Foreign Affairs Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007

FOREIGN AFFAIRS AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEARS 2006 and 2007

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I tell my colleague, I am pleased to be able to team up with him on this effort. Over the last few months, we have been digging into a variety of areas where waste of taxpayers' dollars has occurred.

I think Senator Dorgan has made the central argument with respect to our amendment; that is, you do not get tough with somebody by wasting money. In other words, we are going to have a fair amount of discussion, I suspect, on this amendment about whether you are being soft minded on Castro, or something of that nature, whether you agree with Castro's political agenda.

What we are talking about is stopping foolishness with respect to frittering away taxpayer dollars. As my colleague has said, what we are faced with is a situation where Fidel Castro has jammed TV Martí's airwaves since their conception. As a result, instead of feeding the Cuban people a glimpse of honest television, what we have been feeding the Cuban people is static and snow. Now, the snow on Cubans' TV screens may be the only snow they get in Cuba, but I can assure you this is about the most expensive snow we have seen on the planet.

What we want to do is protect the interests of taxpayers. We have gone through Fat Albert. Now you have the question of the sequel to Fat Albert, with the President having proposed slashing other programs, particularly programs here at home. How do you argue that something such as this ought to be preserved, that the use of taxpayers' dollars in this area ought to be preserved, where everything here at home is on the chopping block during a belt-tightening environment in Government?

TV Martí was intended to follow in the footsteps of Radio Martí, providing Cubans access to balanced information from the outside world so that Cubans living under Fidel Castro's regime would have a taste of the freedom that Americans enjoy here at home.

We are willing to stipulate for purposes of this discussion and debate we are having on the floor of the Senate that Radio Martí enjoys a strong listening audience and successfully transmits news to Cubans from the outside world. But the bottom line is, TV Martí has never come close--never come close--to meeting the standards of Radio Martí. I defy anybody to find a significant group of people in Cuba who see this television.

As Senator Dorgan has mentioned, the process of surveying people, which under normal circumstances would be a good way to determine the extent of use, has now been hot wired so they do not even do the surveys anymore because they are not going to get the results they want to have. They want to have surveys that show a significant number of people are getting this, and they cannot prove it. So if you cannot prove it, you do not put out a survey that says: Oh, no viewers. You sort of figure out a way to make the surveys disappear. That is essentially what has happened.

Our discussions and examination, as we have pursued this issue over the last few months in an effort to root out this waste, indicates virtually nobody sees this. That is where we are now. So we are looking at the prospect, after all of this waste of money--well over $100 million sunk into this static, this static and snow over the years--of spending still more money.

Senator Dorgan and I believe it is time to draw a line in the sand and say: Halt this waste. Halt this frittering away of the American people's scarce dollars.

The President does have a new plan to circumvent the jamming. His idea is to use military aircraft to broadcast TV Martí that way. We have our folks, men and women from Alaska and North Dakota and Oregon, and they are in harm's way today. So at a time when our troops are in harm's way and face great peril around the world, we are talking about transferring military assets that we need to protect their well-being and the well-being of this country. I do not see how you can make the case again that that is a wise expenditure at this time.

So I hope as the Senate debates the Dorgan-Wyden amendment, we can make it clear that when programs such as Radio Martí work, we are willing to make sure the United States plays an active role in trying to make sure people have information, accurate, objective information, on what freedom is all about. But where you are talking about waste, where you are talking about funding programs that may make people say, ``oh, you're getting tough, you're getting tough on Castro,'' when in fact you are wasting money, that is where the two of us are trying to blow the whistle and prevent further efforts to throw taxpayers' money at TV Martí, when there is no evidence it will work.

The money we have spent year after year goes, as I have said, to finance some of the most expensive static, the most expensive snow in the history of television screens. What we ought to be doing is making sure that taxpayers' dollars are spent wisely. Here it could be used in a whole host of other areas. It is our hope, and the purpose of this amendment, to pull the plug on a program that does not work now, has not worked in the past, and is not going to work in the future.

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Mr. WYDEN. I appreciate the Senator's question. It seems to me that this is Government Waste 101. This is not complicated. Since its inception in 1980, it appears that this particular program, TV Martí, has had essentially no real Cuban viewership. We have been doing everything we can to find anything resembling a current study, a current report, any body of evidence which would indicate that there is an actual market, a group of Cubans who see this.

As the Senator from North Dakota has indicated in his question, if you go into a coffee shop in Alaska or North Dakota or Oregon, this program doesn't pass the smell test. People are going to say: Look, we don't like Castro. And this isn't a debate about whether you like Castro. I have been studying this issue since my dad wrote a book about the Bay of Pigs, the untold story. So like many of my colleagues, I have been studying this issue for a long time. This is not a referendum on whether you are going to be tough on Castro or whether you like Castro. This is a referendum on whether we are going to allow millions of dollars of Government waste to go forward. We have been doing it for years. We should have pulled the plug some time ago. And yet, because this program sort of masquerades under the title of being tough on Castro, we just keep shoveling money at it.

I thank the Senator from North Dakota, who has spent a great deal of time on it. I also want to come back to a point the Senator from North Dakota touched on that is very important. Personally, a lot of us would like to reexamine our policy with respect to Cuba. That is not what this amendment is about. This amendment is about one thing: whether we are going to sanction more waste. This program doesn't pass the smell test. You wouldn't possibly be able to explain it in a coffee shop.

My hope is that we support real programs, such as Radio Martí, that are going to make a difference in terms of getting information to the Cuban people about areas where there is waste and not continue to fritter away scarce taxpayer resources.

I thank my colleague for giving me the time.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, as we conclude with this amendment, I particularly thank the distinguished chairman of the committee for this extra time and get back to this question of what the amendment is really all about. I do not quibble at all with the fact that this is a laudable effort to promote freedom, as the Senator from Florida is talking about, but I believe it has to be about more than effort; it has to be about a result.

For example, something that strikes me as something that would be very useful is to set up Internet Martí. We have seen, for example, what happened in China. What really rattled the Chinese Government was the presence of the Internet. As far as I can tell, they have been struggling to block that out as well. They have not been able to do that. But that is the kind of investment that would make sense to me.

I would be thrilled to work with the distinguished Senator from Florida on wireless technology, for example. I have served on the Commerce Committee. I have a great interest in technology. I think there is a lot of potential as it relates to these kinds of concerns: wireless technology, Internet Martí.

What brings us to the floor today is that we talk about the flicker of freedom, which I am certainly for. As far as I can tell, the only thing the Cuban people see flickering is all that static on TV. So I hope we can save some money, which is the point of this amendment Senator Dorgan and I have offered, and then counsel together on a bipartisan basis through the chairman of the committee, Senator Lugar, Senator Martinez, our friend Senator Nelson, on something that would be practical. Sign me up for something like Internet Martí, something that would be a well-targeted investment, would allow us to build on the potential to cap other technologies, wireless technologies, Web-based technologies. That is something that seems to me makes sense.

I hope my colleagues will approve this money, allow us to start targeting these Government expenditures during a time of belt-tightening in a more cost-effective way.

I urge the passage of the amendment, and I yield the floor.

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