April 28th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, we have heard from several Members already about being unhappy with the legislative process today. The votes did not go exactly the way I wanted, but I am not all that unhappy with what happened because there was a serious effort for this House to restore some of the responsibility that they have allowed to gravitate to the administration and to our Presidents over the many years.
Today’s legislative process was chaotic, but I think it was chaotic for a precise reason. We are trying to rectify something that has been going on for more than 50 years, and it is not just this President. It is every President that we have had since World War II. We have in the Congress permitted our Presidents too much leeway in waging war.
This was an effort today to restore that responsibility to the House. It was done sloppily, but considering the alternative of doing nothing, this was much better.
So I am very pleased with what happened today. I am disappointed that there was such strong feelings about the outcome. But I suspect they were not unhappy with the process as much as they were unhappy with not winning the votes.
But nevertheless the votes were very important today. One of the most significant, if not the most significant: we on this House floor today voted up and down on a war resolution. This is not done very often and under the circumstances that exist today, probably the first time.
But that was an easy vote. The House overwhelmingly voted not to go to war. This makes a lot of sense. This is a very good vote. Why should we go to war against a country that has not aggressed against us?
So this was normal and natural and a very good vote. The problem comes with the other votes because they do not follow a consistent pattern.
I think there are too many Members in this House who have enjoyed the fact that they have delivered the responsibility to the President. They do not want war, but they want war. They do not want a legal war, they
want an illegal war. They do not want a war to win, they want a war that is a half of a war. They want the President to do the dirty work, but they do not want the Congress to stand up and decide one way or the other.
Today we saw evidence that the Congress was willing to stand up to some degree and vote on this and take some responsibility. For this reason I am pleased with what happened. So voting against the war that has no significant national security interest makes a lot of sense to me.
Another vote, the vote to withhold ground troops unless Congress authorizes the funding for this; this is not micromanaging anything. This is just the Congress standing up and accepting their responsibilities. So this in many ways was very good. This means that the people in this country, as they send their messages to the Members of Congress, are saying that this war does not make a whole lot of sense. If the people of this country were frightened, if they felt like they were being attacked, if they felt like their liberties were threatened, believe me the vote would have been a lot different.
But I am very pleased that this House stood up and said:
Mr. President, you have overstepped your bounds already. Slow up. Do not get this notion that you should send in ground troops. It makes no sense to this House.
Now the interesting thing is that was a resolution, it was a House Resolution, that probably really does not have much effect other than a public relation effect because it would have to be passed by the Senate, it would be vetoed by the President, we would have to override his veto. So, in the practical legislative sense it does not mean a whole lot, but it means something in the fact that we brought it to the floor and we were required to vote on it.
Another resolution that was defeated unfortunately, and it was defeated by a two-to-one margin; this would have said that the President would have to cease, we should have told him to cease, because we have not given him the right to wage war. As a matter of fact, even today we said there will be no war, there will be no declaration of war, so we should consistently follow up and say what we should do is withdraw and not fight a war.
Likewise, when we come to the endorsement of the military bombing, fortunately it went down narrowly. But it in itself, too, does not have any legal effect. That is a House Concurrent Resolution that has no effect of law other than the public relations effect of what the Congress is saying.
But I think it is a powerful message that the American people have spoke through this House of Representatives today to not rubber stamp an illegal, unconstitutional and immoral war. The only moral war is a war that is fought in self-defense. Some claim that this is a moral war because there are people who have been injured. But that is not enough justification. The moral and constitutional war has to be fought in self-defense.
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April 27th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, today we are faced with an unfortunate and false choice between two evils. The false choice is whether the government should ban voluntary exchange or regulate it–as though these were the only two options. More specifically, today’s choice is whether government should continue to maintain its ban on satellite provision of network programming to television consumers or replace that ban by expanding an anti-market, anti-consumer regulatory regime to the entire satellite television industry.
H.R. 1554, the Satellite Copyright, Competition, and Consumer Protection Act of 1999, the bill before us today, repeals the strict prohibition of local network programming via satellite to local subscribers BUT in so doing is chock full of private sector mandates and bureaucracy expanding provisions. H.R. 1554, for example, requires Satellite carriers to divulge to networks lists of subscribers, expands the current arbitrary, anti-market, government royalty scheme to network broadcast programming, undermines existing contracts between cable companies and network program owners, violates freedom of contract principles, imposes anti-consumer ‘must-carry’ regulations upon satellite service providers, creates new authority for the FCC to ‘re-map the country’ and further empowers the National Telecommunications Information administration (NTIA) to ‘study the impact’ of this very legislation on rural and small TV markets.
This bill’s title includes the word ‘competition’ but ignores the market processes’ inherent and fundamental cornerstones of property rights (to include intellectual property rights) and voluntary exchange unfettered by government technocrats. Instead, we have a so-called marketplace fraught with interventionism at every level. Cable companies are granted franchises of monopoly privilege at the local level. Congresses have previously intervened to invalidate exclusive dealings contracts between private parties (cable service providers and program creators), and have most recently assumed the role of price setter–determining prices at which program suppliers must make their programs available to satellite programing service providers under the ‘compulsory license.’
Unfortunately, this bill expands the government’s role to set the so-called just price for satellite programming. This, of course, is inherently impossible outside the market process of voluntary exchange and has, not surprisingly, resulted instead in ‘competition’ among service providers for government favor rather than consumer-benefiting competition inherent to the genuine market.
While it is within the Constitutionally enumerated powers of Congress to ‘promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,’ operating a clearinghouse for the subsequent transfer of such property rights in the name of setting a just price or instilling competition seems not to be an economically prudent nor justifiable action under this enumerated power. This can only be achieved within the market process itself.
I introduced what I believe is the most pro-consumer, competition-friendly legislation to address the current government barrier to competition in television program provision. My bill, the Television Consumer Freedom Act, would repeal federal regulations which interfere with consumers’ ability to avail themselves of desired television programming. It repeals that federal prohibition and allows satellite service providers to more freely negotiate with program owners for just the programming desired by satellite service subscribers. Technology is now available by which viewers will be able to view network programs via satellite as presented by their nearest network affiliate. This market-generated technology will remove a major stumbling block to negotiations that should currently be taking place between network program owners and satellite service providers. Additionally, rather than imposing the burdensome and anti-consumer ‘must-carry’ regulations on satellite service providers to ‘keep the playing field level,’ my bill allows bona fide competition by repealing the must-carry from the already over-regulated cable industry.
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April 22nd, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to commend the insight added to the policy debate on critical environmental regulatory issues by John McClaughry in an article he authored in yesterday’s Washington Times. Mr. McClaughry succinctly highlights the danger which occurs when, as happened in the United States in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s, property rights are ignored in the name of ‘progress.’
Mr. McClaughry, president of Vermont’s Ethan Allen Institute, correctly explains that technological innovation is stunted when the legal system allows polluters to externalize their costs without allowing legal recourse by those whose property is polluted.
I commend the research of Mr. McClaughry and thank him for his important contribution to the policy debate regarding environmental regulation and recommend a careful reading of his article by everyone genuinely interested in both the proper moral and economic resolution of these issues.
Tomorrow, many Americans will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. The event was created in 1970 to call attention to humankind’s despoliation of our planet. It’s a good time to see what 30 years of Earth Day enthusiasm has given us.
The environmental awareness stimulated by the first Earth Day has had many beneficial results. Thanks to citizen awareness and ensuing state and national legislation, today the air is much cleaner, the water far purer, and risk from toxic and hazardous wastes sharply reduced. Polluters have been made to pay for disposal costs previously imposed on the public. Private groups like the Nature Conservancy have purchased and conserved millions of acres of land and natural resources.
But–and it always seems there is a but–like every promising new movement, the people who became leaders of the environmental movement stimulated by Earth Day soon found they could increase their political power (and staff salaries) by constantly demanding more command and control regulation. That heavyhanded government response has increasingly surpassed the boundaries of science and reason and severely strained the good will of millions of Americans who had eagerly responded to the initial call to clean up and protect our planet.
Here are just some of the ‘achievements’ of an environmental movement that has flourished by promoting fantastic enviro-scares, sending out millions of pieces of semihysterical direct mail fundraising letters, peddling junk science, and making ever-more-collusive legal deals.
A failed Endangered Species Act which, by substituting ‘ecosystem’ control for species protection incentives, has caused thousands of landowners to drive off or exterminate the very species that were supposed to be protected.
A wetlands protection program that has gone from controlling real wetlands to regulating buffer zones around tiny ‘vernal pools’ of spring snow melt, and even lands that have no water on them at all, but feature ‘hydric soils.’
An air quality program that denies permits to dry cleaning plants unless they can prove that their emissions will not cause 300,001 instead of the normal 300,000 cancer deaths among 1 million people who will live for 70 consecutive years next door to the plant.
A ‘superfund’ bill which has sucked billions of dollars out of taxpayers to pay lawyers to pursue ‘potentially responsible parties’ instead of actually cleaning up toxic waste sites.
An ozone depletion scare whose purported effect–increasing incidence of dangerous ultraviolet B at ground level–turned out to be unsupportable by evidence.
A global warming hysteria, based on speculative computer models instead of actual temperature data, to justify a treaty to impose federal and international taxes, rationing and prohibitions on all U.S. carbon-based energy sources.
Ludicrous requirements imposed on the nuclear energy industry, such as requiring massive concrete vaults for the storage of old coveralls and air filters whose radioactivity level a few feet from the container is less than the background radiation produced by ordinary Vermont granite.
Enforcing many of these unsupportable policies is a federal and state bureaucracy eager to deny defendants any semblance of fair play, secure sweetheart consent agreements, and measure their success by fines and jail time imposed–for example, on the Pennsylvania landowner who removed car bodies and old tires from a seasonal stream bed on his land without a federal permit (fined $300,000).
As Roger Marzulla, a former assistant U.S. attorney general for land and resources, recently put it, ‘Like the enchanted broomsticks in the story of ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’ the environmental enforcement program has gotten completely out of control.’
Fortunately, a common-sense, fair play, rights-respecting alternative environmental movement has begun to appear. On Earth Day 1999, its member groups–as many as a hundred state and national organizations–are celebrating ‘Resourceful Earth Day.’ Their alternative is based on a remark made by Henry David Thoreau, who said, ‘I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.’
The astonishing growth of science and technology in the past 30 years has proven over and over again that human ingenuity can and will rise to overcome every environmental challenge. Today’s energy sources are far cleaner and more efficient than those of 1970, and even more pollution-free new energy devices are emerging from laboratories. New cars today, fueled with improved gasoline, produce 2 percent of the pollution of 1970 cars. Cost-effective resource recovery of everything from aluminum to methane, has made giant strides. Microsensors, global positioning satellites, and tiny computers allow farmers to dispense just the right concentration of fertilizer on every square yard of a field.
The friends of the ‘Resourceful Earth’ believe in progress, not just to make and consume more stuff, but to protect our Earth as well. The tide is with them, and as their creative optimism prevails the better off Mother Earth–and its people–will be.
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April 21st, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, supporters of internationalism celebrated NATO’s 50th anniversary with the Senate’s 1998 overwhelming approval for expanding NATO to include Eastern European countries. This year’s official inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic made all NATO’s supporters proud, indeed. But in reality, NATO now is weaker and more chaotic than ever.
In the effort to expand NATO and promote internationalism, we see in reaction the rise of ugly nationalism. The U.S. and NATO policy of threats and intimidation to establish an autonomous Kosovo without true independence from Serbia, and protected by NATO’s forces for the foreseeable future, has been a recipe for disaster. This policy of nation-building and interference in a civil war totally contradicts the mission of European defense set out in the NATO charter.
