The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Miller of Florida). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, just a short while ago we had a vote to cut $54 million out of the U.N. appropriation. The vote tally was 242 to 165, 165 in favor of cutting this $54 million of so-called past dues.

I want to compliment the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Bartlett] for bringing to this our attention, because I think it is a very important point, because we are never reimbursed for all of the peacekeeping missions throughout the world. Therefore, they actually owe us, we do not owe them. So it is rather sad to see that we, as a Congress, cannot rectify this; instead, we vote more funds for the United Nations.

Of course, I do not hide the fact that I do not think a lot about the United Nations. I think ultimately it is very detrimental to America's policy and very detrimental to our sovereignty, so I have a specific agenda in that regard.

Actually, the problems we face with the United Nations can be solved, because there has been a compromise offered. Instead of abolishing the United Nations like I would like to do, I think Ted Turner has offered us a real solution. Ted Turner is a very wealthy man, has made a lot of money in the capital system, and he is voluntarily willing to submit $1 billion to continue with the United Nations, and I think that is fine. I think the United Nations ought to be funded by donations such as from Ted Turner. An additional advantage of having Ted Turner send his money to the United Nations, we can be assured that with the next war started by the United Nations, we can send Jane Fonda to do the fighting for us.

On another subject, I want to just mention something about the recent discussions we have had here on the floor here in the last week on the pay raise. I am not in favor of the pay raise. I voted against the pay raise. As a matter of fact, I think our pension fund is outrageously obscene, and I do not participate in it. But in comparison to some other matters, I think the amount of attention that we gave to the pay raise is probably a little bit more than needed to be done.

For instance, the pay raise, after taxes, would come to $40 a week, but nevertheless, I think the point was well taken that we should not be taking a pay raise when so many people in this country are actually suffering the consequence of a decreasing standard of living. Until we solve that, I do not believe we should be taking a pay raise. That so-called pay raise would have been a 2.3-percent COLA increase.

But in comparison to what we were doing in the particular bill that that was attached to, the Treasury-Postal Service appropriation, informed many Members of the Congress that were not aware of it, but in this bill, we actually increase the budget for the IRS by more than a half a billion dollars. At the same time we hold these grand hearings, make grand speeches against the IRS, and at the very same time we are expanding the role and the power and the authority of the IRS by expanding their budget by more than a half a billion dollars.

Then there is another agency of government that is probably the second least favorite of mine to the IRS, and that is the BATF. The BATF budget was increased 14 percent. It went up $66 million. So at the time we were talking about a small cost-of-living increase for Congress, which again I oppose, we at the same time were pretending that we were fighting this IRS and the abuse of the IRS, but expanding the role of the IRS.

I think what we need to do is get things in perspective. I think that first off, we should exist here for the liberty, protection of liberties of American citizens; we should be protecting the sovereignty of the United States; we should not be paying the dues out of proportion to what everybody else pays throughout the world at the same time we sacrifice much of our liberties and we live in a nation today where our troops are actually serving under the commanders of foreign generals. Everybody I talk to, everybody in my district I talk to, they do not like this. They would like to see this change.

So once again, I would like to express the sadness about the recent vote that we could not even cut the $54 million away from what is called overdue back dues for the United Nations. I think it is so important that we put all of this in perspective. Yes, we do not need pay raises, but we certainly do not need to raise the amount of money we give the IRS and the BATF.