Speech by Rep. Sam Farr (D-California), July 15, 2004

Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. FARR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) and the ranking member, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), for the opportunity to debate an important topic on foreign aid to Colombia under the Plan Colombia.

The amendment that I am going to offer today would cap the military personnel in Colombia. The gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) knows how much Colombia means to me as a former Peace Corps volunteer in that country, and I would like to debate this issue with my colleagues here on the floor.

In the original Plan Colombia, Congress placed caps on the number of personnel that would be allowed in Colombia, U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilian personnel. Those caps were put in place to prevent the growth of the U.S. military commitment in Colombia. I became very concerned when I heard the administration had asked Congress to increase the manpower caps in Colombia to 800 U.S. military personnel and 600 contractors.
It has been pointed out to Congress just last week by General Richard Cody, who told the House Committee on Armed Services that the recent troop deployments in Iraq have taken a toll on U.S. readiness to deploy elsewhere and even to replace troops currently deployed in U.S.-led military combat in Iraq and in Afghanistan. To quote General Cody, ``We are stretched thin with our active and reserve component forces right now. Absolutely.'' Yet the administration wants to double the number of troops allowed under the manpower caps from 400 to 800.

Even General Hill of SOUTHCOM recently said before the Committee on Government Reform that rebuilding the social and economic system is needed in order to solve the problems in Colombia.

But today the administration has been calling Members' offices to ask them to oppose the Farr-Schakowsky-McGovern amendment, because the administration is dead set on working to expand the military aid, not the economic aid to Colombia.

After 5 years of spending almost $4 billion on Plan Colombia, is it not time that we reassess our policy? The Committee on Armed Services did that. The gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) is to be commended for his work on the Committee on Armed Services, because he was able to get a reasonable ceiling on U.S. personnel in Colombia. He got bipartisan support and amended the defense bill to do just that. I am asking the same in the foreign ops bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky)

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