Jim Kolbe

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Well, here we go. This is an old debate. It is an old amendment. Times have changed, but for some people things do not change. The school that is being described here, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, we call it WHINSEC, is a Department of Defense education facility that Congress established in the year 2001. It replaces, as the gentleman has correctly pointed out, it replaces the School of Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Now, WHINSEC provides future civilian as well as military and law enforcement, that is police officers, including U.S. military officers, professional education that helps support our democratic principles in this hemisphere. WHINSEC does that, promotes those democratic values and the respect for human rights and the knowledge and understanding of U.S. customs and tradition through the time that the officers spend there and through the curriculum that is developed there. The courses build strong relationships between the participating nations, helping to ensure peace and stability throughout the hemisphere. This is a school that is open. Anyone can visit the campus, tour the building where the courses are taught, sit in classes, talk to the students and faculty. People are invited in as lecturers from outside. A large part of the curriculum in this program is devoted to human rights and to values. It seems to me that if what we really want in this hemisphere is a military in different countries that shares those values that we hold, that are dear to us, that we should be doing more, not less, of this, more training of these people. Has anybody ever graduated from the School of the Americas in the past that turned out to be bad? Yes, of course. But I can tell you that far more have turned out to be people, honorable officers, who have upheld democracy, upheld democratic values, upheld the civil rights of the citizens in their countries than vice versa. So what we are doing now with WHINSEC as it is revised and restructured, the curriculum for the program, we are doing a great deal more to help to train officers who share our values and who have a contact, a relationship with U.S. military officers so that when there is a problem that occurs in these countries, somebody that is a colonel in the Pentagon and served at WHINSEC with some colonel in a Latin American country, they can get on the phone and discuss and describe the problems that exist there. These kinds of relationships are important, and they cannot be done if you do not have face-to-face contact, if you do not have time the people spend together getting to know each other and talking about issues and learning about values, and that is the importance of WHINSEC. This is a program like IMET that I believe in very strongly that ought to be expanded, not a program that we should be talking about cutting. There is not an example that the gentleman I believe can cite of anybody at WHINSEC who has committed any crimes back in their country. It has two important missions, to teach future leaders and to foster cooperation between our country and those of Latin America. It offers 24 discrete courses. They are from 3 to 49 weeks long, and all are teaching U.S. military doctrine according to U.S. laws and our values. In fact, in every single one of the courses, at least 10 percent of the instruction is devoted directly to democracy and human rights issues. Students come from throughout the Western Hemisphere, even from Canada, as well as the United States; and it is the relationships that are developed there that are so important in the future, in years that pass, that come later when we need to have the contacts with these countries. So, Mr. Chairman, while I understand the concerns that the gentleman from Massachusetts has expressed, I simply do not believe that the evidence bears it out. I simply do not believe that what this organization is doing is wrong. In fact, it is doing everything that we would want an organization to do in terms of training military officers of the future in Latin America to share the values that we have in this United States. I urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. This is a longstanding and actually a very complex trademark dispute between Gallup Organization and Gallup International. It has been the subject of legal action in a number of countries, the courts of a number of foreign countries. USAID says that they are complying with the law, that they are following the law. In fact, Ambassador Tobias recently instructed his staff to take numerous steps to ensure that they are in compliance with the law. He asked that, first, they develop contracting and procurement procedures to ensure the strict adherence to intellectual property rights be integral when evaluating prospective contractors and grantees. Second, that they review current contracts and grants in question, which will be terminated if violations are discovered. And, third, for any product or material that is found to bear a counterfeit Gallup trademark, review it for proper disposition under relevant laws and regulations. Mr. Chairman, they are very much involved in this, and are taking very direct and concrete steps to deal with that. However, having said that, I support certainly the concept that is behind this amendment. I would urge that we accept this.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding. Mr. Chairman, as he has explained what his amendment would do, and as we did with the previous amendment offered by the gentleman from Carolina we would return this particular provision back to the same as the House adopted last year. And with that understanding, I am certainly willing to accept this. The gentleman has also said that he will not offer the other amendment which does expand the authorities. He has asked us to consider that. We certainly can consider that in the conference committee. But, as long as we are returning this to the provisions added last year, I would certainly ask that we leave it as it was last year, and not expand the authority either here on the floor. With that understanding, I accept the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman from North Carolina has explained, his amendment seeks to strike the waiver provision that we have in section 581 of this bill. That section limits the availability, as he has described, of assistance to foreign countries that refuse to extradite to the United States any individual accused in the United States of killing a law enforcement officer. Certainly, as he has said, we want to pursue to the farthest ends of this Earth anybody that is accused of killing a law enforcement officer here in the United States. The provision does also include authority for the Secretary to provide assistance if she certifies to the Committee on Appropriations that the application of the restriction to a country or countries is contrary to the national interests of the United States. Now, I acknowledge that that language was not in the bill when we passed it last year. It was added in conference. So what we brought to the floor this year is exactly the language that was enacted into law last year, but the provision that he seeks to strike was language that was not included in the House-passed bill last year. And given that understanding, that what his amendment would do is to simply return the language in this bill to that that we passed on the floor of the House last year, given that understanding, I am prepared to accept this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I concede the point of order.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent the remainder of the bill through page 121, line 15 be considered as read, printed in the Record, and open to amendment at any point.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I concede the point of order against this language requested by the administration.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the bill through page 127, line 24 be considered as read, printed in the Record, and open to amendment at any point.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I concede the point of order against that language dealing with separation pay for the Peace Corps.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the bill through page 136, line 5 be considered as read, printed in the Record, and open to amendment at any point.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I concede the point of order against this legislation, strongly desired by the administration regarding OPIC and Iraq.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the bill through page 146, line 21 be considered as read, printed in the Record and open to amendment at any point.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in the strongest possible opposition to this amendment offered by the gentleman. There are few things in this hemisphere that are more important for us than the Andean Counterdrug Initiative. In our effort to try and fight drugs abroad we can fight drugs here at home. The gentleman has suggested this money would go to the International Refugee and Migration account, and we believe we have funded that in a fair and reasonable way and will have accounted for the needs of that account. Let me tell you why my concern is more not that we couldn't use more money in ERMA; my concern here is taking this money out of the Andean Counterdrug Initiative. Let me tell you why I think this is the wrong thing to do at this time. We have rewarded in this bill good performers and taken action against those who have not done so well. As I described in my opening statement, we have restructured the accounts that go to Colombia. They are an important strategic partner in the region, and our bill recognizes that by normalizing how we fund Colombia. We move funds for the Colombia Alternative Development programs to the ESF account and to the other accounts; we have moved funds for Colombia rule of law to the INCLE account, the narcotics account. These are the accounts we use to fund similar activities for all of our other strategic partners. So we have basically said to Colombia, you have graduated. It is time for you to become a strategic partner and for our funding of foreign assistance to fall into normal categories. I firmly believe that, contrary to what the gentleman said, that Colombia stands as the most successful model of democracy in this region. It is not without its problems, but I think it has made enormous and positive strides in recent years. With our support it has been transformed into a much more secure democratic and economically prosperous country. So why do I say that? How do I measure the success that we have had? Well, we have got more than 200,000 acres of legal crops that have been planted, 64,000 farm families provided legal farming options, coca eradication through spraying has gone from 47,000 hectares of the first year of Plan Colombian to 138,000 last year, and manual eradication also increased substantially. An additional 1,600 hectares of poppies were eradicated in the year 2005. We have regained Colombian sovereignty over most of the air space, and that has led to a 56 percent decrease in suspected trafficker flights. The drug flow by air to the United States has dropped by about 7 percent. Kidnappings are down 51 percent. Homicides are down 13 percent. All 1,098 Colombian municipalities have a permanent government presence. These are just some of the measures of the things that we have done that I think are very significant. The bill from which this would take funds also rewards Peru by increasing the funds allocated it by $10.5 million. And I did this because we have decreased over the years the funds to Peru and we have experienced the balloon effect of having drug production move from one part of the region to another part, and that is why we have proposed a $7 million increase to Peru's interdiction and eradication program. The last thing in the world we should be doing right now is making a reduction in these overall accounts. On the other hand, we have reduced some of the funds provided to Bolivia. We have reduced the President's request by 44 percent. Of course, that request was drafted very early in this year before the problems that we are seeing with the current government in Bolivia have occurred. There, the eradication efforts have gone absolutely the wrong direction, from an historic high in 1999 of 17,000 hectares of coca eradicated, to a goal in 2006 of only 5,000; and they are not on track to even meet that very reduced goal in Bolivia. And so those are just some of the reasons why we are, as I said, trying to reward those who are doing the right thing in the region, but also make sure that our money is not used inappropriately in countries that are not doing the right thing. So these are just some of the reasons why I think that this amendment would be absolutely the wrong signal at the wrong time and could be the best possible message that we could send to drug traffickers to reduce this Andean counterdrug initiative by the amount that the amendment calls for. I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order on the amendment and I would allow Mr. Crowley to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the bill through page 32, line 20 be considered as read, printed in the Record, and open to amendment at any point.

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

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. KOLBE. The gentlewoman from Oregon has described this precisely. We all recognize that methamphetamine is a terrible problem. I represent a border district in a border State; we have a terrible problem with that with Mexico. The gentlewoman has described this amendment accurately, in that while it increases and decreases the same time, it does not change the structure of any of the accounts or any of the programs; and, therefore, I am willing to accept this amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), one of the members of the Drug Task Force.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to what the gentlewoman from Illinois said. First of all, with regard to the accounts. It is true that the total amount in here for Colombia is above where the President requested. But in the ACI, that is absolutely not true. I would just remind the gentlewoman from Illinois that the amount we have in this bill is $384 million. If you cut another $30 million, you would be at $354. The President requested $506 million for the ACI account. So the gentlewoman is absolutely incorrect in stating the amount that goes for the ACI. She just had her figures incorrect because she wasn't aware, I think, of the restructuring that we have done of this account. Now, I want to just respond to what she was saying about the failures that we have had. I would stipulate to the gentlewoman from Illinois that our eradication programs have not been as good as we would like. She is wrong about the interdiction. We are having success with the interdiction. And we are having success with the interdiction because we have a president down there that is committed to making it work, committed to making Colombians more secure, and committed to providing people with economic well-being in the country. Now, do bad things happen still? Yes. There are still too many homicides and there are still too many kidnappings. Sadly, we know our own troops have sometimes strayed and done things wrong. We know in our own cities that police departments sometimes stray and do things that are not right. But things are getting better in Colombia. There is more security in Colombia. There are fewer homicides. There are fewer kidnappings. The presence of the government in municipalities, of police in municipalities has increased. Roads are open and commerce is moving again in the country. What a time to send a signal to them that we are going to cut them; that we are going to say you are not successful. What we have done in this bill is to restructure the accounts so that much of the aid now flows through traditional accounts of the Economic Support Fund, the Development Assistance, the INCLE funds, and those kinds of accounts. And we are saying to Colombia, you are a strategic partner. We believe that you are succeeding and we are going to put the aid, as we do with other countries, in these kinds of categories. But this is not the time to be cutting the funding for drug interdiction. And I hope this body will reject this amendment very soundly. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the point that I am trying to make is that it is the processing of refugees inside of United States. We are not talking about people who are in camps overseas, who might not have food, might not have sanitation. That is not what is being cut. The other account that is being cut $25 million is the ERMA account. And that is because they have a carryover of about 15 million. The 30 million that we have provided here brings them up to 45 million, and that is the average of what they have spent. It is an emergency drawdown account and they have spent that amount each year. So we are adequately covering the migration, the refugee and migration issues in our bill. I yield once more to the gentleman.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the further consideration of H.R. 5522, and that I may include tabular material on the same.