Elizabeth Furse: “Mr. Speaker I rise because of concerns I have to H.R. 3121, amending the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export…”

“Mr. Speaker I rise because of concerns I have to H.R. 3121, amending the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act. This bill moves us in the wrong direction. It unnecessarily costs the taxpayers more money and it moves us toward less accountability of arms transfers. At a time when we are working so hard to balance the Federal budget, it does not make sense to do as this bill does. For the first time, it would require U.S. taxpayers to pay the costs of shipping the excess defense articles we're giving away to other countries. In a world where our own soldiers are at risk from the very weapons exported by the United States, we should not be promoting increased exports in the ways that this bill does. This bill eliminates congressionally mandated language to ensure that foreign recipient countries use the equipment as intended. That includes, for example, the requirement that excess defense articles transferred for counternarcotics purposes be used primarily for counternarcotics purposes and not for counterinsurgency. This bill strips Congress of its ability to gauge the human rights situation and to determine if the assistance is likely to be used in abuses. We must be more creative than that in determining ways for our Nation's workers to have jobs. We cannot come to rely on arms exports to such an extent that we ignore human rights. This is a controversial bill, Mr. Speaker.…”