[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

[[Page S2633]]

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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