Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4818, Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2005

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4818, FOREIGN OPERATIONS, EXPORT FINANCING, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 15, 2004)

Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 715 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to express my appreciation to the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) and the ranking member, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), for crafting a foreign aid bill that attempts to balance competing priorities for economic development and security funding. In particular, I would like to express my support for the $400 million provided for basic education.

Over the past 3 years, increased funding levels for basic education has made it possible for USAID to expand its education programs from 20 to 43 countries. These increases have also had positive effects on other U.S. development priorities, such as preventing HIV/AIDS and promoting agricultural development and maternal and child health. It is my hope that over the next couple of years Congress will increase funding for basic education to $1 billion annually. I believe this is the kind of leadership and funding America must demonstrate to achieve universal education by the year 2015. I look forward to working with the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) and the ranking member, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), in achieving this goal.

I would also like to touch upon one other priority in this bill that continues to trouble me deeply, U.S. policy and aid for Columbia. Yesterday, a representative from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees described the dire situation of the internally displaced inside Colombia and the increasing number of Colombian refugees fleeing to neighboring Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama.

I have traveled to Colombia on three occasions over the past 4 years, and each time I have visited communities of the displaced. By most estimates, there are around 3 million internally displaced Colombians, mainly women, children and elderly. This bill makes $5 million available to help displaced Colombians, or approximately $1.66 for each displaced person. This hardly seems adequate to me.

Mr. Speaker, I have traveled to nearly every region in Colombia, and everywhere I go, Colombians of all political viewpoints, including mayors and governors, plead for funds to support community-based programs to generate income, provide basic healthcare, education and nutrition, and to bring some measure of economic stability and security to their towns and villages.

Now, I do not mean to imply that none of these funds in this bill will serve these purposes, but we all know that precious little of U.S. aid is allocated for these types of programs in Colombia, especially when weighed against the need. The simple fact remains that the majority of U.S. funding for Colombia is military and security assistance for counterinsurgency and counternarcotics programs.

Over the past 3 years, along with my distinguished colleague, the ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), I have offered amendments to cut military aid for Colombia, but the Committee on Rules refuses to consider amendments on their merit and grant some waivers for amendments to appropriations bills so that key foreign policy issues can be more fully explored and debated.

For example, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and I have never been able to offer an amendment to the foreign operations bill that reflects what many of my House colleagues believe would be a better set of priorities for the hundreds of millions of dollars we send down to Colombia each year; or an amendment that would condition U.S. funding for Colombia's agreement with the paramilitaries to an assurance that paramilitaries with outstanding U.S. extradition warrants will serve prison time in the U.S. or Colombia.

I cannot offer an amendment conditioning U.S. funding to ensure that the land paramilitaries took by violence be restored to the original inhabitants, who are now destitute and desperate displaced people or refugees.

So I sympathize with my colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), and the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), each of whom went before the Committee on Rules the other evening and were denied waivers to debate their important amendments.

We all know that foreign aid authorizing bills come out very rarely and, frankly, the aid for Colombia has never been authorized. It has always been presented to Congress in supplemental spending bills and the Foreign Operations and Defense appropriations bills and hardly ever has a designated line item in the bill. Over $3 billion has gone to Colombia since Plan Colombia was launched, all with very little debate and, in some instances, no debate.

Mr. Speaker, in the future, I hope that the leadership of this House will allow Members to have a more comprehensive debate on whether and how to shape our new and different priorities for the military, security, and economic assistance we are sending to Colombia. I, for one, look forward to that day.