Sam Brownback

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, ``America the Beautiful'' is perhaps one of the most moving anthems that captures the very essence of our Nation. In the fourth verse, Miss Katherine Lee Bates wrote, ``O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years, thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!'' From the inception of our Nation, the strength of America has been our unwavering sense of honor, an unshakable belief that we are all created equal ``under God'' and our unrestrained sense of global humanity. This is the embodiment of the American Red Cross and of the vision articulated by Clara Barton, founder of this wonderful organization that has helped countless individuals in times of crisis whether comforting a wounded soldier during battle, assisting those who are recovering from a natural disaster, or administering life-saving blood to a sick patient. It is indeed the legacy of this organization to go and serve those in most need--even to the endangerment of the volunteer. Clara Barton once elaborated on importance of service to others, ``I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.'' Though the focus of the Red Cross has grown over the years the tenacity to help those in need and who face grave danger has never wavered. Since 1943, every President of the United States has proclaimed March as American Red Cross Month and in turn, the organization uses this month to promote the services provided to the public each and every day. Communities depend on the Red Cross in times of need and the Red Cross depends on the support of the public to achieve its mission. I am pleased to join with the Red Cross and highlight the courageous work that this organization accomplishes year after year and celebrate March as American Red Cross Month. As one of the best known humanitarian organizations, the Red Cross has been at the forefront of providing aid to soldiers during times of war and peace and helping individuals and families prevent, prepare for and respond to large and small scale disasters for more than 127 years. I am very pleased of the work that the Kansas Red Cross has achieved over the years and am especially delighted to highlight the work of the Kansas Capital Area Chapter for their involvement in the creation of the ``Holiday Mail for Heroes.'' This program is a partnership between the Red Cross, Pitney Bowes, and the American people. Holiday Mail for Heroes distributes holiday cards to military veterans and active duty personnel throughout the world. This past year, over 1 million cards were received and sorted by hundreds of Red Cross volunteers. Pitney Bowes boxed and shipped them to different distribution sites--the Kansas Capital Area Chapter being one of them--and I am proud to report, shipped more than 1,000 cards. In addition, to the focus on veterans, the Red Cross also provides programs that promote health and safety services as well. These vital services help to save lives and strengthen communities through education, training and products that enable people to prevent, prepare for and respond to disasters and other life-threatening emergencies. I know that I am profoundly grateful for the services that the Red Cross has given to my state during our times of challenges with natural disasters. Last year alone, more than 5 million people took advantage of such educational opportunities, attending Red Cross first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation--CPR--and automated external defibrillation--AED--training classes. I know that I am profoundly grateful for the services that the Red Cross has given to my State during our times of challenges with natural disasters. Other educational programs and services include Aquatics, such as basic swimming lessons, lifeguarding and water safety, care-giving, and HIV/AIDS education. The American Red Cross has been able to provide services because of the tireless and dedicated work of volunteers, often known as ``Red Crossers.'' Many of these ``Red Crossers'' have been involved in their communities for 10, 20 or even 80 years. Mr. President, it is very fitting that we celebrate March as American Red Cross Month and continue to advance the principles of this very essential organization.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I already entered the note I received from the Special Envoy saying he was never invited, but there is another case--one I know is of great concern to the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen--where Chris Hill told a reporter that he had no recollection of receiving a letter from and had provided no response to the spouse of Rev. Kim Dong-Shik, a U.S. permanent resident and father of a U.S. citizen, who was kidnapped in North Korea in 2000. Yet a photo obtained by the media showed Mr. Hill receiving this from the Congresswoman herself. On the issue of nuclear disarmament, Ambassador Hill also misled Congress. During his February 2007 testimony, Hill insisted that North Korea must disclose ``all'' of its nuclear programs, and specified that ``All means all, and this means the highly enriched uranium program as well.'' But when the North Koreans' belated declaration of nuclear activity did not even mention their uranium program, even when there were reports that the documents themselves that they gave us had traces of uranium on them, Ambassador Hill still insisted on rewarding the North Korean regime with delistment from the terrorism list. On dealing with proliferation, later that year before the House subcommittee, Ambassador Hill said: Clearly, we cannot be reaching a nuclear agreement with North Korea if at the same time they are proliferating. It is not acceptable. Yet only months later, Hill reached just such an agreement before Congress had a chance to answer key questions about North Korea's alleged nuclear proliferation to Syria, taking place during Hill's own negotiations. What all this shows is a disturbing pattern by Ambassador Hill to tell Congress one thing, and then do another. Congressional testimony is not a formality. It is not a venue for executive officials to parrot what Members of Congress want to hear-- regardless of whether such parroting reflects reality. Rather, congressional hearings provide a means to reassure the American people that their tax dollars are being spent wisely, and their interests are being preserved. In this case, we had a right to know that the tens of millions of dollars worth of heavy fuel oil sent to Kim Jong Il, and the other serious concessions Ambassador Hill was handing over, were at least going to improve our national security, if not help end the oppression of the North Korean people. And in that respect, I would like to address the substance of Ambassador Hill's deals with the North Korean regime. The record can be summarized by stating the concessions that both sides obtained through the negotiations. First, Ambassador Hill is credited with a victory in bringing the North Koreans back to the table in 2005. But in doing so, he admits to exceeding his instructions to avoid bilateral talks with the regime. Second, Hill oversaw and managed a complicated process that involved Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan, in addition to the U.S. and the DPRK. Neither of these gains in process provided us with concrete evidence of progress on denuclearization, despite the fact that the North Koreans traded them for substantial material gain from our side. Ambassador Hill did obtain a declaration of nuclear activities from the regime. But as noted earlier, this declaration was half a year overdue and so incomplete as to render it useless. The declaration provided no confirmation of the number of bombs that were made, no admission or information on the uranium program, and nothing on proliferation. It was a radioactive set of documents of dubious worth. Additionally, Ambassador Hill was able to get the DPRK to implode the cooling tower at Yongbyon. But according to many analysts, the step was mostly a symbolic gesture in that North Korea is still able to run its plutonium reactor, just with more environmental consequences. In exchange for these minimal gains in process and symbolism, the concessions we forked over were substantial. Tens of millions of dollars worth of heavy fuel oil were shipped over to supply the regime with ``energy assistance,'' ostensibly so that it could continue to carry out its policies of belligerence and oppression. Congress was asked to pass legislation waiving Glenn amendment sanctions against North Korea. These sanctions were designed to prohibit assistance to states that detonate illegal nuclear weapons, and were automatically triggered when DPRK tested a nuclear bomb in 2006. We gave them a pass on that. We delisted the DPRK from the list of state sponsors of terror, despite their failure to account for the Japanese abductees and U.S. permanent resident Reverend Kim Dong-Shik, not to mention their failure to even slightly diminish the terror they inflict upon the North Korean people. We removed sanctions pursuant to the Trading with the Enemy Act, and facilitated the transfer of money to the regime that otherwise should have been confiscated by the Treasury Department under financial regulations for nuclear proliferators. We looked the other way on the role that the DPRK played in constructing a nuclear reactor in Syria, choosing instead to plow ahead with the negotiations. What is worse, after we gave up so much leverage, the DPRK is now just as hostile and dangerous as ever. Next week the regime plans on launching a ballistic missile over Japan that could reach the outskirts of the United States, a provocative act of the gravest significance. And to push the limits of our tolerance even further, on March 17, North Korean border guards abducted two American journalists--Laura Ling and Euna Lee--and reports indicate that since their capture they have been subjected to ``intense interrogation.'' Taken all together, this is an unfortunate legacy for Ambassador Hill. Broken commitments to Congress, freelancing diplomacy, disregarding human rights, and giving up key leverage to the DPRK in exchange for insubstantial gestures. Such things have harmed our national security and ignored our moral obligations, a legacy ill-suited for the next Chief of Mission to Iraq. I will conclude not with my own words, but with the words of Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who wrote a piece for the Korea Times last month, which I will ask to be included in the Record. By exclusively pursuing the nuclear tail around the six- party table, we have contributed to the horrible suffering of the people of North Korea and degraded the United States' long-standing commitment to fundamental human rights. Like the inmates of the Soviet Gulag or the Nazi concentration camps of the 1930s, about 200,000 to 300,000 hapless victims in North Korean camps wait for help. Our silence to these and other outrages is perhaps Pyongyang's greatest victory to date. We want them to dispose of fearsome weapons--they want our silence. And too often, we have acquiesced.'' Mr. President, I do not acquiesce to this nomination. I now ask unanimous consent the full article by Rabbi Abraham Cooper be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I yield the floor.

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 up to 15 minutes.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for the opportunity to speak now on a critical issue that is facing us. There are a number of nominations coming before this body. We need to move forward on a lot of these nominations and move forward aggressively. There is one I wish to talk about with my colleagues, one about which I am deeply concerned. We held a hearing today on the nominee for the ambassadorship to Iraq. Christopher Hill has been nominated to serve as Ambassador to Iraq. This is our most important diplomatic post in that region, arguably the most important diplomatic post to the United States in the world today. While it is important we have an Ambassador in place as soon as possible, what is most important is that we get the right person in place. The next Ambassador to Iraq faces a daunting array of issues, such as preserving Iraq's fragile security, the drawdown of our troops, Arab- Kurdish tensions, oil distribution, and Iranian aggression, to mention a few. Quite simply, the stakes could not be higher for the administration to find the right person to conduct our diplomacy in Baghdad and that region. In providing our advice and consent to the President, our duty is to ensure that his nominee for this most sensitive and complicated post will not only carry out faithfully the policies of the administration but also will implement the laws of this country. Moreover, the nominee should have a strong track record of diplomacy, forthrightness, professionalism, and achievement to bolster his or her credibility with the American people, with the Iraqi people, and the numerous regional actors. And in this respect, Mr. President, I regretfully say that I do not believe Ambassadors Hill's career in the Foreign Service reflects the needs we have for this position in Iraq or this country. I think his record and his actions fall short of the qualifications we need. I want to articulate why I believe that, and therefore I will be objecting to his nomination as we move forward. Let me begin by saying that I do not deny that Chris Hill is an experienced negotiator. He negotiated Bosnia in the 1990s and then negotiated North Korea for some period of time. But negotiation is only one component of diplomacy. In addition to being able to converse with foreign actors, we also expect our diplomats to respect the chain of command, to work closely with colleagues in the State Department, the Department of Defense, and all other relevant agencies, and we expect our Ambassadors to respect the laws of the United States expressed by statute and through proper oversight. But in his role as Assistant Secretary of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, as well as head of the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks, too often Ambassador Hill found that key officials and the law got in the way of his agenda. He found that sidelining those officials and ignoring congressional will was expedient, if not acceptable. I regret to have to say that. Such behavior establishes a precedent that can only hamper his efforts to coordinate the immensely complicated U.S. Government effort in Iraq, and that brings me to the focus of my concerns and the specific dealings I had--and extensive they were--on human rights in North Korea, where these troubling aspects of Chris Hill's diplomatic conduct all come together. I have a picture next to me here that is a very lamentable one from North Korea. It is a kindergarten in North Korea, and you can see the starving children who are there. This was during the late 1990s when there was starvation taking place in North Korea, and the North Korean Government was not asking for assistance or support and the people were dying of starvation. The human rights situation is deplorable in North Korea. I believe it is the worst in the world, and that is saying something given some of the other actors that exist. Let me start by reminding my colleagues of all of this--the situation in North Korea. North Korea is ruled by a totalitarian regime rigidly controlled by a single dictator, Kim Jong Il. Human rights in North Korea do not exist. The state regulates all aspects of individual life, from food ration, to speech, to employment, to travel, and even to thought. Under Kim Jong Il's watch, millions of North Korean citizens have perished from starvation, while thousands of others have died during imprisonment in the regime's extensive political system and gulags. I will show a picture here of the location of one of the prison camps--or a number of prison camps in Russia. I have given a speech, and I have pointed this out. Google Earth has made witnesses of us all. Now you can see these on Google Earth. North Korean defectors have testified about the conditions in these camps. Prisoners face torture, hard labor, starvation, forced abortion, infanticide, public executions, chemical and medical experimentation on prisoners, and gas chambers. They experience detention without judicial process, and family members of dissenters, including children and the elderly, are also shipped to the gulag as part of the policy of guilt by association. It is thought that over 400,000 people have died in the gulags over the years, and currently there are 200,000 North Korean prisoners in the gulag system. I want to read to you an account from the Washington Post about the only known living escapee from a North Korean gulag, and Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the full article printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, here is the quote I want to read from the article about Shin Dong-Hyuk: . . . his finger was cut off as punishment for accidentally dropping a sewing machine in the factory of the camp where he was held. He bears scars from the torture of being, essentially, roasted over a charcoal fire. When he was 14, he watched as his mother was hanged and his brother shot to death, ostensibly for trying to escape. In a memoir, he writes of the `lucky day' when he found, in a pile of cow dung, three kernels of corn that he was able to wash off and eat. This was from the full piece from the Washington Post that I have had printed in the Record. Here is an aerial picture of what one of the camps looks like. This is camp 18--and you can get these off Google Earth--and the execution site within this camp. Imagine if during World War II and the Holocaust we had these kinds of pictures and this sort of knowledge. Would we say we want to really do something about this or would we not? I think all of us would say: Well, absolutely. We would want to be very vocal about this. We would want to be addressing this issue if we knew it took place. Well, this is happening today. It happened during Chris Hill's watch in that position, it happened during the six-party talks, and he didn't address it and he didn't work on it. The desperate situation has caused tens of thousands of North Koreans to risk their lives and their families' lives to flee across the border into China, seeking food, shelter, and livelihood. But the Chinese Government blocks international access and aid to these refugees, leaving them helplessly exposed to severe exploitation, particularly in the form of sex trafficking. The refugees also face repatriation if caught by Chinese authorities, which for most of them means automatic imprisonment, torture, or execution once returned to North Korean officials. As Holocaust-survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel said, the North Korean regime ``. . . is responsible for one of the most egregious human rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.'' I want to quickly show two satellite photos showing the prison barracks of two camps, one in North Korea and the other in Auschwitz. Now, my point is not to say these situations are the same--they are not--but, rather, that there are similarities, and people should know this kind of evil still exists in the world today. I want people to look at this prison situation. This is one of the camps--and again, this is from Google Earth--one of the prison camps in North Korea. Then I want to hold up here as well a picture of Auschwitz. I ask people to look at the similarity of these situations and of these settings. I know when I first saw this, I thought, this is really eerie, that these look alike this much. Now, I am not saying these are the same situations. What I am saying is we continue to have this evil in the world. We continue to have thousands of people killed in a gulag system in 2009. This continues to happen in the world. Mr. President, as you may recall, the Congress sought to address this horrifying situation back in 2004 with the North Korean Human Rights Act. This was passed and signed into law in October of that year. The Senate even passed that bill by unanimous consent--a proud day in the history of this body as we strengthened the moral fibers of this Nation. The purpose of that law, as defined in its introduction, was to promote respect for and protection of fundamental human rights in North Korea; to promote a more durable humanitarian solution to the plight of North Korean refugees; to promote increased monitoring, access, and transparency in the provision of humanitarian assistance inside North Korea; and to promote the free flow of information into and out of North Korea. Let me also read aloud the very first section of title I of that act. It says this: It is the sense of Congress that the human rights of North Koreans should remain a key element in future negotiations between the United States, North Korea, and other concerned parties in Northeast Asia. So this is a statement to the six-party talks--to our negotiators-- that human rights should remain a key element in future negotiations. This was in 2004. Mr. President, 4\1/2\ years have transpired since the passage of this legislation. During that time, the issue of North Korean human rights quite simply has been subordinated, ignored, cast aside, and indeed swept under the carpet, in complete contradiction of the law of this country and against our Nation's most basic moral obligations and against the witnesses that we are that it is taking place even as we see it. In all the bluster and dealmaking over the past few years, our negotiators have failed to exert any serious effort to address this dire issue. In fact, the situation has only worsened, according to any independent benchmark. And the individual responsible for this account during this period of time is Ambassador Chris Hill, who, according to the Washington Post Editorial Board, displayed a ``stunning lack of urgency'' to deal with human rights and, according to the Washington Times, ``deliberately minimized focus on the bleak human rights record.'' This is the nominee to be the Ambassador to Iraq--the most important account for us, I believe, in the world. The cochair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Frank Wolf, agreed, stating in a recent letter to Hill that he is concerned with Hill's ``marginalization and utter neglect of human rights.'' Just 1 year ago, Chris Hill himself said the following, asked about the human rights situation in North Korea: Each country, including our own, needs to improve its human rights record. In the face of the most horrific and ongoing human rights catastrophe in the world and instructed by Federal statute to address it, Ambassador Hill instead saw fit to associate the record of Kim Jong Il with that of the United States of America. Some have said that the policies implemented by Ambassador Hill were merely the articulation of the Bush administration, but this is not the case. I spoke several times directly with President Bush about North Korean human rights. I know his passion for it and his real commitment to addressing the issue. He proudly signed the North Korean Human Rights Act and then again its reauthorization last year. He appointed a good, qualified man in Jay Lefkowitz as the Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights. But somewhere between the Oval Office and the six- party negotiation room, the message got lost. On this, we have strong evidence that the broken link was Ambassador Hill. First, at his nomination hearing this very morning, Ambassador Hill admitted that on at least one occasion he exceeded his instructions by meeting bilaterally with the North Korean Government. This went against the clear public position of the President. He explained this by saying he had to ``call an audible.'' This was in testimony this morning. But to others, this looks like a freelancing diplomat. When it comes to working in a country with neighbors such as Iran and Syria, the stakes are too high to have diplomacy run anywhere other than by the Secretary of State and the President. We also know from a number of sources that Ambassador Hill used his position to sideline key officials in the administration who were charged with addressing the human rights situation in North Korea. One of these individuals was Jay Lefkowitz, who struggled during his entire tenure as Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea to gain tracks and support for his efforts among the East Asian Bureau and the team led by Hill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter I sent, and was sent back in answer by Jay Lefkowitz today, where we asked him if was he ever invited to the six-party talks--ever.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, this is what Mr. Lefkowitz says in his response to my letter: Dear Senator Brownback: 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. This is the Special Envoy for Human Rights to North Korea. Another key official cut out of the loop by Hill was former Ambassador to Japan, Tom Schieffer. The Washington Post reported in 2007 that Ambassador Schieffer received assurances from the administration that he could tell the Japanese Government that North Korea would not come off the terrorism list until the abduction issue that was central to the Japanese had been resolved. But Ambassador Schieffer found out later that Chris Hill had cut a deal ignoring that pledge and, without advance notice or information from Ambassador Hill, had to backtrack--our Ambassador to Japan--and try to mollify our stalwart ally, Japan, whose Government felt upset and betrayed. Finally, at least one senior intelligence officer has said Ambassador Hill sidetracked and bypassed procedures designed to inform the intelligence community of the substance of his discussions with the North Koreans. Such conduct in the course of negotiations should give serious pause to those concerned about the sensitivity of diplomacy in Iraq and in the Middle East at this time. In addition to this undiplomatic conduct with respect to his executive branch colleagues, Ambassador Hill has a disturbing track record of evasiveness, and I believe dishonesty, in dealing with Congress. In statements made for the record in congressional testimony, Ambassador Hill made promises that he did not, could not, or had no intention to keep. Regarding the prospect of normalization with North Korea, Ambassador Hill assured a skeptical House Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2007 that improvement in human rights would be part of any deal struck with North Koreans. But 1 year later, Ambassador Hill indicated to a reporter that normalization could proceed before such things took place. He stated: Obviously we have continued differences with North Korea, but we can do that in the context of two states that have diplomatic relations. On the issue of human rights last year, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, I asked Ambassador Hill whether he would invite the Special Envoy for Human Rights to all future negotiation sessions. His answer, and I quote it directly: I would be happy to invite him to all future negotiating sessions with North Korea. That answer was given without qualifiers. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the relevant portion of that committee transcript from July 31, 2008, printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the case of Mr. Perrelli, nominated to be Associate Attorney General. I rise to speak in opposition to the nomination. I will not be long, but I think there is an important policy issue that needs to be discussed. I would be prepared to yield back time after that point in time. I do not know if we have other people who desire to speak, so Members could move on about their busy day. I do think we have an important discussion here. I have no doubt of the qualifications of Mr. Perrelli to be Associate Attorney General. I think from what the chairman has stated--and I have no reason to dispute what the chairman has stated about the qualifications of Mr. Perrelli. I think they are good. I do not ascribe bad motives whatsoever to him or anybody. But I think there is a very important policy discussion that needs to take place here, with an opportunity to vote, before we put this individual third in command of the Justice Department, to oversee management of the Department's day-to-day operations, including formulating departmental policies. Concerns have been raised with regard to Mr. Perrelli's nomination to be Associate Attorney General primarily due to his pro bono representation of Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael Schiavo, in his effort to allow the starvation to take place, and the dehydration, of his wife. The death that took place several years ago captured the discussion and the thoughts in the country about issues about the quality of life and whether we protect life that is in a diminished qualitative state. It was a tough discussion. It was a tough debate. I was here and involved with it, as were a number of other individuals. It was one that went back and forth for some period of time. Terri Schiavo, as I might remind a number of individuals, was in a very difficult mental condition. Her husband was desiring to withhold food and water from Terri Schiavo. The family members of Terri Schiavo: No, we should not do this. We should allow her to continue to live. Food, water--provide those items to her. It pulled back and forth on people. And the fundamental root question involved in it is, Do we put a subjective value on human life or is all human life sacred, per se, in an objective sense? Because it is human life, is it sacred, per se, or is there some sort of threshold issue we should be considering on whether we protect human life to the degree fully that we can and certainly on the issues of providing food and water? That was kind of the policy discussion and that was the conundrum we were in as a country because people could see both sides of this issue and say: Gosh, she is in a difficult spot as an individual. Her husband says: Let's withhold food and water. The family says: No. And the country was brought into the discussion, the debate, as was this body. Mr. Perrelli was pro bono, representing for free, Michael Schiavo, in this case, who was the primary proponent to withhold food and water for Terri Schiavo. I think before we put a person who took that position-- he did this for free--into the No. 3 position at the Justice Department of the United States, we should discuss that because people are policy and what they view and what they stand for does find its way into policy apparatus for the United States of America. And this is a key issue for us. I want to put it very clearly. While there is a lot of emotion surrounding this, there is a fundamental policy question, as I mentioned a bit earlier, about this, and that is the basic issue of, do we view human life sacred, per se, or does the dignity that we treat individuals with depend on their physical or mental status as human beings? And we shouldn't get around the starkness of that debate. It is a stark debate, but it is an important one, and I think clearly we should err on the side of saying: If this is a human person, then they are regarded as fully human with all human rights regardless of any sort of diminished physical or mental capacity they might have. To hold differently than that would be for us to say that some people are more equal than others, that some have more rights--or some have fewer rights than other individuals do. And we have been in that sort of policy discussion before, and we have always regretted it. We are at our best when we are standing for the weakest people amongst us, with the most diminished, with the most difficulty. These are the ones we want to stand for the most. One of the proud moments for me here in our body was to work a bill with Senator Kennedy on helping to get more Down's Syndrome children here born alive because right now about 90 percent of them are killed in utero. We worked on a way to have an adoption registry and an effort to recognize that these are valuable people and we should not say that because of their difficulty here, they should be regarded as less human. That is not a position that upholds the nature and traditions and ideals of the United States of America. If a subjective judgment of qualify of life is what determines the value of an individual or the protections accorded to that individual, this has enormous implications for all of us, both for the way we conduct our own lives and the way we order our society. If we have a fundamental mandate to protect the most vulnerable amongst us, not just those who have social or political influence or those who are regarded as productive, a reordering of our priorities and our laws becomes necessary. Ultimately, the debate over Terri Schiavo was not one about States rights or medical ethics or end-of-life decisions; it was about whether we measure life by a subjective or an objective test. That is the fundamental debate point here. Is it a subjective determination? If you hit enough of these criteria, you are given full human rights? If you have a few of these, too few of these, you are not given full human rights? Or is it an objective test? You are a human, of the species, you have full human rights in all situations, and you are certainly entitled to food and water even if are you in a difficult mental condition. I believe this is a very important debate, and now we are seeing more of the country enter into it, end-of-life issues on the sacredness of human life: Does it exist at the end of life or not? Do we have these objective or subjective tests? Mr. Perrelli--by all accounts a good lawyer--comes out on one point of view. He comes out on the point of view that we can look at these in subjective ways, representing the client in this who looked at a subjective quality-of-life case. Of all of the qualified lawyers in the United States--and there are many brilliant lawyers in the United States--why would we insist upon putting in as the No. 3 lawyer at the Justice Department one who has a point of view that is so stark on this and so against the view of most Americans, who would view all human life objectively as being beautiful, as being sacred, as being something worthy of protection? Now, as people are policy, you put someone into the No. 3 position at the Justice Department who holds a very radical point of view on this, of all of the qualified lawyers that are across the United States. The signal that sends across the society is, OK, there is a shift taking place here: we are not going to focus on human life as objectively sacred, we are going to view it as subjectively needing to meet criteria to protect. That may be seen as too stark, but that was the stark question that was put forward in the Terri Schiavo case, and that was the stark question this nominee decidedly went to one side on. He could have stayed out of it, could have not been involved whatsoever. But he didn't. He freely and ``freely'' got involved in this case on one side in a radical direction that I believe is wrong for the country to take. It will be clearly possible that cases involving euthanasia or other end-of-life issues may come before the Federal courts during his tenure in office. With cases in Oregon, the State of Washington, probably being considered in other States, it is highly likely, actually, that these cases will come forward. I am deeply concerned that Mr. Perrelli's view of this, while so decidedly on one side of it, will not be an objective observer or enforcer of current U.S. law. I think that is a step back for us protecting and defending the sanctity of basic human life. This is something I think all of us in our own heart of hearts absolutely agree, that human life is sacred, it is sacred at all stages, and it is sacred in all places. But now we are presented with a policy choice in a person. I would hope that people, as they would look at this, would say that is not a direction we should be going, that is not a direction we should be tilting in this country as we deal with these end-of-life issues coming at a very rapid pace in front of legislative bodies at the State level, and I believe they will come here, and I believe they will enter their way into the courts. For all of these reasons, I really don't believe we should go this route. I will be voting against Mr. Perrelli even though I believe him to be a qualified individual because of the stark position, the negative position he has taken, the subjective view he has expressed with his advocacy of the view of human life in this very important position. I will retain the balance of the time in case other issues are raised, if there are other issues that are raised. If there are not other issues that are raised, I do not know if we have other people to speak on our side. I would be willing to yield back. But if other debate points are raised, then I would like to have a few minutes to respond.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I object in that I want to raise one additional point. And I do believe we should have a recorded vote.

Mr. BROWNBACK. The additional point I would raise on this is that my colleague points to the Florida Supreme Court. I note that half of the Democrats in this body who returned to vote on the Terri Schiavo case voted in favor of Terri Schiavo's family. I think there was a clear view on this, and that is my point, when you get a radical position put forward that looks at this in a subjective sense. With that, Mr. President, I would be willing to yield back time. I do want a recorded vote to take place.

Mr. BROWNBACK

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

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I rise to speak about the nomination of David Ogden to be Deputy Attorney General of the Department of Justice. To summarize what I see in the Record, what I have read, I am very disappointed in the Obama administration for nominating this individual who is obviously talented but has also obviously chosen to represent, sometimes on a pro bono basis, groups that push pornography. He even represented interests against child pornography laws that we have passed by unanimous votes in the Senate. Here is a gentleman who has taken up these causes as a lawyer. I appreciate his skill and ability as a lawyer. I appreciate his willingness to represent a client. But he has chosen to consistently represent pornography companies and groups. Even against the unanimous opinion of this body on child pornography cases, he has taken the other side. The message that sends across the country to people--when we are struggling with a huge wave of pornography, and then, at the worst end of it, child pornography--the message it sends around the rest of the country is this is a Justice Department that is not going to enforce these child pornography laws or is not concerned about this, when we have an epidemic wave of pornography, and particularly of child pornography, that is striking across the United States, and that this is harming our children. It is harming our society overall. Now, at the second to the top place of enforcement, you are putting your Deputy Attorney General who has taken on these cases, and sometimes in a pro bono manner. I have no doubt of his legal skills. But the message this sends across the country to parents, who are struggling to raise kids, is not a good one. Our office has been receiving all sorts of calls opposed to Mr. Ogden's nomination because of that very feature--and deeply concerned calls because they are struggling within their own families to try to raise kids, to try to raise kids responsibly, and to try to raise them in a culture that oftentimes is very difficult with the amount of violent material, sexual material that is out there, and hoping their Government can kind of back them a little bit and say: These things are wrong. Child pornography is wrong. It should not take place. It should not be on the Internet. And you should not participate in it. Instead, to then nominate somebody who has represented groups supporting that dispirits a number of parents and says: Is not even my Government and its enforcement arms going to take this on? Are they not going to be concerned about this, as I am concerned about it as a parent? I see it pop up on the Internet, on the screen, at our home way too often, and I do not want to see this continue to take place. Then along comes this nominee, who knocks the legs out from under a number of parents. I want to give one quick fact on this that startled me when I was looking at it. It is about the infiltration of pornography into the popular culture, and particularly directly into our homes, and now it is an issue that all families grapple with, our family has grappled with. My wife and I have five children. Three of them are out of the household now. We still have two of them at home. We grapple and wrestle with this. Once relatively difficult to procure, pornography is now so pervasive that it is freely discussed on popular, prime-time television shows. The statistics on the number of children who have been exposed to pornography are alarming. A recent study found that 34 percent of adolescents reported being exposed to unwanted--this is even unsolicited; unwanted--sexual content online, a figure that, sadly, had risen 9 percent over the last 5 years. Madam President, 9 out of 10 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who have Internet access have viewed porn Web sites--9 out of 10 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who have Internet access have viewed porn Web sites--usually in the course of looking up information for homework. It is a very addictive situation we have today. I held a hearing several years back about the addictiveness of pornography, and we had experts in testifying that this is now the most addictive substance out in the U.S. society today because once it gets into your head, you cannot like dry off or dry out of it. The situation is alarming on its impact on marriages. There is strong evidence that marriages are also adversely affected by addiction to sexually addictive materials. At a past meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two-thirds of the divorce lawyers who attended said that excessive interest in online pornography played a significant role in divorces in the previous year. That is two-thirds of the divorce lawyers saying this is getting to be a situation that is impacting so many of our clients and is so pervasive. While David Ogden possesses impressive academic credentials, and he certainly is a talented lawyer, he has also represented several clients, significant clients, with views far outside the mainstream, and he has not, to my satisfaction, disavowed the views of these clients. He was given every chance to in hearings. He was trying to be pinned down by people on the committee about: What are your views? I understand your clients' views. What are your views? And he would not respond to those. He said: Well, these are views of my clients. I understand the views of your clients. If they are pushing pornography, child pornography, want to have access to this, I understand that. What are your views? And he demurred each time and would not respond clearly. Based on that record, I am led to believe it is highly likely David Ogden may share the views of some of his clients--of those who have supported pornography--and I cannot trust him to enforce some of our Nation's most important antichild pornography laws--laws that he has a history of arguing are unconstitutional. That is a position he took as a lawyer: that these are unconstitutional, antichild pornography laws. In an amicus brief David Ogden filed in United States v. American Library Association, he argued that the Children's Internet Protection Act, which requires libraries receiving Federal funds to protect children from online pornography on library computers, censored constitutionally protected material and that Congress was violating the first amendment rights of library patrons. Now, that was the position David Ogden took. In a response to written questions submitted by Senator Grassley after his confirmation hearing, David Ogden indicated he served as pro bono counsel--for people who are not lawyers, that means he did it for free--in this case, further calling into question his personal views. If you are willing to represent a client for free, it seems to me there is some discussion or possibility you may really share your client's views on this issue regarding access to online pornography at libraries. The Children's Internet Protection Act passed this body, the Senate, by a vote of 95 to 3 back in 2000. Ninety-five Members of this body believed the Children's Internet Protection Act was an appropriate measure to protect children from Internet filth and was constitutional because our duty, as well, is to stand for the Constitution and to abide by the Constitution and uphold it. How can we trust David Ogden to enforce this law when he argued against it as a pro bono counsel? In another very disturbing case, Knox v. the United States, in which Stephen Knox was charged and convicted for violating antichild pornography laws--these are child pornography laws but child pornography laws which I think are in another thoroughly disgusting category--David Ogden filed a brief on behalf of the ACLU and others challenging the Federal child pornography statutes. At issue in this case was how child pornography is defined under the Federal statutes. I am sure many of my colleagues will remember the controversy that surrounded this case. As you may recall, Stephen Knox was prosecuted by the Bush Justice Department--during the first Bush Presidency--and ultimately convicted, after U.S. Customs intercepted foreign videotapes he had ordered. By the time his conviction was appealed, however, President Clinton was in office, and the Justice Department changed its position on Knox's conviction. Drew Days, Clinton's Solicitor General at the time, chose not to defend the conviction of Knox. The Clinton Justice Department said: Yes, he is convicted, but we are not going to prosecute this. But the Senate, by a vote of 100 to 0-- which is really rare to get around this place--and the House, by a vote of 425 to 3, rejected the Clinton Justice Department's interpretation of the child porn laws. The Senate unanimously said: Prosecute this. Prosecute this child pornography case. David Ogden was on the wrong side of this case. I urge my colleagues to consider whether a man who has taken such extreme positions on pornography, and especially child pornography, can be trusted to enforce Federal laws prohibiting this cultural toxic waste. I am not convinced that David Ogden does not share the views he advocated in the Knox case, and I am concerned that at the very least he may be sympathetic to the views of his former clients. I hope David Ogden proves me wrong and he demonstrates a strong willingness to enforce Federal child pornography and obscenity laws. These laws are on the books. I hope he enforces them. But I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of his nomination given his past record and the positions he has taken. His past positions have been far too extreme and outside of the mainstream for me, or I think for most Americans, and certainly for most parents, to be able to support him to be No. 2 in command of the Justice Department that enforces these laws. I realize many of my colleagues, and likely the majority, are going to cast their votes in favor of David Ogden. Before they do, I ask them to please consider the negative impact pornography has had--and particularly child pornography has had--on this society and the important role the Justice Department plays in protecting children from obscene and pornographic material, particularly child pornography. The infiltration of pornography into our popular culture and our homes is an issue that every family now grapples with. Once relatively difficult to procure, it is now so pervasive that it is freely discussed all over. Pornography has become both pervasive and intrusive in print and especially on the Internet. Lamentably, pornography is now also a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. While sexually explicit material is often talked about in terms of ``free speech,'' too little has been said about its devastating effects on users and their families. According to many legal scholars, one reason for the industry's growth is a legal regime that has undermined the whole notion that illegal obscenity can be prosecuted. The Federal judiciary continues to challenge our ability to protect our families and our children from gratuitous pornographic images, and we must have a Justice Department that is committed to combating this most extreme form of pornography. Perhaps the ugliest aspect of the pornographic epidemic is child pornography. This is where Mr. Ogden's record is most disturbing because he is outside of even the minimal consensus on pornographic prosecutions that exist. Children as young as 5 years old are being used for profit in this, regrettably, fast-growing industry. While there has been very little consensus on the prosecution of even the most hard-core adult pornography, there has been widespread agreement on the necessity of going after the purveyors of child porn. Despite this agreement, this exploitive industry continues to thrive. Every day, there are approximately 116,000 online searches for child pornography--116,000. I think we can all agree that we have a duty to protect the weakest members of our society from exploitation and from abuse. I fear David Ogden will be a step backward--and certainly sends that signal across our society and to our parents and our families in this effort to combat this most dangerous form of pornography. For those reasons, I will be casting a ``no'' vote on his confirmation. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise today to address a provision in the statement to accompany the fiscal year 2009 Omnibus appropriations bill that seeks to address a critical issue in our country, the rising rate of childhood obesity. Over the last several years, Senator Harkin and I have worked jointly to address this issue. During this time, we have focused our efforts on bringing together the different sectors in our society that are equipped to address this crucial issue for our Nation's children. It is my firm belief, that there is not just one solution to reducing the rates of childhood obesity but this should be a collective effort. To that end, I am encouraged that there are those in the food and beverage industry, the advertising industry and media industry that have taken voluntary steps to address this issue. I am pleased that the Ad Council has also worked to address childhood obesity as well with donated multimedia efforts since October 2005 that have equaled $170 million. This initiative includes creative partnerships with NFL, Qubo, an NBC-owned children's network, and the U.S. Olympics. It is my firm belief that the best option to address this issue is not by rushing into government regulation but by working together to address this issue within our spirit of a free-market society--and that is the intention behind this language that directs the Federal Trade Commission to create a working group among the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Secretary of Agriculture. I also hope that as this working group convenes they will first study the Better Business Bureau's Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, and determine whether initiatives such as these would suffice to address this crucial issue, before they implement the remainder of the directive. And, consistent with the current focus of self-regulatory initiatives, I think it would be more appropriate to limit the scope of the working group activities to children under the age of 12. I have found that oftentimes the best results are rooted in industry- led reforms and it is my intention that this working group will keep this intent in mind as they study and develop ways in which to address foods marketed to our children. For example, in July 2007 and again in September 2008, the Grocery Manufacturers Association commissioned studies of U.S. advertising trends through Georgetown Economic Services. These studies have shown that as food and beverage marketers have shifted the mix of products advertised to children, not only are children today seeing fewer food, beverage and restaurant ads on television, they are seeing far fewer ads for soft drinks, cookies, snacks and candy, while being exposed to more ads for soups, juices, fruits, and vegetables and water than they were in 2004. I truly believe that with everyone coming together around a free market principled approach that we will have more expedient and effective results for our children.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I rise to speak in favor of the Wicker amendment. I am very appreciative Senator Wicker has brought up this amendment. This is an issue we have debated for some time, the Kemp-Kasten language, although it has been in since 1985. Our colleagues have put it in there. One of the prime authors of that language, then-Congressman Kemp, is struggling with illnesses himself right now, and I certainly wish him and his family well. They have been in my prayers. I want to put a personal feel and touch on this issue. This is a story about a young couple in China. Yang Zhongchen was a small-town businessman, and he wined and dined three Government officials for permission to become a father. It is a story for which I am paraphrasing some pieces and others I am taking directly out of an AP story that was filed in 2007, to give you a texture of what we are talking about. Here is a young, small-town businessman. He goes to Government officials, and he says: Look, I want to be a dad. I want to be a father. He wines and dines the local officials. ``But,'' as the AP writer writes, ``the Peking duck and liquor weren't enough. One night, a couple of weeks before [his wife's] date for giving birth, Yang's wife was dragged from her bed in a north China town and taken to a clinic, where, she says, her baby was killed by injection while still inside her.'' Quoting from her: ``Several people held me down, they ripped my clothes aside and the doctor pushed a large syringe into my stomach,'' says Jin Yani, a shy, petite woman with a long ponytail. ``It was very painful. . . . It was all very rough.'' Some 30 years after China decreed a general limit of one child per family, resentment still brews over the state's regular and sometimes brutal intrusion into intimate family matters. Not only are many second pregnancies aborted, but even to have one's first child requires a license. Seven years after the dead baby was pulled from her body with forceps, Jin remains traumatized and, the couple and a doctor say, unable to bear children. Yang and Jin have made the rounds of government offices pleading for restitution-- [all] to no avail. This is a 2007 Associated Press story which I ask unanimous consent be printed at the end of my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, there is no reason to change this Kemp-Kasten language we have had since 1985. There is every reason to keep it, to provide this Presidential discretion. I have held hearings in the Senate where we have had people come in who have gone undercover in investigating forced abortions and sterilizations in China who have come back with traumatic and dramatic stories about this continuing to take place. It should not continue to take place, and it certainly should not happen with any sort of support--tacit, implicit, or actual, or financial--from the U.S. Government. Clearly, the U.S. citizenry would be completely opposed to doing anything like this, and in tough budgetary times, this certainly does not help our economy grow. It is a policy people broadly oppose of any sort of support for forced abortions or sterilizations. It is something for which there would probably be 90 percent agreement in this country that we should not fund or support forced sterilizations or abortions anywhere--probably 95 percent. Maybe it is 98 percent. So this policy that has stood since 1985 has broad bipartisan support. Why would we change it at this point in time, with the financial difficulties we have, the broad bipartisan support that it is not the right way to go, and the continued evidence that this continues to be the case today in places such as China and other countries around the world? I do not see the reason why we would want to go a different way. It does not make any sense to me we would want to go a different way. I think this is not a good foreign policy for the United States to be engaged in. I do not think it is a policy the American taxpayers support. I think if we would actually do some thorough digging throughout China--where many of these decisions are made and the actions are actually happening at the provincial level--we would find a lot more of this going on than we would care to know about because a number of these quota numbers are given to local officials who do not have much oversight on a national basis, and so they act on their own accord, and then a lot of bad things happen. We would not want to be anywhere near any of that. The American people do not want us anywhere near any of that. For those reasons, I would urge my colleagues to look at this. This is a time-honored policy that has served us well. Support Senator Wicker's language that reinstates Kemp-Kasten, language that has stood us well in the test of time, and let's not go down a different road that is going to be harmful to a lot of people and is disagreed to by the American public. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Associated Press, Aug. 30, 2007] Chinese Victims of Forced Late-Term Abortion Fight Back (By Alexa Olesen) Qian'an, China.--Yang Zhongchen, a small-town businessman, wined and dined three government officials for permission to become a father. But the Peking duck and liquor weren't enough. One night, a couple of weeks before her date for giving birth, Yang's wife was dragged from her bed in a north China town and taken to a clinic, where, she says, her baby was killed by injection while still inside her. ``Several people held me down, they ripped my clothes aside and the doctor pushed a large syringe into my stomach,'' says Jin Yani, a shy, petite woman with a long ponytail. ``It was very painful. . . . It was all very rough.'' Some 30 years after China decreed a general limit of one child per family, resentment still brews over the state's regular and sometimes brutal intrusion into intimate family matters. Not only are many second pregnancies aborted, but even to have one's first child requires a license. Seven years after the dead baby was pulled from her body with forceps, Jin remains traumatized and, the couple and a doctor say, unable to bear children. Yang and Jin have made the rounds of government offices pleading for restitution--to no avail. This year, they took the unusual step of suing the family planning agency. The judges ruled against them, saying Yang and Jin conceived out of wedlock. Local family planning officials said Jin consented to the abortion. The couple's appeal to a higher court is pending. The one-child policy applies to most families in this nation of 1.3 billion people, and communist officials, often under pressure to meet birth quotas set by the government, can be coldly intolerant of violators. But in the new China, economically powerful and more open to outside influences, ordinary citizens such as Yang and Jin increasingly are speaking out. Aiding them are social campaigners and lawyers who have documented cases of forced abortions in the seventh, eighth or ninth month. Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer, prepared a lawsuit cataloguing 20 cases of forced abortions and sterilizations in rural parts of Shandong province in 2005, allegedly carried out because local officials had failed to reach population control targets. Chen, who is blind, is serving a prison sentence of three years and four months which his supporters say was meted out in retaliation for his activism. Many countries ban abortion after 12 or sometimes 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the mother's life is at risk. While China outlaws forced abortions, its laws do not expressly prohibit or even define late-term termination. A family unplanned Jin, an 18-year-old high school dropout from a broken home, met 30-year-old Yang, a building materials supplier, in September 1998. They moved in together. A year and a half later, in January or February 2000, they discovered Jin was pregnant but couldn't get married right away because she had not reached 20, the marriage age. After her birthday in April, Jin bought porcelain cups for the wedding and posed for studio photos. On May 5, they were married. Now all that was missing was the piece of paper allowing them to have a child. So about a month before Jin's due date, her husband Yang set out to curry favor with Di Wenjun, head of the neighborhood family planning office in Anshan, the couple's home town about 190 miles east of Beijing. He faced a fine of $660 to $1,330 for not having gotten a family planning permit in advance, so he treated Di to the Peking duck lunch on Aug. 15, 2000, hoping to escape with a lower fine since this was his first child. The next day he paid for another meal with Di and the village's Communist Party secretary and accountant. He said the mood was cordial and that the officials toasted him for finding a young wife and starting a family. ``They told me `We'll talk to our superiors. We'll do our best. Wait for our news.' So I was put at ease,'' Yang said. But three weeks later, on Sept. 7, when Yang was away opening a new building supplies store, Jin was taken from her mother-in-law's home and forced into having the abortion. Why had the officials failed to make good on their assurances? One of Yang's two lawyers, Wang Chen, says he believes it was because no bribe was paid. ``Dinner is not enough,'' Wang said. ``Nothing gets done without a bribe. This is the situation in China. Yang was too naive.'' Di, who has since been promoted to head of family planning for all of Anshan township, could not be reached. Officials who answered his office phone refused to take a message and gave a cell phone number for him that was out of service. Late-term procedures decline Zhai Zhenwu, a sociology professor at the People's University Institute of Demographic Studies in Beijing, said that while forced, late-term abortions do still occur sporadically, they have fallen sharply. In the late '80s and early '90s, he said, some family planning officials ``were really radical and would do very inappropriate things like take your house, levy huge fines, force you into procedures.'' Things have improved since a propaganda campaign in 1993 to make enforcement more humane and the enactment of the family planning law in 2001, he said. Controls have been relaxed, allowing couples in many rural areas to have two children under certain conditions. Still, Radio Free Asia reported this year that dozens of women in Baise, a small city in the southern province of Guangxi, were forced to have abortions because local officials failed to meet their population targets. In the province's Bobai county, thousands of farmers rioted in May after family planners levied huge fines against people with too many children. Those who didn't pay were told their homes would be demolished and their belongings seized. Yang and Jin are suing the Family Planning Bureau in their county of Changli for $38,000 in medical expenses and $130,000 for psychological distress. But it's not about the money, said Yang, a fast-talking chain-smoker. No longer able to afford to run his business, he now works as a day laborer in Qian'an, an iron mining town east of Beijing. ``What I want is my child and I want the court to acknowledge our suffering,'' he said. A family planning official in Changli justified Jin's abortion on the grounds she lacked a birth permit. The woman, who would only give her surname, Fu, said no one in the clinic was punished for performing the procedure. Contradictory evidence The National Population and Family Planning Commission, the agency overseeing the one-child policy, says it is looking into Jin and Yang's case. Meanwhile, the evidence appears contradictory. Jin's medical records include a doctor's certificate from 2001, the year after the abortion, confirming she could not have children. Doctors in Changli county say they examined her in 2001 and 2002 and found nothing wrong with her. The court ruling says Jin agreed to have the operation. Jin says the signature on the consent form is not hers but that of Di, the official her husband courted. Sun Maohang, another of the Yangs' lawyers, doubts the court will rule for the couple lest it encourage further lawsuits. But he hopes the case will stir debate and lead to clearer guidelines on abortion. As she waits for the next round in court, Jin says she is too weak to work and has been celibate for years because sex is too painful. Her husband prods her to tell her story, but during an interview she sits silent for a long time and finally says she doesn't want to talk about the past because it's too sad. Then she quietly insists the lawsuit is something she has to do for Yang Ying, the baby girl she carried but never got to see or hold.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Hawaii, with whom I have had the great pleasure of serving in this body, for withholding that request. I come to the Senate floor today to address the Omnibus appropriations bill, as well as to address one of the major needs of a major industry in our State. I would ask my colleagues to think about this for a second: If there was a business in the United States they knew about that contributed annually around $150 billion to the U.S. economy; employed 1.2 million people, mostly in the manufacturing sector of the economy; is a major export driver with 40 percent of their production--40 percent of this $150 billion going to overseas sales, contributing to the economy, contributing as a multiplier, and a significant multiplier--to the economy, I think most people would say: What is the business and how do we support it? How do we move it on forward in these tough economic times, if the business is having a great deal of difficulty? The one major thing they are asking from the Government now is not to badmouth them, not to talk them down. It is to be positive about this business instead of being down. So of all the businesses we have coming to us asking for money, for support and grants and these sorts of things, we have one that is a major industry, an exporter, and a major manufacturer. They want us not to badmouth them anymore. We should be able to comply with that request, and we ought to. I am talking about the general aviation industry, which is this $150 billion industry, flying 1.2 million people, primarily in the manufacturing sector. It is a major exporter that is growing but is having enormous difficulty in this economic and global climate because so much export was going overseas. Federal officials are making fun and saying people should not fly on these business aircraft; they should not use these things. They are making it a matter of derision. The industry is simply asking us not to do that; help us out, don't talk us down, don't hurt us. The industry is appreciative of the bonus depreciation that was put in the stimulus package, and I am also appreciative of that. I hope it can help. It doesn't help when the President and others say people are disappearing on private jets and flying around the country. I think it is helpful to present a few facts on the actual situation and say who actually uses business aircraft and where they go. Eighty- six percent of the passengers on business aircraft are not company senior officials but instead are mostly midlevel employees, including salespeople, engineers, and other technical specialists. These companies have operations in a number of different places. They can't get into convenient commercial airports, and they use business aircraft to get these people back and forth between various sites very efficiently. A lot of my colleagues don't realize there are some 5,000 airports nationwide, but only 500 are served by commercial airlines. So 10 percent are served by commercial airlines and the other 90 percent are not. How do you get in and out of all the other 90 percent, other than by using business aircraft--whether it is propeller or jet? They are what ends up connecting a lot of people on a rapid basis throughout the country. That is important for people to realize. Without the use of a lot of business aircraft, you are going to have much more inefficiency in companies, a lot more difficulty getting people from point A to B. In a lot of cases, you have emergency situations where you have business aircraft moving people who are very sick from one place to get them to a critical hospital; it gives them access. Behind all this and the numbers I am talking about, you have a bunch of people working for these companies. I will show you some pictures of people in my State. I am proud of the work they do in business aircraft. This is King Air by Beechcraft. The assembly line is back here. I have been in these factories a number of times. It is an interesting and cool business. It is one a lot of places around the world are trying to steal from the United States. The Japanese, the Brazilians, and certainly the Chinese are trying to take this manufacturing business from the United States. We are the center of business aviation and of the construction of these planes for the world. As you might guess, it is a high-wage, high-skill manufacturing field. It is a great business. Consequently, you have a number of other competitors trying to break into this field at the same time our Government is talking down this business in the United States. The workers in my State who are making these great quality aircraft are saying: Just don't talk bad about us. I have some other pictures I wish to show you of other people in this business. I want individuals to be able to see this. Behind every discussion, you have the people who make the aircraft. Most people who see this aircraft probably say there is probably somebody well-to-do inside. But more likely it is an engineer, a salesperson or a technician. These are the people building it. This is a Hawker 4000. It is a great aircraft that came out. I will show another aircraft. These are made in Wichita, with a lot of suppliers from the entire region and the country