Posted on 10/04/2001 9:05:08 PM PDT by 4Freedom
Navy allies in Congress say an exit date cannot be written into the law
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WASHINGTON - The Calderon administration has abandoned its support for the Nov. 6 Vieques referendum, calling instead for lawmakers to embrace President Bush's plan to cancel the vote and write into law a 2003 exit date for the Navy.
The move carries risks because Navy allies in Congress say there is no chance to write an exit date into law, and lawmakers who have called for the Navy's exit from the tiny island still back the November vote.
The move comes as Congress is convening a conference committee to hash out differences between House and Senate proposals dealing with the Vieques issue.
One member of the committee, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., a longtime ally of the Popular Democratic Party, came out Wednesday unequivocally opposed to the House measure canceling the referendum and leaving it up to military leaders to decide when to end exercises on the same island.
"Senator Kennedy does not support the House language," said a spokesman. "He supports the agreement as laid down by President Clinton."
That agreement, which the Senate did not change in its version of the defense authorization bill containing the Vieques provisions, was put into law last year. It calls for the Navy departure by May 1, 2003, if it loses a Nov. 6 referendum among residents of the island.
But the Calderon administration, which has previously said it would support the referendum if it could not win a firm date for the Navy exit without it, no longer wants the referendum to be held.
The commonwealth still backs a definite Navy departure date in the law that will come out of the House-Senate conference committee, which will probably convene next week.
In fact, Resident Commissioner Anibal Acevedo Vila urged leaders in Congress Wednesday to do what they so far have avoided doing: adopt the Bush administration's proposal to cancel the Vieques referendum while securing through legislation the May 1, 2003 Navy exit from the small island.
In letters to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and others, the resident commissioner said that "a referendum at this time of unity and support of the nation could well be cause for dissension."
He added that the "punitive language" in the House version of the defense authorization bill "would allow for continued training on Vieques indefinitely. Altering the May 1, 2003 commitment could only undermine the confidence of the people of Vieques."
The letter, which was also sent to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo. - the ranking minority members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees - says:
"I respectfully ask that you join me in support of the president's position to cancel the federally mandated referendum and to establish that on or before May 1, 2003 the Navy will cease training on and depart from Vieques, Puerto Rico."
The letter is futile, as are other commonwealth efforts to reinstate a firm Navy pullout date, according to Bill Johnson, legislative director for Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, who will also be among the conferees.
The conferees, which will include the 25 senators on the upper chamber's Armed Services Committee and the same number from among the larger House Armed Services panel, will "tinker with words," but essentially uphold the House-approved measure, Johnson said.
The only votes left that count are those of the mostly pro-military conferees, Johnson said, noting that the full House and full Senate can neither amend nor filibuster what comes out of conference.
"There will be no referendum and no date certain" for the Navy to leave Vieques, according to Johnson.
"The president already has said that the Navy is planning to leave in 2003," Johnson noted. "If I were Gov. Calderon, I would take that to the bank and go home. She won't get anything further from Congress."
Meanwhile, Mike McCord, a senior staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was more hopeful about the commonwealth's efforts.
"Everything could be potentially discussed, and lots of things could happen," when the conferees get together, he said.
The better alternative is to offer the residents from among those 3,000, that can prove their families have been living on Vieques since before the Navy established the base during WW II, twice the market value for their property. All the other residents can just shut up.
The only residents that have any kind of a legitimate argument, at all, are those whose families refused to leave when the Navy established the base. Everyone else, that came to the island after the Naval base was there, can go scratch.
Everyone know what the referendum results would have been anyway... a big, giant, resounding "NO" to the military exercises.
Try http://www.navyvieques.navy.mil
You can also enter Vieques into any search engine and pull up some links to local papers and island websites.
Just search the word Vieques on Free Republic and you'll find alot of articles I and others have posted in the past.
Yes, there were peope living on the island before the Navy got there. The bulk of the property was owned by a handful of wealthy Spanish plantation owners. They were growing mostly sugar cane there. The rest of the residents were little more than slaves of these plantation owners.
We paid these plantation owners fair market value, at the time, for the property we needed for our base in order to prosecute the second world war on our as well as the rest of the world's behalf.
The residents that remained on the island with the Navy never owned any of the property the Navy is on and never would have.
It's also important to note that there were no native Taino indians left alive on the island when the Navy came. Those that wouldn't leave were slaughtered by the Spaniards that the Navy bought the property from.
It's also interesting to note that it's doubtful that even 5% of the other residents of Puerto Rico have ever even been there once. It's also doubtful that most other residents of Puerto Rico could even find Vieques on a map.
Let me know if I can be of any other help.
You're listening to the complaints of rip-off and scam artists that think they're going to "win the lotto", if they can con a few pandering politicians into giving them 22,000 acres of property and $3 billion dollars of infrastructure that's owned by the U.S. Taxpayers.
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if more than 90% of the 3,000 ingrates that are complaining moved to the island after it was a bombing range. If that's true, they can go scratch.
What community votes next? Okinawa?
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