Sam Brownback

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on Senator Cornyn's time for up to 5 minutes, and I further ask unanimous consent that after I speak, the Senator from Illinois be recognized.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I also wish to inform and talk briefly to my colleagues about a major GAO study that is going to be out next week. It is about the bidding for the tankers for the U.S. Air Force. The GAO will announce the results of its review of the Air Force tanker contract next week. The GAO does not have authority to sustain or overturn the Air Force contract by itself. The GAO only reviews if and when the Air Force followed its own rules. Congress has the final say on this issue because only Congress can consider all of the relevant issues. Still, it is a major report that is going to be coming out on this issue. I have been very disappointed in the Air Force granting this tanker award to primarily a foreign builder, primarily to Airbus and EADS, which will build the biggest part of this tanker plane. I am disappointed for three major reasons: One is that I think the merits themselves of the contracting process were not followed by the Air Force. Second is the heavy subsidization by European governments of Airbus's plane. The base plane has had heavy subsidies of which the U.S. Government, by another arm--the U.S. Trade Representative's Office--is suing the European governments and Airbus and EADS, its parent corporation, for this. We are likely to see that case report out soon. Third, I think all the contractors should be subjected to the same rules, including things such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which U.S. companies are subject to, and I believe all foreign competitors and bidders should be as well. First, regarding the GAO, we need to look inside the process the Air Force used to award the contract. At the base of this, what is very puzzling to me is why the Air Force put so much stock in getting a bigger Airbus plane in this bidding process when they had been happy and desirous of the size of the plane Boeing had put forward. If they wanted a bigger plane, they should have put that forward in the bidding process. Plus, I put this forward: At a time when airlines are looking at the cost of running their airplanes and fuel costs, why is it that the Air Force would look at a bigger plane instead of a smaller plane that is more fuel efficient? That is what all the airlines are looking at. Why would we not look at the same thing? Plus, in looking at the bigger plane, I do not believe a realistic assessment of the military construction needs at the bases throughout the United States and the landing needs throughout the world has been looked at because you are going to have to increase landing space, you are going to have to increase hangar space for the larger airplane Airbus is putting forward. That is in the GAO report. On the foreign trade subsidies, the Air Force says it cannot consider foreign subsidies when it looks at the cost of contract proposals. As a result, the GAO will not review that issue either. But the United States is currently suing the European Union for subsidizing the same company to which the Air Force has awarded this new tanker contract. We expect that ruling on this WTO case very soon. We anticipate getting somewhere--if we win this case--a $4.5 billion judgment against Airbus and EADS for this same frame they are now being rewarded by the Air Force for with a $35 billion contract. So they subsidized the civilian aircraft, militarized it, and put it into the military building field. We sued them on this for an illegal international subsidy. We are giving them a contract here for $35 billion on the same subsidized plane. Only Congress can decide this issue, but I submit this is not the way we want to encourage other governments around the world to operate. Then a final issue is on foreign corrupt practices. The Air Force considers each bidder's ability to execute a major contract, but it cannot evaluate the business practices used by each company, and neither can the GAO. But all U.S.-based companies are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I submit we must require that same sort of performance. If a company is going to bid on a major U.S. military contract, they should be subjected to the same rules. I think this would be something that EADS, the parent corporation of Airbus, would be willing to be subjected to. We should require that they and other foreign companies compete for Defense contracts and hold themselves to the same standards we require of U.S. companies under this Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Again, the Air Force has not considered this piece in their overall analysis. The bottom line is I think this is a highly flawed contract on the basis of the military not following its own design requests of its smaller plane; second, the United States awarding a contract on a subsidized plane that was illegally subsidized; and third, that these companies are operating under different rules. A foreign company operated under a more favorable set of rules. I think the Congress should look at all of these issues and say this is not the way we want to go on these tankers. We want to build them in the United States. We want these jobs in the United States. We want the workers to be in the United States. We want the military industrial complex to be U.S. based and not foreign based. As a gentleman said to me some time ago: There are two things we shouldn't be dependent upon another country's government for, and that is for your defense and for your food. Here we are being subject to a foreign government's building of a major piece of our military complex. The tankers are something that extend the ability for us to be able to fly missions. They are critical to our air campaigns. We are going to be dependent upon primarily a foreign producer to be able to build these planes. I think that has untold problems--potential problems--for us down the road and it would be something it seems to me this Congress should take a very aggressive look at and say no, we don't want to go that route. The GAO report will come out next week. It is going to be a key issue in this overall decisionmaking process. Mr. President, I thank you and my colleagues for the time. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleagues' comments, from both Missouri and Georgia, and I agree on the energy issues. I have been traveling across all of Kansas, going to all 105 counties. I have been in nearly 70 so far, and the dominant issue by far is the price of energy. People want to get these prices down. The key to supply and demand is to get more supply as fast as we can. Work on demand as far as being conservation-minded but not to increase taxes. Increasing taxes--things such as a windfall profits tax--does not get you another drop of fuel. It only raises the price. I do not know of anything we have increased taxes on where you end up getting it for less price. It just does not work that way. So I support my colleagues' statements on that, and I hope the American people are looking at that issue and seeing that here is a way of increasing production but not raising taxes. What the Republicans have put forward is an increase-energy-production bill, and what the Democrats have put forward is an increase-energy-tax bill. I hope people can decide which of these will likely get them lower prices. It is production, it is not increasing taxes.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the Republican side?

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer for that recognition. I thank the Presiding Officer in this body for the chance to address an important topic. I am glad we are discussing important topics. It is important we get a chance to bring up these topics. I, similar to many people, have spent a lot of time with experts and a lot of time with people in my State talking about climate change issues and how we can address them. I do not know of any topic that I have actually probably met with more scientists on, more individuals about, than the climate change topic. It is enormous, it is important, and it is something we need to talk about and address. When traveling across Kansas--we have 105 counties in the State, and I have been to 57 of them now within the last 6 months, going to all 105 of them. We talk a lot about clean energy, and I talk about balancing the three Es--the energy, the environment, and the economy. We have to get these three Es balanced. They are like a cardboard piece balanced on a pencil. You can kind of tilt them a little bit, you can move it a little bit, but you cannot tank it one way or another. You have to move these three together. Most people across Kansas looking at the issue generally agree with that. I want a clean environment. I want a healthy economy. I want energy sources here at home, and I do not want to pay too much for them. Most people are complaining bitterly today, as well they should be, about the high price of energy. It is way too high: $4-a-gallon gasoline that people are having to pay. It is directly out of their pocketbooks. It is directly impacting their economy. We are a big energy-using State. We have a lot of manufacturing, agriculture. Diesel fuel is very important to us. It is well over $4 a gallon, getting up to $5 a gallon in some places. This is a very high- energy formula, and the last thing people want today is to increase the cost of energy. At the same time, they recognize we need to deal with the environment, and we have to grow this economy. So I wish to talk about this in the sense of those three Es, being able to balance those together. I think we can and we should do that. I read a paper recently that talked about the different waves of environmentalism. I thought it was quite good, and I think it is one this body should look at. The title of the paper was ``The End of Environmentalism.'' It was written by a couple of very strong environmentalists. They were talking about what needs to take place now. They were talking about the waves of environmentalism. They were saying the first wave of environmentalism, if I can paraphrase them appropriately, was a conservation wave. The second wave was a regulatory wave. The third wave, that we are in right now, is an investment wave. That is the way you move this forward, through investment and through technology and for us to invest heavily in that next wave of technology, to be able the balance these three Es I talked about--energy, the economy, and the environment. That is the real way forward. This bill does not get us going forward that way. The key for us to be able to do investment is to be able to have a very robust economy and for people to invest in these next-wave technologies, not to load additional costs onto the system. We can look at the cost of what they are today, and then you can look at the projected cost of what this bill would put on the American public and on the energy economy and, at the end of day, still not produce the sorts of results we need to have of strong key reductions in CO2 and, at the same time, maintaining the economy and giving us enough energy to be able to move forward. I would like to point out--and a number of my colleagues have already done this--what this bill will do on driving up the price of electricity. The Energy Information Administration predicts electric prices will be 64 percent higher in 2030 as a result of the bill, fuel prices 53 cents higher by 2030. Actually, I do not think anybody knows, other than they know it will be higher. But I think the biggest stat came yesterday, for me, from Western Resources. It is a utility in my hometown of Topeka, KS, that provides electricity through much of the State. They are saying, at a $20-a-ton cost for CO2, that is going to raise their fuel costs. It is going to more than double the cost of their fuel as compared to what they are looking at presently. We are getting the actual statistics. We are going to put that, later, in the Record. But this is going to be a dramatic increase in the price of electricity for people in Topeka, KS, and across my State. We are a strong coal user, using coal out of the Powder River Basin. I think, as we look forward to the future, the answer is not: No, we are not going to use particular types of energy. It is how you use energy and you reduce your CO2, how you build the next generation of coal-fired plants and reduce the CO2 footprint. A very innovative project is being put forward in the western part of my State. There is a coal-fired plant, where they take the C02 stream-- because we don't know how to do CO2 sequestration on a massive scale yet--they take that C02 stream and run it through algae reactors and have the algae harvest, of sorts, the CO2; and they are building in their biological photosynthesis process and then taking the algae and making biodiesel out of that. Yes, it is experimental, but it is on a large scale experimental, and it is the sort of thing we ought to be looking to for us to invest in that next wave of environmentalism, being an investment wave, to see if we can make these things work in the interim, where we do not know how we are going to be able to sequester, and we cannot drive up too fast the cost of energy because energy prices are so high right now and people are very sensitive to energy prices, as well they should be. We should be sensitive to their sensitivity of energy prices. I think the way we move this forward is with innovation and technology and investment rather than loading a lot of cost on a system that, at the end of the day, could well--and in all probability, from some of the projections, will have huge, substantial impacts and, indeed, may well have the adverse impact of driving things overseas. I think there is a lot in this bill that has unpredictable consequences other than, we know, an increased cost in the United States. That piece we do know about. But what will happen? How will industry react to this? Where will it go? We do know costs will go up for American consumers at a time when we can ill afford to do that; at a time when we would be better off taking those increased costs of investment and putting them into the next wave of technology. That is the route forward. That is the route to stabilize. That is the route to move us and to balance the three ``e''s in this process as we move forward. I am going to be putting forward different amendments and proposals to do just that; to see if we can put forward ideas, particularly in the agricultural sector, to help with carbon sequestration projects, to help with ethanol and biodiesel and wind and solar power, soybean and algae as an investment, as a way of storing it through a natural process, but not putting on a hard cap and trade that adds costs in the system. I think that is the sort of pioneering spirit--that is the sort of investment type of way--that we need to go forward. I am pleased that an amendment I am working on with Senators Stabenow and Crapo has the backing of the American Farm Bureau on a more robust effort on CO2 sequestration via agriculture. I think that is a key way we can move forward and have some success. Finally, I wish to note to my colleagues as well that we are woefully behind on getting judges approved for the circuit court. That was a subject that stalled this body yesterday and I predict to my colleagues that it is going to stall us a lot more if we don't start getting on track to increase the number and get to even a minimal number of circuit court nominees to be approved during the remainder of this Congress. We are at eight for this session of Congress. The low watermark was 15. We are not anywhere near close to getting that. It is a requirement of this body for us to be able to clear judges through who get nominated by the President, and then let's vote up or down one way or the other. Let's consider them and let's get a minimum number. We had an agreement for three by the Memorial Day break. One was approved. There are several highly qualified judges in the system. For us to be able to get our business done, if we are going to get it done, we have to get some of these circuit court judges approved. If we don't, it is going to stall the body and we are going to stall it a lot, until we can get circuit court judges approved in some minimal number. I know there is a lot of dispute about this. It is a need of this body. We need to do this and if we don't do it, things are going to slow down a lot. They are going to get jammed up a lot and it is going to be early and it is going to be very difficult for us to accomplish any other of our business. I urge the leadership to come together and let's say: Here is the number we can approve by this date, and let's get that done or there are going to be a lot of things that are going to stop happening in this body until we can get those approved. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a bill I introduced today: the Access, Compassion, Care and Ethics for Seriously-ill Patients Act, ACCESS, Act. I would like to thank the original Senate cosponsors: Senators Bob Casey, Norm Croleman, Arlen Specter and James Inhofe. I also especially thank Representative Dianne Watson who will be introducing the companion bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the current era, certain cancers and other chronic diseases touch the lives of almost every American. If you have had the experience of a family member or friend struggling with terminal illness, you were probably aware of their need and limited timeline to access promising treatments. Unfortunately, the current system often does not work for the benefit of terminally-ill patients--during emotionally-charged times, patients and their families may face regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles if they wish to access investigational treatment options in order to preserve their lives. Many terminally-ill patients exhaust their treatment options and do not qualify for a clinical trial. They also do not physically have months to wait for an individual investigational treatment application to be approved. In this day and age of scientific breakthroughs, we must embrace these advances and do so with a ``patient-centered'' mindset. Terminally-ill patients often reach a point where the potential benefits of these breakthrough treatments outweigh their inevitable risk of death from their disease. I introduced the ACCESS Act to offer these patients an ethical option--compassionate access to treatments that show promise earlier in the drug development process. The average time for a treatment to go through the entire FDA approval process is 15 years. As a result, the current system tends to benefit future generations of patients with life-threatening diseases, rather than patients of the present time. The ACCESS Act offers a new Compassionate Investigational Access approval system for treatments showing efficacy during clinical trials, for use by the seriously-ill patient population. Seriously-ill patients who have exhausted all alternatives and are seeking new treatment options, would be offered access to these treatments with the consent of their physician. This bill also improves upon the existing accelerated approval system, using a patient-centered framework. The ACCESS Act also makes a technical correction that will increase patient access to drugs used off-label to treat life-threatening diseases. I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting the ACCESS Act that would offer patients, with little hope, a chance at life.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a bill I introduced today: the Access, Compassion, Care and Ethics for Seriously-ill Patients Act, ACCESS, Act. I would like to thank the original Senate cosponsors: Senators Bob Casey, Norm Croleman, Arlen Specter and James Inhofe. I also especially thank Representative Dianne Watson who will be introducing the companion bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the current era, certain cancers and other chronic diseases touch the lives of almost every American. If you have had the experience of a family member or friend struggling with terminal illness, you were probably aware of their need and limited timeline to access promising treatments. Unfortunately, the current system often does not work for the benefit of terminally-ill patients--during emotionally-charged times, patients and their families may face regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles if they wish to access investigational treatment options in order to preserve their lives. Many terminally-ill patients exhaust their treatment options and do not qualify for a clinical trial. They also do not physically have months to wait for an individual investigational treatment application to be approved. In this day and age of scientific breakthroughs, we must embrace these advances and do so with a ``patient-centered'' mindset. Terminally-ill patients often reach a point where the potential benefits of these breakthrough treatments outweigh their inevitable risk of death from their disease. I introduced the ACCESS Act to offer these patients an ethical option--compassionate access to treatments that show promise earlier in the drug development process. The average time for a treatment to go through the entire FDA approval process is 15 years. As a result, the current system tends to benefit future generations of patients with life-threatening diseases, rather than patients of the present time. The ACCESS Act offers a new Compassionate Investigational Access approval system for treatments showing efficacy during clinical trials, for use by the seriously-ill patient population. Seriously-ill patients who have exhausted all alternatives and are seeking new treatment options, would be offered access to these treatments with the consent of their physician. This bill also improves upon the existing accelerated approval system, using a patient-centered framework. The ACCESS Act also makes a technical correction that will increase patient access to drugs used off-label to treat life-threatening diseases. I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting the ACCESS Act that would offer patients, with little hope, a chance at life.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to speak of my support for the conference report on the farm bill. I am delighted to follow my colleague, Senator Roberts, who supports the bill, who has served on the conference committee and has been a longtime worker and writer of farm bills. I think this is probably Senator Roberts' fifth or sixth farm bill. So I am delighted to follow in his wake here and to support the same farm bill. I wish to commend my colleagues, Senator Harkin and Senator Chambliss, for their leadership on this issue. I am proud to represent an agriculture State, along with Senator Roberts, and I am proud to represent Kansas producers and their interests here in Washington. I am proud to be here representing my dad and brother who are full-time farmers and people who both use the farm bill and swear at it from time to time as well, complaining about different of its provisions that are in the farm bill that hit them in an adverse way. Still, I think overall this is a good farm bill. I think some of the highlights of the farm bill are the expansion of ethanol and the cellulosic ethanol field. It is an area we are seeing now--with grain prices rising and people being concerned about the competition between food and fuel moving into cellulosic--that makes enormous sense, and I think it is clearly one of the ways of the future we need to go. The expansion of biobased products that is in the bill, the expansion of the conservation area in the bill, with a keen interest in the environment that continues to grow in the country in its importance and its importance to farmers--I think those are all highlights of the bill. I think weak aspects of the bill are its treatment, particularly in my State, toward wheat and sorghum producers. I think those are weak aspects of this bill. So I think, overall, as my colleague from Kansas said, we need to get some certainty of a bill done, and it is way past time for that to take place--way past time. The extensions that have been taking place are an insult to producers who have to have some form of planning on the horizon to be able to move forward. They do not just buy inputs on a whim. They have to have some planning on the horizon for buying fuels, for being able to buy fertilizers and chemicals, and, obviously, with us doing this in May, this spring planting season is over in many places and certainly in the waning weeks in others. We need to get this done. Much has been said about this farm bill. It has been well over 2 years in the making. I do not believe it is a perfect farm bill. No bill ever is. But I believe it is a bill we need to pass. My producers back home simply want a bill passed. That is what I continue to hear more and more: We just want to see a bill passed. They are tired of the constant wrangling back and forth, and they are not pleased with the commodity title that has been cut. Neither am I. But they would rather have the certainty that this bill represents than continue living under 1- or 2-week extensions. I would like to focus on reasons why I am supporting this farm bill. First--and one of the provisions noted by my colleague--the tax package attached to this bill has a lot of provisions my farmers and ranchers should be able to take advantage of. There are several programs and incentives for young and beginning farmers, as well as mandatory funding for rural micro-entrepreneurs. This is an issue I have been focused on for several years, along with my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan. We and many others have put forward the New Homestead Act, trying to target the outmigration from rural areas, and to cause and to help investment in rural communities, to help stem this tide of outmigration. While we have not been successful in passing that New Homestead Act yet, I am pleased that many of the initiatives in this farm bill are taken from or mirror those provisions in the New Homestead Act. I think they will help in the outmigration progress that is a big problem in my State, that is a big problem, I know, in the chairman's State, in Iowa, as well. Another piece of the tax package I am pleased is in this bill is the provisions to help Greensburg, KS, rebuild. My colleague from Kansas noted this is a town that was nearly wiped out. Ninety percent of the town was wiped out. The President has visited there twice. He most recently gave the commencement address at the high school, less than 2 weeks ago. It is heartening to see the heart of the people in rebuilding. You knew from when you saw Greensburg right after the tornado hit and when you met with the people that this town was coming back, that the will and the spirit of the people were there. They are building it back green. It is really fascinating to see the number of small-scale and large-scale windmills that are in the town, the number of green construction sites and buildings that are going up. They want this town to be green Greensburg, and they are doing it. It is a very interesting thing to see. I was visiting with the John Deere dealership there, and he was showing me all of the green features they are putting in. This will be the most environmentally sensitive John Deere dealership in the country. You can say: Well, I am not sure if that title means a whole lot, but it is going to be a model for dealerships around the country in the farm equipment business. They are excited about it, and I am excited for them. This bill contains tax provisions that my colleague from Kansas, Senator Roberts, has worked hard to get passed. They passed this body three times but have never made it into law. With this bill, they will become law and go into practice. I am also pleased there are several initiatives in this bill to develop the biofuels and biobased products. The agriculture industry is now a food, fiber, and fuels business. For years, this has been the dream of people in agriculture: to expand the base of the industry from food and fiber to food, fiber, and fuels. Well, that has now taken place. That is now here. You travel across my State, you travel across the chairman's State, and there have been enormous investments in ethanol and the expansion of that industry, and it has been a great industry. I realize recently a lot of people have taken to hitting at ethanol. I would ask them, when they go to the gas pump and they are filling up and they are looking at how high this price is, that they would consider that price would be 25 to 40 cents higher without ethanol. Do they want that? I would note as well that the price of corn is not the culprit on the rising food prices. It has had an impact, but quite modest for what people are experiencing, and it is keeping down your fuel prices in an ecologically sound way. I think we can expand that ecologically sound fashion with the cellulosic base. So I would hope in the future you would not only have a corn stream going into the ethanol plant but you would have a corn stover or fodder stream going into that same ethanol plant that would build and create ethanol out of both cellulose and out of the grain as well. That can happen with this title here. I think one of the key provisions is loan guarantees and a new production tax credit of $1.01 per gallon for cellulosic ethanol that will be available through December of 2012. I think this is a key provision and a very helpful provision in this bill. We have been able to make numerous everyday household items recently out of agricultural products. Not only do these products reduce our need for petroleum, they also provide a new market for farmers in rural areas to tap into. For instance, the Kansas Polymer Research Center at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburgh, KS, has been studying, developing, and patenting ways to use various soybean oils to replace petroleum products. The foam rubber in car seats now, they have a patent to be able to make that--and it is being made in some places or soon will be--out of soybean oil rather than out of oil products. They have come up with ways to use soybean oil to create new chairs, materials in carpet, and even green concrete. Now, the color of the concrete is not actually green, but it is using soybean oil providing a new market for our farmers and is up to four times stronger than regular concrete. I am pleased to see this is being supported in the bill. As I mentioned, I think cellulosic ethanol is one of the key titles of the bill. One of the Nation's first cellulosic ethanol plants is being built in Hugoton, KS. I am pleased it is there. I look forward to the further development of cellulosic ethanol, and this bill helps us get there. Finally, while it is not specifically legislated through this bill, it is my hope the USDA will hold ``New Uses Expos'' around the country to showcase these bio-based products that we clearly have been targeting the Congress to do and to expand with; that the marketplace can expand with, that this title does, that this bill does, and we need to show those products off in many places around this country and around the world as a further greening of the United States and the use of the agricultural industry in expanding its base. This simply makes sense. Not only is the Federal Government required to procure bio-based products when available and affordable, but these are the types of innovative ideas that we should be pushing our agricultural industry to further develop. We all want our farm economy to move toward a more market-based system, and these new uses provide us with that opportunity. In the livestock title, I would like to also add that I am pleased to see it is going to allow our livestock producers to produce for a market and not create artificial barriers so the producer cannot get closer to the consumer. There were provisions that were being suggested before that would block our producers, our livestock producers, particularly our beef producers in Kansas, from being able to get closer to the consumer and thus more of the consumer dollar back to the farmer. Those are not in here, and I am very pleased the livestock title does not contain those and has worked with the producers, the livestock producers, to help them out. These are just a few reasons I am supporting this bill. I think the circumstances have been very difficult, but I believe it is a bill worth supporting. I wish to congratulate the chairman and ranking member, Senator Chambliss, for their leadership on a very tough issue and on a tough farm bill, and it is time to get it passed. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum. Mr. President, I will withhold that for just a minute.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I appreciate hearing my colleague from Rhode Island. I am standing here thinking: Thank goodness we have ethanol. Without ethanol--we are supplying 8 percent of our fuel needs--it would drive up gasoline prices another 15 percent. I am certainly pleased we have that. We had a hearing in the Joint Economic Committee today on the price of corn and its impact on food prices. It is interesting from the standpoint that economists are putting it in front of us that a 40- percent increase in corn prices would only lead to a 1.3-percent increase in the price of food, and that is because corn goes into a whole bunch of different substances. Thankfully, with the corn-based ethanol we have, we are holding gasoline prices down approximately 15 percent. A Merrill Lynch analyst estimated oil and gasoline prices would be 15 percent higher, or $4.14 a gallon at today's prices, if biofuel producers weren't increasing their output. That is significant in this marketplace. Thankfully, we have that. I also note that on wheat prices something is significant in Kansas. We have had a fall of $4 a bushel in the price of wheat since January, from $12 a bushel to $8 a bushel. Plus, in a loaf of bread, you probably have 10 cents' worth of wheat. I hope they would say the farm is not the problem in the system. Our oil prices are high and we need to hold them down. Part of the answer to that is domestic production--more oil and gas production in the United States but also biofuels. That is not the reason I came to the floor to speak. It was a good use of time to be able to put that in the Record, though, because we are going to debate, apparently, the role of biofuels in the economy and around the world. I wanted to note it has a positive impact. Mr. President, I will speak on the FAA reauthorization bill. I thank the chairman and ranking member of the relevant committees for bringing to the floor a balanced FAA reauthorization bill. It takes into account the needs of the air traffic control system and pays for them and distributes that in a fair manner. I am not pleased we are not able to move the bill forward. I wish it wasn't loaded up with extraneous provisions but, rather, that it would stay with the FAA. I am particularly happy to see the bill contains no user fees for the general aviation industry. It would have placed an inordinate burden on what has been and continues to be a thriving American industry, a true domestic manufacturing success story. I might note to people here and those watching, we are recruiting for jobs. We need people in this industry. We have a number of manufacturing jobs in my State. I have traveled around and they are saying we need more people coming in to work. Some in Hays, KS, were telling me they need a thousand people for jobs they have. The aircraft industry is recruiting individuals and, hopefully, we can keep that moving forward with a good FAA reauthorization bill. I think it helps the industry further if you don't put a tax on the industry; it will hurt it. This is a domestic industry, and we need to take care of it. Importantly, however, this bill provides for the needed upgrade of our Nation's air traffic control system, which has been outdated for many years and the technology is outpaced by many countries around the world. That should not be the case. Aviation and manufacturing are very important to my State. We have five major aviation companies located there, including Cessna, Hawker Beechcraft, Bombardier Learjet, Spirit AeroSystems, and Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. The aviation industry has a huge ripple effect. Every manufacturing job created adds 2.9 other jobs. It is a vibrant industry that, for the first time this past year, exported more of its product than it sold domestically. This is the first time we have been able to do that. However, I wish to note some disturbing trends on things I think we need to attack so we don't lose this domestic industry. This is one that a lot of people in the world are trying to get a big piece of. Honda is coming into the aviation manufacturing sector, and others are coming into it. It has high-paying manufacturing jobs of a key product used around the world. In 1985, the United States produced 80 percent of the world's new aircraft. This past year, that number was down to 60 percent--from 80 to 60 percent. There is increasing competition, and I hope we can address this trend as we move forward. To that end, I intend to offer an amendment to the bill that would create a blue-ribbon commission of experts in aviation manufacturing to study the current trends in the industry and recommend ways in which we, as a Government, can respond to those trends and ensure the vibrancy of this important commercial sector. Parenthetically, one of the things we should not be doing is exporting our aviation defense jobs--such as sending the major tanker contract to Europe and to Airbus, rather than having it done in the United States. This is a major battle that will engulf this Congress-- whether that $40 billion contract, that the base plane should be an Airbus plane, made primarily in Europe, or if the base plane should be a plane primarily made in the United States. It is a key part of the long-term trends of this industry, and we are already losing a lot of that, even as the industry continues to do well and is exporting well. We are not maintaining the market share we have had internationally because the Europeans, through government subsidies, are buying into this, and other countries are following as well. I think as we look for what can help support our overall exports in our economy, aircraft sales can continue to be that. Presently, they provide a $56 billion trade surplus for our country. We sold $76 billion in airplanes and parts to foreign buyers. I think we need to watch and I think we need to be very aggressive to protect and see that this industry grows. One of the needed things is the FAA reauthorization program. We need a modern air traffic control system, and we need to have a fee structure that doesn't penalize general aviation. There is one final note. One of my colleagues from Missouri is talking about bringing up an amendment that I think would have some positive impact on a repair and maintenance program but would have in it some features--if it continues in the way I have seen it--that could harm our aviation industry domestically. If that amendment comes up, we are going to look very critically at it, with the possibility of putting forward second-degree amendments to make sure we don't unintentionally harm the domestic U.S. aviation industry. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, the guard told the story of a father, a mother, a son, and a daughter who were stripped naked and led into a room together. The room was made of glass, ten feet wide, nine feet long, and seven feet high. Leading into the glass room where the family stood was a metal injection tube. Outside the room, a group of scientists waited with pens and note pads. The guard recalls that the gas began to flow through the tube into the glass room. At first, the gas collected along the floor. The family stood together in the middle of the room. Then, as the cloud of gas rose from the floor of the chamber, the son and the daughter began to vomit and then to die. The mother and father tried to save them. They stood as high as they could to gasp the last clean breaths of their lives, to breathe that air into the lungs of their children, and to preserve their lives for a few more moments. Soon, the parents, too, began to vomit and die. One by one, all four succumbed and collapsed into the cloud of gas. Eventually, the father, the mother, the son, and the daughter all lay dead on the floor of the gas chamber. The story I have just told you did not happen decades ago in Nazi Germany. It happened recently, and there is every reason to believe that things just like it may continue to this day, perhaps at this very moment. They happened in a country with which our diplomats are talking about granting full diplomatic relations and all of the mercantile and diplomatic privileges of membership in the civilized world. This story happened to forgotten people, in a forgotten part of a forgotten country. You have probably never heard of it, yet it is the scene of crimes against humanity whose scale and depravity rival those of Mauthausen, Tuol Sleng, or Srebrenica. The place is called ``Camp 22.'' It lies in the far northeastern corner of North Korea. Camp 22 is not history than we can condemn from the safe distance of time. Yet too many of us refuse to confront it, perhaps because we are afraid that confronting the crimes of Camp 22 would also require us to confront its moral imperatives. We cannot say that we act according to our values when we invite mass murder into the community of civilization, with all of its diplomatic and mercantile privileges. It is to horrors like these that we must say ``never again,'' and mean it, and act. It is a massive place, perhaps hundreds of square miles in area. Former guards say that 50,000 men, women, and children are confined there. Camp 22 is a killing field where guards murder children for scavenging garbage to eat, where prisoners are publicly stoned to death and disemboweled, and where entire families are slaughtered for no more reason than to serve as examples for other prisoners. It is a place where torture, starvation, and disease kill 20 percent of the prisoners every year, and where children die because their parents are accused of thought crimes. Camp 22 is only one of an archipelago of concentration camps in North Korea. The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates that 400,000 people have been murdered in these camps. Survivor Kang Chol Hwan describes spending ten years in another camp, Camp 15, where each spring brought a grim new harvest of deaths from starvation and disease. The only people who have ever seen Camp 22 are its guards, its victims (none of whom has ever escaped), and the thousands of dead whose corpses and bones are strewn in its hills, fields, and ravines. Kim Jong Il's regime still denies that these camps exist. No foreigner has ever been permitted to go near them. Until North Korea allows us to go to the camps to prove or disprove these reports, we cannot know for certain what is happening there. Still, commercially available satellite imagery allows us to look upon Camp 22 for ourselves and verify what the survivors tell us in detail. Google Earth has made witnesses of us all. In these times, anyone with an Internet connection can look down into hell at Camp 22 and witness Holocaust Now. I would like to thank the Rev. Chun Ki Won, whom many have dubbed the ``Schindler of the East.'' Reverend Chun himself has led hundreds to safety and himself spent nearly nine months in a Chinese prison when he was caught trying to get into Mongolia with a group of refugees. The floor charts of satellite photos I am about to show were vetted by refugees, both victims and guards, he is in touch with in Korea and elsewhere. They identified the details of these gulags and confirmed their existence. I want to show you Camp 22 today. I want you to see its fence lines, its gates, and moats. I want you to see the huts where its prisoners live, the coal mines where men are worked to death, and the forests and fields where the dead are discarded. I want you to be haunted by these things when you consider how we should deal with Kim Jong Il's regime, and when you are deciding what kind of a country we will be. I ask that you hear what I have to say while there is still time to stop this, and before our government surrenders the last pressure it may have to stop it. In Camp 22, it is forbidden to mourn the dead. Mourning them will not bring them back, but it may save others who still suffer. Using Google Earth's highest resolution, it is possible to trace the camp's circumference perhaps hundreds of square miles. Unfortunately, only the western half of the camp can be seen in publicly available high-resolution imagery. The alleged gas chamber is outside of this area. Tracing the camp's boundaries is not difficult. The camp is surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences from which vegetation has been cleared away. The sharp corners in the fence lines make them impossible to confuse with roads. At regular intervals, there are guard towers or distinctive guard posts. In North Korea, fence lines like these are the distinctive mark of concentration camps, with a few exceptions, such as Kim Jong Il's palaces, and certain nuclear sites. For example, there is the fence line of Camp 14, the so-called ``life imprisonment zone'' at the headwaters of the Taedong River, from which no prisoner is supposed to leave, dead or alive. Another camp that can be identified by its fenceline is Camp 15, made infamous by Kang Chol Hwan in his gulag memoir, ``The Aquariums of Pyongyang.'' Kang was sent to that camp at the age of nine. It was not until his release 10 years later that he learned why he and his family were sent there. His grandfather had come under suspicion for having lived for many years in Japan. Kang and his family were arrested one night and taken to Camp 15 in accordance with the North Korean doctrine that class enemies must be rooted out for three generations. Former guard Kwon Hyuk claims that the fences around Camp 22 are 2\1/ 2\ meters high, and electrified with 3,300 volts of electricity. He also says the camp is surrounded by spiked moats in places. Photographs from Google Earth also reveal trenches, railroad gates, and guard posts. In some pictures, you can even make out what appear to be clusters of people in the camps. The farmers who live outside the gates of the camps cannot pretend not to know what goes on beyond the fence. One recent defector, who lived in this area, described living near Camp 22 to his English teacher, who wrote about them in the Washington Post. According to this young North Korean refugee, because food and alcohol are scarce in the countryside, the camp guards sometimes went to his house to drink, usually heavily. In their intoxication, the guards would confess to their sense of remorse. When American soldiers and news cameras reached the gates of Dachau in 1945, we and millions of men and women of conscience throughout the world made a simple, solemn promise: ``never again.'' Who among us today questions the righteousness of that promise? And who among us doubts that much of its meaning lies buried in the mass graves of Tuol Sleng, Rwanda, and Darfur? Why have we not done better? Perhaps the civilized world erred by making a promise it could not keep. We cannot solve all of the world's problems or suppress the worst impulses of humanity. Still, ``never again'' was, and is, a promise worth keeping if we read it as a promise, first, to speak the truth; second, to do no harm; and third, to find ways within our means to stay the hand of the murderer. We find ourselves in the possession of information not unlike that which was in our possession in 1943. Our government had aerial photographs of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald, too, and the accounts of the survivors were there for us to act on or disbelieve. Perhaps all of the evils of Camp 22 and these other camps are fictions. If that is so, let Kim Jong Il open them to the eyes of the world. Let him refute me and all of us who believe that it is beneath our nation to collaborate with evil of this depth. I am aware that some in Washington, including many in our State Department, would prefer to hear even less discussion of the atrocities in North Korea for the sake of a diplomatic process that has taken decades to get us nowhere. I was deeply ashamed this year when I read in the Washington Post of how our State Department's East Asia Bureau had tried to pressure the authors of this year's human rights country reports to airbrush the section on North Korea, invoking ``the Secretary's priority on the Six-Party talks'' and asking the authors to ``sacrifice a few adjectives for the cause.'' Perhaps this diplomat was guided by a sincere but mistaken belief that there will be time to deal with North Korea's atrocities when its disarmament is negotiated first. For those who are suffering and dying in these camps, this year, there may not be a next year. With all due respect to Secretary Rice, I have come to doubt that our State Department is as serious about ending these atrocities as it is about pretending that we have progressed toward disarming North Korea. Why, more than 3 years after this Congress unanimously passed the North Korean Human Rights Act, are American consulates in China and other countries still refusing to let North Korean refugees in their gates? Under Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who tells us that he intends to make human rights one of many issues to be addressed through a ``normalization working group'' within the six-party talks, now says that America can raise its objections to these atrocities ``in the context of two states that have diplomatic relations.'' Some of us had observed years ago that Ambassador Lefkowitz, our Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, has been sidelined and silenced. Recently, we watched with embarrassment how he was treated when he dared to make the obvious connection between Kim Jong Il's malice toward his own people and his malice toward us. After all, the basis of any negotiated disarmament or peace must be a shared interest in the preservation of human life. What does it tell us that Kim Jong Il holds human life in such low regard as to run places like Camp 22, and then lie so flagrantly as to deny its very existence? What lessons can we take from the fact that he left two and a half million North Koreans to starve to death while he expended his nation's depleted resources on nuclear weapons and luxuries for himself and the elites? What does it tell us that, according to multiple witnesses, this regime kills newborn babies of refugee women returned from China in the name of protecting North Korea's racial purity? Does this regime value human life including North Korean life--as we value it? If not, isn't it reasonable to conclude that neither a desire for peace nor good faith will motive Kim Jong Il to keep this latest agreement? And finally, what does it tell us that China, the guarantor of that agreement and host for the six-party talks, green-lighted North Korea's nuclear test in 2006? Or that it has just announced a new plan to undermine the U.N. sanctions that followed that test by letting the regime's officials hold accounts in Chinese banks, in Chinese currency? Or that it has flagrantly violated the U.N. Refugee Convention for years by offering bounties to people who catch and turn in North Korean refugees, so that it can string them together like fish on lines, with wires through their wrists and noses, as it leads them back to the death camps and firing squads? Or that it has bullied the UNHCR into refusing asylum to North Korean refugees? And what do we have to say about China's efforts to cleanse its territory of North Korean refugees to ensure that this year's Olympic games will be free of the wretched refuse of its tyrannical satellite? Do not misunderstand my words. I am certainly not advocating war. After all, if we wish to rid the world of this repellent regime, we need only stop sustaining it. Kim Jong Il has already ruined North Korea's economy. He cannot sustain his misrule without the cash he receives from other nations, through aid, trade, and crime. Recent reports by economists and NGO's tell us that North Korea's regime has never been in greater economic distress, and that it has lost even the capacity to feed its elite. As Kim Jong Il shows stubborn contempt for our diplomatic efforts, we must relearn the lesson that diplomacy only influences evil men when it is backed by pressure. In the case of North Korea, the threat of economic pressure will gain power in the coming months . . . but only if we do not throw it away. Nor do I fail to grasp that our idealism must sometimes find ways to conform to our immediate interests. But those who say that America should stand only for its pecuniary interests and abandon its values have forgotten how America built the treasures it now seeks to protect. We have always been a nation of ideas of values. What else unites us? We differ in our ethnicities, faiths, and even in the climates and cultures of our vast country's regions. If our values no longer guide us, we are nothing more than another color on the chessboard, and we have ceased to be a beacon for the world's hopes, a model for its development, and a magnet for its talents. What a tragedy that would be for a nation that, as De Tocqueville said, is great because it is good. I do not say that we are perfect; after all, our tendency to revel in our own imperfections has made our society far more just and good. And with greatness, and with goodness, come obligations to conform the pursuit of our interests to the pursuit of our values. Here is an occasion when our values and our interests both demand that Kim Jong Il be given a stark choice: transparency or extinction. Let us resolve that we will not allow Kim Jong Il to plunge North Korea into famine again this year. Let all nations of conscience join to deny the Kim Jong Il the means--through trade or unrestricted aid--to perpetuate his rule and his luxurious lifestyle while the North Korean people suffer and starve. America should stand ready to help the people of North Korea, if and only if we can verify that every last citizen, soldier, peasant, and prisoner--including the prisoners in Camp 22--can share equally in the aid we should offer generously. If Kim Jong Il refuses the just terms on which we must condition our assistance, then why should we extend the misery of his people by delaying his meeting with the ash heap of history? That is why I am resolved to oppose, to the last breath in my body, adding this country to the list of Kim Jong Il's benefactors and abettors until the prisoners of Camp 22 are fed, healed, housed, and freed.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Enzi, for his work, the chairman for his work, and I particularly recognize Senator Snowe. I know Dr. Francis Collins, head of our Human Genome Project, and the key thing he has talked about from the outset of it was the need for this type of legislation which Senator Snowe has championed for a long time. I am delighted to see it passing here. There is strong support for it. I want to particularly point out a provision in the bill that was added on the House side by Representative Bart Stupak from Michigan, that would prevent the use of genetic information from unborn children and children in the process of being adopted. We can see a situation where somebody would apply for work, a lady who is pregnant, the child has Down syndrome, and that information being used against her in being able to get employment. That is built within the bill and I am delighted that is in there so we do not have that type of discrimination taking place as well. I have spoken previously about the very real pressure that exists in these types of situations, where people get a Down syndrome designation and then the pressure in the system to abort the child. Senator Kennedy and I have a bill that I am hopeful we will be able to get passed on nondiscrimination taking place in these situations, getting more information out to the parents and an adoption registry of people who want to adopt Down syndrome children, who want to adopt children who have these difficulties. At the same time, I think we need to know that today there is a real tragedy on a massive scale going on in the country of genetic discrimination. That is happening today in this country. We know that, today, 90 percent of the women who are pregnant with Down syndrome children, once they get that genetic designation of the child, the child will not be allowed to live--90 percent is the level that is taking place there, of that genetic information and its use. The numbers are similarly high for prenatally diagnosed children with spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, and dwarfism. It has all been well documented by the American Journal of Medical Genetics and the journal Prenatal Diagnosis. So we have an increase in genetic testing, up to 120 different tests, and then a number of these children in this situation not being allowed to live. It is a bit personal with one of my staff members. Stacey Cervenka is here with me, who was born blind and is concerned that in the future our children are going to be prenatally diagnosed as being blind, deaf, and not allowed to get here. I do not think that is the kind of country we want to be in. That is why I am so happy this bill is passing, so we do not have genetic discrimination of people. I think it should extend to the full range of a lifetime of genetic discrimination. That is why I have offered a bill with Senator Kennedy to partially address this issue, the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act, to ensure families get the necessary information in these situations and also the connection to the help and support services they need. It also provides for national registry for those willing to adopt children with these conditions. We all should be concerned when one's genetic information is being used for discrimination. We know we are better than that as a society. The real question is whether every life at every stage and every place has that value and is worth protecting and fighting for. I think it is. I think we as a body believe that. One's genetic composition does not determine one's value. Those with disabilities have the same inherent human dignity and value as everyone else. Genetic discrimination against anyone is unacceptable, particularly those who are next generation, our children. I might add, as a close, that as reported this week, the Governor of Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin, gave birth to a child named Trig, who happens to be a Down syndrome child. I wish to share what she said on this occasion: Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testings he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed. What a great thought for all of us. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. This next picture is the Chungbong Coal Mine in Camp 22. I described Camp 22. It is over 400 square miles. Its main features are coal and forest mining. Ahn Myong Chol, a former guard and driver at Camp 22, described the working conditions in this mine. Prisoners work two shifts a day on meager rations. They are organized into five-person teams and are encouraged to earn rewards and supplement the starvation rations by informing on each other. Prisoners are beaten frequently, sometimes to death, and often for no reason at all. This is according to a former guard in Camp 22. They work in cramped, narrow shafts. Accidents and cave-ins kill many prisoners. Those who are injured are sent to a hospital without qualified staff or medical supplies, and they are essentially left to die. Others die of exhaustion as they try to meet daily quotas. Those who fail to meet the quotas are not fed. Now, there are dozens of these camps all over North Korea. I want to show you some locations of the various gulags that are known throughout North Korea. We now have corroborated reports from multiple sources of the kind of depravity that continues in these camps to this day. Why not, in our Six Party negotiations and talks that we have going on today, that one of our primary ``asks,'' along with dealing with the nuclear issue, be to shut the gulag system down? It is a very clear, a very specific ``ask.'' We have evidence from Google Earth. I believe we have much better satellite photographs that go into this in even more detail. There are hundreds of North Koreans who have fled now into South Korea, a few into this country, with evidence, who are speaking about this issue. So they know and can corroborate what we are seeing in the pictures. Why not confront the North Koreas with it on an equal par with the nuclear negotiations? I think to do this advances our cause overall. In the Soviet Union, when we were dealing with them on nuclear disarmament, one of the key things we asked for is, well, with the human rights agenda, put it up right there beside it. People are saying: Do not do that. You are going to upset the balance. But when you talk with the people who were in the prison system, and you hear their statements about it, they were saying that what gave them heart was they knew someone on the outside world was paying attention to them. It also delegitimized the Soviet Union because as long as you are going at the nuclear issue, the Government in North Korea says, ``They are just trying to disarm us.'' And ``They have got it, this is something that we as North Koreans deserve.'' But when you say: What about the Chungbong Coal Mine and the people dying there every day; what about Camp 22 where you are having people going into this all of the time but nobody ever comes out; if you raise that, it delegitimizes the regime, it makes them confront their own people about what they are doing. And that is a more powerful tool. Why would we not raise that? This was my question to our nominee. Why are we not raising that? It seems as if the desire to get something on the nuclear side is so much greater than that on the human rights side, that this one is set: OK, when we get the nuclear one dealt with, we will deal with this. But in the meantime, people are dying, a lot of them. And this goes on. It continues at a time when we would look at those things and say: My goodness, this is 2008. This does not go on in the world today. You have pictures. You can go on Google Earth and see it. I think we have to raise this issue. I think it is important in our negotiations for us to raise this issue. We have expressed our horror at what has taken place in various places around the world and said, ``never again.'' We have said it about concentration camps. Yet it is going on here and we have a negotiation and we are not even making it a major issue. So I believe we need to step up and we need to push this issue. The final point I would like to make about this is that the Chinese are complicit in this as well. They are the ones who could put the most pressure of any country in the world outside of Korea on the North Koreans. They are the ones who have the economic relations. They are the ones who are the protector of North Korea. When people escape out of one of these camps or try looking for food in China, they are caught by the Chinese and repatriated to an uncertain fate, likely death, often imprisonment, and they are sent back against the Chinese requirements of what they had signed in the U.N. Human Rights Commission Agreement in 1951, an agreement that China is a signatory of that says they will not send people back into a death camp situation or where their health would be challenged or would be likely harmed or that they would be killed. Clearly, that is taking place over there, and China continues to do it. So on top of what they are doing in Tibet and what they are doing in North Korea, on top of what they are doing in Sudan, enabling the Sudanese Government to continue this in Darfur and buying oil out of Sudan and backing reform in the United Nations, on top of that and pursuing resources out of the Congo, regardless of what sorts of abuses are taking place by the groups or the militias stealing the resources to take them out through China, regardless of what is taking place in Burma where the Chinese are blocking and supporting the Burmese and then they are pushing people out, the Korean people are being pushed into Thailand, but they are not citizens of Thailand so they are being trafficked from that point. The Chinese are the ones who are complicit in all of this. They are the great enabler of human rights abuses around the world today, in their own country and externally. They bear a huge responsibility for what is taking place today in North Korea. I hope this continues to be expressed and brought up--I plan to do so--prior to the Olympics this year, which should be a celebration of great athleticism. I believe it will be. But as China seeks to exploit this as a presentation of their coming forward in the world, I hope the world notices what else they are doing. They are hosting a grand Olympics, but they are hosting a greater catastrophe of human rights abuses in their country and around the world. Whether it is Tibetans or people in the house church movement, Falun Gong members being arrested, North Koreans, Burmese, Sudanese, Congolese, they lay at the doorstep of the Chinese. I think we need to confront this. I am hopeful the administration will address this. I know the President personally cares very deeply about human rights abuses in North Korea. He has met individually with people who have come out of North Korea. I talked directly with him about it. I don't think we are seeing the administration meet the President's greatest desires on addressing this issue. That is why I put a hold on Kathleen Stephens being Ambassador to the Republic of Korea until we begin to address these issues. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, Apr. 1, 2007] Escape From Dear Leader to My Classroom in Seoul (By Samuel Songhoon Lee) Seoul.-- At a small restaurant in late February, my student and I ate spicy noodle soup and stared at a huge TV showing the extravagant celebration of Kim Jong Il's 65th birthday in Pyongyang. Thousands of smiling people paraded across the North Korean capital and saluted their Dear Leader. ``I was once there,'' my student said. ``But even as I danced and smiled, I knew of a better life outside.'' She said this matter-of-factly and turned to stir her tea. Her search for that better life had brought her here, at age 13, to Seoul, and to my English class at a special school for young North Korean defectors. The school has more than two dozen students, members of a growing contingent of North Koreans who have deserted that communist country since famines in the mid-1990s killed more than 2 million people. According to South Korea's Ministry of Unification, 41 North Korean defectors arrived in South Korea in 1995. The number increased to 312 in 2000, and to 1,383 in 2005, many of them young people. It isn't easy for these young defectors to fit into South Korean schools and fill the gaps in their education. Most schools here don't offer transition courses on the differences in language and culture. But catching up with schoolwork is only one problem they face. In South Korea, a country that withstood centuries of invasions from its Chinese and Japanese neighbors, unity defines survival. And without ethnic diversity or a history of immigration, unity means conformity. When something becomes fashionable here, it can have significant consequences. For example, South Korea has the world's highest ratio of cosmetic surgeons to citizens, catering to the legions of girls who receive eyelid surgery as a present for their 16th birthday. This culture of unity and conformity is vastly different from the one I experienced growing up Korean American in New York, Denver and Seattle. The lack of diversity at school makes the young defectors instant standouts--subject to 15 minutes of fame and adulation, then an enduring period of isolation. When their peers ask about their accent--noticeably different from what's common in Seoul--most students say they're from Gangwon Province, in the northeastern part of the country. Facing ostracism from South Korean students, many young North Korean defectors drop out of school. According to a ministry report in 2005, 43 percent of young defectors were attending school, and 29 percent had dropped out of middle and high schools. Almost half of the 198 young defectors still attending school said that they hid their background from classmates, according to a survey by the National Human Rights Commission. ``Don't expect them to be like us just because they look Korean and speak Korean,'' the principal told me on the orientation day for volunteer teachers at School 34, an independent school for defectors. ``Treat them like foreigners, but with respect.'' I was assigned to teach two English classes to students ages 15 to 27. When I introduced myself, they were as puzzled and curious about me as I was about them. An oversized Korean American with big Sony headphones--was I really one of them? Taking the principal's advice, I made it clear from the start that I was not, and that I probably could not understand the obstacles they had to overcome to reach the free world. Many feel deeply betrayed by Kim and the propaganda they were forced to learn. But they have achieved a surprising distance from their painful past. They share memories--which include watching public executions and boiling grass to eat in times of famine--as if they were reciting folk tales with a sense of wonder and humor. Among my students, one young man stood out because of his motivation to learn English. His family is still in North Korea, and he wants to earn the $15,000 in payoffs it would take to get them to Seoul. Numerous underground railroads established by brokers in China make rescuing family members from North Korea possible, he told me--if one has the money. ``I can work hard for two years and make that money. But I will lag behind in my study. Then what can I do even if my family were to come here?'' he said. In North Korea, he knew exactly what he wanted to do: become an officer in the North Korean army. He dreamed of killing as many Americans and South Koreans as he could. In his childhood home, a framed photo of his grandfather and Kim was prominently displayed on the living room wall. His family was part of North Korea's small and reclusive elite society, and he would have marched off as an army lieutenant if he hadn't received a black-market Sony Walkman for his 15th birthday and listened to forbidden South Korean radio frequencies. Late at night, muffling the scratchy signal so as not to get caught, he tuned in to the news, learning that much of what he was taught all day in school was a lie. ``We learned that the Americans were constantly trying to invade us. But from the South Korean news, I learned that it was the other way around. But my classmates truly believed in what we were learning. They were like robots.'' When he graduated from high school and was ordered to serve 13 years in the military, he decided to defect. His father bribed the North Korean border patrolmen, who took him to China. Because the Chinese government regularly repatriated North Korean refugees, South Korean missionaries took him to Myanmar, where Seoul's consulate prepared the papers for his final journey to South Korea. Soon after arriving in Seoul, he found School 34 and a community of others like him. Most students were too poor to have bribed their way out. Instead, they had braved often frigid waters to swim across the Tumen River to China. Another student, a good-humored young woman, lost her parents to starvation before she turned 11. To survive, she said, she crossed the Tumen many times to obtain food and other goods in China that she could sell on North Korea's widespread black market. When she defected, she went as far as Xinyang, in China's southeastern Henan Province. Discovered by Chinese agents, she was repatriated and served six months in prison. She was 13 at the time. After being released, she swam across the river again and this time she stayed in China, begging for food. Eventually, missionaries helped her get to Seoul. One recent School 34 graduate is now studying at Sungkyunkwan University, one of the nation's top colleges. He grew up a few minutes away from one of North Korea's most notorious political prisons, Prison 22 in Hyeryung, Ham-Kyung Province, at the northern tip of North Korea. Because food and alcohol are scarce in the countryside, the prison guards went to his house for libations. ``They always drank heavily,'' he told me. ``And when they got drunk, they would mumble about how sorry they felt for what they did to prisoners.'' Despite his rare glimpse of the prison guards and knowledge of what they did, my student says he finds it difficult to raise awareness about the little-known gulags of North Korea among his classmates in Seoul. Most do not care, he says. Or worse, they take a pro-North Korea stance. President Roh Moo Hyun has been passionately calling for the ouster of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, and a wave of anti- American sentiment is sweeping across college campuses. After eight years of the dubious ``sunshine policy,'' which advocated engagement with rather than containment of the communist north, South Korean public sentiment favors neglecting thousands of North Korean refugees in China and pouring cash and aid into Pyongyang, even with Kim's apparent nuclear ambitions. ``Back in North Korea, we learned to hate and fear America,'' a 17-year-old student who attended middle school in North Korea told me one recent afternoon over sodas at McDonald's. His father was once responsible for importing and distributing Soviet arms to the North Korean army. But he defected to South Korea two years ago after his father was purged. ``Now, I've realized that all I learned was a series of lies,'' he said, taking a bite of his Big Mac. ``I wish my friends back in North Korea could eat this one day.'' We left McDonald's shortly and went back to School 34 to study English.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for recognizing me and allowing me to speak this evening before we close down. I want to put before the body a situation that is happening right now in North Korea. I put a hold on our nominee to be the Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea. I want to explain why I am doing that. I want to show why I am doing that. Then I want to raise some issues on human rights and why we need to be a lot more involved and pushy about what is taking place in North Korea. I was encouraged last week in a meeting I had with the new President of South Korea, Mr. Lee Myung Bak, at a meeting hosted by the Senate leadership. I was encouraged to hear his interest in dealing with the human rights situation--or lack thereof, of human rights--in North Korea. He is going to be more willing to work with us than the last Korean administration in South Korea. I was pleased to see his willingness to work with us and support us on the nuclear negotiations in which the Korean Peninsula would be a nuclear-free zone--although that is not the case. We have seen what North Korea has done in their willingness to proliferate. I told the President of South Korea--and he agreed--we must see real and verified results with the North Korean regime, not only on nuclear activities but also on the issue of human rights. We are not seeing either. We are not seeing real and verifiable results on what they are doing in the nuclear development category. We are certainly not seeing it in the human rights category. Without transparent improvement in human rights, and I believe the same on the nuclear issues as well, I told him the establishment of diplomatic relations would condone crimes against humanity on a massive scale. Without transparent distribution of humanitarian aid from the United States and outside world into North Korea, this aid would be used as a weapon of oppression and diverted from those in greatest need to those elites who get the most under the system. These statements I made to him were well received, which is a change from the prior administration which sought a different policy toward North Korea, one they wanted to engage but certainly not address on these human rights and nuclear issues. I met with our nominee to be the Ambassador to South Korea. I met with her twice. In two meetings with Ms. Stephens, the nominee, I gave her every opportunity to explain to me why she should be our next Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea and how she would address the human rights issues. She is certainly a qualified individual, spending her adult career in the State Department and international work. She is a highly qualified individual. Yet on how we are going to and if we are going to positively address the human rights concern and address it on a high scale--to where it is one of the top issues we are dealing with, not just one that, well, once we deal with these others we will talk about human rights or we might bring it up--I did not get satisfactory answers from her, nor did I get those even from Secretary Rice, for whom I have great admiration, a week later, after my meetings with the nominee. I asked her in the Senate Foreign Operations Appropriations hearing what specific ``asks'' we are making of North Korea on the human rights agenda. She didn't say that we had particular items. Now maybe there are ones she is willing to identify. One I asked her specifically about is why don't we ask the North Koreans to shut down the gulags, the political prisoner camps which I am going to showcase here. Why don't we ask them to shut those down as an ``ask,'' putting those on the table? I didn't get a response. We are now approaching 4 years since the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. I was willing to give the State Department and other agencies time to implement the act. I was willing to give those implementing the law, which included Ms. Stephens, our nominee to be the Ambassador to South Korea, the benefit of the doubt. I was willing to wait to see if the Department of State negotiators would be willing to confront the North Koreans regarding their human rights abuses. I wanted to see how much priority they would give to addressing the trafficking along the border between North Korea and China. Today I met with a number of refugees from North Korea. If a woman crosses over that border looking for food in China, 100 percent are trafficked--they are caught and sold. That is taking place on that border today. I wanted to see if we would give priority to the trafficking issues or gain accession to the gulags that dot the country or ensure the food aid would be strictly monitored. I am still waiting, as are many other individuals and groups working on North Korean issues, but my wait is not significant, nor is their wait. The 23 million North Koreans who are waiting are the ones who are dying. Many are desperately waiting in the gulags. I would like to show you these pictures today. These pictures are from Google Earth. Google has made a witness of all of us, to no longer deny that these things exist and say they are classified photographs. You can go on Google Earth and look these up. The existence of these camps and the specific details have been confirmed by North Korean defectors living in South Korea. Some are guards, others former prisoners in some camps that they were able to get out of. I would like to thank, in particular, Rev. Chun Ki Won for his assistance. We now have no excuse for ignoring the truth of what many believe is a holocaust that is occurring in North Korea today. The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea believes that 400,000 have already died in these camps alone--400,000 have died in these camps alone according to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. If you listen to the defectors' stories, as I have done on several occasions, the scale and depravity of the crimes that are committed in these camps rival those done by Pol Pot in Cambodia and even by the Nazis. Too many of us refuse to confront this issue. Maybe we are afraid that confronting the atrocities of these camps would also require us to confront its urgent moral imperatives. The first photo here is of Camp 22 where chemical experiments are alleged to have occurred. Camp 22 is in this picture. It is a huge concentration camp. It is over 400 square miles in size, a concentration camp. No known prisoner has ever left the camp. The information we have has been from guards who have defected. No prisoner has been known to get out of this camp alive. The guards we contacted were able to identify its electric fences and moats. They were able to point out the huts where its prisoners live, the coal mines where men are worked to death, and the forests and fields where the dead are not buried, they are discarded. Former guard Kwon Hyuk claims the fences around Camp 22 are about 2.5 meters high and electrified with 3,300 volts of electricity. He also says the camp is surrounded by land mines and spiked moats. If you look carefully at the center of this next picture, of the courtyard at the middle of the guard station, you will see what appears to be a group of people coming in. This is the entry gate--a group of people going in to whatever fate we do not know. Outside the gates, life for North Koreans, such as it is, goes on. This year is said to be an especially difficult one in this part of North Korea, but the farmers outside the gate are still luckier than those inside. Farmers cannot pretend not to know what goes on beyond the fence. One recent defector who lived just outside Camp 22 told his American English teacher how the guards from his camp would come to his house and search for scarce food and alcohol, and how drunken guards would confess remorsefully to the cruelties they inflicted on the prisoners. The teacher published his recollection in the Washington Post last year, which I ask unanimous consent be made part of the Record and printed at the end of my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in saying that this is the time for us to move. I am delighted to see the majority leader and the majority whip here on the floor as well, to talk, because there is a practical effect of what is soon to take place around here if we don't start moving judges soon, and specifically circuit court judges. This is something I don't want to see taking place, but I think you heard from the Senator from Pennsylvania--a respected, open-minded Member of this body--that if we do not start approving some circuit court judges in some significant numbers--I think my colleague from Arizona mentioned hitting some of the historic averages, or at least getting close to it--I think you are going to see people start to jam the body down and say that unless we start approving some circuit court judges, business is not going to happen around here. I think people will understand why. Circuit court judges are positions that are significant, that are long lasting, that are needed, and yet nominees are not being approved. Why are they not being approved? We have qualified nominees who are in the queue who have been waiting for a long period of time. I have one to talk about here, Judge Robert Conrad in the Fourth Circuit. The seat to which he has been nominated is a judicial emergency. We have a third of the positions on the Fourth Circuit that are open. It is a judicial emergency. His nomination is supported by both home State Senators. They want this position. In North Carolina, Senator Burr and Senator Dole both support this nominee. He is highly qualified. The ABA says this is a highly qualified nominee, meeting their highest standard of ``unanimously well-qualified.'' This is an individual who has been previously approved by this body for a Federal judgeship, and has now been nominated to move from the Federal district court bench to the circuit court bench. It is a judicial emergency. Yet Judge Conrad's nomination languishes and has languished for over 250 days. I think clearly what we are setting up right now is for not much to happen in the Senate. I think what you are going to see starting to take place--and we are serving notice here today, if we do not start moving these nominees at some regular pace--qualified people who fit the criteria, who should move on through, business is going to slow down in this body. It may come to a complete standstill if we do not start getting some judges. We should not go that route. I urge my colleagues, I urge the chairman of the committee and the ranking member, to sit down and say: OK, what can we work out on circuit court judges? District court judges? What can we get worked out so the business of the Senate can move forward? Without that, things are going to slow down here. Things are not going to get done. It is going to be because we are not getting anywhere close to reasonable numbers of circuit court judges approved. I want to say that clearly. That is where this is all headed. The majority party can choose to go that route. That is what is going to end up taking place. It is going to be about judges. We are going to have a big debate then across the country on that. Meanwhile, the whole Nation wants us to get work done and we are not getting it done because judges are not being approved. I hope the majority party would sit up and say we are going to approve this many, that many, we are going to get these moving through in some reasonable fashion so the body can do its job. Judge Conrad is one of those who deserves a hearing. If there are challenges to him on the basis that we don't think he is qualified, we don't like what he said here or there--fine, hold a hearing so we can get those out in the air. Clearly, if we do not start moving some judges in reasonable numbers, you are going to start seeing this body start to not move much through, as we begin to protest not getting judges approved. We should not go that route. I hope we do not have to. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for the utmost urgency of recognizing the University of Kansas basketball team's accomplishments last night.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I am delighted my colleagues granted me this special privilege to speak as in morning business on something so important. This is a bit personal if you are a Kansan. The sport of basketball was invented in Kansas by James Naismith in 1891, and last night it was perfected by the University of Kansas basketball team. I don't know how many people got to watch it. What a fabulous game. I was able to be there, which was a great delight. It went into an overtime game with less than 3 seconds to play and a three-point shot by Mario Chalmers sent it into overtime. It was a classic of college basketball. The whole place was in pandemonium. There were great teams on both sides--Memphis and KU--playing this game. At the end of the day, Kansas came out with a victory. It was a fantastic night. I congratulate the NCAA on the Final Four and the tournament. I think they do a spectacular job of bringing people together and having a great venue. This game was in San Antonio last night, a fantastic celebration of amateur athletics. These players are phenomenal in all they can do. It is certainly a great day to be a Kansan, a great day to be a Jayhawk. My law school degree is from the University of Kansas. It is a great basketball school, with four national championships, one added last night. They have a great tradition of basketball at the school. I think we have one of the best mascots in the country, the jayhawk, which most people would recognize, being at the University of Kansas, but not knowing what it is. It has a civil war legacy in the fight over slavery, where Kansas was the State that started the fight on slavery, being settled by abolitionists. One of the things the proslavery forces were calling Kansas was jayhawkers, in a derisive way, but that then became a symbol much for the State and for the University of Kansas. I like the heritage of that symbol as well. Twenty years ago was the last time we won a basketball championship. That one was Danny Manning and ``the miracles.'' He was a guy who went on to play very well at the professional level. Danny Manning is now coach at the University of Kansas. I can't name anybody else on that team, but he was one who carried them forward. Last night was a great team effort by a balanced team. I recognize as well coach Bill Self. This was his first Final Four, and he wins it. Along the way, he beat a rival school in basketball for Kansas. In North Carolina, there has been a long connection between North Carolina and Kansas. Dean Smith, a long-time coach at North Carolina, was from Kansas. Roy Williams, a long-time coach at Kansas, was from North Carolina. There were a number of people in Kansas, in my State, who were not particularly forgiving of Roy Williams going back to North Carolina even though he had given us a number of good years. I think on Saturday there was a lot of forgiveness. This was the first match between Kansas and North Carolina since he had left Kansas, and we were fortunate enough to be successful in that game. It was a great tournament overall. As a wise sportsman famously said: ``It's never over until it's over,'' especially if Mario Chalmers has one more shot to take. Sometimes big games are disappointments, but last night was certainly not the case, as the Nation was treated to a classic in college basketball. From James Naismith, as I mentioned, who invented the game in 1891, to the Kansas Jayhawks of 2008 that perfected the game, our school has had a great history and a great legacy of basketball. Through players like Wilt Chamberlain and Danny Manning, KU now has 13 Final Four appearances and 3 national championships. It is fantastic what they have been able to accomplish. Again, congratulations to the University of Kansas men's basketball team for a great season, for a thrilling championship game, for writing another amazing chapter in the storied history of Jayhawk basketball. And what goes along with that rich tradition is a number of different chants, but the one that has the most lasting memory with Jayhawkers is ``Rock Chalk, Jayhawk,'' which we don't get to say on the Senate floor very often. Congratulations to a fabulous team and a fabulous effort. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I thank my colleague from Louisiana. I appreciate the information she has put forward. I will certainly be looking at it and considering it. I am delighted we are on the housing bill. Chairman Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, who was in front of the Joint Economic Committee yesterday, I thought did a nice job testifying. There are lot of interesting things going on as to what he was talking about taking place. But he was saying the primary thing to watch in the economy right now is housing, the price of housing, it is holding or declining--it is declining in a number of key areas--but to watch that marketplace because that is the linchpin issue. He urged Congress to act on housing. So I am delighted we have this bill up. I am delighted we have a bipartisan bill that I can look at and say a number of the provisions look pretty good. We do not try to get too one-sided one way or the other so it gets held up. Because this is something we need to act on. I think it would be a good confidence builder for the housing market across the country if we can get something through here, through the House, and signed by the President. Having confidence is a key part of the marketplace. Confidence is a key part of what they did on the Bear Stearns bailout. He said a year ago they probably would not have done it. A year from now, they probably would not do it. But right now things are too shaky and it could cause things to crumble. The key piece to watch is housing. So it is good we are working on this legislation. It is good we are working in a bipartisan fashion. I will be filing an amendment that I think can be very helpful in the pay-fors on this because we need to pay for this. We are in a difficult budgetary situation, so we have a commission bill to look at all spending within HUD and within Treasury and to make recommendations for programs to be eliminated and then requiring a vote of Congress, up or down, whether to eliminate these programs and then use those funds to pay for some of the efforts that are taking place here. I think this is the sort of thing we ought to look at and the sort of thing we ought to do in paying for this because nobody wants the deficit to go up further. I think that is everybody's objective. So we are going to be putting forward that amendment and at the appropriate time bring that up. One of the key things we need to look at and to do on this is something every physician in the United States does when they become a physician. They take an oath. We take an oath of office. We swear to uphold and abide by the Constitution. A physician takes an oath. It is a very simple, very old oath. I think it is a very good one for legislating as well. The oath is very simple. It is, ``First, do no harm.'' That is the first premise that you operate on: ``First, do no harm.'' I appreciate the amendment my colleague from Illinois has up on the restructuring of loans within bankruptcy, cramdown provisions on residential homes people own. I understand the provision. As to my background in the law practice I had, such as it was--I am not bragging about a fabulous law practice; it was a pretty simple pedestrian law practice in Manhattan, KS--we did bankruptcies and we had provisions similar to these in other areas. They were not existing on the loans. So I think I have some familiarity with the impact of this. I believe this one violates the oath of: ``First, do no harm.'' I know my colleague from Illinois has all the right intentions, and I have worked closely with him on a number of issues. He is a very successful, able legislator. I believe this one violates that oath of: ``First, do no harm.'' I say that advisedly. A number of people looking at this believe this provision, if added to this bill and becoming the law of the United States, will drive up mortgage interest rates on residential homes 1 to 2 percent because it introduces a degree of uncertainty. Markets do not like uncertainty, so they factor in for uncertainty. It is believed this would increase mortgage interest rates 1 to 2 percent. I think there could be some fluff in that number. It could be low, initially. Typically, as well, markets will look at things, and at first they will factor more risk in until they have had some practice with this and seen how it hits in the numbers. So maybe over a period of time it would not have as much of an impact. But earlier on it could have more of an impact. Right at the point in time when we are trying to stimulate the housing market, you up your mortgage interest rates on your primary residence 1 to 2 percent, possibly more, because early on the market has not factored in: What will this actually do? The other thing it could well do on top of increasing interest rates is reduce the number of people who could borrow to buy a home. In fact, in 1978 Congress specifically barred cramdown on primary residences to keep interest rates low for primary homes and to ensure that lenders provide credit to low-income borrowers. As many people are in a low- income situation, a more fragile economic situation, if things go south for them on a set of items, they have no choice but to pursue bankruptcy. So now then you introduce another set of risk factors on low-income individuals where it is going to make it harder for them to get a mortgage to buy a home. We want people to be able to buy homes. We want particularly low- income individuals to be able to buy homes. If we introduce another factor of uncertainty that is going to drive interest rates up, it could well end up working out that a low-income individual will have their interest rates driven up even more than the 1 to 2 percent, as the factors for risk are built into it. Again, I add, these are things that are unknown. I have groups that are saying this is indeed the case. I don't think we particularly know on this provision. But you are introducing that period of uncertainty with it. If I could say to my colleague: I know you have talked a long time and you know this issue very well; I wish to finish my statement and then I am happy to take questions or comments, because I know there will be extensive rebuttal taking place on it. I am talking about my experience. I am talking about what I believe will happen in this marketplace. I know it is intended to have a positive effect, but I think it violates this first ``do no harm'' provision. I wish to add some other comments. What we are trying to do here is to stimulate a housing market, not introduce factors of risk into the housing market. We have a good bipartisan proposal that is being put on the floor by Senators Dodd and Shelby, two senior Members of this body who have seen a lot and who have worked on a lot. I think our wisest course at this point in time would be to work together on those provisions where we can get bipartisan support rather than introducing factors that are highly likely to slow down a bill. We need to encourage the market by showing an ability to work together. This amendment, I believe, will be highly controversial and will continue to have the effect of slowing this bill down. The amendment would actually create an ability for unsecured creditors as well of an individual, to reduce their exposure, at the expense of a mortgageholder in consumer bankruptcy proceedings. I think this is an unintended consequence, but it is a consequence of it. This would be bad policy. This was considered in 1978. We want these mortgages to have as low a rate as we possibly can. Potentially 4.5 million Americans could be priced out of the housing market for every 1 percent increase in mortgages. That is according to home builders. They are saying that. So if you have a 2-percent increase, you are looking at the possibility of keeping 9 million Americans priced out of the housing market at a time when we want them in the housing market. That is not going in the right direction. Having said all of that, I think there are people who could look at this another way. Indeed, I asked Chairman Bernanke about this particular provision, because he said we ought to do work on the housing market. I asked him about this particular provision and he did not take a stance on it. He just said he didn't take a stance on prior bankruptcy reform. He said there are arguments on both sides. So I recognize arguments on the other side. I have used cramdown provisions in other bankruptcy settings, in business settings. It does introduce a factor of risk. It does allow restructuring to take place. I think where we are right now, with his statements and with our ability to move a piece of legislation, the key thing we should do is to get the base legislation moving forward, add things where we can get broad bipartisan support, not introduce more risk into the marketplace and possibly limit mortgageholders. I am presuming my colleague from Illinois has facts he is putting forward which say this is not going to take place. I think it is too much of a possibility that it will take place, and that it will first do harm. For those reasons, with all due respect to its supporters, I don't think this is a wise provision. Of course, I don't think this is the time for us to do it. I think we ought to spend a lot more time studying and thinking about this. I believe this is not the bill for this amendment, and I object to the Durbin amendment.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, if I could respond to my colleague through the Chair, again in my limited background--I have actually taught agricultural law and written a book on it. It is not very good. I doubt my colleague has read it. I would recommend this chapter of it for him if he wishes to read it. In the provisions that were done at that time before either of us were in the Senate, what you were doing was taking business bankruptcy reorganizations and allowing for farm application because it was a different business type of setting that was taking place. It did introduce risks that are even still factored in today, because this is a provision that is allowed within it. Now, as I mentioned earlier, over a period of time as markets get adjusted to these, they say: Well, OK, this factor is only going to happen in this series of cases. Or they looked at lower end income clients and they said this is a more likely situation where we are going to see this taking place. Therefore, we are not going to loan to this guy, or it only goes to a bank that is willing to get into a more aggressive loan position and is desirous to do it. So it does have those impacts. But what you were doing with that chapter reorganization during the farm crisis was taking a business reorganization and allowing for the differences in agriculture which are substantial. Now you are getting into the basic housing market with this. This isn't a business reorganization; this is a housing market issue, and you are introducing the very factors I talk about--in a limited fashion; I appreciate that greatly. I think it is less harmful potentially than the original design of the Durbin amendment. I appreciate your heart on it. It is going to have an introduction of factors of uncertainty and will drive interest rates up, and it will drive lenders out in this situation. That is what will happen. I don't think we should go that route.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I am happy to yield.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, responding to my colleague through the Chair, a couple of things. I appreciate that the Senator has narrowed this down from when he started, because he started with a much broader amendment; no question about it. I think what the Senator has done is advisable and good. The base of the concern remains then the same, that now you have narrowed this in on a smaller class that you are going to raise the interest rates on because of the uncertainty that is going to be conducted there, or the likelihood of this having impacts on the mortgage marketplace and reducing their ability to get these houses on the market, which could further depress the prices on those houses. I think this is first do no harm. I appreciate that the Senator has narrowed this and he has narrowed it substantially. I would also point out--and it was 1978 when we did the overall--we took up bankruptcy reform. We did that within the last 5 or 6 years where we had broad bankruptcy reform, and this sort of provision could have come forward in that bankruptcy reform at that point in time. I voted against that bankruptcy reform. I didn't think that overall was the way to go and that again was based on the experience I had in dealing with bankruptcy. I appreciate the Senator's efforts. I think the basic issue he is introducing here continues to be the same even if it is within a narrow marketplace.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Yes.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I would like a recorded vote. We have done this by voice, and I think it is time to really seriously consider it and see where Members are on this issue. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4284 and ask for its immediate consideration.