SENATE KEEPS CUT IN ANDEAN FUNDING

WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved a $15.6 billion foreign aid bill
but, ignoring the argument that American credibility was at risk, cut
back sharply on the Bush administration's request for money to fight
drugs in South America.

Ratcheting down the Andean drug war could "substantially erode our
credibility" as the United States asks countries worldwide "to join
the coalition for a long, protracted, difficult war to rout out
global terrorism wherever it existed," Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said
Wednesday.

Colombia is "the global testing ground for our commitment to
terrorism," said Graham, the Intelligence Committee chairman. "Hardly
more than a year into this battle, we are beginning to sound the
trumpet of retreat and running up the white flag of surrender." The
Senate blocked his amendment in a procedural vote, 72-27.

President Bush requested $731 million for the Andean drug effort. The
Appropriations Committee's foreign operations panel, chaired by Sen.
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., cut it by $164 million to $567 million. Graham
wanted to restore that money.

The House's $15.2 billion foreign aid bill, passed in July, contains
$676 million for the South American drug fight.

"We're spending four times more on the Andean drug program ... than
what we're doing to stop disease -- smallpox or tuberculosis,
malaria, ebola, plague -- from coming into our country," said Leahy.

"We keep pouring money down here," Leahy said. "We don't know where
it's going. We don't know how it's being spent. We know it's not
effective. We know it hasn't stopped drugs coming up here."

The foreign aid bill passed, 96-2. Sens. Graham and Robert Byrd,
D-W.Va., voted against it. Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Mary Landrieu,
D-La., did not vote.

In the Middle East, Israel will get $2.7 billion in military and
economic aid; Egypt, $2 billion, and Jordan, $225 million.

Separately, the Senate approved a one-year moratorium on the State
Department's program to certify which foreign countries fully
cooperate in the war against drugs. Many allies, including Mexico,
have rebelled at such a scorecard.

The Senate also approved spending $2 million for education programs
for Afghan women.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee unanimously approved a
$317.5 billion defense spending bill, but the figure could go up by
$20 billion or more for the war on terrorism before the full House
votes on it.

The spending bill for fiscal 2002, which began Oct. 1, is $19 billion
more than last year's, representing a 6 percent increase and $1.9
billion less than Bush requested. Congress has separately approved
$10.5 billion for military construction spending, and more defense
money is included in other measures.

The bill's $7.9 billion for missile defense, $400 million less than
Bush wanted but $2.7 billion more than was spent last year, is
wrapped into a new counterterrorism and weapons of mass destruction
program.

"This is basically a peacetime defense bill, and we ain't at peace no
more," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., chairman of the
Appropriations Committee's defense panel.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., predicted the
full House will vote next week, but not before the committee acts on
Bush's request to spend $20 billion, part of the $40 billion Congress
approved in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The committee's top Democrat, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said, "This
bill should be supported across the board." He recommended spending
"above and beyond the $20 billion" extra.

Editor's note: The foreign operations spending bill is H.R. 2506.