Speech by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), June 21, 2000

Speech by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), June 21, 2000
Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, we will be voting in just a few moments in regard to the Gorton amendment. I rise to talk about the bill but also to oppose, with due respect, the Gorton amendment.

What is at the heart of this debate on the emergency aid package to Colombia, the very essence of why we need to help restore stability in Colombia and help combat the violent insurgents, is the urgent need to keep drugs off our streets in the United States and out of the hands of our children. That is what this debate is all about; that is what this vote on the amendment is all about.

As my colleagues know, this emergency package would provide $934 million to support Colombian efforts to eliminate drugs at the source, improve human rights programs, improve rule of law programs, and increase economic development. The fact is, there is an emergency in our neighbor to the south, in the country of Colombia. This country, this democracy, is embroiled in a destabilizing and brutal civil war, a civil war that has gone on for decades with a death toll reaching at least 35,000.

Today, we have heard a lot of speeches about human rights abuses in Colombia and what has taken place in the past. In that context, I remind my colleagues of the fact the current aid package that the Senator from Kentucky has put together is based on legislation Senators Coverdell, Grassley, Graham, and I introduced last fall, which was developed with the protection of human rights in mind. It is an integral part of this bill. Our colleagues have a right to be concerned with past human rights abuses. The way to deal with this is through the conditions that are written all through this bill.

My office met with numerous human rights organizations. We worked closely with Senator Leahy's office, and many others, to ensure that safeguards were put in place to prevent U.S. assistance from being used by those in Colombia who do not respect human rights.

Many of those original provisions have been incorporated into the package before us, such as funds to monitor the use of U.S. assistance by the Colombian armed forces and Colombian national police; funds to support efforts to investigate and prosecute members of both the armed forces and the paramilitary organizations involved in human rights abuses. It also contains funds to address the social and economic needs of the displaced population in Colombia.

Our provisions were not only developed to punish human rights abuses in Colombia but, more importantly, they were developed to prevent those abuses.

The fact is that this Congress places such a strong emphasis on the protection of human rights that the legislation before us today would provide more funding for human rights--$25 million to be exact--than was in the President's requested budget. It is more than the President requested.

This Congress is committed to the protection of human rights and will continue to monitor the assistance we provide to ensure that every penny is used for its intended purpose, which is the respect for and protection of human rights.

Many of us on the floor today, and those watching in their offices, have spent a lot of time and energy to expel communism and bring democracy to this hemisphere and to bring a rule of law and human rights protection to this hemisphere. The 1980s were a true success story for the ideals we believe in and for our attempt to spread those ideals and beliefs in democracy throughout this great hemisphere. The people of this hemisphere paid a very heavy price, but I think that price was worth paying to achieve the spread of democracy throughout the hemisphere. We brought democracy and we brought opportunity to our neighbors.

Today, the drug trade--not communism--is now the dominant threat to peace and freedom in the Americas. It threatens the sovereignty of the Colombian democracy and the continued prosperity and security of our entire hemisphere. Tragically, our own drug habit--America's drug habit--is what is fueling this threat in our hemisphere. It is our own country's drug use that is causing the instability and violence in Colombia and in the Andean region.

The sad fact is that the cultivation of coca in Colombia has doubled, from over 126,000 acres in 1995 to 300,000 in 1999. Poppy cultivation also has grown to such an extent that it is now the source of the majority of heroin consumed in the United States. Not surprisingly, as drug availability has increased in the United States, drug use among adolescents has also increased. To make matters worse, the Colombian insurgents see the drug traffickers as a financial partner who will sustain their illicit cause, which only makes the FARC and ELN--these guerrillas--grow stronger and stronger day by day. So the sale of drugs in the United States today not only promotes the drug business, but it also fuels the antidemocratic insurgents in Colombia.

Some may ask, why does Colombia matter? Why are we taking good tax dollars to help our neighbors to the south? I think the answer is simple. It matters because Colombia is shipping their drugs into the United States. It matters because the drug trade is a source of rampant lawlessness and violence within Colombia itself--violence and lawlessness, which has destabilized that country and now threatens the entire Andean region.

Fortunately, in the last few years, Congress has had the foresight to recognize the escalating threats, and we have been working to restore our drug-fighting capability beyond our shores. Many of us who have worked very tirelessly on the Colombian assistance package this year also worked together just a few short years ago to pass the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act, which is now the law of the land. This 3-year plan is designed to restore international eradication, interdiction, and crop alternative development funding. With this law, which we passed on a bipartisan basis, we have already made a $800 million downpayment--$200 million of which represents the first substantial investment in Colombia for counternarcotics activities.

The emergency assistance package that we have before us this afternoon is based on a blueprint that Senator Coverdell and I developed and introduced last October--3 months before the administration unveiled its proposal. As our plan, the emergency assistance package the Senator from Kentucky has crafted goes beyond counternarcotics assistance and crop alternative development programs in Colombia. It goes beyond Colombia and targets other Latin-American countries, including Bolivia, Peru, Panama, and Ecuador.

This regional approach is the only approach, it is the right approach, and it is critical. Both Peru and Bolivia have made enormous progress in reducing drug cultivation in their respective countries, and they have done it with the help, candidly, of our assistance, and it has worked. Now, an emphasis only on the Colombian drug problems risks the obvious `spillover' effect of Colombia's drug trade shifting to adjacent countries in the region.

Some of my colleagues have taken the floor today to express hesitancy and reluctance and opposition to this assistance package. I wish to take a moment to direct my comments specifically to them and specifically to some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle.

Our Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act was an attempt to change the direction of our national drug policy--a drug policy that clearly was not working. We took that first step. Today, we must take the second step. We passed that very important legislation because we had to; we had to because the current administration, unfortunately, had presided over the literal dismantling of our international drug-fighting capability.

Let me explain. When President George Bush left the White House, we were spending approximately one-quarter of our total Federal antidrug budget on international drug interdiction, either on law enforcement in other countries, on our own Customs, on the DEA, and on crop eradication. Basically, it was taking that huge chunk of the Federal antidrug budget and spending it to try to stop drugs from ever reaching our shores. It was a balanced approach and it made sense.

After 6 years of the Clinton Presidency, that percentage of our budget--that one-quarter of our total budget--was reduced to 13 to 14 percent, which is a dramatic reduction in the percentage of money we are spending on international drug interdiction.

That is why many of us in this body--on a bipartisan basis, in both the House and here in the Senate--worked to pass the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act. Speaker Hastert, before he was Speaker, played a major role in working on the House version of this bill, as did many, many others.

We passed that bill. It became law. It has made a difference. We have begun to at least reverse the direction of our foreign policy. We need to get back to that balanced approach, where we spend money on international interdiction, domestic law enforcement, treatment, and education. It has to be a balanced approach.

We passed the bill, it became law, and we started to reverse that policy. The initiative for that came, quite candidly, from this side of the aisle, with support from the other side of the aisle. We saw what the administration was doing and we said that the policy had to change. We said we needed to put more money into interdiction, and that is exactly what we did. We said, candidly, we needed a balanced policy and we began to move in that direction. Now, today, we need to build on that effort.

We need to build on that effort, which today is focused primarily on the current crisis that we see in Colombia. Senators Coverdell, Grassley, Feinstein, and others worked with me to put together a package specifically dealing with the situation in Colombia.

I ask my colleagues to look at the big picture. Step back from the debate about this amendment and look at where we are going as a country. Think about what is in the best interest not of Colombia, but of the United States. This assistance package before us, which my colleague from Kentucky has put together, was put together because Colombia is our neighbor, and what affects our neighbor to the south affects us.

We have a very real interest in helping to stabilize Colombia and keeping it democratic, keeping it as our friend, keeping it as our trading partner, and keeping its drugs off our streets.

Colombia faces a crisis that is different than any crisis that any country has ever faced before in the history of the world. Many countries have faced guerrilla movements in the past few decades, but no country has ever faced guerrillas with as much money as the Colombian guerrillas have. I don't know of any country that has ever faced a guerrilla movement supported by so much illegal drug money. A synergistic relationship is involved between the drug dealers and the guerrillas; each one benefits from the other; each one takes care of the other. While this is a crisis that Colombia faces, it is a crisis driven by those who consume drugs in our country, and we must admit that it is a crisis that directly impacts all of us in the United States. It directly impacts you; it directly impacts me, our children, and our grandchildren.

I ask my colleagues to really consider the great human tragedy that Colombia is today. I ask my colleagues to remember how we got here, and to remember what role this side of the aisle, with help from the other side, played in trying to deal with the Colombian problem, and what role we played in trying to increase the money we were spending and the resources we were providing to stop drugs from ever coming into to our country.

The emergency aid package before us today is in the best interests of the Colombian-Andean region. There is no doubt about that. But, more importantly, and more significantly for this body and for the vote we are about to cast, it is in the best interest of the United States.

It is clearly something we have to do. It may be tempting on the Gorton amendment to say: Look. Why don't we just take that money? We don't need to send it to Colombia. We don't need to send it down there. What do we care about what goes on in Colombia? Let's keep it here, spend it here, and apply it to the national debt.

I understand how people may come to the floor and say that. I understand how people may come to the floor and think that and maybe even vote that way. But I think in the long run it would be a tragic mistake.

If we are trying to make an analogy, let me be quite candid. The analogy isn't any long-term involvement in the United States. The analogy shouldn't be to Bosnia; it shouldn't be to Vietnam; It shouldn't even be Kosovo. The analogy is what happened in the Central Americas in the 1980s.

Quite candidly, many people on this side of the aisle and on the other side were directly involved in trying to make sure democracy triumphed in Central America. We were successful because people took chances. People cast tough votes. People said we care. Today, when you travel through Central America, you find democracies. I have had the opportunity within the last several years to do that, and to travel to most every Central American country. No, things are not perfect. But each of those countries is moving towards more democracy. Each of those countries is moving towards more market-driven economies. Each of those countries has a chance to develop a middle class.

That is the analogy. The United States cared. We were involved. The people there got the job done.

Colombia faces a very difficult challenge. Will this be the only time Members of the Senate are asked to vote on this and to send money to deal with this? Of course not. We all know that. This is a commitment, and it is probably going to be somewhat of a long commitment. But I think it is clearly in our national interest.

We vote today not to assist Colombia. We vote today really to assist ourselves because what happens in Colombia directly impacts the United States--whether it is trade, whether it is illegal immigration, or whether it is drugs coming into this country. What happens in that region of the world has a direct impact on people in Cleveland, on people in Cincinnati, or any other State, or any city in the United States. We vote in our self-interest today for this package. We vote in our national self-interest, I believe, to vote down the Gorton amendment.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

As of June 25, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:S21JN0-228: