my friend, mr. farr, and i have sat together in the office of the fiss -- fiscalia in colombia, i yield myself an additional 15 seconds, we have sat and pain stakingly, with several of our colleagues, democrats and republicans alike, we have gone through these pending cases to bring about a resolution on this issue and in just a few minutes i'm going to be yielding to my friend, mr. farr, to talk specifically about this and the challenges we had. with that, mr. speaker, i'm happy to yield a minute and a half to my very good friend, the chair of the committee on foreign affairs who represents what she calls the gateway to the americas, i think los angeles comes pretty close to that, too, but miami, mr. speaker is the gateway to the americas and they're very ably represented by my colleague, ms. ros-lehtinen. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized. ms. ros-lehtinen: i thank the speaker and i thank the esteemed chairman of the rules committee for highlighting what a transformation colombia ha

mr. farr: thank you very much, mr. speaker. . mr. farr: thank you so much, mr. speaker, thank you for yielding. colombia is an important country to us. it has incredible potential. colombia is a big country, the 20th largest trade partner with the united states, it's our best ally in latin america, the first country to accept peace corps, allowed an air force base to be built in colombia, other cupries haven't allowed that. they are now fighting alongside us in afghanistan, help us with mexico and the drug cartels by teaching the mexican national police and military how to handle those drug cartels. it's the first country to adopt a labor action plan. let me speak to that. that labor action plan was adopted this year, april 11. you'll hear a lot of complaints, it hasn't moved fast enough. it's already organized deprosers into youngs in six months. it's the stroppingest labor plan ever adopted in the history of the united states trade agreements. that's not my opinion, that's the preponderance of the secretary of labor of this country, it's the opinion of the con

my friend, mr. farr, and i have sat together in the office of the fiss -- fiscalia in colombia, i yield myself an additional 15 seconds, we have sat and pain skingly, with several of our colleagues, decrats and republicans alike, we have gone through these pending cases to bring about a resolution on this issue and in just a few minutes i'm going to be yielding to my friend, mr. farr, to talk specifically about this and the challenges we had. with that, mr. speaker, i'm happy to yield a minute and a half to my very good friend, the chair of the committee on foreign affairs who represents what she calls the gateway to the americas, think los angeles comes pretty close to that, too, but miami, mr. speaker is the gateway to the americas and they're very ably represented by my colleague, ms. ros-lehtinen. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized. ms. ros-lehtinen: i thank the speaker and i thank the esteemed chairman of the rules committee for highlighting what a transformation colombia has made

mr. farr: thank you very much, mr. speaker. . mr. farr: thank you so much, mr. speaker, thank you for yielding. colombia is an important country to us. it has incredible potential. colombia is a big country, the 20th largest trade partner with the united states, it's our best ally in latin america, the first country to accept peace corps, allowed an air force base to be built in colombia, other cupries haven't allowed that. they are now fighting alongside us in afghanistan, help us with mexico and the drug cartels by teaching the mexican national police and military how to handle those drug cartels. it's the first country to adopt a labor action plan. let me speak to that. that labor action plan was adopted this year, april 11. you'll hear a lot of complaints, it hasn't moved fast enough. it's already organized deprosers into youngs in six months. it's the stroppingest labor plan ever adopted in the history of the united states trade agreements. that's not my opinion, that's the preponderance of the secretary of labor of this country, it's the opinion of the con

the chair recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. farr, for five minutes. mr. farr: thank you, madam speaker. thank you, madam speaker. i rise to talk about the war in afghanistan. we've been in afghanistan since 2001. what does that mean? i'll tell you what it means. it means 3,650 days of violence and suffering. it means 1,695 american lives lost. it means $454 billion added to our national deficit. it means that this war's got to end. it's time to apply the republican mantra cut, squeeze and trim to afghanistan war, because the cost is simply too high. also, we can't afford to lose another life in this war. we cannot afford to spend another dollar on it. and if our spending reflects our priorities, then we are' totally missing the point -- then we're totally missing the point. americans don't seek war. 59% of likely voters want u.s. troops brought home from afghanistan. but i tell you what americans do want. they want jobs. and if we took all the money we spent on the war we could have created almost a million education jobs, 780,000 health care jobs or 364,0