This is not our first reduction. however. This recommendation for approximately $14 billion in foreign assistance appropriations represents a reduction of almost $7 billion. more than 25 percentover the last 7 or 8 years. I am pleased that we have been able to reach a successful conclusion to the long dispute over loan guarantees for refugee absorption in Israel. This legislation includes virtually the same positions that Senator INOUYE and I introduced last year. which was cosponsored by 72 other Members of the Senate. and those of the compromise Senator LEAHY and I reached earlier this year with the administration. We are at long last able to consider the loan guarantees in their proper light. they are a humane and necessary response to a grave humanitarian threat. It has been the established United States policy of more than two decades to encourage the free emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union. This loan guarantee proposal is a further step in the implementation of that policy. a policy initiated by the late Senator "Scoop" Jackson of Washington. This policy has not become less important in the period after the collapse of communism.
Keywords matched
emigration refugee