Jim Kolbe

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman, for her commitment to this issue here. Amendment No. 18 Offered by Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. Let me just say gentlewoman has been a leader in this field. I appreciate the fact that she has brought this issue to the attention of this subcommittee and to this body. There is no question that the treatment of women, as it relates to reproductive rights and their treatment in their relationships with their husbands and with others is horrific in many countries, and certainly violates all of the standards that we would consider minimal in this country. Clearly there needs to be, in our appropriations, and in the money that we spend on foreign assistance programs, there needs to be an understanding of this issue. There needs to be a sensitivity to it. And I appreciate the fact that the gentlewoman has brought this to our attention. I think by having this dialogue here today, we emphasize to USAID and to all of our mission directors around the world, that this is something that we believe they should be very much focused on, to be sure that the treatment of women in their respective countries, balancing, balancing the secular rights with the religious law that exists in some of these countries, balancing that, that we protect the rights of women, the basic human rights of women in these countries. Mr. Chairman, I certainly believe that this subcommittee should work to that end. I know that my colleague, the ranking member, Mrs. Lowey, has been very dedicated to doing this. And so together, as we move into conference, we will continue to do that.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I had an amendment that would focus on not having any funds be made available in this act to be used to assist any foreign government in enforcing any religious law that has the effect of punishing a victim of sexual assault or rape. This is an area and an issue that has a heavy burden in many of our Muslim populations, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Middle East and North Africa, and as well incidents that have occurred in Nigeria, Libya, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey. Of course, many of these are our strong allies. However, I think it is befitting and important for this Congress to make a very strong statement. For example, in South Africa, a woman is raped every 26 seconds. In South Africa, a woman is killed every 6 days. Bangladesh shows vigilantism against women for a perceived moral transgression. In Pakistan, a woman by the name of Dr. Shazia, a 32-year-old Pakistani physician, is no longer in that country after being raped because of some problems with the judicial system, although the government has expressed support for her and I hope that she will be able to come back to testify against the particular culprit. Because of the religious codes that surround these incidences, women are not protected. My amendment will simply go on record, Mr. Chairman, to say that we are paying attention to this issue, we are concerned about it, and, of course, we want to be able to address it. I would hope that in the statement of managers, as we move toward the Senate, we would be able to express our concern, in particular, about this unique issue And, Mr. Chairman, if I might add, as you well know, I have just recently returned from Afghanistan, and had many, many women surround me, many of them elected officials, the newly elected parliament which we are excited about, has a high percentage of women. These women said to me directly in general Chambers, we are afraid to go back to our provinces. I want to make sure that the security funds for Afghanistan have a particular sensitivity to the security of women elected officials after returning to their provinces and are fearful for their lives.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, certainly the thrust of this amendment is a good one and what he is attempting to do with this is very good. I have some concerns about the cuts, continuing to cut in what is a very limited increase for the O&E for USAID. But having said that, at this time I am prepared to accept this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman would yield, I certainly would intend to try to work to resolve this problem within the degree to which the foreign operations appropriation can do that with foreign countries. But coming from a ranching background and being a rancher myself, I would certainly agree this is a problem that is important. If I might, I understand that you are prepared to withdraw the amendment. If that is the case, then I will not need to insist on my point of order. I appreciate the exchange with the gentlewoman from Colorado.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word for the purpose of entering into a colloquy with the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas. I understand she has some comments she would like to make.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I will close very quickly. Let me just say that the gentleman may be right that there are some groups that oppose this; but every single mayor, every single elected mayor in those villages and those towns shown on the map that he just showed there of El Salvador has voted in favor of this during the consultative process. Every single elected mayor has come out in favor of this. The economic analysis of this has shown that it has about a 20 percent return on the rate of investment. This is the kind of thing that is going to help farmers and businessmen and others who have been too long isolated in this region. In addition to markets, the project connects people with better education, better health care, and better futures for themselves and for their children. So I struggle to see how this amendment is against the people of El Salvador. It is not for mining companies. It is for the farmers; it is for the poor people. It is about not only their livelihood, but it is about their education, it is about their health care. Mr. Chairman, I hope this amendment would be defeated. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate what the gentleman from Ohio is trying to do to look out for the interests of the people of El Salvador, but I think he has got some misinformation. Now, there is one thing he is right about and we can certainly agree on and that is that the Millennium Challenge Corporation proposed compact for El Salvador does have a major roads component. But we are not talking about a superhighway that is blowing through the fields of some poor farmers in El Salvador. It is not about a road that is going to allow building profits for the multinational mining firms that are somehow earning it on the backs of the peasants. And the proposal certainly wasn't developed by the central government at the expense of the opinions of those at the local level. This proposal was developed over 7 years as part of a consultative process, a process which is developing as part of a regional development plan with the other countries in the region, which have identified the lack of transportation infrastructure as a significant impediment for development. If anyone wants proof and reads Spanish, you can go to the Web site for the government of El Salvador where reports about the consultations have been put online, where they are actually online about all the kind of town meetings and the other consultations that have taken place. And why is that? Because for one thing, that is one of the core requirements of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, that this kind of transparency absolutely must be included in the development of the MCC proposal for the partner countries. I was recently in Nicaragua and Honduras, and there too we have roads as a major component of what we are trying to do with the Millennium Challenge Corporation. And why is that important? Because that is how, in a country that is heavily reliant on agriculture, that is how you get products to market. You can't get the products from the farms up in the hills and in the valleys if you don't have roads, secondary roads and main roads, to bring those things to market. So that is why it is an important part of this. But it is not about taking things away from peasants, and this is certainly not about multinational mining companies. It is not about building a superhighway. This is not a four- lane or six-lane. It is a two-lane road, a two-lane paved road that will be good for trucks to carry things on for products to go to market. And importantly, there are 150 miles of tertiary farm to road markets that spread out from this central highway that bring the products in from the little villages and the farms to this highway and then bring it to the markets where it can either be sold in the major cities of El Salvador, or it can be shipped into international commerce, not just to the United States, but regionally, where it can travel on the highways in the region and help to develop the economy of this region. This is the kind of thing that we ought to be trying to encourage. I reserve the balance of my time. With all due respect to my good friend, this road is about helping a poor gold mining company more than it is about helping the people. We know what the stated purpose is: to connect small farmers to a larger market. Yet gold mining, a process that releases cyanide into the environment, is going to result in serious environmental damage, and it is going to displace the farming communities that depend on clean water and land. So you help the gold mining operations move forward and you effectively eradicate farming in that area, which is exactly the opposite of what we are being told. And if the purpose of the highway is to help the poor in the northern region, then why are those same poor and those who work with the poor opposed to the construction of the highway? I have here a photo from a newspaper in the area that shows a huge protest against construction of the highway, among other things, by people in the Chalatenango area, a poor area in the north which will be affected by the highway. The Catholic Diocese of Chalatenango, as well as Caritas, El Salvador, a Catholic relief organization that works with the poor and oppressed, they are marching in protest to this road that is supposed to be being built for them. There are so many other groups that are opposed to this. I submit the following list for the Record. Other groups opposed to construction of the highway include the SHARE Foundation; Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES); Unidad Ecologica Salvadorena, an umbrella group of 32 environmental organizations in El Salvador; the Association of Communities for the Development of Chalatenango, an association of 100 villages and 22 municipalities; the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network (SEEN); among others. Furthermore, not only is the northern region of El Salvador home to half of El Salvador's poorest areas, but it also contains the main source of water and biodiversity in this Lempa River Basin. So you have got the degrading environmental impact of gold mining, and it is going to have a negative consequence for the whole area; and El Salvador is going to end up having to borrow other money to complete the highway. They will end up getting loans from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to finance the rest of the project, get into worse debt and have that debt paid off by the poor. This is a nightmare. I repeat: the people of the United States are building a highway in El Salvador for the benefit of two gold mining companies while gold is about $800 an ounce and these companies could build their own road with a couple of truckloads of gold. Why in the world, when we have bridges falling apart in America, when we have chuckholes all over our highways, when we can't even repair our own infrastructure, are we ready to fork over a couple hundred million dollars, principally to help gold mine companies from Canada? This is insane. So friends, Republicans, and budget hawks, lend me your ears. Reject this plan to fund a road for gold miners, and support the Kucinich amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, let me just say once again I think this would be a very wrong-headed amendment, the wrong thing for us to do. This is not symbolic. This cuts all the ESF funds that we provide to the country of Mexico, which is, relative to most of our programs around the world, very, very small because Mexico is a country that is beyond the least developed; it is now rapidly developing. The money that we provide here is important money. It is money that helps promote democracy. It is money that helps promote such things as property rights. It is money that helps promote such things as microfinance. It is the kinds of things that we do that help provide economic livelihood for the people in Mexico. This is about job creation. It is about allowing people to live and work in Mexico and not have to come to the United States. If you want less migration from Mexico to the United States, we have got to give them a hand, a hand up to prevent them from having to come to the United States because they have no way of taking care of their families. So this would be the wrong thing for us to do in terms of cutting the economic support funds for Mexico. It is also the wrong thing to do to a neighbor with whom we have a very good relationship. Do we have problems? Of course we have problems. Are there times when we disagree? Of course we disagree. Would we like to have more help on some of the migration problems and the drug interdiction problems? Yes, we want more help. But I remember, I have been here in this Congress for 22 years, and I remember going to the inter-American, the U.S.-Mexico parliamentary meetings 22 years ago when we were told by our State Department, our law enforcement officials, there was no cooperation with Mexico. Today, that is very much changed. There is cooperation. We have significant cooperation. This is the wrong thing to do to a country like Mexico that is doing its best to try and cooperate with the United States, both on migration and on drug interdiction. These are small programs, but they are programs that make a difference in terms of economic livelihood in Mexico, and I hope we will defeat this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner) who represents a border State and a border district.

Mr. KOLBE. I rise to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time and just say very quickly that a 2,000 percent increase is a bogus argument. There was $20,000 last year. There is $420,000 this year because we have $400,000 for terrorist training specifically to pay for the salaries of American experts who go over there to train their police. It is not the percentage amount that we are talking about here. It is, should we be doing this kind of work at all; and the answer, I think, if you believe we should be fighting the war on terror and that we should be fighting it where we can find it, wherever we can find police forces that need to be trained, we ought to be doing it with the Saudis, and that is all this is about. I urge defeat of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, if we were sending, millions of dollars to support economic development in Saudi Arabia, as the gentleman from Indiana pointed out, they are a rich country, so as you pointed out, they are doing some bad things, I would agree with them. If we were sending millions of dollars for various projects in Saudi Arabia, I would agree with them. But we are talking about training a police officer to have the tools to detect a terrorist attack. We are talking about fighting terrorism. This is so narrow and so focused. It is on counterterrorism, and that surely is what we want the Saudis to do, to have the skills to detect a terrorist attack in advance, to head it off, to investigate terrorist attacks and to be able to prosecute those people. Surely that is what we want to do. We do not agree with the policies of Saudi Arabia. I do not agree with them, but I certainly want their police officers, I want their detectives to have the kinds of skills they need to go after terrorists, and that is what this amendment is about. This tiny amount of money is about that. We ought not to be taking this kind of step. It is more than symbolic. It has to do with very specific kinds of training that combats terrorism. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond very briefly to what the gentleman just said. I think what he just said demonstrates what this issue is all about: Are we talking about something that scratches the surface of emotions, or are we talking about something that is real. The money is not symbolic. It is real. The $20,000 allows them to buy a seat at the IMET table. It allows them to send their students to the United States to be trained in western values, in democracy and justice. The $400,000 is to pay for American experts to go over and train them in bomb detections and in criminal investigations. Is the gentleman saying we do not want them to be trained, we do not want them to participate? What does this have to do with Wahabism? Nothing. This has to do with whether or not they are going to be a partner in the war on terror. But yes, you can reach beyond that to the emotion and you can do the wrong thing, which this amendment would do, which is to cut the money which enables them to participate in a significant way in the war on terror. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I do rise in strong opposition to this amendment, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. In this bill there is a total of $420,000 for Saudi Arabia. Now, just so we understand where these accounts are, the $20,000 we have heard about before, last year that is what we were arguing about, $20,000 in this entire bill when this amendment came up. And why do we have that in there? That is for providing a classroom space for the IMET, the International Military Education Training program, for IMET students. Why do we have to provide one space? Because by giving them a grant for one space, they are then eligible to buy seats in the classes that they pay for at the somewhat reduced rate. So that is just simply a kind of a dues that are required in order to have them eligible for this program. We have talked about IMET before. Again, it is similar to what we were just talking about a moment ago with regard to the WHINSEC program in Latin America. If we want to have American values of democracy and civil rights and justice transmitted to these countries, to these people, then we need to have that kind of program. Now, the other $400,000 is new this year. Not a heck of a lot of money, but it is for nonproliferation, antiterrorism, and demining programs. This pays for American experts, bomb detection experts, criminal investigation experts to go and help train antiterrorism police in Saudi Arabia. For heaven sakes, is this not something we want to do? Do we not want to train the Saudis to help the Saudis become better at detecting antiterrorism, at detecting terrorist attacks? Do we not want to help them try to deter those kinds of attacks against us and against their own society? This is about the war on terror. And this amendment is about saying, no, we don't want Saudi Arabia involved in the war on terror; we don't believe they should be on our side in the war on terror, because we want to cut out the money that allows us to help the little bit that we have that allows us to help train those people. So I understand the sentiment that is behind this. It is an easy kind of sentiment to scratch the surface and get to this kind of emotion, but it is not the right thing to do. It is clearly not the right thing to do. If we desire that the people of Saudi Arabia embrace a more Western tolerance and a value system, how do we expect them to learn to do that? If we want them to be a better partner in the war on terror, how do we expect them to do that if we are not willing to help train them? This is absolutely the wrong signal for us to send, and I oppose this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I would just say again I think this is an ill-advised amendment, but, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I do rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the gentlewoman. She proposes, as she said, to reduce the funding to Mexico for the International Narcotics Control Law Enforcement account that we call INCLE, from $40 million to $39 million. It is only a $1 million reduction, but it is symbolic, and I understand that; but as a symbol I think it runs counter to what we have been asking the Mexican Government to do, and that is to help us seal the border with regard to drug trafficking coming across the border. I have the privilege of chairing the U.S.-Mexico Interparliamentary Group, and we met this year in Mexico, legislators, Members of Congress from both the United States and Mexico meeting there. We were struck, I think every member of the U.S. delegation was struck, by the degree of cooperation that we are seeing now from Mexico, particularly the Mexican policymakers, the congress, in struggling against the drug trafficking, and, actually, they have been very good on that for several years; but now the efforts they are making to help try and seal the border, it is certainly the most cooperation that we have seen in the last 20 years. In fact, the Mexican congress has adopted unanimously a joint resolution expressing their commitment to helping resolve and expressing their acknowledgment that they have a responsibility for helping to control the problems of migration, illegal migration coming into the United States. The bill that we brought before you is a very modest increase, the $1 million increase, over the previous year to Mexico to help to try and control the border. The majority of this goes to sustain border and port security by improving the ports of entry, improving the inspections at the ports of entry, more secure traffic laws, mobile interdiction teams, and national crime databases. These are all good things. These are the kinds of things we should want to support in criminal justice and institution-building in Mexico, and including the Office of the Attorney General and anticorruption programs. So I think it is a good program, and I think it is one that deserves to have support. Let me be clear about one fact: the funds in this account are used by Mexico to help stop narcotics from entering the United States. Cutting funding in this area doesn't really hurt Mexico, because it isn't anything that has to do with their own law enforcement per se. It hurts our efforts to keep drugs off our streets and out of our schools. I think this amendment won't have a huge effect, but as a symbol I think it is the wrong kind of symbol that we should be sending to Mexico, and I do oppose the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remaining time. Let me just close. I think we have had a thorough debate on this. As I said, this is an issue that we have debated over and over again, and I think time and time again it has been shown that this program of training military and police officers in Latin America is one that is good, good for democracy, good for human rights, good for U.S. relationships with these countries in Latin America and Central America. This is a program that is good for the United States. It is a program that is good for the countries that are involved. This is a program that, if anything, ought to be expanded. We should be doing more of this, more transfer of values from the United States to the people of these countries of the law enforcement and military of these countries is what we ought to want to be doing. Bad things can happen either way. In 1992, Hugo Chavez conducted, he was not graduate of this, conducted a coup against the democratically- elected government in Venezuela. Are we to conclude from that, that if only he had gone to the School of the Americas, that everything would have been well? Probably not, but by the same token, one can hardly conclude that because somebody has gone to the School of the Americas and still ends up doing something that is bad, that overall it is bad for the United States or for their country or for the human rights or the citizens of that country because it is not. It is a good program. It is a program that spreads democracy in the Western hemisphere. It is the kind of program we should be supporting, not the kind of program that we should be opposing, and I hope that my colleagues will soundly defeat this amendment as they have done in the past.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) where the school at Fort Benning is located.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).