Speech by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Washington), June 30, 2000

Speech by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Washington), June 30, 2000

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I oppose the billions of dollars of emergency Fiscal Year 2000 supplemental funding included in the Fiscal Year 2001 Military Construction bill to continue our involvement in Kosovo, and to dramatically escalate our military's involvement in Colombia . While I support the Military Construction provisions in the bill, particularly the worthy Washington state projects specified in the bill, I cannot vote for passage of this measure.

I did not support the President's decision to intervene in the 600-year-old civil war in the Republic of Yugoslavia, and do not support the spending of another $2 billion on this open-ended commitment of our nation's armed forces and taxpayer dollars.

Last week, I actively opposed the President's effort to entangle us in yet another civil war, this time in Colombia . I unsuccessfully sought to reduce the proposed $934 million in funding to $200 million, which would amount to a four-fold increase in spending on our fight against drug-trafficking between Colombia and the United States. This supplemental spending bill now includes even more for Colombia , a total of $1.3 billion. I am afraid this is a mere down payment on the billions more we will be asked to spend in coming years. I refuse to support this launching of yet another never-ending commitment--especially one that the President can neither justify nor guarantee will have even the slightest positive impact on drug trafficking.

The billions included in this bill for Kosovo and Colombia are not only an irresponsible waste of taxpayer funds, they are a dangerous gamble that we will exit involvement in these civil wars with less damage to our fighting men and women, and national dignity than we have in the past.

As of July 18, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:S30JN0-436: