Paul Simon

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, Senator Specter's argument on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is we are not hurting the corporation nor public broadcasting as much as the House is. That is not a very good argument. Let me point out one thing. This body, I am pleased to say, unanimously supported me in an effort to have an exemption to the antitrust laws so that the television industry could get together on the question of violence. The evidence is overwhelming. The Presiding Officer is a physician. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Surgeon General of the United States, all have issued studies saying that television violence that glorifies violence adds to violence in our society. I am pleased to report to this body, thanks to your efforts and to voluntary efforts in the industry, broadcast television has reduced violence appreciably. Cable has moved very, very modestly. But one network and one network alone provides violence-free television for the children of America, and that is public broadcasting. I think we have to put our vote where our mouth is on this. I think we have to encourage the only network in this Nation that provides violence-free television for our children. There is one children's program, for example, that is broadcast in this country which is produced in two versions. One is the violent version for the United States of America, and the other is the nonviolent version for all the other countries in the world. When the Christian Science Monitor asked the producer why, she said, ``Well, the United States people demand violence, and we get no complaints. We cannot sell it in other countries with the violence in it.'' The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is doing a superb job of giving us violence-free television for our children, and we ought to be supporting it and supporting them strongly. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the Harkin amendment. If I am not already, I want to be added. I thank the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. SIMON. I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania. His concern for issues of legal immigration and naturalization has long been recognized, and I am gratified that he will undertake to review seriously, and hopefully restore, the $6 million Senate rescission with our colleagues in the House. The Mildgas Process Unit

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I and my colleagues from California and Illinois, Senators Feinstein and Moseley-Braun, had intended to offer an amendment restoring $6 million dollars for citizenship training and naturalization services that had been rescinded in the Senate, but not in the House. Although naturalization has been identified as a priority by the administration in its immigration policy, naturalization services have been chronically underfunded and naturalization backlogs begin to grow. It is my believe--and I belief that of my colleagues--that these funds are essential to the important goal of providing those who want to naturalize with an opportunity to do so. Admittedly, $6 million dollars is a small amount of money, but the program rescinded in the Senate is crucial to the continued health of those providing citizenship training. In discussing my intention with the Honorable Chairman of the Labor/ HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Specter, I was impressed with his willingness to attempt to resolve this problem in conference with the House of Representatives, which, as I mentioned before, did not rescind the $6 million in citizenship training money. I would like to ask the Honorable Chairman if it is in fact his desire to take a second look at the $6 million citizenship money in conference.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation that would establish an 18 month commission to review the impact gambling has had on State and local governments, and native American tribes. As these entities find themselves strapped for financial resources, many public officials and residents believe gambling can be an economic panacea. Gambling is now one of the largest growth industries in the country. Legal wagering now totals almost $400 billion compared to $17.3 billion in 1974, according to the last--and only--national gambling study released in 1976 by the Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling. Federal policy on gaming should not be a moral one, rather it should be a practical one. Gambling is a matter of personal choice, and I have no problem with individuals who enjoy and are able to play the lottery or the slots. But I am concerned with the substantial costs to individuals, families, and society. Legalized gambling can lead to problem and pathological gambling, deterioration of family relationships, lost work productivity, unpaid taxes, bankruptcies, higher crime rates, and increased costs to the criminal justice system. On the other hand, legalized gambling offers the promise of economic development, tourism, increased jobs and tax revenues, which is extremely appealing to State, local and tribal governments that compete with one another for financial resources. While State governments have primary responsibility for regulating gambling, the scope of gaming has broadened to a national level in recent years. I am introducing the Gambling [[Page S5448]] Impact Study Commission Act to address these issues of national concern, so State, local and tribal governments can make fully informed decisions about future economic development investments.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code to limit the interest deduction allowed corporations and to allow a deduction for dividends paid by corporations. Our current system of taxation encourages American businesses to use debt, rather than equity, to provide needed financing. My bill would encourage firms to shift from greater debt financing to more equity financing by limiting the interest deduction allowed corporations and allowing a deduction for dividends paid by corporations. My proposal would be revenue neutral, although in the long run it should add to revenue because it would help the economy. I propose that, while 80 percent of interest payments remain deductible, 20 percent of the interest payments of all but the smallest corporations (including farm corporations) should be disallowed. And 50 percent of dividends should be deductible. If a corporation borrows money to acquire another company or to buy equipment or for any other purpose, the interest on that debt is deductible, even though the debt can--and often does--put the corporation in a precarious position. But if the same corporation issues stock, and then pays dividends, there is no deduction. The tax laws favor debt. That same corporation, if it cannot meet the payments of principal and interest, will have to sell itself or go bankrupt, neither of which are desirable goals. But if that corporation issues stock, and there is a downsizing in the economy, the only penalty the corporation must pay is that it cannot issue dividends. It can continue to thrive, employ people, and be a productive part of our society. Our tax laws have encouraged corporations and banks and law firms to make ``the fast buck'', rather than take the slow, constructive steps that are necessary to build their businesses and the economy of this Nation. I favor tax laws that give corporations deductions for research, for creating jobs, for adding to the productivity of the Nation. My proposal would provide the incentive corporations need. It would encourage investment and help the growth of productivity. It would also help eliminate the excessive debt our country has accumulated, and it would go a long way toward strengthening the economy. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, Mr. President. It may need to be refined, but the idea is sound. I hope we can make it a part of the Tax Code.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the more thoughtful observers of the political scene through the years has been Melvin Brooks, now retired as a professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Recently, he had an op ed piece in the Southern Illinoisan, a newspaper published in Carbondale, IL. He discusses the practical obstacles to balancing the budget and why it is important to the future of our country. His concluding paragraph says it all: ``Failure to balance Federal budgets without such an amendment appear almost certain and dreadful consequences of failure to pay as we go are virtually certain. Few people seem to realize how many shattering consequences are almost inevitable.'' Mr. President, I ask that the Melvin Brooks op ed piece be reprinted in the Record. The piece follows: [From the Southern Illinoisan] Many Obstacles to Balancing of Budget (By Melvin Brooks) The obstacles to balancing the federal budget are indeed formidable, some believe too formidable to overcome. One key obstacle is the behavior of members of Congress, presidents, other politicians, and special interests seeking to influence national policies. Most members of Congress want to be re-elected, have good mental ability and are politically knowledgeable. They know (or at least think they know) how to obtain enough votes to get re-elected. One way is to tell voters what they like to hear regardless of logical inconsistency, and by all means avoid disagreeing with the favorite prejudices of their constituents. This they do. It seems like increasing majorities of candidates for Congress criticize big government and promise to make large reductions in government, reduce taxes, balance the federal budget, yet prevent any reductions in Social Security or in military expenditures in order to keep the United States strong. This is, of course, an impossible combination and they know it. Yet they also know that if they omit some of these promises, opponents who make all of them are likely to obtain more votes. They also know that if they support the policies desired by special interests, especially those strong in their districts or states, they are likely to receive campaign contributions which otherwise would probably be given to an opponent. [[Page S5511]] And the more money a candidate has the more he can spend on television and thus increase his chances of winning. The temptation to play along with special interest groups is great, even though it will tend to increase national deficits. The other huge obstacle to reducing federal deficits is the apparently high percentage of the public that is not well- informed about federal financial problems and/or are easily influenced by political propaganda. That includes people who pay little attention to what elected officials do from day to day until near election dates and then do their duty by listening to an occasional campaign speech and short (but expensive) political commercials. They do not realize that the records of politicians are a far more reliable indication of what a politician will do in the future than are sounding promises. And people who fail to vote because ``all politicians are dishonest'' or ``my vote won't make any difference'' make it easier for the candidate with the most to spend to get elected. Of course the special interest groups which spend large sums on campaign contributions (in effect a form of bribery) and seek costly special privileges from the government, are a very important cause of our inability to eliminate deficits. As long as they can prevent passage of comprehensive campaign finance reforms such as those narrowly defeated by the Republicans and some moderate Democrats a year or two ago, expect little change. Other causes of budget deficits are the failure of our educational system and the mass media to educate the public better concerning basic political functioning. Can politicians who get elected to high office really be blamed for our dangerously high and still growing national debt of nearly five trillion dollars? After all, every one of them was elected by more votes than those who were