[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 110 (Wednesday, August 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    THE SENIOR SENATOR FROM VERMONT

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to honor one of the true 
leaders of the U.S. Senate, the senior Senator from Vermont.
  I have had the privilege of serving with the distinguished senior 
Senator from Vermont on the Foreign Operations Subcommittee. As 
chairman, he is a champion of reason and compassion in the debate over 
foreign aid reform. He is presiding very effectively over the 
transition from a cold war foreign aid program to a new policy that 
addresses the challenges of the post-cold war world.
  I am happy to say that the senior Senator from Vermont has also been 
a champion of women's rights and reproductive health care. In a time of 
shrinking budgets, he has managed to increase the funding for these 
areas in recent foreign aid bills. This is a remarkable tribute to his 
effectiveness as subcommittee chairman, and to his sense of fairness.
  I could go on at length praising the senior Senator from Vermont's 
accomplishments, but instead I will submit an article for the record 
from the Daily Herald of Rutland, VT. This article clearly explains why 
the senior Senator from Vermont commands such respect in this body and 
throughout the Government. He is a leader in every sense of the word, 
and I am proud to serve with him. Mr. President, I ask unanimous 
consent that this article be included in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Rutland Daily Herald, July 6, 1994]

                           Leahy's New World

                          (By Melrose E. Huff)

       Vermont may be a haven from the world for some, but the 
     senior Senator from Vermont is helping to redefine America's 
     role in the New World Order.
       Sen. Patrick Leahy, now in his fourth term, has emerged as 
     one of Washington's most influential voices on foreign policy 
     and the reform of foreign aid.
       ``Leahy has been both a key leader and a key adviser on 
     foreign policy'' to the Clinton administration, according to 
     Wendy Sherman, Assistant Secretary of State for legislative 
     affairs. ``The Secretary (of State), the President, and the 
     Vice President see him as a keen observer and * * * someone 
     they look to for counsel.''
       Sherman, the liaison between Secretary of State Warren 
     Christopher and the congressional leadership, observed, 
     ``What is unique about Senator Leahy is that he has a policy 
     perspective, intellectual know-how and understanding, and the 
     appropriator's tools.''
       Leahy's influence derives from his chairmanship of an 
     appropriations subcommittee that provide the funds for 
     foreign aid. The appropriations are considered cardinals in 
     the Senate,'' Sherman said. ``They are seen as 
     extraordinarily powerful because they have the power of the 
     purse.''
       Leahy has chaired the foreign operations subcommittee of 
     the Senate Appropriations Committee since 1989, and both 
     Republican and Democratic administrations have had to rely on 
     him to win passage of their foreign assistance requests.
       Leahy's foreign aids subcommittee has come to play a role 
     that is vastly disproportionate to the usual process, another 
     official observed. That's because since the mid-1980s the 
     Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been unable to produce 
     an authorization bill, which in the bill that draws the 
     general outlines of programs and sets spending levels.
       The leadership of the Foreign Relations Committee has been 
     deadlocked for years. Its chairman, Claiborne Pell, a liberal 
     Democrat from Rhode Island, won a zero percent approval 
     rating from the American Conservative Union last year. Its 
     vice chairman, North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms received 
     a 100 percent rating. The result has been to delegate that 
     committee's power to reshape policy.
       ``Your budget is your policy,'' said Marianne O'Sullivan, 
     who is chief of appropriations and budget for the legislative 
     bureau of the Agency for International Development. And Leahy 
     ``has played the lead role in the Senate in reprioritizing 
     where foreign aid funds are spent,'' she said.
       Leahy has cut military and security assistance while 
     increasing funds for such programs as population planning, 
     international environmental assistance, child survival 
     assistance and AIDS prevention, O'Sullivan said.
       In 1989, the first year Leahy was chairman of the foreign 
     operations subcommittee, he cut the administration's $5 
     billion foreign military financing request by $300 million; 
     last year he cut a $4 billion request by $110 million. During 
     those same years he increased development and economic 
     assistance to sub-Saharan Africa from $565 million to $784 
     million, she noted.
       Funding for disaster aid and development assistance--the 
     kinds of programs usually thought of as ``foreign aid''--
     makes up 46 percent of the current year's nearly $19 billion 
     budget. Foreign military financing has dropped to 23 percent. 
     Contributions to multilateral lending institutions, such as 
     the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, account 
     for another 14 percent. Appropriations for the Peace Corps, 
     narcotics control, refugee aid, anti-terrorism assistance and 
     promotion of U.S. exports make up the remaining 17 percent.
       Although year-to-year comparisons are difficult because of 
     changes in accounting methods, this year's allocation for 
     foreign military financing is roughly 25 percent smaller than 
     1989's, while development assistance is nearly 25 precent 
     greater. Leahy likens the slow process of making these 
     changes to reversing the course of a supertanker.
       ``My concern is that foreign aid, as such, continues by 
     inertia and policy neglect. Nobody wants to stop and say why 
     we're doing this,'' Leahy said.
       By the end of Leahy's first year as chairman of the foreign 
     operations subcommittee, it had become clear to him that 
     foreign aid was in need of fundamental reform. Leahy called 
     upon President Bush in a 1990 Senate speech to ``confront the 
     enormous global problems that have replaced communism as the 
     greatest threat to our security'' and submit a foreign aid 
     budget that would address ``the momentous changes * * * 
     sweeping the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall.'' The 
     Bush administration did not respond.
       During the last presidential campaign, O'Sullivan said, 
     Leahy wrote to candidate Clinton and to Bush calling for the 
     reform of foreign aid. Then, during the first hundred days 
     the Clinton presidency, he delivered a series of speeches on 
     the Senate floor proposing major reforms in the foreign 
     assistance act--the permanent law that authorizes funding for 
     foreign aid--and calling for a total overhaul of AID.
       ``Frankly,'' Leahy said in the fourth and final speech, 
     ``it is the last chance. I do not intend to bring foreign aid 
     bills to the floor of the Senate and ask senators to vote on 
     them'' unless reforms are undertaken. That widely cited 
     warning was heard throughout the Clinton administration.
       The problem in the past, Leahy told the Senate, was that we 
     expected foreign aid to work in the developing world as the 
     Marshall Plan had in Europe, where democratic institutions 
     already existed. ``By placing such a high priority on 
     political stability and anti-communist credentials, we failed 
     to insist on the establishment of democratic forms and 
     instititions * * * nor did we penalize recipient governments 
     that did not produce better lives for their own people.''
       Leahy singled out aid to Somali and Zaire as examples of 
     U.S. support for repressive and corrupt governments that not 
     only did ``not prevent anarchy, it actually promoted it by 
     allowing dictators to avoid the need to build workable 
     institutions.''
       Patchwork attempts to reform the Foreign Assistance Act of 
     1961, a piece of Cold War legislation that sanctioned aid as 
     a weapon in the fight against communism, failed because of 
     ``inadequate political, bureaucratic, or intellectual 
     preparation,'' Leahy charged.
       The result has been increasing congressional disenchantment 
     with foreign aid. Leahy noted that it was impossible to pass 
     an appropriation for the 1992 fiscal year: The entire foreign 
     assistance program was funded through a year-long continuing 
     resolution. The 1993 appropriation passed only because it 
     included a highly popular Israeli loan guarantee program.
       Leahy told the Senate that a foreign aid program advancing 
     our national interests in the post-Cold War era would be one 
     that ``protects the environment, curbs runaway international 
     population growth, promotes democracy and human rights, and 
     stimulates sustainable economic growth with equity.'' He 
     pointed out that foreign aid ``aimed at promoting sustainable 
     growth in the Third World offers a way to stimulate rapid 
     growth in U.S. exports sales,'' which in turn creates U.S. 
     jobs.
       Leahy outlined a plan for restructuring aid that abandoned 
     allocations for specific countries and focussed instead on 
     broad policy objectives promoting sustainable development, 
     building democratic institutions, encouraging respect for 
     human rights, protecting the global environment, stabilizing 
     world population growth, providing humanitarian aid and 
     disaster assistance and advancing private enterprise and 
     market economies.
       Leahy also recommended a number of structural changes in 
     AID, the agency that implements the foreign assistance 
     program. He called for reducing the number of its overseas 
     missions and implementing programs through private voluntary 
     organizations, international organizations and the private 
     sector when possible. He also urged increased local 
     participation in planning and implementing AID programs.
       In response to calls by Leahy's subcommittee and other 
     Senate and House oversight committees, Christopher created a 
     task force in the spring of 1993 to rethink the role of 
     foreign assistance. In addition, President Clinton ordered 
     the National Security Council to conduct a review.
       The result was the first blueprint in more than a quarter 
     of a century for U.S. engagement with the developing world. 
     The Peace, Prosperity, and Democracy Act of 1994 was 
     submitted to Congress in February and, if passed, will 
     replace the Cold War Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
       The bill's new policy objectives are set forth in its six 
     major divisions, or titles: promoting sustainable 
     development; building democracy; promoting peace; providing 
     humanitarian assistance; promoting growth through trade and 
     investment; and advancing diplomacy.
       According to AID's Kelly Kammerer, who helped draft the new 
     legislation, if you compare Leahy's Senate speeches on 
     foreign aid reform to the NSC and State Department reports 
     and to the new bill, you'll see ``that almost point by point 
     Senator Leahy's recommendations have been incorporated.'' He 
     observed, ``It is a remarkable tribute to Senator Leahy.''
       It's also why, as O'Sullivan said, Leahy's ``name is 
     practically synonymous with foreign aid reform in this 
     town.''

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