Curt Weldon

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 6 p.m. tomorrow.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I did not get over in time to speak on the motion to instruct conferees, but I think it is time for a reality check with the other side. We heard a lot of rhetoric, unfortunately, about the education debate on our plan versus the President's plan and how Republicans do not care about the condition of our schools. Well, Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the fact that I am one of the few who actually is a classroom teacher in this body. In fact, I spent 7 years teaching in the inner city schools in and around Philadelphia. In fact, I helped to run a chapter 1 program for 3 of those years. I want to remind my friends on the other side that for the 7 years that I taught, I taught in a portable classroom; two trailers bolted together without adequate heat, without adequate air-conditioning, 32 children in a self-contained environment, in a portable classroom. Guess who was in charge of the government when I taught? It was a Democrat President, a Democrat House and a Democrat Senate. Where was the concern for those of us who were teaching in portable classrooms in inner cities back then when my colleagues controlled the whole ballgame? Where were their efforts to deal with school modernization? Where were their efforts to increase funds for school construction? I was there on the front line teaching in that portable classroom with 32 kids that were challenged in an environment that was very difficult. Now, I will remind my colleagues on the other side of one further fact. The first 2 years that President Clinton was in office, the Democrats controlled the House and they controlled the Senate. They could have passed any bill they wanted, and we could not stop it. They had all of the votes. We could not have stopped any issue that they wanted to address for the American people. I find it a little questionable that in the first 2 years of Clinton's administration, when the Democrats controlled the entire ball game, there was no bill for school construction. There was no rhetoric down here on the floor about the need to deal with kids. There was no concern about the people teaching in portable classrooms like I did for 7 years. There was no concern about falling ceilings. What are they telling us? All that occurred within the last 5 years? The fact is, this is nothing more than political rhetoric. The first 2 years that the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate and the White House when they could have done anything they wanted, they did not even propose a bill to deal with school construction. This Congress has. With a bipartisan piece of legislation that we are going to pass, and hopefully this President will sign, we will do what a responsible Congress could have done 7 years ago, and that is deal with the issue of the need for modernization of our schools. So I bring up this reality check, Mr. Speaker, because unlike most of my friends who are attorneys who never taught in the classroom, I taught in the classroom for 7 years. I know what it is like to teach in a portable classroom with 2 trailers bolted together, with kids who cannot go outside because when you open the door, the cold is right there. My point is I think a lot of what we heard today is nothing more than shallow rhetoric.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to highlight an important milestone for America's Emergency Medical Services systems and to voice my continued support for the nation's EMTs and Paramedics. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT). For 25 years NAEMT has represented the interests of America's 600,000 EMTs and Paramedics, while witnessing the evolving role of EMS in this country. No longer are EMS personnel simply ``ambulance drivers,'' but instead they provide quality medical care for the sick and injured, including advanced life support with such interventions as intravenous cannulation, cardiac defibrillation, endotracheal intubation, and medication administration. But EMS personnel today do more than just clinical medicine. Whether it be a free blood pressure and blood sugar screening hosted by the local EMS agency in the rural town of Eveleth, Minnesota or the initiation of a defibrillator training program for community members in Omaha, Nebraska, EMTs and Paramedics across America exhibit a special dedication to the people of their communities. I applaud America's EMS personnel for their 25 years of outstanding service. The aging population and concerns about healthcare for the 21st century are both issues we are fervently debating in Congress right now. EMS, as part of the allied healthcare system, is not immune from the effects of these emerging issues. Instead, these issues are rapidly increasing the roles of EMS personnel. At the NAEMT conference ``Outlook 2000'' in Reno, Nevada on November 8-11, America's EMTs and Paramedics will boldly step forward and accept these new challenges. Mr. Speaker, I am convinced that today's EMTs and Paramedics will continue to proudly serve the people of this nation and will confront future challenges not with trepidation, but with the same confident altruism that led them to first develop America's EMS systems a quarter century ago.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the ``Native American Equal Rights Act of 2000.'' Most Americans believe that ours should be a color-blind society in which an individual's merit, not his or her race, is the determining factor in whether that individual climbs the ladder of success to achieve the American dream. Most Americans, therefore, oppose any racial preferences in our Nation's laws. Most Americans would be surprised, therefore, to learn that non-Indians may be lawfully discriminated against under what are known as ``Indian preference laws.'' The Federal Indian preference laws do three things. First, Federal law allows discrimination against all non-Indians with respect to employment at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service. Second, Federal law allows discrimination against all non- Indians with regard to certain Federal contracts. Third and finally, Federal law provides an exception to the civil rights laws that allows discrimination against all non-Indians in employment at the two Federal agencies and with respect to contracts. Mr. President/Mr. Speaker, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and white Americans should have the same rights to compete for jobs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service that Indians do. Likewise, all Americans should have equal rights, regardless of race, to compete for Federal contracts. Finally, the civil rights laws should protect all Americans equally from the scourge of discrimination. That is why I believe that the Indian preference laws are wrong. A recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States has called the constitutionality of Indian preference laws into serious question. On February 23, 2000, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Rice v. Cayetano. The case involved a challenge to a law of Hawaii that limits the right to vote for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to persons who are defined under the law as either ``Hawaiian'' or ``native Hawaiian'' by ancestry. Harold Rice, who was the plaintiff in the case, is a citizen of Hawaii who nevertheless does not qualify, under the Hawaii law, as ``Hawaiian'' or ``native Hawaiian.'' Mr. Rice sued Hawaii because he believed that this law deprives him of his constitutional right to vote because of his race. The U.S. District Court for Hawaii rejected Mr. Rice's claim. In doing so, the District Court argued that the Congress and native Hawaiians have a guardian-ward relationship that is analogous to that which exists between the U.S. government and Indian tribes. Based on this analogy, the District Court determined that the Hawaii is entitled to the same constitutional deference that the Supreme Court has shown towards the Congress when it enacts laws under its authority over Indian affairs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision. Mr. Rice asked the Supreme Court review his case. The Court agreed to do so. By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals and ruled in Mr. Rice's favor. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Kennedy rejected the lower courts' use of the analogy of the Hawaii law limiting voting rights to the Federal laws granting preferences to Indians. Under the Federal Indian preference laws, individuals who have ``one- fourth or more degree Indian blood and. . . [are] members of a Federally-recognized tribe'' are given preferences with respect to hiring and promotions at the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior, as well as with regard to employment and subcontracting under certain Federal contracts. The Supreme Court upheld the Indian preference laws in its 1974 decision in a case called Morton v. Mancari. Even though the Indian preference laws clearly have the effect of giving one race an advantage over others, the Mancari Court held that they are ``political rather than racial in nature'' because they are not ``directed towards a `racial' group consisting of `Indians,' but rather only to members of `federally recognized' tribes.'' In his opinion for the Supreme Court in Rice, Justice Kennedy said that Hawaii had tried to take the Mancari precedent too far. ``It does not follow from Mancari,'' Justice Kennedy wrote, ``that Congress may authorize a State to establish a voting scheme that limits the electorate for its public officials to a class of tribal Indians, to the exclusion of all non-Indian citizens.'' In a technical legal sense, in the Rice case the Supreme Court did not reconsider its ruling in the Mancari case that the Indian preference laws are constitutional. Instead, the Court avoided the issue by attempting to draw a distinction between the Indian preference law from the Hawaii voting rights law. In a broader philosophical sense, though, the Rice decision seriously calls into question the constitutionality of the Indian preference laws. The racial preference for voters in Hawaii that the Court held to be unconstitutional clearly was politically and not racially motivated. The Court found, however, that a well-meaning political motivation behind a law that has the effect of favoring one race over another does not make it constitutional. Likewise, it is clear that what motivated the Congress to pass the Indian preference laws was not racism, but rather political favoritism. The effect of the Indian preference laws, though, is no less to favor one race over all others than was the case with the Hawaii voting rights law. Under Rice, this political motivation should not save the Indian preference law from being found to be unconstitutional for the same reason as was the Hawaii law. In an insightful opinion article in The Washington Times on May 5, 2000, Thomas Jipping, Director of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Law and Democracy, recognized the inconsistency between the Supreme Court's decisions with respect to the Indian preference laws and the Hawaii voting rights law. ``Either it is legitimate to avoid the Constitution,'' Mr. Jipping wrote, ``by relabeling a racial preference [as a political one] or it is not.'' ``Gimmicks such as relabeling or declaring the context in which a case arises as `unique' [are] simply not sufficient to overcome a constitutional principle so fundamental and absolute.'' ``Both the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals in this case believed that Hawaii's relationship with Hawaiians is similar to the United States['s] relationship with Indian tribes,'' Mr. Jipping noted. ``They were right and the U.S. Constitution applies to both of them,'' he asserted. ``Rather than preserve a precedent through verbal sleight-of-hand,'' Mr. Jipping concluded, ``the Supreme Court should have said the fundamental constitutional principle that decided Rice also calls its precedent in Mancari into question.'' Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely clear to me that statutory provisions that grant special rights to Indians with respect to employment, contracting, or any other official interaction with an agency of the United States are racial preference laws. Racial preference laws are fundamentally incompatible with the equal protection of the laws that is provided to all Americans by the Constitution. The Constitution simply does not tolerate racial preferences of any kind, for any reason. The Congress, no less than the Supreme Court, has a duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States. We should not wait for the Supreme Court to recognize the very serious constitutional mistake it made when it upheld the constitutionality of the Indian preference laws. Congress should repeal the Indian preference laws now. The legislation that I am introducing today, the ``Indian Racial Preferences Repeal Act of 2000,'' does just that. I ask unanimous consent for the full text of my bill, as well as a section-by-section analysis, to be printed in the Record immediately following the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Frelinghuysen, in introducing the National Defense Features Program Enhancement Act of 2000, a bill we intend to push to enactment next year if the Government of Japan, the Japanese vehicle manufactures, and the Japanese carriers continue to undermine our efforts to breathe life into the National Defense Features program. We created the NDF program because we believed it would be the most cost-effective way to augment the substantial investment that is being made in new ships by the Navy. Having seen one very attractive proposal by which vessels would be built to carry cars from Japan to the United States and refrigerated products on the return leg, we authorized and appropriated funds in the mid-1990s to jump start the program. Since then, we have continued to look for ways to make the program as attractive as possible to companies to build ships in the United States for operation in the United States-Japan and other trades. In just the past week, for example, Congress approved as part of the National Defense Authorization Bill for FY 2001 a provision that would expand the Secretary of Defense's authority to finance appropriate projects under the NDF program. In authorizing this program, we had hoped that the Government of Japan in particular would find mutual defense benefits in promoting it. We have written the Prime Minister, we have met with the Ambassador, we have received expressions of support from the Vice President of the United States and our Secretary of Defense, and yet nothing seems to have come of our efforts so far. Unfortunately, we have regularly heard the same response. The Government of Japan insists that the decision to employ NDF tonnage is strictly a matter for the vehicle manufacturers and shipping companies to make since it involves a commercial matter. They in turn have argued that, since the program focuses on mutual defense, the Government should take the lead. As so often happens, no one has been willing to step forward to take the initiative. As our colleagues can no doubt appreciate, our patience is beginning to wear thin. I understand our able Secretary of Defense has recently indicated the importance of the NDF program in discussions with his Japanese counterpart. Perhaps we will finally see some movement. If not, the time to legislate will have arrived. Our bill is designed to create the necessary incentives for the Government of Japan and the vehicle and shipping interests to promote the NDF program. If the Federal Maritime Commission finds that vessels that would be built in the United States under the NDF program are not employed in the particular sector of a trade route in the foreign commerce of the United States for which they are designed to operate and if that sector of the trade route has been dominated historically by citizens of an allied nation, then the Commission shall take action to counteract the restrictive trade practices that have led to this situation. We trust all concerned appreciate our determination to bring the NDF program to life.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding me time. I thank both the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), our distinguished ranking member, for this particular legislation. I rise with a deep sense of sorrow shared by all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in remembering those brave Americans who paid the ultimate price for the freedom and democracy that we enjoy. It is appropriate, Mr. Speaker, that, during this time of reflection on the lives of these individuals, these young sons and daughters and mothers and fathers, these young relatives of so many families in America that have been taken away from us, that we reflect on the value of our military and the role they perform every day of the year. Mr. Speaker, we lost 17 brave Americans. We lost dads who left kids. We lost daughters who left behind moms and dads. We lost people who were involved in their community and charity events and church organizations. We lost future leaders of America. Perhaps even among them was a Member of Congress. I heard the President say today that one of the individuals actually had worked at the White House, helping with the computer system. These were not just sailors. These were individuals who were destined to become a part of the American fabric, who were going to eventually assume their leadership role in both the military and also in civilian life. Tragically, they were cut down. I would ask our colleagues to remember the individuals that are being honored here tonight and the entire crew of the ship, and that we think about the implications of having a Navy where one-third of our ships are right now deployed, and over one-half of those ships underway steaming across the seas to distant lands to protect America. We have military personnel in dozens of cities and countries around the world today performing important functions of keeping peace, allowing us to have that forward presence and making sure that the world is stable. Sometimes I think we take that for granted as a nation, and it takes this kind of incident to remind us that these are human beings; that we have the responsibility to give them the proper benefits, the responsibility to give them the proper equipment, and the proper training. I agree with what the President has been saying and what Governor Bush has been saying and Vice President Gore. We do have the best military in the world, and it is the best-trained military in the world. But I can tell my colleagues that I am concerned. We cannot cut our Navy back from 585 to 317 and keep the level of deployments up. We cannot continue to have 35 deployments in 9 years all over the world and not expect additional pressures like what we have seen. Mr. Speaker, there needs to be a full investigation of this incident, and there needs to be a full accounting for those who perpetrated the act and the reasons why this act occurred. But today we remember those brave souls, those brave heroes, and I join with my colleagues in extending our warmest and deepest sympathy to the families and loved ones of these brave sailors. I ask all of us in America to reflect on the importance of our military and make a renewed commitment in honor of those brave 17 Americans and the entire crew of the Cole that we will continue to provide the full support of all Americans in providing the funding for an adequate military, for the proper quality of life, for proper health care, and for all those other commitments that America needs to make to its uniformed personnel.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for this important legislation and the gentleman from California (Mr. Gallegly) for his work in this effort. I want to relate to my colleagues that since I have been in Congress for the past 14 years, the support for our fire and EMS people has been one of my top priorities, partly because I was a volunteer firefighter and a fire chief before coming here. I have traveled to all 50 States and spoken to all their national and Statewide associations. This has, without any doubt, been the most responsive Congress in the history of this institution in support of the Nation's fire and EMS community. We passed, earlier this year, a $2.9 billion appropriation for the forest fire problem in America, including replenishing funds that were used up with the forest fires of this year. We passed a $100 million add-on to the supplemental bill, which the leadership has committed will be in the final act signed by the President next week. We passed as part of our defense bill, not only a $500 million authorization initiative that I was able to get included, but we increased the availability for Federal surplus property for fire and EMS departments. We commissioned a special panel to look at the radio frequency spectrum issue to make more radio frequency spectrum available. We established a seven-member advisory board in the Pentagon of the fire and EMS groups to look at technology that can benefit firefighters and paramedics around the country, and we have taken a whole new effort to revitalize support for the rural firefighters of America. In fact, a new multiyear grant program that we established under FEMA will, in fact, give fire departments across the country the opportunity to provide matching funds to buy equipment, turn out gear, breathing apparatus and all those other tools that are so necessary. This bill adds one more dimension to what we have done in this Congress for the Nation's fire and EMS community. They are our domestic defenders. They are the people who respond to every disaster that we have in America, from hurricane and fire to flood and tornado they are there, they have been there longer than the country has been a country, 100 of them are killed each year in the course of doing their duty, even though 85 percent of them are volunteers. This legislation specifically pays attention to the retirement status of firefighters. It is significant legislation, because it brings them in line with law enforcement and other personnel. Madam Speaker, I want to applaud our membership and leadership on both sides of the aisle, my colleagues who have done a great job; and I just say to our colleagues they can go home with a great deal of pride and let the fire and EMS community know we are on their side. In fact, just within the next hour, I will be meeting with the representative of AmeriCorps. Now I have never supported the AmeriCorps program; and I never supported it because it is a half a billion dollar program to create volunteers, but the volunteer fire service has never been eligible for the program. Amazing. It is not politically correct to volunteer to fight fires or to be ambulance or paramedic attendants. They want to come in now because AmeriCorps wants to support America's emergency response personnel who are volunteers. To our colleagues, this has been a fantastic situation. I would just add, not one of these initiatives was proposed by the White House. Every one of these initiatives came from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have worked together to bring additional support for America's domestic defenders.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and an honor to have this opportunity to pay tribute to one of the truly outstanding individuals from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Mr. John C. McMeekin. Early next year John McMeekin will retire from his position as President and Chief Executive Officer of Crozer-Keystone Health System where he has served since 1990. The health care industry will lose a trailblazing leader when Jack steps down. John McMeekin has been a leader in the health care field for over thirty-five years and his service is truly commendable. The Crozer- Keystone Health System consists of five hospitals with a licensed capacity of over 1200 beds, four long term care facilities totaling 800 licensed beds, a licensed HMO managed care organization and a network of salaried primary care and specialty physicians. System revenues totaled more than $500 million in fiscal year 2000. Before joining Crozer-Chester Medical Center in 1983, Mr. McMeekin was a senior officer of Philadelphia Blue Cross and began his health career at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1965. He and his family reside in Philadelphia. Mr. McMeekin is past Chairman of the Hospital & Health System Association of Pennsylvania and Chairman of their holding company, Health Alliance of Pennsylvania. In addition, he serves on the Board of VHA, the Board of Executive Committee of the American Hospital Association and chairs the AHA Regional Policy Group II. He also served on the Executive Committee and Board of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and was a trustee of Elwyn Institute. For twelve years Mr. McMeekin served as Public Governor on the Board of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. He is a graduate of Penn State University and holds a Masters degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In September 1996 Crozer-Keystone opened their 200,000 square-foot, $40 million Healthplex, a combination of a 40-bed acute care hospital and emergency service which includes 35,000 square feet of physician offices, four ambulatory surgical suites, a comprehensive rehabilitation facility and a large Sports and Fitness Club. Membership at the end of fiscal year 2000 was approximately 7,000. Under Mr. McMeekin's able leadership, Crozer-Keystone served as an Action Learning Lab for AHA in November 1996 and has been cited for his work in measuring and monitoring the health status of its county of 550,000 people and for its investment in Information Systems. In February 1997 they began marketing their MedCarePlus directly to Medicare beneficiaries as one of the eight provider-sponsored HCFA Medicare Choices demonstration sites. Crozer-Keystone is a major teaching affiliate of Temple University in Philadelphia and a member of the Council of Teaching Hospital and the National Chronic Care Consortium. Mr. McMeekin's distinguished career includes service on numerous boards and associations including American College of Healthcare Executives, American Hospital Association, Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, and the Union League of Philadelphia. His efforts have not gone unrecognized. Included among the awards he has received are: Distinguished Performance in Management Award (Widener University, 1995); Health Care Hero's Award (Philadelphia Business Journal, 1996); First Carl E. Moore Award for Health Care Leadership (Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, 1998) and First Health System Innovations and Development Award (National Health Strategies, 1998). Mr. Speaker, the distinguished career of John C. McMeekin places him in the first rank of outstanding health care leaders of our time. His service to his profession and his fellow man serves as benchmark for us all. I know Jack personally. He is a good friend, a dedicated family man, and a patriotic citizen. It has been a pleasure to work closely with him, and an honor to be his friend. At this time, I would ask my colleagues to join me in paying special tribute to John C. McMeekin. On the occasion of his retirement as President and Chief Executive Officer of Crozer-Keystone Health System, we thank him for his dedicated service and we wish him all the best for the future.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor for me to rise today to congratulate the Eddystone Fire Company No. I for 100 years of dedicated service to the residents of Eddystone, Pennsylvania. The Eddystone Fire Company, chartered on January 29, 1900, was actually organized in 1895. Some thirty-six men gathered one January evening in 1895, in the old lighthouse hall in Eddystone Village. By the time they went home the volunteer fire company had been founded. The original by-laws were adopted February 14, 1895 and the first officers were elected. The first piece of fire apparatus, which consisted mainly of fire hose on a hand-drawn reel, was purchased shortly after the group was organized. It was housed in the old Town Hall building, on the corner of Saville Avenue and 12th Street. As new pieces of equipment were purchased during the years they too were housed in this building. Early in 1954, a new firehouse was built in the old Town Hall. When it was completed, the fire apparatus was moved to its new quarters, and the old Town Hall was torn. down to make way for the new borough hall. The firefighters of Eddystone Fire Company No. I have an impressive record when it comes to fire fighting. The company has fought such spectacular blazes as the Boyer Lumber Yard fire, the Eddystone Ammunition Plant explosion, the Remington Hotel fire, Tollins Fumiture store blaze, the Baldwin Paint Shop fire, the Eddystone High School fire and more recently the Sun Oil truck explosion and fire. The fire company is a volunteer organization and is on 24-hour call for fire, ambulance and water rescue search and recovery services. Aside from a modest appropriation from the borough, the fire company is supported through the efforts of its members and the Ladies Auxiliary. The ambulance service is made up of men and women who are thoroughly trained in first aid and now includes emergency medical technicians. These services are available to all residents of the borough. Today the Eddystone Fire Company is a member of the Ridley Township Fire Board, a sophisticated network of telephone and radio equipment, which handles calls automatically and keeps a record of every alarm called into the company. Many in the Borough have a direct alarm hook-up to the firehouse which gives prompt notice of a potential industrial fire. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have dedicated not only their time, but also their lives, to the safety of all Eddystone residents as well as surrounding communities. As a former fire chief in Marcus Hook, I am aware of the risks firefighters face each day, under intense pressure, in life or death situations. Our thanks and appreciation can never repay those who put their lives on the line to ensure our safety. I am proud to recognize and commend the tremendous commitment, courage and dedication of Eddystone Fire Company members who continue to reflect the same true spirit in which the department was established more than 100 years ago. I am honored to rise today to extend my thanks for what the members of the Eddystone Fire Company do each day and congratulate them on this milestone anniversary.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank our distinguished chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), for this conference report. No one has done more in this Congress over the past 6 years and beyond on behalf of America's national security than the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence). He has been a tireless advocate for our military, and it is appropriate that we name this bill in his honor. It has been my pleasure and honor to serve with him and under him. Equally, I am proud to serve with the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), a real gentleman and someone who is always doing what is best for our service personnel. I want to pay special attention to those Members who will not be coming back with us. We lost Herb Bateman this year, one of our real giants in the Congress. We all miss him because of his leadership on defense issues. I want to add our thanks to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Fowler) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) for their service on the committee, but I want to especially single out my good friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Pickett). He has been my ranking member on the subcommittee for 6 years. I am proud of the fact that we have never had a split vote on any issue in 6 years. Now, that speaks to how we can work together with almost 30 members of the committee on issues that are important to America's security. I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Pickett) for being an outstanding American. I appreciate his work. In terms of the overall bill and R&D, we made the best of a bad situation. In my opinion, this bill is not adequate to meet the defense needs when we couple the decreasing defense spending with massively increasing use of our troops and a total disregard for proliferation. Therefore, our rogue state enemies have technologies that we did not expect them to have for 15 or 20 years because arms control agreements have not been enforced. In the R&D area, the administration cut R&D spending by 25 percent over the last 8 years. We have gradually tried to reverse that. This year's bill adds a billion dollars under the R&D account lines. We focus on the three newest threats that we see emerging in the 21st century: One, the threat of missile proliferation. We increase funding for both theater missile defense and national missile defense; Two, the threat from the use of weapons of mass destruction, and we increase funding significantly in that area; Finally, the threat from information warfare or cyberterrorism. We increase funding in that area. We created a special core of young people to deal with the issue of information dominance and cyberterrorism. We also deal with the issue of establishing a Federal-wide national data fusion center. Several Members have talked about an add-on to the bill. Contrary to what has been said, it was an entirely new initiative for our domestic defenders. It has not just one part, but seven key parts. First of all, it takes technology from the military and establishes a deliberate mechanism with the fire service groups to transfer that technology to our domestic defenders. Number two, it elevates our fire and EMS community to get first access to surplus equipment that the military no longer has a need of. Number three, it includes the bill authored by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady), our good friend, which I cosponsored with him, to deal with a $10 million authorization for Hepatitis C demonstration projects in both our cities and within the military emergency response community. Number four, it has the military look at the whole access of frequency spectrum, and to deal with that. It also includes a provision for funding. These are all new initiatives. It is the domestic defender package. I am proud that this Congress for the first time in 40 years did something besides talk about the fire service in America.