Dale Bumpers: “I wish to tell my colleagues, No. 1, this will be very short and sweet, and it will not require a rollcall. I am saying…”

“I wish to tell my colleagues, No. 1, this will be very short and sweet, and it will not require a rollcall. I am saying this to the distinguished floor managers on the assumption that the President is going to veto the bill and that the bill is going to come back here at some point in the future, in October or November, and I will have an opportunity to offer this amendment and get a rollcall vote on it. Now, this amendment deals with the National Endowment for Democracy. A lot of the new Members are not familiar with the National Endowment for Democracy. Mr. President, Dante Fascell was a beloved House Member. Everybody knew him. He always wanted to do something to enhance democracy when the Communists were riding roughshod on everybody around the world. And when Ronald Reagan came to power, Dante Fascell presented this idea of a privately funded National Endowment for Democracy to President Reagan. President Reagan said he liked the idea of something that would counter communism with democracy. And here is what Dante Fascell said, "We had found ourselves a powerful ally, the President of the United States. We had a horse and so we rode that horse. Changed the bill around and rammed it through." And then he said they gave money to the Democratic and Republican parties, to the labor unions, and to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Hell yeah. They were on board," Fascell recalled. "They got a piece of the pie. They got paid off.…”