Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. RADEWAGEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the 2024 Consolidated Appropriation Act and the inclusion of language from the Compact of Free Association Amendments Act. As a Member of Congress who has lived my personal as well as my civic life among the peoples and leaders of the Pacific Island nations and territories, I want first to recognize here the inclusive leadership of Speaker Johnson, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Westerman, and House Foreign Affairs Chairman McClure. Each of these leaders in our current House Majority reached out for my insights and perspectives as a House member who comes from the Pacific, regarding this legislation approving renewal of the Compact of Free Association.
I also join all stakeholders in the future success of America's relations with the U.S. aligned nations of the Pacific, as well as our American territories, in expressing deep gratitude for the bipartisan and bicameral coordination and cooperation in Congress on COFA renewal from 2020 to 2024. As House and Senate committee members we provided necessary policy guidance to the President, National Security Council, State Department, and Interior Department, making clear Congressional interests and expectations that would need to be addressed before statutory ratification by both Houses of terms included in COFA renewal agreements.
This bipartisan cooperation included the support of House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Grijalva and House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Meeks. Both colleagues cosponsored H.J. Res. 96 with Chairman Westerman and Chairman McClure. Thereby endorsing the original COFA renewal bill that has been inserted in the bill we approve today, which was developed through the bicameral and bipartisan cooperation with the leadership and staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in conjunction with House and Senate hearings on COFA renewal.
Of equal importance, all stakeholders in the COFA success story should recognize the national leaders and peoples of our COFA partner nations for strong commitment to the future success of the COFA alliance. Our closest allies in the Pacific acted with wisdom and patience during delays in the COFA renewal process due to initial U.S. negotiating positions that were not feasible in the COFA nations or in Congress. When ill-advised U.S. positions resulted in failure to conclude negotiations and approve COFA III before COFA II expired, the island government heads of state, ministers and chief negotiators worked with U.S. negotiators and Congress to sustain the COFA II framework until the job approving COFA III was done.
The Special Presidential Envoy appointed on the bipartisan and bicameral recommendation from many of us in Congress managed to salvage the COFA negotiations. Ambassador Yun overcame resistance in some dark corners of the Executive Branch bureaucracy sufficiently for the COFA nations to accept and for Congress to approve the package we are ratifying today.
The PRC communist dictatorship used its presence in the COFA nations to exploit the delay in COFA approval, attempting to influence elections, disrupt political and economic processes, and spread corruption. The dedication of these nations to the COFA alliance prevailed, and renewal of our 75-year relationship represents the success of self-determination and self-government over PRC political warfare and imperialism. That makes what we do today a success for democracy and freedom as well as the strategic national security capabilities COFA provides so the U.S. can continue to lead and defend a free and open Indo-Pacific.
The lesson of history in the Pacific is that funding our Compact of Free Association with the U.S. aligned Pacific Island nations of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands could make a difference between peace and war in the Pacific. The COFA alliances secure vital U.S. national security interests and redeem promises of friendship between America as a pacific nation and the peoples of these strategically located islands first forged in the tragedy and misery of WWII.
From 1947 to 1986 under a U.N. trusteeship administered by America the U.S. Congress provided for governance of the islands in Palau, Micronesia and Marshall Islands under both international self- determination law and the domestic model of territorial law and self- government. From 1986 to 2003 under COFA I, the U.S. Congress continued the policy combining international political status of the Free- Associated States (FAS) consistent with the domestic territorial model economic assistance and federal programs.
In 2003, the U.S. renewed COFA for RMI and FSM, but established COFA trust funds that contemplated reliance on proceeds of investment in lieu of continued direct U.S. economic assistance in 2023. Section 354(c) of the 2003 COFA created asymmetry between the certainty of U.S. defense rights and uncertainty about whether trust fund proceeds would be sufficient to sustain a politically feasible balance of burdens and benefits for the FAS established under the U.N. trusteeship and COFA I.
That same uncertainty was created by terms the U.S. offered to renew Palau's COFA I in 2010. What seemed to emerge was a U.S. State Department policy seeking to reduce and inevitably phase out all or most of the domestic economic and federal program features of COFA. U.S. ambassadors in the FAS and region openly explained that closure of the Office of Freely Associated State Affairs was due to U.S. plans to ratchet down COFA economic cost so those nations would have relations with American more like all Pacific Island Forum nations.
Until reversed after Congress objected, in the 2020-2023 period, the U.S. position in COFA renewal negotiations continued the 2003 State Department policy scaling back U.S. economic assistance and federal programs. Beginning in 2020 leaders in Congress on COFA renewal oversight called for revision and reform of U.S. negotiating playbook to restore the balance of special U.S. defense rights and special economic assistance and programs under the trusteeship and COFA I.
That restoration of sustainable balance of burdens and benefits will be attained by approval of the Compact of Free Association Amendments Act of 2024 (COFA) pursuant to Division G, Title II of the legislation we approve today will bring to culmination a successful bi-partisan and bicameral Congressional process for statutory ratification of international agreements renewing our Compacts with the FSM, RMI and Palau. This effort included the House Natural Resources Committee report to the full House approved by unanimous consent on November 8, 2023, supporting approval of the H.J. Res. 96, the original bipartisan bill to approve the COFA amendment agreement package completed for all three COFA partner nations on October 16, 2023.
This was not merely a parliamentary feat for the Chairman or Committee majority, because HNRC approval set in motion timely confirmation by all relevant House and Senate committees that H.J. Res. 96 was ready for floor action in both chambers. This reflects responsible bipartisan and bicameral recognition by our leadership in both Houses that the U.S. gets no better return on investment of taxpayer dollars than we do on international security and defense alliances under COFA. Specifically, COFA entails obligations of $7.1 billion for exclusive strategic control for 20 years over military access to the vast and vital mid-Pacific Sea lanes, islands and airspace of the COFA nations that straddle the equator across the western and northern Pacific.
Still, even after the strategic and foreign policy necessity of COFA approval was recognized, the pathway to authorization and appropriation of funding for mostly mandatory economic assistance grants and discretionary programs for the COFA nations--over 20 years from FY 2004 through 2043--was not certain until application of budget rules for Congressional disposition of the 2024 national security emergency appropriations legislation to which COFA had been linked were determined.
We now have in the legislation before us an agreed framework for approving ways and means to meet fiscally responsible economic assistance commitments that sustain the COFA alliances with the Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. However, the real work of defending democracy, rule of law and political as well as economic freedom in the American aligned Pacific nations does not end but rather begins anew with approval of the three bilateral COFA agreements we renew with this legislation.
The threat of PRC and its surrogate regimes to the U.S. homeland from Guam and Northern Mariana Islands to Hawaii is matched by aggressive PRC political warfare in the Pacific Island COFA ally nations of Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia. Destabilizing our COFA partner nations is a primary goal of the PRC in its menacing plan to surround and subjugate Taiwan through economic, political and if necessary, military coercion. U.S. failure to sustain the COFA firewall protecting democracy in the region will expose U.S. territories, our COFA allies and our western border states to impacts of political aggression, economic coercion and destabilization that will accelerate migration from the COFA countries in the decades ahead.
Just as it was during the first half of the 20th century in the era of Japanese imperialism leading to WWII in the Pacific, in the third decade of the 21st century PRC imperialism seeks domination and control of the Micronesian region as a platform to gain strategic control of the greater Oceanic region. Now referred to as the Blues Continent, the islands and archipelagoes of the mid-Pacific can join and unite Asia and the Americas to promote freedom and prosperity or descend into conflict and confrontation. COFA comparably is to peace and security in the Pacific what we hope NATO will continue to be in Europe.
That is why on September 18, 2023, as Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee Task Force on the Indo-Pacific, I wrote to the Chair and Ranking Member of that House Committee and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, urging approval of the Compact of Free Association (COFA) between the U.S. and our three closest strategic allies in the Indo-Pacific, Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia. At that time, the 2003 COFA II agreement was set to expire and regrettably did so at the end of FY 2023.
Inclusion of some but not all of the COFA agreement funding for FY 2024 proposed in the COFA renewal agreements under the temporary spending measures after October 1 did not send the strong signal of strategic stability and continuity of U.S. commitment our COFA alliance partner nations needed to counter PRC political warfare threatening America's seven-decade success preserving peace in a free and open Indo-Pacific. That initial failure to provide funding in the Pacific to sustain partnership with our closest allies in the Pacific for the next two decades at this juncture was a miscalculation and self-defeating U.S. policy that we are correcting and ending today.
We supported our leadership in finding a path forward, replacing delay and misdirection caused by initially failed U.S. negotiating positions on COFA renewal agreements with approvals and funding authorization also will end political jousting and gambling with our strategic interests in the Pacific. As noted, Congress will need to exercise oversight of COFA III implementation to ensure provisions of this new COFA III package enacted as federal stature not as a Senate ratified treaty are implemented as statutory mandate by all federal authorities, not as merely policies to be modified or altered in implementation at discretion of federal officials.
That is particularly true as to the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Veteran Affairs programs, the operations of the State Department office responsible for COFA implementation under direction of the Interagency Group on Free Associated States Affairs, fiscal accountability standards applied by the Secretary of the Interior to monitor and manage economic assistance grants and coordinate federal programs, and the procedures and practices of the RMI and FSM Trust Fund Committee. The latter includes Congressional oversight to ensure that funding for extraordinary or exceptional circumstances in the RMI under Article 18 of the RMI COFA Trust Fund Agreement are used to address the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing in the RMI. That means that such funds shall be applied for the benefit and to meet needs of the people of the atolls specified and named in Article 18 related to the effect of the nuclear testing program on the people and environment in those similarly situated island peoples.
As confirmed by the President's Special Envoy in testimony on this COFA renewal package before Senate and House committees, the unique ``political and moral'' responsibilities and commitments of the U.S. to the RMI related to the nuclear testing legacy now continuing under Article 18 of the COFA Trust Fund Agreement includes not only past and present but future measures that further implement the Section 177 Agreement. The provisions of the Section 177 Agreement incorporated into this legislation confirm that the entirety of the agreement remains in full effect, and that all provisions of that settlement continue to apply according to the terms of COFA I, COFA II and COFA III.
That continuity of law regarding the Section 177 Agreement includes the relevant provisions of Section 103 of COFA I pursuant to P.L. 99- 239 and Section 103 of COFA II pursuant to P.L. 108-188, as well as the still authoritative jurisprudence of Juda v. U.S., 13 Claims Court 667 (1987) relating to retained jurisdiction of federal courts. That specifically ensures that in accordance with Section 177(b) of the U.S.-RMI COFA, when measures taken under the Section 177 agreement end the amounts provided--under mutually agreed and/or ex gratia terms--the outcome of U.S. actions under the settlement must constitute just and adequate compensation.
Reversing the miscalculations of the 2003 COFA acts for FSM and RMI and the 2010 Palau COFA agreement that created uncertainty about post- 2023 COFA economic assistance terms is achieved under the COFA III terms we approve today, which anticipate continuity in the COFA alliance not only for 20 years but continuing after 2043. That is imperative because COFA security rights for America and the COFA nations of the Pacific are imperative. Just as our southern border must be secured, our homeland borders and strategic boundaries in the Pacific, including Hawaii, Guam, CNMI, American Samoa and west coast, must be secured consistent with America's leadership of the free world.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source