[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 20, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4778-S4779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS II

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, recently I spoke about the annual 
certification process on drug cooperation. I wanted to follow up on 
those remarks. As I noted then, I believe it is important to address 
some of the myths that have grown up around certification. I also 
believe that it is important to put on record why we need to keep this 
process.
  One of the reasons often advanced for doing away with the 
certification process is that it just makes administrations lie.
  Now, in the first place, I don't believe that this is true. But even 
if it were, I do not see changing a valid oversight requirement by 
Congress on the premise that compliance makes liars out of the 
administration. It seems to me that if there is a law and the 
administration isn't being honest, then you take steps to hold it 
responsible. You don't shrug your shoulders and throw away the law. 
Where would we be if we did that routinely? We might as well forget 
about oversight. We might as well legalize lying.
  Like many of my colleagues, I have had problems with the executive 
branch. I am aware of misconduct, misfeasance, and downright lying by 
executive branch agencies and agents.
  But I do not believe that simple differences of opinion or 
interpretation necessarily constitute lying. It is even possible to 
disagree over policy without calling someone a liar for disagreeing. 
Misguided perhaps.
  It is possible, then, that the administration and Congress might 
disagree over a particular certification decision without jumping to 
conclusions about motive. It is also possible to have such differences 
without concluding that the only proper recourse is to scrap oversight 
efforts. Accountability is essential to our political process. This 
holds true even when there are serious disagreements about outcomes and 
procedures.

[[Page S4779]]

  The recent certification decisions on Mexico and Colombia are cases 
in point. This last March 1, the President decided to again decertify 
Colombia. At the same time, he decided to fully certify Mexico. Both 
decisions caused concern in Congress. It is important to understand 
that there were lots of different concerns. Additionally, many of these 
concerns arose from contradictory opinions.
  Some felt that if Colombia was decertified Mexico should have been. 
Others believed that if Mexico was certified then Colombia should have 
been. Still others believed that both should have gotten national 
interest waivers. Because none of these views were vindicated in the 
actual decision, many have drawn the conclusion that certification 
didn't work. Or they have concluded the administration lied. The answer 
in either case seems to be, ``dump certification.''
  As I have already said, I don't think this is the right course. I 
believe the view is wrong on both substance and process.
  In the first place, when we in Congress created the certification 
process, we did not create a pass/fail system. Nor did we create a 
system of shared outcomes. That is, we created a process that evaluated 
each country on its own merits in fighting drugs. Just like we don't 
give everyone in school the same grade if they performed differently, 
we don't base certification decisions on group behavior. We designed 
the process to permit nuanced decisions. We recognized the need to draw 
conclusions based not on single issues or purely momentary situations.
  At the same time, we realized that without the push of law the 
administration, any administration, would likely not have made drugs a 
major foreign policy concern. In that sense, Congress had a healthy 
incredulity of administration motives. I remind my colleagues that it 
was a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate 
that first passed certification during the tenure of a Republican 
President. We had a bipartisan wariness of the executive branch. It is, 
after all, the business of Congress to give administrations heck from 
time to time.
  Initially, the administration resisted certification. It chose not to 
apply the standards in the law with any vigor. Indeed, the first 
countries to get decertified were all soft targets. Countries like 
Burma, Iran, and Syria.
  These were countries we already disliked and with whom we had only 
limited dealings. Initially, no serious countries got decertified. 
Because of this history, a certain cynicism grew up around 
certification. There is also today an evident impatience with what is 
and must be a complex decision-making process.
  That process has been around for 10 years. As with other cases, the 
longer the requirement has been on the books and the more Congress has 
insisted it be taken seriously, the more used and useful it has become. 
The process has gathered momentum. Last year, in fact, I asked the 
Congressional Research Service to review the merits of the 
certification process. That review, which is still available, makes 
clear how the certification process has matured and proved effective.
  In the past several years, in fact, the list of countries decertified 
or given a national interest waiver has grown to include some real 
countries. Such countries as Nigeria, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and 
Pakistan. Countries with which we have a wide variety of interests 
apart from drugs. Just a few years ago, no one in Congress believed 
that any administration would ever decertify Colombia. Certainly there 
was a lot of sentiment in Congress that believed the evidence justified 
decertification. But the conviction was that it wouldn't happen. It 
did.
  Not only has the standard been applied with more rigor, it has also 
encouraged greater cooperation from certified countries. All in all, 
more countries now take as a given that drug control must be an 
important element in their thinking.
  That list includes the United States. To voluntarily choose to 
abandon such a tool out of a passing frustration is not very sound 
policy.
  But, as the list of affected countries has grown to include more 
significant U.S. partners, the more controversial certification has 
become. This was to be expected. When Burma squawked, few in this 
country cared. Few people cared internationally. The military rulers of 
Burma had few friends. With Colombia affected and Mexico implicated, 
however, the noise level has gone up considerably. Both here and 
abroad.
  To me, this indicates that certification is working. As I noted in an 
earlier statement, the fact that countries such as Colombia are 
complaining about our process is no sufficient reason to change it, 
much less throw it overboard.
  Conversely, the fact that there was a difference of opinion on 
whether to certify Mexico or not, is also no sufficient reason to 
scuttle the boat.

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