Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I would tell the gentlewoman, no, I had no line item in this bill. I reclaim my time because I did put, in fact, a request in to boost agricultural research spending, because I support an increase in agricultural research spending. I support this bill. I believe if there is any part of the overall spending process that we need to be careful not to tinker with, it is agriculture. I am not fighting with the specifics here, I am fighting on a process; that all the appropriations bills should be allowed to have amendments and a full-fledged debate. And whether it is one Member or a group of Members, they should be allowed to come here, because we are not trying to micromanage the subcommittees, but when we see the final report we have a right to say, as Members of Congress, that we do not believe that this full amount of money is legitimate; that we take apart pieces of this bill and say, defend this piece. In fact, the only way an amendment cannot pass this House is if the majority of this country does not favor that amendment. It is not like some kind of a game here where there is some kind of a trick that can get to a majority. Quite frankly, at least one of our leaders is threatening about this process, that we should not be allowed to offer amendments because it is uncomfortable. We are Members of Congress. We have a right. Not all of us are on a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, on the full Committee on Appropriations or its subcommittees. Some of us are on authorizing committees or on the Committee on the Budget. We would like to have the ability to come here and at least question. I will vote for some amendments. I am voting against some amendments. I am going to vote on the end bill. But I do not think it is fair when the attacks come to the floor and they are aimed at a generic, hey, this is an attack on agriculture, this Member is trying to tie up the House. It sounds to me like, thou dost protest too much. If there are particulars that Members want to defend, come down and defend the particulars, because Members should be able to. There are plenty of reasons; even if it sounds embarrassing on some of these research projects, there are scientific reasons why we are the best agricultural Nation in the world. If we do not do this research and if we let this get caught up in whether or not somebody had an inside deal, if someone's project cannot stand the light of day, if their research project in their district cannot stand the light of C-Span in this national debate, then it should not be in the bill. Members should be down here defending it, as the subcommittee chairman did. I commend my friend, the gentleman from Oklahoma, for challenging the structure; for making sure that each part of this bill can either be defended or not defended. I stand with him today because I think it is a healthy process for the United States Congress.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dorothy Kittaka, a music teacher at Haverhill Elementary School in Fort Wayne, IN, and one of only five teachers in the Nation to be inducted this year into the National Teachers Hall of fame. Throughout her career Dorothy has been recognized with numerous awards for her accomplishment in the classroom. She is a two-time Southwest Allen County Schools teacher of the year and a finalist for Indiana teacher of the year. In addition, in 1997, Parents Magazine recognized her with their ``As they Grow'' award, given to people who have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to effecting positive change in the lives of children. However, Dorothy's sphere of influence reaches well beyond her classroom walls and into the community. Dorothy Kittaka is co-founder of the Foundation for the Arts and Music in Elementary Education--known as FAME. She is involved with the Indiana-Purdue, Fort Wayne Community Advisory Council; Arts United; the Fort Wayne Children's Choir and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. Perhaps the best description of the unique gifts Dorothy Kittaka brings to her students was offered by Haverhill's principal: ``Dorothy's entire life is an example of one who believes that the arts are a vital force in the education of children. Her enthusiasm for the importance of the arts ignites the spark of imagination, creativity and joy of learning in her students.'' On behalf of the people of the Fourth District of Indiana, I want to thank Dorothy Kittaka for the countless contributions she has made to the lives of our young people.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, earlier this week I was discussing the war supplemental, and some of my concerns about this Administration's approach to the war in Yugoslavia and Kosovo. I found the most disturbing thing underneath the premise that the administration is pushing, and why I have such deep concerns about this entire effort. Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser, told our Republican conference during some questioning that, he said, we want to teach the world a new way to live in peace. They also said they wanted to show the world a new way to fight the war. My concern is that the undergirding of this entire foreign policy is a kind of a liberal, humanitarian, what would be, with quotes around it, a ``secular humanist'' approach that we can somehow teach people to live together, ironically, through bombing them; and I do not fully understand, but that was not our intent. But we look at the evils that were going on with Milosevic, much like the evils that were going on in Croatia and other ethnic cleansing efforts, not only in the Balkans but in Africa and other parts of the world, and we say, correctly, people should not live that way. But then we think, based on kind of our humanitarian tradition in the United States, that we can just walk in and say, you know, for 700 years, for 1,000 years, for 2,000 years, you have been wrong. We want you to change. If you do not change, we are going to bomb you into change. Mr. Speaker, life does not work that way. If this is the supposition under our foreign policy, that somehow we can walk into Africa and say, change the way you have behaved for all these years; if we can walk into Haiti and say, we are going to put a government in, and now you are going to change; if we can walk into Bosnia and say, now we are going to do a Dayton line, and we want you all to behave; and if we are going to go into Serbia and say, this is terrible, we want you to live in peace together, it simply is not going to work. I was in the camp near Skopje, Montenegro, and talked to many of the Kosovars. As one of the Senators asked them, they said, will you go back and live at peace in Yugoslavia under the Serbians? Absolutely not. We are going to get rid of Milosevic. Milosevic will not be there. They said, all Serbs are Milosevic. What do you mean, all Serbs? You lived with them before. Yes, but they slit my neighbor's throat. They burned my house. They raped my daughters. You heard all kinds of the variations of stories. They are not interested in living with peace. The idea that suddenly we are going to wave a wand, have a sitdown conference here, and everybody in the world is going to live in peace, is a very dangerous undergirding, pressure, for foreign policy. Just yesterday in the Washington Times, based on a Senate hearing, Secretary Cohen said, ``We have got to find a way to either increase the size of our forces, or decrease the number of our missions.'' Now, in the standard colloquial phrase right now in the United States, you would say, well, duh. I mean, we have to find a way to either increase the size of our forces, or decrease the number of our missions. Do we mean it is finally dawning on this administration that we cannot take a declining armed forces and send them all over the world to try to change people through exhortation when we are not willing to stand up, which it is not necessary that this would work, either, but it is the only way we would get peace, is that if we believe, as the Judeo-Christian principles teach, that man is born of sin and of self-interest, and unless there is a transforming power in their hearts they are not going to suddenly change, going in and saying, it is in your self-interest not to have war, that is not necessarily true. It is not necessarily good for Kosovars to let the Serbians have Pristina and the mineral rights in the north part of this country. It is not necessarily in the self-interest of the Serbians to let the Kosovars have the mineral rights and the seminaries in Pristina for their heritage. They both argue over that. You cannot just use the pleasure-pain principles or positivist principles or some kind of humanist principles. Furthermore, if we are going to get back to that, the renaissance did not occur in a lot of the parts of the world where we have our humanist traditions. Unless you have whatever religious tradition it is that reforms people's hearts and people's thinking that there is a higher power, we are not going to have a real peace. If we are not going to have a real peace, we certainly are not going to force it through bombing, and the danger of our current foreign policy is that we are going around the world threatening and trying to reform it when we do not have the traditional criteria of how and when we wage war: Was there a sovereign Nation invading another sovereign Nation? Was there a threat to the national interest of the United States? Was there a tie-in that we can actually deal with and win? These are deep religious and moral questions, and they are not going to be solved by the type of bombing we are doing.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, last week and probably again either Thursday of this week or early next week we will have one of the most difficult votes that a Congress can cast, and that is on our emergency supplemental. It might be called a war-plus bill. It is not just to forward fund the war, because there are over $3 billion to forward fund the war; and it is not just monies that could escalate the war, because there are multiple categories in this bill, including money intended to rebuild our national defense that could, in fact, expand this to a ground war, and the motion to limit that was defeated. So this, in fact, is not just a funding bill for the war, however, because it also includes important funds to rebuild what has been a devastating number of years on our military, where we do not have the readiness and where we have sent troops into battle without being properly prepared and without the munitions necessary. We have weakened ourselves around the world, and I realize that. It also has important funds for our agricultural catastrophes, and it may even have things for Hurricane Mitch and the victims of the earthquake in Colombia in this bill. It has a pay boost for our veterans. But, ultimately, this is a vote on war. And that becomes a very difficult subject for Members of Congress to handle in their districts because, in fact, we have troops on the ground, and none of us want to be perceived as weakening them and putting them in the battle without adequate supplies. At the same time, many of us have strong reservations about this war, that, in fact, it is not winnable and, in fact, we are putting our soldiers' lives unnecessarily at danger by continuing to fund this war. I have been regularly visiting high schools and elementary schools in