Dan Burton: “this amendment is simple in nature. It moves money from three accounts bloated with bureaucracy and into an account…”

“this amendment is simple in nature. It moves money from three accounts bloated with bureaucracy and into an account which helps fight the scourge of drugs which are devastating our society. As the gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) just said, our allies, the Colombian National Police, just yesterday seized three metric tons of cocaine destined for the United States through Mexico. This is just the latest testament that the Congress has provided aid to the right people in Colombia. With the six Black Hawk Helicopters the Congress provided to the CNP last year, the CNP has eradicated more opium, which is used to make heroin, than it did in 1998, and nearly as much as it did last year, and they have only had the Black Hawk Helicopters for 4 months. Yet in the Colombia supplemental aid package, the Clinton administration chose to virtually ignore our CNP allies and start a duplicative Colombian army unit, providing only $100 million to the CNP while spending nearly $1 billion on an army unit. Throughout the process, the gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) and I have tried to explain why there needed to be a more equitable distribution of aid between the two. Yet, despite our long involvement with Colombia, not to mention our role as authorizers, we were ignored. To this end, I include for the Record a letter and a request which the gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) and I wrote to have the needs of the CNP addressed in the supplemental.”