Sam Brownback

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I agreed to this unanimous consent request to try to move this somewhat forward. I do believe this has been a healthy debate. It has been a good thing for us to discuss what took place in North Korea. It has been a good thing for us to discuss human rights. Anytime we can do that I think it is a good thing for us to discuss that setting, moving into Iraq and the human rights concerns there. I do want to address a few things the Senator from Massachusetts raised. One is on the North Korean Human Rights Act. I was the author of that bill. I know that bill. I worked to get that bill through. I pushed hard to get it through. One of the provisions in that bill was $20 million authorized under the North Korean Human Rights Act for use of the North Korean Human Rights Act and to resettle refugees from North Korea in the United States and for a number of other issues. The administration has not requested a single dime under that authorization. It didn't ask for a single appropriation. So the idea that we have implemented the North Korean Human Rights Act when no money was requested underneath that, I guess I am impressed that could take place. I hope the Government can do that well in many other areas, where they do not ask for any money and then they fully comply with an act. I do not think the act was fully complied with. I stated that specifically here on the Record, the places I do not believe it was complied with. We are digging up right now how many people have been resettled in the United States under this North Korea Human Rights Act. It is a very small number--in the dozens at most. There is a lot of hesitation, hiccups taking place. The State Department is not pushing or working with this. A number of these refugees could have been resettled here by communities in the United States. This is actually one piece that could have been done very cheaply because the Korean-American community here would have resettled them, in many cases, without cost to the Federal Government. Very few were received or brought to the United States. The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee is a very distinguished Senator from Massachusetts with a lot of foreign policy experience. I admire all of that. I don't think he has worked quite as much on the Korean issue, certainly not as much as some other Members of this body and myself have worked on it. To say that this was a successful negotiation I think does not stand the overall, just view of this from the public's view, let alone from a diplomatic viewpoint. When you look at this--you say it was a successful negotiation Ambassador Hill conducted with North Korea and the six-party talks. When you look at what North Korea has done since then and try to call it that, I don't think the Japanese would call this a successful negotiation that a missile was fired over their country, one that could reach the western United States. I don't think the Japanese would call it a successful negotiation that the abductees that were taken from Japan by the North Korean leadership and never accounted for were not accounted for during the negotiation. This was the top issue. I had the Japanese Embassy contacting my office, complaining about the six-party talks and not being included on their top issues. Why are they having to go through me? Because they can't go through Chris Hill. What kind of diplomat is that, when he has trouble with one of your main allies on a very specific item and issue that you can at least keep them tuned in and coming along with the overall issue? China is one of the members of the six-party talks and China has been one of the lead problems with us dealing with North Korea. Yet we do not even push the Chinese on North Korea or North Korean human rights. We don't demand that the U.N. Human Rights Commission, or Commission on Human Rights, be allowed into China to determine are these North Korean refugees who are coming into China, are they economic migrants, are they refugees? We don't even push the Chinese to allow the U.N. in to look and see what the status is here. We do not push them at the six- party talks or the U.N. There is a complete failure of this. I have had some refugees, a few who made it out of North Korea into the United States, a few more who made it into China--it is hard to get out of China and into the country--I have had a couple into my office, interviewing them, and they talked about the horrible conditions in China for North Korean refugees. Several hundred thousand, probably, are there, stateless, not protected. The women are generally captured and sold as concubines in China--captured like wild animals. This is their fate. We do not push the U.N. Human Rights Commission, don't push the Chinese to allow these individuals in, even though the Chinese have signed the declaration on this. We don't get that done. That is not a success taking place. North Koreans recently abducted two Americans on the North Korea- China border. That has taken place. We don't object to that. They are developing part of the Syrian nuclear reactor. We don't get any information on that. We get incomplete information. We waive the terrorism list. We get nothing out of this deal. That is called a successful negotiation. I wonder what we will call successful negotiations in Iraq, then, if that is what we are calling a successful negotiation with the North Koreans in the six-party talks. I wonder what we will call successful human rights being determined in Iraq when we see the human rights record of what is taking place in North Korea. I wonder how that is going to be viewed. For all of those reasons, I think this has been a healthy debate for us to have had. I hope when the supplemental comes up, we as a body do not waive again the Glenn sanctions on North Korea. That will come up in front of this body. It is an annual waiver that will have to take place. I hope we as a body do not fund North Korea beyond humanitarian assistance. That will come up in the supplemental. I want to lay those markers down for my colleagues. I hope people are watching for this, that we do not reward the North Koreans, that we do not become their supporter like the Soviets were, and we do not continue this practice, much of which Chris Hill negotiated. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. When people say this is being held up and it is irresponsible and you shouldn't do this, I am just quoting a number of Members of Congress. I am just quoting the President. I am just pointing to a human rights situation that our Ambassador to Iraq will go into, and saying, isn't this reason enough to go with somebody such as General Zinni instead of Ambassador Hill in this situation? Also, we haven't been able to get information from the State Department. I had asked for the instructions they had given to Ambassador Hill. He had stated in committee testimony here that at one point in time he called it ``inaudible'' in the negotiations, and in that ``inaudible'' he made a change. We wanted to find out what State Department instructions were to him, or what they were to him on human rights issues, and that hasn't been received by my office. We haven't been able to get those back. A number of my colleagues don't remember, or they don't cite to the period of time that Ambassador Hill was working on the Korean desk, but they do cite to what he did in Bosnia and say, OK, he was a successful diplomat, he did this; North Korea is tough, we are going to ignore that; and now let's put him in Iraq. Well, there are some real questionable records of what he did in the situation in the Balkans and in Bosnia. Here I have an article, dated March 22, of this year. I think it is very interesting and quite troubling. This is about one of the people who is charged with war crimes and his dealings with Ambassador Hill. I am going to quote from this article and enter it into the Record. Every time Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, appears in court on war crimes charges, he has hammered on one recurring claim: a senior American official pledged that he would never be standing there being charged with war crimes. The official, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration, has repeatedly denied promising Mr. Karadzic immunity from prosecution in exchange for abandoning power after the Bosnian war. But the rumor persists, and different versions that recently emerged that line up with Mr. Karadzic's assertion, including a new historical study published by Purdue University in Indiana. Charles W. Ingrao, the study's co-editor, said that three senior State Department officials, one of them retired, and several other people with knowledge of Mr. Holbrooke's activities, told him that Mr. Holbrooke assured Mr. Karadzic in July 1996 that he would not be pursued by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague if he left politics. Mr. Karadzic had already been charged by the tribunal with genocide and other crimes against civilians. Now, you say, OK, that is charging Mr. Holbrooke, but let's see what the report writers go on to say about this. The Purdue University study, ``Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars' Initiative'', instructed his principal assistant, Christopher Hill, to draft the memorandum to be signed by Karadzic, committing him to give up power-- in exchange for not being charged with war crimes. The author of the study said Mr. Holbrooke used Slobodan Milosevic, the then Serbian leader, and other Serbian officials as intermediaries to convey the promise of immunity and to reach the deal with Mr. Karadzic. ``The agreement almost came to grief when Holbrooke vigorously refused Karadzic's demand, and Hill's appeal, that he affix his signature to it,'' the study says, citing unidentified State Department sources. Chris Hill's name again. The study, the product of 8 years of research by historians, jurists, and social scientists from all sides of the conflict, was an effort to reconcile disparate views of the wars that tore the former Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, Mr. Ingrao said. The former official said Mr. Karadzic wanted written assurance that he would not be pursued for war crimes and refused to sign without them. ``Holbrooke told the Serbs, `You can give him my word he won't be pursued,' but Holbrooke refused to sign anything,'' the official said. Mr. Holbrooke could make that promise because he knew that American and other western militaries in Bosnia were not then making arrests, the official said. Neither Mr. Hill nor Mr. Goldberg responded to requests for interviews for this article. Here is another insertion of Mr. Hill on a huge problem with human rights. This one in the Yugoslav, the Balkans theater. There it is again--North Korea, the Balkans, and we have a brewing situation taking place in Iraq, and we are going to send him there. I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record at the end of my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the Chris Hill nomination to be Ambassador to Iraq. I am opposed to that nomination. A number of issues have been raised on this nomination I want to talk about to try to put some factual setting associated with that. First, though, I wish to have printed in the Record at the end of my statement a Jerusalem Post online edition article dated yesterday that I read extensively from in my first presentation regarding the 65th anniversary of the escape from Auschwitz. I ask unanimous consent to have that article printed in the Record at the end of my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I want to note for my colleagues, I read extensively from this article and did not cite that during my initial presentation. I want to make sure they know this came from that reporter and that we were putting that in. Second, there has been a lot of discussion here about: OK, we have to get this person confirmed. We have to get him out, and it is a terrible shame it has not taken place to date. I agree we need an ambassador to Iraq. There is no question about that. I appreciate my colleagues' concern about getting an ambassador to Iraq. I would note, there is one who does not have the controversy this one has who was offered the post initially, who accepted it, and then somehow this was mysteriously withdrawn. So there was a person we could have gone forward with, who had accepted it, and for some reason it was pulled back. Yesterday, CNN was talking to General Zinni, retired General Zinni, and I wish to quote from this report from yesterday. Zinni told CNN Monday he hasn't been given any explanation about why the offer he got in January for the post-- This is U.S. Ambassador to Iraq-- which he accepted was abruptly taken back. Zinni confirmed in an e-mail that he was asked to take the job by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and even congratulated by Vice President Joe Biden, but then the offer was revoked and extended to Hill, a development Zinni says he heard on the news. Zinni is a retired four-star Marine general and former head of Central Command. Like President Barack Obama, he was an early critic of the Iraqi war. He would seem like a likely--logical, actually--pick for our Ambassador to Iraq, putting forward somebody whom I could have seen supporting. He is knowledgeable of the region and not with a history of deception toward this body or of problems dealing with human rights issues. To my colleagues who put forward: We have to get this done, it is a terrible tragedy you are holding this up, well, why didn't you nominate somebody such as Retired General Zinni, or why did you pick him and then pull him back? That might be a more interesting note to find out. It would be interesting to me, anyway and, I would hope, to a number of other people. The reason I have trouble with this nominee is because of this nominee's past performance, lack of concern on human rights, and then we are giving him this great, huge assignment for the United States, and I don't agree with that. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this be printed in the Record at the end of my statement as well.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Thank you very much, Mr. President. There has also been a charge that Ambassador Hill simply didn't raise the human rights issues because the Bush administration wouldn't let him do this and that you needed to look up the ladder, not at Ambassador Hill on this. I can tell my colleagues from my personal conversations with President Bush, he was deeply concerned about human rights. He loathed Kim Jong-Il because of the human rights issues more than any other. Those were his statements. I personally had two direct conversations at length with the President about this. The idea that somehow Chris Hill couldn't do this because the President and his apparatus wouldn't agree to it raises some major questions about that charge because it certainly wasn't the President who was saying anything such as that. I think that one is patently false on its face. There is also this unfortunate history that Chris Hill has of diminishing and playing down human rights issues. There are human rights issues in Iraq as well, and there are going to be as we go forward in that region. To have somebody who consistently has played these down, ignored them, papered them over, that raises real questions to me. To support that, I wish to put forward as well some thoughts from others of my colleagues who are concerned about human rights. I have cited my own discussion with him. I have cited previously, but I think this bears putting forward to my colleagues again, Jay Lefkowitz was our North Korean Human Rights Special Envoy, who was appointed pursuant to the North Korean Human Rights Act that this body passed and the President signed, and Jay Lefkowitz wrote to me: At no point during my tenure as special envoy for human rights in North Korea, either before or after July 31, 2008, did Chris Hill or anyone acting on his behalf invite me to participate in any six party talks; any, none, not at all. Jay. This is after Chris Hill had stated in open testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, when I was asking him: Will you state that the special envoy will be invited to all future negotiating sessions with North Korea? Ambassador Hill responds: I would be happy to invite him to all future negotiating sessions with North Korea. This is on the Record. This is Jay Lefkowitz' statement afterward. I ask unanimous consent that both of those be printed in the Record after my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, a number of my colleagues will know Congressman Frank Wolf from the House side as a wonderful human rights advocate and has been for a number of years. He is deeply concerned about human rights issues overall. He has worked these issues for a long period of time. He is a fabulous man on these topics. He wrote Ambassador Hill on February 5, 2009, this to Ambassador Hill on his nomination to go into Iraq: While I do not question your qualifications as a diplomat, I must be frank in telling you that I was often disappointed in your approach to diplomacy with North Korea; specifically, your marginalization and oftentimes seeming utter neglect of human rights. In a Washington Post piece Michael Gerson described your shaping of America's North Korea policy in this way-- Now, Michael Gerson was on the inside of the Bush White House and cites to Ambassador Hill as shaping United States-North Korea policy, and Michael Gerson writes this: Hill has been a tireless advocate of preemptive diplomatic concessions-- preemptive diplomatic concessions-- and the exclusion of human rights issues from reports and negotiations. That is the end of the quote from Gerson. It is difficult to know how much the policy you were pursuing simply reflected the President and the Secretary's aims or whether you were in fact the chief architect and advocate of this approach. Regardless, while Iraq and North Korea are obviously two very different countries, it gives me pause as I consider the human rights challenges confronting Iraq's ethno-religious minorities who are increasingly under siege. This is taking place in Iraq today. We have all these human rights abuses that are boiling in Iraq today, and now we want to send a guy who has a highly questionable record on human rights in his last assignment. Frank Wolf goes on: More than 500,000 Christians, or roughly 50 percent, have fled Iraq since 2003. Even though Christians make up only 3 percent of the country's population, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, they comprise nearly half of all refugees leaving Iraq. As Iraq has continued to stabilize, these minority populations, including the aging Christian community--some of whom still speak Aramaic--is dwindling and increasingly vulnerable to marginalization and increasing attacks, of the sort we witnessed in Mosul this past fall. This is from Congressman Frank Wolf. We have a history of bad human rights in dealing with North Korea and we have a bubbling problem, a current problem in Iraq, and we send Chris Hill who has had big difficulty in dealing with it. I ask unanimous consent to have this printed in the Record at the end of my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Finally, in this tranche, there was a letter sent-- this is on January 28 of 2005 and it was to the Permanent Representative of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the U.N., our contact point with North Korea diplomatically. It was addressed to Ambassador Pak. It states: This letter is to inform you and your government of the distress with which the undersigned Members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation received the finding from the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office on December 14, 2004 that South Korean citizen and U.S. permanent resident Reverend Kim Dong-Shik had been abducted by agents of your government in northeast China in January of 2000 and taken forcibly into North Korea. Your government regrettably has, by its own admission, been involved in the abduction of a number of Japanese citizens as well as an even greater number of South Korean citizens. Reverend Kim Dong-Shik, as you may be aware, is the spouse of Mrs. Young Hwa Kim of Chicago, Illinois, and is the parent of U.S. citizens, one of whom is currently residing in Skokie, Illinois. Citizens from a Korean-American church in the Chicago area have also raised this matter as an issue of grave concern and requested congressional assistance in ascertaining the facts behind the disappearance and current whereabouts of Reverend Kim. In pursuant of these issues, Mrs. Kim and a delegation from Illinois will be visiting Capitol Hill in the near future. The successful resolution of this case, therefore, is of critical importance to us-- This is the Illinois delegation-- both because of the constituent interest involved as well as because it is a case involving the most fundamental of human rights. Reverend Kim, in his selfless efforts to assist refugees escaping in an underground network to third countries, brings to mind two great heroes held in high esteem in the United States. The first is Ms. Harriet Tubman, who established an underground railroad allowing for the escape from slavery of those held in bondage before President Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, the second is the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who, during the dark days of the world conflict against fascism in the Second World War, rescued Jewish refugees trapped in Hungary. We view Reverend Kim Dong-Shik as also being a hero who assisted with the escape of the powerless and forgotten. We, therefore, wish to inform the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that we will not support the removal of your government from the State Department's list of State sponsors of terrorism until such time, among other reasons, as a full accounting is provided to the Kim family regarding the fate of Reverend Kim Dong- Shik following his abduction into North Korea five years ago. This is signed by U.S. Senators Richard J. Durbin and Barack Obama. They signed this letter to our permanent representative, the permanent representative of North Korea to the U.N. on January 28 of 2005. Well, those sanctions are now lifted. The guy who pushed for the lifting of them is now being pushed to be the Ambassador to Iraq, and Rev. Kim Dong-Shik--it is still not known where he is. He is still somewhere abducted, hopefully alive--we don't know--in North Korea. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record at the end of my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I am contacting colleagues now. We don't have that officially tied down yet so that I can respond at this time. I appreciate my colleague from Massachusetts saying that, as I understand, there will be a hearing on North Korean--not necessarily on the atrocities, although I hope it will be covered, but also on possible sanctions on North Korea. I appreciate that is being worked on to address some of these concerns. I will be raising, as well--while my colleague is here--that we not put in a supplemental bill support for the North Korean regime that is beyond humanitarian aid, particularly as these things are surfacing now. I realize that is not the Senator's committee, but I want to make my colleagues, who know the situation well, aware of these points that I will be raising.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, we have three who are lined up to speak. There are Senators McCain and Kyl, who have scheduling issues later in the day. That is what I am trying to get firmed up. I am not trying to delay my colleagues.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I have to object at this time. I simply don't know when Senator Kyl can speak, and he desires to speak. Until I can determine that, I cannot agree for others of my colleagues.