defeated. My answer is yes. Either most or many of them at times put their personal interests, the interests of their party and/or the interests of their key supporters ahead of the long-run best interests of the United States. Let me illustrate with the issue of the extremely narrow defeat of the proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Leading Democrats charge that Congress can balance the budget any time there is the will to do it. They claim that whenever the Republicans present a concrete plan showing the cuts they propose to achieve a balanced budget, then the Democrats will negotiate with them to achieve a balanced budget. The Democrats know that the Republicans will not, probably cannot, do this. The president is still smarting over the way Republicans and Mountain State Democrats defeated his proposal to charge reasonable prices for logging, mining and grazing rights on federal forest land. Many liberal Democrats feared that if the amendment were adopted, Republicans might succeed in raiding Social Security funds so extensively that the system would be bankrupted when the baby boom generation retired. There are very good arguments against both of these extreme positions. A reasonable compromise would be an excellent solution but was not seriously considered by either side. Apparently many Republicans and Democrats alike feared that the amendment could force them to make very difficult decisions which might jeopardize retaining their positions in Congress. Right-wing Republicans favor policies which could easily result in a bigger gap between the rich and the poor and even larger deficits as happened between 1981 and 1994. Many liberal Democrats point out the serious potential risks of passage of the proposed amendment to balance federal budgets. But these are only potential. Failure to balance federal budgets without such an amendment appear almost certain and dreadful consequences of failure to pay as we go are virtually certain. Few people seem to realize how many shattering consequences are almost inevitable. Melvin Brooks is a retired Southern Illinois University at Carbondale professor.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, William Raspberry's column in the Washington Post and other newspapers around the Nation frequently gives us insights into our society and our policies that are important. Recently, he had a column under the title ``Get Off Cuba's Back'' that pointed out how ridiculous our current policy toward Cuba is. As I have said on the floor before, if Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union had a series of meetings to create an American policy that would make sure Castro would remain in power, they could not have devised a better policy than the one the United States has followed. We should forget our illusions about overthrowing Castro, and move in the direction of trying to influence him to ameliorate his policies. The William Raspberry column hits the nail on the head. I ask that the column be printed in the Record. The column follows: [From the Washington Post, Apr. 3, 1995] Get Off Cuba's Back (By William Raspberry) Why doesn't the United States get off Cuba's back? The question is meant literally, not rhetorically. In what way is it in the interest of the United States to cut Cuba off from the rest of the world, to wreck its economy and starve its people? When there was a Cold War, the reasons were understandable enough--even to those who disagreed with them. Cuba was on outpost of international communism and right in our back yard. Communist leaders, whether in the Soviet Union or in China, were eager to use Fidel Castro as an annoyance to the United States and as the means of spreading communism throughout the hemisphere. There were even times when the communist-expansion-by-proxy scheme seemed to be working, and it didn't make sense for us to sit idly by and let it happen. The alternate? Isolate Cuba from its neighbors, crush pro- communist revolutions wherever they occurred in the region, encourage the Cuban people to overthrow their despotic leader and serve notice to the communist world that it would be permitted no exploitable foothold 90 miles from our shores. That, as far as I can figure it, is how our opposition to Castro's Cuba became such an obsession. But that was then. This is now, and I cannot find any logical reason for continuing our Cold War attitude toward Cuba--or Castro. Certainly there is no threat that anyone else in Latin America will be tempted to follow Cuba's disastrous economic path. Cuba, no longer anyone's well- financed puppet, is hardly a military or political threat to destabilize its neighbors. And If anything is clear, it's that the Cubans (in Cuba) have no intention of overthrowing the aging Castro. But even if they did, so what? Absent the Cold War, why do we care that Castro continues to try to manage a communist state? Doesn't China, with whom we are panting to do more business? We're buddy-buddy with the Russians now--lending them money, supporting their leaders and again, doing business with them. Isn't there business to be done with Cuba? To this recently reformed cigar smoker, the answer is obvious. And not just Habanas, either. There's sugar and rum and tourism on their side and (prospectively) cars and machinery and other sales and service opportunities on ours. Isn't it likely that international trade and the concomitant exposure of Cuban citizens to the advantages of capitalism would do more to move Cuba away from communism than has a 30-year U.S.-led embargo of the island? Or can it be that we don't care whether Cuba abandons communism or not? Officially, of course, we do care. It is, ostensibly, what our policy is about. Members of Congress-- notably Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and much of the Florida delegation--justify their call for yet tougher sanctions against Cuba on the ground that the new measures will finally topple the regime. My fear is that the motivations are less philosophical--and significantly less noble--than that. Two things seem to be driving our anti-Castro policy: Cubans in Florida and sheer vengeance. Few politicians with aspirations for national leadership seem willing to take on the Miami-based Cubans who (like the followers of Chiang Kai-shek) see themselves as a sort of government-in-exile and dream of a triumphant return to their homeland. There being no significant pro-Castro lobby here, the hopeful antis carry the political day. Keeping these next-Christmas-in-Havana dreamers tractable is, I suspect, one reason for our policy. The other may be a sort of institutional rage that Castro has withstood an international missile confrontation, the Bay of Pigs, any number of unsuccessful CIA plots against him and the demise of international communism--and still sits there as a rebuke to our hegemony. Our officials keep hinting that Castro is ailing, or aging or losing his iron-fisted control. No need to think of economic concessions or diplomatic rethinking now. . . just hold out a few months longer, and watch him fall like a ripe plum. And, of course, use our political and economic power to shake the tree. But to what purpose of ours? Isn't it time to stop making our official hatred of one increasingly harmless old man the basis of our foreign policy? Why don't we get off Cuba's back?

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently, the Jerusalem Report had a fascinating story about a 15-year-old boy who narrowly missed being recruited for a suicide mission. It is an important story because of its insight into how people with the wrong motivation can cause such horrible and needless tragedy. This is a story that ended positively, and the young man, Musa Ziyada, hopes to become a physician. I hope he will, and I wish him the best. I ask that the Jerusalem Post story be printed in the Record at this point. The story follows: Heaven Can Wait Musa Ziyada arrives for our meeting late. The 15-year-old schoolboy had come home from classes and fallen asleep. Still rubbing his huge almond eyes and yawning occasionally, he finally shuffles into his father's office at 3 in the afternoon in the Rimal district of Gaza city and takes a seat across the table. It's a wonder he's here at all. On the fifteenth day of Ramadan (or February 14), the anniversary in the Muslim calendar of the 1994 Hebron massacre, Musa, an intelligent and earnest Hamas activist, was supposed to have strapped a belt of eight kilograms of TNT around his waste and entered Israel as a human bomb. By blowing himself up along with as many Israelis as he could manage, he was expecting to go directly to heaven; his victim, he says, would go to hell. He was stopped just days before his mission by his alert father and an uncle, who had grown suspicious and handed him over to the Palestinian police. ``In the mosque, they told me that martyrdom means paradise, and that the only way to paradise is through martyrdom,'' Musa explains. ``But I thank God that the suicide act didn't happen, because now I'm convinced it's wrong--both from a religious and personal point of view. Musa's smooth olive skin and the downy shadow over his upper lip give him a look of innocence that belies the nature of the lethal journey he almost took. Paradise, he says, is a place where he would find ``all the pleasures of life and more.'' A place with no death (``the last station''), full of palaces and gardens flowing with rivers of milk and delicious wine--with the alcohol taken out. ``They'' told him that as a martyr, he could gain entry to heaven for 70 relatives and friends, no questions asked. And that 70 virgin brides would await him there. ``Wine and women,'' interjects his father, Hisham, with a hearty laugh. ``That was it! Admit it!'' It's in the Koran. Musa retorts quietly, trying not to look embarrassed. ``They'' are two members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, men in their mid-30s who told Musa he was true martyr material and started to train him. ``They're just ordinary people,'' he says, giving the word `ordinary' a whole new meaning. ``Their main job is to persuade boys of our age to be suicide bombers.'' Asked whether he questioned why the two didn't go themselves, Musa replies: ``I didn't want to argue, just to be convinced.'' Musa was born in the Bureij refugee camp south of Gaza city in 1980, the fourth of nine children. His father, Hisham, a slim, European-looking man of 43 with blue-green eyes and a loud, ready laugh, hardly looks the part of a parent of a would-be suicide bomber. Sitting in the front office of his family firm, an aluminum window-frame workshop, he is sporting a red polo-neck, black silky jacket, jeans and tartan suspenders. Hisham can joke about the experience now, and never misses an opportunity to do so. His son solemnly explains that a suicide bomber who blew himself up in Jerusalem in December but who didn't manage to take any Israelis with him will still go to heaven, because his intentions were ``jihadi.'' But he'll only get 35 virgins, the father gaffaws. The Ziyadas are not a religious family, though Musa's mother and grandfather pray as many ordinary Muslims do. But from an early age, Musa was particularly attracted to Islam. At 10, he was a regular at the mosque and was considered something of a prodigy in Koran. By 12, he was a member of Hamas. ``Despite his youth, he was given the title of `emir,' or prince, because of his religious proficiency and knowledge of the Koran,'' Hisham relates, with a mixture of pride and bewilderment. ``Musa was trusted. Doctors and engineers used to flock to visit him in our home.'' Musa also loves soccer and played no the mosque team (``a Hamas team--no shorts,'' says Hisham). About eight months ago, the family left Bureij and moved to Gaza city's Darraj neighborhood, to be closer to the business. Musa was happy with the move and immediately joined the Izz al-Din al-Qassam mosque near his new home. He came with recommendations form the mosque at Bureij, and quickly became something of a local celebrity. When the bombs started exploding, killing