my district since the first of the year as part of the Committee on Education and the Workforce efforts to look at the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. And when I talk to students, whether about the drug-free school program or school violence, inevitably the war comes up. Because many of them are concerned that they may soon become involved in this, especially if it expands to a ground war and we should have to resort to a draft, which in fact we might have to do if we need 400,000 troops. The question I get regularly asked, since I express my skepticism that this war cannot be successful and we have had a poor strategy, is how do we stop genocide and the ethnic cleansing around the world if in fact we do not fight this war; and what are we to do to show our disapproval if we do not go to war? These are difficult questions but not easily addressed or solved merely by saying, therefore, we are going to bomb everybody who we disagree with or who we think has committed genocide. Clearly, this has been a problem in the past. It has happened in Turkey vis-a-vis the Armenians. We watched the Communists overrun Hungary. And many of us, I was only 6 years old at the time of the Hungarian revolution, but many Americans felt we should have intervened at that point. But there are certain things in American history we have said that are criteria for when we get involved in these type of conflicts. One is generally that it has to cross international boundaries. This question is complicated here because it is inside a nation, albeit an autonomous subsection of that nation or at least an area we believe should be autonomous. We have also historically argued that there has to be a clear national interest. And the only clear national interest here is the instability of Europe; and, quite frankly, what we have seen is that every week this war goes on, Europe is becoming less stable and the agreement will be less good. In other words, our peak in American interest agreement was before we started bombing. Every week the bombing has continued, the agreement in the end will be worse. The agreements that are now on the table we could have had several weeks ago. In truth, the Kosovars are less willing and the Serbians less willing to live together in peace in the future because of the conflict escalating. The more we bomb, the more we destabilize Montenegro. Now we have accidentally hit the Chinese embassy, and China has used this at least as an occasion to stir up their people. Russia is concerned as to whether we will be coming in there, and they have reactivated and are concerned about their nuclear defenses because they do not want us coming in if it is Chechnya. Other nations around the world are concerned about what our international policy is. Israel is concerned, justly, that if we recognize an independent Kosovo, what does that mean for the Palestinians? Turkey is concerned about what this means for the Kurds. The settlement we are looking towards is worse than we would have had early on while there was still a possibility to put this thing back together. Furthermore, it does not appear to be winnable. Historically, wars or efforts that have worked have been winnable or had an exit strategy. But that does not and still begs the fundamental moral question: How then do we deal with a Milosevic or a Serbian population? Or, for that matter, in Croatia, where many people were killed and moved out? The ethnic cleansing being the moved out; the killed being the genocide without a trial. Now Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to our Republican conference, suggested that the goal of this administration, and he said this point-blank, was to teach the world how to live together in peace. This shows some of the divisions that we have in this country and in the world regarding, quite frankly, the perfectibility of man. Can we, in fact, especially through bombs, teach the world how to live in peace? Or even without bombs, is that a realistic goal? In my opinion, that is more a humanist perfectibility of man argument and not one rooted in the Judeo-Christian beliefs that this country was founded on. Mr. Speaker, I will extend my comments with written remarks, because I am very concerned the premises of this war are unachievable and the goals are false and, therefore, because of a kind heart, we have plunged ourselves in an unwinnable conflict that is contrary to our own moral traditions.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote. A recorded vote was refused. So the amendment was rejected.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Istook amendment. Let me say, I was reserving the right to object, but I am not the Member who objected. I have tried to cooperate throughout this day in not calling for votes. Even though I was denied an earlier right to vote, though, I could have called for a quorum or an adjournment to get Members over. I have tried to cooperate, but I believe Members have a right to be heard on a question of whether we are going to war, whether we are going to escalate that war and whether we are going to have ground troops in that war. What we have established so far in the process of the debate in the Committee on Rules yesterday and today's debate is waivers were not granted. When we tried to offer amendments about whether to reach back to previous appropriations bills in order to try to restrict the expansion and escalation of this war, amendments that were proposed to transfer funds that I had to move the war funds, the $3.3 billion to refugee assistance, were ruled out of order. A point of order was made on an amendment that I originally thought was in order to try to move the war money. A point of order was made, and I withdrew the amendment. I tried to move the $3.3 billion war money over to readiness, because many of us who strongly favor the efforts of both the full committee chairman and the Subcommittee on Defense chairman to increase readiness would like to see more dollars in readiness. We do not favor dollars to war. The leadership opposed an attempt to try to specify that the President would have to come and designate the funds as an emergency. That was an earlier amendment that I withdrew to try to say that there had to be a specific designation, and that was opposed. There was an attempt to block a vote on reprogramming, when, in fact, there are billions of dollars pending to come in to reprogramming, at least $700 million pending and an additional $1.2 billion coming for reprogramming funds beyond the nature of this. So when it came down to real money questions, as opposed to a resolution last week on the ground war and a resolution on the air war, when it came down to real money questions, the fact is that there is $3.3 billion in this bill, that there is reprogramming money in this bill, that there is a $400 million rapid response team that many of us strongly favor, but without a Balkans limitation becomes another $400 million to expand and escalate this war. There is no protection, substantive protection, on the $6.9 billion even for pay to keep it from being moved because of the way there is the fungibility of funds. That is why it is so essential that at least we make a statement. My friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), pointed out earlier that the language was changed. That is not because the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) wanted to change it. It is because in the Committee on Rules the leadership opposed a waiver for him and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) where they could have had the same language on ground war. So now it is slightly different, but it is the best we can do in this bill. For those of us who do not want any more blood on our hands, who do not want any more Apache helicopter pilots going down, who realize that, yes, as my friend, the gentleman from Maryland, one of the greatest crusaders for human rights in the world, said earlier, it has been a terrible tragedy. It is not clear why this is not like Vietnam, why we are not hearing the Lyndon Johnsons and the General Westmorelands now telling us just a couple more weeks, just a few thousand more soldiers, it will all change. When we know apparently only the American people are deceived about whether or not we are going to have loss of lives and a ground war, how much the loss of lives will be. Milosevic knows all of this. He knows the history of Serbia. These underground things that he has in his army were set up by Tito. They have been fighting in this turf for 700 years. The only people who are not being leveled with are the American people, and it is time they understood that this bill not only funds the current war, it forward funds the war, it potentially escalates the war. And for all the good things in the bill that I will always vote for and for all the refugee money that is so desperately needed that I will vote for and the help for Macedonia and other countries that have been decimated in this process I will always vote for, but I will not vote to spend more money to increase this war. I will support the efforts of the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) to at least try to limit those funds.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, this will be one of the most critical votes on this bill. We are faced with a difficult decision because we have been given a difficult decision in Congress. Those of us who favor strengthening our military, making sure that they get some of the funds replaced that we have been trying to replace for a number of years and rebuild it as we have seen it weakened, as we hear stories of our soldiers in harm's way, who have not fired live ammunition, who are being asked often to take weapons into combat in ways that they were not intended to come into combat. We are running out of missiles. We are very concerned about that. But at the same time we see this as well as a pay raise for our Armed Forces being combined with an effort not only to fund the war of what has been already spent but to forward fund the war. As we established earlier in the first section of the bill, $3.3 billion of that forward funds the war. We have in this section, 201, a very interesting little section. It says, ``Section 8005 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 1999, Public Law 105-262, is amended by striking out $1,650,000,000 and inserting in lieu thereof $2,450,000,000.'' What exactly does that mean? Last week, this Congress sent a very clear message. We believed that the ground war should not occur and that the air war on a tie vote should not go ahead. Is our message this week, ``Never mind''? Under current law, the Defense Department has authority to transfer up to $1.65 billion from the specific purposes for which Congress appropriated the money to other uses, including the conduct of the war in Yugoslavia which Congress has otherwise refused to approve. To me, it is an outrage that the President should be able to take money specifically appropriated for other purposes and use it for a war that is not supported by a majority of Congress. It is my understanding that the Defense Department is preparing to submit a large reprogramming request to cover its expenses so far to conduct the war. Including that request, the Pentagon will have already used $1.4 billion of its $1.65 billion in reprogramming authority. This would leave them with only about $250 million in transfer authority. With war costs as much as $40 million a day, this theoretically at least means that there is only enough money left to conduct the war for another week without specific congressional action. In other words, this clause, in addition to the $3.3 billion, allows other funds to be reprogrammed to escalate and to continue this war. Many of us have a concern that while we say we are doing long-term buildup and while we say we are preparing readiness, in fact in this bill we potentially could even fund a ground war. It is clauses like this that give us grave concern. I understand that they have to apply for reprogramming requests, but in fact evidence shows that about $1.4 billion has already been spent in reprogramming requests without the approval of this Congress. Now, for those who say that those of us who, in effect, say stand down and negotiate, in fact last week's vote, we were told, boy, that could lead to these terrible catastrophes. In fact, what it appears to have led to, in addition to Reverend Jackson going over and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) in a delegation working with the Russians, it appears to have led to the negotiations that should have been occurring before that. But when we look at this, for those who say it is wrong for us to say stand down before more lives are lost and the situation over there is actually getting worse, not better, more refugees are at danger with continuation of the war than not continuation of the war, let us get the settlement over, it will likely, like Vietnam, be the same settlement as earlier. For those who would question me and others for voting for this stand- down, remember, you are also criticizing the American Legion. As I pointed out twice, their head yesterday said that the troops, the pilots and support staff should be immediately withdrawn. They also in a unanimous vote said the resources should not be approved to continue this war. I believe the number is 6.9 million Americans are in the American Legion who have this background. They know what a risk we are putting our veterans at. They know the risk of the continuing air war and, for that matter, the logical escalating strategy without a clear plan. If there is a clear exit plan, if there is an ability to show that, in fact, we have an achievable goal that will lead to even a better negotiated settlement, perhaps we could vote these resources. But we in fact here are not only giving $3.3 billion in forward funding, we are giving this waiver in this clause, the potential shifting of funds in this clause to fund the ground war. I believe that is inconsistent to say we oppose the war but fund it more. Mr. Chairman, I include the following material for the Record: The American Legion, Washington, DC, May 5, 1999. The President, The White House, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. President: The American Legion, a wartime veterans organization of nearly three-million members, urges the immediate withdrawal of Armenian troops participating in ``Operation Allied Force.'' The National Executive Committee of The American Legion, meeting in Indianapolis today, adopted Resolution 44, titled ``The American Legion's Statement on Yugoslavia.'' This resolution was debated and adopted unanimously. Mr. President, the United States Armed Forces should never be committed to wartime operations unless the following conditions are fulfilled: That there be a clear statement by the President of why it is in our vital national interests to be engaged in hostilities; Guidelines be established for the mission, including a clear exit strategy; That there be support of the mission by the U.S. Congress and the American people; and That it be made clear that U.S. Forces will be commanded only by U.S. officers whom we acknowledge are superior military leaders. It is the opinion of The American Legion, which I am sure is shared by the majority of Americans, that three of the above listed conditions have not been met in the current joint operation with NATO (``Operation Allied Force''). In no case should America commit its Armed Forces in the absence of clearly defined objectives agreed upon by the U.S. Congress in accordance with Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution of the United States. Sincerely, Harold L. ``Butch'' Miller, National Commander. Enclosure. National Executive Committee, The American Legion, May 5, 1999 resolution no. 44: the american legion statement on yugoslavia Whereas, The President has committed the Armed Forces of the United States, in a joint operation with NATO (``Operation Allied Force''), to engage in hostilities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without clearly defining America's vital national interests; and Whereas, Neither the President nor the Congress have defined America's objectives in what has become an open-ended conflict characterized by an ill-defined progressive escalation; and Whereas, It is obvious that an ill-planned and massive commitment of U.S. resources could only lead to troops being killed, wounded or captured without advancing any clear purpose, mission or objective; and Whereas, The American people rightfully support the ending of crimes and abuses by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the extending of humanitarian relief to the suffering people of the region; and Whereas, America should not commit resources to the prosecution of hostilities in the absence of clearly defined objectives agreed upon by the U.S. Congress in accordance with Article I Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States; now, therefore, be it Resolved, By the National Executive Committee of The American Legion in regular meeting assembled in Indianapolis, Indiana, May 5-6, 1999. That The American Legion, which is composed of nearly three million veterans of war-time service, voices its grave concerns about the commitment of U.S. Armed Forces to Operation Allied Force, unless the following conditions are fulfilled. That there be a clear statement by the President of why it is in our vital national interests to be engaged in Operation Allied Force; Guidelines be established for the mission, including a clear exit strategy; That there be support of the mission by the U.S. Congress and the American people; and That it be made clear U.S. Forces will be commanded only by U.S. officers whom we acknowledge are superior military leaders; and, be it further Resolved, That, if the aforementioned conditions are not met, The American Legion calls upon the President and the Congress to withdraw American forces immediately from Operation Allied Force; and, be it further Resolved, That The American Legion calls upon the Congress and the international community to ease the suffering of the Kosovar refugees by providing necessary aid and assistance; and, be it finally Resolved, That The American Legion reaffirm its unwavering admiration of, and support for, our American men and women serving in uniform throughout the world, and we reaffirm our efforts to provide sufficient national assets to ensure their well being.

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

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, the main purpose of this amendment was to highlight the fact that, in fact, there was a differential in the first section that had $3.3 billion. We are going to have a number of recorded votes later that will enable us who are concerned to restrict that funding. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is in order because it does not move the money but addresses the same point. If I can explain the technical part of this amendment again so people understand exactly what we are doing here. In the operation and maintenance account it says, Overseas Contingency Operations Transfer Fund of $5,219,100,000 is available to be expended. In that, according to the CRS breakout, and I would say evidence illustrates this later in the bill, there is nothing in this bill that says we are giving the President his $3.3 billion to forward fund this war. But, in fact, if we break out the $5.219, we will find that we are forward funding the military operations, we are funding the refugee operations, we are funding the Southwest Asia. On page 5 of the bill, where it says $1,311,800,000, that is the House appropriations figure on readiness and munitions contingency reserve in munitions. Now, in an effort to keep the $3.3 billion from bracket creep, they have included in that, as a ``provided further'' on page 5 of the bill, that puts two restrictions on the $1.3 billion. It specifies items which meet a critical readiness or sustainability need, to include replacement of expended munitions to maintain adequate inventories for future operations; and, two, includes designation of the entire amount of the request as an emergency requirement as defined in the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act. That is very commendable. My amendment is very simple. It takes the entire $5.2 billion and says, put those two conditions on it. Make sure that they meet a critical readiness or sustainability need and includes a designation of the entire amount. I do not think that this amendment is particularly controversial unless, in fact, we are trying to avoid the obvious, which is, in fact, we are forward funding this war, and that we do not want something coming to Congress that makes us specify or vote on the critical readiness needs. This would not cut off any funds. This is merely an amendment that does what the bill already does but says that the money for Kosovo should be subjected to the same rules as the money for readiness and munition, and that is, the President should have to defend it, that he is not hurting our readiness and sustainability and in fact that it is critical and it is an emergency. Now, if I can finish in the remaining time I have, the American Legion statement of why they believe we should currently withdraw all soldiers, pilots, and support staff from the Balkans, they said: ``Whereas, the President nor the Congress have defined America's objectives in what has become an open-ended conflict characterized by an ill-defined progressive escalation; and, ``Whereas, it is obvious that an ill-planned and massive commitment of U.S. resources could only lead to troops being killed, wounded or captured without advancing any clear purpose, mission or objective; and, ``Whereas, the American people rightfully support the ending of crimes and abuses by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the extending of humanitarian relief to the suffering people of the region; and, ``Whereas, America should not commit resources to the prosecution of hostilities,'' which, in fact, this bill does, ``in the absence of clearly defined objectives agreed upon by the U.S. Congress in accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.'' So for those of us who have a concern about this forward funding of the war, please do not refer to us as disarming our military, or they would have the same statement about the veterans of the American Legion who said that they do not believe that we should also forward fund and continue to fund this war, and in fact are calling for the withdrawal of the troops, the pilots and support staff in the Balkans.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. It is amendment No. 10.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I have a series of four amendments, three I understand are in order, but this one has been ruled not to be in order, and I will not challenge that ruling. The intention of this amendment was to take in this section where it says $5,219,100,000 for Overseas Contingency Operations Transfer Fund and take $3,300,000,000 of that and move it to the four readiness accounts that come up under procurement, to put $825 million under weapons procurement for the Navy, $825 million under aircraft procurement for the Air Force, $825 million under missile procurement for the Air Force, and $825 million for ammunition procurement for the Air Force. The problem apparently with this is that, once we strike in one section, according to our relatively recently adopted rule in the budget agreement, when we strike it from one section, we cannot put it in another section. But I wanted to illustrate several points with this amendment, not that it likely would have passed anyway. The way the bill is written, it is hard to tell that, in fact, this bill forward funds the war in Kosovo because it is not specified particularly in the bill. It says, Overseas Contingency Operations Transfer Fund. However, in the CRS breakout, the $3.3 billion that the President requested for military operations is still in the bill; the $335 million for the military portion of the Kosovo refugee operations is still in the bill; the $257.8 million for Southwest Asia is still in the bill. The only difference from the President's request in this section is the readiness and munitions contingency reserve. If anybody has a doubt that the $3.3 billion is in this $5.29 billion, the question that comes is, why on line 5 on page 5 does it say $1,311,800,000? That happens to be the difference of the amount directly going to Kosovo in Southwest Asia operations from the Readiness and Munitions Contingency Fund. My goal was to give those Members who favor strengthening our military and supporting the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) in their efforts to try to recoup some of what we have lost in our military effort, in our readiness, in our preparedness, in our munitions, in our defense system, rather than blowing it up in Kosovo. We, in fact, have $3.3 billion here that could be used for our readiness. In fact, we have heard from the Air Force that they are $18 billion short, not the $40 million in aircraft procurement, $178 million in missile procurement, and $35 million in ammunition. We have heard that the Navy is $3.8 billion short, rather than $431 million. I wish in this bill I would have been able to redirect the misguided efforts in the Balkans and put that into military procurement. Because many of us who have grave reservations about this bill and many of us who will oppose this bill do not oppose the much-worthy efforts of the chairman to address these terrible declines in our military capacity. I also want to address this point, and I will refer to this several times this afternoon. I was very concerned about some language in the earlier amendments that were debated. I heard those of us who oppose this war and oppose this funding for forward funding the war and possibly escalating this war as monies are transferred, as several of my future amendments will address, are putting our children in harm's way. We have heard we cannot abandon our own troops. We have heard that nothing could be worse than to walk away. We have heard that it is sending the wrong signal and that we somehow, at least an implication, that we are not patriotic. I think an apology, although it was not that direct, an apology is in order not only to the Members of Congress who have concerns and believe we should stand down but also to our national American Legion which yesterday, as their leader said, ``The Legion's National Executive Committee unanimously adopted a resolution calling for all U.S. soldiers, pilots and support staff to be removed from the region of the Balkans.'' The resolution says, ``The U.S.-led NATO attacks against Serbia'', and this is the American Legion, veterans all over in America are, in effect, saying stand down, ``could only lead to troops being killed, wounded and captured without advancing any clear purpose, mission or objective.'' More particular, here are the whereas clauses: ``The President has committed the Armed Forces of the United States in a joint operation with NATO to engage in hostilities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without clearly defining America's vital national interests. Whereas, neither the President nor the Congress have defined America's objectives in what has become an open-ended conflict characterized by an ill-defined progressive escalation.'' Mr. Chairman, I will cover the rest of this later, but, clearly, there are more than just a few Members of Congress. Amendment No. 10 Offered by Mr. Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in favor of this rule, despite my disappointment with several of my amendments not receiving waivers. There will be lots of seemingly contradictory statements made during today's debate about this bill. Some will say this bill is about rebuilding our military, which it is. Some will say it is about raising the pay of our courageous men and women in service, which it is. Some will say it gives the administration the dollars which not only will escalate this war, but possibly expand it to a ground war, which it does. This modified open rule not only restricts amendments that would have moved needed national defense funds to other appropriations categories, but also restricts a number, under House rules, of amendments that could have prohibited the buildup of the war, such as an amendment by my colleague, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Dan Burton). Overwhelmingly, the House had passed an amendment that would have restricted a ground war, but it is not allowed under this bill, where it would have had the force of law. Several amendments of mine that would have reached back were also prohibited. So while there are a number of waivers, there are not any waivers for those of us who were trying to affect some of the ability of previous funds to be moved around. However, by allowing a modified open rule, it still gives many of us the flexibility to offer amendments that are within the House rules that will greatly restrict this Administration's ability to escalate and expand this war, and possibly even force the needed peace settlement that is pending. Our House vote last week clearly pushed the administration towards that, along with the work of Reverend Jesse Jackson. This rule will most likely, and it should, pass. That is quite a difference from the last few sessions of Congress. Quite frankly, in the last few sessions when we had a controversial vote like this, many of us were jammed. That resulted in us coming to the floor and taking down a rule. I learned there were more woodsheds out in this floor than I believed were possible. We were hauled in. We were told our party was collapsing. We were told the whole Congress was going to fold. We were going to lose control of Congress. But in fact, a lot of this controversy inside our party has been alleviated by our new Speaker, who has at least given us the flexibility to offer different amendments. We as a party need to pull together and pass this rule.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, having visited the Balkans, and I was privileged to be included in the trip with Senator Stevens and Chairman Young a few weeks ago, I have been aggressively against this war which I do not believe is winnable in the traditional sense. And it is time to get a negotiated settlement and it is time to cut off the funding, but I wanted to share a couple of things tonight about the terrible things that have happened to the people there. These are pictures that I took in Vranje, just north of Skopje, in Macedonia. This shows just one of what I call the long white road to the mountains. These are actually the shorter mountains. They rise higher up. It is impossible to get ground troops through this area, which many armies throughout hundreds of years have learned is impossible. This street goes on and on, miles and miles, and this is just one of the camps. There were 23,000 people, we were told, in that camp when we first came in. 8,000 additional people were added just that day. These Albanian men were at the back of the place because they kept asking us, ``Are the Apaches going to save us? Are they going to wipe out the tanks?'' Of course, we had to tell them no, that is not what Apaches are designed to do, but we wondered where they were getting that information. They have radios throughout the camp that are constantly broadcasting to them that there is this hope that they are suddenly going to go back. These are some of the people trying to make do. These tents, this size tent from USAID basically had supposedly four to eight people; many of them I saw far more that. They get a couple of cans of food, some bread and fruit each day, but they are desperately trying to make a fire or something to heat it up. As these camps are expanded to 30,000, 50,000 people and upwards, it is just not going to work; nor are the restroom facilities, the water facilities. Here people are desperately trying to stay clean. In the Macedonian camps they are coming mostly out of the cities. They were often booted out in the middle of the night. Most of the people are well dressed. The clothes had not come from the U.S. This is not able to be sustained over a long period of time. This photograph was taken at the back of the camp. I had gotten separated from the other Senators and Congressmen during the trip, as well as the interpreter, and this man was trying to talk to me by going like this. This girl had just come into the camp the night before but spoke some English, said, ``May I help you try to translate?'' What he tried to tell me is he saw 20 people get their throats slit just before he left; saw the mass grave before they torched his house and he got out. That was just one of the many stories we heard. He and all the others around them, when they were asked, first, do you want to go back? ``Yes.'' If we get rid of Milosevic, you are going to have to live under the Serbs. ``No, no, we are not going to live under the Serbs. We are going to get rid of Milosevic,'' was what they said, ``all Serbs and Milosevic.'' We heard that all through the camp. We said, what will you do if you get back? You have to try to live together. ``No, we are going to kill them.'' We have now the stories from like this man of the throats slit, and it is not something that is going to lead to this kind of humanitarian peaceful settlement that some people are dreaming of. This girl here had just come into the camp the night before as well. We stopped her. We saw she had diapers. And she broke down crying. I will never be a professional photographer because I could not snap the picture when her tears were coming down, but she is separated from her family. She is worried about her little child and so on. Now, I say that because I want to illustrate some of the things that have been happening in my district. No matter what a person's position is on the war, their heart has to go out to the refugees here or in the other countries where they have been displaced. I am pleased in my district that a number of churches and people have reached out. We tried to make the point while we were over in Europe to the ambassadors of seven nations, to NATO, that Europe has to pick up the bulk of these funds, but we in America are going to have some obligations as well. One story from Pastor Rick Hawks, who heads a large church in Fort Wayne, The Chapel, has coordinated with 8 churches: The Chapel; Broadway Christian; Church of the Good Shepherd in Leo; Blackhawk Baptist, also in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Fellowship Missionary Church in Fort Wayne; North Park Community Church; Wallen Baptist Church. We also had in my home church, Emmanuel Community Church, Abigail Roemke coordinated this. They had so many clothes and toiletries and stuff come in that it overwhelmed the distribution system that they originally had planned. They had far more than they could actually get directly there in that group. Also Pastor Ron Hawkins' church, First Assembly of God, put together a group that has two registered nurses, Nancy Grostefon and Dawn Rice, and Dr. David Smith, a pediatric surgeon, to spend two weeks working in two camps, and they raised the money through their church to underwrite these nurses and this doctor going over. In Fort Wayne we also have a large Macedonian population. George Labamoff in the Fort Wayne-based Macedonian Tribune, the oldest continually published Macedonian newspaper in the world, put together the Macedonian Relief Fund. They have also have an effort to try to raise money for the refugees in the countries. Lastly, I wanted to read as much as I can of this letter. I visited an alternative school in Columbia City on Monday. One of the things that they were doing was also collecting clothes and materials to send over to Kosovo. The teacher wrote me, saying, ``Teaching current events to young people with little or no background in geography or history is a challenge. So I try to make every lesson relevant by working from what they do know. And at-risk kids, just like at-war kids, know suffering and deprivation. Twenty- five percent of my students have lost a parent to unnatural causes. Twelve percent have been homeless.'' The point here, and I will insert the full thing in the RECORD, is these kids know what it is like to suffer, and because of that they collected clothes to help. I hope all Americans understand we have a long-term responsibility here to those who have been harmed, regardless of our position on the war. Madam Speaker, I have a series of articles that I would like to put in the Record in association with this special order. [From the Journal Gazette, Apr. 20, 1999] Supplies Short in Balkans (By Brian Meyer) Fort Wayne residents will be asked today to donate clothing and toiletry items to some of the 600,000 Kosovo refugees fleeing Yugoslavia. The Rev. Rick Hawks, pastor of The Chapel in Fort Wayne, has scheduled a news conference for 10:30 a.m. today to announce a citywide campaign to provide relief for Kosovo refugees. Donations of clothing, shoes, socks, outerwear, blankets, linens and toiletries will be accepted at seven local churches until May 3. Hawks said the Fort Wayne campaign, called ``Clothes for Kosovo,'' followed his discussions with Dick and Barb Kelley, former Fort Wayne residents now affiliated with the Slavic Gospel Association in Rockford, Ill. Donations from Fort Wayne will be shipped to Rob and Pam Provost, missionaries working in the Albanian capital of Tirana. ``At this point, there's a shortage of everything,'' Hawks said. ``Clothing, personal-hygiene items. ``We aren't dealing with anything perishable, just things like clothes and blankets.'' Seven Fort Wayne churches will serve as collection sites: The Chapel, 2505 W. Hamilton Road, Broadway Christian Church, 910 Broadway, Church of the Good Shepherd, 14711 Wayne St., Leo, Blackhawk Baptist Church, 7400 E. State Blvd, Fellowship Missionary Church, 2536 E. Tillman Road, North Park Community Church, 7160 Flutter Road, and Wallen Baptist Church, 1001 W. Wallen Road. Hawks said the local campaign is also seeking volunteers to help sort and box the donated goods; anyone wishing to volunteer can call The Chapel at 625-6200. ``The most labor-intensive thing is that everything has to be sorted, and there has to be a quick quality check,'' Hawks said. ``And then everything has to be boxed accordingly.'' Hawks said he is hoping to acquire enough donations to fill a tractor-trailer rig. The Chapel will pay the $5,000 to ship the donated materials to Albania. ``We think we'll fill that (truck rig) quite easily,'' Hawks said.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, last week we had a historic symbolic vote on the war. This House voted against ground troops. We also voted against, in a tie vote, a resolution to support the air war. This week we have the real vote. Are we going to fund the war? Are we just talk or are we going to actually cut off the funds for the war? There are three goals that have consistently been stated by NATO and by our government. One is to degradate the military forces or sufficiently degrade the military forces of the Yugoslav government so that we can move hundreds of thousands of refugees back, and then manage it with a peacekeeping force. I would put forth that anybody who has listened to any of the military briefings we have had, who have listened to the public reports, understand fundamentally that this is an unachievable goal. Milosevic understands that. When are the American people going to be told the truth, that our fundamental goals are unachievable? First off, the military has been saying all the way along, this cannot be accomplished just by an air war. They are hopeful that they can bring him to the table, but what do they mean when they say this cannot be accomplished just by an air war? He has dug in, he is fighting in mountainous terrain, he has supplies that are going to last him an extended period of time, and we read just last week that our military says that after 30 days of bombing, we have a net degradation of his military forces of zero. That does not mean that we have not impacted his long-term ability to wage war, we have blown up a lot of factories so he cannot reproduce, we have reduced some of the supply of gasoline into the country but he only needs 10 percent and they are saying currently that 75 percent of their oil supplies are still there, we have only degraded 25. Three weeks ago they told us we had degraded 35, 2 weeks ago 30, now it is 25. We are headed the wrong direction. They say, well, that is because of bad weather. The Balkans, when you read history books, always has bad weather. Furthermore, mountains in this time of year always have bad weather. This was no surprise. The Apache helicopters were not designed to go in to take out tanks. They were designed to go in with American forces on the ground as support. We are going to lose a lot of pilots and not accomplish our goal if we are not careful with how we use Apache helicopters. The American people need to understand the air war cannot solve the problem of getting the refugees back. The ground war cannot, either. A fundamental map, and you cannot see a lot of the details with this map but fundamentally you can tell one thing right away, there is lot of brown and yellow down here. This is Albania, this is Macedonia, and here is Kosovo. Now, to force your way in there, you have to go through mountains of 8,000 feet. That is why the Ottoman Empire stopped when it came in here. That is why Hitler could not make it through this part. There is no way we can put ground troops in through Albania or Macedonia or come in through Thessaloniki because, A, they do not want us to go through there but, B, even if they wanted to and even if we rebuilt airports and even if we built more roads through the mountains, we are not going to dislodge him through the mountains. It does not work. Our military understands. Any general who has ever looked at this understands that if you have a ground war, you are coming through the top where all this green area is. That is where invasions of the Balkans have always occurred. But now we are not just talking a few thousand troops, we are talking potentially 400,000 troops, potentially all or mostly American troops, a minimum, according to estimates, of 20,000 dead up to 50,000 dead, and having to fight our way through Belgrade and Yugoslavia. The people need to understand this is not just a magic little war where we are going to drop a few bombs and he is going to surrender. The truth needs to be told. Those who advocate a ground war and those who advocate an air war need to explain, it is not going to deliver. The only hope is to get him to the table. We have to have the courage. Before we pass a bill this week, if we do, we should first try to take the funds out. I will have a series of amendments and other Members will, too, to take the funds out to continue this war. I know some people are concerned that the President is then going to blame Congress for having lost the war. I tried to explain, we did not lose the war. It was an ill-conceived war. We bluffed something that we cannot deliver. We saw this in Vietnam. We saw it with the Russians in Afghanistan. We cannot win this on the ground or in the air alone without multiple years and destruction beyond imagination, and then we are still just bogged down. The bottom line is this. If we give him $12.9 billion, this current President, then he could potentially, without a lot of protection for this bill, divert it to the ground war without ever coming to Congress. This is not just the $3.3 billion to continue the war. While our intent is to rebuild a military that he has devastated, our good intent could be used to fund a war, an expanded war where thousands of lives are lost, where the negotiated settlement in the end is just like the negotiated settlement we would have roughly had in the beginning. If we get blamed this week because we stopped the funding and the President of the United States says the Republicans stopped the war, which would be untrue because it was an ill-conceived war in the first place, so what? If we saved American lives, that is what we are here to do, not to play politics. At this point it is the job of this Congress to stand up and say, we know, both from the public statements and our private briefings that this cannot be accomplished. It is time to get to the table, because at most what we are arguing about is how to divide Kosovo at this point. It is not even clear in the end that we are going to have a better arrangement than we had in the beginning because now after all this bombing, after the Kosovars are legitimately upset about the slit throats, the massacres and so on, they want to be independent. What are we going to tell the Palestinians when they want to be independent? And what are we going to tell the Kurds when they want to be independent? And what about the subsections of India? And what about the Chechnya area of Russia? Are we going to intervene all over and, all of a sudden, have a new international policy because we got in a bad war with an ill-conceived strategy? And if we continue this, and we continue to fight this and we continue to put the money in, we only dig ourselves deeper in more graves. It is time for this Congress to stand up and say: ``Get to the table now. We're not going to fund this war. It's unwinnable. The settlement you are going to get now is probably as good a settlement as we're going to get later, only with fewer Americans' lives lost, with fewer dollars spent and with less international problems than if we settle it right now.''

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, last night's votes on our war were a wakeup call to our President, to NATO and to the world. The American People's House voted against a declaration of war, against ground troops, and also defeated a resolution on a tie vote, even, in support of the current air war. That should be a clear message to the world that America is in the process of switching the more they learn about this ill-conceived war. Next week's supplemental defense appropriations bill is in deep trouble. How can a Congress vote against a declaration of war this week and then the next week turn around and fund it? I want to make sure as one of those who is against this war, who started skeptical but has turned into someone who feels it is time to aggressively speak out before American men and women die on a battlefield in an ill-conceived, ill-planned and unwinnable war, that several things are true about this supplemental appropriation. Those of us who oppose it are not unconcerned about the refugees. Two weeks ago when I was privileged to go along with the CODEL over to that area and visited a refugee camp in Macedonia, you cannot help but be moved by the terrible stories that the individuals are telling about how they have been forcibly removed from their country. It is terrible. The question is not whether it should pull at your heart and how terrible it is. The question is what can we do about it and is this unprecedented? It is wrong when the Serbs do it, it is wrong when the Croatians do it, it is wrong when the Bulgarians do it, and it is wrong when the Bosnian Muslims do it. The question is by inserting ourselves can we stop this? Is this the most effective way? And will we accidentally create a problem potentially bigger than the problem that we went in to solve? Secondly, this is not about refugee aid. We should be having a separate vote on refugee aid, not refugee aid serving as a cover for military appropriations for a continuing war. All of us agree that the economies of Albania and Macedonia have been devastated by being unable to continue their trade not only with Serbia but the other countries around them, by handling the refugees that come in, by having a general collapse of their economies by their openness. We need to give aid for the refugees, we need to give aid to those countries. That is not what this supplemental appropriations bill is about next week. That is merely wrapping with it. We will give refugee aid, we will give aid to those countries, but I believe it should happen after we have a settlement there. Thirdly, this is not about replacing military preparedness. This President has already proven that whatever we appropriate, he diverts to the war. We can appropriate it for this or that, but if he wants to continue the war, he is diverting it. We have an obligation if we say we are against this war not to hide behind what we are replacing but understand he has no conscience as far as how he will divert the money, which also leads me to, this is not about military buildup. I am one of those who believes we are at least $20 billion behind in military preparedness and that is why we need to do it and that is why we must as a Republican Congress step up regardless of the budget question and address the defense question. But not here. If we put $12 billion, $6 billion more than he proposed on this bill, what assurances do we have that this is not either going to continue the war or be used, even worse, for the ground war that we voted against last night? Because there are no fire walls that you can put in, particularly if we continue to allow reprogramming of money in our leadership that protects us from having voted the funds next week to go to a ground war. It is fine to stand up here as we did last night and say we are against a ground war, we are against continuing this air war, we are against a declaration of war, but the real thing comes down to the money. Next week are we going to stand up and say, ``He can't have the money to continue and expand this war. We want to see people come to the table in a livable, workable thing''? When I was at NATO in Brussels, I had a very weird feeling as I was sitting around the table and hearing how we cannot back up, this could be terrible and devastating for NATO. This is so much like Vietnam where we heard all those things and in fact we got the same deal after we had the loss of American lives that we could have had the first day. In a very interesting book, ``Taking Charge'' by Michael Beschloss about Lyndon Johnson, actual tapes, this is an exchange of Lyndon Johnson with Dick Russell, head of the Senate Foreign Relations, I believe, at that time. ``LBJ: I spend all my days with Rusk and McNamara and Bundy and Harriman and Vance and all those folks that are dealing with it and I would say it pretty well adds up to them now that we've got to show some power and some force--that they do not believe--they don't believe that the Chinese Communists will come into this thing. But they don't know and nobody can really be sure. But their feeling is that they won't. And in any event, that we haven't got much choice, that we are treaty-bound, that we are there, that there will be a domino that will kick off a whole list of others, that we've got to prepare for the worst.'' That is exactly what we are being told here. That is exactly what I heard at NATO. ``Oh, we can't back up because we are treaty-bound, we are there, it will be a domino.'' In fact, we stayed in Vietnam. We lost many of my friends, thousands of Americans in that battle, and in the end wound up backing up, because the problem here is do not bluff, do not make threats that you cannot follow through. Our generals have told us, this is unwinnable in the air. Those of us who have been over there, those of us who have studied any history realize you cannot do a ground war from the south. A ground war would have to come from the north. Not only are there huge mountains and not only have armies throughout world history been stopped in those mountains, you have to come from the north. If you come from the north you have Romania and Hungary drawn into the war. You have a problem of coming through Belgrade and northern Yugoslavia and then us owning northern Yugoslavia as well as the autonomous republic of Kosovo. It is not winnable on the ground. The American people need to be told that if we go to a ground war, between 20 and 50,000 Americans are going to lose their lives. We have to understand what we are faced with here. We bluffed. We should not bluff when we do not have the ability to execute. It is time to cut off the funding for this war.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentlewoman from Ohio, and want to again commend those who have worked so hard for this bill; to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), and subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) castle, and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), my colleague from an adjacent district. It has been a long process, but we are nearing the end of at least this small step towards flexibility for schools in Indiana and around this country. I say it is a small step because we should not kid ourselves. We had other opportunities and will have more opportunities to actually make funding available. I personally am very disappointed that we had to withdraw the Senate amendment that would have allowed some of these funds to be used from last year's teachers program, if a school so chose, for IDEA. Because, in fact, this sets parameters for the Federal Government to grant waivers under certain conditions, but that would have given real dollar flexibility to schools if they felt that they had their class size down. Like in Indiana, where we have mandated that the class size go down, many of the schools have reached those class sizes. Therefore, they are not eligible for the teachers funds in most cases and they would like to be able to use their money for IDEA. So to some degree, when we micromanage from Washington, we punish those States that have actually done a better job of fixing certain conditions and problems in their States and to reward those States that have not done it. That is why we cannot micromanage schools all over America. We need to have flexibility. Unlike many bills that come out of the House, this is at least slightly better than when it went into conference committee. So we have a little bit more flexibility, but I am very disappointed that we had to yield on the House side and the Senate withdrew on the Lott amendment. We will revisit that subject. Because one consequence of looking at the terrible tragedy of yesterday in Colorado ought to be to say it is not the school's fault. The schools and the teachers are struggling with tremendous social problems in this country. We in Washington should not try to tell them how to do it. We need to help them in their local flexibility, not by having more standards or more accountability. The problem here is not that they are not reporting enough to us. The problem is they are fighting in their local communities with how to deal with the terrible problems of reading, of social adjustments, of violence on television. We need to give them the flexibility in their schools that says, what is that particular school's need for their high-risk students? Are some emotionally disadvantaged? Do some have physical handicaps that they are short of money on? Do some have particular reading needs where they have LDD or ADD, or is it their class size is too big, or do they need school construction or do they need it for computers? The local people know this. They are committed to education. We should not sit here in Washington and say we do not trust our teachers, we do not trust our principals, we do not trust our school boards, we do not trust our superintendents. They are on the line. They are fighting every day. They have terrible problems they are struggling with, and we need to help them by giving them flexibility, and this bill is a first step.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, the question is: Why are we here particularly today in addition to it being tax day? When the Republicans took over Congress in January of 1995, the first major legislative vote for me as a Member of Congress was the first item of the Contract with America. A significant number of Members in the class of 1994 were very concerned because that balanced budget amendment had this particular clause taken out. The protection against tax increases, that had been part of our Contract with America. We at that point in our first legislative vote developed our reputation as a bunch of troublemakers in this House. As part of that compromise, we were promised that, on April 15, we would have the opportunity, thanks to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg), who then worked with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) who had been a champion of this long before we got here, who worked out with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader, who had always been a leading tax cutter, that we would have the opportunity to point this out to the American people on this day. Although I still voted against that balanced budget amendment for this reason, a balanced budget will not work unless we have tax protections, because if we can increase taxes, we can balance a budget superficially because it will look like we are raising revenue the first year, but in fact it will continue to contract. The only way really to save Social Security in this country, the only way to really balance the budget in this country is by cutting taxes because of economic growth, an increasing pie. The Reaganomics have been proven to work once in the 1980s. This time, by combining a government growth less than the combined rate of inflation and the economic growth of society, we were able to get an annual surplus but only because we had the tax cuts with it that stimulated the growth. The President can submit a balanced budget here, as our majority leader said a little while ago and the other speakers said, one can present a balanced budget, all one has to do is raise taxes. The fact is this about our President and, in particular, the Vice President: Vice President Al Gore did not invent the Internet. Vice President Al Gore invented the Internet tax. That is the approach of this administration. Their approach is how to raise revenues through tax increases or, at the very least, keep the money here when the tax cuts generated the additional revenue. This Congress is already proving that, even with the Republican majority, when we see a surplus, we tend to spend it. We have millions and millions of dollars being spent every day now over in the Balkans. We have many demands on us. We cannot in this society succeed without economic growth. That means lower taxes and stop any tax increases.