Todd Tiahrt

Mr. TIAHRT

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

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida, and I want to confirm that I stand with him in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. TIAHRT. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. TIAHRT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations, who is very knowledgeable about the extreme needs we have in our defense at this point in time. The gentleman brought a very sobering point; that there is currently activity going on in Kosovo where our young men and women are at risk, and I hope that we will all keep them in our thoughts and prayers. Mr. Chairman, I am very proud of the job our soldiers have done in Central America in meeting the immediate disaster needs. My concern is that if we do not find offsets now, we will never be able to achieve the future requirements that we need for our defense, and that is why I wanted to offer this amendment. But I thank the gentleman from California for the opportunity.

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

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding. And I would like to remind her that this is a precedent that was established in 1994 when a previous bill came to the floor and $902.4 million was taken out of callable capital.

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

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding. I want to say, Mr. Chairman, that there is some impression out here that there is no money that is going to change hands here, that we are going to write a check to Central America but there is no money that is going to leave the Callable Capital Account and how this money will miraculously reappear down in Central America. We are going to write a check to Central America and it is not going to bounce. The money is going to come from somewhere. It is either going to come from the surplus or callable capital. If it comes from the surplus, it has to come out of Social Security. It is really that simple. I want to step back in time to 1994. In 1994, this Congress committed capital stock to the Callable Capital Account of $902.4395 million. It was committed to the Callable Capital Account. But in the piece of legislation that was called the Fiscal Year 1994 Disaster Supplemental Appropriations, we rescinded that. We took the money back. Now, they want to say it is completely different. We were going to send capital stock, $902.4 million, and then we took it back, we rescinded it back; and now they want to say they did not have anything to do with it and it is not like it is this time. But if we look at the votes, it passed with a significant margin, 415-2. Now, the gentlewoman said that I would like to have my foot on the neck of developing countries? Well, just a couple years ago the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) joined with the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) and with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and they voted for it. They voted for the very same thing they are arguing against today. And they are trying to demonize it somehow I guess by saying I want to put my foot on the neck of developing countries. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I want to do is make sure that when we send money down to Central America that it does not come from Social Security. I want to find unobligated money, money that we can use to save Social Security. And that is what I have done with this amendment, and I urge its passage.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would just like to remind Members of the House that half this bill is currently offset by the callable capital account. That is a total of 85 percent of this bill that is offset. I do not find any reason why we should not offset the full amount. I noted that the gentlewoman from California says she has a letter from Secretary Rubin. I have the Congressional Record. What happened in 1994 was that the increases to capital stock going into the capital account was rescinded under the disaster bill. That vote passed by 415- 2. So a precedent was set then, and I think I am just following that precedent was set, I am following what the committee has done before, and I would encourage my colleagues to vote for the Tiahrt amendment. I think it is sound fiscal policy, it is pay-as-you-go policy, I feel strongly about these offsets that they are good offsets, and it is very much needed for the disaster down in Central America. So I would ask for support for the Tiahrt-Goode-Toomey amendment.

Mr. TIAHRT. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 118, and I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) for yielding to me. I have introduced this resolution in anticipation of the meetings being held at the United Nations this week to prepare for the 5-year review of the progress made since 1994 International Conference on Population and Development which was held in Cairo. The language of this resolution represents a compromise between myself and Population Action International. It is supported by Zero Population Growth, and it mirrors the language of the amendment I offered last year to the Fiscal Year 1999 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. As my colleagues may recall, that language laid out the definition for ``voluntary'' in a context of U.S. funded family planning programs. That amendment was offered in the wake of disturbing news stories that spoke of women being forced to participate in family planning programs and in some instances were sterilized against their will, as my chart indicates. Here we have several stories that were covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Miami Herald and the Sacramento Bee talking about occurrences in Peru where women were forced into sterilization. The voluntary family planning amendment I offered last year was adopted on