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URGENT Alert on Burton Amendment to Send $99 Million in Military Aid to Colombia
March 14, 2006

UPDATE, 3/17/06 -- Burton was forced to reduce the amount from nearly $100 million to $26 million. This reduced package passed 250-172. This is in addition to the $600 million that the U.S. is sending to the Colombian military in 2006. To see how your representative voted, click here -- http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll045.xml.

Friends,

This is urgent. The House of Representatives will in the next day or two consider an amendment that would send nearly $100 million in additional military aid to Colombia. Because time is of the essence, and I would be unable to improve upon their words, I am forwarding an alert that our friends at the Latin American Working Group sent out a short while ago.

Please act now. Our sisters and brothers in Colombia are counting on us.

In solidarity,
Erik

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Alert from Latin American Working Group

Dear Colombia Advocates,

We write you today with an urgent action on Colombia policy. Rep. Dan Burton will likely offer an amendment to the Iraq supplemental tomorrow in the House of Representatives that would immediately send $99 million more to Colombia for drug crop fumigation and military assistance. Yet aid for Hurricane Katrina victims is unforgivably slow in coming and numerous social programs are being cut in an already reduced budget. At a time when we are struggling to meet our own human needs at home, this request is absolutely absurd.

We can defeat this amendment. Most Democrats oppose sending more military assistance to Colombia, and many Republicans will see this as an additional, unnecessary expenditure on the budget. Call your representative today to urge him/her to VOTE NO on Rep. Burton’s amendment. The Iraq supplemental will go to the House floor late tomorrow or early on Thursday, so the sooner you can call the better. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to be connected.

The funds proposed through Mr. Burton’s amendment would go to Colombia in order to increase counter-narcotics efforts, and would include marine patrol aircraft for the Colombian navy and helicopters for the Colombian national police. These aircraft would be used for protecting spray planes and for the war effort more generally.

Here are some talking points for your call:

• We are NOT doing what we need to do at home to solve our own problems. Katrina victims are still suffering and health and social programs are under funded. We should not send an additional $99.4 million to the Colombian military at a time when our needs for humane assistance are so great. The U.S. is already providing Colombia with $641 million in military in police aid in 2006 – this is far too much already, and there is absolutely no need for more.
• In order to really stop the drug problem, we need to put money into drug prevention and treatment programs at home in order to reduce demand and into alternative development abroad in order to reduce supply. U.S.-funded drug eradication efforts in Colombia are failing. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) reported that despite the largest drug crop spraying campaign ever in Colombia in 2004, there was no change in the amount of coca produced, and we expect similar figures for 2005. Furthermore, the President’s budget requests a cut in drug prevention and treatment programs at home for 2007, which will only increase the demand for drugs in the United States.
• If your representative is a fiscal conservative, stress to him/her that the Colombia amendment on the Iraq supplemental is an unnecessary additional expense.

Also, thank you to all who asked your representative to sign the Farr-McGovern letter. The letter was sent to Condoleezza Rice with 59 signatures from members of Congress, and at least three other members of Congress wrote separate letters to the State Department. This is a great success! The Department is still debating Colombia’s human rights certification and withholding some military aid from fiscal year 2005, and this type of pressure from Congress will surely influence the State Department’s actions. If your representative signed this letter, make sure to THANK him/her when you call today.