Without the Soviet enemy to justify the European military machine, NATO had to find enemies and humanitarian missions to justify its existence. The centuries-old ethnic hatreds found in Yugoslavia and the militant leaders on all sides have served this purpose well. Working hard to justify NATO’s policy in this region has totally obscured any objective analysis of the turmoil now raging.
Some specific policy positions of NATO guaranteed that the ongoing strife would erupt into a full-fledged and dangerous conflict. Once it was determined in the early 1990s that outsiders would indict and try Yugoslavian war criminals, it was certain that cooperation with western negotiators would involve risks. Fighting to the end became a practical alternative to a mock international trial. Forcing a treaty settlement on Serbia where Serbia would lose the sovereign territory of Kosovo guaranteed an escalation of the fighting and the forced removal of the Kosovars from their homes.
Ignoring the fact that more than 500,000 Serbs were uprooted from Croatia and Bosnia with the encouragement of NATO intervention did great harm to the regional effort to reestablish more stable borders.
The sympathy shown Albanian refugees by our government and our media, although justified, stirred the flames of hatred by refusing to admit that over a half million Serbs suffered the same fate and yet elicited no concern from the internationalists bent on waging war. No one is calling for the return of certain property and homes.
Threatening a country to do what we the outsiders tell them or their cities will be bombed is hardly considered good diplomacy. Arguing that the Serbs must obey and give up what they see as sovereign territory after suffering much themselves as well as face war crimes trials run by the West makes no sense. Anyone should have been able to predict what the results would be.
The argument that, because of humanitarian concerns for the refugees, we were forced to act is not plausible. Our efforts dramatically increased the refugee problem. Milosevic, as he felt cornered by the Western threats, reacted the only way he could to protect what he considered Serbia, a position he defends with international law while being supported by unified Serb people.
If it is the suffering and the refugees that truly motivate our actions, there is no answer to the perplexing question of why no action was taken to help the suffering in Rwanda, Sudan, East Timore, Tibet, Chechnya, Kurdish, Turkey, and for the Palestinians in Israel. This is not a reason; it is an excuse.
Instead, we give massive foreign aid to the likes of China and Russia, countries that have trampled on the rights of ethnic minorities.
How many refugees, how many children’s death has U.S. policy caused by our embargo and bombing for 9 years of a defenseless poverty-ridden Iraq. Just as our bombs in Iraq have caused untold misery and death, so have our bombs in Serbia killed the innocent on both sides, solidified support for the ruthless leaders, and spread the war.
This policy of intervention is paid for by the U.S. taxpayer and promoted illegally by our President without congressional authority, as is required by the Constitution.
The United States Government has in the past referred to the Kosovo Liberation Army leaders as thugs, terrorists, Marxists, and drug dealers. This current fight was initiated by Kosovo’s desire for independence from Serbia.
The KLA took on the Serbs, not the other way around. Whether or not one is sympathetic to Kosovo’s secession is not relevant. I for one prefer many small independent governments pledged not to aggress against their neighbors over the international special interest authoritarianism of NATO, the CIA, and the United Nations.
But my sympathies do not justify our taxing and sending young Americans to fight for Kosovo’s independence. It is wrong legally and morally; and besides, the KLA is not likely to institute a model nation respecting civil liberties of all its citizens.
The biggest irony of this entire mess is to see the interventionists, whose goal is one world government, so determined to defend a questionable group of local leaders, the KLA, bent on secession. This action will not go unnoticed and will provide the philosophic framework for the establishment of a Palestinian state, Kurdistan, and independent Tibet, and it will encourage many other ethnic minorities to demand independence.
Our policy of intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, and their border disputes is not one that comes from American tradition or constitutional law. It is a policy based on our current leaders’ belief that we are the policemen of the world, something we have earnestly and foolishly pursued since World War II and in a more aggressive fashion since the demise of the Soviet Union.
Interventionism is done with a pretense of wisdom believing we always know the good guys from the bad guys and that we will ignore the corporate and political special interests always agitating for influence. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Instead of being lucky enough on occasions to pick the right side of a conflict, we instead end up supporting both sides of nearly every conflict. In the 1980s, we helped arm, and allied ourselves with, the Iraqis against Iran. Also in the 1980s we supported the Afghan freedom fighters, which included Osama Bin Laden. Even in the current crisis in Yugoslavia, we have found ourselves on both sides.
The United States, along with the United Nations, in 1992 supported an arms embargo against Kosovo essentially making it impossible for the Kosovars to defend themselves against Serbia. Helping the Albanian Muslims is interpreted by some as token appeasement to the Arab oil countries unhappy with the advantage the Serbs got from the arms embargo.
This balancing act between three vicious warring factions was doomed to fail and has only led to more instability and the spreading of the war in the region.
Instead of pretending to be everything to everyone, while shifting alliances and blindly hoping for good to come of it, we should reconsider the advice of the Founders and take seriously the strict restraints on waging war placed in the Constitution.
Not much long-term good can come of a foreign policy designed to meddle and manipulate in places where we have no business or authority. It cannot help the cause of peace.
Unfortunately, our policies usually backfire and do more harm than good. When weaker nations are intimidated by more powerful ones, striking back very often can be done only through terrorism, a problem that will continue to threaten all Americans as our leaders incite those who oppose our aggressive stands throughout the world.
War has been used throughout history to enhance the state against the people. Taxes, conscription and inflation have been used as tools of the state to pursue wars not popular with the people. Government size and authority always grows with war, as the people are told that only the sacrifice of their liberties can save the nation. Propaganda and threats are used to coerce the people into this careless giving up of their liberties.
This has always been true with military wars, but the same can be said of the war mentality associated with the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war against illiteracy, or any other war proposed by some social do-gooder or intentional mischief maker.
But when a foreign war comes to our shores in the form of terrorism, we can be sure that our government will explain the need for further sacrifice of personal liberties to win this war against terrorism as well. Extensive preparations are already being made to fight urban and domestic violence, not by an enhanced local police force, but by a national police force with military characteristics.
Even the war against national disasters led by FEMA, usurps local authority while imposing restraints on movement and controlling recovery efforts that should be left to local police, private insurance, and voluntary groups.
Our overseas efforts to police the world implies that with or without success, resulting injuries and damage imposed by us and others will be rectified with U.S. tax dollars in the form of more foreign aid, as we always do. Nation building and international social work has replaced national defense as the proper responsibility of our government.
What will the fate of NATO be in the coming years? Many are fretting that NATO may dissolve over a poor showing in Yugoslavia, despite the 50th anniversary hype and its recent expansion. Fortunately for those who cherish liberty and limited government, NATO has a questionable future.
When our leaders sanctioned NATO in 1949, there were many patriotic Americans who questioned the wisdom and the constitutionality of this organization. It was by its charter to be strictly a defensive organization designed to defend Western Europe from any Soviet threat. The NATO charter clearly recognized the Security Council of the United Nations was responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Likewise, the legislative history and congressional testimony maintained NATO could not usurp from Congress and the people the power to wage war. We have drifted a long way from that acknowledgment, and the fears expressed by Robert Taft and others in 1949 were certainly justified.
United States and NATO, while deliberately avoiding a U.N. vote on the issue, have initiated war against a sovereign state in the middle of a civil war. A Civil War that caused thousands of casualties and refugees on both sides has been turned into a war with hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugees with NATO’s interference. The not-so-idle U.S. threats cast at Milosevic did not produce compliance. It only expanded the violence and the bloodshed.
The foolishness of this policy has become apparent, but Western leaders are quick to justify their warmongering. It was not peace or liberty or national security they sought as they sent the bombs flying. It was to save face for NATO.
Without the Soviets to worry about, NATO needed a mission, and stopping the evil Serbs fit the bill. It was convenient to ignore the evil Croates and the Kosovars, and it certainly was easy to forget the United Nations’, NATO’s, and the United States’ policies over the past decade that contributed to the mess in Yugoslavia.
It was soon apparent that bombing was no more a successful diplomatic tool than were the threats of dire consequences if the treaty, unfavorable to the Serbs, was not quickly signed by Milosevic. This drew demands that policy must be directed toward saving NATO by expanding the war. NATO’s credibility was now at stake and how could Europe, and the United States war machine, survive if NATO were to disintegrate.
Hopes as expressed by Ron Brown and his corporate friends were not extinguished by the unfortunate and mysterious Air Force crash while on their way to Bosnia to do business deals. Nobody even bothers to find out what U.S. policy condones business trips of our corporate leaders in a war zone on an Air Force aircraft. Corporate interests and the military-industrial complex continues to play a role in our Yugoslavian war policy. Corporate America loves NATO.
Most politicians and the public do not know what NATO’s real mission is, and today’s policy cannot be explained by reading its mission statement written in 1949. Certainly our vital interests and national security cannot justify our escalation of the war in Yugoslavia.
The excuse that we are the only superpower is hardly a moral reason to justify bombing nations that are seen as uncooperative. Military strength gives neither a right to bully nor a monopoly on wisdom. This strength too often, when held by large political entities, is used criminally to serve the powerful special interests.
The Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia obviously are much more economically intriguing than Rwanda and Sudan. There are clearly no business benefits for taking on the Chinese over its policy toward Tibet. Quite the contrary, we do business with China and subsidize her to boot.
In spite of the powerful political and industrial leaders’ support behind NATO, and the budgets of 19 Western countries, NATO’s days appear numbered. We shall not weep when NATO goes the way of the Soviet Empire and the Warsaw Pact. Managing a war with 19 vetoes makes it impossible for a coherent strategy to evolve. Chaos, bickering, bureaucratic blundering, waste and political infighting will surely result.
There is no natural tendency for big government to enjoy stability without excessive and brute force, as was used in the Soviet system. But eventually the natural tendency towards instability, as occurred in the Soviet Empire, will bring about NATO’s well-deserved demise. NATO, especially since it has embarked on a new and dangerous imperialistic mission, will find using brute force to impose its will on others is doomed to fail.
It has been said that, in numbers, there is strength. But in politics, it can also be said that, in numbers, there is confusion as differences become magnified.
Nationalism is alive and well even within the 19-member NATO group. When nationalism is non-militaristic, peace loving, and freedom oriented, it is a force that will always undermine big government planners, whether found in a Soviet system or a NATO/U.N. system.
The smaller the unit of government, the better it is for the welfare of all those who seek only peace and freedom. NATO no longer can hide its true intent behind an anti-communist commitment.
Some have wondered how a 1960s generation administration could be so proned to war. The 1960s were known for their rebellion against the Vietnam War and a preference for lovemaking and drugs over fighting, even Communists. In recent months four separate sovereign nations were bombed by the United States. This has to be some kind of a record. Bombing Belgrade on Easter has to tell us something about an administration that is still strangely seen by some as not having the determination to fight a real war. There is a big difference between being anti-war when one’s life is at risk as compared to when it is someone else’s. That may tell us something about character, but there is more to it than that.
Many who were opposed to the Persian Gulf and Vietnam Wars are now strongly supporting this so-called just and humanitarian war to punish those who are said to be totally responsible for the Yugoslavian refugee problem. The fact that Serbia is not Communist in the sense of North Vietnam may play a part for some in making the decision to support this war but not the war in Vietnam. But the Persian Gulf War was not at all about communism, it was about oil.
Some from the left, if strongly inclined toward internationalism, supported the Persian Gulf War, but for the most part the opposition came from those who chose not to support a president of the opposite party, while today, supporting one’s own party’s position to bomb the Serbs becomes politically correct.
The same can be said of those who are opposed to the Yugoslavian war. Where they supported the Persian Gulf War, this administration has not garnered their support for partisan reasons. The principle of interventionism, constitutionality and morality have not been applied consistently to each war effort by either political party, and there is a precise reason for this, over and above the petty partisanship of many.
The use of government force to mold personal behavior, manipulate the economy and interfere in the affairs of other nations is an acceptable practice endorsed by nearly everyone in Washington regardless of party affiliation. Once the principle of government force is acknowledged as legitimate, varying the when and to what degree becomes the only issue. It is okay to fight Communists overseas but not Serbs; it is okay to fight Serbs but not Arabs. The use of force becomes completely arbitrary and guided by the politician’s good judgment. And when it pleases one group to use constitutional restraint, it does, but forgets about the restraints when it is not convenient.
The 1960s crowd, although having a reputation for being anti-war due to their position on Vietnam, has never been bashful about its bold authoritarian use of force to mold economic conditions, welfare, housing, medical care, job discrimination, environment, wages and working conditions, combined with a love for taxes and inflation to pay the bills. When in general the principle of government force to mold society is endorsed, using force to punish Serbs is no great leap of faith, and for the interventionists is entirely consistent. Likewise, the interventionists who justified unconstitutional fighting in Vietnam, Panama, Nicaragua, Grenada, Libya and the Persian Gulf, even if they despise the current war in Yugoslavia, can easily justify using government force when it pleases them and their home constituency.
Philosophic interventionism is a politician’s dream. It allows arbitrary intervention, domestic or international, and when political circumstances demand opposition, it is easy to cite the Constitution which always and correctly rejects the use of government force, except for national self-defense and for the protection of life, liberty and property.
Politicians love interventionism and pragmatism, the prevailing philosophy of our age, a philosophy based on relative ethics. No rigid adherence to law or morality is required. Even the Constitution can be used in this delicate debate of just when and for whom we go to war. The trick is to grab the political moral high ground while rejecting the entire moral foundation upon which the law rests, natural rights, rejection of force and the requirement politicians be strictly bound by a contract for which all of us take an oath to uphold.
What does this hodgepodge philosophy here in the Congress mean for the future of peace and prosperity in general and NATO and the United Nations in particular? Pragmatism cannot prevail. Economically and socially it breeds instability, bankruptcy, economic turmoil and factionalism here at home. Internationally it will lead to the same results.
NATO’s days are surely numbered. That is the message of the current chaos in Yugoslavia. NATO may hold together in name only for a while, but its effectiveness is gone forever. The U.S. has the right to legally leave NATO with a 1-year’s notice. That we ought to do, but we will not. We will continue to allow ourselves to bleed financially and literally for many years to come before it is recognized that governance of diverse people is best done by diverse and small governments, not by a one-world government dependent on the arbitrary use of force determined by politically correct reasons and manipulated by the powerful financial interests around the world.
Our more immediate problem is the financing of the ongoing war in Yugoslavia. On February 9 of this year I introduced legislation to deny funds to the President to wage war in Yugoslavia. The Congress chose to ignore this suggestion and missed an opportunity to prevent the fiasco now ongoing in Yugoslavia.
The President, as so many other presidents have done since World War II, took it upon himself to wage an illegal war against Yugoslavia under NATO’s authority, and Congress again chose to do nothing. By ignoring our constitutional responsibility with regards to war power, the Congress implicitly endorsed the President’s participation in NATO’s illegal war against Yugoslavia. We neither declared war nor told the President to cease and desist.
Now we have a third chance, and maybe our last, before the war gets out of control. We are being asked to provide all necessary funding for the war. Once we provide funds for the war, the Congress becomes an explicit partner in this ill-conceived NATO-inspired intervention in the civil war of a sovereign nation, making Congress morally and legally culpable.
Appropriating funds to pursue this war is not the way to peace. We have been bombing, boycotting and killing thousands in Iraq for 9 years with no end in sight. We have been in Bosnia for 3 years, with no end in sight. And once Congress endorses the war in Yugoslavia with funding, it could take a decade, billions of dollars, and much suffering on both sides, before we put it to an end.