a voice vote and later enacted into law as part of last year's Omnibus Appropriation Act. While the voluntary family planning amendment enacted into law last year prevents U.S. dollars from being spent in family programs that are not administered in a voluntary manner, many programs worldwide still employ these same methods of coercion, incentives, bribes and quotas. For example, in Indonesia family planning clinics rely on threats and intimidation to bring women into their clinics. In Mexico hundreds of forced sterilizations have been documented, and medical personnel have been fired for their refusal to perform sterilizations. In addition, women refusing sterilization have been denied medical treatment. In Peru, as we said earlier, family planning programs use coercion, misinformation, quotas and sterilization for food efforts. These terrible violations of human rights are the reason I have introduced House Resolution 118. The resolution reaffirms the emphasis that the U.S. has taken on giving women a choice and stating that it is Congress' belief that all family planning programs should be completely voluntary, that they should avoid numerical targets and provide recipients with complete information on the methods, including telling recipients whether the methods are experimental, and I think we can all agree that we should respect individual values and beliefs as well as national laws and development priorities. Mr. Speaker, it is my hope that the House will adopt this resolution and send a strong message to the United Nations that we believe every family planning program in the world should be carried out in a truly voluntary manner as described by the definition added to the Omnibus Appropriations Act last year. I would ask my colleagues to please support House Resolution 118. [From the New York Times, Feb. 15, 1999] Using Gifts as Bait, Peru Sterilizes Poor Women (By Calvin Sims) Lima, Peru, Feb. 14--For Magna Morales and Bernadina Alva, peasant Andean women who could barely afford to feed their families, it was a troubling offer but one they found hard to refuse. Shortly before Chirstmas, Government health workers promised gifts of food and clothing if they underwent a sterilization procedure called tubal ligation. The operation went well for Mrs. Alva, 26, who received two dresses for her daughter and a T-shirt for her son. But Mrs. Morales, 34, died of complications 10 days after the surgery, leaving three young children and a husband behind. She was never well enough to pick up the promised gifts, and the family was told it could not sue the Government over her death because she had agreed to the procedure. ``When you don't have anything and they offer you clothes and food for your kids, then finally you agree to do it,'' said Mrs. Alva, a neighbor of Mrs. Morales in the northern village of Tocache. ``Magna told them that her husband was against the idea, but they told her, `Don't worry, we can do it right now, and tonight you will be back home cooking and your husband will never realize what happened.' '' Tales of poor women like Mrs. Morales and Mrs. Alva being pressed and even forced to submit to sterilization operations that have left at least two women dead and hundreds injured have emerged from small towns and villages across Peru in recent weeks in what women's groups, politicians and church leaders here say is an ambitious Government family planning program run amok. Critics of the program, which was begun in 1995, charge that state health care workers, in a hurry to meet Government-imposed sterilization quotes that offer promotions and cash incentives, are taking advantage of poor rural women, many of whom are illiterate and speak only indigenous Indian languages. The critics, who include many of the program's early supporters, say the health workers are not telling poor women about alternative methods of contraception or that tubal ligation is nearly always irreversible. They also charge that many state doctors are performing sloppy operations, at times in unsanitary conditions ``They always look for the poorest women, especially those who don't understand Spanish,'' said Gregoria Chuquihuancas, another Tocache resident. ``They make them put their fingerprint on a sterilization paper they don't understand because they can't read. If the women refuse, they threaten to cut off the food and milk programs.'' While it remains unclear whether such actions were sanctioned by the Government or were the work of overzealous health workers--the Government denies there are sterilization quotas, though it acknowledges goals for budgetary purposes-- independent investigations by members of the Peruvian Congress, the Roman Catholic Church, local journalists and a United States Congressional committee have chronicled dozens of cases of abuse. ``The Government's program is morally corrupt because nurses and doctors are under pressure to find women to sterilize, and the women are not allowed to make an informed decision,'' said Luis Solari, a medical doctor who advises the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, which speaks for the country's Catholic bishops. ``No one has the right to intervene in people's life this way,'' Dr. Solari said. ``It's criminal.'' From its inception, Catholic church leaders have vigorously opposed the family planning campaign because it promotes artificial forms of birth control, which the church disavows. Augusto Cardinal Vargas Alzamora of Lima has warned Catholics that they will be committing a ``grave sin'' if they resort to sterilization. Tubal ligation is still only the third most practiced form of contraception in Peru, after abstinence and the I.U.D., family planning officials say. Abortion is illegal. The Government has vehemently rejected charges that it is conducting a campaign to sterilize poor women and says that all its sterilization operations are done with the patient's consent, as required by law. Health Ministry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that in the last year the program had suffered from ``lapses in judgment'' by individual health care workers and doctors, who had been reprimanded. But the officials said that such cases were isolated incidents that had been blown out of proportion. Reached on his cellular telephone, Deputy Health Minister Alejandro Aguinaga, who oversees the program, said he did not wish to speak with The New York Times. Three years ago, when President Alberto K. Fujimori announced plans to promote birth control as a way to reduce family size and widespread poverty in Peru, family planning experts, feminists and even many opposition politicians expressed broad support for the initiative. But the mounting criticism of the sterilization has tarnished the image of the family planning program, one of the most ambitious in the developing world. In 1997, state doctors in Peru performed 110,000 sterilizations on women, up from 30,000 in 1996 and 10,000 in 1995. Last year they also performed 10,000 free vasectomies on men, a slight increase over 1996. However, women remain the main focus of the Government's program because men are less likely to agree to sterilization, on the mistaken ground that the procedure could impair their virility. Health Ministry officials estimate that the 1997 sterilizations will result in 26,000 fewer births in 1998. This is good news, they say, in a country where the fertility rate--the average number of children born per woman--is 3.5, compared with 3.1 for Latin America in general and 2 for the United States. The rate is 6.2 children for Peruvian women who have little or no education and 7 children for those who live in rural areas. That compares with a rate of 1.7 children for women who have at least some college education and 2.8 for urban residents of all educational levels. Concern over reports of forced sterilization has led to an investigation by the United States Congressional Subcommittee on International and Human Rights Operations, which is seeking to determine if money from the United States Agency for International Development was used in the Peruvian Government's campaign. Officials in Washington said in a telephone interview that the agency had no role in the Peruvian Government's family planning program. They said that money and training for family planning services went directly to nongovernmental agencies in Peru that have no connection with the Government's program. The officials said that they had deliberately taken steps to disassociate the agency from the Peruvian Government's family planning program after it became clear that, while well intentioned, it was too hurried and ambitious to avoid the pitfalls that it has now encountered. Joseph Rees, the subcommittee's chief council, said that after a recent fact-finding mission to Peru he was convinced that no United States money was directly used to finance the Peruvian Government's campaign. But he expressed concern that some money may have trickled through in the form of infrastructure, management or training support. Because some United States-sponsored food programs are operated from the same Peruvian Government medical posts that administer family planning in rural areas, Mr. Rees said that it was possible that some of this food could have been used to bribe women to undergo sterilizations. ``The bottom line here is whether the Peruvian Government is more interested in doing family planning or population control and whether the United States wants to risk being associated with a program where that notion is so far unclear,'' Mr. Rees said. Meanwhile, despite the reported abuses, the number of women undergoing sterilization in Peru has remained steady. Preliminary figures for January indicate that at least 10,000 women underwent free tubal ligations by state doctors. The opposition Renovacion Party, a conservative group that has always objected to the program, says it has collected more than 1,000 complaints from women who say they were either injured by Government sterilization or pressured into agreeing to the operation. Arturo Salazar, a Renovacion congressman, said the Fujimori Government had given no thought to the long-term effect of so many sterilizations, which if left unchecked, he said, will severely diminish Peru's rural population, deprive the nation of security on its frontiers and impede economic development in the countryside. But those issues are of little concern to Martha Eras, also of Tocache, who is struggling to care for her new baby girl, who was born in August despite the Government-sponsored sterilization that Mrs. Eras voluntarily underwent eight months earlier. It appears that the doctor was in such a hurry that he did not check to see if Mrs. Eras was pregnant. ``My husband joked that it was immaculate conception,'' she said. [Excepts from Population Research Institute Review] PRI Petitions for Norplant Withdrawal (By David Morrison) On 24 July 1994 Wyeth-Ayerst itself promulgated a revised and greatly expanded set of guidelines for doctors and clinics involved in the sale and insertion of Norplant. These new guidelines went far beyond those which had originally been issued, mentioning no fewer than 23 new, separate adverse health conditions related to Norplant, including pseudo tumor cerebri, stroke, arm pain and numbness. Unfortunately this new information on adverse health conditions is alleged not to have been provided to the hundreds of thousands of women currently using Norplant, nor, it is further alleged, were physicians or clinics required to inform prospective Norplant users of this new information.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, on March 10, I was unavoidably detained and missed rollcall No. 35, the recorded vote on H.R. 540, Nursing Home Resident Protection Amendments. Had I been present I would have voted ``yes'' on passage.