Mr. BROWNBACK. If we can locate him and if there are not others.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I have said what I know.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I want to speak about another issue, because this caught a lot of what is involved here. This is a 2004 article called ``An Auschwitz in Korea.'' I had hoped my colleague could stay and hear this, but he has to leave. This is to the point raised by a number of people that this was kind of quick and the problem with human rights was not known as an issue in North Korea, and that we don't know about it. Chris Hill steps in and he has to make the call that we are not going to pursue human rights, but we are going to go completely after the nuclear issue. This article is by Jeff Jacoby from the Boston Globe. He puts it so well, because it is to the point we have here. He writes this: Does ``never again'' simply mean ``never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe between 1939 and 1945?'' Is that what ``never again'' means? Obviously, that is not the case. We are not going to let this sort of thing happen again on Holocaust Remembrance Day. That brings us to North Korea. In 2004, this author writes this. This was in the press: It is not exactly news that the Communist regime of Kim Jong Il has sent millions of North Koreans to early graves. Estimates back to 1998 were that as many as 800,000 people were dying in North Korea each year from starvation and malnutrition caused by Kim's ruthless and irrational policies. World Vision, a Christian relief organization, calculated that 1 million to 2 million North Koreans had been killed by ``a full-scale famine'' largely of Pyongyang's creation. They created the famine and people die off who don't support the regime. We have heard about that system before, and some of the purges that took place in the Soviet Union. The article also says: Nor is it breaking news that North Korea operates a vicious prison gulag--``not unlike the worst labor camps built by Mao and Stalin in the last century,'' as NBC News reported more than a year ago. Some 200,000 men, women, and children are held in these slave-labor camps; hundreds of thousands of others have perished in them over the years. Some of the camps are so hellish that 20 percent or more of their prisoners die from torture and abuse each year. The dead can be of any age: North Korea's longstanding policy is to imprison not only those accused of such ``crimes'' as practicing Christianity [one of the major crimes] or complaining about North Korean life, but their entire families, including grandparents and grandchildren. The policy there is if one member of the family complains, 3 generations are taken. This is the way they then operate these prison camps. I want to show a picture of one of the prison camps that looks organized along the lines that Auschwitz was organized. This is taken by Google Earth. They are organized like the Auschwitz ones. The difference here is that they group you by families, so they have taken three generations when one is opposed. They organize this and it is a death camp. Kwon Hyuk was quoted, saying: I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The article says: The speaker is Kwon Hyuk, a former North Korean intelligence agent and a one-time administrator at Camp 22, the country's largest concentration camp. We have a picture of camp 22. I will show you what he is talking about here. It is the largest camp. The testimony was heard on a television documentary that aired on BBC, which I mentioned. Here we have a situation--this writer is writing--of ``Gas chambers. Poisoned food. Torture. The murder of whole families. Massive death tolls. How much more do we need to know about North Korea's crimes before we act to stop them? How many more victims will be fed into the gas chambers before we cry out, `never again!' ''--and we mean it?'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article titled ``An Auschwitz in Korea.''

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, this is Camp 22. You can see it outlined, the size and scale. We have some other camp pictures that show this. I want to make sure everybody knows that on Holocaust Remembrance Day we have pictures of this going on. This is not some secret information. This is on Google Earth. Look it up yourself. This picture is of outside the camp, the westbound coal train from Camp 22 where they do coal mining, slave labor where people go in, but nobody comes out. They are worked to death, starved to death. There are a couple books on this point--``The Aquariums of Pyongyang'' was written by a survivor and ``Eyes of Tailless Animals'' was written by Soon Ok Lee. Those are a couple books people can look at. This is another picture from Google Earth. These are people in the concentration camp, this shows outside the fence. About 200,000 people we believe are in concentration camps in North Korea. Here is another picture, one of a concentration camp. I urge my colleagues to get a briefing on this situation so they can look at the high resolution information we have access to, not just Google Earth. Google Earth is useful for this setting. Here is another concentration camp. Here is the execution site in this particular camp. These have all been run by refugees who have been able to make their way out and now give the information of here is what took place in various places. Here are the coal mine entrances marked No. 1; prisoner housing, No. 2; the execution site, No. 3; No. 4 is a rifle range. I don't know if they use individuals as target practice. This picture shows the location of various prison camps of the gulag that is in North Korea that we chose to ignore in our six-party talks. These are the selected North Korean prison camp locations, where they are around the country. We know what is taking place in that country. I raise all of these points to point out that we cannot continue to allow this to take place. I want to raise one final issue. My colleagues have been very generous to allow me to put this forward. I have to do this on this day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we are about to confirm an ambassador who looked past all of this while he was there. We will soon consider the supplemental appropriations bill. That will be coming up shortly before this body. Last year, this body inserted into the supplemental appropriations bill a waiver to waive the Glenn amendment sanctions against North Korea. The Glenn amendment sanctions do not provide for a Presidential waiver. The Congress has to affirmatively act to waive Glenn amendment sanctions. The Congress did, and that allowed us to send--as the Soviet Union used to send to the North Koreans only we are sending it now. I ask my colleagues not to put in this year's supplemental Glenn amendment waivers and not to put in this year's supplemental funding for North Korea beyond humanitarian assistance. Yes to humanitarian assistance because people are starving to death, but no to fuel, oil aid, no to other aid because they tested missiles in defiance of us and the United Nations. They are being investigated now for sending nuclear material to Iran. They have captured two American journalists and still have them there. They have unaccounted for other people they have captured. They have this incredible human rights gulag system that is tragic and taking place right now. They are forcing people to walk into China, many of whom are women who walk into China to get food and are taken for human trafficking and as concubines. Let's not continue a regime that is a disaster, that is a horrific situation, and we are allowing this to happen. Let's not do that in the supplemental. Let's not approve Chris Hill moving on after two big problems on human rights. I urge my colleagues to vote against this nominee and to not give further funds and aid and waiving sanctions on North Korea. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Jerusalem Post, Apr. 20, 2009] The Teenager Who Exposed Auschwitz (By Rafael Medoff) This month marks the 65th anniversary of a daring escape from Auschwitz, by a teenager who then revealed the truth about the death camp--only to be ignored by the Allied leadership. In March 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary and began preparing to deport that country's Jews--numbering approximately 750,0000--to Auschwitz. A 19-year-old prisoner named Rudolf Vrba, together with fellow-inmate Alfred Wetzler, decided to do something that almost nobody had ever done before: escape from Auschwitz. They were determined to alert the world about the doom that Hungarian Jews would soon face. On April 7, Vrba and Wetzler slipped away from their slave labor battalion and hid in a hollowed-out woodpile near the edge of the camp. On the advice of Soviet prisoners of war, the fugitives sprinkled the area with tobacco and gasoline, which confused the German dogs that were used to search for them. On their second day in the woodpile, Vrba and Wetzler heard Allied warplanes overhead. ``They came closer and closer-- then bombs began to crunch not far away,'' Vrba later recalled in his searing memoir I Cannot Forgive. ``Our pulses quickened. Were they going to bomb the camp? Was the secret out? . . . Was this the end of Auschwitz?'' THE ALLIED PLANES were actually bombing German oil factories in and around the Auschwitz complex. The idea of bombing the death camp had not yet been proposed to the Allied leadership, and details such as the location of the gas chambers and crematoria were not yet known to the Allied war command. But that was about to change. On April 10, in the dead of night, Vrba and Wetzler emerged from the woodpile and began an 11-day, 80-mile trek to Slovakia. There they met with Jewish leaders and dictated a 30-page report that came to be known as the ``Auschwitz Protocols.'' It included details of the mass-murder process, maps pinpointing the gas chambers and crematoria and warnings of the impending slaughter of Hungary's Jews. ``One million Hungarian [Jews] are going to die,'' Vrba told them. ``Auschwitz is ready for them. But if you tell them now, they will rebel. They will never go to the ovens.'' A COPY of the report was given to Rudolf Kastner, a Budapest Jewish leader. Instead of publicizing the information, Kastner negotiated a deal that involved bribing the Germans to permit a train with 1,684 of his relatives, friends and Hungarian Jewish leaders to leave the country. Kastner's action became the centerpiece of a controversial trial in Israel after the war. Another copy of Vrba's Auschwitz Protocols was given to Rabbi Michoel Dov Weissmandl, a rescue activist in Bratislava, who then wrote the first known appeal for the use of Allied air power to disrupt the mass murder. Weissmandl's plea to the Allies to bomb the railroad lines between Hungary and Auschwitz reached the Roosevelt administration in June. Assistant secretary of war John McCloy responded that the request was ``impracticable'' because it would require ``diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations.'' He also claimed the War Department's position was based on ``a study'' of the issue. But no evidence of such a study has ever been found by researchers. In reality, McCloy's position was based on the War Department's standing policy that no military resources should be allocated for ``rescuing victims of enemy oppression.'' VRBA'S REPORT convinced the Jewish Agency leadership in Palestine to change its position on bombing. Agency leaders initially opposed bombing Auschwitz because they believed it was a labor camp, not a death camp. But after receiving the Auschwitz Protocols in June, agency officials lobbied British, American and Soviet officials to bomb the camp or the railways leading to it. Their requests were rebuffed. Most important, a condensed version of the Auschwitz Protocols reached the U.S. government's War Refugee Board in June. It helped galvanize the board to mobilize international pressure on Hungary to halt the deportations to Auschwitz. Although that effort came too late for the more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews who had been shipped to their doom, it did spare the 200,000-plus who were still alive in Budapest. The full version of the Vrba report was actually held up in Switzerland for three months by U.S. diplomats who regarded it as low priority. And when the report finally reached Washington in October, the Office of War Information opposed distributing it; OWI director Elmer Davis claimed the report was actually part of a Nazi conspiracy to ``create contempt for the [Jewish] inmates'' by showing that the Jews were not resisting their killers. Fortunately, Davis and his cockamamie theories were too late to blunt the impact of the Auschwitz Protocols. The Hungarian deportations had been stopped, and Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler had played a significant role in bringing that about. Exhibit 2 Preference for Hill Over Zinni Remains a Mystery (By Dana Bash) Washington (CNN)--Chris Hill is slowly overcoming GOP opposition that has delayed his nomination as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, but it's still unclear why the Obama administration revoked the offer they gave to someone else first--General Anthony Zinni. Zinni told CNN Monday he hasn't been given any explanation about why the offer he got in January for the post, which he accepted, was abruptly taken back. Zinni confirmed in an e-mail that he was asked to take the job by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and even congratulated by Vice President Joe Biden. But then, the offer was revoked and extended to Hill--a development Zinni says he heard on the news. Zinni is a retired four-star Marine general and former head of Central Command. Like President Barack Obama, he was an early critic of the Iraq war. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told CNN he would have wholeheartedly supported Zinni for position because of his knowledge of the region. Graham, along with Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, have led the opposition to Hill, citing his ``controversial legacy'' as point man in the six-nation talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear program and his lack of experience in the Middle East. Graham, however, voted Monday to move Hill's nomination forward, while McCain did not vote. Brownback voted against Hill. A State Department spokesman had no comment on Zinni. A senior Democratic congressional source, who would not be quoted speaking about private deliberations, called the decision to nominate Hill over Zinni one of the ``great mysteries'' of the early days of the Obama administration. Exhibit 3 U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, March 25, 2009. Mr. Jay P. Lefkowitz, P.C., Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Citigroup Center, New York, NY. Dear Jay: Christopher Hill testified today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In response to a question by Senator Lugar, he failed to specifically address whether he invited you to participate in the Six Party Talks to address North Korean human rights. As you recall, in his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee on July 31, 2008, he promised to invite you to participate in all future negotiation sessions, without qualifying the nature of those sessions. Based on my knowledge of the situation, I believe he violated his commitment. Can you please respond to me as to whether or not Christopher Hill or anyone acting on his behalf invited you to the Six Party Talks subsequent to July 31, 2008? I look forward to your swift reply, and appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Sincerely, Sam Brownback, United States Senator.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, there is a previous agreement that the final 10 minutes be equally divided, 5 minutes on either side, and I rise to use that 5 minutes in opposition.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, we are soon to vote on the issue of whether Chris Hill should be the next ambassador to Iraq, and I want to make a few comments about that in closing. I think there has been a good, full discussion, and I think it has been a good discussion. I misspoke at one point in time, in talking about Auschwitz and Poland. It wasn't a Polish concentration camp. It was in Poland, but it was run by the Nazis. I wanted to make sure I am clear on that to individuals. Also, I wish to add Senator Hutchison to the North Korean Sanctions Act for the Record. Today marks the Holocaust Remembrance Day, as cited earlier on the floor. The Holocaust Museum's theme this year is: ``Never again: What You Do Matters.'' I think what Chris Hill did matters in this case. I want to read one section of the statement from the Holocaust Museum and what they put forward about what you do matters. They stated: Remembrance obligates us not only to memorialize those who were killed but also to reflect on what could have been done to save them. Those who survived tell us that as many faced their horrific deaths, their last words were ``Remember us. Tell our story.'' Survivors promised that they would, and that never again would the world stand silent or look the other way. Well, I can't stand silent and look the other way in North Korea. And I think ``never again'' ought to mean that. The deeds of Ambassador Hill in North Korea--no progress on human rights, a terrible deal, failed diplomacy--and I can go through what has happened in the last 2 weeks. To reiterate, North Korea has launched a multistage ballistic missile over Japan, kidnapped two of our citizens, pulled out of the six-party talks, kicked out international nuclear inspectors and American monitors, restarted its nuclear facilities, and according to at least one news source is now under investigation for shipping enriched uranium to Iran. It was a terrible deal. In all this debate we have had about Chris Hill, not one colleague has defended the deal Chris Hill got with the North Koreans on its merits. Nobody has defended the deal he has gotten on the merits. They just said: Well, it is tough to negotiate. Yes, it is tough to negotiate, but on the merits, this was a terrible deal. And the irony is that the only thing dismantled in the six-party talks was our strategic deterrence and our moral authority. That was the only thing that was dismantled. Convening a six-party dialogue is not success in and of itself, especially when the result is so abhorrent. We will have a chance to talk about this again shortly. It is going to be coming up in a supplemental. As a reminder here in the Chamber, then-Senator Obama said: Sanctions are a critical part of our leverage to pressure North Korea to act. They should only be lifted based on North Korean performance. If the North Koreans do not meet their obligations, we should move quickly to reimpose sanctions that have been waived and consider new restrictions going forward. In the supplemental fight, there will be a discussion to give North Koreans more heavy fuel oil. I ask my colleagues not to put that in the bill. There will be a sanctions waiver discussion in the supplemental. I ask my colleagues not to waive sanctions on North Korea in the supplemental fight, and I ask instead that we reimpose the sanctions that then-Senator and Presidential candidate, now President Barack Obama called for in June of 2008. That seems to me to be an appropriate route for us to take as we look at this full set of problems we have and the discussion that we have had to date. I ask my colleagues again to consider the qualifications of Ambassador Hill, the problems that have come under his watch, and the North Korean talks, and not confirm him to be our ambassador for Iraq in a situation where he has produced such terrible results and on a Holocaust Remembrance Day when we say: Never again. I further ask my colleagues that if you do confirm him, if he is confirmed today, that we actually do remember that what we do matters and what we say matters and that we not go forward here at this point in time and say: Fine, we are going to go ahead and waive the sanctions. This was part of the Hill strategy toward North Korea; we are going to go ahead and waive these and we are going to let it happen anyway. Mr. President, I realize I have used my time, and I do appreciate that my colleagues have let us have a full debate on this. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I yield myself 8 minutes. Colleagues, tomorrow is a terrible day. It is Holocaust Remembrance Day. I want to put up a picture of something that is all too familiar to the world. It is Auschwitz, the main camp. You can see the different buildings that were there. What took place there was a horrible thing that happened. The world will remember that. There was a new movie out on it last night that was put forward by a group of students from Kansas. They found a lady who had moved through the Polish concentration camp, actually the internment that they did in the city, the slum. She saved a bunch of orphans. It was a beautiful story about a terrible situation. Tomorrow, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember this type of a picture. Let me show you a modern picture that looks eerily similar. It is not the same situation but just look at the barracks. Look at the design. Just look at the setting. This is North Korea. It is a gulag. We have tens of thousands who have been killed. We have 10 percent of the population that have died over the last decade and a half in North Korea. You want to see an eerie resemblance to something that we always say never again, never again, and yet in our time we see this. Here is the most infamous of the camps. Here is Camp 22. You can get this on Google Earth if you do not trust my images. We did not have that of Auschwitz at the time. We have it now. We know what is going on at Camp 22 from people who have been in North Korea who have made it out. Here is a list of the places where the gulags are throughout the country. We know where these are. We did not know at the time what was taking place in Auschwitz, what was taking place there. We had thoughts about it. We thought it might be taking place. We were not exactly sure. In some cases I am afraid we acted like we didn't want to know. I am afraid that is what we are acting like on this issue; we do not want to know this is taking place. Yet it is. We have witnesses and we have Google Earth. You can show pictures of it. Tomorrow we have Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today we consider what is taking place here, and we are considering a nominee to be our most key ambassadorial post--this is in Iraq--who was the key strategist on North Korea strategy, on the six-party talks, who ignored this situation, who lied to me about it that he would involve our human rights ambassador to North Korea in the six-party talks. That never happened. I have a letter from Jay Lefkowitz, who stated this to me March 25, 2009: At no point during my tenure as special envoy for human rights in North Korea, either before or after July 31, 2008, did Chris Hill or anyone acting on his behalf invite me to participate in any six-party talks. We know it is going on. We have the pictures. We do not even involve our guy to talk about it, and this is the person now we want to promote to the biggest diplomatic post that we have in the world, a diplomat who ignores the human rights abuses in North Korea. The Washington Post even said this about Chris Hill: . . . a stunning lack of urgency on human rights in North Korea. That is my biggest beef, but let's also look at the diplomatic scorecard on what we have negotiated. Oh, OK, so we ignored human rights in North Korea. Chris Hill, he is the lead of our negotiators. He is also over that region. We are going to ignore human rights. But we must have gotten a great deal out of North Korea then because we are going to ignore this piece of it. Here is the diplomatic scorecard of what Kim Jung-Il got and what we got out of the six-party talks. I might remind you what happened during the break that we were on, 2 weeks since our adjournment: The North Korean regime launched a multistage ballistic missile over the mainland of Japan toward Western United States; kidnapped and imprisoned two of our citizens, American citizens; pulled out of the six-party talks; kicked out international nuclear inspectors and American monitors; restarted its nuclear facilities; and, according to at least one news source, is now under investigation for shipping enriched uranium to Iran. Now, that just happened in the last 2 weeks. That is a pretty good 2 weeks for Kim Jung-Il, I guess. And the guy who negotiated this great deal, now we want to put him in charge of Iraq. Well, here is the scorecard: Kim Jung-Il gets delisted as a state sponsor of terrorism; he obtains key waivers of U.S. sanctions imposed after the regime's illegal nuclear detonation in 2006; he received tens of millions of dollars' worth of fuel oil assistance from us--that is, what the Soviets used to give him; now that we are sponsoring we are giving him this sort of stuff so he can operate these gulags--allowed to continue totalitarian oppression and starvation of the North Korean people. We ignore human rights. He likes that. He is never required to release or account for all of the abductees or POWs or to acknowledge a clandestine uranium enrichment program and its role in the Syrian nuclear facility that the Israelis bombed. Remember that one. That was a North Korean facility. It was North Korean designed, able to test ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions without any meaningful consequences. And what did we do? What did we do? Obtained incomplete declarations from North Korea. I might note to my colleagues, some of you may remember this, the actual papers we got, they radiated. They had radiation coming from the papers themselves. That was probably a gift from Kim Jung-Il. Implosion of the Yongbyon cooling tower, through the reversal they are already starting to produce plutonium or they are setting back up to produce plutonium at this plant after they blew up the tower. So they did probably the least safest thing, blowing up the tower, but they can still produce plutonium. That is what we got out of this deal, and now we are going to put Chris Hill in charge of Iraq, a situation and a case where we need the most diplomatic skill, the most accomplished diplomat, and somebody this body trusts because increasingly this moves from a military engagement to a diplomatic engagement. We have to trust the diplomat who is coming forward, who we are putting forward in this situation, and this is what he did on our last account for the United States of America. This is what he did the last time. The camps and human rights is what he ignored the last time around. Now, I think Chris Hill as an individual is a fine individual. I have met with him, as my colleague from Indiana has. I have great regard for my colleague from Indiana and the chairman from Massachusetts-- wonderful individuals. But I am saying, sort out and move away from Republican and Democrat. I opposed Chris Hill and what he was doing during the Bush administration. This is not me saying I am opposed to him because this is about President Obama. It is not. It is about ignoring human rights, it is about the terrible diplomatic scorecard. We are getting skunked. If this were baseball, they would call the game for the mercy rule. We are just getting skunked on this situation. Now we are going to put him in Iraq, and we are going to ask him to move this ball forward for us. I, for one, cannot seem to be able to support him to do that. That is why I want to have a fulsome debate about this. I want to have a debate about why we take these sanctions off on North Korea. We should put them back on.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I appreciate my colleague from Massachusetts and his statement, as well as the ranking member. This was Chris Hill's strategy in North Korea. He was Assistant Secretary of East Asia and Pacific Affairs during the same period of time. It was a failed strategy. We should have him in the middle of designing our diplomatic strategy toward Iraq on such a failure, where he will be coming back before this body asking us for support? I will have more to say on this tomorrow. I will file a bill tonight for myself and several other cosponsors asking that we consider, at the same time as we consider the Chris Hill nomination, reimposing sanctions on North Korea that were lifted during the Bush negotiations. The North Koreans, over this recess, launched a missile and are being investigated for selling uranium to the Iranians. Clearly, we have it within our power to put U.S. sanctions back on North Korea, and that should take place. I hope that during the process of discussing Chris Hill's worthiness for the Iraqi post, which I do not support, we will also vote to put sanctions back on North Korea that were lifted. Clearly, that should take place. I will be filing this bill tonight and asking for its consideration tomorrow. I yield back my time and urge a ``no'' vote on cloture against Ambassador Hill. Cloture Motion

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I would be happy to take a moment to describe the amendment. And if by going by voice vote it is more likely to stay in conference, I would be happy to do a voice vote.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Well, I am quite excited about that.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, colleagues, this is an amendment that passed last year. It creates a commission, an independent commission, to review all of Federal spending, make recommendations to the body, and then requires a vote on those recommendations whether to continue the program or discontinue it. It is a way for us to get at failed programs. It is a way for us to get at inefficient programs or programs that have accomplished their purposes. This is at the core of what so many people want to see us do; that is, to get our spending under control so we can spend on higher priority categories. That is what this amendment would do, and it does it in a fashion and in a way that we have seen before that has worked on eliminating wasteful Government spending. This has had broad bipartisan support in the past. I would hope we could accept it and it could stay in the overall budget in conference.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, to briefly respond to the Senator from Massachusetts, the chairman of the distinguished Foreign Relations Committee has raised a serious issue about Ambassador Hill. A number of us on our side have serious questions about Ambassador Hill and how he conducted himself in the last assignment. I would like to see what some of those instructions were from that assignment. I recognize the seriousness of the situation we are in in Iraq, no question about that. But I have serious reservations about his position in going to that. I think this will be a good period of time for us to get some of these questions answered from the State Department. I have proffered a letter to them. I have some serious questions about what took place during the negotiations with North Korea and a possible missile launch that will take place even in this interim, and this was our lead negotiator there. For those reasons, I, amongst others, am raising questions at this time. I think they need to be answered before he is approved for such an important spot for the United States.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I will be calling up amendment No. 840 tomorrow. It is an amendment I put forward before. It is an amendment that passed this body last year in the budget debate. We talked about it. I think it is one of the things we need to do to try to be efficient with Government programs, and effective, and to make sure that if we have waste, fraud, and abuse or duplicative programs, they get eliminated. I draw the attention of my colleagues to a report card. I don't know if they know this, but the Federal Government itself does a report card on itself as to whether its programs are meeting the design of the programs they put forward, are meeting the criteria of the program that was put forward by the Congress, and then this is scored by the Federal Government itself and it gets a report card. I am not very pleased to note to my colleagues and to the public that the Federal Government, giving itself a grade on this card--if you did it in A, B, C, D, you would see that the Federal Government's GPA is 1.14. A 1.14 GPA is what the Federal Government has for its own programs, whether they pass or fail this test of whether the program is duplicative, whether the program has accomplished its purpose, whether the program is effective at all. You can go down through here and you can see--the State Department actually has the highest score that the Government grades for its programs that were reviewed, whether they are hitting the targets the program was designed to do--the highest score. They get a C-plus. You see down here we have the Labor Department, HUD, Education, all with failing scores, and D-minuses at EPA, Homeland Security; a D at Interior, HHS, Agriculture, and Justice. This is a bad report card. It is never seen as having much significance because nothing happens at the end of the report card, unlike when I was going to school or when my kids now are in school. There is a consequence to not getting a good grade, and you try to improve it. On this one, there is kind of no consequence to it: OK. We got an F. So what? Because there is no consequence. What I want to do is put a consequence into a Federal program failing to meet its target. And that is this amendment. It is called the Commission on Budgetary Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies; it is called CARFA. It would basically create a commission. Every 4 years, each Federal program would be reviewed. That program would be scored. If the program receives an F, it would be put in the groups of Federal programs that all get failing scores and then be required to be voted on by this body, by the House, whether the program is continued or not. So all the bundled 500 programs--however many there are--those that fail, we would have to vote whether to continue those programs or discontinue those programs altogether, no amendment, limited time period for debate, deal or no deal. Do we eliminate the wasteful programs that have failed? Do we keep them? This is a process we have done on military bases--it has worked--on consolidating bases to ones from lower priority to higher priority ones. It has not cut military spending, but it has made it more efficient and effective. That is what we should at least be looking at in the Federal Government, to make the Federal programs more efficient and more effective. That is what this amendment would do. I had a group of college students in today. They were talking about the need to be able to do work programs abroad, study-abroad programs, all which I think are great. They say it has a price tag of about $3 billion. Look at the deficit we are looking at. That is just way too high. But what if you said: OK, that is a good idea, or, we want to declare war on cancer--that is one I think we ought to uptick on this, saying we want to get a country where within a decade there are no longer deaths by cancer in the United States. If you decide to take care of yourself, the right treatments, this is treated as a chronic disease, not as a death sentence. That is something worth investing in. Typically, what we do here is say: OK, let's just put it in the stack and we will see if we can get at it. It goes along with all the other programs, even though these programs are failing, and we just try to add it on. What if we said we are going to take out the failing programs within these agencies we are going to eliminate them and take that money and put it on higher priority programs like a war on cancer, like maybe it is work experience abroad. I don't know if that is it or maybe it is green jobs and new energy, a big energy project. We want to get more energy production from the United States. Great, let's eliminate those that have not worked and take that money and spend it on programs that are higher priority. Maybe these are programs that have accomplished their purposes. We don't need them anymore. It is a novel notion that maybe the Federal Government started a program and it actually accomplished its purposes and we don't need it anymore, so we should move on past it. Yet the way the budget process so often works, the appropriations process works, once it gets in, it never leaves. It just continues on and on rather than us reappraising it or saying is it really meeting the need or is it not meeting the need. This is the way we get at waste, fraud, and abuse, duplication, and programs that have accomplished their purposes. Everybody here in this body would declare themselves against waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government and say we are going to get to the bottom of this program and we are going to make sure it is efficient and effective. We have heard that from President Obama. Frankly, we hear it from every President who gets into office, that they are going to get at the bottom of this and they are going to make sure these programs are working, efficient and working. Yet the Federal Government, giving itself its own scorecard after President after President said this--and we have a 1.14 grade average, most of the programs failing to be able to do that--they say: Well, so? What are you going to do about it? We are going to continue to get our funding next year anyway. This is conservative Presidents, this is liberal Presidents who come in. We are always going to create and make a better system and we are going to stop this wastefulness, and it just doesn't happen. This would get added by putting a procedure in place, a required procedure that would cause these programs to be effective or face the consequences. This is sensible, bipartisan, good-government, an efficient way to move forward. It will work, and it is something we need to do. In closing, I ask that my colleagues would look at this program, and if we get it passed again this year--not strip it out in the conference report, that we would actually do something like this--it would send a notice of credibility to the American public that we are actually going to go at programs, and if they don't work, we are actually going to pull them out. Right now, the public does not believe we will do that. This creates a mechanism, a culling process that we eliminate those, and we could have some credibility with the public that we are going to eliminate programs that don't work, that have waste, fraud, and abuse within them. We have had good bipartisan support of this idea and this proposal in the past. I hope we could have it again in this budget proposal. Overall on the budget, I still think we are going seriously the wrong way. I did a townhall meeting, tele-townhall meeting last night in my State, talking about the budget. People are not satisfied at all with this process. They think there is way too much deficit spending in it. They think it is failing to hit the mark. They are very upset about a lot of the payouts for big entities. They are saying: What about us? Who is taking care of us? They look at those deficit numbers and the tax increases that are probably going to come behind them, and they just don't like it. They do not agree with it, and they do not think that is a way to move forward as a country; that what we ought to do is really get our house in order. I am pleased to see people putting forward other options for how they can deal with the budget and with the deficit. I urge my colleagues to vote against this one, and let's start over. Let's get one where we can have bipartisan agreement. Let's get one that cuts back on that deficit. Let's get one that doesn't raise taxes on Americans. Let's get one that can really help us move forward in this crisis we are in today rather than this one that is highly partisan, deficit oriented, tax increase oriented, and is not supported by the vast majority of the American public. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I wish to speak on the economics of this issue and talk about it from the Joint Economic Committee perspective, as I am ranking member on that committee. There are a lot of problems within this budget as far as what it does to the overall economy, and I think we are going to see some of it as we go through a few of these charts. The problem I see overall and one of the things we have to watch the most, as far as its impact on the overall economy, is what the percent of the Federal Government is of the overall economy. The problem with this budget and the deficits and the financing that takes place in future years is we are going to start moving this government from being roughly and normally somewhere below 20 percent of the economy as far as intake--the taking of taxes--to somewhere north of there, probably around 23 percent. We normally average around 18 percent of the economy being taken by the Federal Government in taxes. This budget moves us, over a period of years, to 23 percent. That is completely unsustainable. It is harmful. We have been somewhere close to that. We haven't been that high. We have been somewhere close to that in the past. Whenever we have been, it has had significantly bad economic consequences for our overall economy. That is just the take. I am afraid what we have going on is too much a philosophy of ``spend it and the taxes will come,'' so that we go ahead and spend this money into the economy and taxes will build up and increase so that over a period of years we spend it in deficit form and start financing the taxes, so we edge up that percentage from 18 percent of what the Federal Government takes to 23 percent over a period of years, while we get people hooked to the spending early on and say, isn't this a great program? We have spent it on school buildings, and on this program, and on that program. Don't you love that? Isn't that great? Yes. We have to build the taxes up now to pay for it. We get a wholly unsustainable situation for the Federal economy. And that is not anything about the State or local share of it, which adds to it, and then people are working half of the year for the Government and not working enough of the year for themselves. That doesn't work. I hope we can back up, philosophically, for a little bit and think where we want to be as a government. I think it is important that we look at it. Thomas Jefferson, in the first inaugural address he gave-- he is one of the greatest minds ever to be in this country and one of the great public policy thinkers. He said this: A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. . . . So it is the limited focus of Government that everybody recognizes, which Jefferson said it should be, one of our country's great minds. It is this limited view of Government and a maximum view of personal responsibility and opportunity that has produced this vibrant, active, growth-oriented country for 200-plus years. Do we want to move away from that to an economy that is much more stagnant, more Government driven, rather than individual driven? Certainly we need to do things in particular areas, such as in the financial market structure, no question about that. But do you want to fundamentally move away from this idea Jefferson spoke of regarding what Government is to be about: ``A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuit of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. . . .'' Jefferson then warned about the perils of excess taxation, excess spending, and excess debt, all three of which are present in this budget. He warned that ``We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.'' We are getting close to that with this budget. ``We must make our selection between economic and liberty or profusion and servitude.'' He was saying, look, we either move forward as a free economy or there is going to be servitude in the process. His warning was that big Government, with its excessive spending and taxation, inevitably strips its citizens of their liberties. Yet here we are today, heeding the notion ``spend and the money will come.'' Spend it and people will attach it to a government program, and the taxes will flow thereafter. It doesn't comport with what Jefferson said. It won't work. I believe it is a fatal error to assume that higher spending today will generate higher future tax revenues. The proposed budget amounts to an ever-increasing size of Government, and at some point we will have to face up to the massive Government we have created through massive tax increases, which will chip away at economic growth and threaten the principles of freedom and the pursuit of happiness on which our Nation was founded and has thus far prospered. On top of this, you have this demographic nightmare coming of the full-scale retirement of the baby boomer generation. So you are upscaling your Government spending and your taxes, and then you are going to have a bunch of people getting into the retirement system, getting Medicare, Social Security, all of which they have paid for and earned, but adding more to the growth of government, more to the demand for more tax increases, and taking away more from the liberty of individuals. More than any budget debate during the time I have been in Congress, this debate isn't simply about the spending priorities of the next 5 years; it is a debate about what kind of economy we will leave not just to the next generation but generations to come. It is a debate about whether we believe that what made America great will keep America great. It is a philosophical debate. It is about the proper role of Government. Do we believe that the strength of America lies in its Government and its political leaders or that the strength of America lies with the American people? That is a fundamental question. Is it better for the Government to decide who runs GM or is it better for GM to decide who runs it? Do we believe that the best opportunity to rebuild this economy is a free enterprise system that encourages investment, encourages entrepreneurs to start new businesses, and empowers our citizens to pursue their dreams and aspirations or do we believe the Government should act as head of a household, determining what is in the best interest of our families? How we answer that question will determine if we begin the inexorable slide toward an America where the Government tells you how much you can earn or who will be deemed ``acceptable'' to run the Nation's enterprises. How we answer that question will determine whether we are willing to accept mediocrity and condemn future generations to an America with fewer economic liberties and opportunities. Make no mistake, as our economic liberties disappear, not just our children but our grandchildren and their children will see their political liberties slip further away. Government will become the master of the people, not their servant. Unfortunately, the spending, taxes, and debt contained in the budget outline submitted by the President and the one reported by the Budget Committee represent a statement that Government knows best, and that we should trust in Government before we trust in a free people. I will talk about the budget suggested by the President and reported by the Budget Committee interchangeably because they are essentially the same. The only true differences come from the use of budget gimmicks and sleights of hand that attempt to make this budget look more ``responsible'' than the one the President has put forward. They are almost identical. I have a chart that points that out where they are on discretionary outlays and total outlays. They are the same. The American people deserve an honest discussion of the budget and the spending and taxes it contemplates. They deserve to know that the policies contemplated by this budget will add more to the national debt over the next 10 years than in all the years from the founding of this Nation until 2008. In fact, according to CBO's estimates, the publicly held debt of the United States will triple over the next 10 years under this budget. It is not simply the dollar amount of the debt that should concern us, it is the size of the publicly held debt in relation to the size of the economy. According to CBO's estimate, the publicly held debt will rise to more than 82 percent of GDP by 2019. That is a level seen only once in our Nation's history--in the extraordinary time of World War II. Yet this comparably massive-sized deficit will come with a significant reduction in defense spending. We did that spending in World War II to pay for war. This has a cut in defense spending. As bad as these numbers are, I am concerned that the situation this budget will put us in is likely to be worse, not better, to the overall economy. Not only were the economic assumptions used by the President overly optimistic, I am concerned that those used by the CBO in creating the baseline are too optimistic. I want to talk about this chart. We talk too much about taxes and too much spending, and it goes too much in debt. This tells a lot of that situation. You can see about debt held by the public as a percent of GDP. This is the average--about 35 percent for a long period of time. You can see that at times, we dipped below that at different points, and then you can see what happens in 2008 and that this shoots up in a dramatic way--not to pay for war. What that debt number shoots up to is dramatic. The point is that this is ``spend it and the taxes will come.'' What are you going to do if you cannot sustain the amount of debt? You are going to raise taxes to pay for that. While CBO projects a larger decline in GDP during fiscal year 2009 than the blue chip consensus, CBO projects a brighter outlook going forward through 2015. CBO also projects lower inflation, interest rates, and unemployment than the private forecasters. I don't think that is probably likely assumptions to actually happen. For instance, these different assumptions result in significantly higher deficits than forecast by the administration. You can see on the chart of the Obama budget deficit what is projected. These are budget deficits under blue chip assumptions. Even that big number of deficit increases probably--it masks the true picture, which is much worse than that. It results in about $2 trillion more in publicly held debt by 2019 than projected by the administration. You can see these dollar numbers. You can see the side bar being trillions instead of billions and millions. You can see it goes from $8 trillion up to nearly $18 trillion. That is the likely scenario, actually, versus what the Obama administration is saying, around $15 billion, which it would be by 2019. That is $2 trillion more. This budget spends too much. There are many important priorities that may have to be delayed. It is no different than what American families do when things get difficult. They figure out what the priorities are and they go with it. Suggesting that the new administration's budget reflects a ``new era of responsibility'' is like bestowing claims of prudence and reliability on the mortgage brokers who contributed to the housing bubble and ensuing economic crisis by carelessly selling unscrupulous and inferior loans. It is neither responsible budget nor fair nor efficient to use the current economic crisis as a means to expand Government spending to unsustainable levels financed entirely through deficit spending and ultimately higher taxes on individuals. The Government is effectively charging its excessive consumption to the taxpayers' credit card, except that the beneficiaries of that consumption will not be the ones who pay off the debt. Rather, today's young workers and future generations will bear the burden of this Government's undisciplined spending. We are essentially forcing upon our young workers, our children, and grandchildren a massive credit card debt--if you can imagine that--resulting from our inability to live within our means. Would any of us do that to our children? Of course not. But that is what this budget does. This budget contemplates permanently increasing the size of Government to unsustainable levels--especially when you consider the demographic-driven entitlement tsunami that is waiting to overwhelm the American economy. Under this budget, Federal spending as a percentage of GDP will be 28 percent of GDP in this fiscal year. Only 3 times since 1930 has the Government spent a greater share of the Nation's domestic output--1943, 1944, and 1945. More disturbing than this year's spending is the escalating spending that this budget entails. Even if you give the President and the Budget Committee the benefit of the doubt for this fiscal year, since much of that money has already been appropriated, spending as a percent of GDP will average 23.7 percent over the 2010 to 2019 period. We will average a greater percentage of GDP over those years than we have spent in any single year, except the 1942 to 1945 timeframe. So you have a permanent growth in Government spending, not paying for war, paying for the excesses in our spending that we want to do. We are going to have to pay that at some point or, more correctly, our children and grandchildren will. I have asked the staff to put together a quick estimate of how high marginal tax rates might have to rise if we are going to balance these budgets. You cannot sustain this amount of debt, and you have spent it, and ``there is nothing so permanent as a temporary Government program,'' as President Ronald Reagan observed. So you have started these on a temporary basis. They are going to balloon up and people get attached. So now you have to raise taxes to pay for it, because you cannot sustain that level of debt. Here are the answers they came up with: projected tax rates that will have to go up, particularly on our top brackets because the President is saying we are going to tax the top brackets to do that. We are looking at a 65-, 69-percent marginal tax rate. We have been there before as a country. We have had marginal tax rates up this high. It has never worked. It was economically stagnant for us as a country. People did not invest money, and basically the Government took this money and gave it to the Government instead of having it in productive sectors in the economy. We were looking at rates of 65, 69 percent. Who is going to work and pay taxes at that rate? People working say: This is not worth it to me. We have been here before. This is a failed policy model. We have done this before. It has failed. We do not want to go back to that failed policy of the past. Then there is the talk that we will do cap and trade, we will have an energy tax that will help pay for some of these programs. Consumers might not pay it directly, but they will certainly pay it at a rate of more than $3,000 per American family with an energy tax. The cost of living will rise, American industry will become less competitive, unemployment will rise, and the American people will suffer. We do not want that. Particularly troubling was the suggestion of the majority leader that this is the right time to start health care reform and the same old Government game, trying to tell people: Look at this wonderful thing Government is providing you, and you are going to get it for free. The reality of economics is that individuals pay corporate taxes in the form of higher taxes. That is simply a fact of life. Equally troubling is the administration's desire to tax corporations that ship jobs overseas. It is nice rhetoric, but the policy is exactly opposite the one we should be pursuing. We should be pursuing incentives for multinational corporations to repatriate their earnings from abroad. One estimate put the amount of capital that could be repatriated if we instituted a 1-year tax rate of 5 percent on repatriated earnings. We could bring back as much as $500 billion into the U.S. economy. Instead, the administration is going exactly the other way. We are going to raise these taxes, and instead of bringing that money home, we are going to drive it overseas. That is what is going to take place. That is what has happened to date. Over the last several years, many of us have tried working on another issue and put a great deal of effort into eliminating the so-called marriage penalty. I am concerned that the President's proposal and this budget will serve to create economic disincentives for family formation. I have another chart to show this situation of the rate increases on increasing the marriage penalty that is going to take place under the President's proposed budget. A marriage penalty already exists in present law, and it gets worse under these policies. The marriage penalty will nearly double in this particular wage earner's case from $2,900 to nearly $5,000. Is that the policy signal we want to send; that if you are going to get married, we are going to double your taxes? That is not a wise way for us to go, and our families are already stressed out the way it is now. I know the President is calling for limiting deductions for higher income taxpayers. What no one on the other side of the aisle is saying, however, is that these limitations are a backdoor method of expanding the reach and scope of the alternative minimum tax. Our economy cannot afford the kind of taxation that this budget is requiring in the future. The all-time high for the Government's take in revenue is 20.9 percent. That is the all-time high of the percentage we have taken of the economy, 20.9 percent. That has occurred twice; again, once during World War II and in 2000. The postwar average is 17.9 percent. Normally, we are taking under 18 percent of the economy, and that is high. Since the spending under this budget and the President's budget is permanent, revenues will have to rise and be sustained at a level of 6 percent of GDP higher than the historical average in order to bring the budget into balance. That is a share of GDP, more than a third higher than the historic average. The historic average is 18 percent. This is going to be 23 percent. We have never been that high before. It is not sustainable. It is harmful to the economy. If you think the economy is in tough shape now, wait until you see the stagnation, the inflation, the unemployment this budget proposal will bring us at 23 percent taxation rates for the overall economy. This is a bold new vision for America. Yet it is a vision that tries to deny the fundamental laws of economics. It is the same denial of risk on the part of financial institutions that put people in houses they could not afford and encouraged them to run up massive amounts of credit card and other consumer debt and led those sophisticated institutions to take on massive amounts of leverage that even the smallest of losses could not survive. We are in the situation we are in because of excessive spending by Government and excessive risk-taking by institutions that were allowed to become too big to fail. It is time to face the facts. Too big has failed. This economy simply cannot afford this budget. The American people cannot afford this budget. Future generations cannot afford this budget. This budget asks the American people to buy into a Ponzi scheme based on the promise of returns that we will never be able to pay, while we divert massive sums in an attempt to socially reengineer the economy and the Nation. Let us heed Thomas Jefferson's warning that I read at the outset and refuse to go down a road that enslaves our descendants for generations to come in the shackles of a mountain of debt, high taxes, and a government that has destroyed any vestige of economic freedom. I yield the floor.