WELDON ON THE PRESIDENT'S
STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
(House of Representatives - January 27, 2000)
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January
6, 1999, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 60 minutes as the
designee of the majority leader.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, tonight, as I sit in the Chamber with our
colleagues, it will be my 14th opportunity and honor to sit in this room as the President
of the United States delivers the State of the Union address for this Nation for the year
2000, the beginning of the new millennium.
I have had the pleasure of sitting through speeches by Ronald Reagan, by George Bush
and, most recently, by President Clinton. We are going to hear a lot tonight, and I want
to talk tonight about some of the things that we will likely hear and will not hear, and I
want to talk about some foreign policy issues relative to a trip that I had the pleasure
of leading with a bipartisan delegation of Members in November of last year to Russia.
Madam Speaker, what we know we are going to hear tonight, because of the huge surplus
that is being generated with our economic upturn and the balanced budget that we are now
in the midst of securing, we are going to hear the President basically recreate Christmas
all over again. The American people will hear litany after litany of new programs, new
ideas, new ways to spend money that has been generated because of our surplus.
And, believe me, Madam Speaker, there is going to be something for everyone. There will
be a new program for everyone in the country. And Madam Speaker, it kind of amazes me
because the American people have to understand, they can send us any amount of money they
want, and we will find a way to spend it in Washington. But is that really what we are
here for? Is our goal here to find new ways to create new programs with fancy sounding
titles, with new bureaucracies, that are for the most part run by political appointees
that are going to better tell the people locally how to run their lives or better solve
the problems locally than if we gave the money back to the American people and then let
them make those basic and fundamental decisions?
Believe me, tonight, if there is one thing we know we will hear it will be a Christmas
tree list of goodies that the President wants to give out all across this Nation. And he
will try to hit every group in America there is. Every group.
Madam Speaker, we have done some good things over the past 6 years. And, yes, many of
them have been with the bipartisan effort in this body and the other body. But, yes, some
of the times we have had to fight the administration every step of the way.
I can recall when the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich), our distinguished Committee on
the Budget chairman, first proposed balancing the budget 6 years ago. The President got
caught and he did not know what to say. In fact, I remember the famous commercials where
he would say we are going to balance the budget in 8 years, 7, 6, 5, 4. He really did not
know because he had no plan. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) stuck his neck out and
said we will submit a plan for a balanced budget, when no one else believed him, including
some on the Republican side. The gentleman from Ohio persevered and eventually we
accomplished what many thought was impossible.
Now, the President will take credit for the balanced budget. But in fact if we look
back over the past 7 years, I can recall a couple of years where the President's budget he
submitted to us got no votes in the House. Not one vote. Because no Member from either
side would support the President's budget plan. Yet tonight President Clinton will take
credit for the balanced budget that we are now enjoying which has helped to promoted our
economic success.
Our Congress, our leadership here, with the support of some Democrats, has tried to
give back as much money from the surplus as possible to the American people. But here the
President has fought us every step of the way. He has rather desired to keep the money in
Washington where the bureaucracy can better decide how to spend funds than allowing the
American people to get that money back for themselves. There are some in this city who
think that the money we collect from the taxpayers of America really is our money as
opposed to their money.
Here tonight we will hear the President talk about welfare reform. What we will not
hear about tonight, Madam Speaker, is the President saying that he made a mistake twice
and vetoed the welfare reform bill. Because two times over the past 7 years the Congress,
bipartisan, Democrats and Republicans, passed welfare reform in both bodies. Two times.
And in both of those cases the President vetoed welfare reform.
It was not until he read the polls and he saw that the American people wanted welfare
reform that he finally signed the welfare reform bill the third time, and then announced
after he signed it he was going to make substantive changes to the bill that we had passed
that he signed in the following fiscal year. And then good things happened with welfare
reform, as we said they would, for the past 5 years, 6 years, and the President now will
take credit for that tonight. He will say look at how many people are working as opposed
to being on welfare. Where were those President's comments when he vetoed both welfare
reform bills that the Congress passed with bipartisan votes over the past 5 years?
We will hear the President talk about protecting Social Security tonight. But, Madam
Speaker, we will not hear about the President last year wanting to use 60 percent of the
Social Security surplus for other programs. We will not hear him talk about that. We will
not hear him talk about the fact that Congress resisted and said, oh, no, Mr. President,
we are not going to spend any of the Social Security Trust Fund money. We are going to
protect all of that for our senior citizens. So the President will talk about
protecting Social Security, but he will not talk about the fact that he originally wanted
to use a significant portion of those dollars.