that are going into making these aircraft. These are some of the volunteers, the employees working here, volunteering in the community and this is from the Christmas season and this is soccer. Here are some of their products. I will show another one as well, so people can get an idea of who all is involved in this picture. This is the rollout of an aircraft, a Cessna. This is the celebration of the rollout of the first Sovereign jet. You can see in the picture the people involved in this. I hope my colleagues will take note that when they use a cheap shot to say we should not have these guys using business aircraft, 90 percent of your airports would not be accessible if people were not using these. These are experts getting to various operations. The corporations would be far less efficient, and they would lose the connection for people to be able to make it to medical services that are critical in some places in the country. There is a lot of good this business does, and it is a business dominated by the United States. We need to support it, not hurt it. Finally, on an amendment I hope comes up on a separate issue in the omnibus bill, there is a sunsetting of the DC scholarship program. I raise the point to my colleagues that this has been a very successful program, with a strong support base from the people who are using it and a desire to continue to use it. I think we ought to continue it rather than sunset this particular program. In the omnibus bill, the opportunity scholarship program is sunsetted unless there is reauthorization that takes place. Hopefully, that will occur this year, and reauthorization will occur. Listen to who is participating in this program, and if it is sunsetted, who cannot continue to participate. The average annual income of the people participating was around $22,800, far below the eligibility level for this program, which is 185 percent of the Federal poverty level or $39,000. The actual number is $22,736, and that is the average annual income of the people participating. Just over 1,700 students are participating in the program. They are trying to get into schools that are better for their kids because the DC Public Schools have not served them well. The DC Public Schools' per pupil expenditure is the highest in the country at $15,000. The DC class size is one of the lowest in the country; it is a 14-to-1 student to teacher ratio. Yet reading scores continue to languish near or at the bottom of national assessment in the Nation. Recent data shows that 69 percent of fourth graders in the DC public schools are reading below basic levels. DC students ranked last in the Nation in both SAT and ACT scores. Forty-two percent of DC students drop out of school compared to 31 percent nationwide. People fudge with figures and say it doesn't mean this or that, but what you have are 1,700-plus students who have opted to use a scholarship to get into a private school that they are very happy with, that they are performing well in, and that the parents are happy with, rather than the DC Public School System that, by and large, is not serving students well, and the longer you stay in that system, the poorer you are doing. Most representatives, Congressmen and Senators, who have children and grandchildren in DC don't send their children to public schools. As a matter of fact, I don't know if anybody in this body does. Yet we consign people who don't have the income ability to get out of the DC public system into a school system that has failed students. A number of efforts are being made to change this system. I applaud the efforts by the mayor's office and the superintendent of schools, Michelle Rhee. But if you are in the system, these changes are taking time to make and you don't have time when you are going through the first, second, third, and fourth grades. Each year you are losing ground. Here is a group of students who have found a way to get into a better situation. We should not take that away. It is wrong for us to take that away. I know they believe it is wrong to take that away. I urge my colleagues to not let this program be sunsetted but to reestablish it. I would like to see it expanded so more students could take advantage of it as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I appreciate the debate on several key amendments. I also want to recognize my colleague from California and her strong support--indeed, key position--on the voucher program, the DC scholarship program that she has been one of the primary architects of and wants to get measurables on it. It is in the subcommittee on appropriations on which I serve, and she has been a key person on that. It is my hope we can work that out, whether it is going to be at a later time for reauthorization or if we can pass it here today. It is a key program, and I want to recognize what my colleague has done on that historically. That is what I come to the floor to talk about, as well as a couple of other things that are coming up but particularly the DC scholarship program. It is an amendment. We have it appropriated in the appropriations bill, but it is required for reauthorization. It needs to be reauthorized. My hope is that the majority leader will say, yes, we will bring this up for reauthorization and give us floor time to do that. I understand the manager of this bill has said he would bring it up in his committee and do a markup in committee. I have worked for this program for some period of time. I have worked with the students and parents in this program. They love it. They appreciate the chance to succeed in a failed school system. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program has received applications from over 7,000 low-income students, has served over 2,600 of these children. We have far more applicants than we do slots. When these students entered the program, they had average math and reading test scores in the bottom third of all test takers. Recent evaluation by the U.S. Department of Education--this goes back to last year--affirms academic gains among scholarship students less than 2 years after receiving a scholarship. Last year, after less than 1 year in the program, two subgroups of students, representing 83 percent of participating students, showed positive results in math, and both years showed overwhelming parental satisfaction. Parents like it. Students are doing better. It is working. I certainly wish to salute Mayor Fenty and DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee for making education reform and support for this program something important in the District. They made this a high priority. Certainly, we have to get the schools functioning in the District of Columbia. This is a piece of it that is working for 1,700 students. We need it reauthorized to be able to continue to move it forward. It would be heartless for us not to do it. I recognize a number of people have a problem with it on this bill. I understand that. If there is a chance we can get an agreement that the reauthorization would take place later, that would be a wise route to go, and then follow through regular order. But this one is working and is working well. It is being well received by parents and students. It has an odd sort of support base where it has both left and right. It has a lot of people in a low-income situation supporting it. It is one of those pieces of legislation that have a broad base of support ideologically and practically. People want to see it moving forward and have it succeed as an overall program. I am very hopeful this Congress can do that. Two other quick points. One is coming up on the fairness doctrine that will be considered. The fairness doctrine, to educate my colleagues--I am sure everybody is familiar with it--was promulgated by the FCC in 1949 to ensure that contrasting viewpoints would be presented on radio and television. In 1985, the FCC began the process of repealing the doctrine after concluding that it actually resulted in broadcasters limiting coverage of controversial issues of public importance. Now we are hearing from some voices saying this doctrine should be put back in place. I urge colleagues to not do that. This isn't the way for us to get a good discussion going in the public marketplace. Indeed, the results in the past, and I believe today, would be that the doctrine would actually result in less, not more, broadcasting of important issues to the public. Airing controversial issues would subject broadcasters to regulatory burdens and potentially severe liabilities. They simply would say: We will not put anything on. Just think about the changing landscape in broadcast radio and television that has taken place since 1949. These numbers are startling. In 1949, there were 51 television stations in the country and 2,500 radio stations. Maybe a lot of people wish we would go back to that era of less media, but we will not. In 1958, there were 1,200 television stations and 9,800 radio stations. Today, there are 1,800 television stations and 14,000 radio stations. There is simply no scarcity to justify content mandates such as the fairness doctrine that would be a regulatory nightmare for radio and television stations. Plus, we have all the new media, social networking, and individual citizen access to information on the Internet that does not warrant this being put back into place. Finally, to comment on the second amendment rights, the Supreme Court, in a historic ruling, has found that second amendment rights apply to the individual, and that applies to individuals across the country, that applies to individuals in the District of Columbia. I think those should be continued and guaranteed and supported by this body as well. I think it would be appropriate for us to support that and support that in this legislation. Madam President, in conclusion, I would like to have printed in the Record two editorials in agreement from two publications that frequently do not agree. One is from the Wall Street Journal and the other is from the Washington Post. Both are in support of the DC voucher program, saying it works--it works for kids, it works for parents--and is something that should be continued. I have never had printed in the Record before editorials from those two publications at the same time agreeing on the same topic, particularly in education. I think what it says is that this one is working and should be continued. So I ask unanimous consent that the editorials be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, this is the largest spending bill ever to be voted on. It will probably be passed by this body. It has been done in the most rushed fashion that we have ever done a spending bill. It is the least bipartisan ever. Not a single Republican in the House voted for this bill; nine Democrats voted against it. Unfortunately, in conference, the bad parts of the bill got bigger and the good parts got smaller. We are left with a spending bill of gigantic proportions and a stimulus package that is small, by any measure. I will point out a few historical numbers. We have had stimulus packages in the past, and we have needed them. We need one now. We have never, in the history of the Republic, had a stimulus package over the size of 1\1/2\ percent of GDP. That is the biggest we have ever done in the history of the Republic. This stimulus spending bill is 5.5 percent of the GDP of the entire country. It is huge--more than three times larger than any we have ever done. To give perspective, we did a stimulus package in 2008 in the amount of $152 billion. This is $800 billion. In 2001, it was $38 billion. That seems small by today's standards. This one is 5\1/2\ percent of GDP. If you look at the actual tax cuts, there are things in the tax cuts I think are good. There are other things in spending I think are good, but they should not be in a stimulus bill. They should go through the regular order in a spending package. We will have the omnibus spending bill after the break. That will be hundreds of billions of dollars, and people can measure that. But the tax cut piece of this bill that is probably going to be stimulative-- and I would support as being stimulative--is a total of $76 billion, which is 9.6 percent of the bill. Many of the tax cuts in the bill are actually spending through the Tax Code or an AMT fix that will not be stimulative, which most people regarded as that will be fixed and they are not going to alter economic activity based on that. You are left with $76 billion in tax cuts that would be stimulative. As I said, there are things in there I like. I congratulate the majority on some of those tax cuts that are in it--the issue on first-time home buyers. We have done that in Washington, DC. It was helpful in stimulating the housing market here. I think it will stimulate the market across the country. Wind energy is in here that will help our Plains States--the Senator from South Dakota, myself, and many others. This will help in wind energy, a key growth area for us. I am supportive of that. I think that is important. We got a piece in here about deductibility of State taxes on purchases of new automobiles in 2009. That will have a stimulative effect. I think it will be small. There is bonus depreciation for a big industry in my State, aircraft, that will have a stimulative effect. It will be positive. All of those I support and I applaud the majority side for that. The sum total of those altogether is less than 10 percent of the whole package. Instead, we are left with this gargantuan spending bill that is 5\1/2\ percent of the economy, which we cannot afford. It will not be stimulative. It will a be highly speculative Government bubble that we are creating. At the end of the day, the last and biggest number in this whole bill is a number of $12 trillion. That is in the bill and that is what we are growing, what we are setting the debt limit of the country at in this bill. We are raising it to $12 trillion. That is in the bill. The reason we are raising that debt limit to $12 trillion--you guessed it-- it is headed that way. We are getting closer with this bill. We have come to a very big speculative bubble on housing and consumer credit and a number of other things as well. This speculative bubble led to a lot of housing being built, cars being purchased, and all was fine. But then the bubble burst. Now we are trying to substitute that with a Government speculative bubble. We are going to spend all this Government money and in a speculative, highly leveraged nature, because 100 percent of this is borrowed. That is somehow going to stimulate the economy. It is going to leave that big, massive hole in it. I am deeply concerned about what this is going to do both in the present and in the near-term future. I hope we can do better. There is a great possibility that we can do better. I think we should. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues and discuss the spending package that will be back in front of us--the $800 billion but, with interest, probably $1.2 trillion, which will be in the package, and it will all be borrowed--every cent of it. We don't have that money presently. So we are going to be borrowing it to do this. A couple of things strike me. One, we learned last fall--and there is an old saying that is true in government and certainly with individuals as well, which is ``haste makes waste.'' I grew up with that saying. People say, look, if you hurry at this and you don't get it right, you are going to have to do it again. We saw that last fall with TARP. We put in $750 billion because they said we have to do it now and we have to do it fast. But at the end of the day, that haste made waste. The Treasury Department went pillar to post, saying we are going to do this or we are going to do that, and they ended up spending the money. Now we are looking at TARP II and the banks still need help. I have a lot of people back home saying: What happened to the first hundreds of billions of dollars you gave the banks? Haste makes waste. We saw it then. There is no reason for us to rush to get this wrong on the stimulus package. Yes, we need a stimulus package. My State needs a stimulus package. This country needs it. We need a stimulus package, not a spending bill. If we slow down a little bit--I think we should refer this back to the Committees on Finance and the Appropriations and put a requirement on it that every dollar spent must yield at least $1.50 in economic activity over and above what is spent. We should make it a stimulus bill, not a spending bill. We have not done that. We are hastily putting this forward. I believe, tragically, we will be wastefully putting it out. There will be a number of programs that can use the funds, I have no doubt about that. But if the target is to get this economy off its knees and moving forward, we have to hit that target and not a multiple set of targets, and not a set of spending targets that are not stimulative in nature. There is another saying that President Reagan was fond of using, and it was that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary Government program. That was his experience and it has been mine as well. Once something gets started, it is hard to stop, because it gets a constituency built up around it, and people build up their expectations and infrastructure around it. When you go to eliminate it once it has started, it is like, wait a minute, now this has a multiplier impact on a broader cross-section of individuals. That is why there is nothing so permanent as a temporary Government program. I think that is probably why some people are looking at starting things under the guise of stimulus that are, in actuality, starting new Federal spending programs with the hope that infrastructure builds up around it and in future years, when it goes to be cut, people will say you cannot do this because it will have this multiplier impact. That is the history of the Federal Government and its growth. According to a CBO analysis, if most of the new spending programs enacted under the proposed stimulus were to become long-term spending programs--and that is our history and what we have seen in the past-- the cost of the stimulus package would rise to $2.5 trillion over the next decade, and $3.3 trillion if you include interest payments on that debt. We are borrowing every cent. You are looking at long-term spending in the $3.3 trillion category. If you do and you look at a rough outline of this, you are going to move the Federal Government from about 20 percent of the economy, which it has been, up to 25 and possibly 30 percent of the economy. At what time do you come to the tipping point? And that is before you add in the baby boomers retiring and the increased costs in Medicare, and when that baby boomer generation is retired and using the Government programs instead of paying into them. You will get to a tipping point where people cannot afford the tax structure that is needed underneath that. That is not wise for us to do. In this stimulus bill, we will take the Federal debt in private hands relative to our gross domestic product from below 40 percent of GDP to move it well over 60 percent of GDP. So that will be like saying I have a job and I make $100,000 a year, and I borrowed $40,000 that I am paying on, and now I am going to jump it to $60,000. You are looking at that in this soft economy and saying, is that a smart thing to do? Most people would say, no, that is not the right thing to do. You want to try to stimulate things, not harm them. Finally is this thought: I don't believe that hastily constructed bills such as this one being sold as stimulative is a plan to help our economy weather this recession. It strikes me as a highly leveraged, speculative bet on larger Government and massive long-term spending as a cure to our economic woes. We have seen what the aftermath of highly leveraged speculative bets can bring. That is what we have gotten into in the first place, where you have had highly speculative leveraged events taking place in the housing market and expanding into credit card use, into automobile loans. A number of homes were bought with 100 or 110 percent borrowing, and they thought the appreciation would pay for that. Those were completely leveraged events. That doesn't bring economic prosperity; it brings bubbles. I don't think you are even going to see that with this one. You are going to see long-term costs. We are going to see speculative debt with the Government using our children as leverage. Is that the way we want to go? Clearly, the people in my State believe no, and they believe we need a stimulus package, and that we need to work together on a bipartisan package. We should take it through the regular order, through the Appropriations Committee and the Finance Committee, and hold hearings on it, look at what actually works, set a criteria on this. When we had this very rapid, hastily put together TARP legislation--and everybody is mad about that now--we didn't hold hearings on it. We did it quickly and in closed sessions. Out pops the package, and now we are back at it. I think we will be back at this one also if we don't do what we need to do. But only our ammo box will be empty. We are not going to have anything in it, because haste makes waste. We rush out there trying to get it done and we don't work the process and work together on it. We are not going to hit the target and that will be sad for the American public. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I agree with my colleagues, Mr. Chairman, that the bill the Senator has brought before us addresses many impending needs. This matter we are discussing not only addresses a critical matter of national security by creating the capability to develop enough medical countermeasures to treat the U.S. population in the event of a terrorist attack, but it would expand domestic jobs and domestic infrastructure in the biotechnology industry. Like Senator Specter addressed previously, this bill does not identify specific funding for these needs. I conclude that the best way of addressing these threats is for partnerships between the academic, industry and government sectors. Academically affiliated, privately operated National Centers of Excellence for Flexible Manufacturing of Medical Counter Measures are the answer to developing, sustaining, and integrating our country's biodefense portfolio under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Yield for what?

Mr. BROWNBACK. Yes, I will be happy to.