Robert Torricelli

Mr. TORRICELLI

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer].

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks].

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. [Mr. SPENCE addressed the Committee. His remarks will appear hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.] Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton], the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on International Relations. (Mr. HAMILTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Gejdenson].

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of our time. Mr. Chairman, through the myriad of provisions of this legislation there is one common thread, one unmistakable common purpose, and that is to reverse nearly one-half century of U.S. leadership, abdicating a leadership that through some of the most dangerous times in history has kept the peace, kept the peace through a system of international security. This is not, Mr. Chairman, a new debate in this Chamber. Democrats and Republicans through our history exchanged the mantle of isolationist leadership many times. But his legislation makes clear that that unfortunate title of leadership now strongly belongs to the Republican Party. Our Republican colleagues have every reason to be proud of the international leadership of Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. But there was another republican Party of Lodge who argued against a League of Nations and brought it to its death, of Burrow who argued against rearmament before the Second World War, and Vandenberg, to the very day of Pearl Harbor, argued against American involvement in the great international conflict. There is now no other interpretation of H.R. 7 available than that this Republican Party, having abandoned the traditions of the last generation, has returned to that earlier age. Mr. Chairman, there is no other interpretation because, when the United States refuses to have our forces under international command, not simply the nations of the Third World, with which I could identify and sympathize, but even of our NATO allies, meaning the great struggle in Korea and the Persian Gulf would no longer be possible. Mr. Chairman in this great Chamber we reserve the honor of a portrait to only two men in the history of our country, George Washington, our first President, and General Lafayette, a French General who came to these shores to secure our independence, but who by this legislation would no longer be allowed to command our forces. Mr. Chairman, ironically, as we debate this legislation, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Field Marshal Montgomery who led British and American forces across the Rhine to defeat Nazi Germany. He would be prohibited from leading those forces today under this legislation. Mr. Chairman, as we speak we celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Persian Gulf war, when Italian and French and British Generals of war led our forces to victory in combined command, but would be prohibited under this legislation. Mr. Chairman, there is no other interpretation than that we are losing our leadership to isolationism, because under this legislation our U.N. contributions would virtually end for peacekeeping, ending our ability to appeal to the Security Council to undertake peacekeeping in our own national interests, and forgetting that the best defense for the United States is no weapon system, but in the nuclear age it is the ability to preserve the peace. It is a great irony, Mr. Chairman, that the same people who would spend anything on any weapons system would now propose to spend nothing to keep the peace, even though a generation has proven that the international system of peacekeeping through the United Nations works. Just as we proved with the death of millions, the failure of the League of Nations could consume as many lives. Mr. Chairman, it is a great tradition in this country that partisanship ends at the water's edge. With this legislation the Atlantic and Pacific are merged, and this Nation is awash in a new partisanship that consumes our foreign policy. Defeat H.R. 7.

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton], the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on International Relations.

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Payne]. (Mr. PAYNE of New Jersey asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney].

