July 27th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in opposition to this resolution and in support of free trade.
Mr. Speaker, the reason a country engages in free trade is not altruism-we do not encourage trade and low tariffs for the benefit of a trading partner. Even if the reciprocal country does not lower its tariffs we can still benefit.
Open and free trade with all nations, short of war, should be pursued for two specific reasons. One, it’s a freedom issue; the right of the citizens of a free country to spend their money any way they see fit, anywhere in the world. And two, free trade provides the best deal for consumers allowing each to cast dollar votes with each purchase respecting quality and price. The foreign competition is a blessing in that it challenges domestic industries to do better. The Japanese car industry certainly resulted in American car manufacturers offering more competitive products.
In setting trade policy we must not assume that it is our job to solve any internal political problems of our trading partners any more than it is their responsibility to deal with our internal shortcomings.
Our biggest problem here in the Congress is that we seemingly never have a chance to vote for genuine free trade. The choice is almost always between managed-plus-subsidized trade or sanctions-plus-protectionism. Our careless use of language (most likely deliberate) is deceitful.
Genuine free trade would involve low tariffs and no subsidies. Export-Import Bank funding, OPIC, and trade development subsidies to our foreign competitors would never exist. Trading with China should be permissible, but aid should never occur either directly or through multilateral banking organizations such as the IMF or World Bank. A true free trade policy would exclude the management of trade by international agencies such as the WTO and NAFTA. Unfortunately, these agencies are used too frequently to officially place restrictions on countries or firms that sell products “too cheaply”-a benefit to consumers but challenging to politically-favored domestic or established “competitors.” This is nothing more than worldwide managed trade (regulatory cartels) and will eventually lead to a trade war despite all the grandiose talk of free trade.
Trade policy should never be mixed with the issue of domestic political problems. Dictatorial governments trading with freer nations are more likely to respect civil liberties if they are trading with them. Also, it is true that nations that trade are less likely to go to war with one another.
If all trade subsidies are eliminated, there is less temptation on our part to impose conditions on others receiving our grants and loans.
Before we assume that we can improve the political liberties of foreign citizens, we must meet the responsibility of protecting all civil liberties of our own citizens irrespective of whether it is guaranteeing first and second amendment protections or guaranteeing the balance of power between the states and the federal government as required by the ninth and tenth amendments.
Every argument today for trading with China is an argument for removing all sanctions with all nations including Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq. None of these nations come close to being a threat to our national sovereignty. If trade with China is to help us commercially and help the cause of peace, so too would trade with all countries.
I look forward to the day that our trade debate may advance from the rhetoric of managed trade versus protectionism to that of true free trade, without subsidies or WTO-like management; or better yet, free trade with an internationally accepted monetary unit recognizing the fallacy of mismanaged fiat currencies.
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July 20th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I rise reluctantly to express my opposition to the Teacher Empowerment Act (HR1995). Although H.R. 1995 does provide more flexibility to states than the current system or the Administration’s proposal, it comes at the expense of increasing federal spending on education. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that if Congress appropriates the full amount authorized in the bill, additional outlays would be $83 million in Fiscal Year 2000 and $6.9 billion over five years.
HR1995 is not entirely without merit. The most important feature of the bill is the provision forbidding the use of federal funds for mandatory national teacher testing or teacher certification. National teacher testing or national teacher certification will inevitably lead to a national curriculum. National teacher certification will allow the federal government to determine what would-be teachers need to know in order to practice their chosen profession. Teacher education will revolve around preparing teachers to pass the national test or to receive a national certificate. New teachers will then base their lesson plans on what they needed to know in order to receive their Education Department-approved teaching certificate. Therefore, all those who oppose a national curriculum should oppose national teacher testing. I commend Chairman GOODLING and Chairman MCKEON for their continued commitment to fighting a national curriculum.
Furthermore, this bill provides increased ability for state and local governments to determine how best to use federal funds. However, no one should confuse this with true federalism or even a repudiation of the modern view of state and local governments as administrative agencies of the Federal Government. After all, the very existence of a federal program designed to “help” states train teachers limits a state’s ability to set education priorities since every dollar taken in federal taxes to fund federal teacher training programs is a dollar a state cannot use to purchase new textbooks or computers for students. This bill also dictates how much money the states may keep versus how much must be sent to the local level and limits the state government’s use of the funds to activities approved by Congress.
In order to receive any funds under this act, states must further entrench the federal bureaucracy by applying to the Department of Education and describing how local school districts will use the funds in accordance with federal mandates. They must grovel for funds while describing how they will measure student achievement and teacher quality; how they will coordinate professional development activities with other programs; and how they will encourage the development of “proven, innovative strategies” to improve professional development-I wonder how much funding a state would receive if their “innovative strategy” did not meet the approval of the Education Department! I have no doubt that state governments, local school districts, and individual citizens could design a less burdensome procedure to support teacher quality initiatives if the federal government would only abide by its constitutional limits.
Use of the funds by local school districts is also limited by the federal government. For example, local schools districts must use a portion of each grant to reduce class size, unless it can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the state that it needs the money to fund other priorities. This provision illustrates how this bill offends not just constitutional procedure but also sound education practice. After all, the needs of a given school system are best determined by the parents, administrators, community leaders, and, yes, teachers, closest to the students-not by state or federal bureaucrats. Yet this bill continues to allow distant bureaucrats to oversee the decisions of local education officials.
Furthermore, this bill requires localities to use a certain percentage of their funds to meet the professional development needs of math and science teachers. As an OB-GYN, I certainly understand the need for quality math and science teachers, however, for Congress to require local education agencies to devote a disproportionate share of resources to one particular group of teachers is a form of central planning-directing resources into those areas valued by the central planners, regardless of the diverse needs of the people. Not every school district in the country has the same demand for math and science teachers. There may be some local school districts that want to devote more resources to English teachers or foreign language instructors. Some local schools districts may even want to devote their resources to provide quality history and civics teachers so they will not produce another generation of constitutionally-illiterate politicians!
In order to receive funding under this bill, states must provide certain guarantees that the state’s use of the money will result in improvement in the quality of the state’s education system. Requiring such guarantees assumes that the proper role for the Federal Government is to act as overseer of the states and localities to ensure they provide children with a quality education. There are several flaws in this assumption. First of all, the 10th amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the Federal Government from exercising any control over education. Thus, the Federal Government has no legitimate authority to take money from the American people and use that money in order to bribe states to adopt certain programs that Congress and the federal bureaucracy believes will improve education. The prohibition in the 10th amendment is absolute; it makes no exception for federal education programs that “allow the states flexibility!”
In addition to violating the Constitution, making states accountable in any way to the federal government for school performance is counter-productive. The quality of American education has declined as Federal control has increased, and for a very good reason. As mentioned above, decentralized education systems are much more effective then centralized education systems. Therefore, the best way to ensure a quality education system is through dismantling the Washington-DC-based bureaucracy and making schools more accountable to parents and students.
In order to put the American people back in charge of education, I have introduced the Family Education Freedom Act (HR935) which provides parents with a $3,000 tax credit for K-12 education expenses and the Education Improvement Tax Cut Act (H.R. 936), which provides all citizens with a $3,000 tax credit for contributions to K-12 scholarships and for cash or in-kind donations to schools. I have also introduced the Teacher Tax Cut Act, which encourages good people to enter and remain in the teaching profession by providing teachers with a $1,000 tax credit. By returning control of the education dollar to parents and concerned citizens, my education package does more to improve education quality than any other proposal in Congress.
Mr. Chairman, the Teacher Empowerment Act not only continues the federal control of education in violation of the Constitution and sound education principles, but it does so at increased spending levels. I, therefore, urge my colleagues to reject the approach of this bill and instead join me in working to eliminate the federal education bureaucracy, cut taxes, and thus return control over education to America’s parents, teachers, and students.
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July 19th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:
Part B amendment No. 8 offered by Mr. Paul:
Page 16, strike line 5 and all that follows through line 17 on page 21, and insert the following: None of the amounts authorized to be appropriated under subsection (a) are authorized to be appropriated for a United States contribution to the United Nations, any organ of the United Nations, or any entity affiliated with the United Nations.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 247, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul ) and a Member opposed each will control 5 minutes.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith ) will be recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield half of my time to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney ) and ask unanimous consent that she be allowed to control that time.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from New Jersey?
There was no objection.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney ) will be recognized for 2 1/2 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul ).
(Mr. Paul asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Mr. Chairman, my amendment strikes the authorizations in section 106 for all U.N.-related operations. We have a bill here tonight dealing with embassy security, U.S. embassy security, and we are all very concerned about it.
But in typical fashion, about all we have been offered so far has been just to put more money into our embassies and never raising the question about why our embassies might be more vulnerable. My amendment deals with that, because I would like to deal with the foreign policy involved with our commitment to the United Nations.
There are many in this Congress who readily admit they are internationalists. I readily admit that I am not an internationalist when it comes to political action and warmongering. Therefore, I think much of what we do in foreign policy makes ourselves more vulnerable. If we look at the two most recent bombings in Africa, these were brought about by our own foreign policy.
Those supporters of internationalism generally accuse those of us who are opposed to it by saying that we are isolationists. This is not true. I am not an isolationist. But I do believe in national sovereignty. I happen to sincerely believe that one cannot become an endorser of some form of internationalism without some sacrifice of our own sovereignty. I think this is the subject that we must address.
I believe in free trade. I do not believe in protectionism. I am not a protectionist. I think people, goods, and services and ideas should flow across borders freely. But when it comes to our armaments, under the guise of the U.N. orders or NATO orders, I do not believe this should be called something favorably as internationalism and those who oppose that as being isolationists.
I object to imposing our will on other people. I believe this is what we so often do. When we do that, we build hatreds around the world. That is why our embassies are less secure than many other nations. This is why we are bombed. We bomb Iraq endlessly. No wonder they hate us.
Iran right now, they have dissidents in the street; but they are blaming America, because there was a time when we put our dictator in charge of Iran as we have done so often around the world. Yet they only can come back by making our embassies vulnerable. It might be wiser for those countries that we cannot protect our embassies to put in a computerized operation because, in this day and age, we do not have to have embassies in the countries that are so dangerous.
But it is not the lack of security that is the problem, it is our type of policy that prompts the hatred toward America. I suggest we should look at some of this U.N. activity.
…(Rep. Chris Smith (R, NJ), Rep. Tony Hall (D, OH) and Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D, GA) spoke against the Amendment.)…
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I am not addressing the imperfections of the United Nations. I am addressing the imperfection of our policy with the United Nations, which is a lot different.
We ignore the rule of law; we ignore international law when it pleases us. We did not accept the United Nations role when it came to Kosovo. We did not even accept NATO when it came to Kosovo. What we did, we just totally ignored it.
We invaded a sovereign nation. We did not abide by the rules of the United Nations. Then when we needed rescue from our policy, then we go limping to the United Nations to come in and please save our policy in Kosovo.
That is what I object to. I think that we should not renege and turn over our sovereignty to these international bodies. I believe there is motivation for this. When our commercial interests and financial interests are at stake, yes, we do get involved in the Persian Gulf; yes, we do get involved in Eastern Europe. But do
So I say that we should have a policy that is designed for the sovereignty of this Nation; that we should not have troops serving under the United Nations; that we should not pretend to be a member of the United Nations and pretend to be a member of NATO and then not even follow the rules that have been laid down and that we have agreed to.
Generally, we always make our problems worse. Our wars are endless, and our occupations are endless. Someday we are going to have to wake up and design a new policy because this will not stop as long as we capitulate to the use of the United Nations and try to sacrifice our sovereignty to these international parties.
Now, this does not get us out of the United Nations. It is a step in that direction, obviously. But it is a step in the right direction because I think it is the proper use of our military if we do not capitulate and put it under NATO and put it in the United Nations. We need to use our military strictly in the defense of U.S. sovereignty.
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July 17th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, once again Congress demonstrates that it has no fundamental understanding of free trade or the best interests of the taxpayer. The Africa Growth & Opportunity Act is heavy-laden with Development Assistance (foreign aid), debt forgiveness (so much for the balanced budget), OPIC expansion (thus putting the taxpayers further at risk), and of course a new international regulatory board to be funded with “such sums as may be necessary.” Additionally, the costs of this bill are paid by raising taxes on charity. Free trade, Washington style, is evidently not free for the taxpayer!
So what exactly is “free trade” and how far removed from this principle have those in Washington and the world drifted?Free trade, in its purest form, means voluntary exchange between individuals absent intervention by the coercive acts of government. When those individuals are citizens of different political jurisdictions, international trade is the term typically applied in textbook economics. For centuries, economists and philosophers have debated the extent to which governments should get in the way of such transactions in the name of protecting the national interest (or more likely some domestic industry). Obviously, both parties to exchange (free of intervention) expect to be better off or they would not freely engage in the transaction. It is the parties excluded (i.e. government and those out-competed) from the exchange who might have benefitted by being a party to it who can be relied upon to engage in some coercive activity to prevent the transaction in the hopes that their trading position will become more favorable by “default.”
Because governments have for so long engaged in one variety of firm-or-industry-benefitting protectionism or another, my “trade free of intervention” definition of free trade is currently quite out of favor with beltway-dominant pundits. Such wrongheaded thinking is not limited to government. In academia, a widely-used undergraduate economics text, authored by David C. Colander, describes a “free trade association” as a “group of countries that allows free trade among its members and puts up common barriers against all other countries’ goods” — thus here we have free trade associations putting up barriers.(An economic textbook only Orwell could love.)
An example of what now constitutes “free trade” Washington style can be found within the USA ENGAGE Congressional Scorecard. It is insightful to consider what USA ENGAGE regards as pro-free trade against the backdrop of the non-interventionist notion of free trade outlined above.
China Most Favored Nation (MFN), while politically charged, is perhaps the cleanest genuine free trade vote chosen by USA ENGAGE. The question posed by this legislation is whether tariffs (taxes on U.S. citizens purchasing goods imported from China) should be lower or higher. In other words, when American and Chinese citizens engage in voluntary exchanges, should Americans be taxed. Clearly the free trade position here is not to raise taxes on Americans and interfere with trade.
The Vietnam Waiver vote classification as a pro-free trade position is particularly indicative, however, of what now constitutes free trade in the alleged minds of the beltway elite. When government forces through taxation, citizens to forego consumption of their own choosing (in other words forego voluntary exchanges) so that government can send money to foreign entities (i.e. trade promotion), this in the mind of Washington insiders constitutes “free trade.” In other words, when demand curves facing the corporate elite are less than those desired, government’s help is then enlisted to shift the demand curve by forcing taxpayers to send money to various government and private entities whose spending patterns more favorably reflect those desired by those “engineering” such “free trade” policies in Washington. Much like tax cuts being a “cost to government” and “free trade associations” whose purpose it is to erect barriers, free trade has become government-coerced, taxpayer-financed foreign aid designed to result in specific private spending and private gains.
The Fast Track initiative highlighted in USA ENGAGE’s Congressional scorecard has its own particular set of Constitutional problems, but the free-trade arguments are most relevant and illustrative here. The fast-track procedure bill sets general international economic policy objectives, re-authorizes “Trade Adjustment Assistance” welfare for workers who lose their jobs and for businesses which fail (a gentler, kinder “welfarist” form of protectionism), and creates a new permanent position of Chief Agriculture Negotiator within the office of the United States Trade Representative. Lastly, like today’s legislative mishap, the bill “pays” the government’s “cost” of free trade by increasing taxes on a set of taxpayers further removed from those corporatists who hope to gain by engineering favorable international trade agreements.
Constitutional questions aside, like today’s HR 434, the fast track bill contained provisions which would likely continue our country down the ugly path of internationally-engineered,”managed trade” rather than that of free trade. As explained by the late economist Murray N. Rothbard, Ph.D.:
Genuine free trade doesn’t require a treaty (or its deformed cousin, a ‘trade agreement’; NAFTA is called an agreement so it can avoid the constitutional requirement of approval by two-thirds of the Senate).If the establishment truly wants free trade, all it has to do is to repeal our numerous tariffs, import quotas, anti-dumping laws, and other American-imposed restrictions of free trade. No foreign policy or foreign maneuvering in necessary.”
In truth, the bipartisan establishment’s fanfare of “free trade” fosters the opposite of genuine freedom of exchange. Whereas genuine free traders examine free markets from the perspective of the consumer (each individual), the mercantilist examines trade from the perspective of the power elite; in other words, from the perspective of the big business in concert with big government. Genuine free traders consider exports a means of paying for imports, in the same way that goods in general are produced in order to be sold to consumers. The mercantilists want to privilege the government business elite at the expense of all consumers–be they domestic or foreign.
Fast track is merely a procedure under which the United States can more quickly integrate and cartelize government in order to entrench the interventionist mixed economy. In Europe, this process culminated in the Maastricht Treaty, the attempt to impose a single currency and central bank and force relatively free economies to ratchet up their regulatory and welfare states. In the United States, it has instead taken the form of transferring legislative and judicial authority from states and localities and to the executive branch of the federal government. Thus, agreements negotiated under fast track authority (like Nafta) are, in essence, the same alluring means by which the socialistic Eurocrats have tried to get Europeans to surrender to the super-statism of the European Union. And just as Brussels has forced low-tax European countries to raise their taxes to the European average or to expand their respective welfare states in the name of “fairness,” a “level playing field,” and “upward harmonization,” so too will the international trade governors and commissions be empowered to “upwardly harmonize,” internationalize, and otherwise usurp laws of American state governments.
The harmonization language in the last Congress’ Food and Drug Administration reform bill constitutes a perfect example. Harmonization language in this bill has the Health and Human Services Secretary negotiating multilateral and bilateral international agreements to unify regulations in this country with those of others. The bill removes from the state governments the right to exercise their police powers under the tenth amendment to the constitution and, at the same time, creates a corporatist power elite board of directors to review medical devices and drugs for approval. This board, of course, is to be made up of “objective” industry experts appointed by national governments. Instead of the “national” variety, known as the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 (enacted for the “good reason” of protecting railroad consumers from exploitative railroad freight rates, only to be staffed by railroad attorneys who then used their positions to line the pockets of their respective railroads), we now have the same sham imposed upon worldwide consumers on an international scale soon to be staffed by heads of multi-national pharmaceutical corporations.
The late economist Ludwig von Mises argued there is a choice of only two economic systems — capitalism or socialism. Intervention, he would say, always begets more interventionism to address the negative consequences of the prior intervention: thus, necessarily leading to yet further intervention until complete socialism is the only possible outcome. This principle remains true even in the case of intervention and free trade.
To the extent America is non-competitive, it is not because of a lack of innovation, ingenuity, or work ethic. Rather, it is largely a function of the overburdening of business and industry with excessive taxation and regulation. Large corporations, of course, greatly favor such regulation because it disadvantages their smaller competitors who either are not in a position to maintain the regulatory compliance department due to their limited size or, equally important, unable to “capture” the federal regulatory agencies whose regulation will be written to favor the politically adept and disfavor the truly productive. The rub comes when other governments engage in more laissez faire approaches thus allowing firms operating within those jurisdictions to become more competitive. It will be the products of these less-taxed, less-regulated firms which will be the consumers’ only hope to maintain their standard of living in a climate of domestic production burdened by regulation and taxation. The consumers’ after-tax income becomes lower and lower while relative prices of domestic goods become higher and higher. Free trade which provides the poor consumer an escape hatch, of course, is not the particular brand of “free trade” espoused by the international trade organizations whose purpose it is to exclude the more efficient competitors internationally in the same way federal regulatory agencies have been created and captured to do the equivalent task domestically.
Until policy makers can learn enough about trade and voluntary exchange to distinguish them from taxpayer-funded aid to bolster corporate revenues, OPIC, Export-Import funding, Market Access Program, and other forms of market intervention (each of which are quite the opposite of genuine free trade), the free trade discussion will remain at worst, a delusional discussion, and, at best, a hollow one.
For these reasons and others, I oppose the so-called free-trade-enhancing Africa Growth & Opportunity Act.
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July 15th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule but in opposition to the bill.
Mr. Speaker, as a legislature of enumerated powers, Congress may enact laws only for constitutionally authorized purposes. Despite citing the general welfare and commerce clause, the purpose of H.R. 1691 is obviously to ‘protect religious liberty.’ However, Congress has been granted no power to protect religious liberty. Rather, the first amendment is a limitation on congressional power. The first amendment of the United States Constitution provides that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, yet H.R. 1691 specifically prohibits the free exercise of religion because it authorizes a government to substantially burden a person’s free exercise if the government demonstrates some nondescript, compelling interest to do so.
The U.S. Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress and requires Congress to define government policy and select the means by which that policy is to be implemented. Congress, in allowing religious free exercise to be infringed using the least restrictive means whenever government pleads a compelling interest without defining either what constitutes least restrictive or compelling interest delegates, to the courts legislative powers to make these policy choices constitutionally reserved to the elected body.
Nowhere does H.R. 1691 purport to enforce the provisions of the fourteenth amendment as applied to the States. Rather, its design imposes a national uniform standard of religious liberty protected beyond that allowed under the United States Constitution, thereby intruding upon the powers of the State to establish their own policies governing protection of religious liberty as preserved under the tenth amendment. The interstate commerce clause was never intended to be used to set such standards for the entire Nation.
Admittedly, instances of State government infringement of religious exercise can be found in various forms and in various States, most of which, however, occur in government-operated schools, prisons and so-called government enterprises and as a consequence of Federal Government programs. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to believe that religious liberty will be somehow better protected by enacting national terms of infringement, a national infringement standard which is ill-defined by a Federal legislature and further defined by Federal courts, both of which are remote from those whose rights are likely to be infringed.
If one admires the Federal government’s handling of the abortion question, one will have to wait with even greater anticipation to witness the Federal government’s handiwork with respect to religious liberty.
To the extent governments continue to expand the breadth and depth of their reach into those functions formally assumed by private entities, governments will continue to be caught in a hopeless paradox where intolerance of religious exercise in government facilities is argued to constitute establishment and, similarly, restrictions of religious exercise constitute infringement.
Mr. Speaker, our Nation does not need an unconstitutional Federal standard of religious freedom. We need instead for government, including the courts, to respect its existing constitutional limitations so we can have true religious liberty.
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July 15th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise with some bit of ambivalence with this rule, but I will support the rule. I was concerned about a special issue with the Post Office and was hoping that we could address this in detail, and that has to do with the regulations that I consider very onerous and very maliciously placed on private mailboxes, the Commercial Receiving Agencies. I was very hopeful that we could deal with that. But it appears we will have another chance to do that at a later date.
I have a House joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act, H.J. Res. 55. If that were to pass, we could rescind all those regulations. Currently, it is my understanding that these regulations have been put on hold. They will not go into effect soon. But the problem still exists, and I see it as a serious problem.
First, let me talk about the Post Office. The Post Office is a true monopoly. In the free market, there are no true monopolies. Only government can allow a true monopoly.
We do have enough freedom in this country to some degree to offer competition to even this monopoly of the Post Office. By doing this, the private post offices have been set up to give additional service and privacy to many of our citizens, and they are well used.
But now the Post Office sees this as a competition because they are providing services that the Post Office cannot or will not provide. So instead of dealing with this, either providing legalized competition in the Post Office or providing these same services, instead, the Post Office has issued these onerous regulations to attack these customers.
They are forcing these private mailbox operators to develop profiles on every customer, have double identification, and then make this information available to the public and to the Post Office for no good reason.
When I first got involved in this, I did not know which constituencies would be interested in this issue. But one thing that I have discovered is that many of those women who need privacy will use private post offices to avoid the husband or some other individual who may be stalking them. They have been writing to me with a great deal of concern about what these regulations will do.
Also, it is a great cost to these operators as well as to all the customers. The Post Office would mandate that a special address be placed on each piece of mail, indicating that they are receiving mail at one of these private post offices. This costs a lot of money. There will be a lot of mail returned. If these regulations had gone into effect this week, as had been planned, a lot of mail, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pieces, if not millions, would have been returned to the senders, and they would not have been permitted to be delivered.
I think this is tragic. I think it has to be dealt with. I am disappointed that we cannot do much with it today, but I know there is a growing support in this country and in this Chamber for doing something about this problem.
We as a Congress have the ability, and the authority, to undo regulations. For too long, we have allowed our regulatory bodies to write law, and we do nothing about it. Since 1994, we have had this authority, but we never use it. This is a perfect example of a time that we ought to come in and protect the people, try to neutralize this government monopoly and help these people who deserve this type of protection and privacy.
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July 15th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, and I thank the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders ) for bringing this amendment to the floor.
I would like to clarify one thing about the original intent of the Exchange Stabilization Fund. It was never meant to be used to support foreign currencies. It should not be so casually accepted that that is the proper function of the Exchange Stabilization Fund.
The Exchange Stabilization Fund was set up, I think in error; but it was set up for the purpose of stabilizing the dollar in the Depression. How did that come about? Well, it started with an Executive order. It started with an Executive order to take gold forcefully from the people. And then our President then revalued gold from $20 an ounce to $35 an ounce, and there was a profit and they took this profit and used some of those profits to start the Exchange Stabilization Fund. They set it up with $200 million. It does not seem like a whole lot of money today.
How did it come about over these many years that this fund has been allowed to exist without supervision of this Congress, and now has reached to the size of $34 billion and we give it no oversight? It is supposed to send reports to us, very superficial reports to the Congress. We don’t know how they got $34 billion. They earned interest on some of the loans, and all the loans are paid back because the countries who get the loans borrow more money.
Mr. Chairman, the Mexico bailout did not solve the Mexico problem. It is ongoing. The peso is in trouble again. They are in more debt than before. We only encourage the financial bubble around the world. This is a dangerous notion that we can take something that was set up to stabilize the dollar, and now we are pretending we can stabilize all the currencies in the world and use it as foreign aid to boot without the congressional approval. There is something seriously flawed with this.
It has also been suggested by many who know a lot more about the details of the Exchange Stabilization Fund than I do, and it has been suggested that possibly, quite possibly, what happens is Treasury deals in currencies all the time and there are profits to be made. And when there is a profit, it goes into the Exchange Stabilization Fund. When there is a loss. It is sent over to the Treasury and then recorded as a loss.
This is a magnificent thing, but in a free society, in a democracy, in a republic where we are supposed to have the rule of law, we are not supposed to have a slush fund that is run by our Treasury without supervision to be doing things that was never intended. This is a serious problem. And I think economically it is serious because it is contributing to the bubble. It is contributing to a financial bubble.
So, yes, we tide Mexico over for a year or two, but what are we going to say next year when there is another peso crisis? Are we going to close our eyes and say we will do whatever we want, it is a major crisis? Our obligation here in the Congress is to have a sound dollar, not to dilute the value of the dollar without our permission and for our President and our Treasury Department and the IMF and the World Bank and the internationalists to destroy the value of the dollar. That is not permissible under the rule of law, and yet we have casually permitted this to happen and we do not even ask the serious questions.
We should make it certain that all loans, all use of that is reviewed by the Congress. This is a very, very modest request by the gentleman from Vermont. It should be absolutely approved. But then some day we ought to give a serious study about how we as a Congress allow these kind of things to happen without our supervision.
What is the purpose of having a Congress? What is the purpose of the Constitution if we have an obligation to guarantee the value of the dollar and if we permit somebody not under our control to do whatever they want to the dollar under the pretense that we are going to protect the value of all the currencies of Asia?
Mr. Chairman, are we going to protect the Euro now? The Euro is getting pretty weak. I guess we are going to bail out the Euro. When it drops down under a dollar, we will expect the Exchange Stabilization Fund to come and bail out the Euro. This has to be looked at. This is the first very modest, very minimal step that we are making tonight. It should be overwhelmingly supported.
It is up to us to assume our responsibility to protect the dollar, have the rule of law, make sure that we assume the responsibilities that have been delegated to us and not close our eyes and let this slush fund of $34 billion that has existed for now these many decades and have allowed the Treasury Department to run it without us caring. So I plead with my colleagues, support the amendment.
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July 14th, 1999
WASHINGTON, DC — In classic Washington, DC, form, the “Religious Liberty Protection Act” (HR1691) is nothing of the sort, and in fact just the opposite, said US Rep. Ron Paul (R, Texas), who is voting against the measure.
