Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2007
FOREIGN OPERATIONS, EXPORT FINANCING, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (House of Representatives - June 08, 2006)
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Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased today to present to the House of Representatives H.R. 5522, the fiscal year 2007 appropriation bills for foreign operations, export financing and related programs. And I might say, Mr. Chairman, that I am pleased to have you back in the Chair for I am not sure how many of the consecutive years since I have been doing this bill that you have been there, but it feels very good to have you back with us.
Before I turn to the bill, let me just mention that this is the last appropriations bill that I will be bringing to the floor, at least the last regular foreign operations appropriations bill.
As with nearly every other foreign operations bill over the last 6 years, this bill is a product of bipartisan cooperation, something I could not have done without the support and cooperation of my esteemed ranking member, Mrs. Lowey, or my vice chairman, Mr. Sherwood and every member of the subcommittee.
I am proud of this bill. I can honestly say it has probably been one of the more difficult ones that we have put together. The bill before you totals $21.3 billion. While this level is $597 million above the amount provided in fiscal year 2006, not counting supplementals, it is fully $2.4 billion below the amount requested by the President. In other words, by reducing the allocation by $2.4 billion, we have freed up that amount for pressing domestic needs.
The bill includes increases for three priorities, the war on terror, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and international health spending, priorities which lie at the core of the United States interests abroad. For the war on terror, this bill includes $962.3 million for Afghanistan. This amount is $137 million below the President's request, but $85 million over fiscal year 2006.
As with last year's bill, this bill continues a provision that withholds $385 million until the Afghan government, both at national and local levels, fully cooperates with our efforts against narcotics production and trafficking. I want to be clear that I appreciate the support of the government of Afghanistan in the war on terror. However, that government must take difficult but necessary measures to fight narcotics production and trafficking, measures that it has so far been unwilling or unable to take.
The bill also includes $521.9 million for Iraq. While below the President's request, it represents a very large increase of $461 million over what we provided in fiscal year 2006. That is because last year we required the administration to fund Iraq programs from unexpended relief and reconstruction funds that were in the very original supplemental appropriation. Now, however, these funds are nearly all expended.
This bill would normalize Iraq and Afghanistan assistance programs, moving them away from emergency supplementals that exceed budget limits.
The bill contains no funding in the economic support fund for West Bank and Gaza programs. Although the President's requested $150 million for this purpose, the request was made before Hamas was elected to lead the Palestinian Authority. The subcommittee believes that humanitarian assistance must continue to the Palestinian people, a view, I might add, that is shared by the Israeli government and by the administration.
Such funding is not affected by this bill. It does contain humanitarian pro democracy funding with restrictions and safeguards that have been included in the past.
For international health, the bill contains the President's requested amount of $3.4 billion for the emergency plan for AIDS relief, and increase of $751.6 million. Within this sum, we more than double the President's request for a contribution to the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, to attain last year's level of $444.5 million.
At the same time, I am pleased that the bill maintains last year's funding levels for other health programs, including an increase for malaria programs of $243 million. For several years now the President's budget request has included deep cuts to international health programs. We have worked hard to restore them to at least the level of the previous year.
In order to bring these accounts back up, we have had to cut some other programs that are also priority programs. We provide $2 billion for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, but that is $1 billion below the request of the President. It is $248 million above the amount that we provided in 2006.
This is a difficult decision for me, but I saw no way to move forward with a bill that gave the full amount that the President asked for the Millennium Challenge Corporation. My goal was very simple, I wanted to send a clear message that Congress supports the MCCs innovative, accountable approach to help countries move away from reliance on donor funding. I think a $248 million increase does send that very clear message, while it frees up funds above that level that enables us to bring before you today a bipartisan bill.
The bill contains two important innovations. First, it includes a Trade Capacity Enhancement Fund which consolidates trade capacity funding from a variety of accounts. This new account includes $522 million, virtually all of what is spent for trade capacity by agencies and accounts that are under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee. And it is about half of the $1.3 billion that is spent on a government-wide basis.
Since we will now require a coherent strategy for the use of these funds, it is my hope and my belief that this new account will provide a strong incentive for countries to liberalize their trade regimes.
This bill would also restructure assistance to Colombia, formerly provided only through the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, or ACI. I want to be very clear about one point. This bill does not cut funding from the President's request for Colombia.
It simply reallocates the funds requested and appropriated to regular assistance accounts. It begins to treat Colombia as we treat other strategic partners.
I think it should be clear to all of us by this time that Colombia has made significant progress in the war on drugs. They are now bringing guerilla forces in from the jungle, they are prosecuting those who are implicated in serious crimes, and they are reintegrating others back into society. Coca interdiction, although not eradication, but interdiction, continues to improve. I spoke with Speaker Hastert, who years ago fathered the legislation creating the ACI, about this reformulation of assistance. It has his support. The Colombian government also supports this move. It is time to recognize both successes of Colombia and its strategic importance to the region.
Finally, this bill includes the President's full request for Israel and for Egypt, our two partners of longstanding in the Middle East. Report language from previous years is continued directing $50 million of Egypt Economic Support Fund assistance to be used for democracy and another $50 million for education. Other language, again the same as last year, would withhold expenditures until Egypt implements financial sector reforms. Importantly, this bill would also rescind $200 million from unexpended balances made available for Egypt in previous years.
In closing, let me say, again, it has been a great pleasure to work with my distinguished colleague, ranking member on the minority side, Mrs. Lowey, who I have the greatest respect and affection for. It has been a pleasure to work with her and with her staff, with Beth Tritter and Nisha Desai. And I don't want to neglect mentioning the fine work of the majority staff, Betsy Phillips, Rob Blair, Craig Higgins, Delia Scott, and Lori Maes, and also Todd Calongne, a USAID fellow working on my personal staff. They are all competent, professional, and a joy to work with. The work that we have accomplished together, and I want to underscore the word ``together,'' has helped make America more secure. It has improved the lives of millions throughout the world.
We have accomplished much over these last 6 years. My colleagues have often heard me say that foreign assistance is a vital component of United States economic and security interests, to say nothing of the humanitarian imperative. And while two significant initiatives were begun under my watch, the Emergency Plan For Aids Relief and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the changes we have implemented in 6 years of appropriations run even deeper. We have worked to direct our nonsecurity foreign assistance around three primary issues, which I believe are at the heart of global development: Health, trade, and governance. This bill continues that direction.
In 2001, international HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis spending from these accounts was $535 million. Today, just 5 years later, we are at $3.4 billion. With these steady increases, we have provided life-saving medicines to hundreds of thousands of people in the developing world, people who are still alive to take care of their children and be productive members of their economies, thanks to the antiretroviral drugs that we are now providing to them and other important therapies. As importantly, these are people who now live with hope, and I believe that people with hope are less likely to be attracted to crime and violence.
The New Trade Capacity Enhancement fund will place trade where it belongs, at the center of our international development agenda. Without trade, sustained global development is simply not possible. This new account will provide further incentives for countries to enter constructive trade agreements with the United States and others. It will also help to ensure that the right programs and policies are in place to make sure the poor are not left behind as economies improve.
Finally, the bill provides further support, as I mentioned, to the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which I see as our best hope for weaning countries from foreign assistance. The MCC provides another set of incentives to countries to make the correct policy decisions, policies which improve rule of law and economic policies, investments in the health and education of people.
I am proud to have served in this institution, and I am especially proud of the work of this committee and this subcommittee. The package of foreign assistance before you is built on a solid basis of experience, funds programs that are more accountable and transparent, and, most importantly, helps to protect U.S. security at home and abroad. It is an example of the good that can be accomplished with a bipartisan effort, and I can think of no arena more important for a unified American voice than in foreign affairs.
Mr. Chairman, fellow members, I am pleased to submit this bill and urge your favorable consideration.
