September 26, 1990 – CBS Radio – The World Tonight – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
September 26, 1990 – Despite the relative calm in the Middle East this day, the scene on Capitol Hill back home was anything but. Haggling and finger-pointing over the Federal Budget, days before the Government would be forced to shut down if no agreement could be reached. President Bush jumped into the fray, trying to sell a budget that included a Capital Gains Tax Cut as part of the agreement and blaming Democrats for the stalemate in talks over the budget, saying they had not come forward with an alternative to the package. The fight was over how and where to cut the deficit to satisfy the demand for $100 billion cut in the budget. But if there was no compromise by October 1st, all bets were off.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Baker told the press that Iraq was demanding a list of non-diplomats taking refuge in the Embassy in Baghdad and was threatening to hang any Americans found there. Baker said the demands fell into the Three R’s (Read it, Repugnant, Rejected). President Bush decided to sell 5 million barrels of crude oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, saying there was no justification for the sudden run-up in oil prices.
Three Iraqi passenger planes landed in Amman Jordan, raising questions about Jordan’s support for the new United Nations Air Embargo against Iraq. Jordanian Officials assured the U.S. they were not breaking the embargo, but the government couldn’t agree whether or not the sanctions included Passenger flights. At the UN, the Jordanian Foreign Minister announced that Jordan would halt the Iraqi Airways Flights. In Baghdad, the counsel said those flights would be terminated immediately.
And that’s a very small slice of what went on this September 26, 1990 as reported by CBS Radio’s The World Tonight.