Now, we are going to hear the President talk a lot about education tonight, Madam
Speaker. And being a teacher by profession, and one of the 25 Members of Congress who used
to be a classroom teacher, education is very important to me. The President is going to
come out with a lot of grandiose plans to spend a lot of money that is controlled by
Washington, to keep those strings attached so that the bureaucrats in this city control
how local school boards and how local superintendents decide how to best meet the needs of
their people.
One of the things that this Congress has done for the past 5 years has been to allocate
more resources to local schools, attempting every step of the way to remove the
bureaucracy in Washington and allow local school boards and local parents to make
decisions about where local education money could best be spent. Now the President will
talk a good game there, but again it has been the Congress who has led the way, many times
with the President finally signing our legislation into law to give local school
boards and local taxpayers more control in terms of education. And that is where the focus
should be.
As a classroom teacher for 7 years, I understand the importance of allowing local
teachers to decide how to best motivate kids. As someone who worked in a chapter 1 and
Title I program for 3 years, I understand the importance of allowing local school
districts to set the policy priorities and objectives for local students to meet.
Now, we are going to hear the President make a few comments about defense tonight,
Madam Speaker, but in last year's State of the Union I brought a stopwatch with me because
I wanted to see if my hunch was correct regarding the President's focus on national
security. My hunch was correct.
The President spoke for 1 hour and 17 minutes last January. The amount of time he
focused on security issues was 90 seconds. Ninety seconds out of an hour and 17 minutes.
And part of that 90 seconds was when he looked up in the audience and thanked a B-52 pilot
who was flying those bombing missions over in Iraq.
What he did not tell the American people, which was even more important, was that that
B-52 pilot was flying an airplane that will be 75 years old because we do not have the
money to replace it. And what he did not talk to the American people about, and I will
guarantee he will not mention it tonight, is the fact that we have 20,000 young Americans
who are on food stamps today, who are serving their country and yet who have to use food
stamps to take care of their families' needs.
And what the President will not talk about tonight, Madam Speaker, is the fact that he
has deployed our troops in more instances than any administration in the last century. In
fact, Madam Speaker, if we take all the presidents who served from the end of World War II
until 1991, all of those Presidents combined deployed our troops 10 times. This President
has now deployed our troops for the 34th time.
And none of those deployments were paid for. He has put the troops in harm's way and
allowed the Congress to come up with a way to pay for those costs by cutting other parts
of our already decreasing defense budget.
No, the President is not going to talk about the fact that our Navy is now going down
to about 200 ships. He will not talk about the fact that a couple of our Army divisions
have been declared not fit to handle the kinds of missions that they are being asked to
perform. He is not going to talk about the fact that General Schwarzkopf and other
generals have said we could not complete another Desert Storm if it occurred. He will not
talk about the fact that morale in the military is as low today as it has been
since the end of World War II; that our reenlistment rate for pilots is down below 15
percent; that none of the services, except for the Marine Corps, can get young people to
join.
The President will not talk about any of that tonight, Madam Speaker, because in his
mind that is not the State of the Union. In fact, Madam Speaker, his State of the Union is
a Disney-like State of the Union, where we only talk about positive things, where there is
room for both parties to share, but not focus on the negative things that have come about
in some cases by the Congress but in my opinion largely by the failure of leadership in
the White House.
Madam Speaker, this President will not talk about security with any definitive plan in
tonight's speech, we can rest assured on that. Because he took James Carville's advice
very well when he was elected 7 years ago, when James Carville told him, `It's the
economy, stupid. Focus on the economy and don't worry about anything else.' So by not
talking about threats around the world, by not talking about the realities of what is
occurring in Russia and China and the Middle East, between India and Pakistan, by not
talking about those areas where trouble is brewing on a regular basis, the American people
do not think we have to spend any more money on supporting our military.
In fact, Madam Speaker, I would be surprised tonight if the President told the real
story about our relations with Russia and China. Things were going well 7 years ago. In
fact, we had a new era, with Russia becoming a free democracy. Both our government and the
Russian government declared the two countries to be strategic partners.
Where are we today, Madam Speaker? Russia's new strategic partner, as defined by the
new President of Russia, Mr. Putin, is China, not the U.S. In fact, Madam Speaker, our
relationship with Russia has never been worse than it is today. And in fact we have now
seen over the past 12 months meeting after meeting between senior Russian leaders and
senior Chinese leaders where they are now exchanging technology and both of whom are
looking to the U.S. as their enemy. Why is that happening, Madam Speaker? It is happening
because of our failed foreign policy.
Now, the President has had some successes. He deserves to take credit for his work in
helping settle the situation in involving Ireland and Great Britain, and I will give him
the credit for that. But I must say that, while taking the credit for those successes, he
also needs to accept the blame for the failures of our policy in regard to China and
Russia.
Madam Speaker, the delegation that I led to Moscow, in fact to Ukraine, Moldova, and
Moscow this past November, saw firsthand the failures of this administration. Our
delegation consisted of 10 Members of Congress, 7 Republicans and 3 Democrats. The purpose
of our trip was threefold, Madam Speaker: It was to travel to Ukraine at the invitation of
the Ukrainian Rada and President Kuchma, and to set up a formal relationship between the
Rada, the parliament of Ukraine, and the U.S. Congress. This new relationship is to be
modeled after the relationship that I started with Russia 6 years ago.
Because of late votes in November, we had to cancel the formal part of the trip to
Ukraine. However, three members of our delegation broke away and went to Ukraine and did
have the meetings to begin the process of this new relationship. And I am pleased and
happy that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and my good friend, the gentleman from
Colorado (Mr. Schaffer), have agreed to co-chair this new inter-parliamentary relationship
between the Ukrainian Rada and the U.S. Congress, and our trip solidified that
relationship as we started the process off in November of last year.
And by the way we will have another trip of Ukrainian Rada members to the U.S. sometime
in the first quarter of this year. We moved on from Ukraine to Moldova, a country that is
strategically important to America's interest and to the future of Russia and to the
people in that part of the world. We were there at the request and invitation of the
President of Moldova as well as the Parliament.
It was heartwarming, Madam Speaker, that the Speaker of the Moldovan Parliament,
because we could not arrive there during a weekday but had to postpone our visit until
Saturday, convened a special session of the Parliament on Saturday morning. It was
heartwarming to see every member of the Moldovan Parliament sitting in the chamber as our
delegation walked in. And I had the high honor and privilege of addressing the session of
the Parliament to talk about the relationship between the Moldovan people and the people
of the United States.
While in Moldova, in meetings with the President, meetings with the leadership of the
Moldovan government and the majority and opposition leadership of the Parliament, we also
challenged them to establish an interparliamentary relationship with the Congress, which
they have accepted. And I am pleased to announce, Madam Speaker, that the two cochairs of
the Moldovan Parliament-U.S. Congress interchange are in fact the gentleman from
Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).
So again the Congress, in a bipartisan way, made significant contributions to improve
relations with both of those nations.
Then finally, Madam Speaker, we traveled on to Moscow. Our trip to Moscow was a special
trip because we were traveling to Moscow at the invitation of the Duma, the parliament in
Russia. The Duma, back in September of last year, formally invited our interparliamentary
exchange program, co-chaired by the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and myself, to
establish a bilateral relationship of elected parliamentarians to help the Russians
uncover the scandal involving the finances of the Russian Government. We accepted the
request of the Russians to bring a bipartisan delegation to Moscow to begin formal talks
of how we could work with the Russian side to uncover the reasons and the causes of
billions of dollars being stolen by Russian Government officials, by people surrounding
the Yeltsin government and by Russian banking institutions, in some cases with the
cooperation of American institutions. So our trip was to solidify that relationship that
they had asked us to get involved with.
Madam Speaker, our meetings in Moscow were extensive. We met with everyone, from the
mayor of Moscow, Mayor Luzhkov, who is himself a new party official in the fatherland
party, which did very well in the Duma elections in December, to leadership of the Duma,
the vice-speaker of the Duma, the number two person in the state Duma, all the faction
leaders, as well as leadership of Russia involving housing, helping them with their
mortgage programs, which is just starting out, meetings with former Russian officials who
were responsible for programs like biological weapons, so that we can learn more about the
instability that exists within Russia today.
But, Madam Speaker, I want to talk about one meeting that was especially important
because I think this meeting and what happened around this meeting is symbolic of this
administration's policies which I think have caused many of the problems that Russia is
experiencing today and has caused the freezing of the relationship between the U.S. and
Russia unlike at any time since the days of the Cold War.
Madam Speaker, knowing that our bipartisan delegation was going to Moscow at the
request of the Russian Duma, the 26 members of the Duma anti-corruption task force, I
thought in advance that besides meeting with the Duma our bipartisan delegation should
also meet with a man by the name of Skuratov. Mr. Skuratov is roughly the equivalent to
Janet Reno in our government, the top law enforcement official in Russia.
Mr. Skuratov is to weed out corruption, to investigate instances of abuse of power, and
to find out if and where money is being used for illegal purposes that should have been
going to the Russian people.
So, Madam Speaker, as I have done in the past on previous trips to Moscow, I officially
asked our State Department to set up three meetings for us in Moscow with the rest of the
meetings being set up through our own contacts.
