Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I am not necessarily known as ``Mr. Internationalist.'' In fact, I authored with the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff] an amendment that said unless Mexico worked harder in this effort, that we were going to cut off funding and support. I have been critical of a number of the trade missions. One thing I have seen, and we did not shy away from communicating this to them, that all the issues that we are dealing with are related to narcotics in our country. At the same time we need to acknowledge that we have leaders around the world, as you said earlier, who are committed to democracy, who need our support, or we are going to lose the best chance for freedom around the world.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I briefly wanted to say here at the beginning, too, I wanted to thank Mr. Zeliff, the chairman of the subcommittee, for raising the issue of the drug war and the battle that we need to do, because we had abandoned it for some time, and say what a privilege it has been to work on his subcommittee, to do the hearings over time, and to initiate this trip. We really had a strong team. Mr. Mica, who had experience as a staffer, as an international businessman, and on the plane we could work together, and in your skill as a Representative of leadership and for them to know that they had the subcommittee chairman of multiple committees. It was amazing as we went into some of these countries, they heard of Mr. Zeliff. They said, ``Oh, yes, he is the person who has brought drugs back in front.'' I heard several leaders of those countries take them aside. Your smoothness when we went into Mexico, it was a difficult situation. They had just had the immigration border incidents that we were there on a narcotics mission, but in fact it turned into a very touchy diplomatic mission as well in a lot of these countries. I want to commend the gentleman as to how he smoothly handled that as we met with the Members of Congress there for dinners and President Zedillo and the foreign minister, because these turned, in Colombia and other countries we will talk about here, and particularly in Mexico, into potentially explosive international incidents that we were able to help facilitate.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for yielding. I want to first just sketch a little bit of the problem. The United States is basically up here in relationship to this map, with Mexico and Panama and Central America coming down into Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. It does not take a genius to figure out what is going on here. One hundred percent of the cocaine coming in from outside the United States is coming from here. Roughly 60 percent is now coming from Peru, which we will hear more about in a minute. About 30 percent of the growth is in Bolivia, with some in Colombia. Not only that, it is coming from basically two places just on the other side of the Andes in Peru and in Bolivia. Bolivia has been growing; Peru has been slightly declining. Furthermore, we are seeing more of the processing. As the pressure goes on in Colombia, the processing starts to move to these two countries in these two valleys. Not surprisingly, as you put the pressure on, and this is a chart that shows some of the success in the Chapare region of Bolivia, that they have had. You can see that they seized aircraft, they have seized coca leaf, they hav seized coca-based paste and base. They have eradicated crops. They have made a major effort in this zone to try to crack down. If you look at this third chart, what has happened, and this shows the Mexico through Central American areas we were in, as they put the pressure in the air, it starts to move to maritime. What we were in was literally the jungle, the rivers areas that were feeding into the Amazon River Basin. It was very disturbing, quite frankly, as somebody who, in spite of the earlier comments, does care about the environment, and I am a Republican; it was very disturbing to see how the rivers were being killed by the chemicals from the cocaine labs and what that was doing to the wildlife. We hear a lot of times about cutting down the Amazon rainforest, and we get many letters from schools. But we could see it burning in different places, and we could see it being cut so they can put cocaine labs in. I want to show, if I can have the pictures now, what we did in Bolivia. After we had our country team briefing, we flew up in a C-130 Vietnam-era transport plane up into the Chapare region to meet with the Puma powers, the soldiers who are busy working in the fields. We did a helicopter, a Huey helicopter, overflight where you can see they have had success in converting things into banana production, pineapple production and others. You could also see that they were hedging their bets, and some places underneath the banana plants you can see the coca. But they were working to eradicate that. They passed tougher laws. Then they took us back in after we had had lunch. They landed us in helicopters. We took four-wheel-drives. We went back down dirt roads. The day before, they had a tip, and they took down a primitive lab. Here what you see is the lab where they are turning it into paste. Here you see we got to witness them blowing up a lab, watching it burn. This is very dark because it is a jungle. It is the literal Amazon jungle. You cannot see it from an airplane overhead. They find six to eight of these a day that they destroy in the jungle that these troops are going through. Here you see leaf that has been pulled up, green leaf that is planted. Later on in the day we stopped at a local market, walked in and there the coca leaf was for sale in those markets, not converted to cocaine where we were. Here you see the coca field that is feeding into this particular lab and the soldiers destroying it. In the back part of this field there was a small area where the little coca plants were planted that would then continue to feed this field. In my home area in Fort Wayne, IN, there are kids dying. You do not see the blood on the coca plants, but there are kids dying; they are shooting each other; they are destroying each other because of the coca plants that are coming in from these countries. What they are telling us, however, is also it is not all our problems, you can see their troops here, you can see their airplane flights and crops being destroyed. We listened to their governments. It is their police that are dying as we heard in Colombia how many are dying. And they are saying, you know, we would not have this problem if you were not consuming it all in your country, too, and you are bringing the problems into our country. It is twofold. We need to stop the interdiction, we need to put more money into these efforts, because our kids and people are dying in our country, and back up the people there, and at the same time we need to work at the demand reduction on our side.

Mr. SOUDER. He is a real hero in our books. I think we are all very impressed when we left, and we told him that. And I think the other thing that we have to look at, an AID program and foreign policy programs need to be geared toward economic development, infrastructure improvements. And what is happening here is that if you leave it to their devices in working with the jungle, that is where the terrorism is. If the towns and the regular government give up the area, then we lose the war. Let me just trace a very interesting article in the Union Leader back in February 26, an article, and I give him a lot of credit for bringing this out, and I believe that they are committed to this in a very strong way, Sissy Taylor, ``Cocaine's Deadly Journey, Trip to New Hampshire Long and Costly.'' Just go through a little bit of how it all works. I will go through a little bit of how it all works. Coca leaves are bundled. Again you have the field. Coca leaves are bundled into bags. The bags are brought to pits where the processing begins. This is the pit. This is about 4- by 12-foot long. The bottom is lined with a filtering canvas. They dump the leaves in, add lime and kerosene or diesel fuel, sulfuric acid, then grind them together with the leaves. A paste is then formed and dried and then washed again with either ether, diesel fuel, or kerosene and then washed again. At this point it becomes coca base. Then the base is bundled and flown or transported into clandestine air strips in Colombia. It is then transported to processing laboratories in the jungles. It then undergoes another chemical process before it becomes cocaine hydrochloride or powdered cocaine. It is packaged into kilos, kilo bags, weighing a little bit more than 2 pounds. The farmer gets about $2,500 a hectare, and a hectare is 2\1/ 2\ acres, so he does not get much for growing the crop. Then it goes into Bogota as processed cocaine, worth $500 a kilo. Then that is transported either to New York, Miami, or Manchester or other cities around the United States, and it could reach as much as $20,000 a kilo. There is so much money in it. What is happening here in each of these countries--President Fujimori of Peru, the President of Mexico, a lot of the areas in the Caribbean, and I want to mention the great Governor of Puerto Rico and some of the fine work he has done--but what happens here is they are afraid of losing control of their countries, losing control of democracy, losing control to drug traffickers, and frankly the drug traffickers are the scum of the Earth. We have got to wake up. Let me just read a note. I met with the Governor of Puerto Rico yesterday, who is leading a valiant effort. We are going to be doing two more hearings, one in Puerto Rico in July and one in the district of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder], in Fort Wayne, and one in the district of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], in Chicago that day if we can work it out. We need to get on top of it. What he said: I want to say a few words about Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, along with Mexico, is a major transshipment point for Latin America's illegal drug cartels. Eighty percent of all the drugs that get into Puerto Rico end up in the continental

Mr. SOUDER. If the gentleman will yield, I want to make one additional point on the pictures the gentleman was just talking about. To give you the scale of why the best drug prevention program is interdiction and as we get into some of the things we need to do, that third picture, that is on fire, and the fourth picture. We took down around 100 crack houses in Fort Wayne last year. That is how great our problem is in a city the size of 300,000, roughly, in the metro area. That little fire there would be the biggest drug bust in the history of Fort Wayne, and they can make it in those little labs, starting for $500. We destroyed the biggest drug bust in the history of Fort Wayne. If we can get it there and reduce the supply, it has a major impact on our cities.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, first I want to agree with the earlier speaker that this amendment is actually not needed. We in the House had already protected life of the mother, but in the new language, ``necessary to save the life of the mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury, provided that no other medical procedure would suffice for that purpose,'' makes it clear this has nothing to do with life of the mother. I would also like to address the question of whether we men are trying to regulate women. I think one of the tragedies of this country are men who beat their spouses, mothers and fathers who treat their children as though they are objects to abuse. The question here is whether it is human life. If it is human life, it has nothing to do with whether it is the right of the woman or the right of the man to kill this child. If we disagree over life, that is one thing. But to act like we are trying to do anything other than protect an innocent life is unfair. In this case, the life is a life. If its head pops out a little bit further but if the legs are out and the heart is beating and the head is inside, then you jab it, it is not a human life. This is a debate over human life, not the rights of women and men.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it is tough during this time of year, when we should be home with our families and celebrating the birth of our Savior and having the time of a wonderful holiday season, to be pinned down here with this acrimony. And I know many Americans throughout the country are fed up, but we are at a real crossroads. It is especially cruel, I believe, to be putting out the false information and scaring the most vulnerable in our society, the senior citizens, who do not have a lot of their life to look forward to in many ways, and yet when they hear this type of thing, to be scared with the false information that is out is especially disturbing and especially cruel at this time of year. I also heard an earlier speaker say that we should not just mathematically balance the budget. My question is what will we do, emotionally balance the budget, rhetorically balance the budget, demagogically balance the budget? Of course, we have to mathematically balance the budget. Every American in this country has to mathematically balance their budgets. I guess there is a real difference between the two sides. They believe in Santa Claus and we do not. We have to mathematically balance the budget. That is why we are sent to Congress; $12 trillion is enough over the next 7 years. We are not cutting the budget. The previous 7 years was $7 trillion. That is, in any terms, real growth. The question here is how far is the Government going to grow, how big is the Government going to be? For example, one of the other negotiations we are having with this President is he has been told, in effect, and I think most Americans can relate to this, that this bank account has been overdrawn for years and by big amounts. An average American, if they were told their bank account was overdrawn $20,000 would work with the bank immediately to try to address that. We have compromised and said, OK, we will do this over 7 years to balance it. He refuses to come back with a proposal to actually balance it. He basically wants to go, OK, how about if we just leave it overdrawn by $10,000? OK, how about if we just leave it overdrawn by 8,000? The fact is we cannot have negotiations unless both sides agree on the fundamental principle that the budget has to be balanced, and the President has not put a proposal on the table that balances the budget. Once he puts a proposal to balance the budget on the table, then we can get into real discussions about how we will prioritize that spending. And that is a legitimate thing for the American people to expect, that we would have such a discussion as to how to prioritize that spending. But it is also legitimate they expect to have a budget on the table. The stock market is not collapsing because of a CR, the stock market is worried we will not balance the budget. As Allan Greenspan has already said, they have factored in that we were going to balance the budget. Now they are afraid. They see the President going back on the agreement that we made, and there is a real concern in this country that we might be so gridlocked, that one party is not committed and our President is not indeed committed in spite of the rhetoric to a balanced budget. The reason people cannot get into our national parks is he will not sign the appropriations bills. It has been nice to hear for months that we do not have the appropriations bills done, but basically, there are three over there now to be signed. Hopefully, another one will move. I want to conclude by saying I realize that most Americans would be a little shocked, but it is time for the President to keep his word and put a budget on the table.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor to set the record straight concerning the student loan and Pell grant proposals in the Balanced Budget Act of 1995. Mr. Speaker, contrary to what my colleagues may be hearing from sources on the other side of the aisle, Federal student loans are not cut. In fact, loan volume will increase by 50 percent over the next 7 years without imposing additional costs to students or parents. This amounts to an increase of $12 billion in spending on Federal student loans through the year 2002; from $24 to $36 billion in 7 years. Mr. Speaker, not only do Republicans increase spending for the guaranteed student loan program by 50 percent, but the maximum award for Pell Grants targeted to low-income students will rise to the highest level in their history, to $2,440. We have targeted the expenditures to those who need it most; not cut them. Democrats have barraged the airwaves to convince the public that Republicans are cutting Federal financial aid, but a 50-percent increase in the guaranteed loan program demonstrates that this is not the case.

Mr. SOUDER

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

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss my opposition to sending our troops to war in Bosnia. As one of the new freshman Members, I do not pretend to have the experience of our earlier speaker, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan], who has traveled to many of these areas and has much knowledge about our military. I am a country boy from a small town in Indiana of 700. I come here on behalf of common-sense Hoosiers who are very concerned about what our President has committed us to do. I want to make a couple of general comments first before plunging into some specifics. The first and core question is, is sending ground troops in our vital national interest? I think not. The primary question regarding the United States role in Bosnia is whether this is a civil war or is an act of aggression between two sovereign nations. This conflict is a civil war because the Bosnian Serbs are fighting with the Bosnian Moslems and the Bosnian Croats over political control, power and authority. Since the conflict is a civil war, there is no legal obligation for the United States to get involved. President Clinton even admitted the conflict in Bosnia is a civil war in an interview with Rita Braver of CBS News on April 20, 1994, stating the President of the United States as follows: ``I think this is a civil war in the sense that people who live within the confines of the nation we have recognized are fighting each other for territory and power and control. It is clearly a civil war.'' That is not a Republican stating that; that is the President of the United States. Although the United States has numerous interests in a peaceful resolution of the Bosnian war, for example, ending the atrocities, preventing further human rights abuses and ending the suppression of minority groups. Much of this, I think, is coming out of a heartfelt concern for those who are hurting in other nations and watching the terrible torture. The conflict does not in fact threaten our national security. Given the terrible nature of war, I am supportive of sending troops into combat situations only when there is a vital national security interest at stake and when a clear military objective is achievable. So then the next question is, has the President provided a clear mission or exit strategy, which will place our troops in imminent danger because he has not provided such a mission or strategy. He has promised to commit at least 20,000 troops. We have heard 30,000, but it appears to be 20,000 here at the beginning, before an agreement was reached, instead of designing a plan that could coordinate troops with this specific goal. In other words, it was a mission looking for a purpose. Clinton's implementation force has no clear mission. In theory, they are poised to act as buffers between warring sides, and in reality, they are targets for snipers. His is an arbitrary time period for exit and not a national exit strategy, which means anybody who wants to wait out the last months can do that. The potential for United States troops becoming targets for those who have no interest in bringing peace to the area is simply far greater than any national security interest in Bosnia. Mr. Speaker, let me tell a local story that has ties to northeast Indiana. Marine Lance Corporal Jeff Durham of Fort Wayne, who graduated from Blackhawk High School, was involved in the rescue of Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady. The 20-year-old Durham and other members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit were awakened on board a carrier in the Adriatic Sea around 3 a.m., were briefed, and departed for a mission 2 hours later. Jeff was on board a backup helicopter which was prepared to defend the rescue team against the enemy if things went wrong. Their mission was to get between the rescue chopper and the enemy. Fortunately, O'Grady made a clean escape and the Marines did not have to get out of the chopper. We may have a voluntary army, but it is wrong to view our troops as missionaries or use them in missions that do not have clear American interests at stake. I know that the people of Fort Wayne and Jeff's family do not consider him a disposable asset, a mercenary just to be thrown around in the process of pursuing whims by our President. I also believe we have shown that there is strong congressional and public opposition to sending ground troops. The House has voted on three separate occasions in opposition to United States involvement in Bosnia. In the DOD appropriations bills, the original House-passed bill contained the Neumann amendment by Mark Neumann, a fellow freshman from Wisconsin, which will restrict the use of funds for deployment of United States forces in Bosnia without the prior approval of Congress. It passed by a vote of 294 to 125 on January 7, 1995. In conference, this was modified twice to become a nonbinding provision and then was dropped completely. By the way, many of us who opposed that DOD Conference Report the first time, one of the three main criteria that we opposed it on was the pulling of that Bosnia language. Part of the agreement that came out of that was H. Resolution 247, which expressed the sense of the House that there should be no presumption by the parties to any peace negotiation that the enforcement of any peace agreement will involve the deployment of U.S. forces and emphasized that no [[Page H 13993]] U.S. troops should be deployed to the region without prior congressional approval. This passed by 315 to 103; that is, no troops should be deployed to the region without prior congressional approval. Clearly, this has been ignored. H.R. 2606 prohibited the use of funds appropriated to the Department of Defense to be used for the deployment or implementation of United States ground forces to the Balkans as part of a peacekeeping operation unless such funds have been specifically appropriated by Congress for that purpose. That passed by a vote of 243 to 171. We have made our will known. We are not being heeded. Hoosiers in northeast Indiana do not support sending the ground troops to Bosnia, either. Ninety-four percent of those contacting my offices have expressed strong opposition to the President's plan. We have hundreds of calls, up to three times as many as we normally get. We have letters. In the last week I was on three different talk shows where 80 percent of the calls were on Bosnia. Outrage is being expressed by the people in Indiana that this President could ignore the will of the American people and to send our boys at risk of a potential war. I also wanted to show, I know that Congressman Dornan showed this map earlier, of a couple of noteworthy geographical points that have probably been made a number of times but I want to make them again. First of all, the so-called Dayton line named after Dayton, OH--talk about interjecting ourselves in international foreign policy, we now have the line between the nations being named after an American city-- snakes around making Vietnam look clearly defined. It goes for over a thousand miles. We are not quite sure because they are still sorting out these borders how many miles exactly, but it snakes around all over the place. Then I asked in one of our briefings, I am on the oversight subcommittee over the Defense and State and CIA, chaired by the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff]. This is Croatia around in a U. Is there anywhere else in the world where you have a nation with a U around another nation? The answer is no. You have Pakistan, it has been divided, it and Bangladesh, and you have other situations but no U situation like this. Another core question is, since this part is tied with the Serbs, which is over on this side, what would have happened if we had not gone in? We were told that most likely Croatia would have drawn a line somewhere like this. Well, these yellow pockets are where Croatia had already advanced, that clearly the Serbs were vulnerable in this area, and that if this was what would have logically happened and if Croatia is in a situation like this U, what exactly do we feel is going to keep Croatia from doing a fairly logical geographical move over time? Well, there are supposedly a couple of different arguments. One is that these areas are Moslem and that while they are working with the Croatians, although they were just fighting them, now they are working with them apparently again, that there was more concern by Croatia that this area would be taken over by the Moslems than the Serbs. This is what you call to some degree hopefulness, because these areas have been fighting all between themselves and partly what we are banking on is that Croatia will not do the logical geographical close because all of a sudden they are going to decide, well, maybe we don't want to fight the Moslems anymore or the Serbians anymore even though we have been doing so for hundreds of years and we view them as occupying our nation's land. It is a little bit hopeful thinking to think that when one army probably was going to win, when one army still has that incentive through history of many years of war, to suddenly say, ``Oh, we think now they're going to be good'' and maintain this kind of unusual geographical layout. Anybody who looks at this goes and say, ``Why exactly are we putting our troops in here?'' One other thing that is kind of interesting. We were told, and this map may be slightly different because there were two things still being negotiated. As is apparent, there is a very narrow part in here between the two parts of the areas controlled by the Serbian Bosnians, and the two areas that were still being debated and which are going to be the most difficult are this area right in here and Sarajevo. So the two places they have not defined are the two most difficult and the two most strife-ridden. The Russian troops are going to be somewhere in here and the American troops are up here. This is a very difficult region to monitor. It is where the Germans were when they came down and lost so many troops, 70,000, trying to subdue this region. They came down through this area. We are putting ourselves right across from the Russian troops in an area where we are still negotiating the borders, where the narrow strip is, very narrow connecting, and you look at this and say, if you already have not established a compelling national interest and you already have a bunch of difficulties with this, would just logic not tell you in looking at this map that you are walking into an unbelievable potential nightmare of a situation for the U.S. Armed Forces? In the briefings that we have had, a number of other things have been interesting talking about the mines that are there and the question of why are Americans going to be involved in taking out these mines? Well, partly apparently we are going to ask all those who had been combatants in this to take out the mines first, but there are a couple of problems. One is that they do not exactly know where the mines are. Second, they do not have the equipment to detect the mines. So since we have the equipment and since our troops are going to have to go through these areas as well as France and Britain, we are going to wind up having to go through the mines, and that is probably what the President was warning us, that we are going to lose lives trying to locate these mines that we do not know where they are and we do not exactly know how to find them, although, quote, they are in logical places. In other words, it is not as though they are randomly sorted. They are at where the front lines were, but since the front line has moved all over the place on this map, it is very difficult for us to know where the mines are. So we are going to have deaths related to the mines. There is no question of that. Another question is whether or not the American troops will be targets After all, it was the American Air Force that bombed many of these cities. One of the things that was kind of enlightening to me was, is that one of the reasons the administration is apparently arguing that our American troops may not be targets is very simple. We are going to rebuild their country. And so if they think that we are going to rebuild the buildings that we bombed out and helped build their nation again, then maybe we will not be targets because the Americans are nice guys and if they shoot us, we will not give them money. We have heard $60 million, then we have heard $600 million. Estimates have certainly been floating around on the floor of the House as high as $6 billion. At a time when we are trying to figure out how not to cut the budget, to respond to the earlier Speaker, but how to slow the growth of the budget, it is pretty tough to go back to Indiana and say, ``Oh, by the way, we're having to slow down a little bit of the growth in these different programs, we're having to do this, we're having to do this but we're going to rebuild everything we just bombed over in Bosnia.'' It is a very tough sell on one hand to say we are tight on the budget, and on the other hand where there is not a clear compelling national interest that we are spending all this money rebuilding it. Plus I just thought this quote was kind of interesting. It was in the New York Times, Friday, December 1. This was a young lady, when asked what she thought about the troops coming in, when asked what she thought of the Americans arrival, she said, ``It's cool. It's great. All the Bosnian boys are going to be very jealous. We don't date them anymore. We met some Swedish soldiers but these American soldiers will have everything. Cars and money.'' This ought to do great relations. We have already bombed their country. We [[Page H 13994]] are coming in there rebuilding it, and now their young soldiers who are coming back and having to supposedly lay down their arms are finding that their girlfriends are all interested in the American soldiers, which is certainly going to lead to extra peace. It is not a major item, but it is just every single thing you hear is not working in our direction. I read the book ``Balkan Ghosts,'' which I recommend to others to read. It is very interestingly written about this whole region. What strikes you is the violence that has occurred here over many, many centuries between the different nations, the different backgrounds, and the deep-seated hatred. I think what struck me most is that so many times, in one case, I cannot remember what century or what war, one of the nations in overpowering the other basically slaughtered all the young children below 2 years old, much like King Herod did in Biblical times. In other cases they took groups into slaughterhouses, an actual butcher place, and butchered them, cutting off their legs and arms and heads and hung up the severed limbs like it was a meat locker. Well, those memories are in these different nations. And often when they go to battle, they will go into their churches, whether it is a Catholic church or an Orthodox church or a Moslem church or some blend thereof because this is a holy war. The enemy that they are fighting has murdered their children, has murdered their grandfathers, it has been in a brutal way, and it is not going to all of a sudden be solved by a 1-year cease-fire if indeed it ever turns into a cease-fire completely, but it is not going to be solved because underneath it there are centuries of very emotional religious and ethnic conflict. Another thing that I never really fully understood until I read that book and got some briefings is why do all of these countries fight over some of these areas? Croatia at its peak went way down this way. Serbia at its peak came way over this way. Hungary came down, Bulgaria at its peak, Romania at its peak, Greek at its peak, the Ottoman Empire at its peak, all at one time or another claimed a bunch of this territory. When they would expand in, they would plant people from their nations to plant seeding in those different areas, so you have mixed nationalities in there to boot. Basically to summarize the battlegrounds, every country merely wants back what they once had. It is impossible to meet that goal. It is much like the Russians saying when they were Communists that they only wanted the land next to theirs. Each of these countries want to go back to maps that overlap and which are not going to be resolved by some kind of miraculous agreement in Dayton, OH. One other thing. In hoping to go over to Bosnia, which we instead got to stay here in Congress over the weekend which was about as bad as going over to Bosnia, that we had a luncheon where the Speaker was at as well, with the President of Montenegro and a representative from Croatia as the Speaker, Mr. Taylor of North Carolina asked, because we heard that it was critical, that we put backing behind this or there would be no peace agreement. You asked whether or not we could do this with air and naval power, and he basically said yes, probably could. I asked the question in one of our briefings why we could not just do that. They first said, and I do not believe they were supposed to say this, retreated, I do not think it is classified or anything, ``Well, it's because this was an American agreement, and the European forces said since this was an American agreement that, therefore, we had to put ground troops in.'' ``Wait a minute. What do you mean this is an American agreement?'' ``Well, this was made in Dayton, OH. This was the American President's agreement.'' They do not think, for example, we should be rearming the Bosnian Serbs. So we are having to put ground troops in because our President brought the peace treaty process to America, it is called the Dayton line, it is an American agreement, that made us put ground troops in, not because they are essential to the peace there but they are essential to the American version of the peace because we may have needed to have some firepower behind it, which is still debatable, but we would not have necessarily had ground troops. There is one other thing that I had learned and kind of reinforced what I had been hearing was we heard a very compelling story from people from Montenegro and it was very impressive how they were getting along and how they had taken things. Then it came around to the representative from Croatia who absolutely ripped into Montenegro how they had pillaged their museums and raped their women and so on. And the response was, ``Yeah, but this happened before 1992,'' which showed me the intensity here even though that apparently was, if I recall correctly, a 1991 incident, that the intensity between these countries is not just going to go away because we wished it to go away and temporarily put some troops there. I also wanted to insert a couple of articles for the Record and I want to read a couple of quotes from this. I was very impressed by an op-ed article on Tuesday, November 28, by James Webb, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Navy in the Reagan administration. He reiterates a couple of points out of the Nixon doctrine that we have apparently drifted away from not only quite frankly under this President but under our last one, that we honor all treaty commitments in responding to those who invade the lands of our allies. That is one reason that we would put our own troops in. Second, that we provide a nuclear umbrella to the world against the threats of other nuclear powers. The third reason would be, finally, provide weapons and technical assistance to other countries where warranted, but do not commit American forces to local conflicts. Bosnia fits none of these. There is no NATO treaty agreement. They are not part of NATO. There is no threat of nuclear war in this situation. Finally, it is indeed a local conflict, so maybe we provide technical assistance but we certainly do not provide ground troops. Another point in this article, it says that we are told, and this is what I alluded to earlier in another context, We are told that other NATO countries will decline to send their own military forces to Bosnia unless the United States assumes a dominant role, which includes sizable combat support and naval forces backing it up. This calls to mind the decades of over-reliance by NATO members on American resources, and President Eisenhower's warning in October 1963 that the size and permanence of our military presence in Europe would, quote, continue to discourage the development of the necessary military strength Western European countries should provide for themselves. NATO has substantially changed since there was a direct Communist threat. We have to always be on guard. Russia could be immediately another Communist power and we would be back in the Cold War. But things have changed and other nations around the world need to take more responsibility. We cannot be a policeman everywhere. I also wanted to read a couple of quotes from Friday, December 1, Washington Times article by Thomas Sowell referring to the lapse of historic savvy by our President. He takes a couple of quotes. For example, the President said, ``Bosnia lies at the very heart of Europe.'' Not if you know any geography. It is basically on the fringes of Europe. It is not primary in either importance or geography. It has been a place where there have been battles where other powers have chosen to get themselves involved as we are but it is hardly central to Europe in either geography or politics. I was very disturbed, for example, when the President at the tail end of his speech made a quote that I have no doubt is accurate from the Pope which was that this century started with a war in this area and we do not want it to end with a war in this area. The question is what is the best way to keep us from not having a war? I do not have a lot of confidence that quote was used in context. If these countries are fighting among themselves, it could get very messy; for example, if Serbia loses control of [[Page H 13995]] this area and moves over to here, there may be centuries of conflict between Serbia and Croatia over where this line could be, and lot of lives unnecessarily lost. If the Moslems are overrun in these areas, in a sense persecuted by either Croatia or by Serbia and flee to other nations, they could be at risk of what they could do. They could be much like the Palestinians and be wandering, searching for a place to land. It is a messy area. But if you put Russian troops right here and American troops right here and you have a change of power in Russia and you have a conflict where this group are allies of Russia and this group, with their more Catholic tradition, are allies of the United States, you are looking at the potential for war. That is how you get into world wars, not by letting these countries fight over their battles and the terrible things that may happen to those countries but by putting two major nuclear powers right across from each other in a very tense situation in defending potential client states. That is how you get a war, and the way to avoid ending this century with a nuclear war is not by us going in there, it is by us staying out. As Thomas Sowell points out, that first off, Yeltsin is at best lukewarm with this. Furthermore, anybody who watches the news realizes the government in Russia is not necessarily stable. Part of their challenge is they are not being aggressive enough and nationalistic enough in approaching relations with our country, that any notion that all of a sudden we are going into Bosnia because there was this peace accord is belied, as Thomas Sowell points out, that Mr. Clinton advocated such action years before the Yugoslav leaders even set foot in Dayton and even before he became President. He is depending on us to forget what he said before. Obviously, he depends on that many weeks out of the year. In this particular case, he has advocated this policy. He has now made it come to fruition and dragging all of America along with him under the guise of something totally different. Our claim that our mission is clear and limited, to quote Thomas Sowell again, as Mr. Clinton put it, is true only if everything goes according to plan. The same would have been true in Vietnam if everything had been according to plan. We would have simply defended the existing government until they got on their feet and then pulled out. You know, many of us and a lot of the media have asked why are so many of the freshman conservative Republicans so upset about this war. Many of us who came through the Vietnam era reacted in different ways. I was a conservative during that period, as were many others, but we did not really like how the war was being fought either. We saw a lot of our friends being killed over something where we basically abandoned later on and learned some lessons there. That is pick you fights, have a clear mission, back up your troops, do not get in situations where you are the sitting ducks, and some people say, and this is a core question and I am going to touch on this for a minute, is this like Vietnam or is this like Afghanistan or is this like Lebanon or is this like Korea? Let me suggest, first of all, on Korea, the line in Korea does not wander around in different angles, coming back like an odd-shaped ``U'' or a ``V.'' And the reason the line in Korea held is because we went all the way up to the Chinese border. The Chinese and the North Koreans were afraid that at any time the American military might again invade North Korea or into China, therefore, they dug in behind the line to keep us from advancing. It was not an arbitrary line put on by our Government in peace negotiations. In Vietnam, when we tried to do that, it failed. The case, and some Marines have compared this to Lebanon, more like we are supposed peacekeeping troops, sitting down basically in valleys and mountainous regions where our guys are sitting ducks for land mines, occasional snipers and random people who have not disarmed, maybe like Lebanon. There can be a case like Afghanistan; Russia went in trying to subdue a rebellion. The rebellion had been going on between different forces for many years. Some of the troops fighting in Afghanistan are now in this area, as we learned by the CBS, I believe, TV commentator captured by some of them the other day, almost shot, that there are roaming bands in this same area of Afghanistan fighters. You see many of the logistics. For me, since I most relate to Vietnam, it sure seems a lot like Vietnam. I heard the President say the other night, ``My fellow Americans.'' A chill goes up my spine because many of us heard ``My fellow Americans'' once too many times already. I now, for the first time, understand how some of those liberal Democrats who I did not like at the time felt when they felt they were pulled into Vietnam under votes in their protest, and all of a sudden their patriotism was challenged because they were questioning a war they did not want to get in in the first place. We in Congress have voted three times we did not want this war. At what point do you say, ``Look, we are elected by the American people as well; at what point is there a joint government?'' You do not have an immediate threat to the security of United States. It is not as though we have troops already in combat in threat of being killed and the President has to go in. You can argue Nixon went into Cambodia because he was protecting troops on the ground. You can do a number of arguments the President has to have flexibility. Does he have to have flexibility to start us into a potential Vietnam? One of the things he said, partly, I think, to shore up his conservative base, if any of our people get killed, we are going to go after them with everything we have. He said that to the troops the other day as he was launching them on their mission. The question is: Is that not what happened in Vietnam? We were their to support Vietnamization, help stabilize the southern, pretty soon, 20,000 troops are not going to be able to stabilize this area, maybe we will need 38,000; someone gets killed, we will have to go up in the mountains. The guys in the mountains, particularly, Afghan Moslems and others who are going to flee into the mountains, Hitler took tons of troops until he finally gave up trying to subdue them. Pretty soon, we are up to 75,000, 100,000 not because we are trying to start a war, but because we are chasing people who killed American soldiers, and we are demanding retribution. This leads to bigger battles. This is how wars start. It is not how wars are avoided, because we are in an extremely vulnerable situation in an area that has had conflict for hundreds and hundreds of years. I also really resented the President's comments about the Olympics in Sarajevo, talking about how peaceful it used to be. It used to be a Communist country. It was hammered together by Tito. None of us voted to elect President Clinton the new Tito. It is not his job to hammer this nation back together through the force of gunpower, which is how this nation was put together in the first place. You can have different views on Tito. Clearly, one advantage of Tito was he provided stability. That is not the mission of this U.S. Congress, this House, this Senate, or this President, to be the new Tito, and I urge our President to lose his Tito complex. I also listened to his tortured logic to try to address why we are getting into this war. Roughly, it went like this: Europe is essential to our stability, NATO is essential to Europe, we are essential to NATO; therefore, we have to put ground troops in. First off, it does not establish the Balkans are essential to Europe. Second, he did not make a very good case that at this time Europe is essential or that Europe is threatened. Third, he did not establish that we have to have ground troops as part of NATO to be supportive of NATO. Maybe because of the peace agreement he agreed to, there is pressure now for us to put ground troops in, but maybe we should have let the Europeans negotiate the agreement that is in Europe. Let them figure out how to do it, and we back them up rather than us being the world policeman who brings them to Dayton OH, and then has all the obligations to be the policeman of Europe. I do not think his logic worked in any way. I also want to read a little bit of a letter that I got from Ralph Garcia. He is the chairman of my veterans' affairs advisory panel. He is president of the Vietnam Veterans' Chapter 698 in [[Page H 13996]] northeast Indiana and on the State council of Vietnam veterans. He said to me that the entire group adamantly agrees that we should not send U.S. troops into Bosnia. He also said that he described, as a Vietnam veteran, as a former CIA employee, that this looks like Vietnam all over again. ``We all agree that is no clearly defined national interest. Bosnia is a European problem. Nor is there a clear, quantifiable objective or mission statement. We will have casualties. The slowing of the Bosnian war process is not worth the cost of U.S. lives or scarce fiscal resources, because peace cannot be enforced.'' I hear this most intensely from veterans in my district. As I look at what happened in Vietnam and as I look now at our young American men and women going into a war-torn land in the middle of winter, feeling doubt about going in, it has to be discouraging to them to hear us fighting among ourselves, of questioning their mission, and that is not what we are trying to do here. I honestly believe we need in this House to cut off funding now before there lives are lost. I believe I am defending those American men and women by pushing before any of them are killed. Once the gunshots start, we have got to rally behind our troops. I understand that. I am going to fight every day up until gunshots start. Even if it is embarrassing for us to withdraw, better to have the embarrassment than to get caught in a long war with many American lives, and I believe that is defending our troops. But what we need to remember is, just like in Vietnam where our leaders messed up and where our leaders are tripping over themselves apologizing for this and apologizing for that, it should take nothing away from those troops who go in to defend American honor, who do what they are asked to do in service of their country. We need to be supportive of them. Our leadership maybe should hang their head, but our soldiers should hold there heads up high and know they are doing what they are being asked to do and they are doing their best jobs. When I was a student in high school at the little high school of Leo High School, and my high school class had 68 members, that shows how little the school was, we did a chain letter to those who graduated from our little school who were over in Vietnam. One of the commitments I made in my district, I hope other Members will as well, anybody who can get me the address of anybody from our region of, for that matter, Indiana, who is in Bosnia. I want to write them a personal note of support to them individually. I hope others will. If I cannot get the Armed Services to give me who is there, I need people to let me know who is there. Another thing we will do is we will collect letters, particularly over the Christmas season, particularly from people from northeast Indiana, to send them. If nothing else, we will give them to the Armed Forces so they can send them to the troops there. This is not a question of supporting our men and women who are serving our Nation with courage, bravery, at high risk, separated from their families. This is a question of trying to protect them, protecting our national interest, to keep us from bogging down in another war where literally there is terrible tragedy all over the world. We can go into almost every country any time. We can go into our American cities that have terrible tragedies. The question is: What is the role of our Armed Forces of the United States? It is a travesty of justice, an embarrassment to our country, to see this President use it like it is the Arkansas State Police trying to put down rebellions all over the world. I am very disappointed at our inability in the House to bring this up to another tough vote now. We have got to cut this money. We are the last line of defense for our troops where their lives are being put at stake during this tough season. Unless we can chop off the money here in the House and try and get the Senate to go along, unless the American people will rise up and speak out and tell their Representatives they do not want their supposed peace mission to turn into a major war, it is very difficult. As I used to sit home before I ran for Congress and then I also was growing up, I used to say, ``Boy, you know, it is really frustrating being out here in Indiana, not being able to influence things and not being able to change.'' Then you come to Washington. You get in there and you see us bail out in Mexico and not be able to stop it. You hear all of this baloney about cuts and how we are gutting Medicare and gutting social security and gutting student loans, all of which are not true, and you think how can I combat this. Then you see our troops going into what I believe will be a war, and we are not able to stop it. I do not feel a whole lot different than I did back in Indiana. Only now I am a Member of Congress. That is really a sad commentary on our political system. I remember in reading Barry Goldwater's memoirs, talking about a conversation he had with Richard Nixon, who said he thought, after having been a House Member and a Senate Member, finally became President of the United States, he could ultimately make these decisions. What he found was he could not even get the type of pencil he wanted. Haldeman would go to the staff and say he would forget about it next week. He could not get the pencils he wanted. It is very frustrating being here, trying to change this, knowing the American people are outraged. They want a change. We are your elected Representatives. There are many of us here who are going to continue to battle, not because of any disrespect to our Armed Forces but because of great respect of our Armed Forces, because we want them to be served in the most important things, which are to defend our Nation, defend our national interests, and when it is unnecessary, to be able to spend their time with their families and have their full lives to look forward to. Lapse of Historic Savvy (By Thomas Sowell) Bill Clinton's speech on Bosnia was an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Virtually every point made in that speech depended on being able to take advantage of ignorance, amnesia, or an inability to deal with simple logic. ``Bosnia lies at the very heart of Europe,'' said the president. That claim can be taken seriously only by those ignorant of geography. The Balkans are on the fringes of Europe, geographically and otherwise. Sarajevo is less than 600 miles from the Bosphorous, where Asia begins. It is farther than that from Berlin or Paris, and more than a thousand miles from London. Mr. Clinton's geographical fraud was not incidental. It was part of a whole false picture he painted, in which we must intervene in order to prevent the war in Bosnia from spilling over in the rest of Europe around it. Not only is Bosnia not in the heart of Europe, its many wars over many centuries have not spilled over into other countries. On the contrary, it was the intervention of other countries in the Balkans that turned a local assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 into the First World War. Today, it is our intervention that risks creating another international confrontation, if Russia resumes its historic role as an ally of the Serbs. The fact that Russian president Boris Yeltsin has gone along grudgingly with Western policy in the Balkans thus far is no guarantee that he will continue to do so, as events unfold next year--which is an election year in Russia, as well as in the United States. Moreover, either another candidate or another heart attack can take Mr. Yeltsin completely out of the picture. There are far more belligerent Russian politicians waiting in the wings, eager to restore Russia's power and its historic role as a force backing the Serbs in the Balkans. What would we do then, with 20,000 young American soldiers as sitting ducks in Russia's backyard? We have a huge national interest in avoiding any such situation. We have no other national interest in that part of the world. Not one American's safety will be endangered if we stay out. Not one American's livelihood will be jeopardized. The notion that we are going into Bosnia because of a ``peace'' accord reached recently in Dayton is falsified by the simple fact that Mr. Clinton was urging such action years before any Yugoslav leaders ever set foot in Dayton, and even before he became president. Again, Mr. Clinton is depending on our forgetfulness. Other gambits in the president's speech include picturing the Dayton accords as some kind of achievement ``as a result of our efforts.'' Nothing has been easier than to get agreements in the Balkans--and nothing harder than getting the parties to live up to them. Calling this latest accord ``a commitment to peace'' is another reliance on amnesia. One of the few claims with any semblance of fact or logic behind it is that, if the United States pulls out of its own commitments, this will make our word less reliable in the future. The larger question, however, is: Reliable for what purpose? Do we want people to rely on us to run around the world engaging in these military adventures? [[Page H 13997]] The need to back up the president's words with American troops cuts two ways. We can either sacrifice young lives for the sake of presidential rhetoric or the president can learn to keep his big mouth shut, in order to spare those lives until they need to be risked for something that truly threatens the American people. If this president can't keep his mouth shut, then we need one who can. There is a far greater danger to the people of this country from terrorists from the Balkans striking in the United States, as a result of our intervention, than from the war in that region spilling over the Atlantic Ocean. Thinly-veiled threats of this sort have already been made. The claim that ``our mission is clear and limited,'' as Mr. Clinton put it, is true only if everything goes according to plan. The same would have been true in Vietnam if everything had gone according to plan: We would have simply defended the existing government until they got on their feet and then pulled out. But wars that go strictly according to plan are the rare exceptions. The big question is: What is our Plan B? What if we can't put the genie back in the bottle and just get caught in the crossfire? The haste with which the Clinton administration is getting ready to put its troops in place suggests that they will deal with that question by relying on the American tradition of supporting our soldiers, once they have been committed. In other words, Plan B is to present us with a fait accompli, so that it will be considered unpatriotic to fail to back up the president as he flounders in another quagmire.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the gentleman very much and appreciate his leadership on this bill. I grew up in a very peace-loving family that would not destroy innocent children. I remember one time my mom said when I was little, I was worried about a spider that she wanted me to kill and I did not want to damage the spider, let alone a human life. But it was more kind of a general feeling than specific knowledge on the abortion issue. I happened to be at graduate school at the University of Notre Dame when the Supreme Court decision Roe versus Wade came down and I got very involved in the pro-life movement and heard about the methods of the candy apple babies, so-called because they burn off their skin and you just see the red, or the method of cutting up the babies and the sheer horror of the pictures and the knowledge is just so overwhelming and that is where if the American people knew the truth about the abortion issue it would not be tolerated. You would not allow this type of thing. If you knew somebody in your [[Page H 11432]] neighborhood took their dog out in the street and did this to their dog, you would not want to associate with them. Yet people in your neighborhood do this to their babies. How can this be happening in this country? As a father I do not understand how a people can take their children that we love so dearly and that we care and do this cruel and inhumane punishment to them. We have heard all through this year about how speakers have come down here into the well and attacked us on our balanced budget proposals and say that we are heartless, that we are cold-blooded, that we are cruel, that we lack compassion, that we do not have human decency, that we are causing inordinate pain and suffering. This is those things. You can debate how much money we should spend on different programs, but these partial-birth abortions, when you stick a scissors into the back of a human life and you suck their brains out, there is no debating whether this ii compassionate or heartless. Let those who have been using those terms so loosely and throwing them around for political purposes defend this in their vote on Wednesday if they want to see compassion. Even the AMA's Council on Legislation agreed that the procedure was basically repulsive. Basically repulsive? It is disgusting. It has been hard to sit down here and listen to people talk about this without getting tears in your eyes about the children and the little tiny defenseless babies in this country who are being treated worse than animals in this society. It is very discouraging that we have all of these humane shelters, all of these people devoted to protecting animals, yet there is this double standard for human beings. I do not understand how this country has tolerated this, particularly this most flagrant of procedures, the last step. Many times they even want to suck out these brains in the name of science, they want to use it, the fetal tissue from these living babies to supposedly save somebody else's life or impact them. I do not know how we can stand here in this country, the land of freedom, and land where people died to have the right to life and the right to survive and do this. I want to close with the story about my cousin. We have heard about people who are handicapped and my cousin Kalisa was born with one stub and without another leg and her organs were not able to keep her alive and they knew she was going to die, they did not know what year but they said maybe 8 years and she lived until she was 10 years old and she could not continue living. But there is not one person who ever came in touch with my cousin who does not believe that her life brought more to this society than many of us who have all of our means, all of our arms and legs and all of our organs because Kalisa was always happy, she knew where she was going to go, she was a light to others, she knew that she was not going to live long and she was a positive influence on others. Those people who say that because somebody has a handicap or because somebody is less intelligent or something else deserve to die should be reprimanded, should be shamed in this House, and then to propose procedures like this, if they cannot stand with us on saying that we are not going to take the weakest in our society and destroy them with this most disgusting method, I am disappointed they would be reelected in this country and speak for the American people. Thank you for your leadership on this.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. First off, I want to say that $230,000 is really an impressive endorsement of my colleague from Washington. It shows how committed he is to change. The people back in his home State, when they hear that, they ought to say, ``Boy, Randy is really out here doing things. They really want him out.'' The problem is that we do not like it that they are doing it with our money or our tax deductions. If people want the tax deductions, they should follow the 5-percent rule. If people want to do it with our money, then they should not be doing it to defeat Randy Tate. They have all the opportunity in the world. In fact, every $10,000 that goes against Randy Tate in his campaign should be considered a badge of honor that he is here reforming things. He should say, ``Go get some more and come after me, because every dollar you are spending does it.'' But do not do it with the taxpayers' money and do not do it with our deductions. Which really gets to a bigger question, which as somebody who boosts increasing the charitable deduction and who has made it a major part of what I came here to do, it has been frustrating to have some disagreements with the friends of mine in the charitable areas over this issue. At the same time, the plain truth of the matter is that this is one of the things that we are fighting and what we are trying to deal with in this bill, and that is the corrupting influence that Government funds can have on the people who are caring for people who really need it. The people in Catholic social services and Lutheran social services and the tons of volunteer organizations dealing with people in prisons and child abuse, domestic violence, the terrible problems that we have in this society, feel the problem that we have in this country is a lot that many of us are ignoring those who are hurting and have not been taking an involvement. They are struggling and they see these terrible problems and think, Boy, if we could just dip into the Federal dollars to solve this. But you start chasing your tail. First, you have to start compromising and start filling out paperwork and changing the nature of your organization. All the sudden there are religious restrictions and many of the most powerful groups have a very strong moral component that they cannot do with tax dollars. They start chasing the Federal dollars and then they start to convert themselves and instead of spending their money on helping the people, the ones they could help, they are now trying to chase and get the Government involved. And the Government, who has been completely ineffective, tends to corrupt the influence of those groups in the first place. So, there is a deeper question here, and that is not only are we trying to talk about the political ends and whether or not some of these groups have been using their funds to damage people in Congress who are trying to cause changes, but there is the core question of what this is doing to the organizations themselves and their mission and this society. We need organizations in this country dedicated to values without the big hand of Government steering them and trying to control what they can and cannot say. Part of this is to say, If you want the Federal funds, then stay out of the lobbying. And if you want to be completely independent and raise your money, then you can follow and get the 501(c)(3) restrictions on the 5 percent, but do not go over that, because your primary mission is to be independent and to help those who are hurting. Your primary mission is not to lobby Congress and to turn into mini-politicians. We are in danger in this country of watching our charitable end turn into another quasi-government and become corrupted and as ineffective as what we have seen. As one pastor in Detroit who was told that he had to do it the Government's way, otherwise he could not get government funds. He could not talk about religion. He was an African-American pastor. He said, ``From what I have seen what the Government has done, every housing project you have touched is crumbling; every juvenile delinquency program you have does not work; every drug abuse program does not have good return. Everything my church has done in the community has worked. Our housing, our juvenile delinquency, our drugs, our child care. Yet, you tell me unless I do it your way, I cannot have the money.'' It is a sad day when our charitable organizations start to get into this web of Government. This is a great way, and really the undergirding of much of what you are doing, not the political. I thank the gentleman from Indiana for his leadership.

Mr. SOUDER. What is their defense for saying in the funds directly coming to them from the Federal Government for use for charitable work, whether it is seniors, or low income, or people who are handicapped, or people being abused, why do they feel that those dollars that are being given from the taxpayers for those purposes should be used directly for lobbying? Is there a reason that they say that they should be allowed to do that, other than self-fulfilling, they want more money for their group?

Mr. SOUDER. One of the great honors I have had was to work with Focus on the Family over the years, and particularly as Dr. Dobson looked at developing and working with Gary Bowers to develop the Family Research Council, and I was working with them in some of the early years. One of the things that Dr. Dobson has to do in his radio addresses is balance how many times he talks about government issues and how many times he deals with political issues. Many 501-C-3's, all of them which deal with social issues, are already under these restrictions. Why is it so shocking to the other groups that they have to behave the way most of these groups have to do already in this country? What makes them special? Why were they exempt in this process in the first place?

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this and the beating the gentleman has been taking on behalf of all those who agree with him. Whenever he takes the lead, he becomes a target for personal smear and innuendo from people who do not want to debate the issue, but the side issue to distract from the main issue, with the gentleman's addressing some of the things that have come up to me in my district and many others. Let me see if I can clarify this question. Organizations that receive Federal funds, are they now restricted from any lobbying? For example, if it is a large organization and they spend some time advocating any kind of Federal policies, does that mean they can no longer do that if they get any money?

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, one of the things that we hear is, why are you guys picking on these groups? Why are you just doing this? The plain truth of the matter is that, if there is any doubt about this freshman class and those of us who are here today, we are not picking on just this group. We are picking on everybody. We are going after this entire system, and we are not going to exempt any different groups. We are looking at term limits. We finally got a commitment that we are going to do gift reform. We got a commitment finally that we are going to do lobby reform. We have a commitment that the freshmen are going to work on a week or at least a couple days or at least a number of initiatives this coming year on finance reform. For 40 years, the other party was in control, and they did not do it. We have Members of this body, former Members of this body going to prison. We have others resigning in disgrace, getting long pensions and all sorts of things. We came here to reform the whole system. We are not going to exempt one group because they look to be charitable corporations. If they are abusing taxpayer funds, they are going to get hit, too. If Members are abusing it, they are going to get hit. If PAC's are abusing it, they are going to get hit. We were sent here to Washington to change this system. I commend the gentleman for his leadership on this issue. I commend the gentleman on other things and the other freshmen. It is not that we are just picking on this. We are, as I said, going to pick on everybody who is abusing the taxpayers' dollars and abusing this wonderful House and trying to return it back to the people. I am proud to be here with my fellow freshmen here tonight and those who came here really committed to reform.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh].

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman from Alabama. I am a cosponsor of his amendment, and I want to thank the chairman of the committee for his willingness to hold hearings. We appreciate his willingness to work through problems in northeast Indiana, as well as northwest Ohio, and the tristate region I represent. I also understand we are moving to new radar systems, and I think those changes in science are very important, and will provide more protection. However, we have gaps in that system. While we are going through those gaps, if we close our local weather service, we are unprotected over the next few years. If we do not have a whole country covered in the radar systems, it becomes more problematic about the weather stations. Our constituents rely greatly on the National Weather Service to provide advanced warnings of tornadoes and other severe storms. Current law prohibits the National Weather Service from closing weather stations unless it can certify that the closing will cause no degradation in the warning service the stations provide to local residents. Without this amendment, that protection would be struck. A few years ago, the city of Kendalville in my district was hit without warning by a tornado that injured 28 people, destroyed 29 buildings, and damaged over 150 businesses and residences. I happen to be very familiar with that, because I was just south of where the tornado was going, heard the warning on the radio, and turned south so I did not get caught in the path. All of northeast Indiana, as well as at least 30 other areas of this country, now face the prospect of losing their weather service warnings, even though independent experts at the National Research Council recently acknowledged that they face a potential for a degraded service. We in our area, in the current proposals for the new radar system, are covered by four different systems, and it leaves us very vulnerable in the middle of that. I was also at a fair last summer where a tornado went from western Ohio and came back west, rather than going west to east, and had there not been a weather service in Fort Wayne, they would have had to relay that to Cincinnati, back to Indianapolis, back to Fort Wayne, and this way in minutes they were able to get us to a shelter. I know in a very personal way 125,000 people in my districts have sent postcards to NOAA with concerns for this. It is very important. There are a couple of concerns. This bill saves $15 million, this amendment, but $35 million additional, I understand, could be saved. I have been working to cut the budget on appropriations bills and will continue to do that, but we also in this bill, I have supported the space program, I supported the space station, I think the chairman of this committee and the subcommittees have done well in battling for science, but if we can have $100 million for space and Russia, we can afford to protect our own citizens in this country. It is not just a matter of children's lives being lost and the homes being lost and lives; in my case, it is my wife, my children, myself, people who I grew up with and who are friends, and this is far too important to lose in a transition where, overall, the program is very effective, but some lives could be lost by this degradation of service.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. One of the questions, and I agree basically with the new technology. A number of us have problems which you have acknowledged. For example, in Fort Wayne, we have Indianapolis which is more than 100 miles, which is where one of the questions comes on the new radar, from the Indianapolis station, half my district is coming down from Michigan at more than 100 miles. Just to the east in another Member from Ohio's district in a rural area, they are coming up from Cincinnati more than 100 miles and another is coming down. Our EMS services are concerned about having to coordinate four different regions and we have not had a good answer to that. Our weather station is about to close. At the very least, these stations while we know that they are working on trying to upgrade the systems as you are talking about, we will not have protection in this period of coordination of the EMS services. We have a question in part of Indiana, whether or not Indianapolis, there is a blockage, whether the radar can even pick up some of the tornadoes and severe storms that are coming across. While it is not perfect in the existing system, it is better than being unprotected while NOAA is working through this process. Many of us if we could be assured that we were not going to have a degradation of services in this process would understand your points very much.

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

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, the DOD appropriations bill emerged from conference with significantly more money added for certain items above the House recommended level. One important addition is $100 million more than the Nunn-Lugar program. The Nunn-Lugar or Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has been accused of permitting the Russians to replace obsolete missile systems with more modern and more threatening ones, in fact, facilitating the upgrading of Russian strategic forces. Yesterday in the Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee, we passed out a budget reconciliation package which reduced spending by more than $10 billion. Some of those savings were made by eliminating the out-of-school interest subsidy that students receive on their loans, during a so-called grace period. While we are reducing benefits to students in America, with the Nunn-Lugar program, the United States is actually encouraging Russian students to study nuclear physics because we will pay them salaries to work at the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow they graduate. The center receives $21 million in Nunn-Lugar aid. Scientists involved in nuclear weapons testing and nerve agent research are said to have received Nunn-Lugar grants. When the General Accounting Office examined the Nunn-Lugar program, it was this center that ``raised the most concerns among GAO investigators.'' I am enclosing a series of reports from the American Foreign Policy Council which poses more questions about the legitimacy of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program: Russia Test-Launched New ICBM Yesterday morning, the Russian government test-launched a new-generation intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The launch is the most visible sign of Moscow's ongoing strategic ongoing strategic nuclear modernization program, as the House prepares to vote on the 1996 defense authorization and appropriations bills. Reuters reported from Moscow that the ICBM was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome 600 miles north of the Russian capital. Russian Military Space Forces spokesman Ivan Safronov says that the missile is a three-stage TOPOL-M, a variant of the SS-25. According to Safronov, the TOPOL-M will be based on mobile launchers and in silos. He stated that 90 of the 154 SS-18 ICBM silos in Russia will be converted to house the TOPOL-M. The SS-18s are being dismantled with United States aid under the ``Cooperative Threat Reduction'' or Nunn-Lugar program. The TOPOL-M cannot be deployed, if Russia is to remain within START limits, until the SS-18s and other ICBMs are dismantled. Therefore, this aspect of Nunn-Lugar funding will help make deployment of the TOPOL-M possible. To date, Congress has failed to conduct significant oversight of the Nunn-Lugar program, and how portions of it are being used to benefit Russian military modernization. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Act (PL 103-160), Section 1203(d)(2) contains a restriction that Nunn-Lugar recipients ``forego * * * the replacement of destroyed weapons of mass destruction.'' The launch underscores the need to revisit Nunn-Lugar, and to deploy a national ballistic missile defense system by 2003. According to Safronov, once the SS-18s and other aging systems are dismantled, they will be replaced with ultramodern missiles. He told Reuters: ``Russia hopes to replace all its outdated missiles in the coming years.''

Mr. SOUDER

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

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, but this is less prescriptive and gives flexibility to the States.

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

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, this debate has baffled me somewhat. It is really at the core of much of what we are trying to do. One of the core assumptions here is that somehow the Governors of the United States are not going to be as sensitive to those who are physically and mentally challenged and need vocational rehabilitation as much as Washington would be, that Washington is the fount for all wisdom, that the laws that we devise here are somehow better able to take care for the people in their States than the Governors themselves who presumably are more responsible and more responsive to the people there on a regular basis than those State legislatures are. In fact, this bill kept four different block grant categories, one of which was vocational rehabilitation, because we were concerned that there might be some creaming. In that we protected the funding stream. If we in fact remove title V, it is not clear what we go to conference to the Senate with, since they have more for a general block grant and in fact passing this amendment could hurt both substantively in the sense of flexibility and in this bill in conference committee. Furthermore, there is a lot of talk about how all the different groups feel on this. In fact, United Cerebral Palsy, the Arc, the Association for Retarded Citizens, Goodwill Industries, oppose taking this section out of the bill because they believe that it will provide more services to the people that they are providing services to and who they serve and who they advocate for. In fact most of the groups who favor this amendment are more people who are participating and getting funds from the Government in this process as opposed to those necessarily working on an individual basis without having a stake in how the programs are administered. Many of the concerns that were raised earlier as far as State flexibility have been addressed. In fact, if Governors like the existing program really well and they are working in Indiana, for example, I do not think that Governor Bayh thinks a Republican Congress is going to do a better job for taking care of people in Indiana than he does. He is not from my party, but I am willing to give him more flexibility in the State. I have met individuals in my office who have been served well in a number of programs, visited programs for those who need special vocational rehabilitation in Whitley County and in Huntington County. Those programs are working well. At the State level they will adapt that and understand that and include those programs that are working well. But to say that we in Washington are the fount for all wisdom, that we cannot block grant and let the people at the local level make these decisions is challenging the core premise for this legislation. It has nothing to do with whether or not we want to serve those who need our help, because in fact we have a category that makes sure the funding stream is there. It is how it is implemented.