Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

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

Mr. SOUDER

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

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), for yielding. I thank him for his leadership and his attempts to try to move the Attorney General to action. Mr. Speaker, I would first like to say a few words in defense, albeit a mild defense, of Attorney General Reno. Her job is not easy. After all, it is not as though she is a nonpartisan person. She is a long- time democrat. She was a staff director at the Florida House Judiciary Committee. She ran for the State legislature and lost. She was a long time State's attorney. She came to Washington as a partisan democrat and these days have to be very hard on the Attorney General, seeing around her all these allegations and all of these challenges. It has to be heart rending to her. The Attorney General was appointed by a democratic president and can be fired by that democratic president. So she has to look and consider that, even though you try not to when you are Attorney General of the United States. It is a fact. She is surrounded by political staff, democratic appointees. Remember, this White House sent the close Arkansas ally, Webb Hubbell, since in prison, to be her deputy Attorney General. This bears repeating. It is not every day that the Nation gets a deputy Attorney General who goes to jail while that administration is still in power. That is another thing that clearly made her job not easy. She has had to appoint special prosecutor after special prosecutor on cabinet member after cabinet member; certainly not an easy thing to do if you are a democratic former candidate, former staff person, former elected official now appointed by a democrat. She now has a special prosecutor on Harold Ickes, who is at the highest levels of the White House. Even higher than that, although it is in a limited way for the Vice President, even Judge Starr, after all that is an Attorney General Reno appointment, but his investigation was limited, and some of us, as the Nation is abuzz about sex, have concern about other matters and have for multiple years and that is what about the campaign finance? As we have been looking at this, and as we heard the FBI director as the chairman brought him in front of our committee, and Mr. LaBella and others, part of the question, as we look at the FBI as to how they approach drug cases, how they approach other issues, the goal has not been to try to set up and catch the lowest level people. There is a real question going on here. We see special prosecutor after special prosecutor chasing little bits of a larger picture; yet the training, the training of the people who investigate this type of thing in the FBI and others, is to look at combinations and to see who is behind this. Yet, we have not seen this coming out. There has been, at the very least, a reluctance, if not actually a deliberate attempt, to break up and not pursue the larger questions of why is this person doing this, why is this person doing this, why is this person doing this, why is this person doing this? People all over the country are debating this in another matter but we see this, as we heard last night, in the Teamsters investigation where the same names start to pop up. We see it in the casinos where the same names start to pop up. We see it in China in technology sales, where the same names start to pop up. When one sees this, one would think that the Attorney General would say, I better get to the bottom of this and see where it is headed, not where it is down there. This is not easy. She has a difficult job with it. One other thing I want to point out, we have had past cases in this House of Representatives far, far, far less serious than this, in fact most of which turned out to be false. Yet, we heard rhetoric on this floor that one would have thought the entire republic was collapsing because there were not special prosecutors. Now is this curious that this particular notion of shame be advanced by someone who has an ethical cloud over him so big and heavy that dewdrops now glisten on his neo-Victorian halo? Questions about whether the activities of a high public official are appropriate, ethical or legal become as pervasive as though raised about the complicated affair, which is something that was said about a Member on this floor. The American people should know where this money came from. Did these donors get anything in return, are there any conflicts of interest, was the high and mighty rhetoric on this floor paralyzing this country in the past, as allegations that have proven to be false even were thrown about. This cloud grows larger and darker with new questions of ethics violations, another Member said. Another one said, the cloud of alleged improprieties threaten public confidence in this House. Can appointing a special prosecutor remove this cloud of darkness? We heard this type of rhetoric, and it is just amazing how many of these people are silent. All of a sudden, independent prosecutor, oh, that is not a big deal. All of a sudden, apparently there is a different standard, that it is okay to go after individuals over history here on minor things but when we are questioning whether American technology was sold because of foreign money, when we are questioning whether inside deals were made on decision after decision, whether or not the very national security of this country has been at stake, well, then we do not really want to get into this. Even though the FBI director says, ``Hey, you are a democrat, you have a partisan stake, you do not really have credibility to do this,'' when her own Justice Department officials say you do not have the credibility to do this, we have to move ahead. I commend the leader of this committee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) for pushing to move this ahead. We have lots of discussions in this country about sex and whether there has been cover-ups and this and that and who did what, but, there is a lot more to this story and we need to get to the bottom of this truth. It is our obligation to do so, and I commend the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe, at a time when this entire Nation is abuzz about what kind of moral leadership is coming out of Washington, that we even have to consider this resolution. In my hometown in Fort Wayne and throughout northeast Indiana and throughout this country, kids are dying in the streets, they are dying in automobile wrecks, they are getting shot down as innocent bystanders in drug wars, most of which started in some kind of combination of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. We have seen a lowering in attitudes about the positive usage of cigarettes. We need to make more gains on alcohol. But we have seen a reversal in the trends on marijuana, partly because the leaders of our country have not spoken out as strongly. The last thing we need in this House are Members of Congress using the word simultaneously with medicinal use of marijuana when what they actually mean is a component inside marijuana, THC, and giving the implication that somehow this is a medicine, at a time when young people are becoming more lax in their attitudes and in their usage. Directly to make this point, in California, it is not for cancer patients. It also can be used for such things as memory recall, writer's cramp, corn callouses. It was a back doorway in California and Arizona and other places where misleading commercials were run, funded predominantly by a man named George Soros and two of his allies who have poured $15 million over 5 years into this to oppose the war on drugs. Among his statements in Time Magazine was, ``I do want to weaken drug laws. I think they are unnecessarily severe. The injustice of the thing is outrageous.'' The director of Soros' Lindesmith Center said, it is nice to think that in another 5 to 10 years the right to possess or consume drugs may be as powerfully and widely understood as other rights of Americans. We are at a moral crossroads in this country. The question is, where do we in Congress stand? Are we going to work to protect our kids in this country, or are we going to weaken these laws that we have tried to uphold? I am very concerned about this trend, and I hope the Members of Congress understand the moral responsibilities of this office.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I stand in somewhat of an unusual position today. I serve on the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families of the Committee on Education and the Workforce and have worked with the gentleman from California (Mr. Martinez) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) on this bill, both in the last session of Congress and in this session, and on H.R. 1818, which is a part of this bill. And we were able to develop a bipartisan and important consensus that in reaching out to children, in particularly their juvenile period, that we need to try to reach these kids before they get to the level of serious crime and work through that problem; and that they deserve special set-aside counseling, both in prevention and after they have committed a crime. But this has been merged with another bill, Mr. Speaker, which I also support, which says that for certain actions, such as if a juvenile shoots somebody and kills them, if they rape someone, or if they commit armed robbery with a firearm, and they are 15 years of age, that person is just as dead, just as raped, or had their life just as threatened as if that individual were 18. We have spent too much time worrying about some of these juveniles on the street without thinking about the people, particularly in a lot of our urban centers, who are terrorized by these young people; without thinking of the people working in many fast food places, that are now shutting down in my hometown of Fort Wayne and around this country, where people do not have places to get food, they do not have grocery stores in their area because a few individuals are terrorizing their neighborhoods. Now, I do not necessarily agree completely with every part of the crime bill section of this, in the sense that I think we need rehabilitation programs. We have had a celebrated case in our State about a young girl who committed a murder. And, clearly, when an individual is 14, 15, 16, 17, they are going through somewhat of a different process. And as has been pointed out, they are going to be released and we need to work with them. But they need to be off the streets and held accountable for their crimes, because for a few people in this society, in many cases, it is questionable, quite frankly, in these rape cases and armed robberies, whether indeed any of the rehab programs are working, and many of these people are not coming off the street. I am not arguing against prevention. I supported that bill; I helped develop that bill. I believe we have an excellent effort to try to reach more of these young people before they get to that step. But we are getting into a posture, it seems like in this government, where if someone apologizes, if they say they are sorry, if somehow somebody gives them a slap on the wrist or maybe gives them a sensor, that they are not held accountable for their actions in this country anymore. There should be a price to pay if someone shoots somebody, if they rape somebody, or if they use a gun in an armed robbery. They should be held accountable for that crime, and we are not doing it at this time. Forty percent of people in the juvenile period of 15 until they reach adulthood are not serving sentences, and they are back out on the streets terrorizing the senior citizens in their neighborhood and the other kids. We had a little boy that was gunned down in Fort Wayne, and one a little bit older, as a gang was going through in a random shooting of a house trying to find another drug dealer. Can anybody get that little boy's life back? I believe the person who pulls that trigger or who threatens to pull the trigger should be held accountable. Then, I also believe while they are in prison, we need to work with them and be sensitive to these young people being raped in prison and how we should separate them. But they should go to jail, they should do the time, and they should be held accountable. Because when they take another life or rape someone or assault someone, they need to be held accountable.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, let me state at the beginning here a couple of entry points. One, I talked last night and earlier tonight a little bit on this particular subject, and I do not want to give the impression that that is all that I am focusing on or anybody else here is focusing on. All day long we have been debating multiple bills. I spoke on the juvenile justice bill, on the medicinal use of marijuana bill. We also passed Congressman Sessions' methamphetamine bill, many other pieces of legislation. I met for several hours with the Higher Education Conference Committee. We do many things. But one of the things we do have a charge of is government oversight. It is also very difficult, and I know it seems kind of curious as we discuss some of these matters, that we are under very tight and wise rules about what we can and cannot say, and it is like having a hundred or a thousand or a million pound gorilla out there on one subject right now that we cannot talk about. And we have to be very careful about what we say about the highest leaders in our land and about other Members, and I think those rules are good. So sometimes if it seems we are a tad evasive at this point, it is not that we are in general, but on this House floor I think we have high standards to meet, we have weighty matters before us, as we have had before in this country's history. And I know many Americans wish this would just go away and that we would not have to deal with these subjects. But in fact we do, that it is not just a question of moral outrage. I have been outraged for an extended period of time, and, like others, I have called for resignation on what I believe is the lack of moral leadership in this country. But we have high standards that we have to go through here in multiple ways, and it is not just about one aspect of anything, and for those who say cannot you just get this over with, there are lots of questions that we have to explore here. We need to know whether our government has been for sale. A lot of people think all the matters that have gone on in Washington are related to sex or even about whether or not individuals have told the truth in front of a jury or tried to influence others. But it goes far beyond that, and we need to get to the bottom of the truth, and any kind of interim measure is not going to work because the fact is that it would shut off other questions that need to be investigated as well; questions, as I tried to illustrate last night, that have been stonewalled. We have had 116 people either flee this country in order to avoid questions, or have pled the fifth amendment. As I illustrated last night, if we put those names across the front, they would cover this entire well, and by House rules I was not able to do that because it would violate House decorum because it would block the whole front of this with the names of people who will not participate in oversight investigation of their country because they might go to jail if they talked. We have had, and it is a frightening trend, and it is hard to tell where it goes and who, but we have to get to the bottom of this. We cannot have what is in effect like the TV movies, or last night I used an example from the Twilight Zone, where a whole town refuses to talk because if nobody talks, then you cannot ever get to the bottom of the truth. Earlier tonight we talked about whether there should be a special prosecutor for campaign finance. We cannot just try to lock up the little people and not get to the big people. We had that debate today in juvenile justice, we had that debate, and we will again tomorrow in our drug laws. At what point do you say you are not going to just lock up every end user, if it is against the law you are going to be punished, but that we have got to get to the people who are selling them and the people who are selling them. The question is who is making the decisions that have compromised the integrity across the board in many cases enough that we have five special prosecutors looking at Cabinet members, or have had, we have them looking at White House officials. We have a former second-ranking official in the Justice Department who has been in prison. We have the legal counsel at the White House has committed suicide. We have deep troubles in this country that we need to pursue, and I want to go through tonight, which I only started last night, some of the individuals that we are trying to get to talk and some of the questions. I want to start with a man named Johnny Chung. On June 20, 1998, the Washington Post reported stunning allegations made by DNC donor Johnny Chung that he knowingly received $300,000 from a Chinese Army officer, an aerospace official, for the purpose of making political contributions. In March of 1998, Chung pled guilty to orchestrating illegal conduit contributions and other related charges, is now reportedly cooperating with Justice Department officials. Johnny Chung gave $366,000 to Democrats in the 1996 campaign. Following the 1996 elections, the DNC returned all of these contributions because of doubts about the origins of the money. According to the Washington Post, Chung has told the Justice Department that at least $80,000 of the money he contributed came from Liu Chao Ying, a formal lieutenant colonel in the Chinese Army. Chung further alleged that top DNC officials such as Richard Sullivan, the former DNC Finance Director, continued to solicit donations from him, despite having good reason to believe that the donations were illegal. Chung became prominant as a DNC contributor and frequent White House visitor during the 1995-96 campaign cycle when he presented a $50,000 check to the First Lady's chief of staff, Maggie Williams, on March 9, 1995, inside the White House. This contribution paved the way for Chung to bring a delegation of high-level Chinese business executives to the weekly radio address. Just prior to making this contribution, Chung received a $150,000 wire transfer from the Haomen Beer Company in China. After the event, Chung was informed by Richard Sullivan of the DNC that the photographs that were taken with high officials and Chung's business associates would not be released to him due to the objections of the National Security Council. One NSC official even referred to Chung as a hustler. The photos were eventually released to Chung, but only after he contributed an additional $125,000 at an April 1995 DNC fund-raiser in China. Chung has been quoted as saying, quote, the White House is like the subway, you have to put coins in to open the gates, end quote. Chung's success at a DNC fundraiser gave him unfettered access to the White House. The White House WAVE records show that between February 1994 and February 1996, Chung was admitted into the White House 49 times. In October 1995 Chung escorted the chairman of China Petrochemical Corporation, Mr. Chiang to a series of high-level meetings in Washington. Arranged meetings for him with the Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers, and DNC Chairman Donald Fowler. Chung then donated $25,000 to Africare, a favorite charity of O'Leary, and introduced him to let us say a high-ranking official at the dinner. Chung invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to a subpoena to testify before the committee in November 1997. He gave a partial briefing to committee members, including me, behind closed doors on the condition that his statements be kept confidential. Questions we would like to ask Johnny Chung: Did you donate up to $100,000 to democratic campaigns that came from Liu Chao Ying the head of China Aerospace International and the lieutenant colonel in the People's Liberation Army? Was Liu Chao Ying hoping to get something specific in return? Of the $366,000 that Chung donated to the DNC, how much originated outside of the United States of America illegally? Why did Chung bring senior executives from China Petrochemical Company to meet with the Energy Secretary O'Leary and Assistant Secretary Lawrence Summers in October 1995? It would be nice if we could ask those questions. John Huang is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was a senior executive at Lippo Bank in Los Angeles where he reported to James Riady. He and his wife personally donated over $20,000 to the DNC and DSCC during the 1992 election cycle. He also donated $86,000 to the Presidential Inaugural Committee in January of 1993. One week later, he was reimbursed of the $86,000 by Lippo Bank. Huang left Lippo in June of 1994, after a successful lobbying effort by James Riady to place him in the administration. Internal DNC memorandum show that he was listed as a ``must consider'' for such appointments at either Commerce, Treasury or State Departments. John Huang was approved for a position as Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the Commerce Department by the President. He received a ``interim top secret clearance'' 6 months before he began his job at Commerce. In his new position, he kept close ties to officials at Lippo Bank in Indonesia, telephoning at least 70 times from his Commerce office, all while receiving at least 37 classified briefings. He also visited the White House at least 78 times between July 1, 1995 and July 3, 1996. On September 13, 1995, he had attended a meeting in the Oval Office with the highest ranking officials in this country and also staff, including Bruce Lindsey, James Riady, and Joe Giroir. At this meeting, a decision was made to move Huang from the Commerce Department to the DNC where he would target his fund-raising efforts primarily on the Asian American community. Three months later, in December of 1995, he resigned to become a fund-raiser for the DNC. He raised between $3 and $4 million while at DNC. He was a primary contact for Charlie Trie and Pauline Kanchanalak, both of whom have been indicted by the Justice Department in its ongoing campaign finance probe. The DNC has returned more than $3 million he raised. These contributions were returned because they were either illegal or suspicious. He invoked the Fifth Amendment on February 18, 1997 in response to a House subpoena dated February 13, 1997. Here are some questions we would like to ask him: It is clear that you and Charlie Trie were working together at some level to raise money for the DNC. We would like to know if you were aware of Charlie Trie's numerous conduit contributions. We would like to know if John Huang was aware that the $450,000 that he solicited for the Wiriadinatas came directly from Indonesia. We would like to know if John Huang was aware that the donation by Pauline Kanchanalak came directly from Thailand. We would like to know if John Huang solicited contributions while he worked at the Commerce Department. We would like to know if John Huang passed on information he received during classified briefings to anyone at the Lippo Bank, since, while he was receiving the classified briefings, he made 70 calls to Lippo Bank. We would like to know if John Huang used his influence within this administration to benefit the Riady family in any way. And once again, as I pointed out last night, remember, it is that family that had concerns about the drilling in the parts of the Escalante wilderness area that had concerns about China, that had concerns about Vietnam. Ted Sioeng, his family and business associates, contributed over $700,000 into the American political process from 1995 to 1996. The committee has determined that the majority of this money was derived from foreign sources or otherwise legally impermissible. Sioeng's contributions, either personally or through his business associates and family members, were given to a variety of Federal, State and local political organizations and candidates. The largest beneficiary of his contributions was the DNC. The DNC received $400,000 from his business associates and family members, $150,000 of which was also given to Republican causes. Over 28 witnesses relevant to the committee's investigation of Ted Sioeng have asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination, left the country, or refused to be interviewed. He is an Indonesian-born businessman who travels on the Belize passport. His major business is the production and distribution of China's number 1 selling cigarette brand, Red Pagoda Mountain. The committee believes Sioeng improperly directed illegal foreign contributions to the DNC and other political entities and candidates. The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs concluded that he had ``worked, and perhaps still works, for the Chinese government.'' The committee has developed substantial evidence to support the Senate's conclusion. Ted Sioeng left the country in early 1997. Since that time, he has refused to cooperate with the investigations being conducted by the House and the Senate. He is believed to reside in Hong Kong or the People's Republic of China. Questions we would like to ask him: Did you ask your daughter to donate $100,000 to the DNC in February 1996? Why have more than 20 members of your family or circle of business associates either taken the Fifth Amendment that you would incriminate yourself if you testified, or fled the country? Did Sioeng arrange a scheme in which at least $300,000 in contributions to the DNC were funded from bank accounts in Indonesia and Hong Kong? James Riady is an Indonesian-based banker and son of Mochtar Riady, chairman of the Lippo Group, a $500 billion Asian business empire. James Riady is a permanent resident of the United States. In 1977, he met our current President when he was serving as Arkansas's State Attorney General. James was sent by his father to Arkansas to learn the banking and finance business at Stephens, Inc. In its report on campaign finance, the U.S. Senate suggests that the Riady family has had a ``long-term relationship with the Chinese Intelligence Agency.'' James Riady is the deputy chairman of the family's main business, the Lippo Group. The Riady family, including its business and partners, donated more than $700,000 to the Democrats between 1991 and 1996. Mochtar Riady and his son James have told close associates that they ``helped get Huang his Commerce Department position in return for their political support for the President.'' Other reports have indicated that James Riady has claimed Huang was ``my man in the American government.'' James Riady visited the White House on 19 occasions, 6 of which were to see the deputy White House Chief of Staff Mark Middleton. He lives in Indonesia and has refused to be interviewed by this committee in January 1998. Questions we would like to ask Mr. Riady: Did you lobby the President to get John Huang's job in the Commerce Department? Did you ask the top leaders of our country, did you or your father, were you asked by the top leaders of our country to pay $100,000 fee to Webb Hubbell while Hubble was under investigation? Let me repeat that, because I tripped over that. We want to know whether he or his father, since they paid $100,000 fee to Webster Hubble, which helped in our opinion possibly to keep Webster Hubble from cooperating, did he get asked by anybody at the White House. But we cannot ask him that, because he will not cooperate. Did the Lippo Group receive any classified information from January Huang while he was at the Commerce Department who we have already documented called that group from the Commerce Department? What were the Riadys hoping to get in return for the hundreds of thousands of dollars they gave to the Democratic party in the early 1990s? They are very a prominent, practical and capitalist company. It is doubtful they were just throwing their money away. Ng Lap Seng is a Macao businessman and Charlie Trie's business partner. They jointly owned a Macao company, through which, according to the FBI, Ng wired Trie more than $900,000, part of which Trie donated to the DNC. Maria Shaw is being investigated for one of the classic cases that we have ever seen: a bunch of Buddhist nuns who gave $100,000 each, but do not understand where the money came from, and where prominent officials of the United States participated in that period where that money was transferred and apparently knew it was a fund-raiser. That is under investigation. Charlie Trie is a long time friend from Arkansas of people in this administration where he ran a Chinese restaurant in Arkansas. He served as a trustee to the Democratic national party and was afforded liberal access to the White House and the top leadership at the White House. Trie was admitted to the White House on at least 45 occasions to visit with Mark Middleton and others. Mr. Trie is believed to have used members of his own family and other associates to funnel over $600,000 in illegal conduit payments to the Democratic National Committee during the 1996 campaign cycle. President Clinton was once quoted as saying, ``Charlie has been a close friend of mine for 2 decades.'' Trie brought $645,000 in contributions to the President's legal defense fund. Many of them were in sequentially numbered cashiers checks. All were returned after it was learned they were connected to a Buddhist cult in Taiwan. Trie came into possession of $200,000 in travelers's checks that came from Jakarta, Indonesia. At least $50,000 of this money was used for conduit contributions. Trie received over $1 million in wire transfers from his patron in Macau. Again, much of this money was used for conduit contributions. In April of 1996, Trie was appointed by President Clinton to the Commission on United States Pacific Trade and Investment Policy, which advised the President on ways to ``achieve a significant opening in Japan, China and other Asian and Pacific markets to U.S. businesses.'' After his named surfaced in the press in connection to the illegal fund-raising scandal, Trie fled to China. He was reportedly living in Shanghai. In June 1997, NBC news interview with Tom Brokaw, Trie boasted he could stay in China for 10 years. He ultimately did return to the United States following his indictment. Trie quipped, ``congressional investigators will never find me.'' Charlie Trie initially left the country for a year in 1997. He invoked the Fifth Amendment on May 11, 1998, in response to a March 25, 1998 committee subpoena. Questions we would like to ask Charlie Trie: Why did you use conduit donors to make contributions to the Democratic party? Did the $200,000 in travelers checks come from the Riady family in Indonesia and clearly trying to influence the foreign policy of this country? Why did Trie flee the country in the wake of the campaign finance scandal? Why was Ng Lap Seng giving Charlie Trie hundreds of thousands of dollars to make illegal contributions here in the United States? Did the top people in this government who knew Trie from Arkansas ever question where he was getting the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he was giving to their party? They knew him, they knew he did not have the money. Pauline Kanchanalak, citizen of Thailand, was one of the most prominent witnesses to have fled this country. She recently returned to the United States after she was indicted by a Federal grand jury in Washington on charges of funneling at least $679,000 in illegal foreign contributions to the DNC and State Democratic parties. The Justice Department has also indicted Kanchanalak's business associate and sister-in-law, Duangnet Kronenberg, who has taken the Fifth Amendment. According to the indictment, Kanchanalak and Kronenberg served at conduits for contributions for foreign companies and individuals into American campaigns. The Justice Department itself has alleged that Kanchanalak and Kronenberg gained access to the top leaders, I will not say who, because of House rules. This access was intended by defendants to impress clients and help their business ventures. In fact, Kanchanalak visited the White House at least 26 times, Kronenberg at least 9 times. Kanchanalak donated $32,000 to the DNC in October 1994, 2 days after the Commerce Department trade officials and John Huang helped arrange the inaugural ceremony for a U.S. Thailand business council at the White House. The 2 also gave a total of $135,000 to the DNC on the same day that Kanchanalak and Huang escorted 3 businessmen into a White House coffee. One businessman did most of the talking about the People's Republic of China. The DNC has returned $253,000 in illegal contributions from Kanchanalak, but has not returned any of the $105,000 in contributions from Kronenberg. Both were also charged with obstruction of justice shortly after the campaign finance scandal broke. The 2 removed boxes of files from their offices and hired someone to erase the memories of their computers. A point I want to make about what we were talking about tonight. You have heard me in a number of these cases refer to people who have been indicted. The question is, and this is what was at the core of our insisting on a special prosecutor, because we heard the FBI director and Mr. Labella tell our committee that you cannot get a fair investigation, and to suggest strongly that Democratic appointed officials, as the Attorney General is, cannot be neutral, and that, in fact, there are questions whether they have been going individually after these cases. Much like what would happen sometimes in a drug bust in Fort Wayne or in Kendallville or in Huntington we can get excited in our district because it is a big drug bust there, and we close it down. Instead of getting to the next level and the next level. What I have been suggesting and you have been watching the pictures is this is massive. Let me remind you again, there 116 people; 79 have plead the Fifth Amendment, the rest have fled the country or in one way or another dodged subpoenas. If I put their names up here 10 at a time, it would cover this whole stage. If I stacked them up here 10 on a board at a time, it would go clear to the top of this ceiling. This is a massive problem that we are facing. People say, why can you not close this down? Why can you not get to the truth? You are hearing we cannot get fundamental questions answered because people will not cooperate. It is like a whole city being in on something saying we are not going to talk. We need a few Americans who know the truth to stand up and say what they know so we can continue to move, or we need to start offering immunity to these people. It cannot be done under a partisan Justice Department. That is what the FBI director is saying, and that is what the Justice Department's own career people are saying. And it has to be done. This is not about sex. The whole country is abuzz about sex. But there are other matters here, too. We have seen a pattern. As we heard last night in the Teamsters, the same names are showing up. The same names are showing up when we start to look at the Indian casino questions. The same names show up in scandal after scandal after scandal. When are we going to get to who is coordinating this and at what level and who knew about it and when, the basic questions that we heard in Watergate years ago? A man known as Antonio Pan is a former high-level Lippo executive based in Hong Kong. He was involved in Lippo's business ventures during China. He became an associate of Charlie Trie and was indicted along with Trie on charges related to illegal fund-raising on January 28, 1998. In October of 1995, Trie and Pan invited then Commerce Secretary Ron Brown to attend a fund-raising dinner while on a Trade Mission to China. At this dinner, Trie asked many of the attendees, many of whom were not United States citizens or permanent residents, to contribute to the DNC. During February 1996, Pan was also active in soliciting conduit contributors for the DNC and reimbursing them with cash on behalf of Trie. Pan sent $25,000 in cashier's checks, via overnight delivery, to Trie's sister, Manlin Foung, in order to reimburse her for contributions to the DNC. The money is believed to have originated with the travelers checks Trie received from Indonesia. Pan also allegedly received $80,000 in cash in August 1996 from Ng Lap Seng and used most of the money to reimburse straw contributors in Los Angeles that he had persuaded to write checks to the DNC for the President's 50th birthday party in New York City. Pan has left the country and cannot be located. Questions we would like to ask Mr. Pan: Why did Pan open a savings account at the Amerasia Bank in Flushing, New York with $25,200 in cash, within minutes withdraw $25,000 and then send it to Charlie Trie's sister and her boyfriend in California? Why did Pan share a bank account with Charlie Trie? Witnesses have told the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight that in 1996, Pan withdrew $80,000 in cash and delivered portions of it to individuals in Los Angeles who then sent it to the Democratic Party. Where did this money come from originally? Who asked him to generate these contributions? Were Antonio Pan and Charlie Trie working on behalf of the Riady family of Indonesia, or were other foreign entities behind their activities? These are grave questions. I am sure in future days we will be going through other names illustrating this point in other ways. But tonight, I wanted to give my colleagues an idea of the depth of the problem we are facing in this United States government. The problems that we have been abuzz about over the last few days are not going to just go away. In fact, we have special prosecutors in addition to Judge Starr being appointed; times extended. We are going to have some more. There is only one way that the problem can go away. But we need to get to the bottom of this. We cannot do any slap on the wrist, any verbal gymnastics here to try to avoid the tough questions. We have to know, has this government been for sale at the highest levels, especially possibly to foreign influences? Have there been patterns of cover-up throughout this entire government, not knowing what level it gets to? I don't know that. We have 116 people that will not talk to us. And they may turn up other names, if some of them start to talk, of other people we need to go to. But we have been inching up and inching up. It is clear there is a pattern that is far beyond the political appointee of this White House to solve. We need a special prosecutor. We need to hear that investigation. We need to hear what the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) turns up in his investigation. We need to see what the Committee on the Judiciary turns up. We need to see what the Teamsters investigation of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) turns up. We need to see how these things come together. If necessary, this House will have to do whatever it needs to do.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the similarities that the gentleman is starting to run into, because you have clearly proven from the statements that you have made and from the indictments, that there was corruption inside the Teamsters election; in fact, that election was overturned. Now we are trying to see where their money moved elsewhere, and the larger question that you are moving into, in addition to that, and it is bad enough, I mean, I have talked to irate truck drivers in Fort Wayne who cannot believe that their own leadership would do this, but then the larger question is, like we saw in the Interior Department, like we have seen in agency after agency, who is running what looks like a large scale, coordinated effort, to find millions of dollars for campaigns in all sorts of illegal behaviors?

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. SOUDER. The one we paid for?

Mr. SOUDER. Reclaiming my time, this is a classic example of, oh, what a tangled web we weave when we attempt to deceive. What we are seeing and hearing from the gentleman, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations looking into the Teamsters, what we heard from the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, unfortunately for the American people it is doubtful that we are suddenly going to come to some conclusion and close down everything. What we see, not knowing at what levels it is going on in this government but what we have seen in agency after agency, investigation after investigation, are people stonewalling information, pleading the Fifth, running out of the country, giving us partial truths, fighting for every little bit of information we can, and it looks like there was an orchestrated effort throughout this entire administration in every agency, uncertain at what levels and by who orchestrated it, for cash, in order to maintain power.

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

Mr. SOUDER. So the person who might be able to answer that larger question, when you asked, took the Fifth?

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. SOUDER. I think that as the gentleman from Michigan and I both would state unequivocally, one of the problems is that we have too much power in Washington because when you have that much power there is going to be a temptation to cheat. But even given that, what we have seen in his investigation, what we have seen in this investigation is not everybody does this. I hear all the time, ``Well, everybody in Washington is corrupt.'' They are not. There are too many decisions made that are influenced by money in this town. There are too many decisions made out of fear for the next political election. What we are seeing gradually unfold over the last few years is something that in scale we have never seen before. We have not seen the amount of illegal foreign dollars moving in, apparently tied to specific decisions. We have not seen the massive scale laundering going from multiple countries even in. We have not seen this many Cabinet members. I mean even under Harding we were talking three. Going with special prosecutors, and even leading up into higher and higher levels of this administration. We do not know where it ends. We are not likely to find out very soon. But we have an obligation in this Congress. While we are doing the other things as the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) said in the Committee on Education and the Workforce, we have been moving many bills through, having conference committees, we have balanced the budget, we are working on tax relief, this is not the primary thing we do here but it is one important part. That is, to make sure that each American citizen when you cast a vote have that vote honored and that your leadership does not have a secondary agenda, especially, and this is what the Founding Fathers were very concerned about, that any of the leadership would get illegal foreign money, where foreign nationals or through agents in this country would attempt to influence decisions of the United States Government. That is the weighty matters that we have been pursuing. I hope it does not lead all the way to the top. But to find out, witnesses need to cooperate with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra). They need to be cooperative with the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton). We cannot have 116 people, by the way we have three more since we have printed these things, that would stretch clear across the front of this, this size sheet if I had been allowed under House rules to put them across, would have covered the entire front of this podium, or clear to the ceiling. We have to have honesty. We have to have American citizens willing to come forth with the truth.

Mr. SOUDER. Did not the gentleman say earlier that the Fifth Amendment, which can only be used if you could go to jail, was taken by the second ranking person, did you say, in the AFL-CIO?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, let me first say at the beginning of my remarks tonight that one of the questions that I received all weekend, and that many others are, is do you guys do anything out there other than talk about certain pending matters that have been widely discussed this past weekend? And the answer is of course we do. We have not had the first hearing on the specifics of what everybody in this country seems to be talking about. At the same time, I agree with what the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) said earlier that it is important that we focus on numerous issues. Earlier today, I was down here discussing the Head Start debate and the Community Services block grant debate, and quite frankly, I got no media inquiries about revising the entire Head Start system in the United States. I got no media inquiries about revising the Community Services block grant and what innovative programs we are doing, since we do not believe the solution is always the Federal Government, what innovative solutions we are trying at the community level to develop. Quite frankly, I got no questions about it back home in Indiana this past weekend. Mr. Speaker, it is not that Congress is not doing other things here. It is that few people are asking us about anything but this subject. When I tried to go to pick up a newspaper at the airport when I was flying back last night, every newspaper in Pittsburgh was cleaned out. Every newspaper in Washington was cleaned out. And they probably were not hunting for the latest stock market reports. But it is important that while we focus on the many matters, and we daily have multiple committee hearings, multiple meetings with people from our districts and many things, that we also look when we feel there have been problems in the oversight of this country, that it is important that this Congress look at it. One of the things that I wanted to take some time to discuss tonight is that it is a lot more at stake here than just what everybody has been talking about this past weekend. Tonight I am going to go through some of this. I sit on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, chaired by the gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Burton), and I have listened to much of what has gone on. I want to make a couple of critical points tonight. And I want to illustrate right off the bat that there is a huge number of people that have made this investigation in campaign finance, in many of the other things that we have looked at in our committee, difficult to achieve. Mr. Speaker, 116 people have refused to cooperate with our committee at this point; 79 witnesses have taken the Fifth Amendment; 18 have fled the country; and, 19 have refused to be interviewed by investigators. I am going to go through some of these charts in a minute, but I want to illustrate a point. We can see on this chart that there are what, about 10 names per chart roughly. In trying to keep with the rules of the decorum of the House, it was deemed, and I believe correctly deemed, that it would not be appropriate for me to show the massive scale of the extent of the lack of cooperation we are getting by extending these across the front of this. But I am going to take a second here and show, if I was able to put these charts up simultaneously to give an idea of the scale how far these charts would have gone. In other words if we had put every name up, they would have covered the entire front of this Congress. They would have covered up this entire front. If I stacked them on top of each other, the numbers of people that have refused to cooperate with this investigation would go to the top of the ceiling. It is not one person, five people, 10 people, 20 people, 30 people. A few weeks ago I was in a parade in the town of Saint Jo in my district for the pickle festival. The pickle company that is based there has an annual pickle festival. The number of people in this cover-up are approximately the number of people in the town of Saint Jo. I graduated in a high school class of 68. The class before me had a little bit smaller size than that. In other words, the number of people refusing to cooperate are about the size of my high school class and the class behind it. If one was trying to find out something that we had done and everybody in the class and the class behind would not cooperate, how would they find out what is going on? Or to take another example, years ago there was a ``Twilight Zone'' episode in 1961 where adults lived in total fear of the immaturity of a normal little boy. Just by using his mind, this boy was able to take away the automobiles, the electricity, the machines because they displeased him and he moved an entire community back in the Dark Ages just by using his mind. And we note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio, have to smile, they have to think happy thoughts and say happy things, because once displeased, the monster can wish them into a corn field or change them into a grotesque walking horror. This particular monster can read minds, he knows every thought and feels every emotion. He is 6 years old with a cute, little-boy face and blue guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at someone, they must start thinking happy thoughts because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the ``Twilight Zone.'' Mr. Speaker, what do we do in a government situation, and we have all seen movies like this on TV, whether it is the ``Twilight Zone'' or others, when a whole town will not talk? People say, ``Boy, it is hard for you guys to prove anything.'' It sure is hard for us to prove anything. Mr. Speaker, I am going to go through. Understand that 79 people have said, ``I invoke my rights under the Fifth Amendment and I refuse to testify on the grounds that it may incriminate me.'' Incriminate means I could go to jail. Mr. Speaker, 79 people have said they could go to jail. The others have fled the country or refused to have subpoenas put on them. If we go through the names, the first name we have no public information on him. Terri Bradley, a secretary fined for making political donations for her employer, a Miami Beach developer. The next name we do not have much information. We are trying to get some from them. The fourth one is the son of the Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown. Chen is a Taiwanese journalist who has written about illegal donations from Taiwanese nationals. Simon Chen is the former owner of the International Daily News, a Chinese language daily newspaper. Wang is a Buddhist nun. I am just going to skip through some of these. Chung pled guilty. Colon is a former head of the Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency. He was hired by Dynamic Energy in August 1994. He received a $3,000 check from Dynamic September 19, and four days later he and his wife, Cheryl, gave $3,000 for reelection of a given member of the other body, which has been returned. Then we come to Crespo, Delvalle, we have numerous down to Manlin Foung, who testified that Trie reimbursed her from his bank account in China for part of her $35,000 donation. Gandhi, which I will go more through, gave $325,000. Then go to the next chart, another 10 names that included Norlanda Hill, a former business partner of Ron Brown. Hill has been indicted in separate fraud charges. She alleges Brown told her domestic companies were being solicited for campaign contributions in exchange for being included in trade missions abroad. Maria Hsia, is a naturalized citizen and close associate of John Huang. She faces charges that she helped launder campaign contributions from the famous Buddhist temple incident. The next group of names are predominantly people who were Buddhist nuns who gave a $1,000. Then there is Jane Huang, John Huang's wife, who according to DC records raised $52,000 while her husband was still a Commerce employee. She has denied she raised it, contradicting the Democratic Committee records. John Huang is a China-born U.S. citizen raised in Taiwan, former executive of the Lippo Group, about which I will discuss more later. Webster Hubbell who, after he left prison, received $700,000 in consulting fees from several companies after he left the Justice Department, excuse me. Several more we are pursuing, but we do not have public information at this time. If we can go to the next chart, the important thing to understand here is the scale. This is not one person, two people, five people, 10 people. It is the scale. And I am not comparing this exactly to that, but I have worked so much with the drug issue, it is as if we were just busting the street guys and not looking at the pattern. And by not being able to get to the first level of saying, ``What do you about the next level?'' Being able to offer immunity, being able to work with these. We do not know the extent of what sort of cover-up that we are facing. Intriago is a former Federal prosecutor and he has solicited donations. You have Jimenez, a Miami computer entrepreneur and donor who made his largest contribution, 50,000, to the DNC after a coffee at the White House. We have Kronenberg is sister-in-law of Pauline Kanchanalak, donated $500,000 to the DNC on the day of a White House coffee, down to Lin. If we can go to the next chart, Nora and Gene Lum are owners of an Oklahoma gas pipeline company, Dynamic Energy Resources, which last year pled guilty to laundering $50,000 illegal donations to campaign contributions. Maria Mapili is a long-time employee of Trie's trading corporation. The indictment towards Trie claims he ordered her to destroy subpoenaed documents and she is in that. Mark Middleton, former democratic fund-raiser and White House aid who left the administration in 1995 to pursue business dials with Asian businessmen. I am not going to go through each of the names here. I kind of hitting some of the highlights. Many of these are tied in clusters around Charlie Trie, whose name you see there, an American citizen and one of two suspects, Antonio Pan is the other, to be indicted in 1997 as a result of the Justice Department's task force. And like I say, we will talk about him more. If you go can to the last chart that we, once again, have individuals who are related to other individuals, people who work for fax machine businesses, straw donors, Buddhist nuns. There is two additional charts, if you want to just put those up. Are there any additional? We have them all covered? I am not going to go through all the names on each of these, but maybe you can take them off slowly and show them. Once again, as we go through this, I want to reiterate, ``I invoke my rights under the fifth amendment to refuse to reply on the grounds that it may incriminate me.'' That means that they believe they have information that could send them to jail. And what you would normally do is go and get a proffer and say, and what do you have and who approached you about what you fear going to jail about, and see if it is worthwhile to offer immunity to them. And then hopefully you move up and say, and who offered you what in order to get to this person? Our goal here, if you look at this list, it is extraordinary. By putting out this list, we are not trying to make any kind of statement because many of them are Asians. The question is, who abused the Asian population. Who told them that they had to give illegal donations, had to launder money through Buddhist temples in order to get decisions made in this country? It is not a criticism of the Asian community. It is a criticism of the people who used the Asian community. It is not a criticism of the Hispanics on this list. It is, who told them American democracy works this way. Who told them that laundering money in return for whatever, and it is not clear what exactly was given, is justified? That is what incriminate means. Chairman Burton asked a question of FBI Director Freeh, Mr. Freeh, over 65 people at that time, it is now 79, have invoked the fifth amendment or fled the country in the course of this committee's investigation. Have you ever experienced so many unavailable witnesses in any manner in which you have prosecuted on which you have been involved? Actually, I have, Director Freeh said. Chairman Burton: You have? Give me a run-down on that. Director Freeh: I spent about 16 years doing organized crime cases in New York City, and many people were frequently unavailable. Chairman Burton: Was that the only time you have experienced something like that? Director Freeh: It went on for quite awhile. Chairman Burton: So the only time that you have experienced anything like this is when you were investigating an organized crime syndicate? What kind of commentary is this on our government? We have been talking about a lot of other things this past weekend. But think about this for a minute. Think about this in the context of other things you are hearing. It started in the case of our Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, a travel office dispute. We noted that they cleared out a bunch of people who, in fact, did not appear to have, they had actually gotten reinstated and back pay for being unfairly fired. We saw patterns of internal favoritism towards certain individuals, towards friends getting government contracts. We thought, why would you want, oh, it was for prestige, but it actually was not, it was for lots of dollars in different agencies. From there we move in past the travel office to, we get this massive thing, when we are trying, a couple of people were wandering around the White House without clearance. How did they get in? So you start to look at the clearance list. We get these massive lists. I still remember the day looking at these lists and seeing all these little letters by everybody and going, what in the world is this. How are we supposed to sort out what is going on here? How did these people get in? There were dead people on it, former Senator John Tower. They were certainly skewed toward Republicans, but there were all kinds of codes. This developed into the so-called FBI question, and the files. How did they get these files? These files were not like when you get a traffic ticket. These were for when you apply for government employment, they do a background check. If you want a security clearance to get in, they do a background check on you. If you are going to handle government secrets, they do a background check on you. A background check means also there is information in your files that may not be confirmed. Did anybody have a rumor about you? You cannot see it. But it is in your file. We found out in our hearings interns were, I do not mean anything like that, I just mean interns were handling the files, which is inconceivable. We heard from the Reagan and Bush White Houses that they had high level people only handling these files, but in the Clinton White House apparently interns were able to do a lot of things. And then we got into the Craig Livingstone who probably would not have passed that, yet he was now in charge of White House security and they could not remember who hired him. I asked him three different times who hired him and he could not remember. Finally one of the White House people said, maybe it was Vince Foster. I mean, blame it on the dead guy. That seemed to be the strategy. We could not get any answers to fundamental questions. Then we go through and look at the FBI files and we find out what these codes are. These codes are for coffees, for Lincoln bedroom. We found out that this database has to do with how much money you give to this administration, that it looks like somebody made the decision somewhere in this administration, we do not know at what level or who, that it was going, the White House was going to be turned into a cash cow, that apparently it was for sale in order to maintain your power, much like the travel office was. Apparently, who knows what they were going to do with the different files and who knows what is being done with those files now. Then we move in and started to go into the Indian gaming casinos where a local decision relating to a poor Indian tribe was overturned, and we see massive, hundreds of thousands of dollars moving into the Democratic National Committee after a decision was reversed at the local level, protecting a tribe that was getting at least $390,000 per Indian and protecting their basic monopoly in that region. In addition to that, the chief of staff in the counsel to the Secretary of Interior then left the Secretary of Interior's office and went to work for the Indian tribe that is getting $395,000 per Indian. Not anything proven yet, but do you know what, it is starting to smell a little bit. Then you start to go through, what are these land deals where all of sudden there is the Escalante wilderness area, and who was the developer that had a stake in that? Oh, yes, it was the Riadys, the same Riadys that are on this list all over the place. The same Riadys that are laundering money through Huang and Chung and Trie, the same Riadys whose employees are not willing to talk and discuss. Once again, it has not been proven the links, but we have been nibbling at the little people along the way. How is this going to build and where is this headed and why are not, and why is not this administration pursuing this to a higher level? Let us get into some of the particulars of this. One thing that often we do not make clear when we discuss this, I want to make sure I make this point, that what would these people want? Presumably they are not just giving money, particularly if they are not even American citizens, because they are really charmed by any of the particular candidates involved. There is something beyond that they are trying to influence, somewhere in our government. Now, I suggested that possibly there were decisions in the Department of Interior. But do you know there are many things in there that need to be explored, and we need access and we need cooperation to be able to do that. For example, we know that this, the leaders of this government criticized the past President for favoring trade to China during the campaign. It happens to be that the individuals who we are trying to get testimony from disagreed with the challenger's at that time positions. And when he became President, he switched his position to China which agrees now with the people who put this money in. There are many American businesses and probably a majority of this Congress that favor that position. But it nevertheless was a reversal, and it also happens to be at least circumstantial that these people won a decision in that. This leadership of this government did not have a position on Vietnam. A number of these major donors had concerns, nonAmerican citizens had concerns about our China policy and our Vietnam policy. And those decisions were changed. It is clear that one of the fund-raisers where a million dollars was raised, that the commissioner of the INS attended and that there had been a request to change some immigration status. And after the fund-raiser that status was changed where after she had attended a fund-raiser raising this money, it is clear that decisions were being made and changed like what the individuals wanted. What is not clear yet, and which we really do not have the power here without some people being willing to talk along this chain and be able to negotiate with people moving up the chain of who influenced what where. We see the people in the national security office writing handwritten memos, quite frankly, I have never gotten a handwritten memo from them explaining why, when they, on Taiwan, when Charlie Trie and his allies said we do not want you putting so much pressure on the Chinese government vis-a-vis Taiwan, they got a handwritten response back. Not too many people get handwritten responses back. It helps if you have laundered a lot of money back.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, let me, once again, I want to reiterate, what I have been discussing tonight is not what the rest of the country has been discussing this past weekend for the most part. What I have been discussing is what has the earmarks at some level of an incredibly massive cover-up, 116 people who have either taken the fifth amendment that say if they talk to our congressional committee, they could incriminate themselves, or they fled the country or one way or another avoided us being able to subpoena them. That is a grave situation. As the FBI Director said, only in organized mob cases has he seen this. It has made it very difficult for us to go ahead with this investigation. And understand we also have, in addition to this, a separate investigation that the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) is pursuing on the China question and the sale of technology. We have a separate investigation going ahead with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) looking at Teamsters money and how that got tied up in massive corruption and attempting to influence elections with illegal dollars, not to mention special prosecutors on Harold Ickes, pending on campaign finance, looking at the Vice President of the United States. We have many ongoing investigations. What everybody in this country has been talking about is just a small part. It is inconceivable we are going to resolve this in the next 30 days because this is a massive problem inside this administration. It is unknown at this point to what levels it goes, but, boy, is it huge. Mr. Speaker, I yield, if he would like to speak, to the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Dan Burton).

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the chairman for his leadership and his willingness to take the slings and arrows that go his way for trying to stand up and search for the truth. Reiterating again that one chart we see here, if I had been allowed, which I am not under the House rules, to display these next to each other, the number of people that have pled the fifth, fled the country, or refused to cooperate would extend from that end all across the dais to that side, blocking this entire front. Or if I stacked them up, they would go up and touch the ceiling. It is not 5 or 10 or 15, it is massive. It is like, as I mentioned earlier, a whole city being in on a cooperative thing and then trying to prove something in the law when we have this type of thing. Now, among the decisions we frequently have had to make in this body are other issues that have faced us, and there have been all kinds of statements made by Members of this body about other issues facing us, such as, ``It should never be sullied,'' ``should never be spoiled by actions of any of its Members, yet today we have a stain on the U.S. House; we have a cloud over its existence.'' Members in this body have said, ``Too many ethical questions have been raised, wanting special counsels.'' They said, ``American people should know where this money came from. Did these donors get anything in return? Are there any conflicts of interest?'' Only they were not apparently putting these standards on the current leadership of our government. They were talking about something that was actually a relatively small case inside this body. We look at the past rhetoric that has been used on the floor of this House about something relating to dollars that pale in insignificance. Never a charge that huge decisions, like the foreign policy of the United States, not even a charge, let alone a provable charge. They were not proven in the cases of any Members that have been discussed at this level. But apparently we can demand here that the American people should know where this money came from, did these donors get anything in return, are there any conflicts of interest. But if it is the administration, we are not going to do a special prosecutor for that. And I think that Members of this body need to sort through what kind of standards we have. On Sunday I was with the Air Guard in Fort Wayne, who had a counterterrorism exercise on chemical and biological warfare, as units are doing all over the country, and cities, as we are concerned about terrorism. And I want to repeat what the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) said earlier. Ironically, we have to stand behind our leadership of this country now more than ever. Because when there is perceived weakness, as there is in this country right now, every tin horn dictator, every terrorist around the world is saying, I wonder if this is a good time to push the United States. I wonder if this is the time I can get away with killing somebody; dropping a bomb; doing this; blowing somebody up. No, it is not, because we will stand as a United Nation. But we will not do this indefinitely, and we have to have leadership that we can count on. But getting back to my point here, it is that we have to look at the totality of this. We have to ask, in our United States military, in the people in our Air Guard in Fort Wayne, what standards do we have for them? Do we have a different standard for some elements of our country and another standard for the soldiers or the generals? Do we have one standard for government employees and not for other parts of the government? Do we have one standard for schoolteachers and not for other parts of people in public service? I am not really talking about what everybody else has been talking about. I am talking about what is for sale. Have we sunk so low, are we so obsessed with power in this country that we will sell it to people who are not even American citizens and able to hold that power? I want to digress to one other case. I am a history buff, and as we go through things like this Current Abuse of Power book on Nixon with the tapes, which is disgusting, I mean this is the kind of book we see about the current leader's administration. It is a spin cycle. We have not proven this point yet, but we are getting a lot of this point. But as we go back through history, Warren Harding went down as a bad President, even though in the end he was not found to have the faintest idea of what was going on on Teapot Dome. And what we see in this administration and what we do not know is to what level of government this goes to. But we do know they corrupted the travel office, they misused the FBI files, they have sold favors throughout, they have special prosecutors on at least five Cabinet members; that Harold Ickes, who has a fascinating story of how he basically got excluded from policymaking, went into the fund-raising like other higher-ups like this, and then got back into the policymaking, because apparently the price to be at the table was you did the fund-raising. Which put tremendous pressure, even if it was not directly ordered, it put tremendous pressure. If an individual was not to be consulted unless they produced money, think of the pressure that put. I want to give, I am trying to think which is the best example, and I am sure we will have other chances to bring this up, but let me give my colleagues an example of James Riady, who is probably the biggest. James Riady is an Indonesian-based banker and son of Mochtar Riady, chairman of the Lippo Group, a $5 billion Asian empire. James Riady is a permanent resident of the United States. He met President Clinton in 1977, in Arkansas, when the President was serving as that State's Attorney General. He was then sent by his father to Arkansas to learn the banking and finance business. In its report on campaign finance, the other body suggested the Riady family had a long-term relationship with the Chinese intelligence agency. James Riady is the deputy chairman of the family's main business, the Lippo Group. The Riady family, including its businesses and partners, donated more than $700,000 to the Democrats between 1991 and 1996. Mochtar Riady and his son James have told close associates that they helped get Huang his Commerce Department position, which is a foreign trade position, in return for their political support for the leader of our country. Other reports indicate that James Riady has claimed Huang was ``my man in the American government.'' James Riady visited the White House on 19 occasions, 6 of which were to see Deputy White House Chief of Staff Mark Middleton. He lives in Indonesia and has refused to be interviewed by the committee. Here are some questions we would like to ask him: Did you lobby the President to get John Huang his job at the Commerce Department? Did the President ask James Riady or his father to pay a $100,000 fee to Webster Hubbell while Hubbell was under investigation? Did the Lippo Group receive any classified information from John Huang while he was at the Commerce Department? What were the Riadys hoping to get in return for the hundreds of thousands of dollars they gave to the Democratic Party in the 1990s? I could, and will at future time, go through other questions, but at this point I see the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Pete Hoekstra), who is here and he has been investigating another part of what looks like, not knowing what levels, but orchestrated efforts to get around our laws in this country. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes, I have a question. I want to see if I understand the scope of this and how this starts to interrelate. Carey was running for the leadership of the Teamsters against Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., and he felt he needed more money to run. So if I understand what the gentleman is saying, they, Carey, the forces, depleted their own members' funds but to complete this they, in effect, gave money to a third source, or second source, which is the Democratic Party, which then in return made sure that additional dollars got back to Carey, not necessarily all that had gone out but Carey got it personally, because if he had stolen Teamsters funds for his own campaign that would have looked bad. Is the gentleman saying that, did I get that correct, that it went to a third party and then some of that came back, matching contributions came back? How did some of that work?

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time and I thank him for his leadership as well as the gentleman from California (Mr. Riggs) the chairman of the subcommittee and the gentleman from California (Mr. Martinez) the ranking minority member. This bill represents months of work to find ways to expand the positive impact of limited dollars on people's lives who participate in these programs. Head Start was originally founded under the Johnson administration when Sargent Shriver said we should give these kids a head start in education. Many of us who have been supportive of Head Start in the past and have worked with this program have been concerned that it has been drifting toward a glorified child care type of a program and losing its educational emphasis. I believe that the changes we made in this bill, and there are some who will oppose this because it is not a perfect bill. In fact, to go under a suspension, we needed bipartisan support for this bill. Some provisions that were in the committee were taken out. But I believe that in the Head Start portion of this bill as well as the Community Services Block Grant, conservative Republicans should support this because it is an improvement from the way we were currently doing business. For example, we have in the Education Performance Standards that they need to develop phonemic, print and numeracy awareness; understand and use oral language to communicate for different purposes; understand and use increasingly complex and varied vocabulary; develop and demonstrate an appreciation of books; and in the case of non-English background children, progress toward acquisition of the English language. We also have Performance Measures. We have four, plus giving local flexibility for additional: Know that letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually named; recognize a word as a unit of print; identify at least 10 letters of the alphabet; and associate sounds with written words. I do not favor national standards for public schools because the bulk of the dollars for public schools do not come from the Federal Government. But the overwhelming bulk of the dollars for Head Start do come from the Federal Government. Therefore, we have an obligation to the taxpayers to make sure that those dollars are being effectively used. In many cases Head Start was drifting away from the promises that it was given. Certain programs were effective and certain programs were not. We wanted to tighten and make Head Start more effective. I believe this will be done in an additional way that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) led the efforts in, and, that is, to get more dollars into the teachers' hands rather than this explosion and expansion of services but not reaching the people with the quality of services that they need. The gains in Head Start are very tied toward teaching the kids who are behind, maybe they do not have the parental investment or the community investment in those kids that many kids such as my children are likely to have, having two parents of a college-educated background with a home computer. Not all kids have that in America. We need to reach out to those and make sure that those services are effectively used and not dissipated by trying to reach far too many who may or may not actually need the services. Title II, the Community Services Block Grant portion of the bill, improves the accountability and effectiveness of these block grants by encouraging effective partnerships between government, local communities and charitable organizations, including faith-based organizations. This has been a critical part of the Renewal Alliance effort in numerous bills to make sure that faith-based organizations are included as an effective way particularly in our urban centers to reach those who are hurting most. I also have two specific provisions in the Community Services Block Grant section. One I offered with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Talent) that was introduced in the House by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) and my former boss, Senator Coats, in the Senate which was Individual Development Accounts. They are matched savings accounts for low-income individuals which can only be accessed for higher education, home purchases, emergency medical expenses and capitalization of a business. In other words, rather than just having the government do a direct transfer, we are saying, ``If you save some of your money, we'll match it,'' much like we have in government employee savings funds, by the way. We are saying, if people will take the initiative to save money, we will match that and try to help get them started in our society and developing their own capital fund if they use it for education, home, emergency medical or capitalization of a business. We also have a bipartisan amendment with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) and myself that would allow at the State level their portion of Community Services Block Grant to be set aside to pay for State charitable credits. This is an important breakthrough, because again we have promoted in the Renewal Alliance, which are those of us who are conservatives who say the Federal Government cannot do everything, what do we propose as an alternative to help those who have been left behind in economic growth. Well, one of the things is to try to give incentives to the churches, to the community foundations, to individuals that if you will help, we will give you a tax incentive, we will allow you to leverage those funds in charitable organizations to do that. We are encouraging Individual Development Accounts. And in Head Start we are trying to promote education. Let me make one last reference. I know some of my conservative allies in the House are very disturbed that several provisions were dropped off from the subcommittee level and the committee level. I have long supported the repeal of Davis Bacon and I do not think there is a bill that makes this more clear. Because we did not repeal Davis Bacon there will be fewer Head Start centers built. It is that simple. Because if you have to pay what is not really necessarily a prevailing wage because if indeed it is a prevailing wage Davis Bacon would not make any difference, that by taking that provision out we will be able to build fewer Head Start centers. By changing the father accountability, we are not doing some of what we Republicans wanted to do and to try to use that. I think you can have a good debate whether or not the children in effect should be punished directly but at the same time without fathers, they are being punished, anyway. We, I believe, should use all levels of government to try to encourage the rebuilding of the families. But you also have to be realistic. We have many improvements in this bill. I outlined many breakthrough provisions. You cannot get everything in a bill and have it make it through this House and the Senate and signed by the President in 30 days. I think the chairman and the subcommittee chairman who I know has some differences with the final form are to be commended for passing a bill that we can get bipartisan support and yet have substantive changes in it that will make it better for those who are hurting in our society.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman agree that, even if my amendment passes, there will be a $6.8 million increase in the assistance portion of EDA?

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment raises the funding for drug court programs by an additional $6 million over the amount currently contained in the bill, which we also just added $3 million to a little while ago in the amendment offered by the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Ensign). Although the committee should be commended for providing a $10 million increase plus the $3 million that were accepted over last year's level and the President's request for drug courts, I believe that the demand and social and economic benefits of the program justify an even larger increase. There is no greater issue in our society than our war against illegal drugs. It is both a war and, as our drug czar said, a cancer, and we need creative solutions to address this. I want to commend the chairman of this subcommittee who has been a leader in the drug task force, the Anti-Drug Task Force, as we work towards a drug-free America, and for his willingness to increase, as he has pointed out with this amendment, a 33 percent increase in drug courts in this country. However, we also have already pending requests that are 50 percent higher. One of the problems that we go through in appropriations bills are tough choices, and this amendment offers such a tough choice. The increase in drug court funding in my amendment would be provided by reducing the bill's increases in funding for the Economic Development Administration to a 2 percent increase to account for inflation. Let me say that again. We are not eliminating EDA, we are not decreasing EDA. The money would come only by reducing the bill's 18.9 percent increase in salaries and expenses in EDA and the 8.4 percent increase in grants to a 2 percent level of inflation. In my view, any increase over and above the level of inflation is not appropriate in light of the health of the economy, the reservations about the effectiveness of EDA, and this opportunity to put more money into drug courts. Now let me once again explain a little bit about drug courts. They are used to place nonviolent drug defendants in judicially supervised treatment programs. A drug court is a successful alternative to placing drug users in overcrowded jails, where in all likelihood they will serve little time and receive no form of substance abuse treatment. We recently heard testimony in the Subcommittee on National Security, of which I am vice chairman, that individuals who were referred to drug treatment programs through drug courts and other parts of the criminal justice system stayed in treatment significantly longer than referrals from other sources. The success of drug courts has been in part demonstrated by the dramatic increase in the number of courts across the Nation. Since 1989 more than 275 jurisdictions have implemented a drug court to address the problem of substance abuse in crime. Currently there are another 150 drug courts being planned and another 13 jurisdictions are exploring the feasibility of these drug courts. Drug court participants and graduates are not rearrested. The recidivism rate for drug court participants and graduates ranges from 2 to 20 percent, far below that in any other drug program. Drug court participants and graduates break their addictions. The average positive urinalysis test while in drug court is only 15 percent. In some jurisdictions, such as San Jose, California, it is as low as 7 percent, significantly lower. Drug courts also have saved the lives of innocent babies. Five hundred twenty-five drug-free babies have been born to participants of drug courts. They reunite families. Over 2,430 parents regained custody of their children. Drug courts help former addicts become constructive members of society. Seventy-five percent of drug court graduates either retain or obtain employment. The important thing to remember here is that all across the country, in many jurisdictions, including in my hometown of Fort Wayne, where Ron Davenport, the head of the Washington House, has indicated that the Drug Court program works because it provides a simple motivation to participants. If they do not cooperate, they go to jail. But it also moves them into treatment programs and creative ways to do this. It has been demonstrated, as I said, in my home area. There is another 50 percent increase waiting to come into this system, and conversely, there seems little need to provide significant increases to EDA when the country continues to enjoy strong economic growth. My amendment would only reduce the increases to the level of inflation. This is not an attempt to eliminate EDA. I know there are many supporters in Congress for EDA. The question is, should EDA be increased more than 2 percent, or should that money go to Drug Courts? I believe, given the nature of the problems that we face in every Congressional district in this country, in families across this country, whether it be in direct crime, in property, or violence or internal family violence caused by drug and alcohol abuse, Drug Courts are an area where we should boost up. As I said earlier, this is a matter of priority. Where would you put your money? To the increased funding in EDA, or to the increased funding in Drug Courts, which I grant has gone up, but is not going up enough to meet the demand.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. As someone who opposed NAFTA and Bosnia, opposed money for Bosnia, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I do wish the Record to show that it is tough to be eliminating 7,000 jobs, since the money has not been spent yet. It may keep us, in the gentleman's opinion, from creating those jobs. Secondly, this is not a cut, it is a reduction of the increase.