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I have had the pleasure of serving in this body for 14 years. And during the 14 years, one of the things that I have learned about our colleagues is that we all have a feeling of high regard for each other. If someone is going to say something about another Member, the protocol usually has been that the Member be told about it in advance. This past Thursday that did not happen, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) got up after everyone left Washington, late Thursday, and did a special order for 1 hour; a tirade mentioning a number of Members of Congress. Now, I will not do to him what he did to our colleagues. He only mentioned me briefly, but I told the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) this morning that I would come here personally and respond to the things he said regarding me. The gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) said that we were too harsh in criticizing the administration for the possibility of having the administration transfer technology to China in return for campaign dollars. He went on to make two specific charges: number one, that the Cox Committee, which I served on, in fact totally exonerated the administration on those allegations; and, number two, that the Justice Department said there was no reason to believe there was any need to further investigate the transfer of campaign dollars for technology to China. Well, let us look at the facts, Mr. Speaker. The fact is that this gentleman, the largest single contributor in the history of American politics, Mr. Bernard Schwartz, from 1995 to 2000, contributed personally $2,255,000 to Democratic national candidates, DNC, the Democratic Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Congressional Committee. The allegation was in 1998 when he contributed $655,000 to those candidates that there was a potential quid pro quo because Bernard Schwartz had been lobbying for a permit waiver to transfer satellite technology to China. Now, the Justice Department has said on the record they opposed that the President intervene to a make a waiver decision, but the President went ahead on his own. Now, in fact, our Cox committee did not even look at this issue. In fact, if the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) would have bothered to read the Cox committee report, in the appendix under the scope of the investigation it says, we did not even consider the political contribution aspect of this because other committees were looking at it and because we could not get people to testify because they pled the fifth amendment or they left the country. But let us look at what the Justice Department said. Here is what the Justice Department said in the LaBella memo, which I would encourage our colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), and every citizen in America to request from their Member of Congress: ``It is not a leap to conclude that having been the beneficiary of Schwartz's generosity in connection with the media campaign, the administration would do anything to help Bernie Schwartz and Loral if the need arose.'' This was written not by a Republican. This was written by Charles LaBella, Justice Department special investigator to Louis Freeh, which went to Janet Reno. They further said this, Mr. Speaker: ``As suggested throughout this memo, there are many as yet unanswered questions. However, the information suggests these questions are more than sufficient to commence a criminal investigation.'' Who would that criminal investigation have been against? It would have been against four people: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Harold Ickes, who is Hillary's campaign manager in New York. It would have been against the Loral Corporation and Bernard Schwartz. So here we have it, Mr. Speaker. The two allegations made by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) are totally false. He owes an apology to the American people. Because, number one, the Cox Committee never looked at these facts. And he should know that unless he cannot read very well. It is right here in the text. Number two, he claims the Justice Department dismissed these allegations out of hand. Well, I trust the American people. I would urge all of our colleagues to have this report available to every constituent across America, the LaBella memo. It is 94 pages. It is redacted, but they can read for themselves and they can see what this Justice Department, what FBI Director Louis Freeh, what handpicked Janet Reno Investigator Charles LaBella said about the need for a criminal investigation. They name the four people in this document, and the four people are those four I mentioned along with Bernard Schwartz and the possibility of a quid pro quo for the $655,000 and all this money being transferred. In fact, Mr. Speaker, when I get more time, I will go through the specific findings in the LaBella memo where they raised the issue of the request coming in to the President and specifically on February 18, 1998, the President signed the waiver after the Justice Department advised him not to sign it. On January 21 of that same year, Schwartz donated $30,000 to the DNC. On March 2 he donated $25,000. All through that year, he donated $655,000 dollars. And that is why Louis Freeh and that is why Charles LaBella said there needs to be a further investigation for criminal activities involving the transfer of campaign dollars to the Democratic party, to the President and the Vice President and the First Lady and Harold Ickes based on the technology transfer to China, especially through the waiver that Bernie Schwartz got even though the Justice Department advised the President not to grant that waiver. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) owes this Congress an apology. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following documents that I just referenced: H. Res. 463 also authorized the Select Committee to investigate PRC attempts to influence technology transfers through campaign contributions or other illegal means. In light of the fact that two other committees of the Congress have been engaged in the same inquiry and had begun their efforts long before the Select Committee's formation, the Select Committee did not undertake a duplicative review of these same issues. The Select Committee did, however, contact key witnesses who could have provided new evidence concerning such issues. The Select Committee's efforts to obtain testimony from these witnesses were unsuccessful, however, because the witnesses either declined to testify on Fifth Amendment grounds or were outside the United States. Because the Select Committee was unable to pursue questions of illegal campaign contributions anew, no significance should be attributed, one way or the other, to the fact that the Select Committee has not made any findings on this subject. The same is true with respect to other topics as to which time constraints or other obstacles precluded systematic inquiry. Much of the information gathered by the Select Committee is extremely sensitive, highly classified, or proprietary in nature. In addition, the Select Committee granted immunity to, and took immunized testimony from, several key witnesses. Pursuant to an agreement reached with the Justice Department, this testimony must be protected from broad dissemination in order to avoid undermining any potential criminal proceedings by the Justice Department. There are two documents which could form a basis upon which to predicate a federal criminal investigation. The first is a February 13, 1998, letter from Thomas Ross, Vice President of Government Relations for Loral, to Samuel Berger, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. It could be argued from this letter that Schwartz intended to advocate for a quick decision on the waiver issue by the President. In the letter, annexed as Tab 47, Ross wrote: ``Bernard Schwartz had intended to raise this issue (the waiver) with you (Berger) at the Blair dinner, but missed you in the crowd. In any event, we would greatly appreciate your help in getting a prompt decision for us.'' In the letter Ross also outlined for Berger how a delay in granting the waiver may result in a loss of the contract and, if the decision is not forthcoming in the next day or so, Loral stood to ``lose substantial amounts of money with each passing day.'' The President signed the waiver on February 18, 1998. On January 21, 1998, Schwartz had donated $30,000 to the DNC; on March 2, 1998, he donated an additional $25,000. The second document is a memo from Ickes to the President dated September 20, 1994, in which Ickes wrote: ``In order to raise an additional $3,000,000 to permit the Democratic National Committee (``DNC'') to produce and air generic tv/radio spots as soon as Congress adjourns (which may be as early as 7 October), I request that you telephone Vernon Jordan, Senator Rockefeller and Bernard Schwartz either today or tomorrow. You should ask them if they will call ten to twelve CEO/business people who are very supportive of the Administration and who have had very good relationships with the Administration to have breakfast with you, as well as with Messrs. Jordan, Rockefeller and Schwartz, very late this week or very early next week. ``The purpose of the breakfast would be for you to express your appreciation for all they have done to support the Administration, to impress them with the need to raise $3,000,000 within the next two weeks for generic media for the DNC and to ask them if they, in turn, would undertake to raise that amount of money. * * * * * ``There has been no preliminary discussion with Messrs. Jordan, Rockefeller or Schwartz as to whether they would agree to do this, although, I am sure Vernon would do it, and I have it on very good authority that Mr. Schwartz is prepared to do anything he can for the Administration.'' See Tab 12 (emphasis in original). From this memo one could argue that Ickes and the President viewed Schwartz as someone who would do anything for the Administration--including raising millions of dollars in a short period of time to help the media campaign. We now know not only that the media campaign was managed by Ickes from the White House, but also that it played a critical role in the reelection effort. Consequently it is not a leap to conclude that having been the beneficiary of Schwartz' generosity in connection with the media campaign, the Administration would do anything it could to help Bernie Schwartz (and Loral) if the need arose. If in fact there is anything to investigate involving the Loral ``allegations,`' it is--as set out in the Task Force's draft investigative plan--an investigation of the President. The President is the one who signed the waiver, the President is the one who has the relationship with Schwartz; and it was the President's media campaign that was the beneficiary of Schwartz' largess by virtue of his own substantial contributions and those which he was able to solicit. We do not yet know the extent of Schwartz solicitation efforts in connection with the media fund. However, if the matter is sufficiently serious to commence a criminal investigation, it is sufficiently serious to commence a preliminary inquiry under the ICA since it is the President who is at the center of the investigation. For all these reasons, the Loral matter is something which, if it is to be investigated, should be handled pursuant to the provisions of the ICA. Conclusion We have been reviewing the facts and the evidence for the last ten months. During that time we have gained a familiarity with the cases, the documents and the characters sufficient to draw some solid conclusions. It seems that everyone has been waiting for that single document, witness, or event that will establish, with clarity, action by a covered person (or someone within the discretionary provision) that is violative of a federal law. Everyone can understand the implications of a smoking gun. However, these cases have not presented a single event, document or witness. Rather, there are bits of information (and evidence) which must be pieced together in order to put seemingly innocent actions in perspective. While this may take more work to accomplish, in our view it is no less compelling than the proverbial smoking gun in the end. As is evident from the items detailed above, when that is done, there is much information (and evidence) that is specific and from credible sources. Indeed, were this quantum of information amassed during a preliminary inquiry under the ICA, we would have to conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that further investigation is warranted. As suggested throughout this memo, there are many as yet unanswered questions. However, the information suggesting these questions is more than sufficient to commence a criminal investigation. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for this special order on rural America. Let me talk briefly about two categories of our defense. The first is our domestic defense. Our domestic defense relies on the 32,000 organized departments that are in every rural town in America. In fact, as my colleague knows, Pennsylvania has 2,600 of these rural fire and EMS departments. They are in every small town in every county in this Nation, in Montana, in Idaho, in Alabama, in Arkansas, in Hawaii, in New York, California. They are there. And 1.2 million men and women, 32,000 departments, 85 percent of them are volunteers. In fact, they are the oldest volunteers in the history of the country, older than America itself. Now, the important thing is, what has this administration done to these people who are serving America, who are responding to floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, hazmat incidents, and fires? Well, they have cut the only program for rural fire departments which has been authorized at about $20 million a year. This administration cut it last year to this year from $3.5 million to $2.5 million. What a disgrace. The President sneezes and spends more than $2.5 million a year. Yet, this administration has done nothing for rural fire departments. Now, why should they? Well, these people lose 100 of their colleagues every year that are killed. Name me one other volunteer group from America where 100 of their members are killed in the line of duty. They have ordinary jobs, but they are killed protecting their towns and their communities. But this administration, they claim they are for volunteers. We saw them develop the AmeriCorps program. Is that not amazing, a $500 million program supposedly designed to help create volunteers. But guess what, the volunteer fire service cannot apply because it is not politically correct to fight fires and respond to disasters. So here we have an administration that is so insensitive to our domestic defenders that they created a half-a-billion-dollar program, giving scholarships, incentives for people to volunteer, but they cannot volunteer in their communities, especially the rural communities where they so desperately need people to man those trucks and their ambulances. This administration just does not get it. Now, Harris Wofford, the head of that program, just called me today, and they now want to do something after the program has been in existence for about 6 years because they realize how insensitive they have been. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) talked about our international defenders, our military. He is right. The gentleman from Pennsylvania is often right, and he is right. The bulk of our military personnel are from the farms. They are from rural America. They are patriotic. They are dedicated. They will go any place that America sends them, and they will perform any task. But do my colleagues know something? Look at what has happened to them. We have had three simultaneous things occur under this administration: the largest decrease in defense spending, the largest increase in the use of our military around the world, and the absolute ignorance when it comes to arms control and the proliferation that has been occurring by China and Russia to rogue states, which further harms our Americans. In fact, it was rural Pennsylvanians, 15 of them that came home in body bags in 1992 because this administration and other administrations had not done enough to build missile defense systems to stop that Scud missile when it hit the barracks in Saudi Arabia. This administration has not done well by our military. The best evidence of that is our retention rate right now for pilots in the Air Force and the Navy is 15 percent. People are getting out because they are fed up with all of these deployments. None of the Services over the past 3 years have been able to meet their recruitment quotas except for the Marine Corps because young people are saying, I do not want to join. Those farmers are saying, in the past, we have gone in the military, but I am fed up now because you are sending me from one deployment to the other. Our once proud Navy which went from 585 ships to 317 ships now have to take people off of one aircraft carrier and move them to another, and they are still 600 sailors short on every aircraft carrier deployed in harm's way today. What this administration has done to our military and has done to those brave Americans, many and oftentimes most of whom are from our rural areas, is absolutely outrageous. In fact, I think it is going to go down in history, the past 8 years, as our worst period of time in our history in undermining America's security. If we look at the history records of World War II, the Vietnam War, World War I, the conflict Desert Storm, our volunteers from the heartland of America are always the first to come and volunteer for this country. But, again, we have not done well by them. Those veterans out there across America have not been taken care of by this administration. This Congress had to fight to give our veterans and our military personnel cost of living increases because this administration thought it was more important to give an IRS agent an increase in their cost of living than they did to men and women who were serving and our veterans who have served. We have got to change that. We need a President that will lead a Congress in proud support of our international defenders and in proud support of our domestic defenders. Al Gore just does not cut that.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. I thank my friend for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, I want to add to the gentleman's comments. I could not agree more with everything that the gentleman from Virginia said. I have had the pleasure of serving as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Research and Development and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Pickett) is the ranking member. There is probably no finer gentleman in this Congress in either party someone who is dedicated, hard-working, conscientious and someone who I have the highest respect for. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to add my comments to that of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) and will associate everything that he said about the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Pickett), applaud him for his positive note of the leadership of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Pickett), and hope that our colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join in supporting the legislation the gentleman referred to.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to congratulate Family Services of Montgomery County for its century of accomplishment to be celebrated on Tuesday, October 3, 2000. Family Services' mission is to strengthen the quality of life for individuals, families, and our community, by providing preventive intervention and essential support during times of need. Family Services of Montgomery County and all of the wonderful people associated with this fine organization are dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for people in our community through an innovative and comprehensive range of human services. Family Services reached its present form when three smaller Montgomery County nonprofit organizations merged--Family Service of Pottstown, the Lower Montgomery County Service Society, and the Main Line neighborhood (with the earliest beginning in 1900). Currently they have a central office in Norristown, three major branch offices, and several satellite facilities. Family Services' formalized programs include: Foster Grandparent Program, Meals on Wheels, Professional Counseling, Project HEARTH (helping elderly adults remain in their homes), Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), Project HOPE (HIV-AIDS prevention and support services, Families and Schools Together (FAST), Plays for Living, Parent-to-Parent Internet Support Group, Employee Assistance Programs, Student Training, Project Yes, and Safe Kids. The services have also included helping people to access housing, fuel and other material needs, linkage to medicare, identifying peer support systems, and locating resources to prevent future problems. Throughout the last one hundred years, Family Services and their predecessor organizations have been on the ``cutting edge'' of social services in our community. They have consistently led the way in helping people who are experiencing a crisis in their lives to help themselves. Family Services continues to provide innovative and timely programs in response to community requests. Examples of recent additions to their services are the ``Parent-to-Parent Internet Support Group,'' ``Project Yes'' in Rolling Hills, ``Safe Kids'' in the Lower Merion area, and the ``New Beginnings'' prison ministry. They have also recently experienced expansion of the ``FAST'' program to the Abington and Methacton School Districts, staffed new locations in Pottstown, Phoenixville, and Royersford with the ``Foster Grandparent'' program, acquired a van for additional efficiency in their ``Meals on Wheels'' program, and more than quadrupled the size of their HIV/AIDS ``Peer Prevention and Education'' program. There is no doubt that many people will face difficulties during their lives. At those times, responsible assistance coupled with sensitive caring go a long way to help ease problems. Mark Lieberman, Executive Director of Family Services, and all of the wonderful people associated with this fine organization can take pride in all that they have done, and all that they continue to do each and every day. The continued need for Family Services is determined by the challenges that individuals, families and our community face. They are moving into their second hundred years of service by building upon community partnerships that will develop and provide essential services for people who need preventive intervention and essential support in order to enhance the quality of their lives. Mr. Speaker, I urge you and all of our colleagues to join me in wishing Family Services of Montgomery County a most joyous 100th anniversary celebration and our appreciation for a job well done.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the business in order under the Calendar Wednesday rule be dispensed with on Wednesday next.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss an issue that is not getting the attention I feel it deserves in the current national debate between the major presidential candidates and Members from both parties running for Congress, the House and the Senate, and that is the issue of America's national security. I want to start, Mr. Speaker, by focusing on the speech that President Clinton gave at Georgetown University just 2 weeks ago on the issue of national missile defense. The President gave the speech because when he signed my national missile defense bill into law over 1 year ago, the President said that he would sign into law, agree to move forward, on national defense, but then make a decision to go forward at some point in time in the future. Mr. Speaker, let me go back and restate for our colleagues the facts in this area, the actions by the President, and then go through the President's speech in detail and attempt to give what I would consider to be our response to the President's speech. First of all, Mr. Speaker, 5 years ago the CIA produced an intelligence estimate that told the Congress and the American people we would not expect to see a threat emerge that could hurt the U.S. directly from a long-range missile for at least 15 years. Many of us on both sides of the aisle felt that that estimate was incorrect. In fact when we pressed the CIA, and I was the one who got the first classified briefing on that report because I was one of the requesters of it, the CIA eventually changed its mind and came to a conclusion that we all agreed to with Donald Rumsfeld and the Rumsfeld Commission that in fact the threat was not 15 years away, but that in fact the threat was here today and growing dynamically with every passing day. That major change caused a bipartisan group in the Congress to want to prod this administration to move forward in defending America, its people, and its troops. Some would say, why would you want to do that? There has never been an attack on America. No country is going to attack us because we have such tremendous clout, we could wipe them out, and if they really want to harm us, they would use a truck bomb or use a car bomb or an explosive device. Mr. Speaker, the facts just do not support that contention. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in 1991, 28 young Americans came home in body bags from Saudi Arabia because our country let those young men and women down. Twenty-eight young Americans came home in body bags because we could not defend against a low complexity scud missile. The scud missile was launched into our military barracks in Saudi Arabia, just as Saddam had launched missile after missile into Israel, raining terror on the Israeli families who were injured and killed by those attacks. Mr. Speaker, that attack by Saddam on our soldiers, and they were both young women and young men, they were young wives and young fathers, because they were largely from reserve units, half of them from my State, showed the vulnerability of America to the emerging threat that missiles provide. In 1991, this Congress vowed that that would never happen again, that we as Republicans and Democrats would never allow America's sons and daughters to be wiped out by a terrorist like Saddam or a Nation like Iran or North Korea that would use missiles to kill our people. So, as a result, Mr. Speaker, we began to work the process in the Congress to change the minds of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in terms of missile defense. Now, let me state for the record, Mr. Speaker, that President Clinton and Vice President Gore categorically opposed missile defense through the first 7 years of their administration. Now, the President and the Vice President can spin this any way they want, but the facts are that for 7 years they opposed missile defense. They opposed the Congress when we said the threat was emerging. They opposed the Congress when Democrats and Republicans put more money into missile defense systems. They opposed the Congress when we said that the ABM treaty was not flexible enough to allow us to defend our homeland and our people. For 7 years, President Clinton and Vice President Gore said we do not have to worry about missile defense, we rely on arms control agreements. Let me say this, Mr. Speaker. I am not against arms control agreements. In fact, I support most of the arms control agreements that America is a party to. But there is an interesting point about arms control, Mr. Speaker, and that is that if you do not enforce those agreements, if you do not abide by the requirements to penalize those entities that violate those agreements, they mean nothing, they are worthless pieces of paper. That has been the record of this administration. Two years ago, Mr. Speaker, I did a speech on the House floor. I documented in that speech 37 violations of arms control agreements by China and Russia. Thirty- seven times we caught Russia and China sending technology away from their country, which is illegal under the arms control agreements that we are party to with those nations. Where did they send that technology? They sent it to a few countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan and India. Thirty-seven times we caught the Russians and the Chinese sending technology abroad. That is a violation of arms control agreements, and 37 times we should have imposed sanctions on those countries and on those companies in those countries that we caught violating those arms control acts. Out of those 37 times that we caught the Russians and the Chinese transferring arms, we opposed the required sanctions two times; once when we caught the Chinese transferring M-11 missiles to Pakistan, and the second time when we caught the Chinese transferring ring magnets to Pakistan for the nuclear program. The other 35 times we pretended the transfers never occurred. We denied that we had evidence. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it is so bad that in one case I was in Moscow January of 1996, one month after the Washington Post reported that we had caught, actually with the help of our allies in that area, we had caught the Russians transferring guidance systems to Iraq. What are these guidance systems used for? They are used to make those missiles that killed our young people more accurate. They are used to make the missiles that killed Jews in Israel more accurate. The Washington Post said that we had caught the Russians giving this technology to Iraq, on the front page of their newspaper. So I was in Moscow, and I was in the office of Ambassador Tom Pickering, who is currently the third ranking leader in our State Department. I said, ``Ambassador Pickering, what was the Russian response when you asked them about the fact that we caught them transferring these devices to Iraq, which is a violation of the missile technology control regime, an arms control agreement?'' He said, ``Congressman Weldon, I didn't ask the Russians yet.'' I said, ``Mr. Ambassador, why wouldn't you ask the Russians? The Washington Post reported it on the front page. They said it happened back in June. Why would we not demand the Russians stop this process and demand action on the part of sanctioning those Russian companies?'' He said, ``That effort has got to come from the White House. It has got to come from Washington. I can't take that action as the ambassador here.'' So I came back to Washington and wrote to President Clinton a letter in January of that year, which he responded to in March of that year, and in that letter he said, ``Dear Congressman Weldon, I agree with you. We are very concerned that Russia may have transferred technology to Iraq that could harm Israel and could harm America, and if we find that that took place, we will impose the required sanctions under the treaty, we will take aggressive action. But, Congressman Weldon, we have no evidence.'' Mr. Speaker, over in my office at 2452 Rayburn, I have two devices. I have an accelerometer and a gyroscope, the heart of Soviet guidance systems that were taken off of Soviet missiles that we caught being transferred to Iraq, not once, not twice, but three times. Every time I travel around the country, and I have spoken to 10 or 15 AIPAC meetings, I have spoken to hundreds of defense organizations, I take my guidance systems. I cannot tell you where I got them, but I can tell you it was through one of our agencies in this country. And I hold them up, and I say, ``Mr. President, here is the evidence that you said we didn't have.'' In fact, Mr. Speaker, we have over 100 sets of those guidance systems that we captured that were being transferred from Russia to Iraq on those three occasions, and we expect that Russia probably transferred hundreds of other systems to Iraq for the same purpose. The point is this, Mr. Speaker: If we do not enforce arms control agreements, the arms control agreements mean nothing. This administration has the worst record in the history of arms control agreements in lack of enforcement. How about a second situation? The President of Israel at the time, Mr. Netanyahu, came out publicly and said Israel had evidence that Russia was cooperating with Iran in building a new missile system that could directly hit Israel from anyplace in Iran called the Shahab-3 and Shahab-4. Israel came out with this publicly. It was a sensational story. All the Jews in America were upset, all Americans were upset, because here was a respected ally of America saying publicly that they had evidence that there were violations of arms control agreements by Russia giving technology to Iran that could threaten our friends and threaten Americans. Well, the Congress was livid. Democrats and Republicans joined together. In fact, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) joined with Democrats in a bipartisan bill called the Iran missile sanctions bill. That bill was designed to force the administration to impose sanctions on Russia. That is required by the treaty. But the Congress was so incensed that Democrats and Republicans said they do not get it, we are going to force them. Two hundred fifty Members of Congress in a bipartisan manner endorsed the Iran missile sanctions bill. The bill was scheduled for a vote on the House floor. Three days before the bill was scheduled for a vote, my office got a call from the White House. We do not get many calls from the White House, Mr. Speaker, for obvious reasons. In this case it was Vice President Gore calling me to invite me to come to the Old Executive Office Building so that he could convince me that the bill was a bad idea. Well, I respect the Vice President, so I said, sure, I will come down. So I traveled down to the Old Executive Office Building and went into a room where there were Members of the House and Senate from both parties sitting around a table. Let me see now, if memory is corrected, Carl Levin was there, John McCain was there, Bob Kerry was there, Lee Hamilton was there, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) was there, Jane Harman was there, John Kyl was there. About 14 Democrats and Republicans from the House and the Senate with Vice President Gore and Leon Fuerth, his National Security Adviser. For one hour, they lobbied us not to support the Iran missile sanctions bill. They said, if you bring this bill up on the floor of the House and if you pass it, it will undermine our relationship with Russia and Boris Yeltsin. When the Vice President finished, we said, Mr. Vice President, with all due respect, and we do respect you as a person, there is no longer a confidence in the Congress that you are enforcing arms control agreements and stopping proliferation. Two days later, in spite of that personal lobbying by Vice President Gore and personal lobbying by President Clinton, this House passed the Iran missile sanctions bill with not just Republican votes. Mr. Speaker, 396 Members of Congress, 396 Members of Congress out of 435 voted to slap the President across the face because he was not enforcing the very arms control agreement he talks about so frequently. We broke for the Christmas and religious holidays and came back in February of the next year. The Senate was going to take up the same bill, the Iran missile sanctions bill. I get another call in my office, an unusual call, again from the White House inviting me back to the Old Executive Office Building. So I again went down. The same people were there, the same leaders of the House and the Senate from both parties. We sat around the table. Again, it was Vice President Gore, it was Leon Fuerth, and this time, a member of the National Security Council, Jack Caravelli. For 1 hour and 30 minutes they lobbied us against the Iran missile sanctions bill. They said, you cannot pass this in the Senate. You have passed it in the House; it is embarrassing to us. If you pass it in the Senate, it will cause further harm to our relationship with Russia. When the Vice President finished, we said, Mr. Vice President, you do not get it. You have not stopped the proliferation. You are not enforcing the arms control agreements. The technology is still going to our enemies, and you are sitting on your hands. We do not want to cause conflict with Russia, but you have armed control agreements to stop proliferation, and if you are not going to enforce them, then these agreements are worthless pieces of paper. With that, we left the Vice President's office. A week later the Senate voted the bill. Again, Mr. Speaker, the vote was 96 to 4. Mr. Speaker, 94 senators to 4, slapping the President and the Vice President across the face, because they did not get it. Arms control agreements are no good unless we enforce them, and an administration that basis its strategic relationships on arms control, but does not enforce those agreements, has no international security ability, and has no foreign policy. We passed that bill overwhelmingly, and the President had the audacity to veto it. Mr. Speaker, we could not override the veto that year, there was not enough time, so we came back in this session of Congress; and we passed the bill again in the House and in the Senate. And guess what the President did this time, Mr. Speaker, because he does this so well? He must have went like this, let us see, which way is the wind blowing today. Oh, the polls are showing that I better sign this, or I am going to be embarrassed and they are going to override my veto. So the President signed our Iran missile sanctions bill into law, after opposing it, after lobbying us and saying that we did not need it. Mr. Speaker, that is why we have a problem. That is why we have nations that are now threatening Israel and our friends in the Middle East that we cannot defend against. Because this administration has allowed the technology to flow like running water down a riverbed. This administration, while not enforcing arms control agreements, has opposed us every step of the way on missile defense. Now, the President gave us a great speech at Georgetown. He bit his lip, he tweaked his eye and did all of those things that make him so appealing on national television. But he did not tell the truth, Mr. Speaker; and that is the most important thing. He said, we are for missile defense. Let us look at the facts, Mr. Speaker. Four years ago the President went before the AIPAC national convention. AIPAC is the group that represents the Jews in America who are concerned about issues affecting Israel's security. President Clinton stood on the podium in front of 2,000 Jews at an AIPAC convention, and he pounded his fist on the dais and he said this: I will never let the Jews in Israel feel like they are unprotected from the missiles that Iran and Iraq are now acquiring. I will support the Arrow program that Israel is trying to build. Well, let us look at the facts, Mr. Speaker. That same year, the administration had requested no dollars for the Arrow program, which comes under my subcommittee. In fact, Mr. Speaker, because I formed a relationship with the Israelis and with the Israeli Knesset on a cooperative bilateral protection capability, we went to the Israelis and to AIPAC and said, how much money should we put in the defense budget for AIPAC? The number for the Arrow program that year did not come from the White House, it did not come from the Pentagon, it came from an inquiry that I made to AIPAC; yet the President said he was supporting the protection of the people in Israel. He also said he was supporting a program called THEL, Theater High Energy Laser, one of the most promising technologies to take out missiles like those being developed by the Iranians and the Iraqis. What the President did not tell the folks at AIPAC that year was that he had zeroed out funding for the THEL program for 3 straight years. Mr. Speaker, one cannot continue to say one thing and do something else. When the President talked about delaying the deployment of missile defense at Georgetown last week, he failed to mention a few things. He said he was supported. Well, let us look at the facts, Mr. Speaker. I was very careful over the past 6 years in building a case for missile defense to base our case on facts, not rhetoric. I did not agree with the approach that was taken under the Reagan years, when I was not here, of a massive umbrella that would protect all America. I did not think it could work. That is not what we proposed. We proposed a system that would provide a thin layer of protection against those rogue threats that we know are there today, and that was our basis. We had over 150 classified and public briefings and hearings for our colleagues in this Chamber to learn the facts about the growing threats, to learn the facts about the technology, to learn the facts about what our allies would say. After all of those briefings and all of those hearings, Mr. Speaker, I worked with my colleagues on the other side to put into place a bipartisan bill. In fact, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) was my cosponsor. That bill had bipartisan support. It simply said, we will deploy a missile defense system. Simple phrasing. One sentence. It is the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense system. The bill was scheduled for a vote a year ago in March. On the day the bill was coming up for a vote, President Clinton sent a letter, along with Al Gore, to every Member of this body, 435 Members. And the President said this: I oppose Curt Weldon's bill on missile defense. I urge you, Democrats and Republicans, to vote no on H.R. 4. I knew the President was against missile defense all along. I knew Al Gore was against missile defense all along, so it did not surprise me. In fact, it was exactly what I wanted. So we convened that day. I had already gone to Moscow with Don Rumsfeld and Jim Woolsey, who was Bill Clinton's CIA director. We had already briefed the Russians on what we were doing; we had already closed the House down for 2 hours and had a classified briefing on this floor where NINE members of the Rumsfeld Commission presented factual information. Mr. Speaker, 250 Members of Congress sat in these chairs with no staff here and heard the briefing that outlined the fact that the threat is here today to America and that we better do something about it. All of that took place. On the day of the vote, I said this to my colleagues: it is a clear choice today, folks. If you support President Clinton and Al Gore, then vote against my bill. Oppose it. I will respect you, because I will respect you for your convictions of thinking we do not need this system. So vote against it, and we will still be friends. But if you agree with me, if you agree with the CIA and the revised threat assessment; if you agree with Donald Rumsfeld and Jim Woolsey, if you agree with those people who say the threat is here today, then vote for my bill, and vote against the President. Mr. Speaker, we had a lot of debate that day. When the vote came, the President lost. Mr. Speaker, 103 Democrats voted with me, 102 Democrats voted with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and all but two Republicans voted with me. The vote was veto-proof; it was overwhelming. Mr. Speaker, 317 Members of Congress said once again to Bill Clinton, you just do not get it, President Clinton. We are going to force you to do something that you have been opposed to. The Senate passed a similar bill with 98 votes. So guess what the President did, Mr. Speaker? He did what he did on the Iran missile sanctions bill. He read the polls. Well, the Congress is overwhelmingly in favor, and the American people say do it. I better find a way to support that bill, sign it into law, but to politically leave myself an out so I can get out from under this right before the election next year, and that is when he did. He signed the bill into law and unlike Bill Clinton, there was no Rose Garden signing ceremony; and if you know this White House, they do that more than we eat meals. There was no Rose Garden event where people came down and stood behind the President. Very quietly, with no one around, the President signed the bill into law, H.R. 4, because he knew he could not oppose it. We would overwhelmingly override his veto. So the President said when he signed the bill into law, I will make my decision next year about whether or not we should deploy a system. He said, I am going to make it based on some factors, whether or not the threat is real, what our allied response is, and whether or not it is cost justified, and whether or not the technology is there. And that was the basis of his speech at Georgetown. So, Mr. Speaker, let me analyze some of the facts in that speech. First of all, Mr. Speaker, the President himself acknowledged in his speech, the threat is here. He said, for the first time, the threat to America is here and it is growing. In 7 years and 10 months, or 8 months of Clinton-Gore administration, never once did they admit that the threat was here and growing. In the Georgetown speech 2 weeks ago, President Clinton acknowledged what we have said for 7 years: the threat is real and it is growing. The second issue the President raised was, but I am not sure that technology is ready. We need more testing. Now, that was a great statement by the President: we need more testing. For 6 years, Mr. Speaker, this body has been plussing up funds for more testing of missile defense systems each year; in fact, has spent $1 billion each year more than what the President asked for. Now, you know what the President and Vice President did each year? They criticized the Congress when we put more money in for testing. Yet, in the Georgetown speech, the President said, we need more testing. Now, he cannot have it both ways, Mr. Speaker. He cannot go to Georgetown and say I am for missile defense, I want more testing, even though for the past 6 years, I have opposed the funding for more testing. The President said, the technology is not ready yet. Well, Mr. Speaker, we all know that it is going to take 5 years before we can put a system into place that will meet the challenges of the threats that we see emerging. Mr. Speaker, the President said, and I quote: ``The technology is not ready.'' Now, that was an absolute distortion. Either he was misinformed, or he lied. Now, why do I say that? Because, Mr. Speaker, over the summer we held hearings in my committee on the Committee on Armed Services where we had the President's experts on missile defense testify. Jack Gansler is one of the highest ranking officials in the President's Defense Department at the Pentagon. He is in charge of acquisition and technology, I think number three in the Pentagon. Jack Ganzler said in questioning in our committee, and I will provide a copy of it for the Record, that when I asked him, ``Is the technology to hit to kill a missile with a missile or a bullet with a bullet, is that technology achievable,'' his answer was, ``In my opinion, the technology is here. We have achieved the technology.'' General Kadish is a three-star general, a very capable leader. He is paid to represent our military in running the program. He is not Democrat, he is not a Republican, he is a paid military expert. He is respected by leaders in both parties. General Kadish testified before our committee. We asked him, ``General, is the technology achievable to do this? Can we hit a bullet with a bullet?'' General Kadish said, ``In my opinion, the technology is here. We have done it. It is no longer a technology problem, it is an engineering challenge to put the systems together.'' The Welsh report. General Welsh is a retired Air Force general that the Clinton administration hired to survey our progress on missile defense. The Welsh report said unequivocally that the technology is here. So we had Jack Ganzler, General Kadish, and General Welsh in the Welsh report all saying publicly, there is not a technology problem. What does President Clinton say at Georgetown? ``We have a technology problem.'' Either President Clinton does not listen well, he does not pay attention, or else he lies well, because his three top experts on this issue totally refuted what he said to the American people when he said that the technology was not at hand. Now, there are challenges. There are engineering challenges. There are challenges to sort out decoys from the real bomb that may be coming in. But those challenges are achievable. In fact, the head scientist for the National Missile Defense Program, Dr. Peller, when he testified before our committee, I asked him, I said, ``Dr. Peller, how hard is it to build a system that can shoot down a missile with another missile?'' He said, ``Congressman, when I worked at Boeing, before I ran this program I ran their Space Station program. The challenge to build a Space Station is much harder and greater than the challenge I face on national missile defense.'' So all of the experts, Mr. Speaker, refute the comments the President made at Georgetown, yet the President got away with this grand national speech. He also said, ``I am making a decision to delay deployment today because I want to do more testing. I want to make sure it will work.'' The irony is, Mr. Speaker, the only thing that he did by delaying the decision with the Georgetown speech was the contract to begin to build a radar system on an island in Alaska. That is the only thing we can do right now. The system will not be ready for 5 years. But by delaying the contract to build the radar in Alaska, we cannot do the additional testing that we need. That radar would have helped us better test the system that President Clinton told the American people he wanted more testing of. Mr. Speaker, sometimes the statements coming out really disgust me because they are not being challenged, because the President can use the bully pulpit to say whatever he wants any time he wants without the benefit of someone else standing up and saying, ``Wait a minute, Mr. President. Let us look at the facts,'' because facts are difficult things to refute. Now, the President also mentioned that he was delaying the decision on missile defense because our allies and other countries were being offended by what we were about to do. He cited Russia. He said that Russia was against missile defense. Russia will use this against us. China will use it. The European nations are against it. Let us look at that also, Mr. Speaker, and let us look at the facts. Do the Russians trust us? No. Do I understand why the Russians do not trust us? Yes. Mr. Speaker, one of the other things I do in the Congress, as Members know, is I work Russia issues. My undergraduate degree is in Russian studies. I have been in that country 21 times. I co-chair the Interactive Caucus between their Duma and our Congress, so I am with Russians all the time. In fact, I was with the chairman of the International Affairs Committee just 1 hour ago, Mr. Ragosin from the Duma. I was with six other Russians earlier this morning. I meet with them every day. Let us analyze why the Russians are upset with what we are doing with missile defense, and let us see if missile defense is the problem or if Bill Clinton is the problem and Al Gore is the problem. Why would the Russians not trust America? Do they think we are going to try to take them over? Some do. Why would they think that? Are they confused? Yes. Why would they think that? Let us go back to 1992, Mr. Speaker. Boris Yeltsin was elected president of Russia, a new democratic free market Nation. In one of his first speeches he said ``I challenge America to work together with Russia on developing a missile defense system that could protect both people.'' George Bush was president back then. What was George Bush's response? George Bush says, ``I accept your challenge, President Yeltsin. Let us work together.'' So our State Department and the Russian Foreign Ministry began high-level discussions. They were called the Ross- Mamedov talks, named after the Russian deputy foreign minister and our deputy secretary of state. They met repeatedly. They were building confidence. They were having success in working together. Then things happened. The elections happened. Bush lost, and Clinton came in in 1993. Within the first 3 months, what did Bill Clinton do, this man who believes that security is obtainable through arms control agreements alone? He canceled the discussions with the Russians. Without giving the Russians any reason, he canceled the Ross-Mamedov talks. The Russians said, ``Wait a minute. You said you wanted to work with us, America. Now you are saying you do not want to work with us.'' That was the first bad signal sent by America to the Russians that we do not want their cooperation, that we do not want to work with them. A second event happened in 1995, 1996, and 1997. We had one cooperative program with Russia on missile defense called the RAMOS project. The RAMOS project is being done by the Utah-Russian Institute in Utah and the Komyeta Institute in Moscow. They have been working together for months and years in developing confidence on a joint system of using two satellites with identical capability, to build confidence that both countries will know when a rocket is launched. The Russians were very enthusiastic about this program. It had strong bipartisan congressional support. What about the Clinton-Gore team? Without any advance notice to the Russians or to Congress, they announced they were canceling the funding for the RAMOS program. The Russians started calling me frantically. The former ambassador to America, Vladimir Lukhin, who chairs the Yablakov faction, wrote me a letter. The chairman of the ministry of atomic energy, Mikaelov, wrote me a letter. They said, ``You cannot let this happen. This is terrible. It undermines our relationship.'' Only because Members of Congress joined together, and in this case, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), joined by myself and Members of both parties, said to the White House, ``Oh, no, you don't. You are not canceling this program. It is too important for the confidence between America and Russia.'' What do Members think the Russians thought? Here in 1993 they cancelled the discussions between our two countries, in 1996 they cancelled the only cooperative program with America. What do Members think they are thinking? They are thinking that for some reason Clinton has some effort to not want Russia involved in missile defense. Then came 1996 and 1997. What happened then? President Clinton decided that since he is a big arms control fan along with Al Gore, that instead of working to amend the ABM treaty, they are going to tighten the ABM treaty. What is the ABM treaty? The ABM treaty is a relic of the Cold War. It was important at a time where we had two superpowers, the Soviet Union and America, each able to annihilate the other with their missiles, attacking each other. The theory behind it, which is where it got its name MYAD, was mutually-assured destruction. You attack us with your missile and we will wipe you out, if we attack you with our missile, we will wipe you out, neither side being able to build more than one defensive system around one city. That has been the basis of our relationship. That treaty worked in the 1970s and 1980s when only two nations had that capability, the Soviet Union and America. How do we justify that treaty in the 1990s and the year 2000, when China now has at least 24 long-range ICBMs, when North Korea has at least two long-range ICBMs, when Iran will have within 5 years long-range ICBMs? How do we justify a theory of mutually-assured deterrence when those nations did not even sign the treaty? What the President did, instead of working to defend our country, was he sent our negotiators to Geneva. They started meeting in Geneva to make the ABM treaty tighter as opposed to more flexible, a stupid decision on the face of it, but that is what they did. Many of us in the Congress said, what in the world is the President doing? He and Al Gore have a negotiator in Geneva meeting with the Russians talking about making tighter changes to the ABM treaty. So Mr. Speaker, I did what none of our colleagues did, I went to Geneva. I flew over with a Navy escort. I got permission of the State Department. I said, I want to sit across from the Russians. I want to talk about what is going on here. They let me, so we flew to Geneva and we went to the site where the meetings were taking place. I met the chief Russian negotiator, General Klotunov. I sat down across from him at a table for 2\1/2\ hours. I said, ``General Klotunov, I am a Member of Congress. I really have some questions about these negotiations between your side and our side over the ABM treaty, so can I ask a couple of questions? ``There are two issues evidently you are working on. One is you want to multilateralize the treaty; that is, to make a complicated story simple, you want to take a treaty between two countries, us and the former Soviet Union, and you want to now include three other former Soviet States, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. So my question to you is, why would Russia want to include Belarus and Kazakhstan on a treaty when they don't have missiles? They gave all their missiles up? Why would you want them to be a player on a treaty where only us and Russia have these missiles, unless you want to expand it to include China or North Korea or these other nations?'' General Klotunov looked me in the eye, and in front of our negotiators and with a recorder taking all this down, said this publicly: ``Congressman Weldon, you are asking that question of the wrong person. We didn't propose multilateralizing the treaty, your side did.'' How in the world and why in the world would America want to make it more difficult to amend a treaty to let us protect our people? That is exactly what we did, Mr. Speaker. And Belarus, with a leader like Lukashenko, who is a crazy man, Belarus could object to a change in the treaty which would benefit us, and Russia could say, ``we agree, but Belarus objects,'' and we could not deal with that issue. I didn't understand what the President's reasoning was, and therefore I came back and told my colleagues, ``I think this issue is a stupid issue and something we should not be doing with the Russians.'' But we agreed to it with the Russians. Bill Clinton agreed to it, and so did Al Gore. The second issue I raised to Klotunov was demarcation. That is a long word, and very tough for somebody like me who is just a schoolteacher to understand what it meant. I had to get some people over to brief me. Demarcation was trying to decide what is a theater missile defense system versus national missile defense. For some reason, we picked a speed and a range that made a difference when one was theater and one was national. If I live in Israel, a small country, a theater missile defense system is a national system, because it protects the whole country. For the State of Pennsylvania, a theater missile defense system really is a broader national missile defense system. I could not understand how this difference was created. I asked General Klotunov, ``How did you arrive at the numbers that we and you agreed to on demarcation between these systems?'' He said, ``Congressman, that was some very serious discussion between your State Department and our ministry of foreign affairs.'' I said, ``Well, can you share with me the basis of it?'' He said, ``No, it is too complicated.'' I was not satisfied. I came back to our country and asked the military to explain it. They did not have any good answers, or did not want to give them to me, so I did not get a satisfactory answer on that issue until about a year later. I am sitting in my office, Mr. Speaker, and reading press accounts from newspapers around the world, as I usually do, involving emerging threats to our security. Lo and behold, in a Tel Aviv newspaper I see a story with a headline, ``Moscow offers to sell Israel newest missile defense system.'' I read the story. It talks about a system I had not heard of called the ANTEI 2500, supposedly the best system in the world. I called the CIA, George Tenet. He is a very capable leader. I have a lot of respect for him. I said, ``Mr. Director, do you know what the system is?'' He said, ``Congressman Weldon, I don't, but we have experts in the agency. Let me get someone to come over and brief you.'' About a week later, an analyst from the CIA comes over to my office to talk about the ANTEI 2500. I say to him, ``Can you tell me about this system? I know most of the Russian systems. I know about the S300, S400, the system they are building, the SA10, the SA12. What is the ANTEI 2500?'' He says, ``It is a brand new system.'' I said, ``Do we know about it?'' He said, ``Yes, we know about it.'' He pulled out a brochure in English with beautiful color pictures: ``Here, this is for you.'' I said, ``What is this?'' He said it was a marketing brochure in English that the Russians gave out at the Abu Dhabi air show offering to sell the system to any Nation that wanted to buy it. I said, ``How good is it?'' He said, ``If it does what they say it will do, it is the best system in the world. On the back page of the brochure are all the criteria for this system.'' As I read through it and looked at the range, the speed, something clicks in my head. I say, ``Now, wait a minute.'' I looked at the analyst sitting across from me in my office. The range and the speed of the system are right below the threshold of the demarcation. He starts shaking his head. He said, ``Yes, Congressman, you are right.'' I said, ``Are you kidding me?'' I said, ``What that means is, then, that we let ourselves get sucked into a negotiation by the Russians where they were building a system that we did not know about that they could market to our friends and our allies, yet we would limit our own ability to go beyond that.'' He said, ``Yes, that is exactly right.'' What a way to negotiate treaties, Mr. Speaker. No wonder this Congress and the other body said we will never support those two changes to the treaty. But to get back to my original point of the confidence of the Russians. Bill Clinton, as our representative said to the Russians, we support these two changes. He knew he had to take them back, according to our Constitution, and have the Senate give their advice and their consent. That is a requirement that even Bill Clinton cannot get around. Well, do you know what he did. Because he knew he could not get those two changes through the Senate, he did not bring them out for the Senate to consider for 3 years, for 3 years, after he convinced the Russians that those two changes were acceptable to America, the multilateralization and the demarcation. He left the Russians believing that America would support them. So when the Russians passed START II just a couple of months ago, the Clinton administration had urged them to include both of those changes to embarrass the Senate. So that what they would not submit to the Senate 3 years ago they included as a part of START II so the Senate would have to vote down START II because those two changes were never submitted separately as required by the Constitution. Well, the Senate is not going to do that. So for a third time, Bill Clinton convinces the Russians that we cannot be trusted. Now, why would the President do this? Why would not he call the Russians when there are companies transferring technology? Why would he not be honest with the Russians? Mr. Speaker, our policy for the past 8 years, under Bill Clinton, with Russia, has been based on the Clinton to Yeltsin personal friendship. That worked for the first 4 years. As someone who has spent a lot of time in Russia, I supported the approach of helping Yeltsin succeed. I had the same hopes and dreams that all of us had and that Bill Clinton had. But here is where we fell down. Instead of supporting the institution of the Presidency in Russia, the institution of a parliament in Russia, we supported a person. When that person became a drunken fool surrounded by corrupt oligarchs and bankers stealing money from the Russian people, we were still supporting him, the only people supporting him in the world. When Boris Yeltsin's cronies were stealing billions of dollars of IMF money, $18 billion that the Russian people were going to think helped them build roads and schools and bridges and community centers, Boris Yeltsin's friends and cronies stole that money and put it in Swiss bank accounts and U.S. real estate investments, and we went like this and like this. Why would Bill Clinton do that? Because he did not want to embarrass his friend, Boris Yeltsin. When we caught the Russians doing stupid things like allowing transfers of technology to go abroad, we did not want to embarrass Yeltsin. When we caught them working with the Iranians, we did not want to embarrass Boris Yeltsin. When we caught them with the guidance systems to go to Iraq, it was the year Yeltsin was running for reelection. In fact, we now have a secret cable that Bill Clinton sent to Boris Yeltsin which our colleagues and the American people can get if they buy the book ``Betrayal'' by Bill Gertz. In the back of that book is an appendix. In that appendix is a secret cable now released that President Clinton sent to Boris Yeltsin in 1996 saying, ``Dear Boris, I will make sure nothing happens to upset your election campaign.'' As a result, Mr. Speaker, the Russian people lost confidence in America. They thought our only purpose was to steal their money, embarrass them, and not be candid with them. As a result, when Boris Yeltsin was about to leave office this time last fall, his popularity in every poll in Russia was less than 2 percent. Nobody in Russia trusted Boris Yeltsin. Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton was still his best friend. Imagine this, Mr. Speaker, and picture this visually, imagine the euphoria in America, in 1992, you have got Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank outside the Russian White House in Moscow, waiving a Russian flag with American flags all around him as thousands of Russians are chanting singing. Now they have overturned communism, and their newest ally and their friend is America. That was 1992. Shift to 1999, last year in the fall. What is the picture out of Moscow, Mr. Speaker? I remember one picture last fall: 5,000 Russians standing outside of our embassy in Moscow, throwing paint at the American embassy, firing weapons in our embassy, and burning the American flag. It was so bad that our embassy had to tell Americans traveling in Moscow, do not speak English on the street. That just did not happen, Mr. Speaker. It happened because the Russians no longer trusted who we are and what we were about. That was because this President had a foreign policy that was more like a roller coaster. Things were done to suit the political expediency of both President Clinton and President Yeltsin. That is why the Russians did not trust our movement on missile defense. In fact, I have friends in Russia. One senior policy analyst who was doing an op ed with me entitled, ``From Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Protection.'' The Russians want to work with us. But they have no confidence in who we are as a people because of the policies of this administration. The President worried about Russian response on the issue of missile defense. What about Kosovo, Mr. Speaker? Let us talk about Kosovo for a moment. President Clinton and Tony Blair went before the American and British people, interestingly enough, 30 days before a big NATO anniversary conference here in Washington a year ago in the spring. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton said we are going to move NATO in a new direction. We are going to go in to Serbia. We are going to defeat Milosevic who is evil; who is corrupt. We are going to show that NATO has a new role in the world. We are going to bring Milosevic to his knees. President Clinton said in justifying the use of our young people in Kosovo, when we are done, we are going to find massive graves. There are going to be hundreds of thousands of people who were killed by Milosevic and buried throughout Serbia because of what he has done to people. Well, that is what the President says. Let us look at what happened, Mr. Speaker. Here we are, the Kosovo conflict is over. The CIA came in and testified before Congress just 3 months ago, and I asked the question, ``How many mass graves did we find because the President said there would be 100,000?'' The CIA said, ``We would never say that.'' I said, ``Well, I know you are not the White House, but how many did you find?'' He said, ``I think we found one grave.'' ``Well, how many were in there?'' ``Well, we do not know, maybe 1,000, maybe more. We do not know whether they were mass graves or just people buried together.'' So I said, ``Well, the basic justification of the Kosovo war by our President was massive atrocities. Are you telling me they did not occur?'' He said, ``Well, we do not have any evidence of mass graves.'' It turns out, Mr. Speaker, the allies probably killed more innocent people than Milosevic did up until the war started. When the war started, he became more of a madman and killed more people. The bottom line is, Mr. Speaker, after it put America's sons and daughters in harm's way, after spending billions of dollars, after President Clinton going on national TV with Tony Blair, why is Milosevic still in power? What did we do, Mr. Speaker? Did we fail? Has President Clinton come before the American people and said, I am sorry I failed. Our policy was a disaster. What about the billions of dollars we spent? What did we accomplish with Kosovo. We killed innocent people. We did not remove Milosevic. Now, it has just turned itself around. Is the ethnic cleansing still going on? Yes. But instead of the Serbs beating up the Kosovars, the Kosovars are beating up the Serbs. President Clinton does not want to talk about that now because the NATO anniversary celebration is over. They had the parades through Washington. The President and Tony Blair gave their speeches, so we have gone on to other issues. So what was accomplished in Kosovo? I can think of two things. We managed to alienate the Russians. It is the number one issue on the mind of every Russian how America did not bring Russia in to help solve the Kosovo problem. The second, we alienated China, because the Chinese are still convinced we hit their embassy deliberately in downtown Belgrade. When the President repeatedly said we did not, they still believed that we did. The irony of this President's administration relative to our foreign would-be adversaries, China and Russia, is that, in 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced a new strategic partnership, Moscow and Washington together working as one. In 1999, Boris Yeltsin, as he is leaving office, and President Putin as he went into office in 2000, made different speeches. They announced a new relationship, Moscow and Beijing against America. That is the legacy of Clinton and Gore on international security issues. The President talks about Russia's response to our missile defense. Cut me a break, Mr. Speaker. The President is just not being honest with the American people. Should the Russians worry about what we were doing with missile defense? No way. They have the best missile defense in the world. If the Russians really believed that missile defense was not important or we could rely on deterrence, why would they have the only operational AB instrument in the world, and they have it today. The Russians have the world's only operational antiballistic missile system. They have one, and we do not. Theirs surrounds Moscow, which is where 80 percent of their people live. So with one system, they protect the bulk of their population. Certainly all the people that matter to them are around Moscow. They protect all of them. Their system has been upgraded three times. So if the Russians really believe in deterence, why do not we tell them to take down their system and be as vulnerable as we are. We in America who could build one system would never choose to protect one city over another. So we have no system. So the irony is, Mr. Speaker, that the President said he did not go forward because Russia is concerned. Our allies are concerned, when the very reason they are concerned is because of the lack of a vision and the lack of statesmanship on the part of our White House, including our President and Vice President. Where does this all come down to, Mr. Speaker? Well, what the President did by announcing his decision in Georgetown in his speech is going to cost us more money. The estimates are another $1 billion with a 1-year delay in missile defense, $1 billion that we are going to have to fork over. But more importantly, we are unprotected. Now, some say, well, it is not going to happen. Let me remind my constituents and colleagues here in the Chamber. In 1991, 28 young Americans, half of them from Pennsylvania, came home in body bags because we let them down. We could not defend against a low complexity scud missile. Will that happen again? Well, I can tell my colleagues, in 1995, in January, because of Russia's problems in their military, when the Norwegians launched the weather rocket, a three-stage rocket for atmospheric sampling, the Russian system is in such bad shape, they misread the Norwegian rocket launch. They thought it was an attack from an American nuclear submarine. What did they do? The Russians have acknowledged that, for one of the first times ever, they put their full ICBM system on alert. Well, what does that mean? That meant Russia had 15 minutes, 15 minutes to decide whether to launch a missile against the U.S. or call it off. Boris Yeltsin has publicly acknowledged, and I will put in the Record, there was 7 minutes left, he overruled his Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and the general in charge of his command staff and called off the response. Imagine that, Mr. Speaker, in January of 1995, we almost had Russia launch an ICBM at America because of a Norwegian rocket launch that they had been told about. What would we have done if that launch would have occurred? We could not defend it because we have no system. Well, we do. We probably sent up a radio signal to wherever the trajectory was of that city and tell them over the radio, you have 25 minutes to vacate your homes, because that is how long it takes for an ICBM leaving Russia to hit America. Twenty-five minutes to move, that is the only protection that we could provide to the American people. What are we going to do if that happens? If an accident occurs, what do we do, have Putin apologize to us, say, ``Oh, we are sorry. We are sorry you lost 200,000 people in L.A. We are sorry that Atlanta, Georgia got bombed. We did not mean it. It was an accident.'' What do we do if North Korea says, ``We are going to test you, America. We are going to invade South Korea. If you interfere, L.A. is out the door.'' What do we do then, go in and bomb North Korea in advance, or do we wait until they launch their missile and then wonder whether we are going to attack North Korea later. What about the people in L.A.? Who is going to protect them? Mr. Speaker, this President should not be allowed to get away with what he did. He lied to the American people. Our security is at risk. The same way he lied to the American people in the China technology transfer scandal. In closing, Mr. Speaker, I was a Member of the Cox committee. For 7 months, we sat through testimony and meeting after meeting with the CIA and the FBI. I saw all the evidence or most of it that the CIA and the FBI have relative to how the Chinese got technology from America. Mr. Speaker, through all of that evidence that we saw, nine of us, four Democrats and five Republicans, nine decent people voted unanimously, nine to zero that America's security was harmed because of technology that was transferred to China. Now, the administration would have us believe it was stolen. Wen Ho Lee, the poor man, just got released after 9 months. They said it was stolen. It was not stolen. It was not stolen. It was a wholesale auctioning off of America's technology. What did they get in return? They got campaign dollars. The same man going around the country championing campaign finance reform obtained millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaign committee. This is not the Republican gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) talking, Mr. Speaker. I would offer to my colleagues a letter that Louis Freeh, one of the people in this administration with integrity, the head of the FBI, hand picked by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, Louis Freeh wrote a 90-page memorandum based on a factual investigation by his investigator, Charles Labella. That 90-page memorandum went to Janet Reno. It is now available. I will give it to anybody that wants it, and they can read it for themselves, in Louis Freeh's own words. What did it say? It said: ``As the FBI Director of America, I have reason to believe that further investigation is warranted because four people may have committed felonies in campaign contributions being received with technology being left out of our country to go to a foreign nation.'' And Louis Freeh named the four people. Who were they? In Louis Freeh's own words: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Harold Ickes, who is running Hillary's campaign in New York State. The scandal of this administration was not Monica Lewinsky. The scandal of this administration was the wholesale auctioning off of America's technology so that Clinton and Gore could get reelected. And now we have the President giving a speech at Georgetown about how he is making the right decision for us on protecting our people. The White House should be ashamed. America should be ashamed. And all of us had better look to the facts as opposed to the wink and the nod and the smile. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 12:30 p.m. on Monday, September 18, 2000, for morning hour debates.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the parishioners of St. David's Church, Wayne and St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley, near Paoli, Pennsylvania for celebrating their 300th anniversaries. This historic milestone was reached on September 2, 2000. It is often said of Pennsylvania that ``America starts here.'' This is particularly true for the greater Philadelphia region, where so many of our Founders came together to deliberate, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and in whose fields and valleys so many cruel and bitter battles were fought during our Revolution. During this time of remembrance it is fitting to recall the people who settled Chester County, lived in its towns, educated its young, built its businesses, reached out to its needy, fought its wars and ultimately returned to its soil. A prominent role in the development of Chester County was played by St. David's Church in Wayne and St. Peter's Church in the Valley. As we reflect 300 years later on this rich history, it is my honor and privilege to congratulate the two current rectors, The Rev. John G. Tampa of St. Peter's and The Rev. W. Frank Allen of St. David's, who have the honor to serve their parishioners during this momentous time of celebration. Continuing a walk in faith begun over three centuries ago, they provide the leadership and vision that have made St. David's Church and St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley a cornerstone of spiritual leadership as well as a source of inspirational outreach and service. These churches remain to this day vibrant members of their community providing food, education, health care, shelter, training and countless other services to people in need. The two parishes were established in 1700 as missions of the historic Christ Church, Philadelphia, serving what was then the frontier regions of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Christ Church is familiar to students of our history, for it was the site where our Founders met to discuss and later to proclaim our country and its unique form of government. From the moment of their founding, St. David's Church and St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley have played a prominent role in the history of Pennsylvania, and indeed of the nation. The first services were held in small log cabins, were tended by a circuit-riding clergyman and drew only a handful of Welsh pioneers. Today, the combined congregations of St. Peter's and St. David's exceed 3,000 parishioners, and they continue to grow. It is interesting to note that it was from St. David's Church that General Anthony Wayne, whom some regard as the real founder of the American Army, went off to fight with General Washington. It was to St. David's Church that his body was returned years later. Not surprisingly, St. David's and its graveyard have been designated as National Historic Landmarks. St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley, another National Historic Landmark, served as a field hospital for soldiers wounded in the Brandywine campaign of 1777 and later at Valley Forge. Its graveyard contains the remains of both American and British soldiers killed during the Revolution. Its beautiful grounds, a wildlife conservatory, were selected by Governor Tom Ridge as the site for the signing of Pennsylvania's innovative conservation measure, the ``Grow Greener'' bill. Mr. Speaker, St. David's Church and St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley have much to celebrate together as they mark their 300th anniversary. I congratulate everyone associated with these worship communities and wish them continued growth, happiness and success as they recall their journey: the road, the people, the vision and the faith, which brought them to this milestone.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in shock and disbelief. I never would have imagined last Wednesday and Thursday as we sat on the conference committee between the House and the Senate working out the differences between our two bills on defense sitting next to Herb Bateman, where Herb was aggressively vocal on issues that were important to our military personnel, important to the readiness of our troops, that we would be eulogizing today Herb on the floor. Just 6 short weeks ago, Herb and Laura were guests of ours in Philadelphia at the convention where we entertained 100 Members of Congress for the entire week at our former military base. Herb was in great spirits and looking forward to his retirement so he could spend more time with his family. He was planning the kinds of things that he was going to do when he no longer had the pressures that are obvious here in this body. Unfortunately, today we have to acknowledge Herb's leadership and his passing and he never got to enjoy that retirement with his wife and his family. But what a legacy Herb left for all of us. He was the ultimate in terms of what a Member of Congress should be. He had integrity. He was hard working. There was not a dishonest bone in his body. He was dedicated both to his Virginia district, but he also was dedicated to the people of America who serve in uniform. He was always looking for the right way to make sure that our troops who were serving around the world were properly prepared and trained and protected to represent this great Nation. Herb was the consummate Member of Congress. When he got into an issue, you knew that Herb would stay with that issue because he believed it to be the right issue and the right side of that position whether or not our party was for it or against it. Herb had conviction. Herb was someone you could always count on to be presenting the right thing in terms of our military but for other groups. He was a strong supporter of our fire and EMS community, looking for ways to help support the volunteers and the paid firefighters down in Virginia and around the country. He was someone who all of us could use as a role model, as I did for the years that I have served in this body, having first met Herb as a junior member of both the Merchant Marine Committee and the Committee on Armed Services. He will be sadly missed. And to Laura and his family, we say, Laura, our thoughts and our prayers are with you. Herb has done a great deed, and he truly is a statesman.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, this past Friday, President Clinton gave a major foreign policy speech at Georgetown University announcing his decision not to move forward with the plan to deploy a national missile defense. It took the President 7 years and 8 months of his administration to finally make a speech about missile defense. He did not make a speech after 26 young Americans came home in body bags because we could not defend against a low complexity Scud missile. He did not make a speech after in January of 1995 the Russians almost responded with an attack on the U.S. because they misread a Norwegian rocket launch, an attack that we could not defend against; and he did not make a speech 2 years ago after the North Koreans test-fired their three-stage missile which the CIA now claims can hit the U.S. directly. But he did make a speech this past Friday. I was not surprised, because his position has been consistent with both he and Al Gore for the past 8 years. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I could respect the President if he would have come out publicly and simply said, ``I disagree with the Congress and the American people. I don't support missile defense and will not during my administration move forward.'' That is what he has done for 8 years. In fact, the day that my bill came up on the House floor for a vote just a year ago he wrote a letter to every Member of the House opposing the bill, saying please vote against it. Yet 103 Democrats joined 215 Republicans in giving a veto-proof margin to move this country forward. So the President did what he does so frequently. He used a political game and pretended that he really was for missile defense. Mr. Speaker, again I could respect him if he simply said that he opposed missile defense as he did in that letter to every Member a year ago in March. But, instead, the President of the United States in his speech before Georgetown University publicized around the world last Friday told half-truths, misrepresented factual information and, Mr. Speaker, sadly he just downright lied. Mr. Speaker, beginning tomorrow, at a speech before the National Defense University, I will respond to the President factually, I will respond to his specific words, and I will show the American people how this President and this Vice President have chosen to ignore the reality of the threats that are emerging. I will focus on four key areas the President focused on: The emergence of the threat, the arms control record of this administration, the Russian and world response to missile defense, and the technology readiness, because those are the issues the President spoke to, and I will take apart word by word taking the opportunity to define ``is'' as the President defines ``is,'' and I will show the American people that again this President and this Vice President just do not get it. This Congress voted overwhelmingly with veto-proof margins in the House and the Senate to move forward. And this President, in a typical election-year maneuver the Friday before Labor Day, before he was to travel to the U.N. this week, chose to give the American people bad information. The American people deserve to hear the other side. Beginning tomorrow, I will give the other side and through a series of special orders over the next several months will outline for the American people the factual response to President Clinton's falsehoods that he outlined at Georgetown this past Friday.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of Aimee's Law. Aimee Willard lived 2 miles from my home. Aimee Willard went to the same schools that my children attended. Aimee Willard played in the same parks that my kids played in. Aimee Willard's family, being in the same school district that I lived in, went through the same kind of experiences in life that my kids went through, that my neighbors' kids went through. She was an ordinary kid, but she was also very extraordinary. She was an outstanding lacrosse and soccer player, and went on to become one of the top stars at George Mason University. She was an outstanding student. She had many friends, many who knew her, and although I did not have the pleasure of knowing her personally, her friends would say frequently that when Aimee was around, everyone was happy. Aimee Willard did nothing to offend anyone. She cared about animals, she cared about people, she loved life. Aimee Willard was struck down by an animal. There is no other word, Mr. Speaker, an animal. As she was driving home from an event with her friends on one of our major interstate highways, she was struck by a car behind her, causing her to pull over. She was abducted, she was raped, and she was brutally murdered. Her body was found the next day in a dumpster with two trash bags over her head and a stick between her legs. That was Aimee Willard's response to a life of wanting to help people. Now, the man who has since been convicted and sentenced to death for killing her was an animal, he was an animal, because he had killed someone else in Nevada, because they parked in his place at his apartment complex. But he only served 11 years of that life sentence. But in prison, as the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Salmon) said, he had a felony conviction for assaulting another prisoner and he also had a conviction for an assault on a woman who was visiting him in prison. But the Nevada prison officials just did not get it. So after 11 years, they put Arthur Bomar on the street. Arthur Bomar came to Pennsylvania and he snuffed out the life of this bright, energetic, future leader for America. She may have been a sports star, she may have become a teacher, she may have become a Member of Congress, but an animal struck her down. Now, who should pay for that? The family cannot be compensated. Their daughter is gone, gone forever, snuffed out in the prime of her life, 22 years of age. Who should pay? Sure, Arthur Bomar is going to pay. Hopefully this time he is sentenced to life in prison and he will serve life in prison. But who else should pay? Pennsylvania spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to track down, try and convict Arthur Bomar, when it was Nevada who let him out after 11 years. This law says, Nevada will pay. If a State wants to let a convicted killer out on the street, a rapist on the street, a child molester on the street, then that State will pay the price, not the State that has to retry, recapture, and resentence the individual who did the brutalest of a brutal assault on a person like this. One of my colleagues said there are those who are against it. Well, naturally those in the States do not want to bear any responsibility. Well, duh. What do we think they are going to say, that they are going to come out and support it? I mean, we all have brains. Every victim and witness association in this country supports Aimee's Law, and that is what matters. I do not care what the governor association says and I do not care what the conference of state legislatures said. I know what is right, and people like victims of Aimee Willard's family deserve to know, in her name, that it will never happen again or those States where the person first committed the crime will pay the bill. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues, as they did a short time ago by a vote of 412 to 15, to pass Aimee's Law.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. I have the highest respect for the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member, but this is a small, small token on behalf of America's real heroes. The best example of what America is all about are the 1 million men and women who serve this country in 32,000 departments every day responding to disasters. They do not just respond to fires. They respond to hurricanes, to earthquakes, tornados. They respond to subway collapses. They respond to highrise conflagrations. They respond to HAZMAT incidents, refinery explosions and they have done it for the last 250 years, longer than the country's been a country. Each year we lose 100 of them, most of them volunteers, because 85 percent of the 1 million fire fighters in this country are volunteers, they are not even paid for what they do. I cannot think of any other volunteer group that loses 100 people every year, every year. I have been down in that ceremony in Emmitsburg more than I want to be there, and I have seen the anguish in the family's eyes of those who have lost their loved ones. Mr. Chairman, I spoke at the D.C. fire fighters' funeral that were killed last year in a fire. I understand what our friend and colleague is talking about when he talks about the loss of life in his own home district. Mr. Chairman, this is the least we can do, a million dollars to give to the NIST organization to help on the research on thermal imagers. As a former volunteer fire chief, I can tell my colleagues the importance of thermal imagers. When the fire fighters go into a building and they are overcome by smoke, they collapse. There is no way available to go in and find them in a smoke-filled room, except for this new breakthrough technology that we developed for the military called the thermal imager. Now, as the chairman of the research committee on the military side, I have supported the funding for the research for our military. What this funding would do would be to help take that technology and make it available for the fire fighters. Mr. Chairman, our colleagues will say wait a minute, the Federal Government should not be involved in the fire service; well, hold it. Let us get real. This bill has billions of dollars of money for law enforcement. I am a supporter of the police as a former mayor, but we pay half the costs of the vests for police officers who might be shot. Cut me a break. We are going to pay for half of the cost of a police vest, and we cannot put $1 million into research for thermal imagers for fire fighters. The last time I checked, law enforcement was a local responsibility. We are not talking about $1 million. This bill has billions of dollars for local police officers, billions and billions of dollars for local police, for training, for equipment, for meetings, half of the cost of police vests. But not one dime of money for the Nation's fire fighters. Nothing. Nada. And these fire fighters, who are largely volunteer, save taxpayers money, because if we do not support them, you are going to have to hire full-time paid fire fighters to replace them. Every one of my colleagues in this room has fire departments in their districts. There are 32,000 departments, in every State, they are in every county, they are in the most rural community, and they are in our largest urban city, and they all have the same challenges. The least we can do is set aside $1 million in an account where there is a surplus this year to help get our Federal agency to provide research money to take this technology and use it for the fire service itself. Billions of dollars for law enforcement, which I support; nothing for the fire fighters of this Nation. The only pittance we put forward is about $30 million a year for the U.S. Fire Administration and the NATA Fire Training Center at Emmitsburg. That is it. Yes, we have a responsibility. I say to my colleagues, this is an easy vote. If we cannot support something like this, a bipartisan amendment offered by my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), and my friend, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pease), then shame on us. I say to this body, support the real heroes in America, the unsung heroes. Support the men and women of the fire service, who day in and day out protect your towns, who protect your cities. Most of them do it as volunteers.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I want to, first of all, thank my distinguished chairman and leader, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), and my distinguished good friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), for bringing this very timely legislation and thank all the members on the Committee on International Relations to allow us to make a statement on the seriousness of the situation that is occurring in Russia over the last several months relative to freedom of the press. As my friend has stated and my colleagues are aware, I have a special interest in Russia. I just made my 21st trip there last weekend with Secretary Cohen, where I was able to attend meetings with him and the defense minister and the leaders of the Duma on improving American- Russian relations. I felt that we achieved a considerable amount of progress, but I would be less than candid if I did not tell my colleagues that there are serious problems inside of Russia. All of us were optimistic when the new President Putin took over in January and was elected in free and fair elections several months later, but there has been a pattern well documented in this bill of actions against members of the free press, including Radio Free Europe and the independent radio and TV stations in Moscow and, most recently, including the chairman and the head of Media Most Corporation, Mr. Gusinsky. In fact, the distinguished chairman knows because he was host to the number two person at Media Most. As the distinguished chairman knows, just several weeks ago, we had the number 2 person from Media Most over speaking to Members of Congress expressing the real concerns of what happened with the FSB invasion of their headquarters and the outrage that many of us felt about having this independent media feel the pressure of what appears to be the Putin government, in trying to crack down on the ability of Russians to speak out. Russia is a fragile democracy, and that fragile democracy is going to exist and succeed only based upon the success of their free media, and we must in America speak out when we see incidences occur like the incident involving the reporter who was responding or reporting on the Chechnyan war to the efforts by Gusinsky to report on concerns within Russia about the direction of the Russian government. And while President Putin and leaders in the various factions may not agree with what is being said by the Russian media, they must understand that a free democracy must have that free speech, or it will cease to be a free democracy. I might also add that we are heartened that Mr. Gusinsky has recently been released, but I also want to mention there are other patterns of strong-arm tactics coming out of Russia, Mr. Speaker. On April 3, one of our Pennsylvania constituents, a Penn State professor by the name of Ed Pope, was arrested. He has been charged with crimes against the Russian state. It is an absolute fabrication. My good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), and I have been working this case for 6 weeks; and we are not going to step back until we see Mr. Pope released to his wife and to his loved ones up in State College. Russia needs to understand, Mr. Speaker, that all of us on both sides of the aisle want to be friends with Russia. We want Russia to be an equal trading partner of ours. We want a secure stable relationship. We want to have a fair process where the two countries can work together in every possible area of cooperation. But none of this can exist if there is a pattern of abuse of the free media and if there is a fear of intimidation on the part of those people who would go to Russia to conduct business or to perform positive relations with the people of Russia. So, again, I want to thank my colleagues for this outstanding resolution. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) has been a tireless advocate on these kinds of issues around the world. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings) is constantly on top of these issues. I applaud both of them for their leadership and join with them in urging our colleagues to pass this important legislation this evening.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that I rise to congratulate Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania on the momentous occasion of its Centennial Jubilee. This year, Rev. Msgr. John Galyo and the parishioners of the Church celebrate the 100th anniversary of their parish. Founded by Slovak immigrants in 1900 as a place to worship in their native tongue, Sacred Heart Church quickly developed into a cohesive faith community. However, the growth of the parish, both spiritually and physically, did not come without hard work, determination, and the pride of its people. The original wooden church was destroyed by fire in the 1920s. Through the tremendous sacrifices of its selfless parishioners, a new brick building was constructed and opened for services by 1929. It remains a house of worship to this day, giving testimony to the undying spirit of the Sacred Heart community. Although Slovak is no longer the main language spoken by the parishioners, their pride in the Slovak heritage lives on. In fact, Sacred Heart is one of only a few remaining Slovak parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Over the course of the century, Sacred Heart has been both a blessing and an inspiration to Southeast Pennsylvania. It emerged from humble beginnings and has clearly prevailed through the often turbulent tests of time to become a thriving and enduring spiritual family. Mr. Speaker, I ask you and my other distinguished colleagues to join me in congratulating Msgr. Galyo and the parishioners of Sacred Heart Church as they celebrate a century of tremendous achievements. May they enjoy bountiful blessings and good fortune for many more years to come.