Bosnia Today

Floor Speech

Madam Speaker, last week Congressman Trent Franks and I had an important meeting with Reis Emeritus Dr. Mustafa Ceric, the former Grand Mufti of the Islamic community of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Dr. Ceric is internationally recognized and renowned as a man of peace, a leader in interreligious dialogue. For example, in 2008, he led the Muslim delegation to the Catholic-Islamic Forum, and he did that kind of work on many, many occasions.

Last week, we talked about Bosnia since the conflict and the genocide of the 1990s, about where Bosnia is today and where it needs to go.

I would like to share with my colleagues what Reis Ceric had to say. Dr. Ceric briefed and updated us on Bosnia's struggle to hold itself together, build its economy, and integrate into NATO and the European Union.

He talked about a country where, 19 years after Srebrenica and the horrific genocide that occurred there and the Dayton Peace Accords, ethnic divisions remain strong and, in many ways, have hardened as a generation has grown up in a system that classifies people into one of three ethnic communities--Bosniak, Serb, or Croat--and in a system that diminishes the rights of anyone that doesn't belong to one of those communities, including Jews and Roma.

In Bosnia today, only ethnic Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats can be elected to the legislature--the House of Peoples--or to the Presidency. This structurally-embedded discrimination is a legacy of the Dayton Peace Accords brokered under American watch.

While this design was probably necessary at the time to stop the genocide and aggression, in today's time and expanding Europe, it clearly violates our basic values of freedom and equality.

As a result, in Bosnia today, all persons are not equal and--based on race, religion, and ethnicity--entire segments of the population are excluded from full political participation.

The Dayton Peace Accords were a tourniquet to end the genocidal conflict in 1995. However, that is all they were really intended to be. Dayton was never intended to operate as Bosnia's Constitution, certainly not for 19 years.

As a result of Dayton's severe limitations on its democracy, Bosnia cannot be fully integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures. Without amending the Dayton Accords to respect basic human rights and political rights of one person-one vote, Bosnia will never even be a candidate for the European Union.

So a question mark hangs over Bosnia's future, as ethnic activists continue to agitate to partition the country and threaten daily to secede, taking large swaths of ethnically-cleansed territories with them. Such action might lead to a revival of hostilities.

What further aggravates the condition is a sustained campaign of mischaracterization and outright denial of genocide by some government officials of the Republika Srpska, the smaller of Bosnia's two entities.

Milorad Dodik, the President of the Republika Srpska, is publicly calling for the naming of public squares, roads, and boulevards after indicted war criminals such as Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic; yet Dayton provides no mechanism by which Bosnia, Madam Speaker, can be fully democratized.

Significant leadership by Bosnian leaders is going to be absolutely necessary to break through the stalemate created by ethnic interests, and, of course, the United States must do its part to ensure that the Bosnian dream of a robust democracy, respect for the fundamental human rights, and rule of law is reached. I respectfully submit that delay is denial and that the Bosnians deserve better.

Madam Speaker, the United States has a special responsibility to Bosnia. We could have done more for them in the 1990s. I know, I was here.

I held hearing after hearing, traveled to the former Yugoslavia repeatedly, joined by other colleagues like Frank Wolf, trying to get this country to stand up and assist those who were being victimized by an invasion; instead, we left it to the Europeans in the 1990s, and, unfortunately, it was a train wreck.

We could have lifted the arms embargo on Bosnia earlier, which may have prevented the genocide.

I would note, parenthetically, that I was the sponsor of legislation to lift the egregiously-flawed arms embargo that hindered both the Croats' and the Bosnians' ability to defend against aggression.

Only after the tragic and preventable Srebrenica genocide in early July 1995--and thanks to the leadership of some of us in the House and Senate--did our government swing into action and broker the peace deal.

Bosnians, Madam Speaker, of every ethnicity and faith look to the United States to help move the country forward. I agree with Reis Ceric that, without American leadership and help to evolve the Dayton Accords toward a democratic constitution, the situation will likely fester and get worse.

Madam Speaker, in the 1990s, throughout the darkness of the Balkan war, Reis Ceric was a powerful, persistent, reasonable, and dynamic voice for peace, human rights, the rule of law, and accountability for genocide.

Reis Ceric is a good friend of mine and truly an inspiring man of God.

TAX-PAYER-FUNDED ABORTION

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I would like to address another issue before the House today.

Madam Speaker, 5 years ago, about 5 feet from where I am standing right now, President Obama told lawmakers and the American public in a specially called joint session of Congress on health care reform that, ``Under our plan, no Federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.''

That was September 9, 2009. In an eleventh hour ploy to garner support from a remnant of pro-life congressional Democrats absolutely needed for passage of ObamaCare, the President issued an executive order on March 24, 2010, that said:

The Affordable Care Act maintains current Hyde amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly-created health insurance exchanges.

It turns out, Madam Speaker, that those ironclad promises made by the President himself are absolutely untrue.

Agree or disagree with public funding of abortion--and a significant majority of Americans oppose it--but no one likes to be misled. Today, as I think many of my colleagues know, a growing number of Americans are recognizing that abortion is violence against children and hurts women.

Abortion methods rip, tear, and dismember or chemically poison the fragile bodies of unborn children. There is nothing benign, compassionate, or just about an act that utterly destroys a baby and often physically, psychologically, or emotionally harms the mother.

At its core, Madam Speaker--and this has been missed by many, especially in the media--the Hyde amendment has two parts. It prohibits funding for abortion, but it also prohibits funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

Remember, the President stood here and then, in his executive order, said that the act maintains the Hyde amendment restrictions governing abortion and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges. That is what the executive order said, and yet, now, we know that is absolutely untrue.

A comprehensive Government Accountability Office report released this week documents massive new public funding for abortion in the President's new health care law.

Like so many of the President's promises that litter the political landscape, GAO has found that, in 2014, taxpayers are funding over 1,000--let me repeat that--1,000 ObamaCare health plans that subsidize abortion on demand--even late-term abortion--decimating the Hyde amendment that the President said he would honor.

Again, if you fund the insurance plan, the purchase of a plan, it is a violation of the Hyde amendment that the President said that he would extend to the newly-created health insurance exchanges.

According to the Government Accountability Office, in their findings, every ObamaCare taxpayer-funded health insurance plan in my own State of New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Hawaii pays for abortion on demand, every one of them.

In New York, a whopping 405 out of 426 ObamaCare plans subsidize abortion on demand. In California, it is 86 plans out of 90; in Massachusetts, 109 out of 111; in Oregon, 92 out of 102; in Washington, 23 of the 34 plans; and so it goes.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, their April 2014 estimate, Madam Speaker, between 2014 and 2024, taxpayer subsidies to buy ObamaCare health plans will total $855 billion, making taxpayers unwittingly, wherever they live, complicit in abortion.

GAO has also found that even an accounting trick embedded in ObamaCare requiring premium payers to be assessed a separate, monthly abortion surcharge is being completely ignored. The surcharge would have added some modicum of transparency so individuals would know whether they are purchasing a pro-life or pro-abortion health insurance plan.

Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska summed up the plain meaning--the absolutely plain meaning--of the law when he said that you have to write two checks, one for the abortion coverage and one for the rest of the premium.

According to the GAO, none of the 18 insurance companies they interviewed are billing the abortion surcharge separately. None. So much for the rule of law.

Last year, Members of Congress and some staff were barred from any further participation in the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan, the FEHB, and compelled on to ObamaCare exchanges.

After months of misinformation, obfuscation, and delay, I finally learned that, of the 112 plans offered on the exchange for my family, 103 of those plans pay for abortion on demand, a clear violation of the Smith amendment, a Hyde-like amendment that I first sponsored on the floor back in 1983 and has been the law of the land for all of these years, except for 2 years during the Clinton administration.

Madam Speaker, Americans throughout the country have raised very serious questions that they find it nearly impossible to determine whether the plan that they are purchasing finances or subsidizes the killing of unborn children--there is little or no transparency--hence the request by several Members of Congress, including our distinguished Speaker, Speaker Boehner, that the Government Accountability Office investigate.

As the November 15 open enrollment approaches for ObamaCare, we have no reason now to believe that the President's promise of this most transparent government in history will give consumers basic information about the abortion coverage.

First, we were told it wouldn't be in there--again, a promise made right from this podium, Madam Speaker--and then by way of executive order; and, now, we can't even find out, clearly and unmistakably, which plans include abortion and which do not.

To end President Obama's massive new funding of abortion on demand, Madam Speaker, last January, the House of Representatives passed my bill--a totally bipartisan bill--overwhelmingly known as the No Taxpayers Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act.

Madam Speaker, when our friend and colleague on the other side of this building, Harry Reid, was a Member of the House, he was as pro-life as Henry Hyde. Now, as a majority leader, he refuses to even allow H.R. 7 and its companion bill offered by Senator Wicker to come up for a vote.

With respect to the distinguished Senator and on behalf of the weakest and the most vulnerable, the unborn children and those who will be hurt by abortion--their moms--I respectfully ask that he reconsider and post the legislation for a vote.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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