Rep. Paul said the legislation flies in the face of the First Amendment’s clear statement that Congress “shall make no law” prohibiting the “free exercise” of religion.
“However, HR1691 specifically prevents free exercise whenever the government claims a ‘compelling interest.’ Of course, that compelling interest is not defined, so it could be literally anything.”
Such loose language, said Dr. Paul, gives bureaucrats and the courts near-free reign over religious exercise in the United States.
“Nowhere does the legislation actually enforce the spirit of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Rather, its design is to impose a national standard of ‘religious liberty’ beyond what the federal government is allowed to do under our Constitution,” said Rep. Paul. “It is telling that one of the staunchest supporters of the measure is the liberal Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. On the other hand, opposing the legislation are such stalwarts of the conservative movement as Eagle Forum, the Religious Freedom Coalition, the Christian Action Network and the Home School Legal Defense Association, among many others not supporting it.”
While there have been instances of state governments improperly restricting religious liberty, Rep. Paul pointed that most instances dealt with the government schools.
“It is unreasonable to assume that religious freedom will be enhanced or better protected by a national ‘terms of infringement.’ This legislative standard is ill defined, therefore granting the federal courts, federal agencies and even Congress great ability to wreak even more havoc. Just as the federal government has mishandled the abortion issue — first by improperly intruding, and now by actually subsidizing — we can expect our religious liberties to be as casually dismissed as pre-born life.”
As government gets larger, it will continue to be caught in the “hopeless paradox wherein tolerance of religious exercise in public facilities is irrationally considered ‘establishment,’ while restricting exercise in other venues is not deemed ‘infringement.’”
“Our nation does not need more unconstitutional laws an doublespeak definitions of liberty and infringement; we instead need all levels of government — including the courts — to respect the existing constitutional limitations. Doing so will ensure the religious liberty of all Americans.”
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July 13th, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the City of Yoakum, Texas, which will celebrate its 112th birthday on Wednesday, July 28, 1999, with a festival at the city’s Heritage Museum.
Yoakum is located partially in western Lavaca County and partially in eastern DeWitt County. Today, the city is known as the ‘Leather Capital of the World,’ due primarily to the economic impact of 12 leather goods manufacturing firms and some 16 factory locations in Yoakum.
In its early years, Anglo-Americans used Yoakum as a gathering site for thousands of bawling Texas Longhorns that were grouped into cattle drives and driven along the Chisolm Trail to market. Yoakum’s townsite was established in 1887 with the arrival of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad–the railroad of Yoakum’s history.
Once, Yoakum was the ‘Green Wrap’ tomato capita of the world and still commemorates this heritage with the annual ‘Tom Tom Festival.’ As that industry faded, the community leaders–namely Mr. C. C. Welhausen–fostered the idea that Yoakum needed another industry as a base to its economy. The result: a leather industry era that now employs some 1,500 and produces millions of dollars of the Yoakum area economy.
Beef production is also huge in Yoakum, and both Lavaca and DeWitt Counties rank in the top five counties in the State of Texas in cow-calf operations. A true cowboy culture exists in the Yoakum area due to the thousands of head of cattle grown on area ranches.
I am proud to represent a city so full of rich, Texas heritage. Mr. Speaker, I hope you will join me sending happy birthday wishes to the City of Yoakum, Texas.
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July 1st, 1999
Mr. PAUL. Madam Chairman, I will take my one minute to address the subject of privacy, because I do have an amendment that I think would improve the protection of privacy.
We have had a lot of talk and indication on this side of the aisle about protecting privacy. But I believe the understanding of what our role is in protecting privacy, if it applied across the board, would mean that politicians and political action committees could never rent a list from the Sierra club or the American Civil Liberties Union.
But I am addressing the subject of Know Your Customer. At the same time we hear these declarations for protection of privacy, we hear from the same people that we cannot get rid of Know Your Customer.
Now, if one wants to really find something where one invades the privacy of the individual citizen, it is this notion that the Federal Government would dictate a profiling of every bank customer in this country; and then, if that customer varied its financial activities at any time, it could be reported to the various agencies of the Federal Government. Now, that is privacy. That is what we have to stop. I ask for support for my amendment.
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