Speech by Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin), March 29, 2000

Speech by Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin), March 29, 2000
[Page: H1544]

[TIME: 1845]

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I have been here long enough to see a few of these fights before, and whenever the question of military aid comes up, the question of human rights also arises. So we have to face the question: How much murder, how much torture, how much corruption are we going to tolerate on the part of parties to whom we are providing aid?

Invariably, what happens is that a set of so-called standards are drawn up which sound very good. They give Members of Congress a fig leaf that they can stand behind to give the impression that they are really doing something for human rights, but then they contain a perennial presidential waiver.

On occasion, presidential waivers are justified. But when Congress routinely sets human rights standards which can then be routinely waived by the President, it cheapens the process and trivializes our concern about human rights. It lets Congress claim credit for the aid that is being provided; it lets Congress claim credit for protecting human rights when, in reality, it does not in any meaningful way. Then it leaves the President standing there as a punching bag no matter what he does, whether he waives or whether he does not waive, those standards. I think that that, in the process, trivializes everything that we deal with on issues like this.

I think that is the reason why groups such as Amnesty International and other human rights organizations are opposed to this amendment. They understand that this amendment does not do what it purports to do, which is assure that the Colombian government and the parties with whom we will be dealing with, in fact, live up to the standards we expect them to live up to on human rights.

In my view, until we do have language that does assure that, we most certainly should not support either this bill or this amendment, which makes it easier to continue the charade in this case that we have seen so often in Salvador, in Nicaragua, in Guatemala, in Indonesia, and in a number of other places around the world.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

As of March 30, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H29MR0-173: