Top 15 Jesse Helms Quotes

I reject that criticism because this is indeed another kind of holocaust, by another name. At last count, more than 40 million unborn children have been deliberately, intentionally destroyed. What word adequately defines the scope of such slaughter? [After 9/11] the American people responded with shock, sadness and a deep and righteous anger — and rightly so. Yet let us not forget that every passing day in our country, more than three thousand innocent Americans are killed [through abortion].

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.

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 Armed Services Committee may wish to explore the legal advisers' concerns that the draft of the international criminal court statute pending before the sixth committee of the United Nations could impact in an extremely negative way upon "the status of forces' agreements or the prosecution of war crimes." These are not just words, they have meaning and they have implications, a constitutional question. The Finance and Energy and Commerce Committees may be interested in the potentially devastating impact that this proposal may have on the cost to U.S. companies doing business overseas. The jurisdictional authority of such a court is expansive and its impact is unknown. We are flying blind by the seat of our britches. It should be excluded from this bill. It is totally unwise. It is dangerous to act precipitously on this provision, and I hope that my efforts to strike this provision will be supported by a majority of the Senate. I hope the public will require their Senators to explain why they oppose it or not.

Efforts to establish such an international criminal court drives right to the core of our basic constitutional liberties and guarantees. But you will not read that in the press. They will say, "What is that fellow talking about?" If they say anything at all. Well, the constitutional lawyers know what I am talking about, and you watched Sam Ervin talk about it. This court, Mr. President, has the potential of sitting in judgment of American citizens, U.S. corporations, the U.S. Government, and, yes, even the legislative acts of Members of Congress. So it does matter. It does need and deserve and cry out for consideration of the implications of such a court. This provision should not be included in this bill in any shape, fashion, or form--not one. I wish Sam Ervin were back here. The committee reported a freestanding resolution some months ago to find its way to the other committees' jurisdictions. I hope the Senate anticipates that the Senate Judiciary Committee will conduct a thorough, careful review of the impact that this proposal threatens to our constitutional prerogatives. We will ignore this issue at our own peril, and worse, at the peril of the governance of the American people.

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.

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.

My intent is, as a manager of this bill, to strongly support Senator Dole and Senator Pressler when they offer major amendments to restructure the U.S. participation in the U.N.-sponsored activities and require withholding of U.N. assessments until an inspector general is appointed at the United Nations. Mr. President, Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti are all disasters, every one of them, disasters that must not be repeated. The answer is not in rewriting the War Powers Resolution. Forget that. The answer is better decision-making, a much closer scrutiny of U.N. actions, and a more thoughtful understanding of the practical consequences of pursuing a policy of what they call aggressive multilateralism. The same people who throughout the 1980's wanted to blame America first have now written a new draft of a Presidential decision, Directive PD-13, that is intended, and I quote, "sacrifice Americans first." This new invented game of surrender your sovereignty is to be played out in the United Nations by the nonelected officials committing the U.S. Treasury and the troops of the United States to U.N. objectives without congressional approval. They just go ahead and do what they want to do. I do not know about other Senators. But this Senator says no, not with my vote would it happen.

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.

The committee rejected my amendment, and further rejected the administration's request to repeal the six mandatory positions. But not a word of that was in the paper. Nobody on television mentioned it. The committee's majority told Secretary Christopher, "We don't trust your promise to keep our favorite Assistant Secretary positions, but we will give you two more Assistant Secretary bureaucracies to grow on." That is what the committee did with the vote that defeated my proposal. The other body, the House of Representatives, did the administration one better. The House guys provided three new bureaucracies which is totally unacceptable. And during consideration of this bill I intend to offer an amendment and have the Senate vote on it to rectify the Foreign Relations Committee's judgment on this matter, and thereby prevent the further bloating of the Federal bureaucracy. I do hope that Senators will support that.

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.

Dr. Wharton may be a good and decent man, praised for his organizational abilities a year ago to spend substantial efforts on reorganizing and restructuring the State Department. But to the dismay of a lot of us, we waited a much "ballyhooed" reorganization report which was delayed, rewritten, scrubbed, and never materialized beyond another document that was leaked to the press. A year later, here we are. We find Dr. Wharton in a caretaker status dismissed supposedly because of a lack of attention to policy matters. One of the only substantive records we have of the administration's reorganization effort is the administration request for a 33 percent increase in the number of Assistant Secretaries, from 18 to 24 in number, and an increase in the number of Executive Level IV positions in the State Department. Mr. President, what an incredible response to the promise last year to streamline the bureaucracy. Maybe all of this has been reported in the media, but I have not seen it. They are too busy with other things.

But I could not believe my ears when I heard all that good news a year ago. I remember pulling out my hearing aid to see if it was working right. I thought finally somebody had acknowledged that the State Department was a topheavy, bloated, inefficient bureaucracy in need of massive reorganization and reductions. No wonder I said, "Glory, glory, hallelujah," because that had been something on my agenda for a long time, at least 21 years or more. But what happens? Mr. President, as we have seen in endless and countless instances over the years, the State Department's rhetoric far exceeded its actions. One year later Secretary Atwood with his good intentions to reorganize the State Department--and I have no doubt about his good intentions. I believe that he meant what he said a year ago. Anyway, Secretary Atwood is gone--promoted, I guess you might call it, to AID, the Agency for International Development, to tackle that behemoth of a mess.

When the Foreign Relations Committee heard from Secretary-designate Christopher on January 13-14 last year, 1993, the Secretary-to-be said: "We need to do more with less." I am sitting there applauding, saying, "Praise the Lord." But subsequently, his Deputy Secretary, Cliff Wharton, and his Under Secretary for Management, Brian Atwood--two nice fellows--appeared before the committee and--I am quoting them exactly--they promised to "streamline the bureaucracy, consolidate responsibilities, reduce personnel, and reinvigorate management." What happened? They were off in the stratosphere, wild blue yonder, or whatever you want to call it. Now, we heard the Secretary and Deputy Secretary announce with great fanfare a broad-based reorganization to, guess what, reduce excessive layering, that is, bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy. The State Department would, according to the Secretary a year ago, "do its fair share" to participate in, guess what, "reductions and cutbacks that President Clinton would impose on the entire Federal Government." Promises, promises.

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.