Speech by Rep. Porter Goss (R-Florida), March 29, 2000

Speech by Rep. Porter Goss (R-Florida), March 29, 2000
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of our time.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to quickly point to a few things.

First of all, I am not sure that everybody really understands that the FARC is not just another political opposition group. This is a vicious guerilla band of people that this past weekend killed 26 policemen in Colombia, in one city, in Bahia del Puerto. They beheaded the chief of police and killed four children between the ages of 3 and 7, to say nothing of their mothers and other innocent victims.

This is, unfortunately, routine business. This is the face of a terrorist insurrection against a democratic government.

Secondly, I would like to point out, the much-discussed Rand report talking about how much more we get out of our money for treatment, that is interesting if we are talking about treatment, but we are talking about trying to stop people from becoming victims. We do not want them to become addicts. We do want to treat the addicts, but we want to stop our youth from becoming addicts by making sure there is no supply for them. That is a legitimate part of what we are about.

The third thing is, there are many elements to this bill that were not discussed today: Kosovo burdensharing, a critical bipartisan amendment that I know will get a lot of attention as the day goes on.

The fourth thing, some talk about entanglement. We are not sending an expeditionary force, we are sending training and logistics support.

Fifth, what does this matter to the average American who does not necessarily know where Colombia falls on the map of the world? I will tell Members what it matters, it matters about our kids, our kids who are tempted by the scourge of drugs. We are dealing with our children and our grandchildren and their future.

If Members do not like that, we are dealing with the price of gas, because gas comes from this area, too. Destabilization in this area is just going to keep the price of gas higher longer.

So there are lots of ways Members can bring this personally to themselves and into their lives, to their pocketbook, to their quality of life. But nothing, nothing should take second place to the well-being of our kids and us doing our job to make sure they are properly protected.

This is a good open rule, it is a fair rule. I urge support for the rule.

As of March 30, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H29MR0-104: