our country is built on is the idea of free and fair elections. And if what is going on in Peru right now is able to stand, then the Fujijmori government in Peru will be built on unfree and unfair elections. Indeed, a lot of controversy is going on right now about a young boy and whether he should or should not go back to Castro because of freedom. If we look at what is going on, again, in Peru, a cancer will start to grow that America should be no part of. So I would say that, if what stands, we need to look at stripping aid from the supplemental, we need to look at blocking aid with the drug war, we need to look at blocking access to international financial institutions. Because free and fair elections are paramount to our system of government and to governments throughout Central and South America.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, I would say this is a well-intentioned bill; but without the Coburn amendment which corrects a number of fatal flaws, I think it is, in fact, fatally flawed. And I would say that for a couple of different reasons. I would say, first of all, if we look at the way the Coburn amendment corrects the bill, it helps us to focus, because as it is now configured with 150 percent of median income the threshold, what that means is we have a worker in Fairfax County, Virginia, making $50,000 or $60,000 subsidized in the purchase of their home by somebody making $12,000 or $18,000 in Yamasee, South Carolina, which is in the neck of the woods where I grew up, where frankly there is not a whole lot of money to go around. So it loses focus on helping those in need. Two, I think it encourages risk. It is very easy to spend somebody else's money; but by moving from 3 percent down to 1 percent, in terms of the amount of your own money you have to have in the deal, you frankly encourage people to, in essence, go out and take options on homes. These are not purchases but options. And I would say of most concern for me is that this bill supposedly is about recruiting and retaining EMS workers, firefighters, teachers, et cetera; but, in fact, it will have the reverse effect. It is going to encourage job rotation. I can envision the day, if this bill goes through without this correcting amendment, when we will be watching a ``60 Minutes'' special about the policeman or the firefighter who switched jobs every 2 months, bought himself a different FHA house and because he could buy it for 50 percent of appraised value, he was buying $100,000 houses for $50,000 and he was making $300,000 flipping houses by moving jobs rather than making the pay that he was supposed to be earning as a firefighter or an EMS worker. It is going to have the reverse effect in terms of job rotation and retaining of workforce.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would just mention to Members that if Members believe in a ruling class, then they will vote against the amendment of the gentleman from the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). If Members believe in a government class, they will vote against the gentleman's amendment. What this is about is government making the choices. That is what he has raised. We have gone from removing barriers, which is supposedly what this original bill was all about, to subsidy, and Washington getting to pick the winners and losers. I think that is fundamentally against the idea of one man-one vote, equality in this country. I would go back to a point that was talked about earlier, which again, the gentleman's amendment, unfortunately, cannot get at, but it is a very important point. That is, if this bill goes through in its present form, then a number of categories that Washington has chosen can buy a house for half price, while the farmer in our home district cannot buy that house for half price, while the McDonald's workers in our hometown cannot buy that house for half price, while the person who cuts timber in our backyard cannot buy a house for half price, or somebody working in a grocery store, or somebody who works at the local nursery school, or somebody who works in construction, they cannot buy houses at half price. All of those are important parts of what makes up a local community. I think they have value, too. Without the gentleman's amendment, they are excluded. I do not think that is fair.

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

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I think we could debate whether or not an individual would be gaming the system based on what the Secretary eventually came out in terms of regulation behind this bill. But I think there is a larger issue here which is quite simple and, that is, if this bill goes through without this correcting amendment, you could literally buy a house for 50 cents on the dollar, for half price. You could buy it for half of appraised value. Is that not correct?

Mr. SANFORD. That is incorrect.