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Mr. KOLBE. The gentleman has identified a problem that we think is absolutely of critical importance. We have moved from, I believe, no money just in 2003 to 1 million to 5 million to $7 million in this year, so I think we are moving very substantially in this area.
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Mr. KOLBE. The report accompanying H.R. 5522 does indicate the committee's awareness of the Gift of Life International's Project Iraqi Hearts. It is an initiative that should be thoroughly explored. The ranking minority member and I are both committed to working with the gentleman from New York to ensure that this proposal gets careful consideration from the Department of State and USAID. Specific funds have not been set aside, but if review by State and AID show the program can deliver results that save lives, it would have the committees's strong support.
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Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California for the statement you have just made and your commitment to the international environment.
As you pointed out, I have in the past supported the mission of the GEF. I had the opportunity to sit down with the CEO of the GEF, Mr. Good, to engage in some very good discussions about their reforms and also on their programs in the past.
I have in the past been concerned about the pace of reform at the GEF. Last year, the House withheld funding for the GEF because it had not completed reforms associated with the third replenishment when our bill came to the floor. There were subsequent agreements that allowed us, in the end, to fund the GEF fully last year.
It is my understanding the GEF has now adopted the reforms sought by the committee and the administration for the fourth replenishment. We will certainly take this into consideration when we meet with the Senate in conference on this bill. In order to facilitate this, I urge the administration to consider a budget amendment requesting additional funds should they decide that is appropriate.
I thank the gentleman again for his commitment to GEF and the environment and will work with him as the bill moves through the process.
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Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I won't take that much time, but let me just respond to the gentleman from Wisconsin and let me just say that he has been very cooperative, and I appreciate very much his cooperation in trying to work out some time limitations so that we could work our way through this bill in an orderly fashion, and hopefully in a timely fashion, and get everybody home at a reasonable hour.
With the number of amendments that we have, it does not appear that we can get any kind of a unanimous consent agreement that would allow us to finish the bill by the time that the gentleman has said that he would prefer us to be out and not considering major issues of appropriations of taxpayers' dollars after the hour of 10 o'clock at night.
So it is beyond my pay grade at this point to decide how we proceed, whether or not we do agree to a unanimous consent agreement to have some limitation on the time of amendments and stop at a reasonable time tonight, or whether we simply plunge on through without any kind of agreement and get as far as we can tonight, which will certainly be much shorter, but we will not get nearly as far or nearly as fast.
So I am hoping the leadership, that is not on this floor at this time, will shortly be able to come back to us with some understanding of how we are going to proceed, and I hope we can just move on and do the reading, and we will get to amendments as we can here.
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Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, this is an example of the kind of amendment that we are going to hear a great deal about this afternoon and this evening. It is the kind of amendment that if the world were different, if we lived in a world with unlimited resources, it would be wonderful to say ``yes'' to an amendment like this.
But, of course, we do not live in a world of unlimited resources. As described in general debate, the allocation for our bill is $2.4 billion below the amount requested by the President, and certainly lower even than what all Members would like to see in the bill.
We have $1.29 billion for development assistance. That is $12 million above what the President requested. So in this particular area, despite the fact that we are $2 billion below the President's request, we have actually exceeded the amount in this area. It is equal to the amount we provided in fiscal year 2006 once you adjust for the trade capacity funds that have been moved to the new account.
We have some very tough choices that we have to make in this bill, and yet we have provided at least steady funding levels for the Development Assistance Account.
Now, the difficult part of this amendment is where the money comes out of. The gentleman says it is more important to provide safe drinking water than it is to make military sales to other countries. I would agree with that statement certainly when it is phrased that way. But I think it is important, and the gentleman understand, that of the $4 billion that we have in our bill for military assistance, foreign military financing, all but $900 million is designated for countries. It is designated to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and some for Colombia, and a couple of other countries. But there is only $900 million that is not designated.
The gentleman's amendment takes this money out of it, but does not touch the earmarks, of course; and so it comes out of that $900 million that is left. What he is doing is taking the money away from a handful of countries which would absolutely decimate the handful of countries left. You would be talking about taking away the small amounts of money that we give to such countries as Armenia, the substantial amounts that we give to Pakistan, Turkey, the small amounts that we give to countries like Liberia and Ethiopia. All of it would come out of the funds that go to those countries, which money is important, very important in terms of their security, very important in terms of their international obligations. In many cases, it goes for things so those countries can meet their international obligations towards peacekeeping forces.
So the amendment is going to reduce funding out of 68 small country programs which would have to be cut by 50 percent or more in each of those cases in order to accommodate the gentleman's amendment. I think to do this would be absolutely irresponsible on the part of the House of Representatives, and we should not allow this to happen.
Let me conclude by saying what we have done on water programs in this legislation. We have directed the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide not less than $50 million from the development assistance accounts to build wells in rural areas and to secure water systems in urban areas of Africa and communities that lack access to fresh water.
In addition, we have language, bill language within the Development Assistance Account, that mandates $20 million specifically for water programs in East Africa, and that of course is where we know the need is the very greatest.
These directives, these mandates, will double the fiscal year 2006 allocation for Africa in the Development Assistance Account. No one, certainly not the least of whom is me, doubts the need to provide clean, safe water for drinking around the world. I believe this bill as presented to the House helps us deliver on that promise.
Does it do everything we would like it to do? No. But in so many other areas, this bill so necessarily falls shorts, as do other appropriations bills.
This amendment is not the right way to proceed and the consequences for the small countries that rely importantly on our foreign military financing programs and are affected by this reduction would be absolutely drastic. I would urge my colleagues to defeat this well-meaning amendment, but with consequences that are quite dire to the effect of this bill.
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Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I do rise in opposition to this amendment, and I say so with the greatest respect to my colleague DAVID OBEY. Often on this floor, we say things about each other and we say things because it is the oil that helps make this place move forward, but I do have the greatest respect for him and I believe he has been a great part of this institution, it has been a privilege to serve with him. We just differ on this amendment. We had a very good debate in the full Appropriations Committee on this, and I hope the debate this afternoon will be as constructive and as good as the debate that we had in the committee.
We both agree that Egypt should strive toward greater democracy and greater freedoms, and I believe the approach taken by this amendment is the wrong approach.
Mr. OBEY suggests that we would take $100 million of funding in economic support funds from Egypt. The intent is to take these funds from the amounts that are designated as budget support for Egypt. These are the funds that are transferred to Egypt when it successfully completes certain financial sector reforms. In other words, we have put benchmarks in front and said the money can't be released until they meet these reforms. As they meet these reforms, the money is then released. This would then take the money away from that, reducing that incentive to make these kinds of reforms.
The funds that are targeted by this amendment support one of our strongest allies in this region. And I say that very carefully, one of our strategic partners, our very strong allies in this region, to help them meet the memorandum of understanding that we made in March of 2005 about these financial sector reforms.
Last month in the same kind of debate that we had in Committee, the Secretary of State said in a letter to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, ``Reducing U.S. assistance would seriously damage our partnership as well as the broader strategic interests of the United States.'' And she also went on to state, ``We firmly believe the U.S. assistance to Egypt could continue at the full level requested by the administration, and ask your support for that request.''
In the past, the ranking member Mr. Obey has himself recognized this when he has stated on the floor his support for the funding for Egypt. Now, I recognize and he could argue quite correctly, times have changed, there are different things that have happened, and he could say this is a different source of funds perhaps from it. But nonetheless, he himself has recognized the importance of Egypt as an ally.
While it is sometimes important to dispense tough love by withholding or eliminating funds, we also have to ensure that Egypt remains allied with the United States as a leading moderate nation within the Middle East. And I believe that, in this case, any attempt to pressure Egypt into hastening its transition to democracy could push this country away from the United States and allow another foreign power to gain a foothold in the region that could be very detrimental not only to our interests, but to the interest of peace in the region. This certainly would not be good for any of us.
Mr. Chairman, the bill that is before us today already has a $200 million rescission in funds for Egypt in the economic support fund. So for those who want to make this claim, the bill already has sent a signal to the Egyptians, and I think this amendment just simply piles on. It is overkill, in my opinion.
As in the programs that would receive funds with the Obey amendment, he would put some of it to the global HIV/AIDS initiative. I don't believe that anybody could claim that we have not supported this program or provided all the funds that could reasonably and effectively be spent. In fact, this bill has a total of $3.4 billion for HIV/AIDS programs. The President's request, $750 million increase over the 2006 level, this is the largest increase in this bill, and that demonstrates how much I think all of us on this committee and in this body care about fighting the HIV/AIDS. To increase it by another $50 million is simply not necessary and doesn't do anything more to meet in any way, certainly not as much as it detracts from the strategic interests that we have in Egypt.
The second area is in the international disaster and famine assistance, and this is a contingency count for uses when disaster strikes. In this bill there is a total of $348 million, again, the President's request for this account. The supplemental that 2 days ago was considered by the House and Senate conferees includes an additional $161 million for IDFA to accommodate emergencies that have recently arisen. We have done what I think is the responsible thing in this bill.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote against the Obey-Lantos amendment.
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Mr. KOLBE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to correct some statements that were made by previous speakers with regard to the International Republican Institute having been denied the ability to operate in Egypt. I have the privilege of serving on the board of the IRI, and I did speak yesterday to the president of the IRI.
There has been some disagreement, some misunderstanding, I think, really in terms of the registration process for the IRI in Egypt, but it is the belief of the President of the IRI that this is going to be worked out very shortly. But we do not believe it will, in any way, affect the programs of IRI in Egypt.
So I think he would agree, and certainly I would suggest to you that $100 million whack at Egypt over the slowness of registering an organization, an NGO that has engaged in democracy building, is a little bit of an overkill.
That leads me to my larger point, and this has been a bipartisan debate, and we have seen speakers here on both sides of the aisle speaking against this amendment and appreciate my colleagues who have come to the floor to make the points about how important Egypt is as a strategic partner.
That is the bottom line here. Egypt is a strategic partner. Egypt is a country that is in transition as we speak. Everybody knows that we are moving on to a post-Mubarak age. The question is, where do we want to be 10 years from now? Where do we want Egypt to be? Where do we want to be with regard to our relationship with Egypt. I would suggest to you that Egypt which has been since 1979, with the Camp David Accord, the key part of our strategic effort to achieve peace in the Middle East, that this would not be the time, this would not be the way to achieve that, to continue on that path by kicking sand in the face of Egypt.
This is not the right move, Mr. Chairman. This is not the way to go about this. We need to continue this strategic partnership. We need to continue to say to Egypt, we do expect you to reform. We do expect these kinds of political reforms to be made. We will work with you and we will stand with you and we will stand with the people of Egypt to make these reforms. And we are glad that you have moved towards the multi-party presidential election. We are glad some of these things are happening. We expect more to be done, but we are not going to achieve that if we do not continue the partnership. If we jerk the rug out from under them, if we take away that partnership, we can hardly expect that to continue.
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Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I hope in just a moment here that we will be able to have the committee rise and we will have a unanimous consent agreement to propound. But let me say before that moment that I do think this debate that we have just concluded has been a very constructive debate, a very productive one.
As I said in the committee, I hope that our friends in Egypt, whether they are here in the United States or whether they are listening to this abroad, have taken some message from this debate that we have just had on the question of our relationship with Egypt and the support and the strategic partnership which we all recognize as an important one. But I hope the message that our friends in Egypt take from this is that democracy is about this kind of a debate.
In a democracy, you not only allow this kind of debate, you encourage it. What we hope to be able to say to our friends in Egypt is that this debate is an important one, and we have had a very constructive debate that I believe is very important.
Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.
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