[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 74 (Monday, May 6, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2632-S2633]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
S. 1309
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I wish to discuss S. 1309, the
Combating Global Corruption Act of 2019. There is heightened awareness
in the United States, the Western Hemisphere region, and around the
world that corruption is a serious threat to democracy, stability,
global security.
Corruption erodes trust and confidence in democratic institutions,
the rule of law, and human rights protections. It damages America's
global competitiveness and creates barriers to economic growth in
international markets. It threatens our national and international
security by fostering the conditions for violent extremism and
weakening institutions associated with governance and accountability.
As Transparency International noted in its 2018 Corruption Perceptions
Index published this January, failure to curb corruption is
contributing to a worldwide crisis of democracy. According to Freedom
House, in 2017, democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades and
marked the 12th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.
We have all seen the headlines, from scandals in Liberia, Hungary,
and Guatemala, to the doping by Russian athletes and their subsequent
ban from the 2016 Summer Olympics, to the Panama Papers. It is clear
that where there are high levels of corruption we find fragile states,
authoritarian states, or states suffering from internal or external
conflict, in places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Syria,
Somalia, Nigeria, and Sudan.
The problem of corruption and the dysfunction that follows it can be
difficult to address because it is like a hydra, with many corrupt
actors that can include government officials, businessmen, law
enforcement, military personnel, and organized criminal groups.
Corruption is a system that operates via extensive, entrenched networks
in both the public and private sectors. It is ubiquitous and pervasive.
We must address it. We can't throw up our hands and accept corruption
as the status quo because the costs of not addressing and rooting it
out are too great. Corruption fuels violent extremism, pushing young
people toward violence, because they lose faith in the institutions
that are supposed to protect and serve them. Corruption feeds the
destructive fire of criminal networks and transnational crime. Citizens
lose faith in the social compact between governments and the people.
Terrorist groups use corruption to recruit followers to their hateful
cause. It is a vicious cycle.
The human cost of corruption is substantial. Across the globe,
millions of men, women, and children are victims of modern day slavery.
Corruption enables their trafficking within and among countries.
Corruption is a constant companion to modern day slavery and the
suffering that it brings. We also have seen this play out in the
refugee and migrant crisis, with thousands drowning in the
Mediterranean, victims of trafficking networks and corrupt government
officials who facilitate this illicit business. Make no mistake,
corruption is big business. UNICEF estimates that human traffickers
generate $32 billion in profits by smuggling 21 million men, women, and
children through corrupt networks every year.
Let's be clear-eyed: Any fight against corruption will be long-term
and difficult. It is a fight against powerful people, powerful
companies, and powerful interests. It is about changing a mindset and a
culture as much as it is about establishing and enforcing laws. As my
colleagues and constituents know, my attention has long been focused on
fighting corruption. I was proud to sponsor the Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act with our late colleague Senator John McCain,
an unwavering enemy of corruption throughout the globe. That bipartisan
bill was enacted into law in late 2016, and I applaud the Trump
administration for aggressively using the act to target human rights
abusers and corrupt individuals around the globe who threaten the rule
of law and deny fundamental freedoms, but the problem of corruption is
enormous; we simply must do more.
I want to briefly discuss something that is hard to capture in
legislation. It is something that I grappled with when drafting this
bill. It is something that perhaps, more than anything, will dictate if
we win this struggle against corruption. That is bipartisan political
will, which as so critical in advancing the Global Magnitsky Act.
Global Magnitsky took several years to enact because some in Congress,
as well as some Obama administration officials, were concerned about
the political and practical ramifications of the bill.
Another example of the impact of a lack of political will on fighting
corruption is particularly salient this week, as we mourn the passing
of our dear colleague, former Senator Richard Lugar. In 2010, Senator
Lugar and I were able to get one of the most powerful anti-corruption
and antipoverty laws enacted.
Senator Lugar and I worked on the bill that would become section 1504
of the Dodd-Frank Act, known as the ``Cardin-Lugar provision,'' for
several years. Over the course of our tenures on Foreign Relations
Committee, we had seen clear evidence that secrecy breeds corruption
and that corruption can breed instability and perpetuate poverty in
resource-rich countries. The Cardin-Lugar provision requires that all
foreign and domestic companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges and
involved in oil, gas, and mineral resource extraction must publish the
project-level payments they make to the foreign countries in which they
operate. The enactment of this provision was a watershed moment in
which the United States reclaimed its position as a leader in the
effort to increase global accountability and transparency. It took 6
years for the Securities and Exchange Commission to finally issue a
rule to implement the law--6 years. That is the length of a term of a
U.S. Senator. It is college and a master's degree. It took 6 years for
the United States to act on this bill. It took that long because some
people believed that less transparency is a good thing. Some groups
believed that accountability should take a back seat to profitability.
Unfortunately, the rule was repealed by Congress in February 2017.
Congress has a responsibility to reaffirm our bipartisan commitment
to combatting corruption not only to honor the legacies of our late
colleagues Senator Lugar and Senator
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McCain. We also must act to show solidarity with the millions of brave
human rights defenders, anti-poverty advocates, journalists, and
investigators who put their lives at risk every day--and sometimes pay
the ultimate price--to fight the scourge of corruption and impunity.
I am proud that last week Senator Young and I, along with Senators
Leahy, Rubio, Blumenthal, and Merkley, reaffirm bipartisan political
will to combat global corruption by reintroducing the Combating Global
Corruption Act, S. 1309. Our bill makes clear that the United States
must meet the scale of the problem of corruption with greater resolve
and commitment. To do that, our bill focuses on four things.
First, we must institutionalize the fight against corruption as a
national security priority. Our bill requires the State Department to
produce an annual report, similar to the Trafficking in Persons Report,
which takes a close look at each country's efforts to combat
corruption. That model, which has effectively advanced the effort to
combat modern day slavery, will similarly embed the issue of corruption
in our collective work, so that we hold governments to account. This
bill establishes minimum standards for combating corruption, standards
that should be part and parcel of every government's commitment to its
citizens. These include whether a country has laws that recognize
corrupt acts for the crimes they are--violations of the people's
trust--along with appropriate penalties for breaking that trust,
whether a country has an independent judiciary for deciding corruption
cases, free from influence and abuse, whether there is support for
civil society organizations that are the watchdogs of integrity against
would-be thieves of the state. This bill, hopefully, will build
anticorruption DNA into the foundations of government action.
Second, in the United States, our whole-of-government effort must be
better coordinated. Right now, we work across multiple agencies and in
multiple offices to combat corruption. There is much information and
many best practices that can be shared; we have got to do better at
that and take advantage of those areas where we have been successful.
The State Department and the United States Agency for International
Development have done great work, but the vast nature of the problem
requires that we improve our ability to tackle it. In this bill,
agencies and bureaus and our missions overseas will have to prioritize
corruption into their strategic planning as an essential part of our
foreign policy work, a step that I believe will foster greater
cooperation.
Third, we must improve oversight of our own foreign assistance and
promote transparency. The U.S. taxpayer has a right to know how our
foreign assistance is being spent and also should feel confident that
we are doing the kind of risk assessments, analysis, and oversight that
ensure our assistance to other countries is having the effect we want
it to have. Our bill consolidates information and puts it online, where
citizens can see the numbers and the programs. That kind of
transparency is in and of itself good, but in my experience it has the
effect of making us better at self-policing our work. We can use the
data to capture redundancies and analyze trends, which I believe will
make our decision-making better. The bill embeds oversight into our
foreign assistance programs overseas, maintaining the flexibility we
need to meet our goals rapidly while also holding government to
account.
In fact, it is a natural complement to the Foreign Assistance
Transparency and Accountability Act, a bipartisan law Senator Rubio and
I cosponsored that looks at our foreign aid and seeks to ensure that
our foreign assistance programs are tracked and evaluated adequately
and appropriately.
I am a believer in the power of example. This ``one-two'' punch of
the Combating Global Corruption Act and the Foreign Assistance
Transparency Act strengthens our foreign assistance policy,
demonstrates that we hold ourselves to the highest standards, and shows
other countries that we are committed to this fight.
Finally, we have to find ways to resource anti-corruption work.
Corruption is big business and big money. We should look for ways to
use seized assets and ill-gotten proceeds to build civil society
capacity to fight corruption and make it easier to transfer these
assets to the appropriate effort. We have also witnessed the damaging
impact of corruption on our foreign assistance efforts. The Combating
Global Corruption Act understands that corruption risk assessment
before, during, and after the provision of foreign aid and security
assistance is integral to reducing and eliminating corruption. It holds
U.S. foreign assistance and security assistance programs accountable to
U.S. taxpayers by specifying transparency and accountability measures
for the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the U.S.
Agency for International Development to advance anti-corruption efforts
in those countries where the U.S. administers foreign and security
assistance.
As we project the American values of good governance and
anticorruption abroad, we must also redouble our efforts to strengthen
these core values here in the United States. Unfortunately, these
values have been put into question under our current administration.
Our concerns run deeper than noticing the lack of priority given to
anti-corruption and good governance policies. U.S. credibility has been
weakening on this issue. In turn, our U.S. foreign policy is
threatened.
For the 3rd straight year, the Trump administration, through its
budget request, sent a message to the world of its priorities for the
United States. For the 3rd straight year, the Trump administration
proposed drastic cuts to the State, Foreign Operations, and Related
Programs--SFOPS--budget, which would cut foreign assistance funding by
more than 30 percent. This also came amidst the recent decision to cut
off foreign assistance to the Northern Triangle of Central America, a
region of the world where U.S. assistance in combating corruption has a
direct impact on our national security. This decision threatens to
undermine the critical anti-corruption programming that helps us combat
narcotics trafficking groups and violent gangs, as well as to address
the root causes of migration. For this very reason, the bipartisan
U.S.--Central America strategy names good governance as one of its
central pillars.
This is why for Fiscal Year 2020, I asked the Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs to
include at least $500,000 for the Department of State and $500,000 for
the U.S. Agency for International Development to achieve meaningful and
robust implementation of the activities outlined in the Combating
Global Corruption Act. This includes the bill's reporting requirements,
staffing, and staff training to support anticorruption as a foreign
policy and development priority. This bipartisan bill recognizes the
importance of combating corruption as a hurdle to achieving peace,
prosperity, and human rights around the world. Passage of S. 1309 would
signal to the international community that the U.S. Congress has not
forgotten U.S. values and that we will continue to fight to ensure such
values and U.S. credibility remain intact.
There is only one United States of America. There is only one country
that can do what we can do, and this bill sends the message that we
will continue to fight to ensure that stature does not change.
I am under no illusion that this global fight against corruption will
be easy. It will make the work of our government agencies more
challenging. It will make our diplomacy more challenging. It will
require political will, but political will finds its source and its
strength in our values. Political will is created when we embrace those
values. Political will endures in good governance, accountability, and
transparency and those values that are at the core of the compact
between the government and the governed.
As this bill moves forward, I urge my colleagues to find the
political will to combat global corruption, ensure accountability, and
keep our commitment to the best of American values.
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