House Votes 50% Salvador Arms Aid Cut

President Bush’s long-stalled request for emergency aid to Nicaragua and Panama cleared its last major hurdle in Congress on Tuesday, even as the House signaled its impatience with human rights abuses in another Central American country by voting to cut U.S. military aid to El Salvador by 50%.

Spurred by frustration over the lack of progress in the investigation of the slaying of six Jesuit priests in San Salvador last year, the House voted 250 to 163 to suspend half of the $85 million slated to go to El Salvador in military aid this year. However, the vote was largely symbolic because the House later reversed itself and defeated the authorization bill that contained the Salvador amendment by a vote of 244 to 171.

The vote to cut aid to El Salvador was intended as a signal to both the Salvadoran government and the Bush Administration that future military aid to El Salvador will depend on stronger efforts to curb human rights abuses by the military and to negotiate an end to that country’s long-stalemated civil war, a congressional source said.

“The vote reflected the growing consensus that U.S. policy must take a sharp turn away from unconditional support for the (Salvadoran) military,” said James Hamilton, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, one of the many church and civil rights groups that lobbied for passage of the amendment.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III has been trying to negotiate a bipartisan compromise with House Democrats over the Administration’s El Salvador policy. But while he has agreed that some conditions should be imposed on military aid, the negotiations have stalled over the amount and the timing of future cuts.

Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Rules Committee and chief sponsor of the amendment, said Democrats took their challenge of the Bush Administration’s policy toward El Salvador to the floor because those negotiations with Baker had not made much progress. He indicated that he expects Tuesday’s vote to lead to another round of talks with the Administration.

“The American people and the Congress have been played for fools” by the Salvadoran military, Moakley said. “This must end, and it must end now.”

Earlier, House and Senate negotiators in a separate action eliminated the last major hurdle to the Panama-Nicaragua aid package by approving an appropriations bill containing $720 million for the two infant democracies in Central America.

First requested by Bush last March, the Panama-Nicaragua emergency aid package got off to a fairly fast start in the House, where lawmakers approved $420 million of the $500 million the President sought for Panama and all of the $300 million he requested for Nicaragua. But it took much longer to limp through the Senate, where lawmakers larded it with a wide variety of unrelated domestic spending provisions.

The final Senate bill, a $3.4 billion supplemental appropriations measure, then went to a House-Senate conference, where negotiators spent more than a week reconciling the different House and Senate versions of the bill.

Those negotiations were finally wrapped up on Tuesday when the conferees completed work on $2 billion in defense cuts being used to offset some of the additional spending.

The bill, which also contains $400 million in loan guarantees for Israel to build new housing for Soviet Jewish emigres, now goes back to the House and the Senate for final passage before being sent to the President’s desk in time for Congress to adjourn before the Memorial Day weekend.

Although they began their legislative lives as separate issues, the El Salvador aid debate and the Panama-Nicaragua package became entwined when the House Democrats attached the Moakley amendment to cut aid to El Salvador to a bill authorizing the money already approved for Panama and Nicaragua in the appropriations measure. Before money is actually spent, both authorization and appropriations bills must be passed by both houses of Congress.

The intertwining of the two issues had raised the possibility, going into Tuesday’s debate, that the aid package sought by Bush would be further delayed by the fight over El Salvador.

The White House had warned that it would veto the authorization bill if it contained the El Salvador provision. Opponents of the measure argued that the need to dispatch emergency aid to Panama and Nicaragua was too urgent to risk yet another delay.

“Congress should not take this moment to undermine the support we say we want to give to Panama and Nicaragua by linking it to an emotional issue like El Salvador,” California Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) said. “If the President does have to exercise his veto, the House will have, in the short term at least, destroyed American policy in Central America.”

That danger was defused, however, when the House-Senate conferees agreed to waive the usual requirement for a companion bill authorizing money for the Panama-Nicaragua aid package. Although the waiver must still be approved by the Rules Committee, congressional sources said the Democratic leadership would agree to let the money go through without the need for a separate authorizing bill.

The Moakley amendment is now expected to serve as the starting point for the Democrats’ negotiations with the Bush Administration on El Salvador. Restoration of the aid cut--or elimination of the aid--would have been contingent upon actions to be taken by both the Salvadoran government and the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas. The two groups have fought to a stalemate in El Salvador’s long and bloody civil war.

The amendment would have allowed Bush to restore the aid if the FMLN launches another offensive or if the Administration determines that the guerrillas are continuing to receive arms from abroad or are not negotiating in good faith at U.N.-mediated peace talks now under way in Venezuela.

It would have required Bush to cut all remaining military aid if El Salvador fails to negotiate in good faith or if President Alfredo Cristiani is deposed by a coup. It also would have required the cut if Cristiani’s government does not conduct a thorough investigation into the murder of six Jesuit priests and two women by Salvadoran soldiers last year.

Supporters of the amendment said U.S. aid to El Salvador over the past decade has clearly not restrained the excesses of its right-wing military death squads and may have only encouraged corruption in its armed forces.

“After 10 years we must recognize we have been unable to instill a respect for human values or the rule of law in the Salvadoran military,” California Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) said. “There is widespread corruption in the military. . . . U.S. officials . . . estimate that 15% of the Salvadoran military is made up of ‘ghost soldiers’ whose salaries end up lining the pockets of the commanders,” Berman added.

Opponents argued that the measure would weaken the Salvadoran government’s negotiating position at the peace talks and undermine Cristiani’s attempts at reform.