Foreign Operations Amendments

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Sept. 23, 2004
FOREIGN OPERATIONS AMENDMENTS

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, as my friend and colleague Senator Leahy has just said, in a few minutes we will be moving to the Foreign Operations bill. I thought I would take a few minutes in anticipation of that to talk a little bit about that bill.

Let me begin by thanking Chairman MCCONNELL and Ranking Member LEAHY for their great work. In a very tight budgeting year, they did a remarkable, bipartisan job. I also personally thank their staff, Paul Grove, Tim Rieser, and Mark Lippert. Their tireless efforts are greatly appreciated.
The staff has done a fabulous job, as have the two Senators. They have a great team.

I want to highlight several items. I know my colleagues will be outlining the bill in detail, but I want to talk about several things that I am particularly grateful that they were able to include in this bill, and I think they deserve our thanks.

First, this bill provides lifesaving humanitarian assistance to the Darfur region of Sudan. With the support of Chairman MCCONNELL and Ranking Member LEAHY, we were able to add $150 million in emergency humanitarian relief.

I also want to recognize specific language that we were able to secure in the bill relating to child survival in HIV/AIDS. Specifically, I again thank the chairman and Senator Leahy for their inclusion of language addressing the continued need for mother-to-child transmission programs, as well as the importance of AIDS pediatric treatment.

In addition, I am pleased the bill includes specific language about how to protect the transfer of land and property rights to AIDS orphans. These are individuals who cannot be forgotten, and making sure that we protect their rights is so very important.

The bill also has an additional $15 million for the child survival primary causes line item. Also, the bill includes the provision of Senators DURBIN and BROWNBACK that increases funding to the Global Fund by $150 million, with half of that money dedicated to the treatment and prevention of malaria, a disease that kills over a million people a year, at least 700,000 of them African children. I commend both of my colleagues for that, and I commend, again, Senator Leahy and Senator McConnell for their help on that amendment.

Finally, I thank the chairman and ranking member and their staffs for the tremendous attention they have paid to Haiti. Because of their support, the Senate bill provides over $82.5 million, excluding any assistance for food. That represents a 230-percent increase over the administration's original request. As my colleagues know, our assistance to Haiti is critical in helping our neighbor, a nation less than 800 miles from our shores, get back on its feet.

The committee included much needed report language in the bill outlining key priorities that should form the basis of our U.S. assistance strategy in Haiti and provides a reporting requirement to ensure that this strategy is developed in a multiyear, long-term fashion. Haiti's needs are immense. We simply cannot afford to turn our backs.

Mr. President, the commitment of the chairman and the ranking member to Haiti is clear. The committee's commitment to Haiti is clear and made more so by the support of the amendment we are offering today, a resolution calling for increased international assistance to Haiti. I know my colleague will talk about that shortly.

Specifically, the resolution focuses on two principal deficiencies we are facing in Haiti-funding and security, which are challenges that have been even further exacerbated these past few days. Haiti has been hard hit, as we have all read, by Tropical Storm Jeanne. The death toll so far is estimated at over a thousand. But, frankly, we believe that figure is going to climb as more bodies are found.

At least 1,200 to 1,300 Haitians are missing, presumably washed out to sea or buried in thick heavy mud.

On a personal note, I spoke this morning to my friend, Father Tom Hagan, from the organization Hands Together. Father Tom lives in Haiti and has lived there for many years. I talked to him on a cell phone this morning. He was back in Port-au-Prince. Yesterday, he traveled north to the city of Gonaives, and he also passed through the village of Brunette. He described for me on the phone the devastation he saw. What he told me was just unbelievable, shocking, absolutely tragic.

As father Tom moved up north and approached Gonaives, that village, about a mile outside of the city, was covered in water-2, 3, 4 feet of water. He said it was a huge lake, that in some places the water was up to the windows of his truck. He had a terrible time, frankly, getting up there.

I have a couple of photographs from Gonaives I want to show my colleagues. This picture was an AP photo taken in Gonaives. The second aerial photo was taken, again, in the city of Gonaives.

As Father Tom said, in the city most of the houses have been destroyed. The mud huts and concrete shacks crumbled, leaving standing only the houses made of stone. Anyone who has traveled in Haiti knows that most of the houses are made of mud-mud huts. Very few are made of stone. Very few are really made of anything substantial.

Father Tom told me the stench was overwhelming. Dead bodies were littering the roads and floating in the putrid standing water that remains. Dead animals abound and disease, of course, will soon be rampant.

Father Tom told me people were wandering about aimlessly in a state of confusion and desperation. He said that you can literally see the fear on people's faces. Mothers could be seen holding dead babies in their arms and walking around. Other mothers were carrying their young children above their heads, trying helplessly to keep them out of the flood water.

Father Tom said that even the animals seemed confused and didn't know where to go. Thousands of people have been displaced, with no food, no good water, and no shelter. Father Tom told me that the U.N. troops were visible on the ground, but even their compound is underwater. He saw aid workers from the Pan American Development Foundation. He saw some of their trucks and saw that they were trying to get aid to the people. Some of the trucks did get through to Gonaives, but others were turned over and stuck in the mud.

The village of Brunette, which lies very near Gonaives, has also become a lake. In January, 2003, Senator Durbin, Senator Nelson, Senator Nelson's wife Grace, and my wife Fran, and I all traveled to Brunette. We visited the village and met with village leaders and schoolchildren. This is a picture of Brunette, the village we visited on that day. This was one of Father Tom's water development projects. As I said, we met with the village leaders and schoolchildren. It was a very happy day.

Senator Durbin and Senator Nelson will recall that the bumpy ride we took, going up from Port-au-Prince, was 50 miles or so. It took about 4 hours to get up there because it was such a rough road. We did get there and saw this village. These are some of the pictures that we took on that day. The village that you see here is now gone, according to Father Tom. It is a lake, totally covered. You cannot see anything. All you can see there is water. It looks like a total lake. Father Tom assumes that the people just went to higher ground. That is the life these people are going to have to try to go back to and try to put together.

I ask my colleagues to try to imagine this village we see in this picture completely submerged in water, completely covered in fetid, disease-ridden floodwater. Father Tom said you can no longer see the houses above the water. All you can see is part of a cistern from the water project we visited that day.

Clearly, the people of Haiti need our help, now more than ever. This bill today is taking a number of steps that will aid the Haitian people. I congratulate Senator McConnell and Senator Leahy, the chairman and ranking member, for their great work.

With this recent disaster, the needs of the people of Haiti-food, water, and medicine-will even be greater.

I thank all my colleagues who have been so supportive of the efforts to help bring Haiti back to its feet. I ask them today for their continued support. I ask everyone for their prayers as well. This is a very difficult situation that the people of Haiti face today. The situation Father Tom described is clearly one that necessitates the United States and the international community to become even more involved, to get food in there, to get good water in there, and then be involved in helping to rebuild, in helping these people put their lives back together.