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October 1996, pg. 35 Special Report
A Look at the 104th Congress
by Shirl McArthurSince this will be the last issue of the Washington Report before the 1996 general elections, we thought it would be useful to examine the records of individual members of the 104th Congress on issues concerning the Middle East. It was difficult to do this in a meaningful way, however, because most Middle East-related votes also involved other matters. A congressman’s vote on a given bill may have been determined by issues extraneous to any consideration of justice or U.S. national interest in the Middle East. Examples of such legislation include the foreign aid bill, anti-terrorism legislation, immigration legislation, and even the 18-month extension of the “Middle East Peace Facilitation Act” (which, among other things, allows the PLO to maintain an office in Washington) because it was combined with the foreign aid bill. The Iran/Libya sanctions legislation initially seemed an obvious choice for this analysis. However, the floor votes in the Senate on this legislation were voice votes, and the key votes in the House were unanimous. What opposition there was to this legislation therefore, took place in the committees. For these reasons we chose just three issues to provide readers with a snapshot of their representatives in action. The only one of the three that actually involved a floor vote was the bill to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The other two issues were removal of the ban on travel by U.S. citizens to Lebanon, and the Senate and House letters to the Clinton administration requesting humanitarian assistance to Lebanon in response to “Grapes of Wrath,” signed by 19 senators and 17 representatives. Regarding the bill to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, even though they voted in favor of the final bill, two Jewish senators—Dianne Feinstein of California and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, both Democrats—deserve credit for inserting at the last minute a provision allowing the president to delay moving the embassy if doing so would damage “national security interests.” In the interest of space the accompanying table lists
only those congressmen who, in our opinion, were on the side of
justice and the U.S. national interest by voting against moving
the Embassy to Jerusalem (A) or by supporting lifting the travel
ban on Lebanon (B) or by urging humanitarian aid for Lebanon (C).
Only 8 representatives (4 from Michigan) and 2 senators show up
in all three columns. About the same number of representatives (9)
but several more senators (11) appear in two columns.
Key to columns: A = Voted against moving U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem |
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