LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW: Mitch McConnell : Controlling the Money in the Foreign-Relations Debate

Shortly after the Republican landslide in November, Sen. Mitch McConnell spoke to a liberal, internationally minded audience on New York’s Upper East Side. The prospect of the outspokenly conservative GOP senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, assuming control of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had shaken their composure. McConnell sought to reassure them. “With all due respect to my good friend, Jesse,” he said, it was going to be McConnell, not Helms, who would wield power on foreign-policy issues in Congress.

In McConnell’s view, the U.S. national interest since World War II had been served by a strong bipartisan foreign policy. And he was going to do his level best to see that this continued. At the same time, however, McConnell took the opportunity to warn his audience that they “had every right to be worried” about prospective changes coming in the way Congress looked at domestic policy.

This unusual mix of commitment to internationalism, combined with a willingness to engage in bare-knuckle political infighting on domestic issues, makes McConnell, 52, a formidable combatant on a wide range of issues. Even when the GOP was in the minority, he was often able to construct coalitions to promote favored programs abroad. On domestic matters, his partisanship could be equally successful--as in the closing days of the last Congress, when he almost single-handedly blocked passage of campaign-reform laws.

So it should not have been surprising that with the GOP victory, McConnell wasted little time in asserting himself. In December, just after Pearl Harbor Day, McConnell launched a surprise attack of his own--on the congressional foreign-policy Establishment. After working in secrecy with a few trusted aides, he proposed a wholesale revamping of foreign aid.

In unveiling his own version of where U.S. largess should be dispensed overseas and how and by whom it should be managed at home, McConnell threw down the gauntlet to a host of entrenched powers. These include Senate GOP colleagues like Bob Dole of Kansas, the new majority leader and Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, the once and now again chairman of appropriations.

But most of all, McConnell’s proposal was a preemptive strike against Helms and his ambitions to set the agenda for foreign-policy debate. That this relatively obscure junior senator from Kentucky could recast the debate for many in the foreign-policy community is testament to his political skills. But it also serves as a cautionary tale about where power lies in Washington.

Presidents used to court previous Foreign Relations Committee chairmen, towering figures like Henry Cabot Lodge, Arthur Vandenberg and J. William Fulbright. But the committee fell on hard times. Even its staff admits it was marginalized under the most recent chairman, Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.). McConnell, in fact, served on Foreign Relations before transferring to the less well-known, but far more influential Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He understood that in foreign affairs, as in domestic policy, congressional clout rests with the power of the purse. And it is in the taxing and spending committees where real influence is wielded.

Talking in his office across from the Capitol, McConnell’s conversation is peppered with the jargon of the Hill. To outsiders, they may be terms of art, but for McConnell and other congressional leaders, they are tools of their trade.

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Question: Why is it necessary for the new Congress to have a foreign-aid bill written by you?

Answer: What we did was announce a foreign-aid-reform authorization bill which may or may not ever pass, but in (my) Appropriations Committee, we can achieve many of the goals that I have outlined through the allocation of funds. Some things would be funded and some things would not.

Q: Is it then fair to say you are showing a lack of faith in Sen. Jesse Helms and the Foreign Relations Committee?

A: Well, in his defense, the Foreign Relations Committee wasn’t a beehive of legislative activity prior to Sen. Helms becoming its chairman . . . . Whether they act or not, there will be an appropriations bill. The difference between us is we’re shooting with real bullets. And I thought people might like to know what the real bill might look like . . . .

It’s a fact that a foreign-aid authorization bill hasn’t become law since 1986. The appropriations bill will pass every year. It’s the real bill with the real money every year.

Q: So your advice is for people to keep their eyes on the appropriations--

A: Well, the people who know what’s going on always have.

Q: Will it be a very different kind of appropriations bill than in the past?

A: Philosophically, my view is--and it was my view even before the election--that if we have a mandate to shrink the government, foreign aid is certainly not going to be exempt from that.

And so the issue becomes: What do you do with a shrinking pie? My view is you have a sort of laser-like focus on where American interests lie. And the principal criteria for expenditure of tax dollars abroad ought to be what is in our national-security interest . . . . We ought not to be spending money on anything abroad we wouldn’t be spending it on at home. Sort of the smell test for foreign aid.

Q: Would you also say your approach is designed to save foreign aid from the more conservative elements in your party?

A: I’m an internationalist. I believe in foreign aid as a tool . . . . There are others who don’t think we ought to have it at all . . . . But I do think that aid ought to be married up with interest . . . .

Now with regard to AID (Agency for International Development, which dispenses most overseas assistance)--and here I think my views are similar to Sen. Helms: We don’t have the money to be engaging in a kind of exotic social spending in various places in the world. We don’t have the money to do that at home, we’re arguing, much less somewhere else.

There are two areas in the world that clearly meet the national-security interest test--the Middle East and in Europe.

Now, with regard to Europe, my view is that the most important thing to try to do is to avoid the re-emergence of the Russian empire. And there are two ways, clearly, the U.S. can have an impact on that. The first is to reject the “Russia First” policy of (Deputy Secretary of State) Strobe Talbott--which essentially has been whatever (Russian President Boris) Yeltsin wanted, Yeltsin got.

Ironically, since the Nov. 8 election, they’ve been talking differently. I expect the President, any day now, to go out and announce he’s changing his registration--whether it’s defense spending or firing Joycelyn Elders. Now they’re acting like they want to expand NATO--something they’ve been fighting vociferously for the last two years. I don’t know where the Clinton crowd is. They seem to be coming our way. And if they are, that’s fine.

But the policy ought to be to earmark assistance to the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union as a way of further underscoring their independence.. . . No. 2, we should expand NATO, and there are several countries that are obvious candidates for immediate admission--Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and, possibly, Slovakia.

Now, the Russians don’t like that. And they don’t like it when we earmark assistance to what they consider the “near abroad”--their term for anything that used to be part of the Soviet Union. I don’t think, in order to be friends with the Russians, we have to acquiesce. I mean, we’re going to be basically friends with the Russians . . . . But I don’t think that being friends requires acquiescence to their policy in that part of the world and substituting theirs for ours.

We ought to encourage the independence of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union . . . . We should earmark assistance for countries like Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia . . . . I would go beyond that and require that Russia respect their territorial integrity.

In the bill, I’d require the President to explain the presence of Russian troops in other republics and, if it’s clear they’re not there by invitation, the Russians would leave their troops in these republics at a cost of our foreign assistance.

Q: What about their latest intervention in Chechnya?

A: Well, that’s inside the Russian Federation. What they do within their own borders is their business.

Q: Do you see other areas where the Administration may come around to the views of you and your fellow Republicans? Bosnia, for example.

A: Nobody’s been consistent on Bosnia--including me. The Administration changes from day to day, and the Republicans have been all over the lot . . . . About the only thing we’ve all sort of settled on of late, and which the Administration seems to be moving in the direction of too, now, is lifting the arms embargo so that the Bosnian Muslims have a chance to win the fight. And there is some historical antecedents for that--especially what we did in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, basically, just provided arms to a side that we wanted to have a chance to win as an alternative to intervention ourselves.

Q: The other area you consider of fundamental importance to the U.S. is the Middle East. How far do you go in supporting efforts to broker a deal between Israel and Syria?

A: Let me tell you what I don’t envision. I just cannot conceive of American tax dollars going to (Syrian President Hafezl) Assad. And if Assad thinks that America’s going to sort of purchase peace with Israel with its foreign assistance, I, for one, would like to take this opportunity to disabuse him of that notion. I think that it is a reasonable possibility that Syria could get, out of negotiated settlement with Israel, off the pariah list. (But) I think the chances of U.S. foreign aid to Syria are slim, slim or none.

Q: What about stationing American troops between Syria and Israel on the Golan Heights to guarantee the peace?

A: I’m very skeptical about that. I think if you start putting American troops arguably in harm’s way on the Golan Heights, as potential cannon fodder between two sides in a kind of uneasy peace, you run the risk of jeopardizing the whole U.S.-Israel relationship. I mean, you saw what happened in Somalia once American troops started getting killed. Israel should not ask for American troops on the Golan.

Q: The House is going to be run in a different way not just because it’s Republican but also because of the discipline from the new Speaker. How does that affect your foreign-policy work in the Senate?

A: No. 1, it’s the interesting story. The Republicans haven’t controlled the House in 40 years. And, No. 2, through the House Rules Committee, if they choose to, they can do things rapidly. You couldn’t do that in the Senate if you wanted to.

So there isn’t any question the most interesting story around here the first few months of 1995 is going to be the House, and it should be.

But the action, the real action--and this has almost always been the case, anyway, but it’ll be even more apparent--that the real action is going to be in the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, because if you want to cut spending for a program, that’s how you do it. And so I think both the House and the Senate Appropriations Committees are going to be where the action comes in terms of downsizing government.

Now, that’s not necessarily going to be a fun process. People used to go on the Appropriations Committee because they wanted to get some project for their district. Those days are gone. The Appropriations Committees are going to become more the place where you go to cut.