Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2764, the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2764, THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE, FOREIGN OPERATIONS, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 20, 2007)
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Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, first I would like to thank the gentleman from Florida, my good friend, Mr. Hastings, for the time. I would also like to thank Chairwoman Lowey and Ranking Member Wolf for their efforts on this undeniably important piece of legislation.
This bill funds a number of U.S. Government programs and activities, including the State Department, the United States Agency for International Development, foreign, economic and military assistance, contributions to international organizations and international broadcasting programs.
Even though aspects of this bill have clearly bipartisan support, there are significant areas of concern with some of the priorities that the majority has set forth in this legislation.
Just over a year ago, the people of Colombia reelected President Uribe to a second term with over 62 percent of the vote. President Uribe is the first President in over 100 years to be reelected by the Colombian people. His reelection and his extraordinarily high current approval ratings are a testament to his efforts to curb terrorism, corruption and narcotrafficking in Colombia.
For years, designated terrorist organizations in Colombia have hampered efforts by the people of that great country to live in a peaceful democracy. Proactive action must continue to be taken to ensure that armed terrorists are not allowed to create social unrest through violence. With the current landscape in the world today, foreign assistance, Mr. Speaker, is as strategically important to our national interest as it is morally just.
I am concerned that the underlying legislation cuts funding for Plan Colombia $59 million below the President's request and $86.5 million below fiscal year 2007. Plan Colombia has achieved significant results. When it began, that country was facing a civil war that was tearing it apart. Now that the plan has had time to take effect, and with President Uribe's leadership, kidnappings have fallen by 75 percent and the gross domestic product of Colombia has increased to 7 percent annually.
We must not take progress in the Andean region for granted, however. If the United States turns its back on the region, it will falter and create a scenario that will require greater U.S. investment and sacrifice at a time when obviously we have significant responsibilities worldwide, not to mention that we would be spurning a democratically elected ally that has bravely fought corruption and narco trafficking.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank President Bush for his continued support for a democratic transition in Cuba. Pursuant to the recommendations of his Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, the President requested $45 million in economic support funds for Cuba pro-democracy activities. These funds would support efforts for a transition to democracy in the Western Hemisphere's only totalitarian dictatorship through support for dissidents, human rights activists, independent librarians and others who risk their lives each day for freedom in that enslaved island. Unfortunately, the bill brought forth by the majority is cutting the funds needed to support pro-democracy efforts in Cuba and funding less than 20 percent of the President's request.
I would note that under the bill, the other countries in the Western Hemisphere will receive over 95 percent of the funds requested by the President, and I think that is good. Yet funds to support a democratic transition in the Western Hemisphere's only totalitarian dictatorship constitute approximately 19 percent of the President's request.
Mr. Speaker, these acts include from staging a hunger strike; to demanded access to e-mail and the Internet and going to prison for it; to having the audacity of possessing books by Gandhi and Orwell and Martin Luther King in their homes and offering those books as an independent library to their neighbors, an act of great courage that is met by the dictatorship's goon squads with violence, confiscation of the books and often prison time; to the independent journalists who risk their lives and their families' safety by writing the truth about life under the totalitarian nightmare, and who need paper and typewriters and faxes and telephones to send their stories out; to the children of political prisoners who have received the only toys they have ever seen because of the solidarity of this United States program of assistance; to those from all walks of life who dare to join a human rights organization in a totalitarian police state; to the physicians who open their homes to their neighbors for the practice of medicine and dispense medicines, risking prison for breaking the rules of the totalitarian state, the only employer in the country, or the physicians who refuse to perform the forced abortions ordered by the state when there is any indication whatsoever of a problematic pregnancy, so the regime can keep its infant mortality statistics low.
Mr. Speaker, that is how one of my heroes, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet began his heroic journey as a pro-democracy activist. He subsequently has become a great pro-democracy leader. I carry a card with his photograph with me at all times. He is currently in a dark and damp dungeon, sentenced to 25 years in the gulag for having the audacity of peacefully advocating for democracy and free elections in Cuba.
Mr. Speaker, we cannot send aid to him in prison. The regime will not allow it. But we can help his family and his colleagues in the struggle for freedom.
These are the acts of civic resistance that have grown exponentially in recent years, despite a tremendous increase in the dictatorship's brutal repression, and those are the people, the heroes that I have mentioned, that we help with this program, that we will seek to increase funding for through the President's requested level by an amendment that I will introduce with my friend and colleague Representative Albio Sires of New Jersey, and that I will ask all freedom-loving Members of this House to support.
Last February, Mr. Speaker, the six Cuban American Members of this Congress, Bob Menendez, Mel Martinez, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Albio Sires, Mario Diaz-Balart and myself, received a letter from nine pro-democracy leaders in Cuba. They know the risks that they were and are taking by sending us that letter. They knew that it would be utilized publicly in forums such as today's.
In that letter, that group of dissidents and pro-democracy leaders, representing an extraordinarily wide spectrum of ideology and opinion, some with whom I have had disagreements in the past, came together and told us of the importance of this aid that we will be debating in this bill. They stated in their letter, ``We can affirm that the aid that for years has flowed to the pro-democracy movement takes into account the vast range of needs, from medicine to keep a political prisoner or dissident from dying, to food, water filters, medical equipment, clothing, shoes, coats, toys for the children of political prisoners, who suffer doubly the loss of a loved one and social repression on the streets and in school, essential vitamins, office supplies, and the tools of democracy, computers, printers, phones, fax machines, among others, that account for a long list of articles and materials that have been made possible in Cuba.''
