Young Oak Kim: “the people in my district in California do not have any luxury to subscribe to the Washington Post and the Washington…”

“the people in my district in California do not have any luxury to subscribe to the Washington Post and the Washington times, which have extensive coverage of what is happening inside the Beltway. There is a lot of rhetoric, especially about the U.N. peacekeeping mission. This bill that we just passed, H.R. 7, which is named the National Security Revitalization Act, the people are saying if this is passed, that will be the end of the U.N. peacekeeping mission. I would like to clarify this. I would like to urge all my people in my district, people in California, to contact Mr. Clinton not to veto this important bill. Let me tell you what this really truly says. In the last year, 1995, fiscal year, our administration came to Congress to ask for $533 million for the U.N. peacekeeping mission, just peacekeeping. That is our assessment. At 6 months later, they come back asking an additional $672 million. Adding it together, our assessment was actually $1.2 billion last year alone, cash assessment to the United Nations. This year our administration asked again for only $445 million. Now, who is trying to fool who this time? This is a very unrealistic request to try to trick the system by grossly underestimating our peacekeeping assessment numbers so that the overall budget looks smaller. I can bet you that they are going to come back halfway through this year asking another $1/2 billion.”