[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 22869]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          ASSISTANCE TO LIBYA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Madam Speaker, I am here to speak on a different 
topic, on U.S. assistance to Libya and the need for U.N. and foreign 
aid reform in our budgeting process.
  Madam Speaker, just as the convicted extremist of Pan Am Flight 103 
was being given a hero's welcome in Libya and just prior to the Libyan 
leader's own bizarre 93-minute diatribe against all freedom-loving 
nations before the U.N. General Assembly last week, the Congress was 
receiving a notification from our State Department that it intended to 
provide $2.5 million in economic support funds for Libya. That's 
unbelievable.
  The State Department plans also to send 400,000 of those dollars to 
organizations run by members of the Qaddafi family; $200,000 of this is 
to go to the Qaddafi Development Foundation for assisting indigenous 
NGOs identify potential for reform. Reform in Libya? You have got to be 
kidding. This foundation is not a nongovernment organization. It has 
direct links to Libyan Government and is actually run by the son of 
Qaddafi. For those of who don't know Qaddafi's second oldest son, he is 
the one who personally escorted the man responsible for the tragedy of 
Pan Am Flight 103 from Scotland upon his release back to Libya on his 
father's personal jet.
  The foundation run by Qaddafi's second eldest son is the very group 
that was used by the Libyan regime to channel funds to compensate 
American victims of Libyan-sponsored attacks, including victims of Pan 
Am Flight 103. State Department funding for this foundation may, in 
fact, serve as a backdoor replenishment of funds used by Libya to 
compensate our victims of Libyan-sponsored attacks.
  Turning to a separate $200,000 slush fund proposed under the heading 
of ``Inclusive Economic Law and Property Rights: Promoting Women's 
Economic Opportunities,'' the State Department has indicated that the 
anticipated implementing partners will be the United Nations 
Development Programme and an organization run by Qaddafi's daughter. 
Qaddafi's daughter also serves as the UNDP's goodwill ambassador to 
Libya, so she gets two opportunities to directly benefit from U.S. 
Government programs in Libya at our taxpayers' expense.
  The role of the United Nation Development Programme is very 
disturbing. It has been the center of several major corruption scandals 
in recent years. It reportedly cannot account for millions of American 
dollars that it received in Afghanistan. It also allegedly funneled 
hard currency to the North Korean regime while Kim Jong Il was 
consolidating his nuclear program. UNDP then retaliated against the 
whistleblower who uncovered this wrongdoing.
  So I ask you, was funding for the Qaddafi family and a notoriously 
unaccountable UNDP what Congress had in mind when it appropriated funds 
to support what they call promotion of democracy and human rights in 
Libya? Oh, my gosh. Absolutely not.
  Unfortunately, the Libya aid program presents just one more example 
of the need for broad, comprehensive reform of the United States 
foreign assistance program. Our U.S. foreign assistance can go a long 
way in improving people's lives while promoting our most cherished 
ideals of freedom and human rights. However, when administered poorly 
where unaccounted foreign governments, international organizations and 
bureaucrats are the beneficiaries, then our foreign aid programs only 
serve to undermine our very own interests.
  It is time for us to get serious about reforming our foreign aid 
system and about effectively vetting our programs and partners.
  Toward this end, Madam Speaker, I have proposed two separate pieces 
of legislation: H.R. 1062, the Foreign Assistance Partner Vetting Act, 
and H.R. 557, the United Nation's Transparency, Accountability, and 
Reform Act, and I hope that we can get those bills heard forthwith.
  Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

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