S5918 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 1, 1995

step for man; one giant leap for mankind?’’ Buzz Aldrin’s inspiring remarks

brought back that momentous day—

July 20, 1969—when the Eagle landed

and man’s first steps were taken on the

moon. Most importantly, he made it

clear to the students in the audience

that they, too, can and will accomplish

great things.

I am pleased to share Dr. Aldrin’s remarks with my colleagues and ask that

they be printed in the RECORD.

The remarks follow:

A SPEECH BY BUZZ ALDRIN UPON THE DEDICATION OF THE SCHOOL NAMED IN HIS HONOR

Few people have the opportunity to attend

the dedication of a school that has been

named for them. My family and I are appreciative that the leadership of Fairfax County

named Aldrin Elementary School in my

honor, rather than in my memory! Thank

you very much. It is a privilege to be here.

Twenty-five years ago it was a privilege to

be there. It was incredible to be someone

who lived the words, ‘‘to go where no man

has gone before,’’ and science fiction became

scientific fact when we walked on the moon.

Some of you in the audience may still remember where you were when you heard

that the Eagle had landed. Some of you sat

glued to a television screen as I climbed

down to the surface of the moon. For a nation unwilling to accept second place in the

race for space, it was a declaration of victory. For a world believing that space was an

unconquerable frontier, it was a shout of triumph. ‘‘One small step for man; one giant

leap for mankind.’’

I still hear those words in my ears, just

like the hallways of this school echo with

the steps of boys and girls and adults. Each

day students, teachers, and administrators

alike are taking small steps together to embrace the future. Some steps are taken in

wheelchairs. Some steps are aided by walkers. Some steps are the small steps of two

year olds and the larger ones are the steps of

12 years olds. But no one really moves toward the future alone. Each of us has been

helped in our stride toward tomorrow. The

steps that occur within this school are not

steps taken alone. Parents bold the hand of

their children, each step a step of love.

Teachers hold the hands of students, each

step a step of knowledge. Administrators

hold the hands of students, parents, and faculty so that each step is supported. And community people, business leaders, people like

Brian M. Mulholland, government officials

like Senator Robb, Senator Warner, and so

many others join hands and walk with this

student body because the steps of students

and faculty may look like small strides, but

actually they are the steps that will take us

into a world that will look very different.

It is here that you must take advantage of

the latest in science and technology. It is

here that you must realize that no dream is

too small. And it is from here that a new

generation of All-Stars have been born. Your

theme this year has been ‘‘Reaching for the

Moon With Its Stars,’’ and appropriately so.

Schools are places for those small steps that

later become giant leaps. It is here that

hopes are nurtured and cultivated. It is here

that children can be instructed to do what

others have done, and be challenged to do

what no one else has accomplished.

My message to you today is that ‘‘No

dream is too high for those with their eyes in

the sky.’’

You honor more than me and my name

with this school. You honor the dreams that

propelled our nation to explore space and the

hopes that continue to lead us toward the future. May we continue to honor our hopes

and dreams by enabling the small steps of

children to become giant leaps for humanity.

It is obvious that ‘‘It’s one small step for

man; one giant leap for mankind’’ every day

at Aldrin Elementary School.

f∑

CUT CORPORATE WELFARE

∑ Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, there has

been a great deal of praise to various

people for direct lending, including

some to PAUL SIMON.

But the person who really pioneered

direct lending for the student loan program and was convinced of its usefulness before I was, is Congressman TOM

PETRI, a Republican Member from Wisconsin.

Recently, he sent a ‘‘Dear Colleague’’

letter on direct lending because it is

now threatened by people who profit

from the present system.

His ‘‘Dear Colleague’’ is titled ‘‘Cut

Corporate Welfare,’’ and I ask that it

be printed in the RECORD.

The letter follows:

CUT CORPORATE WELFARE

DEAR COLLEAGUE: Those of us who call ourselves fiscal conservatives won’t have one

shred of credibility as budget cutters if we

are unwilling to go after corporate welfare

with the same zeal we apply to other types of

waste. And in this kind of effort, liberals

should be willing to join us. Please consider

the following case carefully.

Suppose you were a banker and you were

able to make loans that: were fully guaranteed by the federal government (i.e. as safe

as t-bills); paid you interest directly from

the federal government for a period of years

at 2.5% more than the interest on t-bills;

were fully as liquid as t-bills (or even more

so) because you could sell them at any time

at face value or even a slight premium in a

large secondary market with plenty of eager

buyers; require no credit-worthiness analysis

up front; and required no collection effort for

a period of years (you do nothing but sit

back and collect your interest), after which

you could still sell them or start collecting

on them and receiving an extra .6% interest?

Wouldn’t that be a great deal? Wouldn’t

you fight like Hell to keep it? You bet. And

the deal exists—it’s the guaranteed student

loan program. But it’s a lousy deal for the

taxpayers. They’d be much better off selling

t-bills themselves to finance the loans (rather than renting banks’ capital at 2.5% more

than the t-bill rate) and then contracting for

loan servicing with the current private

servicers on a competitive bid basis. And

guess what? That’s what direct lending is.

It’s still a public/private partnership, but the

one useful function the private sector performs—loan servicing—is priced in a market

process rather than a political negotiation

over interest rate premiums.

Think about it another way: what useful

function are the banks providing? They can’t

assess risk. They take no risk. We can get

cheaper capital. And we wouldn’t even need

their servicing if we collected these loans as

income taxes through the IRS.

Make no mistake—guaranteed student

loans contain an enormous bank subsidy.

That’s one of their four main sources of

waste (the others are default costs, administrative complexity, and mistargetted subsidies for students). If we don’t get rid of this

corporate welfare, we’ll have to cut more

somewhere else.

The choice is clear—are you for the banks

or for the taxpayers? True fiscal conservatives should have no doubt about whose side

to take.

Sincerely,

fTHOMAS E. PETRI, M.C.∑

VETERANS’ COMMUNITY-BASED

CARE ACT

∑ Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I

rise to support S. 725, the Veterans’

Community-Based Care Act of 1995, introduced by my distinguished colleague, Senator ROCKEFELLER. I am

honored to be an original cosponsor of

this bill that I deeply believe is of signal importance to veterans and to the

future of VA health care.

The VA currently is planning to revamp its health care system to reduce

its strong emphasis on inpatient hospital care in order to provide more veterans with health care in outpatient

and noninstitutional settings, including community-based facilities when

such care is appropriate. This bill will

not only support VA’s restructuring efforts, but also help some of our most

vulnerable veterans—those with substance abuse problems who require rehabilitation services; elderly veterans

who are infirm; and homeless veterans

who suffer from severe mental illnesses

or substance abuse problems.

Let me stress that these are proven

programs with successful track records

and this bill will extend existing authorities for these worthwhile and innovative programs for about 5 years.

Mr. President, I would like to briefly

describe these programs so that my

colleagues may more fully appreciate

their value to needy individual veterans and to the VA health system as a

whole:

One provision would extend VA authority to contract with non-VA halfway houses for rehabilitation services

for veterans with substance abuse problems. This worthwhile program was

first authorized in 1979, and currently

operates at 106 medical centers, with

6,300 veterans treated in fiscal year

1994. These community half-way houses

perform a vital function in facilitating

a veteran’s successful transition from

inpatient substance abuse treatment

and detoxification to independent living within the community. The halfway houses provide a supervised, substance free environment, and help develop independent living and social

skills. I strongly and unequivocally

supported extension of this program in

the 103d Congress and I firmly believe

it merits further extension.

The bill also would extend VA’s authority to provide health and healthlinked service to veterans who otherwise would need nursing home care. It

enables veterans to live at home and

receive, at less cost to VA and the taxpayer, the same type of services that

would otherwise be provided in a hospital or nursing home. Mr. President,

this can be best described as a win-winwin program. Veterans would be able

to continue living at home, costs to the

taxpayer would be cut significantly,
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.