Cass Ballenger: “I would like the White House to answer a serious question: Why does the President believe that the Commerce Department…”

“I would like the White House to answer a serious question: Why does the President believe that the Commerce Department, and not the State Department, should have the final say about a matter of national security? Technology transfers to Communist China is a matter of highest national security. Why then did the Clinton administration take the authority for the granting of waivers from the State Department and give it to the Commerce Department? Here we have a case of two interests in conflict. We have an important and legitimate economic interest in selling goods and technology to China, and we have a national security interest in preventing Communist China from acquiring technology that can be used for military purposes. These two interests are at times absolutely in conflict, but it is not difficult to decide that national security must always come first. Why then would this administration put commercial interests above national security interests? Mr. Speaker, it is wrong, wrong, wrong for this administration to have made this policy change. This administration has its priorities utterly backward.”