The three meetings were with the defense minister of Russia, Mr. Sergeyev, whom I have
met before, with the new at that time the prime minister, and the new president of Russia,
President Putin, who was out of the country when we arrived and we, understandably, could
not meet with him. But the third and perhaps most important meeting was the request that
we made to meet with Mr. Skuratov.
Now, Mr. Skuratov is somewhat of a controversial figure. Besides being the chief
prosecutor in Russia, he was found to have been involved in and, at least, filmed in what
appeared to be on the Russian TV an escapade with a prostitute, or a woman, in a Moscow
hotel. After that little bit of film footage was played by the Russian Government on
national TV, Boris Yeltsin fired Skuratov.
Now, it just so happens, Madam Speaker, that he was fired the day before he was about
to indict senior Russian elected officials who he had found were involved in ripping off
hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that were supposed to go to the Russian
people.
In fact, Madam Speaker, when Boris Yeltsin fired Skuratov the first time, the elected
parliament in Russia, the upper council equivalent to our Senate, the Federation Counsel,
overrode Mr. Yeltsin by a wide margin and said, you will not fire Skuratov; we, in fact,
endorse him.
So then President Yeltsin fired Skuratov a second time, and the Federation Counsel
reinstated Skuratov a second time. So Yeltsin fired him a third time, and the Federation
Counsel reinstated him a third time.
Now, Yeltsin says all along the time period here that he kept firing Skuratov because
he was an immoral person. Now, I do not know whether Mr. Skuratov is an immoral person or
not, Madam Speaker, but I can tell my colleagues this, not only was he fired by President
Yeltsin three times even though the Senate in Russia supported him, but over 25 deputy
prosecutors that were working with Skuratov on the corruption in Russia were fired along
with him.
Now, the hotel film footage only showed one man, it did not show 25 other prosecutors,
involved in immoral acts. Yet all 25 of these prosecutors working for and with Skuratov
were relieved at the same time.
Now, why would they be relieved? What was so significant that Yeltsin found it
important to fire them? Well, that is why I felt it was important for us to meet with
Skuratov and to hear what he had to say. So, Madam Speaker, we requested through our State
Department the opportunity to meet with Skuratov.
Some strange things occurred, Madam Speaker, that I want our colleagues to hear, which
is the reason why I have taken the floor tonight, which I am sure President Clinton will
not talk about tonight in the State of the Union speech because it has been a part of our
policy toward Russia for the past 7 years. We do not like to see or hear bad things coming
from nations where our relationship is based on personalities, like President Clinton to
President Yeltsin.
When we arrived in Moscow, my staff asked the State Department if the meeting had been
set up with Mr. Skuratov. The State Department said, no, we could not arrange the meeting
with Mr. Skuratov. We were very disappointed, to say the least.
The Monday morning we arrived at the Duma headquarters, equivalent to our Capitol
building, we were brought into the committee room where the chairman of the security
committee for the Duma was about to host us, Mr. Ilyukhin, and that was to be followed in
a large hearing room for a public hearing hosted by the chairman of the anti-corruption
task force involving over 20 members of the Russian Duma.
During our meeting with all the Members of Congress, both parties, and Mr. Ilyukhin, a
couple of deputies said to him, do you think it would be possible for us to have a meeting
with Mr. Skuratov?
Upon which Mr. Ilyukhin said, sure, that is easy. We can set that up for you whenever
you like.
I looked over at the State Department official in the room with us and I said, well,
that is interesting because our State Department said they could not reach Mr. Skuratov.
The members of the Duma said, no problem, we will arrange the meeting for you.
The irony of the request and the fact that the Duma members would set up the meeting
was, Madam Speaker, that the State Department then requested of me if they could attend
the meeting with Mr. Skuratov which they had failed to set up.
On Tuesday evening, after our meetings with the Russian leadership, with Mayor Luzhkov,
with the leaders of the Duma, the Federal Counsel, and with agencies of the Russian
Government, at 6 o'clock in the evening in a secret room in our hotel Mr. Skuratov was
seated waiting for Members of Congress to arrive.
I was surprised when we arrived in the meeting room that there was a State Department
employee at the end of the table. I asked him to identify himself, which he did; and he
said he was there at the suggestion of our Ambassador Jim Collins.
So I began the meeting. It was ironic, Madam Speaker, that the State Department that
could not set up the meeting for Members of Congress with Mr. Skuratov would want to have
an official present at the table to monitor what was going to take place.
So I thought I would ask Mr. Skuratov how he found out about the meeting. I said, Mr.
