The 2007 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (no bill number yet)

The foreign aid bill for 2007 was approved by the House Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee on May 19, 2006. While no text of the bill is publicly available, news reports indicate that the bill would vary only slightly from the Bush Administration's foreign aid request to Congress. The largest change appears to involve Colombia: military and police assistance to Colombia is increased by $29 million to pay for aircraft upgrades, and economic assistance is increased by $10 million and no longer funded through counter-narcotics aid programs.

See press coverage of the subcommittee's actions, in Spanish, on the websites of Colombia's El Tiempo and Miami's El Nuevo Herald.

The Bush administration's 2007 foreign aid budget request to Congress is available on the State Department website.

The 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 5122 and S. 2766)

Making Section 1004 Defense Department counter-drug aid a permanent program

Section 1004 is scheduled to expire at the end of 2006; Congress has granted extensions to the program, which is not a part of permanent law, in 1995, 1999 and 2002.

On May 9, 2006, the Senate Armed Services Committee drafted its version of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, S. 2766. Section 1022 of this bill would extend Section 1004 aid until 2011. The Senate version does not require the Defense Department to report to Congress on how this aid was used. The full Senate has yet to consider this bill.

On May 11, 2006, the House of Representatives approved its version of H.R. 5122, the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1021 of this bill would make Section 1004 a permanent program, adding it to U.S. law as Section 383 of Title 10, U.S. Code. Section 1004 would no longer have to be renewed every few years.

Section 1022 of the House bill would repeat the report to Congress on Section 1004 expenditure that appeared in the 2001, 2002 and 2006 Defense Authorization laws. The bill language would not make the reporting requirement a permanent feature, however. It would only extend it for one year (2007). The report on 2006 aid would be due on April 15, 2007.

Expanding Section 1033 Defense Department counter-drug aid and making it a permanent program

On May 11, 2006, the House of Representatives approved its version of H.R. 5122, the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1022 of this bill would make Section 1033 a permanent program, adding it to U.S. law as Section 384 of Title 10, U.S. Code. Section 1033 would no longer have to be renewed every few years.

The bill would also expand the scope of Section 1033 aid even further.

• The list of eligible countries, which was expanded from two to nine in the 2004 bill, would be expanded to fifteen with the addition of Belize, Guatemala, Panama and three central Asian countries (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan).
• The maximum expenditure is increased to $60 million per year in 2007 and 2008.
• The types of aid that can be provided have been expanded to include "vehicles, and aircraft and detection, interception, monitoring and testing equipment" and, in the case of Afghanistan, "individual and crew-served weapons of 50 caliber or less and ammunition for such weapons for counter-narcotics security forces."

On May 9, 2006, the Senate Armed Services Committee drafted its version of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, S. 2766. Section 1023 of this bill would not make Section 1033 assistance permanent; it would extend it until 2008.

The Senate bill would include the following expansions in the scope of Section 1033 aid.

• The list of eligible countries, which was expanded from two to nine in the 2004 bill, would be expanded to twenty-four with the addition of Belize, Guatemala, Panama and twelve other countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chad, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Philippines, and Thailand).
• The maximum expenditure is increased to $80 million per year in 2007 and 2008.
• The types of aid that can be provided have been expanded to include "vehicles, and aircraft and detection, interception, monitoring and testing equipment."

The full Senate has yet to consider this bill.

Adjustments to the Counter-Terror Fellowship Program

On May 11, 2006, the House of Representatives approved its version of H.R. 5122, the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1024 of this bill would make "enhancements" to the CTFP, allowing funds to be used to send students to civilian educational institutions in the United States, and increasing the annual worldwide budget from $20 million to $25 million. It would also change the program's name to "Regional Defense Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program."

On May 9, 2006, the Senate Armed Services Committee drafted its version of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, S. 2766. Section 1202 of this bill would make the same changes as the House version of the bill.

Renewal of authority for "Building of the Capacity of Foreign Military Forces"

Section 1206 of the 2006 Defense Authorization gave the Defense Department a new authority to provide military aid to foreign countries. The provision allowed regional combatant commanders (like Southern Command) to spend a worldwide total of $200 million on equipment, training and services for other nations' militaries - even though programs in the foreign aid budget (such as Foreign Military Financing) already exist for this purpose. Among the countries chosen to benefit from this $200 million fund in 2006, four are Latin American or Caribbean: the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Panama. (Amounts are not currently available.)

Section 1206 of the Senate's version of the 2007 bill would continue this military-aid authority through 2008. The maximum amount would continue to be $200 million per year. No more than $50 million may be spent in one combatant command's region; since there are only five geographic combatant commands including Northern Command, it is likely that the Western Hemisphere would receive a full $50 million in military assistance through this new account in 2007 and 2008.

"The committee underscores that the authorities provided in this section are provided in the spirit of a pilot program," reads the Senate Armed Services Committee's report on the 2007 bill. "The committee intends to review carefully how these authorities are implemented so as to have a basis for determining whether and, if so, in what precise manner, to reauthorize these or provide other authorities after the conclusion of the pilot program. ... The committee strongly discourages further modifications to these authorities until a track record implementing the pilot program authorized in this section has been developed."

The full Senate has yet to consider its version of the 2007 bill. The House bill does not include any provision similar to Section 1206.

Latin America Military Training Review Act of 2005 (H.R. 1217)

This bill would suspend the operations of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC, the successor to the U.S. Army School of the Americas) for two years while creating two bipartisan commissions.

The first would be "a joint congressional task force to conduct an assessment of the kind of education and training that is appropriate for the Department of Defense to provide to military personnel of Latin American nations."

The second commission would investigate and document human-rights errors committed in the school’s past, including the drafting of manuals advocating tactics that violate international law and their use in training.

This bill, which has a large number of sponsors, has yet to be considered by the House Armed Services Committee.

Venezuela resolutions (H.Con.Res. 400 and H.Con.Res. 328)

H.Con.Res. 400 "strongly condemns the actions and inactions of the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela which have created fertile ground for criminal drug trafficking organizations" and calls on Venezuela to improve airport security measures. The resolution has yet to be considered by the House International Relations Committee.

H.Con.Res. 328 is a resolution "condemning the anti-democratic actions of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should strongly support the aspirations of the democratic forces in Venezuela." The resolution has yet to be considered by the House International Relations Committee.