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, today is a proud day for Northeast Indiana. One of our own, former Vice President Dan Quayle came home to Huntington to announce his campaign for President of the United States. In Huntington, we are proud of the Dan Quayle Museum, the only museum in the United States devoted to Vice Presidents. In Indiana, we have had many Vice Presidents--in addition to Dan Quayle, Thomas Marshall, Thomas Hendricks, Charles Fairbanks, and Schuyler Colfax are Hoosier Vice Presidents. While William Henry Harrison, who was a Territorial Governor based in Vincennes before Indiana was a state; and his cousin Benjamin Harrison, who lived in Indianapolis at the time of his election. And there's Abraham Lincoln. We Hoosiers say that Indiana made Lincoln and then Lincoln made Illinois. But Dan Quayle will be our first really Hoosier President. And I'm proud he's from my district, and I'm honored to hold the same congressional seat he did. My friend Mike Perkins wrote the following article in the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette that summarizes our feelings. [From the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette, April 11, 1999] Why Quayle Always Returns (By Mike Perkins) A few minutes after noon Wednesday, Dan Quayle will step to the microphone in a packed gymnasium at Huntington North High School and make history by announcing he is a candidate for president of the United States. It will be a big story on a national basis and a very big story for the small town of Huntington, the place Dan Quayle still considers his hometown. As it first did in the summer of 1988, the national media spotlight will again fall on the community. It will focus on the place, the people and the attitudes that helped shape Dan Quayle. That's one of the reasons he's coming back here on such an important day in his life. While we've hardly used to such attention, it can't be quite as bewildering as it was in August 1988, when Huntington became, for a day or two, the center of the political universe. When George Bush surprised nearly everyone by naming Dan Quayle his running mate on the Republican ticket, editors, producers and reporters everywhere scrambled to find Huntington on their Indiana maps. There they hoped to find people who could help them unravel the mystery of just who this Quayle fellow was. What the reporters discovered when they got here was that Dan Quayle was anything but a mystery to the people of Huntington. His family had lived here for years. He'd graduated from high school here, spent a few summers at home during college, then moved back to Huntington with his wife, Marilyn, after law school. He went to work at his family's newspaper--where I am employed--and he and Marilyn even hung out a Quayle & Quayle law shingle on the second floor of the newspaper building. They bought a house, settled in and began a family. They made friends they're still on a first-name basis with. Small-town life agreed with them. As did big-time politics. The Quayles moved from Huntington not long after Dan Quayle took his oath as a member of the House of Representatives in 1977. The Quayles have not spent more than a few days at a time in Huntington since then. Dan Quayle last voted at his Huntington Precinct 1A polling place in 1992. He has returned a few times since for ceremonies and fund-raisers. It is significant that Dan Quayle, who lives in Phoenix after calling Indianapolis home, chooses to return to Huntington for Wednesday's announcement. There's no strategic reason to do so. He does not need to work against a rural Midwest backdrop; he'll be spending much of the coming year in towns smaller than Huntington as he stumps through Iowa. He does not need to curry votes; Huntington County and all of Indiana have been kind to him that way over the years, and the Republican nomination should be decided by the time the Indiana primary rolls around in May 2000. Dan Quayle is coming back to Huntington because his successful journeys always seem to start from here. In 1976, as a political unknown, he launched his first campaign for Congress from the Huntington College student union. He returned there in 1980 to announce his ambitions for the Senate. He and George Bush began their quest for the White House in 1988 from the south steps of the Huntington County Courthouse. Dan Quayle was not supposed to have a prayer against the popular J. Edward Roush in 1976. But he won. Birch Bayh was thought to be all but unbeatable when the 1980 campaign began. Quayle beat him. George Bush had to overcome Michael Dukakis' early lead while Dan Quayle stood up under a withering media barrage in the fateful first weeks of the 1988 campaign. And they won. Quayle is not the early favorite for the Republican nomination in 2000. Sound familiar? Dan Quayle knows he can expect a warm reception from the people in his hometown. Community pride in having sent a congressman, senator, then vice president into the political arena transcends party affiliation for most people in Huntington County. Even those who disagree with Dan Quayle's politics can admire the man behind the issues and the way he reflects their values and their beliefs. In large part Wednesday's rally will be a local production. Hundreds of volunteers have been mobilized. Work has been under way for weeks. The person at the eye of the organizational hurricane is Marj Hiner, co-owner of a Huntington trucking company. She has been a volunteer for Dan Quayle since his earliest House campaigns and she passed her trial by fire when she helped put together the 1988 Bush- Quayle rally on three days' notice. Quayle knows Hiner and the Huntington County people she has enlisted to help. He trust them to play a pivotal role in a watershed event in his political career. Quayle's friendships, as well as his roots, run deep here. It's impossible to know where Dan Quayle's personal journey will take him in the months and year to come. In political terms he's still a young man, likely to be a force in the Republican Party for many years to come. His path might not often lead him back to Huntington, but when he does return he'll be welcomed with kind words and understanding hearts. You shouldn't expect anything less when you come home.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) for his leadership on this issue. It is a very complicated and difficult issue in the middle of a very partisan atmosphere. Clearly, whether or not we are able to get an accurate count may have an impact on how Congress is distributed, and that is why we see much of the debate here. I believe we have to have a real count and not an estimate or a guess. Estimating has real problems, and I want to illustrate why local communities, mayors, city councils and county councils are so concerned about having the ability to review this, because our assumptions when we estimate are critical. Mr. Speaker, let me illustrate by using fantasy baseball. I love to play fantasy baseball. I have a team, and it is based on real daily statistics. Imagine what baseball would be like if the Census Bureau was in charge of baseball: Fantasy owners of Mark McGwire would be crushed because he would hit only 36 home runs this year, which is his yearly average. Unless, of course, we use his average for 162 games, in which case he hit 48 home runs. But we could use his 3-year average, which is 60 home runs. But anybody who has Mark McGwire in fantasy baseball is really hoping for more than 60 home runs, so they would not want the Census Bureau statistic. Then take Sammy Sosa. His Census Bureau number this year would be 27. That is his average yearly number. Who would want Sammy Sosa at 27 home runs if he has got the potential to hit 66 home runs? Now I have had Andres Galarraga, and I would like the Census Bureau number on Andres Galarraga because his 3-year average is 44 home runs, and he is out for the year. But, as my colleagues know, this illustrates the problem with estimating. Estimating for the whole United States is accurate. But the smaller the unit when we do estimating, the less accuracy there is and the more deviation there is because it is more difficult to count. So when we go down to a census block or the equivalent of an individual player, it is completely unpredictable; over 8 percent, I believe, is the variation, or higher. When we move to the city level or even a city council level to a city, then we become more like a team, and it is also very inaccurate and above the percentage that the estimates of the current census of actual numerical count, if we did it in not the way the Republicans are proposing, because we are proposing to increase the money for local groups to go out and do it, we are proposing to increase any way we need to to get a better real count. But if we just took the traditional problems that they had in 1990 and said this is the way we are going to do a real count, it would still be more accurate at the city level and the block level than estimating. Now when we get to the larger units, estimating starts to work better because we have a larger base to work off of and the people are not moving around. Now let me illustrate why that is the case, because estimating and the mathematical probabilities are based on very difficult things in this type of situation. The people who are most at risk of being undercounted, and I do not think there is any one of us here who sincerely have worked with the problem who do not believe that counting is very difficult in high-risk populations, which include illegal immigrants; it includes the homeless; it includes anybody who does not want to talk to somebody from the Federal Government. For example, in Fort Wayne we say we have 120 crack houses, but only 20 or 30 may be operating at a given time because it is really abandoned homes and the people are moving between them. Illegal immigrants may be clustered many in a house, or there may be a couple, or the place may not have them at a given time. Now what we have proposed to do, and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) and I, and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) and I worked on an amendment in committee to make sure that we signed off an amendment that even said groups of color with a marketing background, so we can get people in the community to try to find the people who are hard to count because they do not trust somebody like me walking into a neighborhood. Looks like potentially I am going to count them and they are not going to trust me. We have to find groups in local communities who are trusted, but if we do not get real people, that is why we have estimates in this country, and some big cities that is there is 20,000 homeless or there is 120,000 homeless. Quite frankly, if we estimate on certain assumption that there is 120,000, and there is only 20,000, we are depriving 100,000 other citizens, if we are wrong, of their civil right to vote. That is more than the cities, for example, of Muncie and Terre Haute in Indiana, plus Huntington combined, would be deprived of their right to vote because somebody made an estimate that was high on the homeless as opposed to low. It does not work. Many of the people who are hardest to count are moving around, and if they are moving around, unless we have a real name, we could quadruple count them. It is a difficult thing, and it is not a question of sincerity here. I want to get a real count, I want to do everything I can to get the real count, but I am not going to go in for guessing.