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of New Jersey [Mr. Menendez]. (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Wynn]. (Mr. WYNN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Ackerman]. (Mr. ACKERMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, the Speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich, has, on this date, received a letter from five former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In their correspondence they state, and I quote, ``This legislation will impose onerous and unnecessary restrictions on the President's ability to place U.S. forces under the operational control of the Nation's military leaders for U.N. operations.'' It continues, ``Throughout our history, presidents have found it advantageous and prudent for forces to participate in coalition operations. During the Gulf War, Korea, and during 50 years of the NATO alliance and in multilateral peacekeeping operations, our armed forces have successfully worked side by side with those of other nations.'' The letter concludes ``Mr. Chairman, this would force the administration to choose between acting unilaterally and doing nothing. Accordingly, we urge rejection of the restrictions on the President's command and control,'' and his military authority, in this legislation. It is signed by David C. Jones, General, U.S. Air Force; David E. Jeremiah, U.S. Navy; Glen Otis, General, U.S. Army; W.E. Boomer, General, U.S. Marine Corps; B.E. Trainor, Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps. For the Record, Mr. Chairman, I include this letter in its entirety: February 15, 1995. Hon. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, The Capitol, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Speaker: As retired flag and general officers, we are writing to express our serious reservations about HR 872, which is now under consideration by the House of Representatives. We are especially concerned about provisions in the bill that would impose onerous and unnecessary restrictions on the President's ability to place U.S. forces under the operational control of other nations' military leaders for UN operations. As you know, throughout our nation's history Presidents have found it advantageous and prudent for U.S. military forces to participate in coalition operations. During the Gulf War, in the U.S.-led UN operation in Korea, throughout the nearly 50 years of the NATO alliance, and in multilateral peacekeeping operations, our armed forces have successfully worked side-by-side with those of other nations to advance our national security. In the post-Cold War world, it will remain essential that the President retain the authority to establish command arrangements best suited to the needs of future operations. As commander-in-chief, he will never relinquish command of U.S. military forces. However, from time to time it will be necessary and appropriate to temporarily subordinate elements of our forces to the operational control of competent commanders from allied or other foreign countries. As retired military officers, we can personally attest that it is essential to the effective operation of future coalitions that the President retain this authority. Just as we will frequently have foreign forces serving under the operational control of American commanders, so must we be able to negotiate reciprocal arrangements freely. HR 872 would place unprecedented and, in our view, burdensome limitations on this authority. By narrowing the President's options and complicating the process of building a coalition during a crisis, the bill could, in effect, force the Administration to choose between acting unilaterally and doing nothing. Accordingly, we urge rejection of the restrictions on the President's command and control authority contained in this portion of HR 872 as unnecessary, unwise, and militarily unsound. David C. Jones, General, US Air Force (Ret). David E. Jeremiah, Admiral, US Navy (Ret). Glenn K. Otis, General, US Army (Ret). W.E. Boomer, General, USMC (Ret). B.E. Trainor, LtGen, USMC (Ret).

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes and 15 seconds to the gentleman from California [Mr. Berman].

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Engel]. (Mr. ENGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TORRICELLI

Mr. TORRICELLI. If the gentleman would yield, I think that is the savings, reducing time, that these are coming off an assembly line and only to be put together at the site.

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

Mr. TORRICELLI. I thank the gentleman from Indiana for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, I am very proud to join with the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] in offering this amendment. It is not, Mr. Chairman, simply a question of how much we spend for prison construction, but what value we receive; whether indeed we get the added capacity that is required to prevent the early release of felons onto our streets and insure that there is just and fair punishment. Much has been learned about prison construction and ways to reduce those costs and the time that is required for construction. Many States and localities have learned that by prefabrication, indeed in the very manufacturing of prison cells, often with steel in a factory setting, these costs can be dramatically reduced. Indeed in a soon to Consulting & Engineering Co., of California, it is believed that both the quality can be increased and the costs can be reduced by a significant percentage by these modular steel cells. They are prefabricated, they can be brought to the site and then put together. Indeed at times in the future when prison populations might change, they can even be disassembled and moved. Our hope is that the experience of some States in using this technology can be duplicated around the country. All we ask is that the States and the Federal Government, as they look at prison construction, break out of their own methods, be creative about it, use their best judgment to get the best value for their dollars. With that I want to thank the gentleman for yielding. I also want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida, for his support for the amendment.

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I think an answer to the gentleman's question might be, ``First, because you're reducing construction time, there certainly is an impact on construction costs. Second, while obviously the fabrication at the site continues Davis-Bacon protection because it is construction, the cells themselves are manufactured off the site. Therefore they would probably not be included under construction at prevailing wage. They would be manufactured.''

Mr. TORRICELLI

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise to share in the sentiments of the gentleman from North Carolina that it is not a question of this amendment or any exceptions. The problem is the undermining legislation. Any nation, Mr. Chairman, can fight crime, can secure its streets and its cities, if it is prepared to compromise the rights of its citizens. No totalitarian or authoritarian government has ever feared the problems of crime on its streets. But the goal has never been simply to secure the streets. It is also to have its people secure in their homes, and from their government, not just from criminals. So the United States has always been different. We have sought to protect the innocent while we were prosecuting the guilty. That balance has made the United States unique. It is also now at question. The underlying legislation, if it means anything, would violate the sanctity of the home, the privacy of the family, the right to have a wall of protection in the front door of your own house between you and the government, to ensure that the only judgment is not the police officer as to whether or not your home should be violated, but a judge issuing a warrant on probable cause. The very Constitution of the United States. And the irony of it is, is that this was one of the motivating factors that led to our own revolution, the insistence on the part of the British Government of breaking down the doors and violating the property rights of our citizens 200 years ago. But to add insult to injury, now we are creating two different levels of privacy and property rights. If your violation is for tobacco, alcohol, or on guns, your rights will be secured. The BATF will not get in your home, because the gun lobby would have it be so. But if you are a citizen of no particular offense, your wall of privacy is being lowered. What a statement to the American people, and what a violation of the historic trust and commitment of this institution to our constitutional principles. Mr. Chairman, our Republican colleagues in the last election have had every reason to be proud. They won a tremendous victory. But they did not receive a mandate to change the Constitution of the United States, to rearrange its powers, or to make our people less secure from a government that would abuse their rights. Mr. Chairman, I cannot claim to ever have been a conservative Member of this House, but I have always respected tenets of Republican philosophy, limited government, power in the hands of people, controlling the excesses of government authority. Allowing a government to enter a home or seize property without warrant, expanding the police powers of the government, is an invitation to abuse. It is not simply a violation of some of our historic commitments. Ironically, it is a departure from the conservative philosophy of the very Members who have now won electoral control of this institution. Mr. Chairman, our leaders may have failed us in protecting us in recent years from crime and the problems of our country, but it is our leaders who have failed, not our Constitution. If the country is in need, it is our leaders who should change, not our Constitution. Because if, my colleagues, we succeed in defeating crime on the streets at the cost of criminal activity by our government, then we have achieved nothing.

Mr. TORRICELLI

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. The right of persons to be secure in houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Today we are told it is an inconvenience, it is in the way of the police, it did not apply to the States until 1961 anyway. It is the Bill of Rights, and every Member comes to this floor every day and pledges allegiance to that Constitution and has sworn an oath to it. It is not always going to be convenient and sometimes it is going to cause problems. And yes, I say to the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff], it did not apply to the States in these cases until 1961. But the Supreme Court of the United States, the people of this country, had decided in each generation, in each decade to expand its powers, because for 200 years we have understood that the principal danger to the freedom of the people of this country was expanding Government power. For 200 years we have understood the very cause of our revolution, that we wanted to be secure in our homes, that we feared the criminal and lawlessness, but we also feared a government so content in its own powers that it would enter our own homes and violate our own rights. It is a great irony that a new conservatism, believing that government robs people of their freedom, believing in the right and the sanctity of private property, would now cause a new exclusion, the exclusion of the right of the person to be free of government power. It is, of course, worth noting that many of those things that we are told that need to be protected for law enforcement are already protected. A fleeing felon, the police can already enter under the fourth amendment. The destruction of evidence, the police can already enter under the fourth amendment. The possibility of escape, the police can already enter under the fourth amendment. Indeed, the very things the police need for practical law enforcement for the dangers of our times are already protected. We achieve nothing but lowering the standard that we apply to law enforcement, a standard which will be lowered and lowered if this measure succeeds. My colleagues, we must make compromises, but if today we violate the fourth amendment, then the criminals have already won. Our Constitution will have been compromised.

Mr. TORRICELLI

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, the experience of this Congress in our own time has been exactly the opposite. Our national debt has increased by fourfold not because of a Congress, but because of the very executive power that you are using today to control spending. It was, after all, during the Reagan and Bush administrations where they proposed spending in excess of the spending proposed by budgets within this Congress against restraint attempted in this Congress that this deficit was created. But indeed, Mr. Chairman, none of these arguments compare with the concern for our constitutional government. Our country has been blessed with leaders like George Bush, Bill Clinton, Gerry Ford, and Jimmy Carter, who, even if they possessed executive power, would not have abused it. But who here can be certain that will be true for all time? Who would serve on a Watergate Committee if Richard Nixon had this power over your district? How would the Vietnam war have been different if Lyndon Johnson had had the power to control your districts if you voted against appropriations? And what of Harding and Teapot Dome, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the gentleman from Virginia has suggested, over the courts? How would American history have been different? I know that our country is troubled, and I know that we have problems. But this constitutional arrangement has withstood civil wars, international conflict, and a depression, and served is so great that it would require us to change this balance of powers, as our fathers before us refused to do in times of much greater national peril. The proper power of this country with regard to appropriations belongs in the People's House. If that power is not handled well, the people have a remedy with elections. It is best not taken away from the people themselves.

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment of the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] and against the line-item veto. Mr. Chairman, when the 20th century concludes, there will be but two nations who end this period of history with the same form of government with which the century began. All others have fallen victim to revolution or tyranny, internal or external. Only the United States and Britain remain. And if there is a common thread through their forms of government that may account for their survival, it is the concept of limited executive power and the separation of the powers of government. Our Founding Fathers believed that the principal threat to American liberty would never be a foreign foe, no invader or tyrant. It would be within us, if anyone succeeded in concentrating executive powers. So, based on their own experiences with the British monarchy, they sought to divide the executive powers of this country to assure that there was no concentration. They recognized, as we have experienced, that it would often be inefficient, sometimes wasteful, always slow, and, as indeed history has proven, it would be very frustrating, but that indeed nothing else could assure the continuation of liberty. Under this system we have seen the appointment of Presidential powers; taxation powers to the Congress, appropriation powers; declaration of war to the Congress; Commander in Chief to the President. But the balance has worked. Now some would have us believe that one man, a President, would better serve this country by having the power to rewrite or eliminate entire appropriations. Their argument rests first on the notion that there is no other alternative to reducing spending. This ignores the fact that in our constitutional scheme, there is already a right to reduce spending through rescission. Indeed, in the last 20 years Presidents have proposed 72 billion dollars' worth of rescissions, and this Congress has approved 92 billion dollars' worth of rescissions. Second, their argument rests on the fact that they believe we are duplicating a constitutional arrangement that is already successfully implemented in the States. But a President, with his vast powers of war and peace, control of our liberties and our economies, is not simply a larger Governor. He has powers of a vastly different proportion. But even if the argument were accepted, the power of rescission to both reduce and eliminate appropriations is denied 40 Governors, specifically denied them, for the very reasons we cite here today. So we do not duplicate the experience of the States, we greatly exceed it. Third, even if these arguments are not accepted, there is not evidence that these powers being given to each executive would in fact have a meaningful impact on expenditures. Indeed, the Public Administration Review has studied 45 States that have a line-item veto, and concluded: It is easier to portray the line-item veto as an instrument of executive increasing power, rather than an instrument for fiscal efficiency. The line item veto probably has had a minimal effect on making state government more fiscally restrained. Fourth, the entire proposal is based on the assumption that somehow Presidents have a monopoly on good judgment, that somehow they would be fiscally more responsible.

Mr. TORRICELLI

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Speaker, I believe that my point has been made and that it stands. There has been an inconsistency. The precedents of the House have not been maintained, and the truth has been ruled out of order.

Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. Speaker, a further parliamentary inquiry. Mr. Speaker, while the Chair has ruled, it must now be clear to all Members that the comity of this House and our ability to proceed depends upon an understanding of the Chair's ruling. I would therefore inquire as to what precedents the Chair has relied upon is finding that involved an innuendo. Clearly there are Members of the institution who recall that Mr. Gingrich as a Member of this institution came to the floor raising questions about former Speaker Wright's publishing activities. Did therefore the Parliamentarian at any time rule that those inquiries were inappropriate? Can the Chair cite in support of his ruling any instance in the history of this institution when such a similar inquiry about a financial matter, stated upon the facts, in all instances relying upon the truth, was ever inappropriate? Indeed, Mr. Speaker, can the truth ever be inappropriate on the floor of this institution?