Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, this amendment, which as originally drawn was like the amendment I offered last year that passed with a pretty strong majority, halves the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund. Mr. Walberg and I were cosponsors on a bipartisan amendment that passed that cut $79 million. To get this amendment to the same point, we would have to amend it down $60 million, I believe, to get it from the 279 to the cut. I don't know if we want to do an amendment or not. The more money it takes, for me it's fine, but if we wanted to halve it.

I ask unanimous consent to modify the amendment to reflect the cut not to be--an amount of 139, but to take into consideration the 79, and so to make this amendment only $60 million. So I would like to offer an amendment to the amendment to make this amendment reflect a $60 million cut to make the total cut 139, which would be half.

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, that is just better, because this amendment is kind of a compromise between the amendment Mr. Walberg and I had and Mr. Cicilline's. Mr. Cicilline's cut the fund entirely. This cuts it in half. A little more than half is really better.

The fact is, yes, we need the infrastructure in America; but we spent a lot of money on the infrastructure fund in Iraq, and we know from experience that a lot of that money, if not most of it, was stolen and wasted.

The same things happened in Afghanistan. The Inspector General has reported it; and, in fact, Afghani officials have reported it. They do not have the expertise, nor do they have the abilities, to maintain products after they are built. When the roads are constructed, they can't maintain them. So it is throwing money away.

The same thing happened with air-conditioners and other products that we gave the Iraqis and we have given the Afghanis. They cannot maintain them. They can't maintain them when they do construct them, but before that half of it is ripped off and graft. There are rankings of the most corrupt countries on the face of the Earth. Afghanistan is always number one or number two, and continues to be.

No matter how long we stay there and how long we have been there, the level of corruption has remained right at the top. That is not going to change.

Giving this money away is basically encouraging and endorsing and seconding corruption and graft that we have seen in Afghanistan over the years, and waste. This Congress should not be passing funds that we know are going to be corruptly going to officials who are putting it in their pockets, not helping the Afghani people.

In a perfect world, I wouldn't offer the amendment. In a perfect world, I would say, oh, ``Charlie Wilson,'' what a great movie, what a great story, we pulled out too soon. Well, Charlie Wilson was right in theory. He was wrong in application, because they steal and it is corrupt and they cannot maintain it. We couldn't have put enough money and enough people. You have to change the ethics.

I've heard a lot of people here on this floor talk about situations in America. They say, we can't do it, it has got to be the family do it. Well, talk about the family--the whole country is corrupt. They have stolen and stolen and stolen American dollars. We are throwing them away, and we need to stop it.

It should be a place, just as the Walberg-Cohen-Esty-Rigell amendment passed, that this amendment passes, so that we limit the amount of money that is at risk and we save this money for the American taxpayer. We put the money into deficit reduction, the next generation doesn't have to pay for the corruption of the Afghani officials and the waste of Afghanistan with the inability to maintain the projects that they finally might get squeezed out after they steal as much as they can. We should not be funding this.

I would ask that we approve our amendment in the name of fiscal austerity, deficit reduction, anticorruption, and just plain old, good old common sense. We might as well just have a bonfire and burn this money up before it goes over there because it is not going to work. In theory it is great, but in reality it doesn't work. The definition of ``insanity'' is expecting something different when you do the same thing over and over and over and you get the same result and you keep doing it.

So this Congress, which has less than 10 percent popularity right now, doesn't pass an insane amendment to give money to corruption and to waste, I ask you to approve this amendment.

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Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

All you have to do is look at the top, Mr. Karzai and his brother, who was killed, who was one of the main drug runners down there who was killed. The whole country from the top to the bottom is corrupt.

I thank the gentleman for his thoughts. You can't find honest people there to see that this money gets to their people. They don't care about their people. They care about their own power, their own money, their own riches. They are corrupt, and we are throwing this money away.

Let's face reality and pass the amendment.

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