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
May 9, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE H 4601

from local papers in south Florida to

record the incident?

There is a real question as well in

terms of the process of determining political asylum of those 123 people while

they were on the vessel. The administration has given myself as well as

other Members of Congress who have

inquired totally conflicting reports in

terms of the status hearings of those

people.

This administration and, in fact, this

Congress is faced with a choice. We

cannot have it both ways. We all profess that our desire is to bring down

the Castro dictatorship, which we must

bring down, a relic of decades past, an

evil empire 90 miles from our shore.

And yet in order to do that, we have

the resources at our disposal to do it.

Yet we have chosen not to.

fb 1900

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING

FROM OKLAHOMA CITY?

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr.

LATOURETTE). Under a previous order

of the House, the gentleman from West

Virginia [Mr. RAHALL] is recognized for

5 minutes.

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in

outrage to take exception to words attributed to a constituent of a Member

of this House, as reported in the April

26, 1995 edition of The South Whidbey

Record published in 2nd District of the

State of Washington, that a revered,

senior Member of the U.S. Senate

should be killed, and that the person

killing him should be given a medal

during a Town hall meeting which I assume was called at taxpayers’ expense.

I take even greater exception to the

fact that a Member of this body did not

disavow or dissociate himself from, his

constituent for calling for the murder

of a sitting Member of the U.S. Senate,

Senator ROBERT C. BYRD of West Virginia.

I take great exception to a Member

of this House, who not only did not

censure or otherwise refute his constituent’s call for murder, but allegedly went on to state, and I quote:

‘‘He should be tarred and feathered

and run out of the country.’’

Peter Coogan, staff reporter for the

aforementioned newspaper in south

Whidbey Island, WA, who opens his article with the words: ‘‘To Kill a U.S.

Senator or merely to tar and feather

him,’’ reports that a Member of this

body, whom he claims was elected

based on a campaign that attacked the

Federal Government, allegedly made

the statement at a town meeting in response to his constituent’s call for the

‘‘killing’’ of Senator ROBERT BYRD.

Mr. Speaker, these are dangerous

times for unguarded, irresponsible

speech, and we have every reason and

every right to expect a Member of this

body to strongly disavow such speech

and to advise any constituent that

murder is not an option in this country.

Am I in a total state of stunned disbelief that a Member of the House of

Representatives let this kind of statement about killing a U.S. Senator go

unchallenged when such rhetoric may

have led to the killing of more than 160

innocent people in Oklahoma City’s

Federal building? Yes, I am.

Have we learned nothing from that

evil act that shook a nation to its

core?

Should I be surprised at such rhetoric

being used in just days after Oklahoma

City, when the GOP’s national committee planned to have as its honored

guest a convicted felon-turned-radiotalk-show-host at a gala party fundraiser only days before the last body

was brought out of that bombed out

Federal building? A talk-show host

who advised his listeners to shoot for

the head of Federal agents, as the best

way of killing them, and who bragged

about using profiles of our President

for target practice? Why be surprised?

Mr. Speaker, I request that the newspaper article to which I have reference

be printed in the RECORD immediately

following my remarks.

Mr. Speaker, the newspaper article to

which I referred is as follows:

[From the South Whidbey Record, Apr. 26,

1995]

METCALF SAYS BYRD SHOULD BE TARRED,

FEATHERED

(By Peter Coogan)

To kill a U.S. Senator, or merely to tar

and feather him.

The question sparked some light-hearted

banter between U.S. Rep. Jack Metcalf and

one of his constituents at a Congressional

Town Hall Meeting in Oak Harbor Saturday.

It came up when Metcalf tried to explain

why, as a rule, he votes against large, heavily amended ‘‘omnibus’’ spending bills, even

if they contain some good ideas.

As an example of past abuse, he said a senator had hidden the cost of a Coast Guard facility for an East Coast state in the emergency relief spending for victims of the California earthquake. He asked the crowd to

guess which eastern state.

‘‘West Virginia,’’ said Angelo Kolvas of

Oak Harbor.

Yes, Metcalf said. The culprit was former

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman

Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, who ‘‘steals

money all over America.’’

Metcalf started to suggest some punishment for Byrd, saying ‘‘he should be——’’

Kolvas interrupted with ‘‘somebody should

kill him and give them a medal.’’

Metcalf said: ‘‘He should be actually tar

and feathered and run out of the country. I

mean, I’m serious. He steals money because

he’s chairman of the Senate Appropriations

Committee, or one of the committees, and

he’s always the one on the conference committee, in the middle of the night. He’s stuffing pork in there for West Virginia, brutally.’’

Kolvas suggested that other congresspeople are guilty of the same thing.

‘‘This gentleman is right,’’ Metcalf said.

‘‘It is the fault of Congress, but Senator Byrd

still should be tarred and feathered.’’

Telephoned later, Kolvas said, ‘‘I am not a

vindictive person but if that guy would die

today, that wouldn’t bother me a damn bit.’’

He added, ‘‘I really don’t think anybody

should kill Byrd. That was a little strong.’’

RETURNING FISCAL SANITY TO

OUR BUDGET PROCESS

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under

the Speaker’s announced policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. EHRLICH] is recognized for 60

minutes as the designee of the majority leader.

Mr. EHRLICH. I rise, Mr. Speaker, to

engage my colleague from California in

the 5th installment of our series of colloquys. The gentleman from California

[Mr. RADANOVICH] and I have in the

past now 120 days, I believe approximately, talked about the Contract

With America, and the themes behind

the Contract With America, and the

regulatory reform, and legal reform,

welfare reform, and a lot of the initiatives that we campaigned on that

formed the Contract With America,

and, Mr. Speaker, I have been thinking

about that a lot these last days as now

this great House turns its attention to

Medicare, and the Federal budget, and

doing what a lot of us were sent here to

do, which is to return a sense of fiscal

sanity to this country and to the budget process of this House. And, Mr.

Speaker, as I thought about all this,

and I thought about a lot of the rhetoric being heard around this town

these days, I again thought about the

common themes that seem to occur or

recur every time we discuss an important issue in this House, and the

premise, whenever comes to an economic issue, Mr. Speaker, seems to be

all tax cuts cost the United States

Treasury in direct proportion to the

tax cuts. Tax cuts are mutually exclusive of the budget cuts. There is no

multiplier effect when tax cuts put

more money into the pockets of individuals and business.

Premise number two seems to be that

we ignore the accepted economic realities and real life experiences of tax increases on the one hand and tax decreases on the other, and, Mr. Speaker,

I thought of all this in the context of

Medicare and what this majority is

now planning to do with respect to

Medicare, because there is certainly a

lot of talk these days, a lot of heat, and

smoke and mirrors on this floor and

around this town, and Mr. Speaker, in

order to create a context for this debate I thought to myself what example

could I think of in the recent past

where good politics and bad economics

came together.

And Mr. Speaker before I get to that,

I would like just to tell the House an

example of what I am talking about.

Today’s message from the House Democrat leadership:

GOP makes its choice. Seniors cough

up $900 a year to pay for the wealthy’s

tax cut. House Republicans returned

from the party conference last week

united by a plan to cut Medicare to pay

for the $345 billion tax cut for the

wealthy. Under the pretense they will

be, quote unquote, fixing Medicare. Republicans have identified Medicare cuts

as the cash cow for their tax give away

to the wealthy.