Today, with the amendment that I have filed along with Representative Sires, we reply to the letter sent in February by those pro-democracy leaders, and, as I stated, Mr. Speaker, we will ask all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the aid requested by those pro-democracy leaders in that letter, the assistance for the pro-democracy movement.
Mr. Speaker, on other subjects in this important legislation, the bill cuts by approximately 40 percent the President's request for the Millennium Challenge account. The Millennium Challenge, which President Bush called a new compact for global development, provides assistance through a competitive selection process to developing nations that are pursuing political and economic reforms in three areas: ruling justly, investing in people, and fostering economic freedom. Contributions from that account are linked to greater responsibility from developing nations. The new responsibilities these nations accept in exchange for the funds ensure that the funds we provide do not go to waste and have the greatest possible impact on those who need the help the most.
That account encourages transparency, and it is a good aspect of our foreign policy, and it is very important that it be increased as this legislation moves forward.
Lastly, I would mention that this bill faces a veto threat by the President because of language which may undermine what is known as the Mexico City policy. The Mexico City policy currently in effect requires that foreign NGOs agree as a condition of receipt of Federal funds for family-planning activities that the organization will neither perform nor promote abortion as a method of family planning. The Mexico City policy applies only to family-planning programs and is designed to protect the integrity of U.S.-funded international family-planning programs by creating a bright line of separation between abortion and family planning.
There is concern by the President and many Members in this Congress that U.S. taxpayer family-planning funds could possibly go to NGOs that promote or provide abortions under the language in the underlying legislation.
I understand the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) will introduce an amendment to address this issue, and I urge Members to consider that very important amendment.
The majority correctly currently brings this important legislation to the floor under an open rule. The House has traditionally considered appropriations bills under open rules in order to allow each Member an opportunity to offer germane amendments without having to preprint their amendments or receive approval from the Rules Committee. I hope that the majority will live up to their campaign promise of running a transparent House and will continue our tradition of open rules with the rest of the appropriations bills this year.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, again I thank my dear friend for yielding me the time initially.
I would like to, with regard to the issue of the amendment that I made reference to previously, note that I will be bringing to the floor along with my friend and colleague, Representative Sires, to restore to the President's request by offsetting funds from the administration account billions of dollars of the State Department, approximately $30 million, to bring to the President's request level the assistance for Cuban democracy programs.
Not today on the floor in the context of the rule but last night in the Rules Committee, a colleague who previously spoke made reference to a GAO report to impugn and to impeach the program of assistance to the Cuban pro-democracy movement and oppose efforts to restore the level to the President's request.
I have in my office and I highly recommend to all colleagues precisely that GAO report. We would inform colleagues where to download it. It is a very important report, and there are a couple of things I would like to point out from the report that is used to impeach or attempt to impeach the program and impugn the program, criticize the program, of assistance to the dissidents in Cuba.
The GAO report found that from 1996 to 2006, the Cuba program provided the following assistance:
385,000 pounds of medicine, food, and clothing to the pro-democracy movement.
More than 23,000 shortwave radios.
Millions of books, newsletters and other informational materials.
U.S. assistance, the GAO found, supported journalism correspondence courses for more than 200 Cuban journalists.
The publication of approximately 23,000 reports by independent journalists in Cuba.
And with regard to the recommendations of the GAO report, as you know, Mr. Speaker, the GAO often when it reviews in-depth, as it does, a government program or agency, it often recommends cuts in that program, and the GAO makes no recommendation of a cut. It makes recommendations for the more efficient running of the Cuban democracy programs.
And in response to the GAO report, and I have this letter in my office and it's available to any Member who would like to read it and I highly recommend it, the agency that administers these programs, the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, in a letter dated January 16 of this year, responding to the GAO report, informs specifically, with specificity, how all of the recommendations of the GAO report have been implemented.
And so I highly recommend the reading of the GAO report and also the response by the administrating agency with regard to the implementation of the recommendations of the GAO report, Mr. Speaker.
It's important that we help those who risk their lives and the safety of their families day in and day out to achieve freedom, a democratic transition in our closest neighbor, 90 miles away, that at this time is a state sponsor of terrorism and an anti-American totalitarian regime. And what those heroes of the pro-democracy movement are risking their lives and their families' freedom for is a democratic transition to a reality with the rule of law, obviously a democratically elected government that will no longer be allied with state sponsors of terrorism, anti-American state sponsors of terrorism but that will, rather, be worried and working for the needs to better the lives of the long oppressed people within Cuba.
Mr. Speaker, again I thank my good friend Mr. Hastings for yielding the time. I thank any of my colleagues who may have been listening to this debate for their attention. Once again I would plead that they join from both sides of the aisle to bring up to the President's request the assistance for the Cuba pro-democracy movement.
With that, Mr. Speaker, and acknowledging the complexities and yet the importance of the underlying legislation brought to the floor today by this rule, I yield back the balance of my time.
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