dozens of Israelis from Afulah to Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street, Musa began to talk about martyrdom and heaven. ``He began to mention it more and more,'' says the father. ``When bombs went off, he'd say `Wow, I wish I was that martyr.''' He thought the suicide bombing at the Beit Lid junction in January, which killed 21 Israelis, was excellent. ``Still, we didn't think much of it,'' Hisham says. ``That's how some of the boys in the street talk.'' It was the winter vacation from school. Musa said he wanted to spend some time at Bureij with his friends and family that he'd left behind there. He was given permission, and after about 10 days, his father traveled down to check up on him. When he heard from Musa's aunt and sisters there that they had hardly seen him, he began to get suspicious. One of Hisham's brothers, Samir, is an intelligence officer in the Palestinian police. He was hearing from ``his boys'' in Bureij that Musa had been attending secret sessions in the mosque; he finally came to Hisham and told him he'd better watch his son. The father went to Bureij and made Musa come home. Musa, meanwhile, had attended two secret sessions with his Hamas operators. The first, he says, was to tell him he'd been chosen and to get his agreement. ``I wanted to be a martyr but I wasn't a volunteer,'' Musa says. ``They convinced me.'' The second session was to explain the outline of what he would have to do. ``I wasn't told the location of the attack, but I was told people would help me and be with me all the time, even inside Israel,'' Musa relates. The third session, for the final details, was set for the 13th of Ramadan. He had told his father that he absolutely had to go back to Bureij that day, to help with a Hamas food distribution. But by then, Hisham had made up his mind that Musa was in trouble, and took him to the police. ``I was scared,'' Musa recalls. ``The police were very nervous around me at the beginning and I was confused. I didn't know what to say.'' Before he could say much, his interrogators found on him a handwritten will that said it all. In it, Musa had asked forgiveness from his family and wrote that he'd see 70 of his relatives and friends in heaven. Musa spent the next week-and-a-half in custody, and was released a few days before the end of the Ramdan feast. At that point, Hamas spokespeople denied Musa's story, and said the police had tortured him into giving a false confession. Musa claims he was beaten by his interrogators (his father vehemently denies it), but says matter-of-factly that, truth aside, Hamas has to defend its interests. After months of admonishment from Israel that it has done little to stop Palestinian terrorism, the Palestinian Authority in Gaza is now making efforts, at least to improve its image and impart a sense of goodwill. Yasser Arafat has announced that his police have prevented at least 10 terror attacks recently; and Musa and two other teenage would-be suicide bombers who had changed their minds have been presented to the press in Gaza. The Israeli public has been outraged by the recent levels of Palestinian terrorism, and after the Beit Lid attack, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin predicated a resumption of the autonomy talks with the Palestinians on a serious attempt by Arafat to quell the phenomenon. Since then, the Palestinian Authority has announced the establishment of military courts and the Palestinian police have carried out a mini-crackdown on the radical Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for Beit Lid and which is an easier target than the more popular Hamas. The offices of the Islamic Jihad newspaper, Istiqlal, have been closed and several of the radical organization's leaders are in detention. The talks have resumed, but there is evidently still a way to go. Brig. Sa'eb al-Ajez, the National Security Forces commander of the northern Gaza Strip, can barely bring himself to accept any Palestinian responsibility for attacks that have taken place outside Gaza, and instead hints at an Israeli hand in the suicide bombings. ``One has to ask how come the bombs used in Dizengoff and Beit Lid were of such high technical quality, when all the ones we've found in Gaza are so crude,'' he tells The Jerusalem Report in an interview. ``How come someone carrying 20 kgs of explosives creates a blast with the force of 50 kgs?'' He goes on to relate that, according to the Palestinian police, the Beit Lid bombers set out from an area of the Gaza Strip under Israel's control, wearing Israeli army uniforms and driving an Israeli military vehicle. When told that his conspiracy theory would be considered shocking and ridiculous by most anyone, I'll leave it up to the reader to decide.'' But at the same time, he tells of the exchange of information taking place between Israelis and Palestinians on the military liaison committee, which he terms a success. And he himself has been taking part in joint anti-terror training at the sensitive Erez checkpoint and industrial zone at the Strip's northern border with Israel. The training isn't a formal part of the Oslo agreement. ``The need just arose,'' says Ajez. ``It's in our interest. We need to protect the Erez area, for the sake of our economy.'' What's more, Palestinians argue, they are better positioned to police the Gaza Strip than the Israelis could ever have been. ``We know our people,'' says Brig. Ajez. ``From the first glance we can tell things about them that the Israelis can't. The Palestinian police have only been in Gaza for a matter of months. In another five or six months,'' he declares, ``we'll control the whole area. We'll even know who is blinking and who is not.'' Says another police source, who works in the southern half of the Strip: ``Believe me, when we are on a case, we do a hundred times what the Israelis used to do. We arrest many more people, because we know who they are.'' Musa's father Hisham stresses his abhorrence of terrorism. ``I want you to explain in your magazine that we are completely against these attacks and are doing our best to stop them.'' But asked whether he'd have turned Musa in to the Israelis had they still been in control of Gaza, he replies, ``Of course not, I'd have been a collaborator! I'd just have kept him at home myself. But many people support the Palestinian Authority, like me, and will help for no money.'' Musa has now been persuaded by his father, and an Islamic authority he went to for a second opinion, that it is un- Islamic to appoint the time of one's own death. Musa says he still wants to be a martyr, preferably dying for the cause, ``but not in a suicide attack.'' He expresses no remorse about the fact that he planned to kill as many Israeli bystanders as possible in the process, and says he still supports Hamas's religious and political program. Despite having been saved from the jaws of death, he says he is not angry at Hamas, ``but I may argue with them now.'' At times a little sheepish in front of his father, he comes across as little more than a teen rebel, if a potentially murderous one. He's not too religious to shake a woman's hand, and when an electronic pager goes off in the room, he asks if it's a Gameboy. When he grows up, Musa says, he wants to be a doctor. ``To heal people?'' this reporter asks, incredulous after hearing the tale of heaven and hell, of eternal life, death and destruction, ``Yes,'' Musa replies quietly, ``to heal people.''

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently, Lorna Hahn had an op-ed piece in the Washington Post titled, ``Kowtow: The State Department's Bow to Beijing.'' What she says there makes eminent sense. I cannot understand our continuing to give a cold shoulder to President Lee of Taiwan. I trust our Government will make its decision known soon that it will do the responsible thing and let President Lee come to our country. He is a freely elected president of a multiparty country with a free press. We should not give him the cold shoulder because another nation without these human rights objects. I ask that the Lorna Hahn item be printed in the Record at this point. The item follows: Kowtow--The State Department's Bow to Beijing. (By Lorna Hahn) Lee Teng-hui, president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, wishes to accept an honorary degree from Cornell University, where he earned his PhD in agronomy. Last year, when Cornell made the same offer, Lee was refused entry into the United States because Beijing belligerently reminded the State Department that granting a visa to a Taiwanese leader would violate the principle of ``One China.'' (Cornell subsequently sent an emissary to Taipei for a substitute ceremony.) This year, on Feb. 9, Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord told a congressional hearing that our government ``will not reverse the policies of six administrations of both parties.'' It is high time it did. The old policy was adopted at a time when China and Taiwan were enemies, Taiwan's government claimed to represent all of China, and Beijing's leaders would never dream of meeting cordially with their counterparts from Taipei. Today, things are very different. Upon assuming office in 1988, Lee dropped all pretense of ever reconquering the mainland and granted that the Communists do indeed control it. Since then, he has eased tensions and promoted cooperation with the People's Republic of China through the Lee Doctrine, the pragmatic, flexible approach through which he (1) acts independently without declaring independence, which would provoke Chinese wrath and perhaps an invasion; (2) openly recognizes the PRC government and its achievements and asks that it reciprocate, and (3) seeks to expand Taiwan's role in the world while assuring Beijing that he is doing so as a fellow Chinese who has their interests at heart as well. Lee claims to share Beijing's dream of eventual reunification--provided it is within a democratic, free- market system. Meanwhile, he wants the PRC--and the world--to accept the obvious fact that China has since 1949 been a divided country, like Korea, and that Beijing has never governed or represented Taiwan's people. Both governments, he believes, should be represented abroad while forging ties that could lead to unity. To this end he has fostered massive investments in the mainland, promoted extensive and frequent business, cultural, educational and other exchanges, and offered to meet personally with PRC President Jiang Zemin to discuss further cooperation. His policies are so well appreciated in Beijing--which fears the growing strength of Taiwan's pro- independence movement--that Jiang recently delivered a highly conciliatory speech to the Taiwanese people in which he suggested that their leaders exchange visits. If China's leaders are willing to welcome Taiwan's president to Beijing, why did their foreign ministry, on March 9, once again warn that ``we are opposed to Lee Teng- hui visiting the United States in any form''? Because Beijing considers the ``Taiwan question'' to be an ``internal affair'' in which, it claims, the United States would be meddling if it granted Lee a visa. But Lee does not wish to come here in order to discuss the ``Taiwan question'' or other political matters, and he does not seek to meet with any American officials. He simply wishes to accept an honor from a private American institution, and perhaps discuss with fellow Cornell alumni the factors that have contributed to Taiwan's--and China's-- outstanding economic success. President Clinton has yet to make the final decision regarding Lee's visit. As Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.) recently stated: ``It seems to me illogical not to allow President Lee on a private basis to go back to his alma mater.'' As his colleague Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) added: ``It is embarrassing for many of us to think that, after encouraging the people and government on Taiwan to democratize, which they have, [we forbid President Lee] to return to the United States * * * to receive an honorary degree.''

