Jesse Helms Quotes

[Voters] "sent me to Washington to vote no against excessive Federal spending, against forced busing of little schoolchildren, and to vote no against the forces who have driven God out of the classroom.

In June of last year, the administration contended that the only way to save $250 million over the next 4 years was to consolidate VOA and RFE/RL. And today, January 1994, the administration contends that it can accede to the Senate--what do you know--and permit there to be true surrogate broadcasting, that is to say, keep RFE/RL and Radio Free Asia and still save $250 million. So you might say that saving $250 million in a budget like ours is not a giant step, but it is a step in the right direction. Either Mr. Duffey was wrong in June or he is wrong now, and I look forward to the debate on this issue. We will have friendly debate, and I hope that the Senate will carefully measure the information on both sides. Now, Mr. President, I do not think I have ever been more disappointed in the good-intentioned efforts announced at the beginning of this administration a year ago to restructure the State Department. Oh, I had bureaucrat after bureaucrat come up to see me saying, "Senator, you are going to love this." And I did like what they were saying. But nothing happened. Nothing happened. The administration and Congress deserve a D minus on this matter.

In closing, I reiterate my appreciation to Senator Pell and Senator Kerry and Senator Pressler and their respective staffs for their stewardship in guiding this legislation through subcommittee and to floor debate. I say again, as I have said so many times publicly, I am most grateful for the consideration and cooperation of Claiborne Pell for his efforts to accommodate the concerns of Senators on this side of the aisle. I do hope we can move this legislation on to conference in an expeditious fashion. That concludes my statement, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.

In committee, I offered an 8.5 percent budget reduction amendment designed to require the State Department to review its organizational and operational requirements seriously. You know how bureaucrats in this town operate. They hear a mandate or presumed mandate of Congress and then they go about doing what they want to do instead of what Congress has asked them to do. My amendment, as perfected by Senator Kerry and Senator Pressler, cut the administration's fiscal year 1994 request by $504 million, out of a $6.4 billion request. It cut it down to about $5.9 billion in terms of an authorization bill. And it reduced the administration's fiscal year 1995 budget authority by almost $450 million. That is a $950 million reduction over 2 years. As the saying goes, that is not exactly chopped liver. The authorized levels in this bill are $253 million below last year's actual level for the State Department, the USIA, and related agencies. S. 1281--this bill--also includes authorization for the Peace Corps at virtually no-growth levels in terms of expenditures. Ordinarily, the Peace Corps is authorized as a separate bill or included in the foreign aid authorization bill. It is a little bit different this year. In addition to the budget reduction, there are some positive legislative provisions in this bill. For the first time, this bill caps--puts a cap on--the end strength of the Foreign Service officers who can be hired. I intend to offer a technical amendment giving the Secretary of State authority to RIF--that means reduction in force--the Foreign Service office employees if he finds it necessary to do so. The bill eliminates Foreign Service performance pay. It ensures adherence to statutory pay ceilings so that nobody can make more than the Secretary of State. And it provides mandatory reassignment or retirement of Presidential appointees within 90 days.

Bureaucratic costs associated with such needless additional jobs, if you want to call them jobs, is astounding. The cost of the salaries for these 12 additional political appointee positions is more than $1.2 million a year--a small amount. It depends on where you are from. To the taxpayer down there in Chinquapin, NC, it is not a small amount of money, and I certainly do not think it is small. Every new bureau at the U.S. State Department will mean at least $2 million per year in additional costs, and support costs. You have to have secretaries, and you have to have all of the rest that goes with it--more people to sit around and say, "Oh, I have to clip this fingernail before I do anything else." The administration request is antithetical I think to our purpose in being here today. Mr. President, in committee I offered an amendment to remove all statutory requirements for the creation of Assistant Secretaries. We have enough of them. They fall all over each other. The most important thing they do, most of them, in today's time, is arrange where they are going to have lunch. Over time Congress has mandated six such positions. And my amendment authorizes the Secretary of State to organize as may be necessary within the ceiling of 16 Assistant Secretaries. Lord knows that ought to be enough. It is the same number Mr. Christopher had when he was with the State Department in the Carter administration.

During the past few weeks, I have talked by telephone on numerous occasions with a fine, Christian lady whose face and voice are familiar to most Americans. Her name is Anita Bryant. She has stood beside Billy Graham during his televised crusades. No doubt you have seen her also as she appeared on television commercials advertising Florida orange juice.
She is a lovely person, deeply committed to Christianity. She is also a concerned American- concerned about the erosion of moral principles and indecency in all of the forms spreading out across America. She has warned that unless America returns to basic principles, our freedoms are in jeopardy. Not so long ago, she spoke out against America's growing tendency to give respectability to homosexuality. And that's where her troubles began.

In some respects, the authorized levels for the U.N. peacekeeping operations in this bill are nothing short of disingenuous. The Department of State, the U.S. Mission of the United Nations and OMB have known for just about a year now that U.S. peacekeeping assessments in 1994 will be $1 billion more than Congress has authorized and appropriated, and there will be $1 billion more than authorized for next year, fiscal year 1995. In fact, the U.S. State Department has already spent all of the fiscal year 1994 funds that were appropriated, and we are only 3 months into the fiscal year. As they say in North Carolina, "How do you like them apples?" If the American people had a vote on it, we would find out pretty quickly. This administration continues to write the United Nations blank checks every time we vote in the U.N. Security Council to approve another peacekeeping mission. Thus far, the State Department has been sucking hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Defense every year to support U.N. peacekeeping operations.

Mr. President, the money is drying up. We the people--and I consider myself one of the people--of the United States populace have spent in excess of $2 billion in Somalia, over $800 million in direct support to the U.N. mission. And when the United States pulls out, watch it; the United Nations is going to send the American taxpayers a bill for over $500 million more to pay the 31.7 percent assessed cost for U.N. peacekeeping in Somalia. How dumb can we get? This cannot continue, and it must not continue, and will not continue after Senator Dole's amendment, of which I am a cosponsor, is enacted. It is an amendment to the U.N. Participation Act. Again, I hope all Senators and their staffs will take note of the Dole amendment and what it means and stands for and what it calls for. There is one provision in this bill that every Senator should know something about. Senators should familiarize themselves with the dangerous impact of section 170(a) relating to the creation of an international criminal court. I remember Sam Ervin sitting over there warning us about this. He was disturbed about the so-called genocide treaty, and I tried to pick up when he departed and do the best I could. We finally defanged the genocide treaty so that it amounted to nothing. But here they go again.

I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries. [in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate]

Mr. President, before I conclude, I feel obliged to comment briefly on two amendments that I intend to offer, designed to assist U.S. citizens who have had their property confiscated--that is to say illegally stolen--by foreign governments receiving foreign aid from the taxpayers of the United States. The Senate passed one of these amendments 96 to 4. I stood down there during the vote and Senators came in and said, "good amendment" and all of the rest of it. The State Department, however, and other U.S. officials turned a deaf ear to U.S. citizens whose property had been unlawfully taken from them. Unfortunately, the Senate must again send a wakeup call to the U.S. State Department. That message must go to the countries abusing the rights of U.S. citizens, and those countries ought to be denied even one dime of foreign aid money until they cut this out.

The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.

One other area that deserves our closest attention is the funding level reporting requirements and approval for U.S. participation in the United Nations and other international organizations. Sometimes, Mr. President, I wonder if the U.S. Government has the slightest idea what goes on in the United Nations and the other international organizations. The United States voted in the U.N. Economic and Social Council Organization to grant consultative status to self-proclaimed homosexual pedophiles. How about that? I do not recall anything in the Washington Post about that, or even in the Washington Times, as far as I know. This group, a known homosexual pedophile organization, was elevated to consultative status by the United Nations and the State Department as well. What is new? I intend to offer an amendment to correct this grotesque embarrassment to the United States, and particularly the people back home. But we tried to encourage reform in the U.N. budget process and mandate timely reports to Congress when this administration uses U.S. funds for international peacekeeping activities.

In particular, she condemned legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 4 by Congressman Edward I. Koch (pronounced "Kosh"), a member of the New York delegation in Congress. Mr. Koch was nominated by both the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party of New York. The bill that he introduced bears the number H.R. 2998. The title of Mr. Koch's bill states that its purpose is to prohibit discrimination on the basis of affectional or sexual preference... Specifically, the bill would amend the so-called Civil Rights Act of 1964 in several ways. Among other things, employers would be required by federal law to seek out and hire homosexuals on a quota basis. This would include schools, hospitals and other institutions. Failure to comply with the requirement (to hire homosexuals) would result in the loss of federal aid.
When Anita Bryant dared to speak out against this bill she found herself in deep trouble. In Miami, her home city, the homosexuals (who call themselves "gays" organized, and began a pressure campaign to intimidate the Singer Sewing Machine Company, whch was to have been the sponsor of a television series featuring Anita Bryant.
Anita's contract for the television series was abruptly canceled. An official of the Singer Company made clear that, all of a sudden, Anita Bryant was "controversial."

Compromise, hell! That's what happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?

White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who had their purses snatched last year by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated.