Plan Colombia and Beyond

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July 20, 2005

Gagged, again, in the House

“We have got a war against drugs and you are standing here saying, okay, let us not do this, let us not do this, but the drug problem exists so what do you want to do about it?” asked Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton during last month’s House debate on foreign aid, addressing Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota), Dennis Moore (D-Kansas) and others who were seeking to cut $100 million in military aid to Colombia. “Unless you have got some constructive alternative, I think you ought to take a hard look at what has been talked about here today by the colleagues on our side of the aisle.”

Rep. McGovern and his colleagues have a “constructive alternative,” of course; it runs along the same general lines as the recommendations laid out in the Blueprint for a New Colombia Policy that CIP co-published earlier this year (PDF format). But they had no opportunity to present it during the debate on the foreign aid bill.

Since it is an appropriations bill, the rules of the House only allowed them either to cut funds or to move funds between accounts (as we’ve explained elsewhere). And since most Colombia aid in that particular bill goes through one account – the Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI), which includes both military and economic aid – there was nowhere to transfer it. Any attempt to specify how exactly the ACI money could be spent would have been against the rules, and thus found to be “out of order” and thrown out. So they were stuck supporting a cut in military aid – and facing Dan Burton’s unfair charge that they have no proposals of their own.

This year, however, the House International Relations Committee has managed to produce a Foreign Relations Authorization bill (HR 2601), which actually seeks to set policy, guidelines and amounts governing State Department and foreign aid programs. This bill, which went to the House floor for debate yesterday, is not an appropriations bill. It doesn’t carry the same strict rules of debate that would keep amendments from being introduced.

As a result, two Democratic Representatives had planned to introduce amendments:

• Rep. McGovern was to add conditions on U.S. support for paramilitary demobilizations identical to those on the Senate’s much better version of the foreign aid appropriations bill. McGovern’s conditions would have superseded some very vague, easily fudged conditions that Rep. Burton had added to HR 2601. In a dissenting opinion added to the International Relations Committee’s report on the bill, the committee’s ranking Democrats, Tom Lantos (D-California) and Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), warned that the Burton conditions “should be strengthened in a meaningful way before this Committee authorizes assistance to a process that could cost the U.S. taxpayer an estimated $80 million over three years and could establish a lenient precedent for future processes through which terrorists around the world could shield themselves.”
  
  
• Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) was to add a requirement that 40 percent of aid to Colombia through the Andean Counterdrug Initiative account be non-military aid for economic and social needs (alternative development, aid to the displaced, judicial reform and similar efforts). This would have boosted economic aid to Colombia by about $40 million more than the current $152 million.
  

While these two amendments should have been perfectly acceptable under the rules of debate for HR 2601, they still had to pass through one obstacle: the House Rules Committee, a powerful body that meets before every bill is debated on the House floor, and decides which amendments may be introduced. Members of Congress had submitted 90 amendments for consideration in yesterday’s debate, and on Monday night the Rules Committee met to whittle that number down.

In the end – even though Rep. McGovern is a member of this committee – neither Colombia amendment survived the Rules Committee’s axe. With no pretext beyond “we don’t want to discuss that,” the committee’s Republican majority prohibited both the McGovern and the Lee amendments from getting any hearing in the full House.

House opponents of the current policy toward Colombia were denied an opportunity to answer Rep. Burton’s charge that all they do is criticize without offering alternatives. Meanwhile (para colmo, as they say in Colombia), the Rules Committee gave Mr. Burton a green light to introduce an amendment authorizing $25 million to buy new aircraft for Colombia’s Navy. (This amendment, likely to be approved by voice vote, doesn’t mean that the aircraft are on their way – money for them still has to be appropriated in an appropriations bill.)

HR 2601 was introduced yesterday and probably will come to a vote today. Yesterday, at the outset of the debate, Rep. McGovern vented his very justified anger at the silencing of dissent on Colombia policy. Let’s quote him at length.

Last night the Republican leadership decided to refuse this House the right to debate U.S. policy towards Colombia. Out of the 90 amendments submitted to Rules, only two dealt substantively with U.S.-Colombia policy.

I offered an amendment to match language approved by the Senate that would strengthen the accountability over U.S. funds for Colombia’s demobilization of right-wing paramilitary forces.

The gentlelady from California, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, offered another amendment to ensure that 40 percent of U.S. aid to Colombia would be used for alternative economic development, human rights, rule of law and strengthening democratic institutions.

Well, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to strengthening democratic institutions, the Republican leadership certainly doesn’t believe in teaching the Colombians by example.

At the end of June, I stood here on the House floor, during debate on military aid to Colombia, and was criticized by Republicans for not talking about what kind of policy I stood for.

But here we are today, taking up a bill that only comes to the House floor every two years, and is one of the only bills where an amendment on U.S.-Colombia policy can actually be offered – and both the Lee and the McGovern amendments are banned from debate.

Mr. Speaker, once again, the Republican leadership has rejected any attempt to bring some kind of accountability to our policy on Colombia.

Once again, the Republican leadership is serving as the chief apologist for the Colombian government.

When it comes to Colombia, the Republican leadership continues to engage in a policy of see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

Once again, the House is being asked to look the other way -- to sit down and shut up – as Colombia moves towards carrying out what appears to be a deeply flawed plan for demobilizing the right-wing paramilitary forces, forces that are on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

The State Department estimates it will cost about $80 million to carry out the demobilization.

Who do you think the Colombian government is going to ask to bankroll this process? The American tax payer, that’s who.

Well, before we spend one more single solitary U.S. tax dollar on this demobilization process, I for one want to make sure that my tax dollars are not paying for some sweetheart deal for Colombian drug lords, terrorists and killers to escape extradition to the United States or serve a couple of years under house arrest on their country estate.

These are the paramilitary masterminds and commanders who have flooded our streets and neighborhoods with cocaine and heroin. Yet, on July 1^st, President Uribe told the Voice of America that their extradition warrants would have to be suspended.

If Colombia wants to stand in the way of these drug lords facing U.S. justice, then that’s Colombia’s decision – They can just do it without U.S. tax dollar support.

I want to make sure that my constituents hard-earned tax dollars are not paying for a process that will allow paramilitary money-laundering and organizational structures to remain intact – so that they can transform themselves into mafia-like political, social and criminal networks.

The OAS has denounced the Colombian law on the paramilitary demobilization. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have denounced it. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia has raised grave concerns about it.

So, why then, Mr. Speaker, is it so hard for this House to even have a debate over having some accountability if the Colombian government asks us to fund this process?

That’s all I want, Mr. Speaker, is a little bit of accountability.

Quite frankly, the majority on the Rules Committee and the Republican leadership should be ashamed of themselves for running away from this debate – and for being complicit in a policy that will very likely end up protecting drug lords, terrorists, killers and their profits from facing any kind of genuine justice.

Posted by isacson at July 20, 2005 04:05 PM

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