[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 194 (Tuesday, December 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H16799-H16801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1830
                 FUNDING THE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, this should be the season of selfless 
giving, a season where Americans give without any expectation of 
reward. This should

[[Page H16800]]

be a season of joy and happiness when millions enjoy the company of 
their families and loved ones. But as some of our Nation's elites 
celebrate this time of giving, they do so with the knowledge that every 
dollar they give in politics is actually an investment in influence 
peddling.
  Instead of corrupting this season of giving, I hope our public 
officials will give something back to the American people, something 
more powerful than money: hope in our government that should be 
responding to people's needs, not the needs of the powerful few.
  The latest example of this sickness afflicting American politics is 
reflected in our political system being bought out from under us 
through the system of Presidential libraries whose principals seek to 
find investors from other countries to help to promote their legacy in 
perpetuity. Don't believe the logic? Just then follow the money. With 
President Bush desperately trying to salvage his legacy, action is 
heating up on funding his Presidential library. While donors to George 
W. Bush's Presidential library represent a Who's Who in Republican 
politics, some of these donors have significant business with the White 
House. According to a recent Harpers magazine article, a wealthy Texas 
oil man, Ray Hunt, reportedly gave $35 million, $35 million to the Bush 
Presidential Library.
  This same businessman was a big campaign contributor to the Bush-
Cheney campaign and, coincidentally, has a stake in a nearly billion-
dollar proposal to pipe out Peruvian natural gas. All of our friends 
who participated in the recent debate on Peru free trade ought to think 
about this one. In addition, Mr. Hunt is closely involved with a 
``legally questionable'' exploration deal with the Iraqi Kurds. 
Interesting set of friends in this White House.
  Estimates now indicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library will 
cost up to half a billion dollars. A half a billion dollars. Why should 
a sitting United States President be involved with raising nearly 
unlimited amounts of money from those seeking influence? The American 
people surely are not blind. They understand that money buys influence, 
and a system allowing millions of dollars in unregulated cash corrupts 
all tents of democracy. We must patch this gaping loophole and prevent 
the leader of the free world from raising unlimited and unregulated 
funds for a pet project. This creates as direct a link as one can 
imagine between money and influence.
  With House passage of H.R. 1254, the House of Representatives has 
clearly demonstrated its intent to provide more accountability for 
donations made to Presidential libraries. While this legislation is an 
important step in mandating the disclosure of all donations of more 
than $200, it does not require the disclosure of all donations from 
foreign governments, foreign individuals and foreign corporations. The 
Senate, the other body, should act on Congressman Wexler's legislation 
and move forward in giving this legislation teeth.
  I would like to place in the Record an important article that I 
referenced in Harper's Magazine, the title of which is, ``On the Hunt: 
Bush backer seeks $1 billion for Peru project,'' and also an excellent 
article that was in The Washington Post this past weekend, the headline 
of which reads, ``Clinton Library Got Funds From Abroad. Saudis said to 
have given $10 million.'' I ask to include these articles in the 
Record.
  This article then goes on to talk about President Bill Clinton's 
Presidential library, its cost over $165 million, in which foreign 
sources helped contribute to that, with the most generous overseas 
donation coming from Saudi Arabia. Now, the last time I looked, Saudi 
Arabia is the country that sent the vast majority of 9/11 hijackers 
here. So why should any United States President take money from those 
kinds of interests?
  It seems to me that these Presidential libraries have gone way 
overboard. Why can't the Archives just take the records. Why do we need 
all these palaces created around the country for some of these 
Presidents? What kind of legacy are they leaving us anyway; a Nation 
that has been hemorrhaging jobs from coast to coast, a Nation that is 
terribly in debt, in hock, with over half of our U.S. Government bonds 
now being sold to foreign interests.
  President Lincoln never did anything like that. His service was so 
great, the American people recognized it for what it was. The same was 
true with Franklin Roosevelt. Why do we have to have these modern-day 
palaces to egos of these current-day Presidents? It seems to me that 
Congress ought to curb this really disgusting behavior, because you 
never really know when you're meeting with a President of the United 
States and a foreign leader if they are going to be begging money for a 
library they wish to create for themselves.
  Madam Speaker, we need reform in this area as well.

                [From Harper's Magazine, Dec. 18, 2007]

       On the Hunt: Bush Backer Seeks $1 Billion for Peru Project

                          (By Ken Silverstein)

       Beginning tomorrow and over the next few weeks, the World 
     Bank and other lenders will be voting, apparently in favor, 
     on a package worth more than $1 billion to support a 
     controversial pipeline project in Peru. The primary company 
     that would benefit from that money is Hunt Oil, which is 
     headed by Ray Hunt, a Texas oilman who raised huge sums for 
     the Bush/Cheney campaigns and who reportedly has given $35 
     million for the upcoming Bush Presidential Library. Hunt Oil 
     has recently generated controversy of its own, by signing 
     what the New York Times called a ``legally questionable'' 
     exploration deal with Iraqi Kurds.
       The Hunt-led project would ``build a pipeline, a gas 
     liquefaction plant, marine terminal and other facilities to 
     export 4.4 million tons of liquid natural gas annually,'' 
     according to a 2006 story in the Washington Post. The 
     pipeline would ship liquid natural gas that originates in the 
     Camisea Field of Peru's Amazonian rain forest and send it to 
     Mexico and from there, possibly, to U.S. markets.
       The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in which the 
     U.S. holds a thirty percent stake, will vote tomorrow on up 
     to $900 million in loans for the Hunt Oil project. The U.S. 
     Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) decides Thursday whether to 
     allocate several hundred million dollars worth of support, 
     and the World Bank will vote on a similar amount in January. 
     The IDB already backed an earlier phase of the Camisea 
     project, which has been plagued by problems. Among the 
     troubles, the Post said, were the spilling of ``thousands of 
     barrels into pristine rivers and killing the fish upon which 
     indigenous communities depend for their livelihood.''
       A number of Peruvian and American groups--including 
     Environmental Defense, Oxfam America, and World Wildlife 
     Fund--are asking for further evaluation of the project before 
     multilateral loans are approved. They point to three broad 
     areas of concern. First are social and environmental issues, 
     as the project runs through a spectacular stretch of the 
     Amazon that is home to 12,000 indigenous people. ``The 
     lenders have sold themselves cheap and are not setting high 
     enough standards for their participation,'' said Aaron 
     Goldzimer of Environmental Defense.
       Similar concerns were expressed in a December 12 letter to 
     Ex-Im from Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont--chairman of the 
     subcommittee which monitors Ex-Im and approves the U.S. 
     contribution to the IDB and World Bank--and his House 
     counterpart, Congresswoman Nita Lowey of New York. They 
     wrote:
       It is . . . our understanding that there are unfulfilled 
     commitments and serious failures, risks and concerns still 
     pending from the first phase of the project. These include a 
     lack of fully independent monitoring; ongoing corruption 
     investigations . . . new planned infrastructure in the Nahua 
     Kugapakori Reserve which may violate previous commitments; a 
     government audit released last month that identified 
     significant problems with pipeline construction . . . and 
     significant impacts on local culture, human health, fisheries 
     and biodiversity that have not been adequately assessed much 
     less addressed.
       Second, the Peruvian government of President Alan Garcia 
     has embarked on an aggressive campaign to dismantle the 
     country's already weak social and environmental institutions. 
     The government recently fired nearly all the directors of a 
     federal environmental authority, and replaced them with 
     political hacks. (Sound familiar?) Garcia recently axed the 
     country's superintendent of protected areas when he voiced 
     objections to a proposal that would opened up a large swath 
     of the Bahuaja Sonene National Park for energy exploration.
       Garcia has been attacking critics of domestic energy 
     projects as commies and pro-poverty advocates. Meanwhile, the 
     entire Peruvian Amazon has been divided into concessions for 
     oil and gas development. Two years ago, only 15 percent of 
     the Amazon had been parceled out for energy development. 
     Garcia will undoubtedly take multilateral bank support for 
     the Hunt project as a stamp of approval for his approach and 
     use it to further steamroll his domestic opponents.
       Lastly, the economic benefits of the project for Hunt Oil 
     are quite clear but far more dubious in the case of Peru. In 
     their letter to Ex-Imp, Leahy and Lowey said they were 
     concerned that Peru did not have sufficient gas reserves to 
     meet both long-term export requirements and domestic demand.

[[Page H16801]]

     What that means is that Peru might well pay more for energy 
     imports down the road than it gets now for its exports. Glenn 
     Jenkins, founder of the Program on Investment Appraisal and 
     Management at the Harvard Institute for International 
     Development, prepared an economic analysis of the project for 
     Environmental Defense. He concluded that massive new reserves 
     are discovered, Peru would be worse off from an economic 
     perspective if the project proceeds.
       Back in 2003, the Ex-Im, surprisingly, rejected support for 
     the first phase of the project on environmental grounds, and 
     the Bush Administration abstained during the IDB vote. Ray 
     Hunt and his company have been aggressively lobbying in 
     Washington to make sure the administration supports the 
     proposed multilateral funding this time around. Early 
     indications are that the company has succeeded and that the 
     IDB, Ex-Im and World Bank will end up approving support.
                                  ____


                [From washingtonpost.com, Dec. 15, 2007]

 Clinton Library Got Funds From Abroad--Saudis Said To Have Given $10 
                                Million

               (By John Solomon and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum)

       Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 
     percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign 
     sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from 
     Saudi Arabia, according to interviews yesterday.
       The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility 
     in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it 
     gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, 
     according to people directly familiar with the contributions.
       The presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 
     (D-N.Y.) has for months faced questions about the source of 
     the money for her husband's presidential library. During a 
     September debate, moderator Tim Russert asked the senator 
     whether her husband would release a donor list. Clinton said 
     she was sure her husband would ``be happy to consider that,'' 
     though the former president later declined to provide a list 
     of donors.
       Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has made an issue of the large 
     yet unidentified contributors to presidential libraries, 
     saying that he wants to avoid even the appearance of 
     impropriety in such donations. Obama has introduced 
     legislation that would require disclosure of all 
     contributions to presidential libraries, including Clinton's, 
     and Congress has actively debated such a proposal. Unlike 
     campaign donations, money given to presidential libraries is 
     often done with limited or no disclosure.
       The Clinton library has steadfastly declined to reveal its 
     donors, saying they were promised confidentiality. The 
     William J. Clinton Foundation, which funds the library, is 
     considered a charity whose contributors can remain anonymous.
       In response to questions from The Washington Post, the 
     foundation reiterated that it would not discuss specific 
     sizes or sources of donations to honor the commitment it made 
     to donors. But it acknowledged that some of the money Clinton 
     received from the library came from foreign sources.
       ``As president. he was beloved around the world, so it 
     should come as no surprise that there has been an outpouring 
     of financial support from around the world to sustain his 
     post-presidential work,'' a foundation statement said.
       Bill Clinton has solicited donations for the library 
     personally, aides said, but he also delegated much of the 
     fundraising to others, especially Terence R. McAuliffe, a 
     former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the 
     chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The 
     foundation statement stressed that he has turned over the 
     facility to taxpayers, as other former presidents have.
       A handful of major donors' names to the Clinton library 
     were disclosed in 2004 when a New York Sun reporter accessed 
     a public computer terminal at the library that provided a 
     list of donors. Soon after the article appeared, the list of 
     donors was removed.
       The amount of the contribution from Saudi Arabia and 
     several other countries, as well as the percentage of the 
     total given by foreigners, had not been revealed.
       The Post confirmed numerous seven-figure donors to the 
     library through interviews and tax records of foundations. 
     Several foreign governments gave at least $1 million, 
     including the Middle Eastern nations of Kuwait, Qatar and the 
     United Arab Emirates, as well as the governments of Taiwan 
     and Brunei.
       In addition, a handful of Middle Eastern business 
     executives and officials also gave at least $1 million each, 
     according to the interviews. They include Saudi businessmen 
     Abdullah al-Dabbagh. Nasser al-Rashid and Walid Juffali, as 
     well as Issam Fares, a U.S. citizen who previously served as 
     deputy prime minister of Lebanon.

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