GARY LONGSINE
America, Bush need your help
We desperately need a funda
mental re-evaluation and
reorganization of national
security policy. We must stop, think
and change. We must do it today.
We can no longer view national
security strictly in terms of military
threats from outside. We must con
sider the economy, the environment,
the health of our people and the scourge
of world poverty and hunger to be
vital to the security and well-being of
our nation.
President Bush would prefer that
you view these issues as a dichotomy:
domestic vs. security issues, or mili
tary vs. humanitarian. That way, he
can blame Congress for inactivity on
the very issues he ignores and can
continue to play with foreign policy
in his Cold War ways and golf on his
domestic time.
Bush has had his chance to lead
this country and the world into his
new world order. So far he has done
nothing new, except name it in speeches
that now have a hollow ring. We must
realize, because Bush won’t, that the
true threats to our nation’s security
come from problems that were ig
nored or created in the frenzy of the
Cold War and greatly exacerbated by
a decade of Ronald Reagan and Bush.
Absent presidential action, Con
gress cannot be expected to provide a
coherent and visionary leadership.
However, it should be expected to
provide clear legislation in response
torcal problems. The new world order
needs to begin at home. We can lead
the world, but only if we lead our
selves first.
One big obstacle to our self-lead
ership is a practice the courts have
adopted as a response to confusing
legislation from Congress. We should
put an immediate stop to the use of
legislative history to interpret the
wishy-washy laws passed by a timid
and divided Congress.
Legislative history is the record of
debate on a bill. Courts use it to
determine the intent of Congress when
the intent, apparently, is not discern
ible from the text of the law. The
record often contains hundreds of pages
of explanatory remarks dropped into
the record. Much of it is never actu
ally read in the debate.
The record is generally so exten
sive that virtually any interpretation
of a legislative bill can be supported.
This moves the courts to the center of
policy making. I say move them back
out. If Congress can’t pass clear leg
islation on an issue, then it shouldn’t
pass any at all.
Bill GL-1: “The courts of this land
Bush has had his
chance tg lead this.
country and the
world into his new
world order, So {gr
he has, done, nothing.
new, except name, it
in meshes, that mm
have a hollow ring.
shall not use the legislative record of
Congress to interpret the laws of the
land as passed by Congress. The text
of the law shall be sufficient to deter
mine its meaning. If the text has no
meaning, then the law has no mean
ing. No guessing and no peeking al
lowed.”
With that done, Congress should
strive to pass clear legislation directed
at our nation’s very real problems.
It is not enough to say that we must
stop spending hundreds of billions of
dollars on our military when we have
homeless people,children in poverty,
more than $2.5 trillion in the federal
debt and death by stray bullets in our
inner cities.
Bill GL-2: ‘‘Congress hereby di
rects the president to submit within
one year a budget with military spend
ing reduced by half. Furthermore, all
procurement of nuclcafr weapons and
their delivery systems shall cease
immediately.”
With the military monster under
control. Congress can make some
headway into salvaging the economy.
It needs help. It sags under the tre
mendous weight of a variety of debt
related problems. The recent scrap
over credit card interest rates points
to one of the widely ignored aspects
of these problems.
You, as a credit card-using con
sumer, are paying interest rates far in
excess of the interest that would nor
mally be associated with your lend
ing risk. The tremendous profits milked
fofrom credit card holders are being
used to prop up ailing banks.
You are paying banks for making
bad loans to developing nations. You
are also paying for loans to wealthy
developers, who made more money
in one year in the 1980s than you will
in the rest of your life. These develop
ers built tremendous office complexes
in cities such as Houston. Poking
through the skylines of several major
cities in the Southwest are giant of
fice towers sitting empty or uncom
pleted.
Most of the developers paid them
selves handsomely — and legally —
for the entrepreneurial talent required
to convince a banker that yet another
empty tower in a Southwestern state
would be a sound investment.
Billions of dollars of these and
other bad loans are being written off
by banks such as Citibank, Chase
Manhattan and Chemical Bank. You
probably have a credit card from one
of these banks and you are probably
paying from 17 to 20 percent interest.
A decade ago, a legal monopoly
affectionately called Ma Bell was
disbanded for doing exactly the same
thing the major banks are doing now.
Ma Bell was charging long-distance
customers higher rates to subsidize
the losses incurred in their service to
local callers.
But that is just a drop in the bucket
of economic problems. We need
sweeping changes. Economic collapse,
or even eternal stagnation, is a much
greater threat to our security than
Libya could ever hope to be.
Bill GL-3: “Congress directs the
president to submit a budget with the
deficit reduced by one-third. The
president shall submit a balanced
budget in 1993. Thereafter, all budg
ets, except in times of national emer
gency as declared by the president,
approved by a two-thirds vote of both
houses of Congress, and initialed in
triplicate by God, shall be submitted
as balanced.” i
If you want to help bring in the
new world order, send a self-addressed,
stamped envelope and a contribution
of $25 for the complete text of 25
simple legislative GL-bills that could
help save our nation.
Our country needs your help.
Suggested bills are welcome. Please
keep them to 50 or fewer words. No
words of more than three syllables.
We’re dealing with Congress, you
know.
I^ongsine is a senior economics and inter
national affairs major and a Daily Nebras
kan columnist
‘Gag rule’ inaccurate name
for abortion counseling decision
In the editorial ‘“Gag rule’ re
mains” (DN, Nov. 21), Eric Pfanner
neglected to tell the whole story about
this issue. Title X has recently been
referred to as the “gag rule.” This is
not a gag rule. Keep reading, and I’ll
explain.
In a statement Nov. 5, President
Bush said, “Patients and doctors can
talk about absolutely anything they
want.” This includes abortion. The
doctors can inform their patients of
the costs, harms and effects or what
would happen during the abortion,
etc. They simply cannot refer the
patients to an abortion clinic. There
fore, it is only non-medical person
nel, clinic counselors, for example,
who are affected by this ruling.
Pfanner said that counseling is not
the same as advocacy, and I agree.
What this ruling says is that physi
cians should be the ones to discuss
abortion with patients, but they should
not refer them to abortion clinics once
they have already conceived. This is
the reason family planning clinics,
such as Planned Parenthood, are so
upset with this ruling. They also wanted
to allow their counselors to discuss
the option of abortion with their pa
tients.
The original intent of Title X, when
it was implemented in 1970, was to
deal with the issue of preventative
family planning, not to deal with the
issue of abortion. Once a woman
becomes pregnant, she no longer falls
into the pre-conceplive category.
Abortion is not preventive family
planning. It is post-conccptive plan
ning, not to mention that it is the
ending of a human life.
The congressional conference report
on Title X clearly states: “It is, and
has been, the intent of both houses
that funds authorized under this legis
lation be used only to support preven
tive family planning services.” Sec
tion 1008 of Title X says, “None of
the funds appropriated under this title
shall be used in programs where
abortion is a method of family plan
ning.”
Pfanncr’s article mentioned that
the failure to override this veto will
lead to Bush’s less-than-perfect rec
ord on social issues. I believe he is
trying to reiterate what House Speaker
Thomas Foley recently said. Foley
feared that if the House voted with the
president, it would imperil vital so
cial programs offered by these clin
ics. But, in fact, none of the money
would be taken away from these clin
ics if these clinic counselors were not
allowed to discuss abortion. Bush has
said he will sign the bill with every
dollar intact.
Another point I feel needs to be
made here is that even though abor
tion is legal on demand, it docs not
mean that we, ascitizensof the United
States, have to subsidize it, or infor
mation about it, with our tax money.
As with the issue of food stamps,
the government sets guidelines as to
how people can use their food stamps.
This is, as it should be, the same with
the issue of abortion. The govern
ment is giving federal money to these
family planning clinics and should be
able to have a say in how this money
is going to be used.
It would have been well-advised
for Pfanner to become aware of the
truths of Title X, and of Bush’s re
marks, before solely relying on Planned
Parenthood forces and their pro-abor
tion rhetoric when writing his edito
rial.
Ken Kroll
sophomore
psychology
Editor’s note: In writing the Daily
Nebraskan editorial on Bush’s veto,
Pfanner used articles by The Asso
ciated Press and The Washington
Post as his sources.
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