[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 28, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E436]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E436]]
                 LIBERIA IS IN NEED OF U.S. ASSISTANCE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 28, 2006

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to continue my supplication for 
increased U.S. support for the people of Liberia and to enter into the 
Record a Washington Post editorial dated March 20 which outlines why 
the United States should lend itself to providing assistance to the 
poverty-stricken West African country.
  When the country of Liberia was founded by freed American slaves in 
1847, it held a world of promise. Today, however it is suffering from 
profound poverty--a product of a civil war that has driven more than 3 
million Liberians from their homeland. More than 8 in 10 Liberians 
cannot find work. Underdevelopment plagues the country--a country with 
no running water and no electricity. Founded by the dream of freedom, 
it now suffers from a distinct deprivation that the United States can 
now address through their support of the newly elected president of 
Liberia Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and her goals for her countrymen and 
women.
  This month, President Johnson-Sirleaf addressed a special joint-
session of Congress and met with President Bush. She outlined the many 
things that are needed to be done in order to ensure her country 
thrives. ``We must revive educational facilities, including our few 
universities. We must provide essential agricultural extension services 
to help us feed ourselves again, developing the science and technology 
skills to insure that we prosper in a modern global economy,'' she told 
Members of Congress. President Johnson-Sirleaf has expressed the 
urgency of resettling displaced Liberians, the rehabilitation of the 
core of an electricity grid to high-priority areas and institutions, in 
addition to the demobilization of former combatants and restructuring 
of their army, police and security services. President Johnson-Sirleaf, 
as Mr. Fred Hiatt mentions in his editorial, is one reason why 
President Bush should help Liberia. A Harvard-trained economist, and 
former World Bank and United Nations official, she is committed to 
uplifting her country. A second reason, according to Hiatt, is the fact 
that if nothing is done at the present time, the cost of repair in 
Liberia will be ``far more difficult and expensive'' later on.
  Mr. Speaker, all these are pressing reasons to assist Liberia and I 
am certain that with President Johnson-Sirleafs commitment and U.S. 
aid, the economy and social conditions of Liberia can be revived.

              [From the Washingtonpost.com, Mar. 20, 2006]

                        The Case for Caring Now

                            (By Fred Hiatt)

       On one of her visits to her native Liberia, Ellen Johnson-
     Sirleaf told a joint session of Congress last week, she was 
     placed in a jail cell with 15 men. ``All of them were 
     executed a few hours later,'' she said. ``Only the 
     intervention of a single soldier spared me from rape.''
       Now Johnson-Sirleaf, 67, is the newly elected president of 
     her unhappy African country, and if you think she was trying 
     to seize Congress's attention with that anecdote of 20 years 
     past, you are no doubt correct.
       After all, the world is full of unhappy countries that have 
     won sympathy here, and then been rapidly discarded. Think 
     Haiti, for example, or Afghanistan, which was of interest to 
     Ronald Reagan, forgotten by George H.W. Bush, neglected by 
     Bill Clinton and then (not coincidentally) a crisis again.
       Now Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first female elected leader, 
     is enjoying her moment of fame and good feeling. Laura Bush 
     and Condoleezza Rice attended her inauguration in January, 
     Congress greeted her as a hero last week, President Bush will 
     receive her tomorrow. After a quarter-century of coups, 
     dictators and civil wars in Liberia, this is a moment of 
     restored democracy and hope.
       Do not assume, however, that Johnson-Sirleaf therefore will 
     stoop to unseemly flattery or diplomatic spin. After all her 
     years of exile, harassment, surveillance and prison with all 
     the misery waiting for her back home, she seems to have no 
     time for that.
       As in: When she is asked during a visit to The Post how she 
     will plead her case for aid to Bush, given draining U.S. 
     commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, she replies, ``For the 
     reason you said--he needs a success. Billions are being spent 
     on Iraq, billions are being spent on Afghanistan--and it will 
     take a fraction of those billions to make Liberia a success 
     story.
       ``I think he needs one, and we're going to give him an 
     opportunity to have one.''
       It's not that Johnson-Sirleaf, stately in traditional 
     dress, comes across as ungrateful. In her address to 
     Congress, she thanked the United States for its help in 
     brokering an end to Liberia's vicious civil war and for 
     sending money to get the country going again.
       But, she says, ``we still have problems. I can't tell you 
     we're out of the woods.''
       Any Western leader might regard that as an astonishing 
     understatement. Johnson-Sirleaf works out of a dilapidated 
     palace that, like the rest of her country, depends on 
     generators for electricity.
       ``We have a city that's dark,'' she says. ``We have a city 
     where many young children don't know that water comes out of 
     a tap.'' At night, children gather on street corners to do 
     their homework by the spillover from private floodlights, 
     since they have no light at home. Many others do no homework 
     because they can't afford pencils, or can't attend school at 
     all.
       Civil war drove most of the country's 3.5 million people 
     from their homes. Some 45 percent of the population is 14 or 
     younger; many of those children were press-ganged into armies 
     and know no other life. Life expectancy is 42.5 years. 
     Unemployment is 80 to 85 percent. Of every 1,000 children 
     born, 132 die in infancy.
       Why should the United States care? The standard answer of 
     traditional historical ties, based on the freed American 
     slaves who founded Liberia, may have worn thin after all 
     these years. But there are two others.
       One is that helping is cheaper in the long run than the 
     alternative. When conditions in a country become too 
     atrocious to bear--when drug-addled marauders take to 
     chopping off the hands of children who get in their way, as 
     in Liberia's neighbor Sierra Leone--public opinion may (at 
     least some of the time) force the United States, Britain or 
     the United Nations to intervene. By the time that demand 
     comes, the destruction is so complete--in Liberia, roads, 
     hospitals, water pipes, everything has crumbled--that repair 
     is far more difficult and expensive.
       The second is Johnson-Sirleaf herself: Harvard-trained 
     economist, former World Bank and U.N. official, democrat. She 
     espouses an anti-corruption, socially inclusive vision that 
     aid officials can only dream of finding in most poor 
     countries. Courageously, for he still has many followers, she 
     has asked that former dictator Charles Taylor, now in 
     Nigeria, stand trial for his crimes.
       When her hour at The Post is over, she waves off the usual 
     pleasantries and asks: What will emerge from this interview? 
     What will Liberia get out of it? And suddenly 
     ``grandmotherly,'' the adjective you often hear applied to 
     her, reminds you less of the woman who sneaked you an extra 
     cookie when your mother wasn't looking and more of having 
     your hands checked for cleanliness before being seated at the 
     Sunday dinner table.
       Well, Madam President, I'm afraid this column is the best I 
     can do. I hope you get more out of President Bush tomorrow.

                          ____________________