Skuratov how did you know to be here today? He said, some of my friends that you met with
asked me to come over and meet with you, and I told them I was more than happy to meet
with Members of the U.S. Congress.
I said, Mr. Skuratov, when did our State Department contact you to tell you that
Members of Congress wanted to meet with you? He said, Oh, Congressman, your State
Department never contacted me. In fact, I did not know you wanted to meet with me until
Monday night late there was a message on my phone machine at my home asking me to call the
embassy back in Moscow.
That was the evening after we had gotten a commitment from the Duma members that we
would get a meeting with Mr. Skuratov.
Madam Speaker, it is obvious what was going on here. Our State Department did not want
the 10 Members of Congress on the trip to meet face to face with Mr. Skuratov.
Well, at that I was very upset, along with our colleagues who were with me. We asked
the State Department official to leave because we felt he did not have a purpose in being
at the meeting with us except to take notes and perhaps report back to the Yeltsin
government.
Then something strange happened, Madam Speaker, almost like it was out of a James Bond
movie. Here we are in Moscow, in the National Hotel on the third floor in a private room,
and the Members of Congress, including myself, have just kicked out our State Department
official who was in this meeting; and a woman knocks on the door and she has got a fur
coat on and a fur hat and a purse. And she comes in; and I say, excuse me, this is a
private meeting. Would you mind leaving, stepping out of the room? She said, oh, I was
sent here by the U.S. State Department, by our American Embassy in Moscow. I said, well,
this is a private meeting. Would you please leave?
Upon which, Madam Speaker, she took off her fur coat, took off her fur hat and placed
her hat, coat, and pocketbook on the table we were meeting at and walked out of the room.
Now, Madam Speaker, I have met a lot of women in my life and I do not know of any women
that go around leaving their pocketbooks in a room full of strangers. And I just wonder,
Madam Speaker, if that pocketbook had something inside it that will allow someone else to
listen or monitor what Skuratov was telling the Members of Congress that were in that
meeting.
Sounds like a James Bond thriller. Well, sometimes I think this administration gets
involved in James Bond types of activities, especially when someone is about to say
something that might embarrass this administration in terms of our policy toward Russia.
Well, Madam Speaker, with the consent of the Members of Congress with me, I told the
staff to remove the purse, remove the coat, remove the hat so that we could continue our
meeting. And we did.
Madam Speaker, for 2 1/2 hours Members of Congress and senior committee staff from the
Committee on Banking and Financial Affairs, the Joint Economic Committee, and the
Committee on Armed Services sat and listened to Skuratov tell an unbelievable story.
Now, Madam Speaker, I have the notes from both the trip and the meeting, which are
available to any Member of Congress who wants them, which we have already given to our FBI
about what Skuratov said. Let me just give my colleagues a few highlights, Madam Speaker,
because I think the American people would have liked to have heard this tonight as a part
of the State of the Union, why our relationship with Russia has turned so sour.
It is because, while we were reinforcing Yeltsin, the Russian people knew that Yeltsin
and his cronies were ripping off hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of money
that was supposed to go to help the Russian economy. This is what Skuratov said. He said
that he had evidence not just to indict Yeltsin's daughter, Tatianna, but to even lead to
Yeltsin himself that Skuratov was about to indict the senior members of Yeltsin's family
and the senior leaders of the Russian Government when he was brought down and when the
prosecutors with him were fired.
He said he also had evidence that up to 700 senior Russian officials, 700, were
involved in insider GKO bond trading, meaning they were making money off of Russia's
economic problems. While the U.S. and the West were bailing out Russia's economy with
money from the IMF and the World Bank, 700 Russian officials were reaping the financial
benefits of insider trading of GKO bonds.
He gave us one example. He said the foreign minister in Russia during his investigation
he found was making an annual salary of between 4 to 5,000 rubles a month. That is not
much money when we convert it to U.S. dollars. The foreign minister was making 4 to 5,000
rubles a month. Yet Skuratov had evidence that he was involved in insider bond trading in
the millions of U.S. dollars. We have to ask the question, how could a person making 4 to
5,000 rubles a month get access to millions of U.S. dollars? He said that was the norm in
the Russian government of Boris Yeltsin. He also told us that in the most recent IMF
tranche of money that this country guaranteed to go into Russia, it was over $4 billion,
that he could only account for about $300 million that went through the normal banking
process in Russia, that over $4 billion of that IMF money did not go through the normal
banking process that IMF funds would go through.