Bellicosity and jingoism associated with careless and illegal intervention can never replace a policy of peace and friendship whenever possible. And when it is not, at least neutrality. NATO’s aggressive war of destruction and vengeance can only make the situation worse. The sooner we disengage ourselves from this ugly civil war, the better. It is the right thing to do.
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April 20th, 1999
Thank you for calling this hearing on such an important and timely subject. When Congress passed the Bank Secrecy Act in 1970–and it should be pointed out that the act undermines, not protects, consumer financial privacy, it was argued that the act would “have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings.” When its Constitutionality was challenged in California Bankers Assn v. Shultz, 416 U.S. 21 (1974), Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas found the Bank Secrecy Act unconstitutional, writing:
“It is, I submit, sheer nonsense to agree with the Secretary that all bank records of every citizen have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings. That is unadulterated nonsense unless we are to assume that every citizen is a crook, an assumption I cannot make,” Justice Douglas concluded. He added, ” A mandatory recording of all telephone conversations would be better than the recording of checks under the Bank Secrecy Act, if Big Brother is to have his way [emphasis added].”
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the same case warned of the gradual erosion of our Constitutional rights and added, “[The] crucial factor is that the Government has shown no need, compelling or otherwise, for the maintenance of such records. Surely the fact that some may use negotiable instruments for illegal purposes cannot justify the Government’s running roughshod over the First Amendment rights of the hundreds of lawful yet controversial organizations like the ACLU. Congress may well have been correct in concluding that law enforcement would be facilitated by the dragnet requirements of this Act. Those who wrote our Constitution, however, recognized more important values [emphasis added].”
This act has shown that it does not have a high degree of usefulness and violates consumers expectations of privacy rights. In fact former Federal Reserve Board Governor Larry Lindsey (“Invading financial privacy,” Financial Times , March 19, 1999, p. 20) and the banking industry–as well as consumer and privacy advocates– have questioned the efficacy of the reporting requirements. Mr. Lindsey has labeled the success of this approach of unreasonable searching without a warrant or probable cause akin to finding a needle in a haystack; such a rate of success lampoons the claims that the reporting requirements have a “high degree of usefulness” and runs counter to our fourth amendment Constitutional rights.
Erza Levine of Howrey & Simon Attorneys at Law, on behalf of a group representing Western Union Financial Services, Inc., Travelers Express Company, Inc., and other money transmitters, during the April 15, 1999 hearing (the Subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations and the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit of the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services), cautioned, “The public and many members of Congress are beginning to realize that certain aspects of the BSA [Bank Secrecy Act] program, including the filing of SARs [Suspicious Activity Reports], involve the maintenance by the government — at the IRS Detroit Computing Center — of extensive data banks of unsupported allegations relating to individuals and companies in the United States; a privacy concern generally ignored until recently. An SAR is just that — it reflects someones suspicions, it does not reflect proof of misconduct or wrongdoing. The [Non-Bank Funds Transmitters] Group believes that a legitimate concern exists regarding the long term maintenance of records of suspicions and rumors about individuals. This data may leak or be misused.”
Arguments that these regulations deter crime are not substantiated empirically nor does the argument convince bankers. One bank corporate compliance manager wrote to the regulators protesting the Know Your Customer rule, “The intended targets of the regulations [i.e., the criminals] will likely find ways to get around these requirements . . . It seems unlikely that individuals who smuggle drugs, commit murder or engage in other criminal acts will be seriously discouraged from those acts by the prospect of having to lie to a banker.”
Richard W. Rahn, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, argues in his book, The End of Money and the Struggle for Financial Privacy , that the rapid development and dissemination of technology is going to force policy makers to make different choices than we did in the past. Now is the time to reevaluate past decisions in a relatively lower-tech period and reaffirm our pledge of support to respect our constituents privacy expectations. We need to pass H.R. 518, the Bank Secrecy Sunset Act, and force a review of our policies regarding financial privacy.
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