Howard Berman

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. I will yield more time to discuss this, if you want, but first I am going to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ruppersberger), who has been waiting patiently. Then, if you want, we can come back to this. (Mr. RUPPERSBERGER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's amendment encourages the administration to create a Comprehensive Interagency Strategy and Implementation Plan for Sudan. I have spoken with Mr. McCaul about his proposal and agree that developing a coherent approach to the situation in Sudan is critical. The United States must make every effort to address the ongoing and interrelated crises in Sudan. The U.S. should work towards a stable and lasting peace in a region that has seen so many tragedies in recent years. I have no objection to this amendment, and I look forward to working with Mr. McCaul on this provision as the bill moves through the process. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition even though I don't oppose the amendment.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim the remainder of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chair, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to my colleague from California (Mr. Schiff), a former member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of the Appropriations Committee. (Mr. SCHIFF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BERMAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank him for his suggestion. I agree completely that science constitutes an untapped and undertapped resource in America's diplomatic toolbox, and I can assure the gentleman that I am committed to enhancing our capacity in this area, collaborating with him on this effort, including further legislation as well as a role in the foreign assistance reform process that we are working on.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am now pleased to yield to another excellent member of the committee, former colleague in the legislature in California, the gentlelady from California (Ms. Watson), 1 minute.

Mr. BERMAN. I am pleased to yield an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the very active and distinguished member of the committee, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Sheila Jackson-Lee. (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am now pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for purposes of a colloquy.

Mr. BERMAN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. My amendment makes a number of changes. Many of these are minor or technical amendments. Others address issues raised by other committees that have a jurisdictional interest in the bill. However, there are a number of other changes in my bill that are more substantive. For example, the amendment takes care of requests by Members that are generally unobjectionable even though substantive. For example, the bill adds a provision that would allow the State Department's growing Civilian Response Corps to enhance its capability by drawing on locally employed staff who have significant expertise in unstable environments. It includes provisions to assist in the compensation for victims of terrorism from the 1998 Nairobi bombing, drawing from a bill that we passed last year on a bipartisan basis and supported by Mr. Jesse Jackson, Mr. Roy Blunt, and our ranking member, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The amendment also updates language currently in the bill, welcoming the end of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam. These are provisions pushed particularly by the gentleman from New York (Mr. McMahon), a member of the committee. The United States, standing with the international community, eagerly looks forward to the government of Sri Lanka's putting forward a timely and credible proposal to engage its Tamil community and address the legitimate grievances of its Tamil citizens so that peace and reconciliation can be achieved and sustained. It also includes two requests by Republican members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, including an amendment by Mr. Wilson from South Carolina, who I agreed to work with during the markup at the committee. It also increases the amount of funds for the State Department Inspector General and the National Endowment For Democracy, as suggested by the minority in their views on the bill. This continues my efforts to include sensible Republican ideas into H.R. 2410, even though I recognize that very few Republicans appear to be prepared to support the legislation at this time. In addition, my amendment would also begin the process of modernizing our foreign assistance program by establishing a rigorous system to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of U.S. foreign assistance. One of the greatest weaknesses of the current U.S. foreign aid program is that it lacks a clear set of goals and objectives, and there's no systematic plan for measuring results. Under my amendment, the Secretary of State would coordinate the monitoring and evaluation activities of the various agencies carrying out foreign aid activities, and would report to the Congress on the findings and lessons learned from such evaluations. Finally, in recent days--and this is important--there has been significant concern expressed that a provision in the bill authorizing the Office of Global Women's Issues, an existing office at the State Department that focuses on issues like education for women and girls, political empowerment, and violence against women, somehow is a basis for promoting or lobbying for abortion. That is simply not true. The bill as reported out by the committee does not refer to abortion in any way, nor does the office work on abortion issues. That office is focused particularly on women in Iraq and in Afghanistan on the issues of education and political empowerment that I just mentioned. To reassure my colleagues, however, I have included in my amendment the following new subsection: ``Nothing in this section, and in particular the duties of the office described in subsection (c)''--that is the Office of Global Women's Issues--``shall be construed as affecting in any way existing statutory prohibitions against abortion or existing statutory prohibitions on the use of funds to engage in any activity or effort to alter the laws or policies in effect in any foreign country concerning the circumstances under which abortion is permitted, regulated, or prohibited.'' This language makes it very clear that existing prohibitions on lobbying for or using funds to promote abortion--including the Helms amendment, the Leahy amendment and the Siljander amendment--remain in effect and will continue to apply to the actions of the office. I believe this confirms that the bill does not undermine current law in any way and will reassure my colleagues on this issue. I think this manager's amendment is a good amendment. I urge all my colleagues to support it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN

Mr. BERMAN. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition to the amendment, though I'm not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. BERMAN. Will the gentleman let me finish my thought?

Mr. BERMAN. I don't know if we can get the international community to do the kinds of things that can stop Iran and enforce the regime to change its behavior in this area or on the issue of terrorism or on all of the other issues that we have with Iran; but let's try a policy that's different than the one that has been a total failure for the past 5 years. We said we won't engage until they suspend. They kept enriching. We said we'll sanction all we can. We caused some annoyances. Most of those sanctions didn't work because no other country was serious about it. Now we're trying a different approach to get the world serious about it. Give it a few months to try and work. I urge that this eviscerated version of the bill that I am sponsoring in this motion to recommit be defeated and that you don't wipe out the whole State Department authorization bill and the committee's work.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, what we see in the offering of this motion to recommit is a political party or the leadership of a political party that, number one, is not serious about pursuing an effective strategy to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability and, two, that is using the pretext of Iran to strike every single provision of the bill that we have presented and that has been debated on. The very first provision in this bill is to strike all that follows after the enacting clause. Then my friend from Indiana takes a bill that I am the sponsor of, along with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and a number of people on both sides--it now has something like 155 cosponsors--to focus on the issue of refined oil products going to Iran. He eviscerates that bill by taking out every single trade sanction and all of the financial institution sanctions, so it totally wipes out the State Department authorization bill. They know that we intend to pursue the policy of seeing if Iran diplomatically, in a short timeframe, can be dissuaded from the course they are now on. If they cannot be, at the same time, we are pursuing efforts to get key countries to come together at the Security Council with a level of, as the Secretary of State said, crippling sanctions on Iran to get that regime to change its behavior.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to strongly oppose the motion to recommit.

Mr. BERMAN. Then we will pursue these international sanctions in working with the Russians, the Chinese, the Arab States, and with all of the countries that know that Iran with a nuclear weapons capability is an intolerable situation that cannot be tolerated. Instead, he jumps ahead to the third part of the strategy, a strategy on which we were going to have hearings in the month of July and see how both the multilateral sanctions and the engagement process--the diplomatic process--worked. Then, if we were not moving ahead, he would take a serious and tough bill that had import sanctions, which said that companies that provided refined oil products to Iran couldn't import, stripped from this bill; and that imposed even tougher financial sanctions that we now have stripped from this motion to recommit. Meanwhile, all of the things in the State Department authorization bill--all of the issues that my friends praised even in the course of the debate on this bill, which they don't like, every single provision--is stripped. This is not a serious effort. What really bothers me about this amendment is, with Iran, we should have a bipartisan approach. We tried a policy. I supported that policy of the previous administration: isolate and sanction unilaterally because we could never get effective multilateral sanctions. It didn't work. Iran kept enriching every day while we sat around, railing against them. We are trying something new because we want this policy to work. We want to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability. I don't know if the diplomatic strategy will work. You guys don't know if it will work.

Mr. BERMAN. I object.

Mr. BERMAN. I am not going to yield to you and am going to vote ``no'' emphatically on this thing. This is an irresponsible motion.

Mr. BERMAN. I have no further speakers. I support the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. I just want to express my strong support for this. The issue of child soldiers is a very important one. I appreciate your raising it, as well as some of the other contributions of other Members on this issue. I strongly support the resolution.

Mr. BERMAN. The gentleman's amendment is pretty direct. It requires the President to report total cash and in-kind contributions by the United States to the entire United Nations system for the period covered by H.R. 2410, fiscal years 2010 and 2011. The amendment makes sense. It encourages full transparency in detailing the logistical and other support that the U.S. provides to critical peacekeeping operations and other U.N. activities in the support of U.S. interests. The Members of Congress have a right to know, the people of America have a right to know, and I support the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. I yield myself as much time as I may consume. The gentleman has touched on a real problem. Just as he describes it, the notion of criminal aliens released because of the limitations on the time they can be held, not taken in their home country, creates a very undesirable situation in our own country. The gentleman's addition to the existing law makes a lot of sense because it's to retaliate against the officials of that government who seek diplomatic visas to come to the United States. The existing provision of law is very understandable, although I have a little concern that sometimes we're visiting on the spouse of a U.S. citizen or worker with particular skills the sins of the government on that individual or on that individual's American citizen family. But the gentleman has been very flexible in working with us on this amendment, and he is certainly trying to go after a real problem. I wish I had a better alternative than this, but military force isn't my answer. So I'm going to support the gentleman's amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman.