Speech by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-New York), July 23, 2003

Speech by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-New York), July 23, 2003

Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, this bill provides $574 million for Colombia. The amendment would cut $75 million from that total. And the reason I support it, although I have great respect for the chairman's position, is because I have fundamental questions about the direction in which our Colombia policy is headed.

As my colleagues may know, the United States' commitment to Colombia has shifted in the last year from being exclusively focused on drugs towards an open-ended, long-term commitment to aid the Columbian government in its war against guerillas and terrorists.

The response to that shift in the United States' policy has been more violence directed at U.S. personnel, including kidnappings, hostages being taken and planes being shot down.

Next year marks the end of the original 5-year Plan Colombia, and as we near that time we find that coca production in the region has increased

[Page: H7396]
rather than decreased, violence continues unabated, more Colombians are internally displaced.
The human rights situation is worse. No viable alternative development scheme is in place, and drug dealing paramilitary organizations control much of the country. Meanwhile, the amount of United States assistance to Colombia has increased every year to over half a billion requested next year. Plans underway in the administration will lead to an even broader commitment to Colombia to assist in this civil war in the name of fighting terrorism.

According to the GAO, the administration has not developed estimates of future program costs, defined their future roles in Colombia, identified a proposed end state, or determined how they plan to achieve it.

During the original debate on Plan Colombia, critics said we were descending a slippery slope. Well, we are hurtling down that slope with no end in sight. Last year, in the context of agreeing to broaden the authority for U.S. programs beyond drugs, the new government of Colombia agreed to adopt major reforms within the military and to significantly increase security expenditures from its own budget. While it appears that the Colombians increase their security budget in 2002 and 2003, the United States has no firm commitment that the increased level will continue in 2004 and beyond. In the meantime, the costs of simply maintaining the aircraft and equipment we already have there now exceeds $230 million per year. The best you can say about reforms within the military is that they are a work in progress.

I support Colombia. I want to help Colombia. But we do not help Colombia by continuing an unbalanced policy, looking the other way on human rights problems and continue collusion with paramilitary organizations and paying the maintenance bill for their helicopters while failing to insist on a viable development scheme for rural areas.

Passage of this amendment will not cut off aid to Colombia. It will send a strong signal to the administration that they need to make some policy changes, clarify the length and terms of our commitment and present Congress with an exit strategy.

Mr. Chairman, I urge support of the McGovern amendment.

As of August 6, 2003, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r108:@FIELD(FLD003+h)+@FIELD(DDATE+20030723)