Madam Speaker, Mr. Skuratov went through a whole litany of the details of the
investigation that he was in the midst of when he was fired. He told us that there is
evidence in Russia and evidence available to document the ties to Russian criminal
elements and in some cases U.S. institutions. We asked him, `Well, what kind of
cooperation did you get from our government?' He said he had had one brief meeting with
FBI Director Louis Freeh but no further subsequent meetings with the FBI. We have since
met with the FBI, we have given them the information, and because I have the highest
confidence in Director Freeh and his agency, we are convinced that he will use that
information and pursue further information that Mr. Skuratov has identified for us. But,
Madam Speaker, my point is a simple one. We will not hear that story tonight in the State
of the Union. We will not hear the story about the instability in Russia. We will not hear
the story, Madam Speaker, about the billions of dollars of U.S. money that has been ripped
off while we sat back and reinforced Yeltsin every step of the
way with the Russian people losing confidence in its relationship between Russia and the
U.S. We also will not hear this story, Madam Speaker, that I would like to see the
President tell, the story of Lieutenant Jack Daley, a 15-year naval intelligence officer
who was lasered 3 years ago by a Russian spy trawler called the Kapitan Man. Jack Daley
was flying a surveillance mission monitoring Russian spy ships that were spying on our
submarine fleet out in Puget Sound. During the mission where he was flying in a helicopter
with a Canadian pilot, they both had a sensation in their eyes as they were taking
photographs of this spy vessel. When they landed, they were taken to the base infirmary
and were told that they had been lasered by a high-powered laser generator.
Madam Speaker, what we will not hear the President talk about tonight is the fact that
our State Department interfered with our Defense Department and would not allow our DOD
personnel to go on board that Russian ship until we had notified the embassy in Moscow
that they had done something wrong. In fact, Bill Gertz in his book `Betrayal' revealed
for the first time the classified cables that were sent between our embassy and the Moscow
embassy, our State Department and our Department of Defense. So instead of protecting our
own naval intelligence officer who had been lasered by a Russian spy ship, we were trying
to make sure again, like we were with the money laundering, that Boris Yeltsin was not
embarrassed. Then something terrible happened with Jack Daley's career. For 15 years he
had been an outstanding sailor, given the highest awards that one can get in the Navy. But
because he questioned why his government was not supporting him but instead protecting
Russia and Boris Yeltsin's leadership, Jack Daley's career was almost brought to a
grinding halt. In fact, Madam Speaker, he was bypassed for a promotion until bipartisan
Members of Congress, people like the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and people like
myself and others got involved, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), in Jack
Daley's case and we said to this administration, `You can't get away with ignoring harm
done to an American soldier because you don't want to embarrass Boris Yeltsin and his
relationship with Bill Clinton.'
When Jack Daley was bypassed this past summer a second time for his promotion, those of
us in the Congress on both sides of the aisle following the case were livid and we
demanded that our Defense Department protect our own military officer. In September of
this year, finally, John Hamre, our Deputy Secretary of Defense, called me and he said,
`Congressman, I think you'll be happy. We had a special Navy panel review the Jack Daley
case and he is being given his promotion.'
Madam Speaker, the point is that what we will not hear the President talk about tonight
are the multitude of times that we have pretended reality was not what it is in Russia or
in China, when we ignored arms control violations, 17 by the Russians, 20 by the Chinese
over the past 7 years, when we had the hard evidence of deliberate arms control violations
by both countries we pretended it did not happen because we did not want to upset the
relationship between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin or Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin. We
will not hear that story tonight, Madam Speaker, because the President will only talk
about the glitz, he will only talk about the economy going well, he will pretend the world
is safe, there are no problems.
He will not talk about the fact that he reversed himself on missile defense because the
bipartisan Congress for 6 years every year passed overwhelmingly bipartisan measures
demanding that this administration move to protect our troops and our people. He will not
talk about the fact tonight that the day after last year's State of the Union speech when
he did not talk about missile defense at all, he had Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen give
a major foreign policy speech when he announced that we were in fact changing our position
and now supportive of missile defense as a Nation. He probably will not talk about the
fact that in last year's State of the Union speech he did not talk to any great length
about the increasing threats from weapons of mass destruction or cyberterrorism but in
fact the week after the State of the Union speech, he gave two speeches, one was on
cyber-terrorism and he said he would request billions of new dollars, and the second was
on weapons of mass destruction and he again said he would request billions of dollars.
My point, Madam Speaker, is we are going to hear a good speech tonight. It is going to
give the President a good bump in the polls. It is going to make the American people feel
good because there is going to be something in it for everybody. We are going to praise
people in the audience, we are going to applaud our troops as the best that have ever
existed in the history of the country, we are going to talk about the economy and we are
going to say everything is rosy, but we are not going to hear the kinds of things that I
have outlined in my 1-hour special order today, Madam Speaker.
Again, there are things this President can take credit for and can share jointly with
the success this Congress has had. But it is not just accepting success. He also has to be
honest with the American people about problems we have not yet solved, about the failed
relationships our country now has with China and Russia, about the fact that we are not
properly funding the men and women serving our country and still have up to 20,000 young
military men and women who have to receive food stamps because we do not pay them enough
to take care of their families. These are the kinds of stories, as well as some of the
others that I have talked about, that I would have hoped to hear from the State of the
Union.
Madam Speaker, in going over these highlights tonight, I have focused every step of the
way on the fact that our successes have been bipartisan in this body and the other body.
None of our successes that I have outlined today, welfare reform, balanced budget,
protecting Social Security, pushing education funds to local schools, trying to increase
funds for our military, dignity in the way we enforce arms control agreements, none of
those successes were Republican successes alone. Sure, the Republican majority allowed
those bills to come to the floor, but in most cases, if not all, it was support from the
Democrat side that helped those bills become reality and become the law of the land. We
will not hear those stories tonight.
We are going to hear a one-word standup session about how great Bill Clinton has been
for America for the past 7 years. And there are going to be those around the country who
are going to say, if we just had control of the Congress, these are the Democrats now, we
could do so much more.
Madam Speaker, in closing, I want to remind the American people of a simple basic fact
that is irrefutable. For the past 50 years, since 1952, the party of President Clinton,
the Democrat Party, has had a chance to govern America time and time again. Let us look at
the history of this country. Under JFK, we had a Democrat President and a Democrat
Congress. Under LBJ, we had a Democrat President and a Democrat Congress. Under Jimmy
Carter, we had a Democrat President and a Democrat Congress. Under Bill Clinton, for the
first 2 years, we had a Democrat President and a
Democrat Congress. Madam Speaker, every American and every colleague needs to ask
themselves, how many times in the last 50 years has the Republican Party had the President
and the Congress?
The answer, Madam Speaker, is zero. The Republican Party has not controlled the White
House and the Congress since 1952.
Our message, Madam Speaker, is we have done good things over the past 5 years. Yes, the
President will take credit for many of them tonight, from the balanced budget to welfare
reform, to saving Social Security, to helping boost up our defense. He will take credit
for all of them. But, Madam Speaker, imagine if the Republican Party for once in the next
election cycle, after 50 years of not having a chance, had a chance to control the House,
the Senate and the White House, something the Democrats have had time and again. Remember,
Madam Speaker, when the Democrats controlled the Congress and the White House, they did
not protect Social Security. They did not reform welfare. They created bigger programs,
out-of-control programs. They had the opportunity time and time again, and they drove this
country into a massive deficit because they always controlled the Congress until 6 years
ago.
So I would only hope tonight as we listen to the President's last State of the Union,
and I know my colleagues will give him the respect that he is due as our Commander in
Chief and as our President, while I may disagree with his policies and may disagree with
some of his decisions, I respect the fact that he is our leader and he is our President
and so I would hope, and I know that our colleagues will give him that respect tonight,
but I only wanted to share, Madam Speaker, some thoughts of things that maybe could have
been said, should have been said but will not be said tonight in this State of the Union
speech for America for the new millennium.
Madam Speaker, I will include one further item. During our trip to Moscow, the leader
of the Kurchatov Institute and a good friend of mine, Yevgeny Velikhov, gave a speech in
our honor at a luncheon he hosted. It is important to understand who Yevgeny Velikhov is.
He is the director of one of the largest institutes in Russia called Kurchatov Institute
in Moscow. It is the institute that developed all of Russia's nuclear programs, their
nuclear technology. Yevgeny gave a speech about relations between the U.S. and Russia that
is absolutely unbelievable. My point in placing this speech in the Congressional Record at
the end of my comments today, Madam Speaker, is that Yevgeny Velikhov represents
mainstream Russia. Russian people want to be our friends. Russian leaders want to work
with us. But we cannot have a policy as we have had over the past 7 years of being so
enamored with Boris Yeltsin, or a personality, that we ignore the reality of what is
occurring in that country, because if we do that again, the Russian people will have the
same feeling toward us then as they have toward us now.
They have seen us ignore the corruption, they have seen us ignore the involvement of
Yeltsin's own family and his friends in stealing money from the Russian people. They have
seen America turn its back when we had evidence of the selling off of technology from
Russian criminal elements to foreign nations. We have got to change that policy. People
like Yevgeny Velikhov understand that. The future of our relationship with Russia I think
can be bright as I think our relationship with China can be bright. There, as this past
weekend I had a chance to speak to the Mid-Atlantic Monte Gade Society of Chinese
Scientists, I said it is an absolute tragedy that this administration is blaming the whole
fiasco over the Chinese technology transfer on one man who they claim stole technology.
Instead of focusing on a Chinese or Asian American, this administration should look to
itself and to its failed policies of allowing proliferation to occur and technology to be
transferred legally to anyone who would pay the price.
Madam Speaker, I would hope that as I close this special order today our colleagues
will think beyond the rhetoric of what we are going to hear tonight and put our minds
together to work, as we did in the last year of this session of the Congress, on some good
initiatives, the kinds of things that we have passed, the kinds of foreign policy actions
that we have taken, and drag the President along for the good of America into the new
millennium and the 21st Century.
Madam Speaker, at this point I would enter into the Record another speech
of Yevgeny Velikhov.
E.P. Velikhov's Speech at the Meeting of Kurchatov
Institute's Scientific Society With a Group of USA Congressmen
Ladies and Gentlemen, we gathered in a memorable time when the ages are changing. This
calendar event is being reinforced by one of the also important circumstance for the whole
mankind: 2000 years of Christ's birthday.
His teaching changed our world. When the mankind was keeping to his commandments it
progressed, but as soon as they were forgotten the mankind became sunken into deep crisis.
And we, having achieved this century border, have got into this no way state.
Practically all the XX century beginning from 1917 and ending by 1990 year, we were
living behind the `iron curtain' in the state of ideological confrontation. And all these
years the idea to conquer the world has dominated as in the Soviet Union as well in the
United States of America. But reasonable people from both sides (and their number was not
small) understood that there are on the both sides of the `iron curtain' the real alive
people, who were ready for cooperation. And overwhelming ideological
barriers we were going toward each other creating step by step a bridge of confidence and
understanding.
When almost 10 years ago the `iron curtain' has broken we hoped for a strengthening of
this bridge, for the sound forces going through it in both direction. Unfortunately this
has not happened. The ideology has broken, but in the result of this powerful ideological
burst a foam appeared, which has flowed from us to the USA and from the USA to us.
Americans have felt on themselves what is the Russian crime, corruption, they saw `new
Russians', our bankers, oligarchs, who have `green cards', huge amounts of money for villa
construction, wealthy holidays. Exactly they became to represent the Russian face in the
West. And the West has shuddered.
But we also have shuddered. Flow of the people, representing wrong side of American
life, started into Russia. We have seen here your expert--economists, whose ideas have not
been accepted in the USA as they were not perspective and harmful, but they have found a
fertile soil in the Russia. We have seen in our space also American businessmen, who tried
to involve us into adventure projects. I personally confronted one of such so called
businessman, who proposed to cooperate in a major project on unlawful ground.
Certainly, the roots of many vices such as corruption, stealing, unlawful
privatization, drags, pornography, prostitution, are situated also in our ground, but in
many respect the people's awareness connect them to America and the USA is not accepted in
Russia now as a prospering and educated society.
It seems that we have forgotten 10 Christian commandments. It appears on the border of
centuries that a huge charge of mutual good will, which we have had at the end of 80-ty
years, has been almost used up. And instead of the `iron curtain' we begin to construct a
`stinking trench' behind the rusted barbed wire. Lets look at today's time: as earlier we
threaten each other by nuclear restriction and think up limitations, sanctions. We
appeared to be in a situation dangerous for the world at the end of
XX century.
Meantime the USA and the Russia are playing today a huge role in the establishment of a
stable and secure peace, democratic order. It is clear, that being in confrontation we can
only negatively influence as on our countries as well on the world as a whole.
I would not like to be a pessimist. We have way out and we can see it if we return with
open face to our youth. It is a new growing force of Russia, it is that base on which we
can build the world and the order.
`Junior Achievements of Russia' is gaining power by us. One million of young men and
girls from 80 regions of Russia, who study economics, business and management are today in
its ranks. After 5 years they will be 5 millions. And this is a great power, which is
ready for democratic transformation in the country.
Altruism is laying in the base of their activity--one of the best features of Americans
which the Russian youth has accepted and absorbed. As many Americans members of `Junior
Achievements' see the highest sense to serve to the society.
Finally, we can learn in our new construction against our businessmen, who are heading
this movement. They are those people who a faithful to the principles of `pure business'
and they are true to their duty. They are ready to invest into creation of new society.
The resume from my speech suggests itself: experience which has come from `the top'
appears to be not quite satisfactory. It came to us with the people who have forgotten the
Christ's commandments. But we have sound forces, who not only accept them but they are
leaving in accordance with them. We connect the Russia's future with them and the future
of Russian-American relations.
I call upon to support the people who have the life principle to serve to the society.