Mr. SANFORD. It could be in the most distressed area or it could be in the most affluent area.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to my colleagues attention the nation of Kazakhstan. This young nation has emerged, under the leadership of its President Nursultan Nazarbayev, as a bastion of democracy and free market economics in Central Asia. I am entering into the Record two articles written recently by R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr. of the Conservative New Service who just returned from Kazakhstan reporting on that nation's ethnic and cultural diversity, its free media, and its strategic importance to the United States. I recommend these two articles to my colleagues and ask them to join me in saluting Kazakhstan's struggle to right itself after 70 years of Soviet repression. The Forgotten Republics Astana, Kazakhstan.--This is the capital of Kazakhstan, once one of the feared republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the proving ground for much of the USSR's nuclear weaponry. Now it is a vast region--in terms of territory, the ninth largest nation on earth--populated by anti-Communists, many trained in Moscow. It was my pleasure the other day to visit the President's office and interview one of the country's most ardent anti-Communists, the President himself, Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev, a co-conspirator with Mikhail Gorbachev in the decomposition of the Soviet Union. Somehow Nazarbayev landed on his feet. Entering the President's newly constructed offices with two other American journalists for a televised interview, I am reminded of how earnest the Yank journalists traveling abroad are in displaying their high journalistic standards. Was it Dan Rather who, at the beginning of an interview with the President of a recently constituted African republic, asked-- pen poised above his note pad--``Mr. President, how exactly do you spell your name?'' Oh, maybe it was not the earnest Dan. But surely some American at large in the faraway has popped such a question. The journalists with whom I travel are not quite so self- conscious. In fact, we did not even ask Mr. Nazarbayev for his card. We remembered him from the last days of the Soviet Union. Now he is trying to bring stable, capitalistic growth to his country, to develop its rich natural resources (especially oil), to maintain cordial relations with the United States, and to ensure the development of a democratic regime in a country that was recently Communist and before that a collection of unstable principalities--mostly Moslem-- governing nomadic tribes. This last goal is somewhat controversial. The President's critics, here and abroad, doubt his seriousness about making Kazakhstan democratic. Yet some of his critics abroad are obviously ill-informed. A representative of the Helsinki Commission recently alleged that Kazakhstan has only two cardboard parties. It has four, apparently quite vital, political parties contending in the parliament alone. I have interviewed representatives from three, the last being an affable Communist, Professor (what did you expect?) Serikbolsyn A. Abdildin, chairman of the Kazakhstan Communist Party. We exchanged banter about the greatness of Marx. He was speaking of Karl, I of Groucho--though I also have a very high opinion of Harpo--who was a manifestly superior thinker than Karl, and whose philosophical errors led to at least a couple of hundred million fewer deaths. Professor Abdildin still thinks nothing of the hundred million or so whom Moscow's Marxists put to death. Mistakes were made, but now on to his new ``social agenda.'' On the outskirts of Astana there is a sobering monument that has been raised to the Kazakhstani victims of the Soviet concentration camps. Nazarbayev's government threw it up immediately following Kazakhstan's independence--there are not many Kazakhs in doubt as to the barbarism of ``Soviet times,'' a barbarism that many Westerners missed. Though Nazarbayev is coy as to precisely why he came to disrelish the Soviet system and what brought about its fall, he has pushed pretty hard to eliminate it. He does say--as do most sophisticated Kazakhs--that by the 1980s he could see that, in economic terms, Marxism was a disaster. There can be no doubt he favors the market. ``The planned economy,'' he tells us, did not respond to market conditions, which reminds me of all the progressive American economists who told us ``the market'' was a fiction of Milton Friedman's imagination. Let them consult the President of Kazakhstan and his Moscow-trained allies who are welcoming American corporations along with what he calls ``small and middle- sized'' businesses. Nazarbayev returns to the theme of democracy. He complains that a State Department human rights report critical of his government is fraught with errors, errors that he insists our Ambassador has acknowledged. He wants his country to be ``a strategic partner'' with the United States. And the expresses concern over terrorists at his border who claim to be Islamic fundamentalists. Nazarbayev sees them less as pietists than as terrorists I cannot say with utter confidence that Kazakhstan is a completed democracy. It has a multiplicity of political parties competing among the electorate and in parliament. It has religious tolerance. Islam and Christianity are practiced in public. There is a free press gaining strength, though how free it is remains a question to me. It does seem that Kazakhstan is well on its way under Nazarbayev to economic development along market lines and to some sort of democracy that is a long way from its recent Soviet past. Many of Nazarbayev's critics in the West were not nearly so vocal in their denunciations of the Soviet Union's democratic failures as they are of Nazarbayev's alleged failures. What can he do to escape their complaints? My advice is for him to announce that he is returning to the Communist fold. Furthermore, he is re-arming his nuclear weapons. Under him, Kazakhstan, once the fourth largest nuclear arsenal on earth, became the first nation in history to disarm its nuclear force. Now he is the target of the West's perfectionists. They never treated his Soviet predecessors so rudely. And the only people I have met in Kazakhstan who share their critique are an Islamic Kazakh nationalist and the amusing Professor Abdildin. And allow me one final report. As Vladimir Putin makes his way to the Presidency of Russia, I have been asking prominent Kazakhs, many of whom visit Moscow frequently, as Kazakhstan remains part of the Commonwealth of Independent States, if his election might prefigure a return to Russian bellicosity. The Kazakhs, having suffered two centuries of Russian aggression, have more reason to fear such a turn of events than most peoples. Economic conditions in Russia will not allow renewed Soviet expansion, they tell me, and the Russians know it. Maybe the Russians do not even yearn for such grim days. Mr. Putin, however, strikes me as an unusual world leader. He is tight-lipped in public. The roll of his shoulders when he walks should remind us that he is a conditioned athlete, a practitioner of the martial arts. One hopes he gets sufficient exercise in the gym. [From the Washington Times, March 24, 2000] American Model for Kazakhs R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. ASTANA, Kazakhstan.--I am freezing here in the snow-covered capital of what was until 1991 one of the fearsome republics of the now-defunct U.S.S.R. Kazakhstan had a large army, the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and a loyal Communist Party, propagating the word that the West was corrupt, overrun with gangsters and a constant threat to Kazakhstan's benevolent socialist society. Today I am traveling along the potholed streets of that advanced society. Here, in the new Kazakh capital not far from the Russian border, and a few days ago in Almaty, an older and even bleaker city, I see the grim dilapidation of the banks of government housing, the aged infrastructure, and the sad victims of Soviet communism trudging the streets, and I remember. Was it not John Kenneth Galbraith and like-minded progressive economists who told us as recently as 1985 that the Soviet economy was a robust competitor to the West? It was, and when a few months later Mikhail Gorbachev pronounced the Soviet economy a disaster, his remarks, you can be sure, made no dent in Mr. Galbraith's arrogance. Were Professor Galbraith with me today what would his retort be to the dozen or so bright, optimistic government officials rattling off their programs for using the market economy to extract from Kazakh territory the valuable minerals and oil their communist predecessors wasted or ignored? Today's government officials, mostly the products of Moscow's universities during what they call ``Soviet times,'' all say that by the 1980s they recognized the futility of the communists' ``command economy.'' When in the early 1990s they had an opportunity to break with the Soviet Union, they did. They set off on the present program of economic development with free and global markets. They became the only nation ever to give up its nuclear arms. Western democracy became their model, and they opted for the American social system. The American model of the melting pot that allows ethnic and religious pluralism is important to Kazakhstan. In ``Soviet times,'' its vast unpopulated territory, covering 4 times as much land as Texas, was used by Moscow to dump millions of peoples the Soviets deemed undesirable. Along with the indigenous Kazakhs, there are Germans, Koreans, Poles, Crimean Tartars, Josef Stalin encouraged millions of idealistic Russian communists to come here after World War II to fortify the U.S.S.R.'s southern border against China and against Muslim fundamentalists who have lived in Central Asia for 1,000 years. In the 1960s, millions more Russians came as part of Moscow's Virgin Lands policy to make Kazakhstan more profitable. The consequence was environmental catastrophe. Nuclear experiments that included Moscow's first hydrogen bomb and other military experiments have rendered many areas of the country health hazards. The agricultural and industrial programs of the Virgin Lands imbecility left 20 million tons of industrial waste polluting the countryside and the Aral Sea drying up. Denied its water from rivers that were diverted to irrigate futile cotton plantings, the seabed has become a scab on the Earth. Cleaning up from ``Soviet times,'' is a major burden on the government made all the more difficult by Russia's refusal to explain the nature of its military experiments. So, too, is maintaining a socially cohesive society, through that challenge seems easier. Everywhere one looks, one sees a society divided, essentially into two ethnic groups; the Russians, who look like Western Europeans and compose 38 percent of the population, and the Kazakhs, who look Asiatic and compose 51 percent of the population. Yet there seems to be little friction between these populations. Both seem bound together in contempt for the old Soviet system and hope for their country's future. The Russian zealots who came here as colonists after World War II, and in the Virgin Land program have now mostly returned to Russia, 2 million tired and aged idealists looking, looking for retirement back home and graves in Russian soil--another of communism's sad chapters. The elected president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, an erstwhile collaborator of Mr. Gorbachev's in perestroika, shares the hopes of other government officials. In interviewing him, I note he repeatedly speaks of his faith in free markets, democracy and a ``strategic partnership'' with the United States. Kazakhstan with its Equally important are the oil and other resources that Kazakhstan has in abundance and that American companies are developing. Some observers back in the States are critical of Mr. Nazarbayev's claims to democracy and perhaps even to friendship with the West. Their suspicions are understandable. Many in this government were trained by Moscow's totalitarians. Yet from my observations, this developing country now has at least four highly competitive political parties, nearly 1,000 media organs mostly privately owned, the freedoms of our Bill of Rights, and commendable tolerance. Moreover, Kazakhstan has something its critics in the West lack, the zeal of converts. In asking scores of Kazakhs how they came to their free-market and democratic values, the interviewer learns the Kazakhs were amazed by what they saw in the West as their closed society developed cracks in the 1980's. President Nazarbayev says he saw the Soviet system ``could not compete'' with the West economically. He and his younger political aides developed the convert's zeal to move their country to the model that was so manifestly superior to the Soviet model. And, I ask my Kazakh hosts, how did those cracks develop in the closed society? They answer that the arms race launched by President Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union. Meanwhile the Reagan administration's public information agencies got word of democracy and freedom through the cracks. Mr. Reagan's boasts about America being a ``shinning city on a hill'' resonated with those who today are leading Kazakhstan to Western prosperity. Yet Mr. Reagan's eloquence had its limits. It never impressed John Kenneth Galbraith.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I want to make a couple of points: One, basic economics, as the gentleman from California pointed out, the gentleman said supply always equals demand. If we push down supply here but do nothing about demand, we can be sure from Guyana or Venezuela or a lot of other places supply will be there to meet it. Two, my wife got a $218 ticket the other day for turning left on a green light in front of oncoming traffic. If she had been caught instead with a noncommercial quantity of marijuana in her car, she would have gotten a $125 fine instead of a $218 fine. We are not serious about this war on drugs. Three, Colombia does not have a shootdown policy and, yet, we are about to send over a billion dollars. For that matter, America does not have a shootdown policy. Finally, we have a flawed strategy. In military, you have to effect the center of gravity. You have to eliminate an enemy's ability to make war. We do not do that; what we are offering here is a false promise.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I very reluctantly rise in opposition to this amendment for basically two reasons. One, it was Paul Kennedy, the historian Paul Kennedy, who made the point in his book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, that economic supremacy is the precursor to military supremacy. And for us to maintain that economic supremacy, at least in part, rests on fiscal discipline. And for us to in essence breach a budget that we set last week to the tune of $4 billion, I think, is a move away from the kind of fiscal discipline that, in fact, Paul Kennedy and others have talked about over time. Secondly, I think at some point we have to draw the line on deployments. And I look at this money. I look at basically the Powell doctrine. The Powell doctrine was we go in, we make a difference, we have clearly defined military objectives, and then we get out of town. Mr. Chairman, this is the list of different deployments that we have had. Basically, over the last 10 years, we had the highest number of deployments that we have had. Mr. Chairman, 149 deployments according to the Committee on Armed Services from 1990 to 1999, versus 17 deployments from 1982 to 1990. And, in essence, we are rewarding that. At some point Congress has to draw the line and basically starve the beast by saying we will not continue to fund these kinds of deployments. Since I have been here, we have funded Haiti, we funded Bosnia, we funded Kosovo, we are funding the Middle East operations over Iraq to the tune of $1.2 billion a year. We had State Department officials telling us in testimony last week that it could last as long as Saddam is alive. If South Carolina is any guide on that front, that means another 50 years of us spending $1.2 billion a year. Mr. Chairman, at some point we have to draw the line on deployments, rather than continue to feed them. Therefore, I very reluctantly rise in opposition to this amendment.