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I am introducing an amendment for myself and my colleagues from Illinois and Missouri. Quite simply it restores $700,000 to the land acquisition account of the National Park Service for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. One hundred acres on the riverbank of the Mississippi River in East St. Louis, IL was designated in 1992 as a National Park. Included in the authorization was $2 million allocation for land acquisition. This $700,000 is well within that allocation. The park is designed to be an extension of the Arch Park in St. Louis, MO. It enjoys the bipartisan support of Governors and delegations in both Illinois and Missouri and for a good reason. Similar to the resources and effort that went into revitalizing the riverfront in St. Louis, investors on both sides of the river have and will continue considerable private sector donations towards development of the park. Those important investment by the private sector are jeopardized if the Federal Government backs out of its commitment to share in the development of the park. A great deal is at stake in the development of the park. It's influence in the years ahead on the economy of East St. Louis could be significant. For that reason my colleagues and I share a commitment to this project and its success.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the Equal Surety Bond Opportunity Act of 1995. This bill is designed to further equal opportunity for surety bond applicants and to equip bond applicants-- particularly small business applicants--with information to help them to strengthen their businesses. Construction firms must have surety bonds to bid on all Federal projects in excess of $25,000 and all federally assisted projects in excess of $100,000. In fact, bonding is now required for most State and local government construction projects and an increasing number of private construction projects. Clearly, access to surety bonding is essential to the livelihood of the majority of construction companies. Surety bonds ensure that a contractor is capable of completing the specified work and has the financial ability to pay its bills on time. If the bonded contractor fails to complete the project, the surety firm steps in to fulfill the contract. Furthermore, surety firms minimize their own risk by determining, before they issue a bond, whether the applicant is capable of completing the particular project in question. The principal source of bonds--for-profit corporate surety firms--use undisclosed underwriting standards to make this determination. Essentially, they assess an applicant's three C's--cash, capacity to do work, and character. But the personal character of a contractor may be evaluated in a very subjective manner, which can result in discrimination. Although classified as a type of insurance, these bonds are really more like a line of credit. If a surety firm has to step in to fulfill the bonded company's obligation under a contract, it expects to be reimbursed. Unfortunately, as with other types of lines of credit such as mortgage financing, women and minority contractors face serious problems in obtaining surety bonds. Several studies of mortgage lending rates in Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington, DC have revealed a significant race-related mortgage lending gap even after adjusting the data for legitimate business concerns. These studies were based in part on data that banks and other lending institutions are required to report to the Federal Government. Federal law does not require surety firms to report any similar data for applications received or granted. I sponsored and held hearings on the Equal Surety Bond Opportunity Act in the 102d Congress. Witnesses at that hearing included representatives of the Women Construction Owners and Executives and the National Association of Minority Contractors who testified in support of the bill. According to these witnesses, bond applicants have been rejected simply for being a woman, or being a minority. Clearly, these are unacceptable reasons for rejecting a bond applicant. The American Subcontractors Association also presented testimony at that hearing. They agreed that women and minority-owned construction companies face special problems in getting bonds, as do many small and emerging construction firms. They noted, however, that all of these companies would benefit if surety companies were required to give an explanation for rejecting a bond application. This would allow them to take corrective action for future applications. By law, the U.S. Treasury Department maintains a list of federally approved surety firms authorized to issue bonds on Federal projects. My bill, which is modeled after the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, would make it unlawful for a Treasury-approved surety to discriminate against applicants based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age. Simply put, the bill makes it clear that the three C's cannot be determined by reference to an applicant's race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or marital status. The bill would also require Treasury-approved firms to provide denied applicants, upon request, full written disclosure of the reasons for their denial. A written explanation will give all construction firms the opportunity to take appropriate corrective action--an opportunity now available to all prospective Federal small business contractors when denied by an agency contracting officer. The written explanation would also help curb denials of bonding based on nonlegitimate reasons. Again, the legislation will benefit all construction firms. It does not dictate underwriting standards for the surety industry. It does not require sureties to report data on applications received or bonds written. Nor does it inflict onerous regulations on the industry. But it will give businesses the information they need to improve their businesses. Moreover, the bill will ensure that surety firms comply with the same nondiscrimination laws that apply to banks and other lending institutions. If a surety firm is in compliance with these laws, it has nothing to fear from this legislation. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support this very simple, but important legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of my bill be included in the Record.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill calling for an 8 cents a gallon tax increase on gasoline and diesel fuel. Revenue gained from this tax would be used for mass transit, AMTRAK, and interstate, State, and local roads and bridges. As the administration and the Congress consider proposals to downsize the Federal Government and increase the responsibilities of State governments, returning some Federal taxes to States and cities would be a very sensible step. and surface transportation investment. And returning revenue to State and local governments for infrastructure and capital improvement projects would help State and local governments, promote job creation and improve the Nation's economic well-being in general. This motor fuel tax increase would go a long way toward meeting this goal. An increase in public investment is long overdue, Mr. President. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I am pleased to speak on the Daschle amendment. Let me just comment briefly on the observations of my friend from the State of Oregon. It is true that the volume of Senator Kennedy's remarks does not necessarily mean that there is virtue to his remarks, but in this case I believe there is virtue in his remarks. And because my colleague from Oregon speaks in a calm, less passionate voice does not mean necessarily that there is virtue to everything he had to say, some of which I agree with, some of which I do not. That we should provide tax breaks for the self-employed in their health insurance we agree completely. When my colleague from Oregon says that this particular tax break is designed so that we have equal protection for everyone, the poor and the rich alike, it is true that if you are either poor or you are a millionaire and you move to the Caribbean and you renounce your American citizenship, you can get this tax break. But there are not going to be very many poor people who are going to take advantage of that. This is designed for those who are more fortunate economically. When my friend argues that all we have to do in the future to achieve a balanced budget is to restrain spending, he is correct. If you assume and we were to pass, we were to pick up one more vote for a balanced budget amendment, if we had no cuts in interest rates--and every projection, CBO, Data Resources, all of them say we will have reduction in interest rates--if we were to have no changes in Social Security, we could increase spending 1.7 percent a year between now and the year 2002 and achieve a balanced budget. So that argument by Senator Packwood is absolutely correct. I serve on the Budget Committee. I want us to use not what we call euphemistically the current services budget but where we are now. That is how a family does it, as Senator Packwood says correctly. But the Senator from Oregon is incorrect when he said these are not cuts. What he said, if he were making a speech on the 1996 budget, would be accurate. In the rescission, what we are saying to groups is we are giving you the money. Indian housing, we have told them we have appropriated X-number of dollars--I do not know the amount--for desperately needed housing on Indian reservations, and now we are coming along saying we are taking you look through this. To AmeriCorps, Senator Daschle will restore $210 million, overwhelmingly supported by the American public; 90 percent support the idea. The Los Angeles Times showed 60 percent of the people who call themselves conservative support the idea. Republican Governors. Montana's Governor says: While balancing the budget, fighting mandates, and streamlining government, I am committed to this community service program for Montana. Michigan's Governor: AmeriCorps captures the promise found in all its citizens, young and old, who see problems in their communities and work together to solve them. Massachusetts' Governor: Governors of both parties have shared my enthusiasm for national service. Title 1 helps poorer people, the disadvantaged. The reality is we do not do a very good job in the field of education in disadvantaged communities. I am not saying all education in disadvantaged communities is terrible, but it needs a lift. It is very interesting that Sweden, which does not have the income disparities we have in the United States, spends two to three times as much for education in the disadvantaged areas as in the more affluent areas. We do the opposite. I was on a call-in program this morning with station WILL in Champaign, IL, and a faculty member of the University of Illinois got on the phone and he interpreted my remarks as being negative about American education. But he made this significant observation. He said some of the finest students we have come from the Chicago suburbs. The Chicago suburbs. Not the city of Chicago, where the need is so great, where, frankly, we are not spending the money. If there is any question about the value of title I since it was enacted, the gap between black and white students has narrowed significantly. For 9- year-olds, the gap in achievement test scores has closed by 18 percent in math and 25 percent in reading. This program works. And this is a program we are going to cut back on if we do not adopt the Daschle amendment. The dropout rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has declined significantly for all students, from 17 percent in 1967 to 11 percent in 1993. The decline in the dropout rate has been even more dramatic for African-American students, going from 28.6 percent in 1967 to 13.6 percent in 1993: even with the present appropriation that this rescission would cut back without the Daschle amendment, 13 percent of high-poverty schools will receive no funds at all. In the city of Chicago, the Chicago school district, you have to achieve 56 percent of poverty in your school before you receive any help. Clearly, a needed program. Goals 2000. We hear a lot of talk around here how we are going to help the States. Goals 2000 says to the States you set your standards, you establish the program, and we will provide some assistance. We cut back on that. Safe and drug-free schools. Cut back $100 million out of $472 million appropriated. We are going to solve the problem of crime not just by building more prisons but by drug treatment programs, drug prevention programs, education programs--very much needed. Head Start. Every study shows Head Start pays off in this country. And just about every Head Start program has a waiting list of young people to get into the Head Start program. I visited the Head Start program in Rock Island, IL, where, like every Head Start program, they have a waiting list. In Rock Island, IL, on Monday morning, one group of children come in; Tuesday morning, a second group comes in; Wednesday morning, a third group, and so forth. I asked the woman in charge: What would it mean if you could have the same children in here not just 1 day a week but all week? She smiled and said, ``You can't believe the difference it would make in their lives.'' We save money by not funding Head Start so that all young people who need the help can get into it, but it is extremely shortsighted. The WIC Program; every study shows it pays off tremendously. That is the health program for women, infants, and children. School-to-work. I heard Gov. Tommy Thompson from Wisconsin--and, as the Presiding Officer knows, he is a good Republican Governor--I heard him praise what we did in school-to-work. We are spending a huge amount of our education dollar for those young people who go on and get a bachelors degree, but 75 percent of our students do not do that. School-to-work is designed for everyone, but particularly for those who are not going to go on to get that bachelor's degree. There was $30 million cut out of that. Year-round youth training, under the JTPA Program, cut $100 million. With the kind of youth unemployment that we have, I do not think it makes sense. Immigrant education. I hear a lot of speeches that we ought to make English the official language around here. I do not know what it would mean, incidentally. Would that mean you cannot get a translation if you are in court if you speak Chinese or Spanish or some other language? But it is interesting that when we come up for immigrant education to have classes so that people can learn the English language--and that is really the way you make English the official language, let people learn the language, and we ought to do that--we are cutting $8.8 million out of that. I believe that the amendment by Senator Daschle is a sound amendment. I agree with Senator Packwood and I agree with our Presiding Officer that we need a balanced budget amendment and that we ought to start from a zero base and not a current services budget. My hope is, and my belief is, that Senator Domenici is going to do that with the Budget Committee this year. But, I think it is a mistake to cut back, particularly in this area of education. I note on the floor the presence of the Senator from Vermont, who has been rightfully telling us for some time we ought to be spending a higher percentage of our budget on education. It is very interesting, as interest has grown because of the deficit, we have spent less and less on education. In fiscal year 1949, believe it or not, 9 percent of the Federal budget went for education. Today, 2 percent of our budget goes for education. We will spend 11 times as much this year on the gross interest expenditure as we will spend on education. Mr. President, I hope we will adopt the Daschle amendment. This should not be a partisan matter. I think it makes sense. I hope we will do the right thing for the future of our country and vote for it. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, after I announced I would not seek reelection to the Senate, President Clinton called me and suggested that periodically I should make comments about issues, on the assumption that someone who will not again be a candidate for public office could speak without having the onus of public gain associated with the remarks. This is the second in a series of observations in response to the President's suggestion. We have heard a great deal about family values during the recent political season. There are few Americans who do not recognize the virtues of family values and treasure them. However, in no other nation do political leaders talk as much about family values as in our country, and in no other Western industrialized nation is there anywhere close to the 23 percent of children living in poverty that we have. Political leaders talk more about family values than act upon them. Assuming that we are serious in our concerns about family values, we should ask ourselves what that implies in policy. There are some obvious answers. We will be concerned about one another in a family. Violence will not be part of that family life. Each person will try to live responsibly and help others in the family when there are needs, great or small. A slight bit of reflection will cause people to recognize, if we follow the finest ethical standards and if we show love and concern for everyone in our household, but ignore the problems of our neighbors, we will not be protecting our family. We will have failed in our attempt to project family values. If the neighborhood in which we live deteriorates, our family is in jeopardy because of problems of crime, or simply because of a loss of economic value to our home. If an unpleasant atmosphere where we live replaces a pleasant atmosphere, fear will be the unseen companion, as our family members walk the streets of such a neighborhood. Anyone who professes family values but ignores the neighborhood is betraying the very values he or she professes. What is true of homes immediately adjacent to that family is also true of homes 6 blocks away. While the threats of crime and economic deterioration are less pressing than to a home next door, the threats are, nevertheless, real. We recognize that family values are not a set of virtues to be practiced in isolation. On further reflection, we recognize that what is true of immediate neighbors and those who live 1 mile away is true for those at greater distances. Ultimately, people in the Chicago suburbs who wish to practice family values must understand that they have a stake in what happens on the west side of Chicago. People in New York sense that they have a responsibility to themselves to help victims of a flood in California. ``One Nation, under God, indivisible,'' is more than a phrase. To the extent that we create that as a reality, we protect our families. To the extent that we permit the artificial barriers of race or geography or sex or religion or ethnic background to diminish our concern for one another, we diminish the quality of life for our families--all of them. Concern for others cannot stop at the borders of our Nation if we are to protect our families; 650,000 American homes have experienced grief because of a loss of a family member in military contests with other nations. We have slowly learned that we cannot protect our families when we ignore the threats to nations beyond our borders. If I were speaking a decade ago, I would have said that the great external threat to the families of our Nation is nuclear annihilation; the United States and the Soviet Union have thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at each other. If that spark had been ignited in some way, civilization, as we know it, would have died. Today, the great threat to our security is instability in trouble spots around the world. As the only superpower left in the world, we will either provide leadership or there will be deterioration within nations and between nations. Few thoughtful people in this country or any other would deny that the United States should lead. But there are sizable numbers of observers of the international scene who believe this Nation is too often squandering its opportunity for significant leadership. Ultimately, the United States, along with the rest of the world, will suffer because of that. I say that with the knowledge that both political parties in this Nation must do better. President Clinton faced the huge task of moving from Governor of Arkansas to suddenly becoming the most influential person in the world in foreign policy. It is not an easy transition. In March of 1994, he did a better job than in March 1993. This year, he is doing a better job than last year. A year from now, he will do a better job than he is doing today. That is encouraging. He is a giant on the international scene by reason of his position. But he is hampered in his effectiveness by limited background and also by the reality that his two key players in international affairs, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, are capable and knowledgeable but both are, by nature, cautious. The net result from the executive branch is leadership that is generally solid but sometimes not as bold as it might be. The greater deficiency is with the legislative branch. We too often micromanage. I have been guilty of this myself. A much worse offense is that we pander to public opinion and reduce this Nation's ability to lead more effectively. A public opinion poll suggests foreign aid is unpopular; we cut foreign aid, even when it hurts our long-term interests. If there is a surge of public opinion suggesting that we avoid sharing risk for peace with other nations, we follow the surge of public opinion rather than national and international need. When we discover that speeches calling for reductions in what we pay to the United Nations bring applause, we pander to the applause and become the world's No. 1 deadbeat. What should the United States be doing? Let me suggest three points: No. 1, as a people, we must broaden our understanding of other nations and other cultures. The provincialism of Congress mirrors our people. A family cannot be said to truly have family values if they do not understand one another. That is true within our Nation, where we have far to little understanding between urban and suburban and rural populations and far too little understanding across the barriers of race, religion, sex, and ethnic background. But it is true beyond the borders of our Nation. The family of humanity needs to understand the hopes and fears, the dreams and problems of those who live in other nations. As we learn, we will be willing to share more than our experiences. But basic knowledge is vital, whether within a single family, a community, a nation, or in the community of nations. Our knowledge is lacking. That is why the Peace Corps is more important than what our volunteers do for other nations; we gain a sensitivity to other cultures, a major asset to the nation. Colleges and universities can do much more to broaden the understanding of students. Can someone really be considered educated if, upon graduation as an engineer or physician or teacher or journalist or accountant or architect, he or she does not have the most minimal understanding of the rest of the world? We understandably lament the failure of too many graduates having even a cursory understanding of the religious heritage of the United States, but can people who do not have some appreciation of the beliefs of Moslems and Buddhists be expected to deal effectively with other nations? for 2 years, Dana College in Nebraska, is seriously considering a program to offer its students assistance which would permit any student, regardless of family income, to study or travel abroad. The theory is that the students would not only enlarge their personal horizons, but when they return to this small campus, they could stimulate others. Dana College has only 600 students, but they come from 27 States and 14 nations. I hope the college can raise the money to do this, and lead other colleges and universities around the nation to do the same. Our language provincialism reflects our cultural provincialism. In almost every nation in the world--if not all of them--all elementary students study a foreign language. In the United States, only a tiny fraction do. We are the only nation in which you can go through grade school, high school, college, and get a Ph.D., and never have a year of a foreign language. We are also the only nation in which, if we study French or German or some other language for 2 years, we will say, ``I have studied German.'' Or, ``I have studied French.'' It is uninformed provincialism that leads Members of Congress to call for laws prohibiting military leaders of any other nation from commanding our troops in a U.N. operation. Ever since George Washington had French leadership for some of our rebels, we have worked with other nationals. Would there be anything un-American about having a NATO commander who is Canadian or Italian or from some other NATO nation? Will we agree to take part in a U.N. operation only if we're promised a leadership role proportionately much greater than the resources we have committed? Responsible patriotic fervor can sometimes be converted into irresponsible nonsense cloaked in ``patriotism.'' The media of our Nation should do more to inform us, but faced with budget problems, major newspapers, wire services and networks have reduced their overseas personnel. When critics rightfully note that the U.S. budget and policy do not reflect the tremendous changes that have occurred in the rest of the world, particularly our military budget, part of the reason is that even the people who do not get their news primarily from television bites receive too little information about other nations, unless there is a crisis. The lack of public understanding of the dramatic changes in the world makes it more difficult for leaders in the administration and Congress to alter foreign policy. That democracy is spreading in Africa and much of the rest of the world is known by only a tiny fraction of the American people who can tell us lurid details of the O.J. Simpson trial. Editors who rightfully criticize Members of Congress for pandering to public whims defend their obsession and excessive attention to the Simpson trial by telling us, ``We're giving the public what it wants.'' That is an irresponsible answer for politicians and an irresponsible answer for the media. Commenting on foreign aid, Michael Kinsley wrote recently in the New Yorker: Americans are scandalously ignorant * * *. All over the country--at dinner tables in focus groups, on call-in radio shows and * * * occasionally on the floor of Congress-- citizens are expressing outrage about how much we spend on foreign aid, without having the faintest idea of what the amount is. This is not * * * a question of being misinformed. No one--not even Rush Limbaugh--is out there spreading the falsehood that we spend 15 percent of the Federal budget on foreign aid. People are forming and expressing passionate views about foreign aid on the basis of no information at all. If we expect the legislative and executive branches of our Government to build a responsible course of leadership on a base of public ignorance, we ask for far more than we are likely to receive. My second point: We should be providing more foreign aid, not less. In probably two out of three of my town meetings people ask: ``Why don't we cut back on foreign aid, and spend the money on our own needs?'' They, of course, have no idea that through our aid programs more than 3 million lives are saved each year through immunization programs; that as we help the other countries survive economically, they frequently become our customers, then lift our standard of living; that much of what we call foreign aid is spent for food and equipment in the United States. We cannot reverse illiteracy or set up a program to educate people on family planning with a military budget; this takes foreign aid. When the political parties of democracies in Asia held a conference recently, they closed their meeting by singing, ``We Shall Overcome,'' an expression more of hope than confidence, because democracies in many parts of the world are frail. A little help from the United States as the world's leading democracy means much to them, both for the concrete help and in symbolic terms. When I ask people at town meetings--and I am sure my colleagues from New Hampshire and Michigan have this same experience--what percentage of our budget goes for foreign aid, usually the guess is somewhere between 15 percent and 25 percent. They are startled with I tell them it is less than 1 percent. A University of Maryland poll found the same answer. But, then, the University of Maryland asked how much would be ``appropriate'' and the answer: 5 percent. When asked how much would be ``too little,'' they answered 3 percent--more than three times what we actually spend. If military aid is subtracted from our foreign assistance, less than one-half of 1 percent of our budget goes for foreign aid, to economic assistance. Because of the huge and growing U.S. debt, this year our gross interest spending will be 22 times the amount we pay for foreign aid. Even more startling, because so many U.S. bonds are now held by the economically fortunate beyond our borders, we will spend more than twice as much on interest to them as we do on foreign aid that is designed in large measure for helping poor people. We appropriate less of our national income for foreign aid than any Western European country or Japan. At one point under the Marshall plan, we spent 2.9 percent of our national income helping the poor beyond our borders. And how properly proud we are of it. Today we spend less than one-sixth of 1 percent of our national income on foreign economic assistance. Yet most Americans believe we are the most generous of the wealthier nations. In the Marshall plan years our national income--in inflation-adjusted terms-- was approximately 40 percent of our present income. As our income has risen, our response to poor people has diminished. But something else is significant about the Marshall plan, which rescued Western Europe from communism. When General Marshall announced it at a Harvard commencement, and President Truman followed with more details, the first Gallup Poll showed only 14 percent of the American people supported it. We had a Democratic President who did not consult with pollsters before he called on the American people, and he had to deal with a Republican Congress. Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican leader from Michigan, did not first ask what the Marshall plan might do to his party's political fortunes or how he might use it against the President. A Democratic President and a Republican Congress did the unpopular, what was right, and served this Nation and the world well. The lessons to be drawn are obvious. President Ronald Reagan suggested that we should devote 1 percent of the Nation's income to helping the poor beyond our borders, appreciably less than we did under the Marshall plan. We have not come close to the Reagan standard. Only Denmark and Norway meet this not-so-high standard. Among other nations that assist more than we do are Sweden, Netherlands, France, Finland, Canada, Belgium, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Great Britain, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Japan, New Zealand, and Ireland. Canada does three times better than we do. While we lag behind other nations on economic assistance, we spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Looking at our budget, you would hardly guess that the Berlin Wall fell. If we were to reduce our defense expenditures by one-half--which I do not advocate--we would still have, by far, the largest expenditure on compounding that problem by pushing many nations to buy arms from our weapons producers, arms that too often destabilize an area rather than stabilize it. The United States defense budget suggests that the great threat to the world is a Soviet-type attack. The reality is, the great threat is instability. While nations struggle to build democracy, we build more B-2 bombers instead of assisting democracy. Purchasing the B-2 bombers helps the manufacturer, but they are designed for yesterday's defense needs. They were useless in Desert Storm and Haiti. While we blunder ahead with billions on useless bombers, shaky democracies receive our cold shoulder. ``We can't afford to help,'' we tell them. While the swing to democracy around the world has been dramatic, it is not irreversible. Some democracies are likely to fail because of U.S. inattention and paltry financial backing. Our weak performance in assisting democracies has been compounded by our failure to pass the balanced budget amendment. Instead of lessening U.S. government borrowing and reducing interest rates around the world, we have chosen the high-interest-rate course. That causes higher debt service costs for desperately poor people. The executive director of the International Monetary Fund once told me that facing our U.S. fiscal problems is more important to the developing world than our foreign aid. Yes, we in the United States pay higher interest rates because of our fiscal folly, but so do many nations who can afford the high interest rates less than we can, and they have not caused our national debt. The developing nations now owe $1.4 trillion. If U.S. imprudence forces interest rates up 1 percent, that potentially costs these poor nations $14 billion. If we exercise fiscal prudence and international interest drops 1 percent, that potentially saves them $14 billion, far more than our economic assistance. In a family in which one person becomes very wealthy, and others in the family are extremely poor, some suffering from malnutrition, they will not continue to be a cohesive family if the wealthy member of the family simply ignores the problems of the poorest. A family member who makes no attempt to understand the problems of the poorest in the family will be regarded by the other family members as arrogant and callous, and when that family member faces problems--which all family members eventually do--the other members of the family are not likely to come to his or her rescue. It takes no great imagination to see where the United States fits into that picture. We should play a stronger role in U.N. peacekeeping and peacemaking. I am impressed by the leadership of Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali. But he has an impossible job if the United States does not play a strong supporting role. That means paying our dues. That means contributing more than dollars to U.N. peacekeeping efforts. The latest U.N. report of March 6 of this year shows the following troop contributions to U.N. peacekeeping operations: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Country Strength ------------------------------------------------------------------------ France........................................... 5,093 United Kingdom................................... 3,860 Jordan........................................... 3,698 Pakistan......................................... 3,102 Canada........................................... 2,629 Bangladesh....................................... 2,208 Poland........................................... 2,181 Netherlands...................................... 1,823 Norway........................................... 1,775 Ghana............................................ 1,730 Malaysia......................................... 1,677 Nepal............................................ 1,607 Turkey........................................... 1,488 Russian Federation............................... 1,487 Spain............................................ 1,452 Denmark.......................................... 1,368 Argentina........................................ 1,360 Sweden........................................... 1,316 Ukraine.......................................... 