[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 28, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         ANOTHER WEEK IN HAITI

  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, another week has passed and the President's 
Haiti policy is still producing all of the wrong results--including a 
large and growing price tag. Although we have never had a formal 
response to our requests for cost estimates on the Haiti operation, 
this week we finally learned some revealing details from the news 
media. We now know that it costs $15,300 a day to fuel the U.S.S. 
Comfort--the hospital ship in Kingston, Jamaica--and the Coast Guard 
spends at least $120,000 a day to run that ship as a processing center. 
We can add in $12 million paid to Turks and Caicos for use of a beach, 
$1.5 million to rent a cruise ship we never used, $63,000 a day to rent 
two other cruise ships--and we still have not counted the costs of 
eight Navy ships; a dozen or so other Coast Guard cutters or the 
sanction enforcement teams in the Dominican Republic. When we add it 
all up, I suspect the price tag will seem staggering, even to the big 
spenders in the Clinton administration.
  All this big money should be producing big results, right? Wrong. 
Other than big misery to innocent Haitian victims and United States 
businesses seeking to boost productivity in Haiti, our sanctions are 
having little impact on the targets of Cedras and company. In fact, to 
the contrary, the military junta in Haiti is profiting from the 
embargo--enriching itself through the sale of contraband, often stolen 
from United States aid shipments. Aid workers are frustrated at every 
turn by the unintended consequences of the embargo, particularly the 
rapid deterioration of infrastructure. Much needed food and medicine 
spoils on the docks for lack of machinery and trucks to move them. We 
have seen the toll of such deterioration before--the distended 
stomachs, the reddish hair, the stick-like limbs--these are the signs 
of malnutrition we now see in 2 out of 3 Haitian children.

  Desperate Haitians, drawn by the hope of the President's new offshore 
refugee processing, are taking to the seas in ever-increasing numbers. 
In this morning's paper we read that the idealists in the 
administration are belatedly awaking to the reality of the problem they 
have caused: ``This is the surge that we had to worry about, the influx 
that swamps the system'' said on administration official. With word 
getting out that the United States has upped its rate of positive 
asylum rulings from 5 percent to more than 30 percent of those 
applying, it is no wonder Haitians by the thousands are trying to make 
it to those processing ships. This month, the Coast Guard has 
intercepted more than 4,500, twice as many as we saw in May. In the 
end, if they cannot starve the Haitians into democracy the President 
and his ``B team'' of foreign policy advisors seem committed to forcing 
a democracy at the barrel of a gun.
  If the embargo should be declared a failure, military intervention is 
clearly the President's contingency plan. Even the U.N. Special 
Representative on Haiti, Dave Caputo, concluded that United States 
policy toward Haiti is being driven by domestic political concerns. 
Last month Caputo said:

       The Americans will not be able to stand for much longer, 
     until August at the latest, the criticism of their foreign 
     policy on the domestic front. They want to do something; they 
     are going to try to intervene militarily.

  We and others have tried to provide the President with a better way 
out of this stalemate. But all other views are being ignored. And that 
is a tragedy, for Haitians, and for Americans who may risk their lives 
in an ill-conceived military mission.
  Mr. Speaker, we can do better; we must do better.

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