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, tax relief is as good as a pay raise, maybe even better. A pay raise could mean higher taxes. It could result in sending more money to Washington, D.C., and have very little extra money jingling around in our pockets. But tax relief is more money in the household budget. Mr. Speaker, Americans do one of two things when they get a little extra money in their pocket. It is saved or it is spent. Either is good for the economy. Saving the money from a tax cut would provide more resources, more capital for creating new jobs and new businesses. Spending the tax relief not only provides for the needs of hard-working Americans, but the demands for products will create new jobs and sustain the jobs we have. Mr. Speaker, tax relief can be as good, if not better, than a pay raise, and the Republican plan will not only restore the integrity of Social Security, rebuild our national defense, strengthen education, but it will also provide much-needed tax relief for hard-working Americans.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, there is confusion in the administration's foreign policy. One hand does not know what the other hand is doing. The first hand has reached into our pockets and spent $8 billion to establish a multi-ethnic country called Bosnia. That is $8 billion that was not budgeted and that has shortchanged our entire Nation's defense, placing at risk our pilots because we have had to reduce needed maintenance on their aircraft. The other hand is planning to spend more unbudgeted money to first bomb Serbia and then to send in troops to establish an ethnic nation called Albania. One hand wants a multi-ethnic country, the other hand wants an ethnic country. Which is it, Mr. Speaker? What is it the administration is after? I think it is time we openly debate which hand we should shake; otherwise, we will be left empty-handed.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I believe one would have to be totally out of touch to defend the current tax code. No sane individual, if asked to start from scratch, would come up with the current tax code in a million years. The tax code is baffling even to the experts. In short, it is indefensible. One of the aspects of the tax code that is particularly indefensible is the marriage tax penalty. Many people do not learn about the marriage tax penalty until they get married. Then they discover all of a sudden that the government wants to make sure young couples starting out have a little bit tougher time than they had planned. Perhaps the most surprising of all is the fact that the marriage tax penalty can be the stiffest for those who can afford it the least, the working poor, who are trying to keep home and family together. This unfairness in the tax code should have been done away with years ago, but the liberals in Congress have fought against any tax relief, even for the working poor. Mr. Speaker, now is the time to eliminate the marriage tax penalty and bring tax equity for working families.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, with solemn thought and a certain sadness we are brought together to speak of removing the President of our United States. This is a task I did not choose, but as with all of us in this chamber, this task was thrust upon us by the actions of our President. Before us are four articles of impeachment. Two for perjury, one for obstruction of justice and the last for abuse of power. In these articles, we are required to judge our President and determine if his actions rise to the level of impeachable offenses. But we judge not only the character of the President, we judge ourselves and our nation. What standard must we raise for our President and ourselves? What standards will come from this for each of us to live up to and what expectations will we set for our nation? Will we accept the degradation of untruth or attempt to bring ourselves and our nation to its highest and best? With sadness we view the crisis of character in the words and deeds of the last year and we must hold the President accountable for those actions. Over 2,500 years ago, the philosopher Heraclitus said, ``A man's character is his fate.'' Anne Frank, quoting her father said, ``Parents can only give good advice or put them (children) on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.'' I believe this to be right. I believe in personal responsibility. I believe the president is responsible for his own character and his own actions. The standard of conduct and personal character we expect from our President should be no less than what we expect of ourselves. So we must ask, do we expect to carry out our duties and our responsibilities with integrity or do we stoop to the lowest levels of personal character? Stephen L. Carter, in his book ``Integrity'' defines integrity in three steps. First, to conduct ourselves with integrity we must discern right from wrong. This is a judgment based on all we are and all we know. What we learned from our parents, our teachers, people of faith, the wisdom of our years and that small, still voice inside which guides us to the judgment of what is right. Second, we must do the right thing. And third, we must tell others why we are doing what we are doing. Our decision must also determine what we hope for our nation. Tolerating actions that abuse the law, without repercussions, moves the entire nation to a place beneath its rightful one. We must work to raise our nations goals, ideals and future. We must protect the rule of law for it brings justice to us all. If we refuse to hold the President accountable for his actions, then we accept the degradation of our society and his actions. This cannot be. It is clear to me the President committed perjury and broke the law. It is against the law to deny another American their civil rights by withholding information and coordinating an effort to mislead a court as the President has done. It is obstruction of justice when the President used taxpayer funded resources to cover up, delay, and propagate misdeeds and lies. Finally, it is an abuse of power for the President to deliberately mislead Congress. All of these rise to the level of impeachable offenses. It is my hope that we expect the highest and best from ourselves, our nation and our President. Honesty is a simple concept but it is at the foundation of our system of justice which protects our free society and our free enterprise system. For these reasons, I have chosen to vote for articles of impeachment.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, we have heard this morning that this was a quote, unquote, do-nothing Congress. I think the liberals think that because nothing has happened for the left. I think they must have been hiding under their desk. They did start out wanting to spend 150 billion more dollars on new government programs. They wanted to raise taxes by $130 billion, but we did not let that happen. We did balance the federal budget, we do have a $70 billion surplus, we have been able to strengthen families, strengthen their pocketbooks through lower interest rates. We have been able to strengthen our military. Right now we cannot conduct a similar scenario like the Gulf War, but we are going to strengthen the military. We also provided the first steps for strengthening Social Security and Medicare. Now the left can claim they got 100,000 new teachers, but nobody over there has done the math. If they figure out the math, they only got $10,000 per teacher. Who is going to make up the difference? Can they find a teacher who will work for $10,000 a year? Well, Republicans have a good program for saving schools, for making them stronger by getting parents involved. We have done that this year in the 105th Congress. It has been a good Congress, a successful Congress, and I am happy to be a part of it.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, it is the nature of politics that we never get everything we want. But when the American people support a general direction in which we want to go, small victories do become possible. Yesterday's agreement between Congress and the White House on the remaining spending bills represent a victory for those seeking to take this country in the direction that the Republicans have been trying to go, the direction of smaller government, holding the line on spending, local control of education, tax relief, a stronger military, and more weapons for the war on drugs. After many months of difficult negotiations, an agreement has been reached that reflects the priorities of a Republican Congress. This Congress can properly be called the surplus Congress. Just a short time ago, Congress was facing $200 billion deficits as far as the eye could see. Anyone proposing to end that was immediately labeled as an extremist by liberal Members on the other side of the aisle. Here we are, with a Federal budget that has a surplus at hand. Now, I know that there are a number of Democrats who fervently believe that the current budget surplus is due to President Clinton's 1993 tax increase, but they are wrong. Federal revenues are up, way up, but I would suggest to my friends on the other side to examine the budget tables and take a look at where those revenues are coming from. I am fairly confident that they have not done that, because if they had, they would discover that strong job growth and the booming stock market are primarily responsible for those increased revenues, and not the Clinton tax hike. The funny thing is that no matter how many times this is pointed out, the liberals continue to go on thinking that it was a tax hike, Clinton's tax hike, that put us on the right track, out of budget deficits. Not to belabor the point, but it is important to know the truth about this very important issue. To those on the other side who are still not convinced, despite the fact that the budget tables are available for the whole world to see, they only need to consider the President's own budget a mere 2 years ago. In the 1996 budget, 3 years after the Clinton tax hike, it contained $200 billion-a-year budget deficits as far as the eye could see past the end of this century, into the next century. It was not until a Republican Congress forced the President to accept a balanced budget that the surplus actually became a reality. The deficit Congress was transformed into a surplus Congress. The primary reason why a balanced budget benefits the average person is because it makes lower interest rates. That means it is easier to buy a house and to make monthly mortgage payments. It means those credit card debts are a little easier to pay off. It means that young people who want to go on and further their education have an easier time paying off student loans. Most important of all, lower interest rates mean business can expand more easily and create new jobs, and job creation, economic growth, means higher revenues. Mr. Speaker, this shows that the cuts on the capital gains taxes were important in a couple of ways. Federal revenues from capital gains realizations are way up, and low taxes on capital investments mean more capital invested. Ronald Reagan cut the taxes on capital gains. This Republican Congress did it again. The results are that capital investments have soared, and liberals on left are scratching their heads, wondering why the economy is booming. It is not rocket science and it is not magic. The Republicans were elected in 1994 to change the course after 40 years of Democrat rule; 40 years in the direction of bigger government, higher taxes, and less accountability. As we approach the final actions of this surplus Congress, I am glad that we have held fast to Republican principles of limited growth in the Federal Government, of tax relief, stronger schools, safer streets, a better military, a balanced budget, and a $70 billion Federal surplus.

Mr. TIAHRT

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, we are coming to the end of the session here and we have a tentative agreement reached on how we are going to continue this government for fiscal year 1999. We found out that we can agree with this President. Now, he did think that he got his way on the 100,000 teachers program and IMF funding, and we are glad that the $18 billion is there for IMF funding with the needed reforms that were associated with it, and we are glad that we have additional money for teachers. But I wonder if anybody has actually done the math. The President said that he wants 100,000 teachers and we set aside a billion dollars to do that. If we divide 100,000 teachers into a billion dollars, I know this is high level math for some, if we divide it out we get $10,000 per teacher. I would ask my colleagues to go back to their districts and ask any teacher if they are willing to start a new full- time job for $10,000 a year. I know that when my wife was teaching in the public schools in the late 1970s, she was willing to teach for $10,000 a year in southwest Missouri, and the cost of living was not nearly as high as it is today. I think at best we will get 30,000 teachers out of this program, and they will be paid some reasonable sum. But more importantly, the Republicans insisted on and won the provision that says that this money will go directly to the classroom. This money will not be spent in Washington, D.C. on the bureaucracy. Right now we have a Department of Education bureaucracy and the average salary at the Department of Education is $52,000 per year. There are millions of people across the United States that would like to teach for $52,000 a year. I can think of a lot of them in Wichita, Kansas, where the average salary is below $30,000. I think rather than waste the money here, it is much more important that we send that money directly to the school districts. One other thing that we agreed on with the President is that there is a surplus that can be spent on something other than saving Social Security. I think we need to keep in mind that the Republicans have put at the top of their list that we need to save Social Security and we passed a bill that said that 90 percent of the surplus would be set aside for saving Social Security and 10 percent would go to tax relief. The President has insisted that we do not have any tax relief this time, but we wanted to make sure that we did have that money available. He has agreed that it is available, except he wants to spend it on the bureaucracy. So, we have agreed, in order to get some type of compromise, we have agreed with the President that we would take the Republican priorities and spend some of that on emergency spending. One of those things that we did for emergency spending was provide tax relief for the financially strapped farmers. If my colleagues have been following the nationwide news, and certainly in Kansas it has been followed closely, farmers have been having a hard time this year. Weather has been a problem. Around the world prices have been depressed and that has caused a lower demand for farm commodities and so the prices have been down. Combine that with the natural problems that we had with the weather, and it has been a tough year. We have also provided tax relief for farmers and other self-employed individuals by allowing 100 percent deductibility of their insurance premiums. One of the other things that was a great victory for the Republicans in this settlement is that we now have much-needed increased funds for national defense. About $9 billion of emergency spending for defense and intelligence needs. This administration has increased the work level of the Department of Defense much more than any other bureaucracy that we have here in Washington, D.C., and yet they have limited the funds. They have tried to divert the funds. They have allowed much of it to be wasted, and they have sent people overseas on numerous missions. Bosnia comes to mind, and now we are looking at Kosovo. We have had intervention in Haiti and in Africa and different places. Mr. Speaker, all of this costs money and the administration has been more than willing to send our young men and women abroad and not fund it. Well, because of that, we have created an emergency in our national defense system. We are going to now, with this final bill, be able to do something for our young men and women who are willing to risk their lives. We also have some relief here for the need that we have to provide for our national defense. We have about a billion dollars that have been set aside for missile defense. Most people do not realize that we have no defense for incoming ballistic missiles. We have had in the past a policy of mutually assured destruction. We would not fire on anybody else because they would fire back on us and vice versa. If someone was to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile on the United States, they could be assured that we would enjoy their country too. And so this mutually assured destruction has been our policy. Now, with the breakdown of the USSR and other Third World countries becoming nuclear powers, we find that we have no policy that is working and this mutually assured destruction cannot be guaranteed when we have terrorists that we are dealing with. So, it is very important that our country provide for a missile defense system. We have now, because of the Republicans in our negotiation, our leadership in negotiations, we have provided the first step in continuing this missile defense program that is much-needed. There are other provisions in here that were very important that we see become law. We are now protecting children from pornography on the Internet. We are now going to stop needle exchange programs, which have been proven not to work. So we think that we have a good settlement and a good agreement and it shows that our system of democracy does work. Nobody got 100 percent of what they wanted, but we got an agreement and we are moving forward to make sure that this country is safe and secure and that our needs are met.