1,208 U.S.A............................................ 1,139 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nepal, with a population of less than one-tenth of ours, is contributing 41 percent more troops than the United States. Jordan, with a population of 3.2 million--less than 2 percent of our population--is contributing more than three times as many troops as the United States. There are 16 U.N. peacekeeping operations underway at this point, and we are contributing troops to 6. But it is more than the deficiency in the contributions of numbers. Somalia illustrates the problem. Contrary to the present public image, the Somalia action was one of George Bush's finest moments and something for which the United States should be proud. Our actions saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I was in Somalia with Senator Howard Metzenbaum early in November 1992. I have never seen anything like it, and I hope never to see anything like it again. We returned to the United States on a Sunday night and, the next morning, called the U.N. Secretary General. Fourteen weeks earlier, the U.N. Security Council had authorized 3,500 troops to go to Somalia to help in the desperate situation there. Weeks later, 500 Pakistani soldiers finally arrived and were forced to hole up at the airport at Mogadishu, the capital city. I told Boutrous-Ghali that he should get the additional 3,000 troops there immediately and that Somalia needed an additional 10,000 troops, a figure based only on instinct. He told us he would send the additional 3,000 troops by ship. When I responded vigorously that untold lives would be lost if the troops did not arrive by plane, he noted, ``Your government charges me very high rates to move troops by plane.'' I asked him if we could use the cost of flights to apply to our past-due bills at the United Nations, and he quickly said yes. I called Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger and gave him the background, asking him to call the Secretary General immediately. I also asked the Secretary of State to discuss the matter with the President, explaining that I would call the President directly, but he was in Connecticut that day for the funeral of his mother. The next day, President Bush asked the Secretary of State to fly to New York to discuss the matter with the Secretary General. Then, President Bush--to his great credit--moved quickly and, that Thursday, announced that the United States would lead U.N. efforts in Somalia. In a few days, troops, food, and medical supplies were in Somalia. How many lives could have been saved if the United Nations had been able to respond more quickly? Thousands. But no one will ever know the precise number. Another example: When serious trouble between the Hutus and Tutsis started in Rwanda, Senator James Jeffords and I got on the phone to the Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire in charge of a small contingent of U.N. troops in the capital city of Kigali. One of the amazing things about our technological age is that you can call from Washington, DC, to a ravaged city in Africa and reach someone by phone. That was on May 12, 1993. He told us that if he received 5,000 to 8,000 troops immediately, he could stop the bloodshed in Rwanda. Senator Jeffords and I immediately dispatched a message to the White House, and to other officials, urging quick action. On October 5, 1993--almost 5 months later--the U.N. Security Council authorized action. With unbelievable brutality exploding in Rwanda, nothing happened to stop it for a seemingly endless period of time. To their credit, the French sent 2,000 troops, and later, the United States and other nations sent smaller numbers to protect camps and airports on the periphery of Rwanda, primarily in Zaire. How many lives could have been saved if the United Nations had been able to respond more quickly? Thousands. But no one will ever know the precise number. Lesson No. 1 to be learned: The United States and other nations must equip the United Nations to respond quickly to this type of emergency. I introduced in the last Congress, and will reintroduce in this Congress, a proposal calling for 3,000 volunteers among U.S. service personnel who would be paid slightly more than other U.S. troops, who would be ready on 24-hour notice to go to any place in the world called for by the Security Council and approved by the President of the United States. We should call upon Germany, Great Britain, France, Japan, and other nations to do the same, and smaller nations to have a smaller contingent of troops available on similar, quick notice. Senator Jeffords will cosponsor the legislation. Today, after the Security Council acts, the Secretary General gets on the phone and begs nations for help. It is a time-consuming process when time quickly, we can prevent future disasters in places like Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. There is a second lesson to be learned. If the United States is to play a responsible role of leadership in the community of nations, some risks must be taken, and when there are regrettable casualties within our Armed Forces, we must stay our course. Those who enlist for service in the Chicago Police Department know they will be performing a public service, but they also know they will be taking a risk. If some drug smugglers or gang leaders in a neighborhood kill two policemen, the mayor of Chicago will not announce that that area of the city will no longer have police protection because of the casualties. Somalia illustrates our problem. Mistakes were made, primarily by a U.S. military man put in charge of part of a U.N. mission for which he had little background. He looked for military answers to problems rather than the diplomatic answers that Ambassador Robert Oakley had adeptly been fashioning. But when a U.S. serviceman's body was dragged through the streets by teenage thugs, when that man went to Somalia on a humanitarian mission, the American people were appalled, and there were cries in Congress to pull out all our troops immediately. At that point, we had a new President inexperienced in international relations facing a volatile Congress. Some calming words of explanation to the American people would have been appropriate, explaining that if local terrorists can cause a few American casualties, and we flee the scene, the example will not go unnoticed by others around the world wherever American troops are stationed. The reality is that fewer American service personnel were killed in Somalia than cabdrivers were killed in New York City that year. That does not make any of the deaths less tragic. But those who enter the Armed Forces must understand that, like the Chicago Police enlistees, they are taking additional risks. And the American people must understand this. We are in the budget season, discussing whether or not to appropriate money for certain fancy weapons systems. What other nations question is not the technical proficiency of our weapons but our backbone. And the question is being asked, not about those who serve in the Armed Forces, but about the administration, Congress and the American people. Others look at the weakness of both the Bush and Clinton administrations in Bosnia and they wonder. A few terrorists frighten us out of Somalia, and they wonder about our professed resolve elsewhere. When several Members of Congress issued calls to get us out of Somalia, the administration first called a meeting of all Members of both Houses at which Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin spoke. The meeting was a disaster. Such a large meeting on a volatile subject should never be called; the noisemakers take over. Then the White House called a smaller meeting with about 20 of us from Congress with all the key administration people present, including the President. The lengthy meeting, held on October 7, 1993, resulted in a compromise that all U.S. troops would be pulled out by March 31. I was not happy with this, but I agreed to the compromise because it was considerably better than an immediate pull-out. A few days after the White House meeting, President Mubarak of Egypt visited the United States, and I went to Blair House to pay a courtesy call on him. Just before I got there, an administration official asked me to urge President Mubarak to keep his Egyptian troops in Somalia after March 31. Without quoting President Mubarak directly, it is not violating any confidence to say that the request to have his nation, with its meager resources, stay in Somalia while the wealthy and powerful United States of America wanted to quietly back out, did not impress him. We must be careful in using our human and military resources, but when we make the decision to use them--preferably in concert with other nations--we should use those resources with firmness and a reliability that other nations, friendly or unfriendly, sense. Since U.N. efforts at peacekeeping are in our security interest, would it be asking too much for us to suggest that 1 percent of the defense budget be set aside for support of peace keeping? Far from harming our security needs, that would strengthen the ability of the United Nations to respond quickly to emergencies, and that 1 percent would not harm any defense needs that we have. It is easy for officeholders of either party to appeal to the fears and hatreds of people, to appeal to the worst in us, to ask us to turn inward rather than reach out. But if we are serious in our talk about family values, we should urge our citizens to reach beyond the artificial barriers that separate people; to be concerned about one another, then, all families will be more secure. Appeals to shortsighted selfishness do not help a family, and a political call for shortsighted selfishness does no favor to the nation. As leaders, we must appeal to the noble in our people, not the worst, and if we apply that to international relations, the United States will benefit, as will the rest of the world. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, before I get into prepared remarks on another subject, let me associate myself with the remarks of Senator Kennedy. I think we have to ask ourselves why we can be so responsive to a few millionaires who want a tax break that is going to cost $3.6 billion and we cannot respond to millions of Americans who are struggling at the minimum wage? I think we have to go to two things. No. 1, our system of financing political campaigns. Those millionaires, I am sure, if we look at our financial records, have contributed to Members of the Senate. Maybe to Paul Simon, I do not know. They have a voice. How many people working at the minimum wage have contributed to Members of the U.S. Senate? Not very many, if any, because they cannot afford it. We respond to those too much, to too great a degree, who pay for our campaigns. That is the simple reality. I think the second reality is, millionaires can hire the lobbyists. That is that. I do suggest that we change the way we finance campaigns. What we have to keep in mind is, who is contacting Members? And the people who have real needs, working men and women who are struggling, are they getting their voices through? Too often, they are not.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the controversies we will face in the Senate before this session is out is whether to follow the advice of the bankers and the secondary markets and cut back on the direct loan program. Direct loans are a great thing for students, their parents, the colleges and universities, and for the taxpayers. To cave in to the financial interests, who want to keep their Federal subsidy--often the same people who denounce welfare for the poor--is something I hope the Senate will not do. Recently, the Chicago Sun-Times, which originally opposed the direct lending program, had an editorial supporting the program now. The experience in the schools that have it is so positive, I hope we will listen to our colleges and universities and not to those who are eager for profits at the taxpayers' expense. I ask that the Sun-Times editorial be printed in the Record. The editorial follows: [From the Sun-Times, Mar. 29, 1995] Direct Loan Program Is Good Deal for All Under the guises of deficit reduction and reduced government, Republican forces in Congress are pressing for changes in student loan programs that would impose onerous new costs on college students and stall broader availability of direct loans, the plan sponsored by Sen. Paul Simon (D- Ill.) to eliminate middlemen. be ``zeroed out,'' to swipe a phrase from the new congressional vocabulary. Efforts to eliminate the federal subsidy of interest charges on student loans come at a time when rising college costs are forcing more students to borrow money to pay for their education. The American Council on Education reports that 6.6 million students took federal loans this year, up from 4.5 million in 1988. Meanwhile, the dollar amount increased from $11.8 billion to $25.8 billion. The government eases that burden by paying interest on loans while the student is in school. Without the subsidy, the debt of an undergraduate who takes out the maximum loan amount for four years would increase 20 percent, the ACE says. These subsidies are costly--$2.2 billion this year--but they are based on sound public policy: providing access to higher education. Elsewhere in Congress, moves are afoot to limit the direct loan program, which Simon sponsored to allow students to get loans directly from the federal government. The program, which is being phased in over five years, is strongly opposed by banks that have risk-free profits under government loan guarantees, and by the huge public-private agencies that administer the program and run profitable secondary loan markets. Having failed to block the original legislation, opponents now seek to limit direct loans to 40 percent of student loan volume, arguing that private enterprise works better than government. Although we would like to see stronger guarantees that schools are not ripping off the direct loan program--as many for-profit trade schools did under the subsidized bank loan program--we believe the record of the direct loan program to date calls for its continued expansion. Students and participating schools, including the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, report fewer hassles with direct loans. More important, the program is expected to save money. The Clinton administration estimates $5.2 billion would be saved by 2000, if the direct loan program were fully implemented by the 1997-i98 school year. That's a good deal for the schools and a good deal for the taxpayers. The program should continue on schedule.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment. We are dealing with economic dynamite here. And the very discussion has to be disquieting to a lot of people in the financial markets around the world. Senator Boxer made a very good point just a few minutes ago when she asked about the stability of the United States. People wonder, can we stay the course on things? It is no accident that just a few days ago, we saw the worst trade figures we have had for a long, long time. And those trade figures were caused, to a great extent, by the peso crisis in Mexico. Mexico has been a country where we have sold more goods than we have imported. The future of Mexico is tied in with the jobs. Senator D'Amato talks about working men and women in the United States. We want to protect those jobs and help Mexico protects those jobs. I will add a couple of other points, Mr. President. It is easy in this kind of climate to find scapegoats, when people are having a tough time making a living. What has happened in our society is happening in every society: As the demand for unskilled labor is going down, the demand for skilled labor goes up. As that happens and people lose their jobs, they look around: Whom can we blame? Part of it is translated, I regret to say, in terms of race in our society. There are people down on affirmative action, saying, ``We are losing our jobs because of African-Americans,'' or because of others. Mexico becomes an easy scapegoat for a lot of people who do not understand the realities. The drop in the dollar that we experienced here a few weeks ago, to the extent that Mexico was involved, is because of our debt and our deficit. Ordinarily, a $20 billion loan guarantee would not mean anything for a country with a $6 trillion economy. Mexico is not the primary problem. I will underscore a point that Senator Dodd made. This does not refer to Mexico. It says, ``We can't make loan guarantees except as authorized by an act of Congress.'' Say on November 1 of this year, we recess until January. Say on November 10, there is a crisis in the British pound sterling. The United States is frozen. The most powerful economic Nation in the world, which will have so much at stake, could not do a thing. That just does not make sense. Finally, I say to my colleagues, this is not the kind of an issue where we ought to be pandering to public opinion. There are issues in which all Members in politics pander to public opinion, but with this one we are dealing with something that really goes to the heart of the economic survival of this country and other countries. I urge my colleagues to look back to something that happened some years ago--Senator Byrd was here; I do not think Senator Hatfield was-- when General Marshall, in a Harvard commencement, announced the Marshall plan. Harry Truman was President of the United States. The first Gallup Poll that was taken after that showed 14 percent of the American public supported the Marshall plan. It was extremely unpopular. We look back on it now and boast about how we saved Western Europe from communism with the Marshall plan. It is something we can be proud of. But it took the U.S. Senators, who had the courage to do what was not temporarily popular, to do that. Particularly because Harry Truman at that point was dealing with a Republican Congress, it took Senator Arthur Vandenberg from Michigan to stand up and say this issue is more important than temporary public opinion or the Republican Party or winning a Presidential race. Arthur Vandenburg did the right thing. The country moved ahead. It is one of the great acts of our country in the history of our country. On an issue that is this volatile, we had better do the right thing and not ask ourselves what will the polls say back home. This is an amendment that ought to be resoundingly defeated.

Mr. SIMON. I thank the Senator for yielding. In response to my friend from Oregon, before I would agree to unanimous consent to set it aside, I would like to speak for 10 minutes. I would also suggest to my friend from Connecticut not to set it aside until we get word from the President. I think just setting this aside leaves it in limbo and is going to cause great problems in Mexico right now. I think we ought to get word from the President of the United States that if this in here, this is going to be vetoed. So that we can assure the markets in around the world that we are not about to destabilize the situation in Mexico through irresponsible action on the floor of the United States Senate.

Mr. SIMON. Will my colleague from Connecticut yield?

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, this month on Capitol Hill an exciting literacy program began with the help of Senators and Senate staff. The children of the Brent Elementary School are now being read to once a week during their lunch hour by volunteers in the Everybody Wins Program. Everybody Wins is a successful literacy program started in New York City, which matches up professionals with at-risk, inner- city school children as reading partners. During each power lunch session, the reading partners select a book and read aloud together--an activity that the Commission on Reading calls the single most important activity for building a child's eventual success in reading. Everybody Wins, started by businessman Arthur Tannenbaum in New York City, is for the first time branching out to Washington, DC, and enlisted the help of the Senate to reach out to their neighbors on Capitol Hill. The bipartisan support in the Senate began when I joined Senator Jeffords' efforts to implement the program. All of the Senators on the Labor and Human Resources Subcommittee on Education, Arts, and Humanities have since become involved. Already 7 Senators and over 100 Senate staff members are reading to children during their lunch hours. Many of the Senators who are working with the program are so impressed that they are moving to implement Everybody Wins in cities in their own States. Mr. Tannenbaum's ultimate goal is to have every child in the country read to either by a parent or relative or a volunteer. I want to commend Mr. Arthur Tannenbaum on his hard work, his leadership in this area, and his strong commitment to improving the lives of children.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I reintroduced a bill that would authorize the establishment of an African-American Museum within the Smithsonian Institution. My colleague, Congressman John Lewis, offered the companion measure in the House on February 1, 1995. The purpose of this legislation is to inspire and educate our Nation and the world about the cultural legacy of African-Americans and the contributions made by African-Americans. Throughout American history, two racial groups--African-Americans and native Americans--have been consistently mistreated and underrepresented. To help make up for this mistreatment, a memorial to the native American experience has already been authorized. This legislation would commemorate the African-American community and experience. There are many wonderful private museums that are dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the African-American art, culture and history. These museums contribute greatly to their communities, and should continue. On a different scale, however, there should be a national African-American Museum. We need an institution that can serve as a national and international center. A national museum dedicated to education and research would provide a broader and better understanding of the contributions made by African- Americans. The inadequate presentation and preservation of African- American life, art, history and culture undermines the ability of Americans to understand themselves and their past. With a better understanding of our collective past, we will be a stronger Nation. There are many issues abroad and at home that clamor for our immediate attention. To face these issues, we need a comprehensive understanding of our history. Of the 30 million visitors to the Smithsonian every year, many are from other countries. After visiting the African-American museum, these travelers will have a more complete understanding of our Nation. Mr. President, I recognize that these are times of fiscal constraint. This legislation does not require any additional appropriation. Currently, one corner of the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building has been set aside for the African-American Museum project. Claudine Brown, the project's current director, and her staff have worked hard on this temporary exhibit. Ms. Brown will soon be leaving the project to return to New York. Her contribution has helped to lay the foundation upon which we can now build. I was disappointed last Congress when this legislation did not pass the Senate prior to adjournment last Congress. That unfortunate outcome, however, makes our renewed initiative all the more pressing. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of the National African American Museum Act. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Would it be in order on the floor of the Senate to mention that our colleague, Senator Bob Graham, became a grandfather of triplets this evening?

Mr. SIMON. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, in March and April the organization World Neighbors will be featured in ``The Quiet Revolution--An Approach to aid that works: This PBS series documents effective foreign aid programs.'' The series features six humanitarian aid programs where people are successfully breaking out of poverty and taking charge of their own destiny. The Quiet Revolution takes an emotional and personal view of how effective aid programs can transform lives. Instead of presenting the poor as anonymous victims, it shows them as they really are: intelligent and capable people wanting to solve their own problems. It is an image of poverty that has rarely been seen and capable of touching hearts and minds. The Quiet Revolution was a dream of Jack Robertson, a man who shared a great deal in common with the people chronicled in the films. Mr. Robertson died shortly after the films were completed and faced incredible odds throughout the making of the series. Yet he was driven by persistent optimism and stubborn refusal to let anything stop him from sharing the series with the world. I would like to commend the World Neighbors and Mr. Jack Robertson for their tireless efforts to make such a needed documentary.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, we are receiving regular reminders obliquely of the need for a balanced budget amendment. In Sunday's Washington Post Jane Bryant Quinn's column ends with the words: ``Big cuts in the federal deficit would improve confidence abroad. But Congress and the voters aren't there yet.'' And in a column by Stan Hinden there is reference to Donald P. Gould, a California money manager of a mutual fund. In the Hinden column, among other things, he says: ``Gould noted that the global strength of the dollar has been slipping for 25 years-- except for an upward blip in the early 1980's.'' It is not sheer coincidence that for 26 years in a row we have been operating with a budget deficit. Hinden also notes in his column: Since 1970, the dollar has lost more than 60 percent of its value in relation to the German mark and has dropped almost 75 percent in relation to the Japanese yen. In 1970, it took 3.65 German marks to buy one U.S. dollar. As of last week, you could buy a dollar with only 1.40 marks. I served in Germany in the Army after World War II, and I remember it took a little more than 4 marks to buy a dollar. The Washington Post writer also notes: Gould, who is president and founder of the Franklin Templeton Global Trust--which used to be called the Huntington Funds--is not optimistic about the dollar's future. He sees little chance that the United States will be able to solve the fiscal and economic problems that have helped the dollar depreciate. We are getting that message from people all over the world. I cannot understand why we do not listen. Finally, Donald Gould is quoted as saying: For the first time I am aware of, during a global flight to quality, that quality has been defined as marks and yen and not dollars. I hope we start paying attention to this kind of information.