============================================
The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
============================================
Human Events
	
HELMS WEIGHS IN AGAINST WTO
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
But Dole and Gingrich Back It

Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.), the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, has joined in with those Republicans who have decided to make
Bill Clinton's life less comfortable.  Barely had the election outcome been
announced when Helms, according to informed sources, said he was going to 
bury the President's choice for ambassador to Panama, Robert Pastor, the 
architect of Jimmy Carter's disastrous Latin American policy (see Human 
Events, June 24, page 3).

Then Helms, in a press conference in Raleigh, N.C., announced that under his
leadership, the committee was intensely interested in reviewing the 
following issues:

* The "so-called" foreign aid program that has "spent an estimated $2 
trillion of the American taxpayers' money, much of it going down foreign 
ratholes, to countries that constantly oppose us in the United Nations, 
and many which reject concepts of freedom."

* Evaluation of why the Foreign Service "should operate under different 
personnel rules from all other of our government's civilian personnel."

* Reevaluation of U.S. relations with "that long-time nemesis of millions 
of Americans, the United Nations...which costs the American taxpayers 
billions of dollars."

* The administration's effort to regain the Golan Heights for Syria.  
"Syria doesn't want peace with Israel," said Helms.  "What Syria wants is 
the Golan Heights, plus, of course, access to the American taxpayers' 
money.  Congress needs to get off the dime and demand a reassessment of 
the entire Middle East peace process so that we can know, in advance, 
what our commitments are likely to be."

REPUDIATED CONGRESS SHOULDN'T VOTE

Even more alarming for President Clinton, moreover, was the forceful 
November 14 letter the North Carolinian sent the President in connection 
with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).  The 
controversial GATT implementation bill (S 2467), wrote Helms, "is 
scheduled to be raced through a lame-duck session of the U.S. Senate on a 
very unwise 'fast-track' schedule allowing no amendments and no motions 
of any kind, and with an up-or-down vote automatically occurring at the 
conclusion of only 20 hours of debate."

Then Helms made his request: "I implore you to inform the Senate that you 
are willing for consideration of the GATT implementation bill to be 
delayed until very early in 1995, thereby permitting meaningful public 
hearings at which significant witnesses on both sides can be heard."

Helms also added this not very veiled threat: If the President would put 
off GATT, this would have an "exceedingly positive effect" on Helms' 
willingness to let the administration's foreign policy positions be 
"considered both fairly and fully."

As Human Events readers are aware, many conservatives are extremely wary
of the new GATT, with its World Trade Organization (WTO) component.  So
alarmed, in fact, have been a number of Senate Republicans over the 
agreement that, along with Helms, Senators Strom Thurmond (S.C.), Larry
Pressler (S.D.) and Larry Craig (Idaho) introduced a "sense of the Senate"
resolution during the summer calling for creation of a joint task force 
of administration officials and congressmen to determine whether the new 
agreement should be considered a treaty needing two-thirds Senate approval
before its provisions could be enacted.

(The resolution never got anywhere, and thus the implementation of the 
new GATT's provisions will need just a majority vote in the House and 60
votes - seven less than required for the ratification of a treaty - in 
the Senate to waive the Budget Act of 1974 in order to bring it up for a 
vote.)

The senators, however, noted that 42 state attorneys general have warned 
that the 123-member WTO could run roughshod over state or local laws that 
it deems illegally interfere with international trade.  As a party to the 
WTO, the attorneys general said, the United States "would be obligated to 
change local, state and federal laws determined by a secret WTO panel to 
be 'GATT-illegal,' or face perpetual trade sanctions."

GINGRICH ADMITS WTO POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS

The senators also stressed that, unlike the current GATT agreement, the 
"United States will have only one vote and no veto rights in the WTO.  
The single-vote structure will give the European Union the capacity to 
outvote the United States 12 to 1.  It will also give the island of St. 
Kitts, with a population of 60,000, the same voting power as the United 
States.  The United States will have less than 1% of the total vote, but 
will be assessed almost 20% of the total cost of operating the 
WTO....State officials have no standing before WTO tribunals even if a 
state law is challenged as an illegal trade barrier."

What is somewhat astonishing is that the two Republican leaders of the 
new Congress - Sen. Robert Dole (Kan.) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (Ga.) - 
favor GATT and the WTO, despite major reservations, and want the current, 
lame-duck Congress to vote on the legislation when it returns in less 
than two weeks.

Incoming Speaker Gingrich, though now backing the new GATT, earlier this 
year said he was worried that the trade organization would become a 
"Third World-dominated, dictatorship-dominated system" that could exert 
authority over U.S. economic policies and infringe on national sovereignty.
Gingrich declared, "I'm for world trade, but I'm against world government."

Even when he had clearly shifted to a favorable view, he acknowledged the 
WTO's dangers.  Sitting in on House Ways and Means Committee hearings on 
the WTO earlier this year, Gingrich noted that "[T]his is not just 
another trade agreement.  This is adopting something which twice, once in 
the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the United States Congress rejected.  I 
am not even saying we should reject it; I, in fact, lean toward it, but I 
think we have to be very careful, because it is a very big transfer of 
power."

Indeed, as we noted in our July 1 issue, Gingrich likened GATT to the 
"Maastricht" treaty governing much of Europe, by which individual states 
have surrendered an unprecedented degree of economic sovereignty.  We 
need "to be honest about the fact," Gingrich allowed, "that we are 
transferring from the United States at a practical level significant 
authority to a new organization.  This is a transformational moment.  I 
would feel better if the people who favor this would just be honest about 
the scale of change."

If even supporters of the new GATT are admitting its potentially vast 
dangers to the United States, what's wrong with Helm's suggestion that 
the liberal Congress so overwhelmingly repudiated by the American people 
on November 8 should be cut out of the voting picture entirely?

[end]

Source: Human Events
	Inside Washington
	November 25, 1994

