May 9, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE H 4599

Rights Practices,’’ including the report

for 1994, and the United Nations Human

Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, has annually condemned Cuba for

its gross violations of human rights.

We salute such condemnation.

We also are aware of the deliberate

sinking of the tugboat 13th of March

which this House of Representatives

unanimously condemned which resulted in the deaths of 40 people, that

incident, including over 20 children. In

congressional testimony the Secretary

of State has stated that the sinking

demonstrated the brutal nature of the

Castro regime. How does the U.S. Government intend to ensure the rights of

individual dissidents, of human rights

activists, of former political prisoners,

and other objectors to the Castro dictatorship with legitimate claims to political asylum if they are picked up at sea

and returned automatically to Cuban

officials? Will there be any form of INS

personnel on board, or where will they

be taken to process their political asylum cases? Those questions remain unanswered.

Under Secretary Tarnoff suggests the

Cuban dictatorship can be trusted. Yet

it is my understanding that a group of

20 Cuban nationals who recently were

deported by the Government of Belize

to Cuba have been detained in Cuba by

Castro’s security forces. How can you

ensure that Cubans whom the United

States repatriates will be treated differently and that they will not suffer

retribution? Can you be certain they

will be able to keep their jobs, ration

cards, apartments, and any personal effects that they put at risk upon leaving? What further ability will U.S. staff

have to monitor the increasing flow to

the U.S. Interest Section? I do not believe we have that capacity. And what

is the State Department’s position and

this administration’s position regarding Cuban law which was reinstated

after the September 9, 1994 accords

which forbids illegal exit from the

country? It is my understanding that

under that Cuban law, people who flee

the country are considered as having

created a crime punishable as treason.

If the law is in effect, how is it possible

to believe that repatriated Cubans will

not suffer under said law?

Finally, we stated, this administration has stated and the Secretary of

State has stated, that we want to foster change in Cuba. But if change is

ever to come to Cuba, the human

rights activists, the dissidents, and political prisoners who are willing to risk

their lives under a brutal dictatorship

must know that political asylum is

available to them in the United States,

and I do not believe the State Department has the necessary safeguards to

ensure that those who fight for democratic change can acquire political asylum if their lives are in danger.

That is the reality of this policy that

is forthcoming. The fact of the matter

is that we could have sought the family

reunification we seek to do with the

people in Guantanamo, saved the taxpayers a million dollars a year, and not

have negotiated with the Castro dictatorship in violating basic tenets of

human rights, one, that we are a signatory to, the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights, which is to ensure that

people have the right to freely leave

their country.

b 1845

And in our case, in our own immigration law, to ensure that those who

truly have a case for political asylum

can purport it. The fact of the matter

is this policy simply does not create

that possibility, and in fact it dooms

those who are political dissidents,

human rights activists, the people who

could make change in Cuba to knowing

that the United States has closed their

door on them.

previous order of the House, the genIt is a sad day in our history.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

ftleman from West Virginia [Mr. RAHALL] is recognized for 5 minutes.

[Mr. RAHALL addressed the House.

His remarks will appear hereafter in

the Extensions of Remarks.]

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

THE CLEAN WATER ACT

fprevious order of the House, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. PALLONE]

is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to

discuss the Clean Water Act and the reauthorization that the House will begin

to consider tomorrow and for the remainder of this week.

The Clean Water Act, as we know it,

in my opinion, and the resources it protects are in jeopardy pursuant to this

reauthorization that we are about to

consider tomorrow.

In the committee process, waivers

and exemptions have been expanded

while bill-strengthening amendments

repeatedly met with defeat, and the result of this legislation which we begin

with tomorrow, H.R. 961, in my opinion, will be deterioration of over 20

years of clean water efforts, efforts

that have successfully moved us in the

direction of fishable, swimmable waters.

With H.R. 961, esoteric costs and benefits will rule the day at the expense of

human health and safety and protection of invaluable natural resources. If

H.R. 961, Mr. Speaker, as it now exists,

is passed it will be more difficult, in

my opinion, to explain to my constituents and others why they cannot fish in

local streams, why they are losing

business due to beach closings and

other reductions in recreation and

tourism, and why their property values

have decreased or why their drinking

water is not usable.

I would hope over the next few days,

as the number of amendments are proposed on the House floor that would

seek to strengthen the Clean Water Act

and reauthorization and bring back, if

not improve, the existing law, that we

would see many of our colleagues join

in targeting a number of detrimental

provisions of H.R. 961, of which I would

like to list a few.

One is the existing waivers for combined sewer overflows and industrial

pretreatment. Another is ocean discharge in place of full secondary treatment. Another is the loss of wetlands

protection, the abolition of the coastal

zone nonpoint source program, the erosion of the Great Lakes initiative, the

elimination of the EPA from dredged

material disposal decisions, insufficient enforcement and lack of citizen

rights provisions.

Mr. Speaker, if I could just read some

sections of an article that appeared in

the New York Times on April 2 which

outlines some of the problems with

H.R. 961. It says, and I am reading from

sections, that the Clean Water Act of

1972, the existing bill, has done much

to make America’s water fishable and

swimmable. Experts in both parties regard it as the most successful of the

environmental mandates passed in

Congress since Earth Day 1970. However, the new provision we are about to

consider tomorrow in H.R. 961 blasts so

many holes in this law it is hard to

know where to begin. Basically, they

would demolish the underlying strategy of the original act. The 1972 law

conceded it was impossible to measure

the dollar benefits of clean water

against the costs of cleaning it up. So,

in fact, if industry was instructed to

use the best available technology to

control pollution, even though that

may not be the perfect answer, it has

worked.

The new law, by contrast, would

postpone any further improvement in

water quality unless it could be provided the benefits in health, swimmable, fish stocks are worth the cost.

That means monetizing the value of a

cleaner environment, a nearly impossible process.

The bill that we are going to consider

this week would relax national water

quality standards, provide certain industries with further exemptions from

whatever laws remain on the books,

and make voluntary a program that

now requires States and cities to control storm water pollution. Not least,

it would reverse a 25-year effort to preserve diminishing wetlands. Scientists

now estimate there are 100 million

acres of wetlands remaining in the

United States, doing what the wetlands

do so well, filtering pollutants an nourishing organisms essential to the food

chain.

By drastically narrowing the definition of what a wetland is, the bill

would make millions of acres available

to developers and the oil and gas industry.

In brief, the bill we are about to consider would make it much easier for

polluters to pollute.

Mr. Speaker, I have to decry this legislation because I know for the last 7 or
H 4600 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE May 9, 1995

8 years or so, since I have been in Congress, at the Jersey shore we have seen

a steady increase in water quality.

Beaches that in 1988, when I was first

elected, were closed and were not available for tourism and were basically

making almost impossible for the Jersey shore to come back economically,

those beaches are now open, the water

quality is improved, my constituents

are looking forward to a great summer

beginning the end of this month. But

they can not believe that this House or

this Congress would seek to gut, if you

will, the very legislation that has made

that possible.

I hope that many of my colleagues

over the next few days will join with

me in passing some strengthening

amendments so that the Clean Water

Act will continue to be viable into the

next century.

FIGHTING THE WAR ON

TERRORISM

fThe SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. FOX] is

recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on April 19 a tragedy occurred

which rocked the Nation. For the second time in recent years, terrorists

struck a target in the United States

and, at the same time, dealt a blow to

our national sense of security. As everyone now knows, a terrorist, or group

of terrorists, exploded a car bomb in

front of the Federal office building in

Oklahoma City, killing hundreds of

adults and children and leaving scores

injured.

We, as a Nation, now realize that it

could happen to any of us, anywhere,

and none of us are immune—not even

our children.

In the painful days which have followed, citizens began to take stock of

the situation and Congress will consider its legislative options to address

this. How can we prevent this kind of

disaster from ever happening again?

The most truthful answer is that we

can’t completely prevent these kinds of

tragedies, but we can take appropriate

steps to reduce the number and severity of them.

As the magnitude of the horror in

Oklahoma City was fully felt, all

Americans began to realize that the

terrorist bombing had profoundly

changed all our lives, not just those of

us who have lost loved ones in the

nightmare attack.

We experienced a tragic lesson that

day. Terrorism is not just something to

be feared from foreign nationalists; it

can be a horror from within our country as well. There are obvious and dramatic lessons to be learned by the

American people in the wake of this

disaster. We need to examine the balance of power between the authority of

the state versus the rights of the individual.

In the House, we are considering several measures. The State-Sponsored

Terrorism Responsibility Act would

hold state sponsors of terrorism responsible for their actions and allow

American victims to have a means of

redress. This bill will amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to provide specific jurisdiction for lawsuits

against countries that support or condone terrorism, torture or genocide.

International terrorism poses a grave

threat to the interests and security of

the United States both at home and

abroad. Outlaw states continue to

serve as sponsors and promoters of this

reprehensible activity by providing a

safe haven, terrorist training and

weapons. This legislation will make

those states responsible for their actions and the actions of those they support in their terroristic efforts.

Other bills in the House would place

new restrictions on the granting of

visas to aliens linked to terrorism activities and would remove restrictions

on a database that helps identify aliens

with ties to terrorists seeking admission to the United States.

The House measure would also repeal

the 1990 law that forbids consular officials from denying visas based solely

on an alien’s membership in a known

terrorist organization and would establish deportation proceedings against

aliens living in the United States and

engaged in terrorist activities.

It would further restrict the use, purchase, sale and transfer of nuclear materials, plastic explosives and toxic

gases and would encourage broader disclosure by consumer reporting agencies

to the FBI for counterintelligence and

counterterrorism investigations.

Finally, the House is considering legislation which would give the FBI

greater access to hotel/motel records

for the purpose of identifying subjects

of terrorism investigations.

Each bill before Congress deserves

careful consideration and I hope we

will be able to incorporate the best

ideas of each into a bipartisan

antiterrorism package with sufficient

teeth to help us put an end to the

senseless criminal violence we have

seen in Oklahoma City, at the World

Trade Center, on the Achille Lauro and

in the skies over Lockerbie, Scotland.

And for the families of those who

were killed in Oklahoma City we offer

our prayers and condolences. We will

do everything within our power to ensure that those who committed the

cowardly acts of violence will be

brought to justice and punished. It

won’t bring back those who lost their

lives, but it will send a strong signal

that our Government will no longer

tolerate such acts against the freedomloving people of this great Nation.

A DARK DAY IN AMERICAN

fHISTORY

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. DEUTSCH] is

recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, at about

12 o’clock this afternoon, a United

States Coast Guard vessel brought 13

Cubans who had left Cuba in a raft

back to a military base inside of Cuba.

That Coast Guard vessel was escorted

by two Cuban naval warships in this

act.

It is a first time. Today is truly, unfortunately, a dark day in American

history, a dark day for the Coast

Guard, a day which hopefully will be a

very short day and short time period in

American history.

But if we do not act, it will be a day

that in years to come people will look

back, I am sure, with remorse and regret, the first time in American history that the U.S Government has repatriated people to a Communist dictatorship.

It is a symtomatic problem of a

Cuban policy by this administration

that has been schizophrenic, at best.

We were told during the Guantanamo

exodus that it was impossible to blockade the island. Yet the administration,

in fact, has blockaded the island with

the help of the Cuban Government and

Cuban Navy in a one-way blockade,

preventing people from leaving.

The island could have been blockaded

several months ago, in fact, even up to

a year ago, to prevent a migration

which did occur of tens of thousands of

people.

Our country has become a partner

with Castro in repression of his people

at this point in time. The 13 people

that have been returned to Cuba were

not sent back to Canada, were not sent

back to Mexico, were sent back to a

country which this Government has

continuously called, and by accurate,

independent accounts from Amnesty

International, press accounts, the most

repressive government in this hemisphere, a terrorist government, a government in terms of world history that

stands out as one of the worst abusers

of human rights in the history of this

planet.

The Attorney General, in announcing

this change in policy, said that those

who returned to Cuba were to be guaranteed no reprisals. I asked the Attorney General this evening why then the

secrecy in the return, why then the

delay in the actions? These people were

picked up in a boat on Friday. Today is

Tuesday.

It defies logic, based on the history of

the country of terrorist incidents that

occur in Cuba almost on a daily basis

that we know about, obviously scores

that we do not know about, that there

will not be reprisals. It defies logic.

You do not have to be the Secretary

of State of the United States, you do

not have to have gotten a Ph.D. in

international relations to understand

the nature of the Cuban Government.

And again, I asked the Attorney General why into a military base, why not

into Havana Harbor where there would

have been at least some foreign press

to record the incident, some stringers