Helms was also prominent advocate of free enterprise and favored cutting the budget. He was a strong advocate of a global return to the gold standard, which he would push at numerous points throughout his Senate career; in October 1977, Helms proposed a successful amendment that allowed United States citizens to sign contracts linked to gold, overturning a 44-year ban on gold-indexed contracts, reflecting fears of inflation. Helms supported the tobacco industry, which contributed more than 6% of the state's GSP until the 1990s (the highest in the country); he argued that federal price support programs should be maintained, as they did not constitute a subsidy but insurance. Helms offered an amendment that would have denied food stamps to strikers when the Senate approved increasing federal contributions to food stamp and school lunch programs in May 1974. In 1973, the United States Congress passed the Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act. It states that, "no foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." In January 1973, along with Democrats James Abourezk and Floyd Haskell, Helms was one of three senators to vote against the confirmation of Peter J. Brennan as United States Secretary of Labor. In May 1974, when the Senate approved the establishment of no‐fault automobile insurance plans in every state, it rejected an amendment by Helms exempting states that were opposed to no‐fault insurance. From the start, Helms identified as a prominent anti-communist. He proposed an act in 1974 that authorized the President to grant honorary citizenship to Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He remained close to Solzhenitsyn's cause, and linked his fight to that of freedom throughout the world. In 1975, as North Vietnamese forces approached Saigon, Helms was foremost among those urging the US to evacuate all Vietnamese demanding this, which he believed could be "two million or more within seven days". When the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to suppress a report critical of the US's strategic position in the arms race, Helms read the entire report out, requiring it to be published in full in the "Congressional Record". Helms was not at first a strong supporter of Israel; for instance, in 1973 he proposed a resolution demanding Israel return the West Bank to Jordan, and, in 1975, demanding that the Palestinian Arabs receive a "just settlement of their grievances". In 1977, Helms was the sole senator to vote against prohibiting American companies from joining the Arab League boycott of Israel, but that was primarily because the bill also relaxed discrimination against Communist countries.