May 1, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S5919

and VA inpatient facilities and nursing

homes could be reserved for veterans

for whom there is no other feasible alternative.

I am especially pleased that this bill

would reauthorize the Homeless Chronically Mentally Ill [HCMI] program.

This program has been effective in

serving the most disadvantaged, most

needy and often most difficult population of vets to reach. It is precisely

the kind of program that Senator Hubert Humphrey would have approved of

in that passes his litmus test for judging a society by the way it deals with

the most vulnerable and needy of its

citizens. HCMI authorizes VA outreach

workers to contact homeless vets, assess and refer vets to community services, and place eligible vets in contracted community-based residential

treatment facilities. This program is

one of the two major VA homeless programs and now operates out of 57 medical centers in 31 States and the District of Columbia. I backed extension

of this program unequivocally in the

103rd Congress, and I am even more

convinced now that it merits reauthorization.

Another extraordinarily valuable, effective, and humane program that this

measure would reauthorize is known as

the Compensated Work Therapy and

Therapeutic Transitional Housing program [CWT/TR]. It is a demonstration

program authorizing the VA to renovate 50 residences as therapeutic transitional houses for chronic substance

abusers, many of whom are also homeless, jobless, and mentally ill. VA

would also be authorized to contract

with nonprofit corporation which

would own and operate the transitional

residences in conjunction with existing

VA compensated work therapy programs. Once a residence is fully renovated and operational, rent collected

from vets in the program usually exceed operating costs. A preliminary VA

evaluation of the program indicates

that well over 50 percent of participants complete the program and have

had substantially better sobriety, employment, and housing status than before entering the program. I strongly

backed extension of this program in

the last Congress and have no doubt

that there is an urgent need to further

extend this program that serves those

are among the most needy of our veterans.

Finally, Mr. President this bill would

extend VA’s authority to enter into enhanced use leases, which would permit

other parties to use VA property so

long as at least part of the property

will provide for an activity that furthers the VA mission and enhances use

of the property. An excellent illustration of how this program would operate

is a plan to establish at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center [VAMC] a managed care clinical research and education center on land owned by the

VAMC. An HMO would build a facility

on VAMC grounds that would be large

enough for VA personnel to do important clinical research and provide additional space for VA personnel to provide patient care to vets. Additionally,

VA personnel would gain first-hand experience in managed care and make the

VA more competitive in a managed

care environment. Finally, the program would ready the Minneapolis

VAMC for participation in the Minnesota State health care reform program should this become feasible.

In closing I want to thank my colleague, Senator ROCKEFELLER for his

leadership in preparing this legislation

and urge my colleagues to give it their

A BULLET FROM AMERICA

full support.

THREATENS AN INVALUABLE

∑

fBEIRUT SCHOOL

∑ Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, my wife

and I took off on a rare vacation of any

length, when we spent 10 days in Spain

and Portugal over the Easter recess.

While I was there, I picked up the

New York Herald Tribune and read the

Tom Friedman column, which originally appeared in the New York Times,

paying tribute to Malcolm Kerr, who

served as president of the American

University in Beirut.

An incidental surprise in the article

was to learn that Steve Kerr, who plays

for the Chicago Bulls, is the son of the

late president of American University.

Mr. Friedman has a point to make on

what we ought to be doing in the field

of economic assistance to other countries. I ask that the Tom Friedman column be printed in the RECORD.

The column follows:

A BULLET FROM AMERICA THREATENS AN

INVALUABLE BEIRUT SCHOOL

(By Thomas L. Friedman)

WASHINGTON.—When I was a reporter in

Beirut in the early 1980s the three most

chilling words anyone could say to you were:

‘‘Have you heard?’’ The news that followed

was almost always bad. That is why I shuddered on the morning of Jan. 18, 1984, when a

banker friend called me to say: ‘‘Have you

heard? Malcolm Kerr has been shot.’’

Malcolm was the president of the American University of Beirut, an expert on Arab

politics and a friend of mine. I immediately

ran over to the AUB campus. By the time I

got there Malcolm was dead, the gunmen

were gone and the only trace left of the murder was the bullet hole that had gouged the

wall on the stairs to his office.

I have been thinking about Malcolm and

the AUB lately because his widow, Ann

Zwicker Kerr, has just published an affectionate memoir of both entitled ‘‘Come With

Me From Lebanon.’’ The book chronicles

how they met on the AUB campus in 1954,

she as a junior year abroad student from Occidental College and he as the son of AUB instructors. (Ann’s parents wanted her to go to

school in Europe, she wanted to go to India,

so they compromised on Lebanon.)

Years later, after marrying, she and Malcolm returned to the AUB as teachers, and

finally, after 20 years at the University of

California at Los Angeles, they came back to

run the AUB in the middle of the Lebanese

civil war, out of a conviction that it was an

institution worth saving. In Malcolm’s case,

it became an institution worth dying for.

I fondly recall sitting on the veranda of

Marquand House, the AUB president’s residence overlooking the Mediterranean, drinking freshly squeezed lemonade and listening

to Malcolm’s sober and always biting analysis of Arab politics. I was reminded of it

reading Ann’s book, in which Malcolm complained that there were ‘‘two rival student

groups each wanting to organize its own

Miss AUB contest—a Miss Left-Wing AUB

and a Miss Right-Wing AUB, and after heroic

efforts the dean of students finally got them

together, only to have the army move in and

scrap the whole thing!’’

No one knows who murdered Malcolm, but

clearly it was extremists intent on driving

the United States, and its marines, out of

Beirut. (He left behind four kids, one of

whom, Steve, plays guard alongside Michael

Jordan for the Chicago Bulls.)

I hope this book gets read by two audiences. For the general reader it is a

throughtful period piece about Americans

abroad—a reminder of that generation of

American secular missionaries, most of them

teachers and doctors who, long before the

Peace Corps, dedicated their lives to spreading the gospel of Jefferson and Lincoln in the

Arab East. They came innocent of any imperial ambitions and they both nourished and

were nourished by the local educational institutions they ran.

I also hope it is read by all those in Congress who today are so eagerly, and mindlessly, slashing U.S. foreign aid. Because

when America cuts foreign aid, it isn’t just

cutting payoffs to the Guatemalan army. It

is also cutting off the AUBs.

Who cares? Well, consider this: When the

United Nations was founded in San Francisco, there were 19 AUB graduates among

the founding delegates, more than any other

university in the world. Educational institutions like the AUB are literally factories of

pro-Americans.

Since its founding in 1866 it has graduated

34,000 students from all over the Middle East,

who were educated in the American system

and exposed to basic American values and

standards. Today those graduates are cabinet ministers, business executives and educators peppered throughout the region.

Most important, the AUB is still one of the

only real liberal arts colleges in the Arab

world. It is the best answer to Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, most of the AUB’s students today are Sunni and Shite Muslims,

who still see an American degree, not a Khomeini decree, as their ticket to advancement

in the world.

But the AUB today is struggling. In 1985 it

got about $15 million a year in American foreign aid. Today it gets $1.8 million. Tomorrow, if some in Congress have their way, it

could get nothing. It would be an ironic tragedy if the AUB, having survived civil wars,

bombings and the murder of Malcolm Kerr,

were to have the fatal bullet put in its head

by a stingy U.S. Congress controlled by people with no sense of America’s role in the

world or the institutions that sustain its values abroad.

Mr. SIMON. I visited the American

University in Beirut long before I was

a Member of Congress and was favorably impressed by what they did. The

stunning statistic, which I had never

read before, that there were 19 American University in Beirut alumni

among the founding delegates at the

San Francisco U.N. Conference, is dramatic evidence of the good work that

they do.

The first lesson from the Tom Friedman column is that we should adequately support this fine and important university.
S5920 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 1, 1995

But there is another lesson to be

drawn. Until the political earthquake

of November 8, 1994, I served on the

Senate Foreign Relations Committee

and chaired the Subcommittee on African Affairs. I learned to my chagrin, a

little more than a year ago, that only

11⁄2 percent of American economic aid

to sub-Sahara Africa goes for higher

education.

In our aid programs we have to meet

emergencies—and Africa has more than

its share of emergencies—but we also

have to be looking long-term, and one

of the ways that we help Africa longterm is to see to it that they have leadership in the future. One of the most

effective ways to see that they have

good leadership in the future is to

make an investment in higher education.

I hope we reflect on the Tom Friedman column.

RICH NATIONS CRITICIZE UNITED

STATES ON FOREIGN AID

∑

f∑ Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently,

I read a New York Times article titled

‘‘Rich Nations Criticize U.S. On Foreign Aid,’’ by Steven Greenhouse. It referred to a report of the Organization

for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], and I ask that the article be printed in the RECORD at this

point.

The article follows:

RICH NATIONS CRITICIZE UNITED STATES ON

FOREIGN AID

(By Steven Greenhouse)

WASHINGTON, April 7—An organization of

wealthy industrial nations issued a stinging

report today criticizing the United States for

moving to cut foreign aid when it already

gives a smaller share of its economic output

to such assistance than any other industrial

nation.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group

of 25 nations, said the United States, once

far and away the world’s leading donor, was

setting a poor example by cutting its aid

budget and warned that the move might

prompt other countries to follow suit.

Using unusually blunt language, the report

said that ‘‘this seeming withdrawal from traditional leadership is so grave that it poses a

risk of undermining political support for development cooperation’’ by other donor

countries.

The report said the United States had

slipped to No. 2, well behind Japan, in the

amount of foreign aid provided excluding

military assistance. The United States provided $9.72 billion in 1993, compared with

$11.3 billion for Japan.

It said the United States contributed 15-

hundredths of one percent of its gross domestic product for economic aid, putting it last

among the 25 industrial nations. The average

among these nations was 30-hundredths of

one percent, while Sweden, Denmark and

Norway all give 1 percent of their overall

output to foreign aid.

J. Brian Atwood, Administrator of the

Agency for International Development, the

Government’s principal aid arm, welcomed

the report, making clear that he intends to

use it as ammunition in the Clinton Administration’s fight to persuade Congress not to

cut foreign aid. At a news briefing today, Mr.

Atwood criticized Congressional committees

for proposing to cut $3 billion from the $21

billion international affairs budget, which

includes State Department spending as well

as foreign aid.

The report was written by the O.E.C.D.

Secretariat and was overseen by James H.

Michel, the chairman of its development assistance committee. Mr. Michel was an assistant administrator of A.I.D. in the Bush

Administration.

Mr. SIMON. After reading the article,

I asked for a copy of the OECD report,

and it is a somewhat technical but important insight into our deficiencies.

Let me give a few quotes from the report:

A perplexing feature of the US development assistance effort is that while public

opinion responds readily to situations of

acute needs in developing countries (contributions to private voluntary agencies are

among the highest per capita among DAC

Members), there is no strong public support

for the Federal aid budget. This may be explained in part by the fact that the public

greatly overestimates the share of foreign

assistance in the US Federal budget. According to a recent poll, the majority of respondents believe it to be around 20 percent of

total US Government spending. In fact,

USAID spending represents only 0.5 percent

of the Federal budget and the US has the

lowest ODA/GNP ratio among DAC Members.

Two other important points are

made:

There is considerable apprehension in the

donor community that some proposals may

be given voice in the new Congress which

raise the possibility of major cut-backs in

US aid and even a turning away by the US

from the common effort for development

which it inspired over 30 years ago.

The second important point:

The US has accumulated substantial arrears both to the U.N. system and to be the

multilateral concessional financing facilities, due to Congressional reluctance to approve the necessary appropriations. Plans

discussed with Congress in 1994 to eliminate

these arrears over the next few years are

welcome. At the same time these plans appear to imply a reduction in US contributions to future financing of these agencies

and facilities. This would represent a shift in

burden-sharing to other DAC Members, and

might have serious consequences for upcoming replenishments of the International Development Association (IDA) and the soft

windows of the regional development banks.

But perhaps more telling than anything else is the percentage of gross national product [GNP] that is used for

foreign aid among the 21 wealthy nations.

I ask my colleagues to look at this

table, and I do not believe we can look

at it with pride.

Mr. President, we are shortly going

to be making decisions on our budget,

and one of the questions is: Are we

going to be less sensitive to the needs

of the poor, both within our country

and beyond the borders of our country?

I hope we will provide a sensible and

humanitarian answer, that suggests we

should be helpful to those in need.

The table follows:

Net ODA from DAC countries in 1993

[As percent of GNP]

Denmark ............................................ 1.03

Norway .............................................. 1.01

Sweden ............................................... 0.98

Netherlands ....................................... 0.82

France ............................................... 0.63

Net ODA from DAC countries in 1993—

Continued

Canada ............................................... 0.45

Finland .............................................. 0.45

Belgium ............................................. 0.39

Germany ............................................ 0.37

Australia ........................................... 0.35

Luxembourg ....................................... 0.35

Switzerland ........................................ 0.33

Italy ................................................... 0.31

United Kingdom ................................. 0.31

Austria ............................................... 0.30

Portugal ............................................ 0.29

Japan ................................................. 0.26

New Zealand ...................................... 0.25

Spain ................................................. 0.25

Ireland ............................................... 0.20

United States ..................................... 0.15

Total DAC ................................. 0.30

f ∑

AFRICA

∑ Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the World

Bank issues an annual report on regional perspectives.

Because I formerly chaired the Subcommittee on Africa for the Senate

Foreign Relations Committee and have

a continuing interest in that continent, I read their report on Africa

with special interest.

There are some things that are worth

noting.

One is that, excluding South Africa,

the gross domestic product [GDP]—national income—grew by just 1.4 percent. That is a low growth rate for an

area with a high population growth

rate. Fundamentally, it means there is

a continuing decline in the standard of

living that should concern all of us.

The high debt burden they mention is

also something to be concerned about.

They did note ‘‘the political transition sweeping the continent, noting

that a few years ago there were only

six democracies in Africa and the number had reached 29 by the end of June

1994.’’ But they also note in the story

that while in general democracies fare

better, some of them are having a difficult time, and there are exceptions to

democracies faring better, including

the repressive Government of Sudan.

Mr. President, I ask that the article

be printed in the RECORD.

The article follows:

AFRICA

The year 1993, on the whole, was a difficult

one for the countries of the Africa region, as

gross domestic product (GDP), excluding

South Africa, grew by just 1.4 percent. Although this represents an improvement over

1992, it is nevertheless disappointing, considering the region’s high rate of population

growth and the level needed for development. As in previous years, the countries implementing major reforms, and therefore

benefiting from the Special Program of Assistance (SPA), saw their aggregate output

increase by 2.1 percent, or more than the average for the region.1 The sixteen core (or

steady) reformers did still better, as their

GDP rose by 2.8 percent; the countries comprising the CFA Zone, however, saw their

economies contract for a third consecutive

year.2 A positive development in 1993 was

that, on average, the low-income countries

performed better than the middle-income

Footnotes at end of article.