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, first off, this is not a question of an accurate count, it is a question of an accurate count versus a possibly inaccurate guess or, more likely, a probable inaccurate guess. We hear all this talk about wanting to count people. The difference here is we would like to count people; the other side would like to estimate. They would like to guess where the people are, guess which city they are, take samples here and there from past experience and guess. The Constitution says we have to count. And that is really what this debate is about. Are we going to count real people, make every effort, spend whatever is necessary to count real people, or are we going to have imaginary people? There is not a lot of confidence right now in this country that either side would not attempt to cheat if they could do the estimating, because estimating depends on our assumptions. If it is not a real count, and we keep hearing there was an undercount last time, well, where they really counted, and they fixed the undercount, they can fix it. But if we are guessing what the undercount is, we will not really know because we are estimating. Mr. Speaker, I have a business degree and a Master's degree, and I know my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Sawyer), is a big supporter of estimating and the mathematical science of estimating, as is the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Census, but the fact is it is still a guess and it is not accurate at the local level. I want to illustrate one point that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) was also making. Councilwoman Rebecca Revine, in Fort Wayne, has signed on a letter of Republican mayors and local officials supporting this bill because they are worried that without post-census local review they will not be counted accurately. Here is why: In Fort Wayne, Indiana, my hometown, the census liaison sent this fax to his superiors in Washington: ``As of today, Groundhog Day 1999, despite being promised the address list in November 1998, over a dozen calls to the Bureau, the involvement of the Chicago Bureau supervisor, finger pointing by the Bureau among Chicago, Jeffersonville and Suitland, Maryland, and the involvement of our U.S. congressional office, me, we still do not have a printed address list and instructions for completing the process. ``The maps already provided are seriously out of date. No annexation and boundary study for 1999, combined with Fort Wayne's aggressive annexation policy, will mean the geography used by the Bureau will be inaccurate and incomplete. ``No local review of information provided or aggregate results from the Bureau prior to release will mean no external check of accuracy or `completeness'.'' Is it any wonder that Fort Wayne, Indiana, is worried and why they want to have post-census review? What mayor, what city council, what county council in America would not want to look to see if the maps were accurate, to see if the information the government based it on is accurate? That is all this bill does. We will debate sampling plenty, but this bill says the people in Fort Wayne ought to be able to see the maps, the assumptions, and whether they got the boundaries right. How can anyone be against that? No mayor that does not want to do it has to do it, no county council that does not want to do it has to do it, no city council that does not want to do it has to do it. Why in the world would anybody be against giving Fort Wayne or other cities the right to look at the results?

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding me this time. In response to my colleague and friend, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), there is a difference between claiming this would be a clean bill and actually making it so that it does in real dollars what this hypothetically does. The goal of Ed-Flex was to give flexibility to local school systems and States to have flexibility with their money. Senator Lott's amendment in the Senate actually allowed flexibility in the money. The Democratic motion to instruct conferees in article 2 says that additional funding be authorized. That is not real money. That is much like a sense of Congress that we should give more money. It deletes the part that actually gives the flexibility to the State and locals to choose. The gentleman from Indiana said that Congress should not be dictating what the local school districts are doing between teachers and IDEA. Yet, at the same time, that is exactly, if this motion to instruct conferees would pass, what we are doing, because Congress should not dictate whether or not they should hire teachers. Congress should not dictate whether they should use it for IDEA. Congress should not dictate whether it is if computers. The point of Ed-Flex is to let the districts choose. The Lott amendment gave flexibility so that, in last year's appropriations bills, not that they have to use it for IDEA, but that they can use it for IDEA in real dollars. This is real flexibility. How can my colleagues claim to be for this bill and yet instruct conferees before we even start that they cannot have flexibility with the appropriations. The point of this bill is to give that local flexibility, especially since, on March 4, there was a Supreme Court decision regarding the health care related to school performance of Garrett Frey in Iowa. That health care is going to cost that school district $30,000 to $40,000 a year just for the nurse. The party that was in control of this Congress for 40 years and during the whole period of IDEA did not put necessary funding in. We are only funding it at 12 percent. With this court decision, they needed even more. Here we have the opportunity to put the money in, and they are against allowing the schools the flexibility.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) for a conclusion.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak briefly on the steel issue tonight because tomorrow during the debate we have several markups where I may be tied up and may not be able to give a statement on the floor, plus I couldn't give them as extended remarks. There will be much talk tomorrow about the question of free trade versus fair trade, and I wanted to register my opinions as somebody who is concerned about how to promote international trade and at the same time make sure that that trade is fair. As we are aware, since July of 1997, as a result of the collapse of numerous economies around the world, there has been a flood of imports into the United States. Foreign corporations from Japan, Korea, Russia and a host of other countries have been selling steel at as much as $100 a ton less than it costs them to produce it. Steel producers from Russia, one of the more egregious examples, were allowed to dump 47 percent more steel on our market than was shipped in 1997. We simply cannot allow this to continue. We cannot have free trade if some people cheat. Russia is a particularly interesting case. Last fall, I was part of a Duma-House of Representatives' exchange where I spent a number of days in Russia. The steel industry was tremendously important and still is to the Soviet regime. It represents both an obvious source of the war machine there and reflected an almost excessive emphasis on manufacturing. Enormous resources were mobilized and poured into this industry, without regard for market forces or efficient use of capital. This awesome industrial effort transformed vast rural regions into major steel producers. By the 1970s, the Soviets created by far the largest steel industry the world had seen. For many years, the Soviet Union was the leading producer, about 186 million tons in 1986, but there still was and still is no reliable cost data, no standardized accounting practices and no interest in even thinking of market efficiencies. In fact, most of their business transactions were conducted in barter, even paying taxes with steel. The breakup of the Soviet Union has created a significant crisis for their steel industry. To say domestic demand has dropped is a laughable understatement. Russian steel's traditional market, especially the Soviet war machine, pales in comparison to what it once was. Russian GNP has fallen over 42 percent since 1989. Steel consumption, once 970 pounds, per capita has fallen to 265 today. In 1997, it was estimated that they had nearly 5 times as much steel- making capacity as was needed to meet domestic demand, yet production continued. By mid-1998, Russian mills exported about 65 percent of their output, some even 100 percent of their output, usually at prices well below market levels. In May 1998, Metal Bulletin reported that, incredibly, Russian plate and hot-rolled coils were being sold in some markets at less than half the prevailing domestic market price. By late 1998, at least 30 countries had imposed import restrictions against Soviet companies or were preparing to do so. In 1998, the U.S. bore the brunt of this tremendous Russian onslaught. The President proposed a suspension agreement that represented a 78 percent reduction from the 1998 level, a good start but nowhere near enough. Essentially, this still allows a significant amount of dumping to occur. We must do more. In the meetings with the Duma, I raised this issue of dumping and their response is particularly telling. For those who tell me that this is a free trade issue, it simply is not. When I raised the fundamental injustice of their subsidization of energy costs, in my district we have the lowest producing steel companies in the world, Steel Dynamics being the example, and they have seen their energy costs soar, and when I raised this problem they advised me that we should do like they do; they said, we own our energy producers. Therefore, our energy costs are nothing. That is a creative cost accounting way to get around the principle of free trade. This simply is not free trade. We in America cannot tell our foundries, we cannot tell our steel companies, that they have all these regulations, they have all of these energy prices, now go out there and compete freely, when we allow, contrary to free market principles, people to dump at below cost. The principle of free trade requires fair trade and equitable trade. The President cannot merely say we are going to kind of jawbone with these other countries that have had the problems in Asia, that have had the problems in South America, the problems in Russia and then make us promises to enforce the rule of law. We need to do it. I heard really moving stories about how in Russia and other countries steel workers have been laid off, how towns are being shuttered. Well, come to America. Whether it is in Pennsylvania or Indiana or all over this country, we have steel workers out of work, too. Only we have steel workers out of work because people did not follow the laws that are essential to making free trade work. This bill that we are going to consider tomorrow not only rolls the level of imports back to where it was before the illegal dumping came but also establishes a more effective steel import monitoring system. It is essential, if we are to have free trade, to make sure that it is fair.