Politics

Foreign Aid Bill Approved

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 18, 2001 / 6:05 PM EDT / CBS

The House of Representatives passed a $15.2 billion foreign aid bill after a debate that centered on the administration's program to eradicate drugs and bring political stability in Colombia and its neighbors.

The House rejected several amendments offered by lawmakers who questioned the effectiveness of the Andean anti-drug initiative and contended that the $676 million allotted for the initiative would be better spent fighting the worldwide epidemic of AIDS and other health problems.

The foreign aid bill for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 passed 381-46. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

The legislation contains $2.7 billion in military and economic assistance for Israel and $2 billion for Egypt. It provides $474 million for AIDS programs, $425 million for reproductive health assistance, $768 million for the states of the former Soviet Union, and $600 million for Southeast Asia and the Balkans.

Thanks to friends of the U.S. steel industry, the measure also reduces funding for the U.S. Export-Import bank by $18 million, exactly the amount the bank loaned to a Chinese steel company.

The House defeated, by 240-188, an amendment by Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, that would have shifted $60 million from the Andes initiative and military assistance programs to an international AIDS fund.

Up to 100 million people could be infected worldwide in the next four years if action is not taken, said Democratic leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri. "We cannot allow the enormity of the problem to numb us or convince us that this pandemic is beyond our ability to fight it," Gephardt said.

Opponents argued that the fight against drugs also is too important to ignore. "The Andean region deserves every consideration we can give it, because we have created the problem that exists there," said Rep. Cass Ballenger, a North Carolina Republican.

The House defeated by 249-179 an amendment by Rep. James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, that would have cut military aid to Colombia by $100 million, with half that money going into tuberculosis programs and the other half into child survival programs.

The House approved by voice vote an amendment by Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, to maintain a combined limit of 800 U.S. military and civilian contract workers in Colombia. Conyers said that was necessary to avoid Vietnam War-like "mission creep."

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Critics of the Colombia program have long worried that the United States could get involved in Colombia's 37-year-old civil war, which pits leftist guerrillas against right-wing paramilitaries.

Last month, Colombian investigators asked to question three American contractors who may have witnessed or participated in a 1998 massacre of 17 civilians by the Colombian military.

Analysts have expected the Bush administration to take a tougher line in Colombia. Robert Zoellick, the president's trade representative, said in a December speech that the U.S. "cannot continue to make a false distinction between counterinsurgency and counternarcotics efforts" there.

Plan Colombia was supposed to combine military training and eradication efforts with efforts to push such crops. But a House committee report found that "by March 2000, not one grain of rice, nor one seed, had been delivered to communities that had agreed to voluntary eradication."

The original Plan Colombia bill required that Colombia, long criticized for its poor human rights record, make specific improvements before it received the money. The State Department last year found that despite a few advances, Colombia had not met the requirements. But President Clinton, citing national security reasons, waived those requirements.

The White House said it would look at the rights record again in 2001. But early this year, the outgoing Clinton administration opted not to issue a formal report on the matter.