Sam Brownback

Mr. BROWNBACK

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

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Senator Webb and I are involved in the Joint Economic Committee's time. Under the Budget rules, we get a certain amount of time to talk about the impact of the budget on the overall economy. That is what I intend to do. I think it is also important to do this because, obviously, the budget does not happen in a vacuum, and the size of the Federal budget and its impact on the economy is so profound that I think we need to spend quite a bit of time, a lot more than just an hour's time, about what impact the Federal budget has on our overall economy. The things we do, it is impacting the overall economy. I appreciate Senators Webb's comments about the military actions. We actually have held a Joint Economic Committee hearing on the impact of the war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, on our overall economy. While I certainly dispute some of what the economists came forward with, I thought it was a useful thing for us to discuss. I think we ought also to look at that as not in a vacuum, given potential large impacts if the United States pulls out of Iraq and Afghanistan and pulls back from engagement on the global war on terrorism. It can have a huge impact on our economy, in many ways unmeasurable, and in a lot of ways difficult to predict. But the impact is enormous. I think we have to look at this and say: We need to stay in this. We need to be able to get this done. That stability has a clear, positive impact on the environment. And a change toward a more stable environment in the Middle East and toward a democratic process in Iraq and Afghanistan over a lengthy period of time has a very positive impact on the global economy and ultimately on the U.S. economy. I do not think we can discount those features. While members of the Joint Economic Committee on the other side of the aisle prefer to look only at economic costs associated with wars, there are clearly benefits derived from National security, which they should not ignore. I wanted to talk about now the budget proposal in a couple of ways. I would like to speak first about the impact of tax-and-spend proposals that are too much of a feature in the overall budget put forward by the Democratic majority in the Senate. I appreciate the work by those who constructed the budget. I recognize the difficulty of crafting a budget. But I think there are some fundamental flaws that exist in the Democrat's budget that if not addressed, or if addressed in the way that the Democratic majority puts forward, are going to have fundamentally negative impacts near term and long term on the U.S. economy and on our opportunities and our hope for the future. I think as a premise that we need to look at the United States as a place for a growth platform. We need to look at how we can grow the economic activity, increase the freedom for our people and the population overall, provide for everybody, and in that process grow and provide more opportunities for people here and for us in our future and future generations. If we go the way the Democratic majority is putting forward in this budget, we are going to see increased taxes, we are going to see increased spending of a substantial nature. We are not going to deal with the entitlement crisis we are already in, and we are not going to be able to provide for opportunities in our future. There are fundamental choices that people need to make and I will articulate these and I will go through them specifically. Our economy is currently experiencing a significant slowdown associated with the subprime mortgage meltdown, difficulties in financial markets, and certainly a slowing in our housing markets, which includes rising foreclosures. With that backdrop, though, now would seem to be exactly the wrong time to be talking about tax increases. Just on a basic level, you would look at that and say: If you have a slowing economy, is that the time to raise taxes? And I think most people, if you ask them, they would say: No, that is the time you cut tax rates to try to stimulate economic growth. Yet this Democratic budget provides just the opposite, a very large tax increase, raising taxes by $1.2 trillion, the largest tax hike ever. That is not something you want to do when the economy is slowing. It goes against economic fundamentals. But it also shows the fundamental impact of the Federal budget on the overall economy. This tax increase will be wide and deep, affecting nearly 116 million Americans, millions of American families, including seniors who will owe thousands of dollars more to pay for more and more Government. And, yes, this budget projects to make the Federal Government even larger and more intrusive. Not satisfied in the Democrat's last budget with a $205 billion 5-year discretionary spending increase; this 2009 Democrat budget will increase spending by $210 billion over 5 years in this budget. Of course, this will lead to more and more debt that will pile up on top of more and more spending. I think the second major shortcoming of the budget proposal put forward by the majority is the failure to confront the need for entitlement reform. Now this is something we have been talking about for some period of time. I stand ready, and I hope a lot of my colleagues do, to go at, on a joint, bipartisan basis, entitlement reform. We have talked about it a lot. I am going to show charts on this. But the entitlement plans are going to eat up the entire budget. We will go through the specifics, but it is clearly an unsustainable system that we are in right now. Like in most problems, the earlier you deal with it the more options you have to deal with it. And the earlier you deal with it the more likely it will be that you successfully deal with it. And the earlier you deal with it the less pain there will be over a period of time, than if you deal with it later. These problems with entitlement promises that are unsustainable are the same. If we can come together, on a bipartisan basis now, start an entitlement reform, A, the country would cheer that we would do it; B, we would have more options; C, it would be more successful; D, it would be less painful. That is the way we need to go at it in dealing with our entitlement reforms. But in the Democrats' fiscal year 2009 budget, we see that they are again wishing to ignore this pressing problem associated with entitlement spending. So I wanted to take a look now at some of these problems and put a few charts up in front of people I think they are familiar with, but they remind us of the magnitude and the growing nearness of this problem of entitlement programs. If you look at the red line on this first chart, you see that total primary spending is projected by the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan office, to rise from its current level of 18 percent of GDP to more than 30 percent at the end of this chart, 2082, a long ways out there, but it shows you clearly where the trend line goes under the current entitlement programs. Those are not adjustments to entitlement programs, those are current entitlement programs. Yes, Federal spending is projected to rise to over 30 percent of our Nation's GDP, under our current set of entitlement promises. The second chart shows that the longer we wait to address the unsustainable nature of promises in our entitlement programs, which this Democratic budget totally ignores, the bigger will be the pain. Now, here you can see reductions in spending that would be necessary to solve our entitlement crisis. For example, if we were to address our fiscal problems solely by cutting Federal spending starting this year, we would need an across-the-board spending cut of close to 7 percent. If we wait until 2020, we would have to cut spending across the board by 9 percent. To wait until 2040, you have to do it by 15 percent. That is my point; that is, the sooner you start to work on these things the less pain you have to have in the process, and the more likely it is that you are going to be successful in getting this done. These are dramatic spending cuts. But what if we can get started now and on a bipartisan basis, just going on a slight level and give people time to prepare for adjustments that will surely have to be made? You still get a much larger impact if you don't fix the unsustainable nature of our entitlement promises now, and instead wait longer. The longer we ignore the unsustainable nature of entitlement promises, the bigger will be the pain associated with bringing the Nation back to a sustainable fiscal course. Now, this is a commonsense proposal. You would say: Of course, then, I should deal with that now. We are offering to do it on a bipartisan basis. The chairman of the Budget Committee from the majority claims that the task force he and Senator Gregg wish to form to study the entitlement programs is the only way to deal with the problems. I am a cosponsor. I would sponsor legislation to do this. But that in no way mitigates the need to get started as soon as we can to reform entitlements now. Why wait for a task force to form? I think we need to get started on this now. To see how severe problems associated with the entitlement program promises are, consider the next chart which shows CBO's projection of health care spending. Now, here is the big one that eats us up. We know this. We have got fabulous things going in the health care field that probably are going to drive these costs up even more than this chart projects. I want to see those things developed further as far as the technology and the ability. I was out at the National Institutes of Health this morning looking at some of the things they are working on at the National Institute of Mental Health, understanding the mind and how it works. Fantastic. I want us to continue to fund that. That is going to probably drive this line up even higher. That may be the nature of where we are. We do not want to stop that funding. But then you see how dramatic and important it is to address this piece of it, the health care piece of it now, and to begin to address it at this point in time. Net Federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid now accounts for about 4 percent of GDP. CBO projects, given current entitlement promises and not these major changes I am talking about, that spending will grow to almost 20 percent of GDP in the projected time period here of 2082. A long time now, still the trend line is known and knowable and we should use the ability to deal with it more now than putting that off until later on. So spending on Medicare and Medicaid alone, according to the projections on this chart, will use up the entire historic norms for tax collection and beyond. But Medicare and Medicaid are not the only entitlement programs. The next chart shows Social Security spending as a share of GDP in the past and spending projections for the future. While spending for Social Security benefits has been between 4 and 4.5 percent of GDP for the past couple of decades, it is projected to rise significantly to 6 percent over the length of this chart's projection, not near the growth of entitlement programs, but still showing a significant 50 percent rise. If you add the 20 percent of GDP accounted for by Federal promises for Medicare and Medicaid, 6 percent for Social Security benefits, you see that the Federal Government has already promised over 25 percent of our total yearly output to entitlement spending. This only counts promised entitlement spending right now. As I mentioned previously, our historical norm for the amount of tax collection that our society gives and puts into the Federal Government is about 20 percent. If you get above that, people really start to yell. So we are already above that in the promises made in three entitlement programs. And that takes into account nothing for the military, for schools, for other social programs, for infrastructure, for unemployment, or for any discretionary spending. The Democratic majority seems to want to focus on one route here, and that is tax and spend. The Democratic majority, unfortunately, has chosen in their budget to ignore our Nation's looming fiscal crisis that is sure to come from the unsustainable nature of entitlement programs. This fiscal year 2009 budget promises to impose the largest tax increase in the history of this Nation on American families and does this at precisely the wrong time, when the economy is struggling. This will be the largest tax hike ever, amounting to an additional $3,135 in taxes each year for every household, over $3,100 a year increase in household taxes at exactly the time when people are getting concerned about economic activity. Just when we did the stimulus, we raise taxes. I want to take up the theme of the impact on our economy of this budget. That is the role of the Joint Economic Committee, and that is why they have been given a period of time to comment on this, because this has such a profound impact. Now I want to talk about the impact of raising taxes at this point in time on the overall economy. I have talked about entitlement programs, the failure to address those, the long-term pain that is associated with that, and the additional pain by putting it off on a longer basis. Now what about the impact of raising taxes at this point in time on our economy and who is going to pay those increased taxes? The Democratic majority's budget will raise taxes on at least 116 million Americans. It is not just on the rich, unless there are 116 million people categorized as that in the United States. It will tax the hard-earned income and retirement benefits of millions of American families and seniors to pay for larger and larger government rather than reform. I think what people want to see is, you guys are going to operate within the amount that you have and reform the system. Reform what you have, don't tax and spend. Let's leave taxes where they are or make them lower so we can grow the economy more and then reform the system within rather than just adding and adding and adding. The majority would have you believe that they will offer amendments to make the middle-class parts of the tax reductions permanent. They are not including any teeth in that budget amendment, and we will almost certainly not see legislation to accomplish that extension in this Congress. It is just empty promises. Democrats complain that the tax relief measures of 2001 and 2003 primarily benefitted the wealthy. Let's go through a couple of charts to look at that claim and see who is paying these tax increases or paying and receiving the tax relief of 2001 and 2003 and who would pay, if what the majority is putting forward is enacted, the tax increases. As shown by the changes in the share of total Federal tax liability by income group on the chart, the percentage of all taxes paid by the top income group has increased since the tax relief measures were enacted, and the share of taxes paid by the bottom four income groups has declined. I think this tells a dramatic and different story than what we hear a lot of times in the rhetoric. Where you look at the various income categories, the lowest 20-percent income category, next 20, next 20 up, and on up, and then we put a block here showing the top 1 percent income category. My point of showing this is on your bottom four income categories, the lowest 20 percent earners under the changes in Federal tax liabilities 2000 to 2005, this is the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the greatest beneficiaries under those tax cuts were the lowest income categories. The biggest beneficiary under those tax cuts was the bottom 20 percent. That is as it should be. The lowest income category should have the biggest impact, the most positive impact. You are seeing that in then the next lowest 20 percent, the bottom 40 percent here, then the 60, and then the 80 percent of lowest incomes. Now you look at the top 20 percent earners, they pay an increase as a percentage of the Federal budget of taxes under these tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. And your top 1 percent is up 8.2 percent in terms of what they pay as their share of Federal taxes. My point in saying this is, these tax cuts have worked as they should have. They have cut the overall tax rate for individuals, and particularly for lower income individuals. They have stimulated the economy, and they have shifted the tax burden to the higher end of the income distribution. When you say tax cuts for the rich, your really should be talking about tax cuts for most Americans and the percentage they pay. This is as it should be. This is how it was designed. So when people say we have done these tax cuts for the rich, we are not going to extend them, does this chart show tax cuts for the rich? I think it shows tax cuts primarily benefitting the lower 80 percent of wage earners and having a burden shifting to the top 20 percent of income earners. That is the design it should have. It has grown the economy overall. It has been the way we should go. Yes, despite the tax relief measures that many tout as tax cuts for the wealthy, the share of taxes paid by the top 10 percent of income earners rose more quickly than during previous periods, including periods with higher top marginal tax rates. According to the most recent data, the share of all Federal income taxes paid by the top 10 percent has reached an all-time high of 73 percent. Let me say that again. According to the most recent data, the share of all Federal income taxes paid by the top 10 percent has reached an all-time high of 73 percent. You can see the trend line of what is taking place from 1979; the top 10 percent of income earners, 1979, the percentage of income taxes paid was below 50 percent. In 2000, 68 percent; now it is all the way up to 73 percent, as it should be. Democrats talk about raising taxes on the wealthy, but fail to mention that not extending the tax relief measures of 2001 and 2003 will result in huge tax increases for all Americans, as this chart displaying average percent increases in taxes by income levels shows. I wanted to show you this one. Low- and middle-income families will be the hardest hit by the scheduled tax increases that will occur in 2011. These families benefitted the most from a reduction in the bottom tax rate, from the child tax credit and marriage penalty relief contained in the 2001, 2003 tax relief measures. If the tax relief measures of 2001 and 2003 are not made permanent, families with $50,000 in income will see their tax bills rise by 261 percent in 2011. On the other hand, families with $500,000 or more in income will experience a 12- to 13-percent rise in their taxes. Is that what you want for a structure of tax increases, putting the largest hikes on the lowest earning families and the smallest hikes on the upper earners? I don't think that is the way you want to structure tax increases. I don't think that is the way the American public would want to see that structured. I don't think the American people would want to see any tax increases. The average household will pay an additional $1,833 under the Democrat's plan. Many will have their taxes rise by even more. Seniors, families with children will pay an additional $2,000 or more. Married couples will pay an additional $3,000. Small business owners will have their tax bills rise by more than $4,000. Another shortcoming in this budget is the failure to adequately address the growing burden that the AMT will place on many middle- income families. Although the AMT was enacted initially to prevent millionaires from avoiding taxes altogether, it will soon ironically affect a greater percentage of middle-income married couples with children than millionaires. Let me show this chart, the ones it is going to impact. This says, middle-income married couples with kids will be more likely than millionaires to pay the AMT in 2010. Here is your married couples with kids, AGI of $75,000 to $100,000, 89 percent will be in the AMT; millionaires, 39 percent will be in the AMT. The AMT needs to go. I think we should go and offer an optional flat tax for the overall Tax Code and do away with the AMT altogether. You can see its disproportionate negative impact on families, not hitting its target and having an overall very negative impact on the economy. Given the time I have left, I want to talk about a proposal we are going to put up in this budget and it is a bill on the CARFA commission, the Committee on Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies. It is something we have talked about before and we have had it up as a proposal in the Congress. I have had it up as a proposal and I have had a number of cosponsors. On the current CARFA bill, we have 24 cosponsors. I hope it will be a bill that my colleagues in the majority will look at and support. It is built on the BRAC Commission. I would note that the BRAC Commission provided for a process to close military bases. Before we had BRAC, it was impossible to close a military base. Any time you wanted to close one, the people in that district, that State would fight you. You would never get any of them closed. We put together this BRAC process. They came up with a list of bases to close, and then they presented it to Congress. Congress got one vote up or down, close all of them, keep all of them, deal, no deal. Through that system, we have now saved the Federal taxpayer over $65 billion from that process of closing military bases and consolidating them in a few areas, working toward greater efficiencies. It has been very successful. What we need to do now as a part of the Federal budget is take that to the rest of the Government so we can close Federal programs that are no longer working. I want to show you this report card of how successful is the Federal Government. This is the Federal Government report card, and this is done as a scoring by Federal agencies, where they score the effectiveness of various programs for hitting their intended target when they were started and for the budget they have been given. I want to note that if you gave a GPA to the Federal Government on accomplishments that it does with the money it has been given, the overall grade point average that the Federal Government gets is a 1.14 out of a 4.0 GPA. Now, that is not very good. What happens--everybody knows this is what takes place--we get a program started, it gets funded, and it is never ended. It may be completely successful and all is accomplished, but the program continues because we do not do any sort of culling process at all. Then we want to do something new, but wait a minute, we did not do away with the old. The BRAC process we are talking about putting on the rest of Government--this CARFA Commission--would put that process on the rest of Government and I think dramatically improve this GPA because now you start getting rid of programs that are no longer effective, just like when we had military bases that were in places that were there because of maybe the Spanish American War or the early wars in this country-- completely out of position, no longer necessary but sustained because they had supporters in the system, even though they were not being effective. Well, imagine if you take that system of protection and nonculling and apply it to the rest of Government. How many programs do we have that we have created over the 200-plus-year history of the country, and we have never done away with any of them? We have not even adequately evaluated their effectiveness. You can see why we would be able to improve the government's GPA score and be able to have more money to put in higher priority areas, such as the National Institutes of Health, where I would like to do a war on cancer; or the things we need to do for infrastructure in the country. Yet we have never been able to eliminate any spending. Here is a systems approach, under my proposal, that has worked in another area, that has been key, that has produced $65 billion in savings, that we need to take to the rest of Government. So one of the amendments I will be putting forward is asking for the establishment of this CARFA Commission--Commission on Budgetary Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies--that will provide a list--a group on an annual basis--of programs that should be eliminated and give Congress then one vote, up or down: agree or disagree whether to eliminate this whole group or to keep the whole group. I think that is something we need to do overall. It ought to be something we can come together on, on both sides of the aisle. I would note that in traveling across this country and talking with people, one of the big things the American public wants to see us do is get together and get something done on something that is significant to them. One of those things is that we would be much more responsible to the Federal taxpayers as to what we are spending their money on. If we can become more responsible on that and work across the aisle and they could see Federal programs that are being eliminated because they are no longer effective or they are wasteful--and then they would actually see that taking place--I think people would then trust us more with taxpayer dollars rather than not trusting us with taxpayer dollars. If we can show them that, they would see us doing it on a bipartisan basis. This is something for which the outcome is certainly not stacked. This is something that both sides could support as a process because we have in the past. We could finally see something starting to take place in eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government. Everybody is opposed to waste, fraud, and abuse in this body-- everybody. Yet it continues because the system is built to spend, it is not built to save, it is not built to reduce. We have a system that is built to save and reduce, and it is called that BRAC system in the context of military bases. Then that saved money is put into higher priority needs. Let's take that system out to the broader body of government. This is the short period of time given to the Joint Economic Committee to talk about the impact of the overall budget on the U.S. economy. The impact of this budget that the majority is putting forward is profound and it is negative on the overall U.S. economy. I urge my colleagues to vote against it because of that. It fails to address any sort of entitlement reform. It increases taxes at exactly the wrong time. You do not need to increase taxes, I think, at any time because of the scale of taxes. But when you have a slowing economy, it is the absolute wrong time to raise taxes. The Democrat's budget also does not deal with reform of the AMT, the alternative minimum tax, which it should. It raises taxes on lower income individuals in this society and in our economy, not on upper income individuals. Again, it does have tax increase at exactly the wrong time. And it does not include things such as fundamental spending reform through a CARFA type of process we used in the military base BRAC system before. Because of these failures of big-ticket, overarching items, this is the wrong budget at the wrong time that will have a negative impact on our overall economy. It will have a profoundly negative impact on our overall economy. It is not the right medicine of what we need to move forward. For us to grow this economy at this point in time, we need lower taxes, not higher taxes. For us to grow this economy and provide for our future, we need entitlement reform now. We also need to be able to get at our wasteful spending in the Government. We need to adjust our systems to be able to do that. Those are reforms that if we did them now--and did them at this point in time--we could have a much brighter and sustained future. This budget does not provide for those. For those reasons, I will be opposing this budget. Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve any time I have on the Republican side for the JEC.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I know we need to move everything back 10 minutes because we were supposed to start at 5:20 p.m. and we are already 10 minutes past that time. So if we move everything 10 minutes back--

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, Today, I rise to congratulate my colleagues on the passage of the Second Chance Act, a bill that we have been working on for over 4 years. I am pleased to join with Senators Biden and Specter and Chairman Leahy in supporting the passage of this bill. I, like my colleagues, have worked long and hard on this bipartisan legislation that is supported by over 200 bicameral and bipartisan organizations. I truly believe that with this bill, we have an incredible opportunity to reshape the way in which our Nation fights crime, addresses poverty, and provides for safer communities. Indeed, we have all seen the statistic. Over 650,000 individuals will be released from our Federal and State prisons, and 9 million are released from jails. Approximately two out of every three individuals released from prison or jail commit more crimes and will be rearrested within 3 years of release, placing increasing financial burdens on our States and decreasing public safety. This is unacceptable and must be addressed. Recidivism is costly, in both personal and financial terms. Consider: the American taxpayers spent approximately $9 billion per year on corrections in 1982, and in 2002--nearly two decades later--taxpayers spent $60 billion. In addition to the astronomical costs of recidivism, the Nation's prison population is projected to continue to grow over the next 5 years by an additional 13 percent. According to ``Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America's Prison Population 2007--2017'', State and Federal prison populations are expected to add approximately 192,000 persons at a cost of $27.5 billion between 2007 and 2011. If that is not astonishing enough, State spending on corrections has risen faster over 20 years than spending on nearly any other State budget item--increasing from $9 billion to $41 billion a year. The average annual operating cost per State inmate in 2001 was $22,650, or $62.05 per day. Among facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it was $22,632 per inmate, or $62.01 per day. These figures do not include the cost of arrest and prosecution, nor do they take into account the cost to victims. Despite that fact that taxpayers went from spending $9 billion per year on corrections in 1982 to $60 billion two decades later, the failure rate of our prison system has not improved over the last 30 years. However, my concerns with our correctional system do not stop here. Not only do we need to ensure that our communities are safer, that the money spent on corrections result in drastically lower recidivism rates, but we must also look at the cost to the children of incarcerated individuals. A recent study found that children of prisoners are five times as likely to be incarcerated later in life as a child who has not had a parent incarcerated. Fifty-five percent of prisoners have children under the age of 18 and, tragically, more than 7 million children can claim a parent in prison, in jail, under parole, or under probation supervision. Additionally, some incarcerated parents owe more than $20,000 in child support debt upon their release. Parents play a vital role in the lives of their children--and the role of incarcerated parents is no different. The children of individuals in our prison system often depend upon their incarcerated parent, at least in part, for financial support, and look to that parent for guidance in many aspects of their lives. Failing to address this very important facet of the family structure within the prison population could be contributing to the deterioration of families. We must stop subsidizing programs that do not work and that lead, in turn, to negative behavior less safety, more crime, and more money wasted. The Second Chance Act of 2007, co-authored by Senator Biden, Ranking Member Specter, Chairman Leahy, and myself, as well as our counterparts in the House of Representatives, is a bill that will address this issue by providing grant money to States through the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor to encourage the creation of innovative programs geared toward improving public safety, decreasing the financial burden on States and successfully reintegrating exoffenders into society. Additionally, this bill authorizes two grant programs designed to aid nonprofit organizations--faith-based and community based organizations--that provide programs to those incarcerated. As you may know, faith-based programs are very successful in reintegrating offenders into society. A 2002 study found that faith-based prison programs result in a significantly lower rate of re-arrest than vocation-based programs--16 percent versus 36 percent. A 2003 study on Prison Fellowship Ministries' Texas InnerChange Freedom Initiative, IFI, program found that IFI graduates were 50 percent less likely to be re-arrested. The 2-year postrelease re-arrest rate among IFI postrelease graduates in Texas was 17 percent compared with 35 percent of the matched comparison group. And finally, the study found that IFI graduates were 60 percent less likely to be reincarcerated and the 2-year postrelease reincarceration rate was 8 percent of IFI graduates--8 percent--versus 20.3 percent with the matched comparison group from a nonfaith-based program. The bill also focuses on systematic changes within the criminal justice system by encouraging more coordination between Government agencies, encourages States, and local governments to reevaluate their current statutes in order to streamline their budgets and provide for more effective transition programs for inmates, which include: education, job training, life and family skills, programs for children of incarcerated parents, as well as substance abuse treatment. Further, I want my colleagues to know that there are real accountability measures within this bill. If grantees do not show significant progress in reducing the recidivism rates for program participants they will not be eligible to receive further funding under this act. States have already shown that recidivism rates can be dramatically cut with innovative programs, and I am proud that my State, Kansas, is a leader in this regard. In Kansas, the Shawnee County Re-Entry Program engages corrections officials and community partners to develop comprehensive reentry plans for people in prison who have been assessed as high-risk for reoffending upon release. In the 12 months prior to release, program participants work closely with case managers to develop their reentry plans. Case managers continue to provide support as needed following release. The Shawnee community is closely involved in the program as well, serving on accountability panels and as volunteer community connectors. The program also developed a data collection system to enable facility and parole case managers to enter information more easily. The system allows facility staff and case workers to share data with other data systems within other State agencies, and faith and community-based providers. A Web-based data system would also help build the capacity of community and faith-based organizations to track data similar to State data collections methods. In this way, State agencies can more easily compare data and outcomes with information collected by faith and community groups. This is just one example of innovation in addressing the concerns facing our criminal justice system. Indeed this bill is much needed and will serve as a catalyst for systemic change. This bill could not have happened without the hard work and determination of over 200 organizations, such as Prison Fellowship Ministries, Open Society, the Council of State Governments, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as many State and local government correction officials and law enforcement officials--a truly bipartisan/bicameral coalition of partners committed to changing the criminal justice system. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, Senators Biden and Specter, and Chairman Leahy. Together we were able to implement vital legislation geared to improve public safety, give aid to States, and to truly give those incarcerated a second chance not only to fully integrate into society in a positive way but to provide them with a hope for a positive future not only for themselves but for their families as well.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes as in morning business on an issue that is very important to my State.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for allowing me a few minutes to speak about the tanker contract going to the Airbus- Northrop Grumman consortium. I am still worked up about this; I am going to be worked up about this for some period of time. This is a big impact contract. I want my colleagues to think for a minute about this, about us subcontracting out the building of our ships, our ships to the lowest bidder around the world. If we said: OK. We are going to start building our ships wherever we can get the cheapest hulls for them, do you think we would be building them in the United States? OK. I think other countries or other countries' governments would say: Well, now, here is a good deal. We want to be in shipbuilding, and so we are going to subsidize our way into this. Do you not think we probably would end up building these ships in other places overseas? What we have taking place in this country is Airbus, which is subsidized with aid by European governments, is going to build basically these tanker planes and is going to fly them over here and then they are going to be fitted or militarized in this country. That is what is going to take place. They are going to fly the whole plane over here and then militarize it. Now, is this a European plane or is this an American plane? This is an Airbus plane. It is going to be Airbus components. It is going to be built, it is going to be manufactured, it is going to be done there. I ask my colleagues to think about this. Is this the right thing we want to do? Do we want our tankers and then our AWACS and our ships and our submarines, bid them out to the lowest bidder? In this process, my guess is we will have a lot built in Asia and South America and Europe and subsidized by governments. I do not think this is the way we want to go. So before we move forward on this issue, I think we need to ask and have answered several questions. No. 1, what is the economic impact to our Treasury of outsourcing our military construction? These jobs are going overseas. That has an impact to our Treasury of the jobs being overseas instead of here. Let's have a real, true economic picture of this taking place. I think we ought to have that. No. 1, I think we need to know the direct and indirect amount of the subsidization Airbus is giving to this plane to be able to get this contract. Because here we have a 40-percent bigger plane being produced by Airbus, at a substantially lower price than the Boeing aircraft, and they are not beating us on labor costs. They are certainly not beating us on exchange ratios, given the dollar to the Euro ratio. There is no way to do this without heavy subsidization, either direct or indirect. You cannot do this without some subsidization. OK. Fine, let's find out what the number is, and then let's start where I guess we are going to have to compete on a subsidy, we compete on subsidization. But I think we need to know that number before we go forward with a multidecade, $40 billion contract of made-in-Europe tankers. No. 3, I think we need to know our security vulnerability before we make those tankers overseas. I think there is a very real prospect that in the future, if we are involved in supporting the Israelis, and the Europeans do not like it, they want to go more with the neighbors in the neighborhood, they say: OK, we are not going to give America flyover rights over Europe, and also we are not going to sell them spare parts on these tankers. I think we need know what the security vulnerability is before we go forward with this as well, and that needs to be appraised. Finally, I would urge and we are starting to look at ``Buy American'' provisions in our military contracts. I am a free-trade person, but I think you ought to compete on an equitable playing ground, and that if they are going to subsidize, then we have to subsidize if they are; otherwise, we force them not to subsidize. Also, on defense, we should not be dependent upon foreign governments for our Defense bill's military construction, particularly when they depend upon us for a lot of the security, and then they get the big contract to build the equipment. I do not think this is fair at all. I do not think it is the right way for us to go. I think we have several vulnerabilities. I think if you look at a full economic picture of shooting these jobs overseas, of what that does to our Treasury versus buying a cheaper, subsidized European plane versus buying an American plane, where you are having your full costs, but your workers are here and they are paying taxes here, my guess is to the Federal Treasury it is a net positive for us to build them here, even if the plane costs us a bit more because we do not subsidize the price of the plane such as the Europeans are. I have been in this fight previously on civil aviation, where the Europeans subsidized their way into that business. Now they are doing it in the military contract area. I do not think we ought to do it, particularly on a contract that is going to last decades. So these are several questions we are going to be working on along with my other colleagues. I would hope we ask these big questions and get them answered before this big contract is let. Are we are starting to build our defense industry in Europe rather than in the United States? I wish to thank my colleagues for allowing me to speak on this issue. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I understand from the Air Force yesterday that some of it was, but I don't understand if it was--I do not know fully if it was just the U.S. cost or if it is also what we are going to have to get from other countries around the world on costs there for landing, longer landing strips, and bigger hangars to be able to put any of the aircraft in. So I don't know if that is fully in it as well. But these are huge, decade-long projects and costs.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I appreciate my colleague joining with me. I wish to make two other quick points. One is I think we need a long-term economic model of the impact on our economy versus the impact on the European economy. Because I believe if you look at the true cost and if you look at the true impact of these jobs being in the United States versus subsidized jobs in Europe, you are going to see the long-term economic impact on this country and on our Government with the taxes our workers would pay will be better by building the plane here. Second--and this is a strategic issue--this is a bigger plane that is being purchased by the military. It is going to need a longer landing strip. Are those longer landing strips going to be available in countries such as Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan or are we going to be able to get a longer runway to be able to land on? Now we have a plane that will carry more fuel, but it will take a longer landing strip. We can build those in the United States. We can build bigger hangars here. Can we around the world so we can have the reach we need?

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, thank you very much. I thank my colleagues. I, too, am from a State that is keenly impacted by what is taking place on this bid proposal. The Air Force's decision to award a new tanker contract last week is a crowning achievement, not for the Air Force or the United States but for Airbus and the Europeans. We were saying in our office, I wonder if in the future our young men and women going into the Air Force to fly these planes or to work on these planes are going to have to pass a test in French--``Parlez-vous francais?''--to be able to determine whether we can work on these aircraft. And to be able to get maintenance, equipment, and training, well, we are going to have to go to Europe to be able to do that. We are going to have to get the people who built them to tell us how to do it. I do not think that is right. I also would like to say to my colleagues, I have been around this fight between Airbus and Boeing for a long time, and Airbus has subsidized itself directly into the commercial aviation market. They had zero market share 30 years ago. They started a European consortium called Airbus and EADS to be able to get at Boeing and into the commercial aviation market. They completely subsidized their way into it. It got to a point with the subsidies where they were taking over half of the marketplace in commercial aviation. Now here we go again. We are just now on the defense side of it. Instead of the commercial side, we are on the defense side. This aircraft which EADS and Airbus have put together is heavily subsidized by European governments, by European treasuries, to be able to get a price point, to be able to compete against a well-known Boeing aircraft that has been in our fleet for decades, that has worked well for decades, that has been used to train our young pilots and multiple generations of pilots on this tanker. Now we are going to put those pilots in an Airbus plane, and they are going to land in fields all over the world in an Airbus airplane--our U.S. military risking life and limb--while the Europeans make money off of us and get into, by subsidization, a defense marketplace. Make no mistake, this is just a start. This is what the Europeans did in commercial aviation. They started subsidizing commercial aviation. They got in one place, got all the market share, and subsidized into another one. They do things called launch aid. I don't know, my colleagues probably are not familiar with launch aid, but launch aid is where European governments say: We will give you this much money to start this aircraft, and if you stop producing this aircraft, then you have to pay the money back. Well, it then pays them to keep producing the aircraft, and even selling it at a loss, because then they do not have to pay the launch aid back. Well, now they are doing it in a defense contract field, and they start with tankers. The Europeans start with tankers. Then they will go with surveillance aircraft. Then they will move to other airframes, to where then is it going to be all of our major airframes that are going to be made by the Europeans? I like the comment from my colleague from the State of Washington: What happens if the Europeans are not pleased with what we are doing in the war on terrorism or what we are doing in the defense of Israel and if then their governments start saying: Well, I don't like what your policy is in the Middle East. Now, as you know, what they do is they say: Well, we are not going to give you overflight rights. We are not going to let you fly your planes out of Germany or not let you fly your planes out of Great Britain. We are going to stop you. What if in the future they start saying: We are not going to sell you spare parts. Then where are we at that point in time? What do we say to them? I do not know how to use my French enough to plead and beg for spare parts, but I really do not want to be in that spot, and I do not think we should. As a friend of mine said to me this morning--he is for a very open trading system--he said: There are two things we should not be dependent upon other governments for: one is for your defense, and one is for your food. Those are just two things you should not be dependent upon another government for. Now we are going to be dependent for our defense on a European government that often goes a different way than us. I think this is crazy. For a decision that is going to last--as my colleague, my seatmate from Kansas, said--for up to 80 years, that just does not seem to be a smart way to go. This is one Senator who is going to fight against this, who is going to fight against this in the appropriations process. I do not think it is smart. I think it is the wrong thing to do.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I am happy to yield.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, we have just started this discussion, and I think it is a big one, I think it is an important one, whether we should be dependent upon European governments for our global reach in military for our aircraft. That is what tankers provide us is a global reach and whether we should be dependent on the European governments-- upon the French, upon the Germans, upon the Brits--for our global reach. I don't think we should be. I think we have to look at the subsidization of this cost by the Europeans. I think that needs to be discounted and taken out of this proposal. I think we have to look at a long-term project, and we are going to be talking about this a lot before we go forward with this--as Chancellor Merkel called it, this giant success for Airbus and the European aviation industry. It may have been that it is at our cost. I am not going to stand still and let it happen. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Yes, I will.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, is there any prearranged agreement on the speaking order?

Mr. BROWNBACK. At 5:55. I thought the Presiding Officer said 5 o'clock. I will be happy to yield. I ask unanimous consent that after the Senator from California speaks, I be allowed to speak and then my colleague from South Carolina be allowed to follow me.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I see my colleague from California. I would like to speak for a few minutes. We are shortly coming to the hour. I don't know if we have been alternating back and forth.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from California for her comments. I respect her thoughts and her opinions and her consistency of position. I disagree, and I will articulate why on that. Mr. President, we have been arguing and debating on Iraq for some period of time, since we have gone to war, which we did on a bipartisan basis, and aggressively decided that this was an important strategy to pursue together. We did that 5 years ago. We have invested a lot of time and energy and life and blood and limb from this country. I was with a young man from Wichita, KS, yesterday who has a prosthesis on the bottom right of his foot. He was pleased to serve in Iraq. He doesn't like it that he has lost his foot, but he wants us to win and he wants us to see it on through. So here we are, 5 years later, a lot of investment, particularly of people and lives, and it would seem as if a fair number of people now in this body would say: OK, we have done it long enough, let's quit. Let's pull on out and let's hope it all works out. I don't think that is a responsible strategy. If I am hearing the people who have served there right, they want to see it through. They want to see us win, and they want to see us get it done right. They want to see us be able to bring a democracy that can stand on its own-- certainly not perfect, but one that can stand on its own in that region of the world. And they don't want to see us lose the investment we have made to date. And we have made a heavy investment. They don't want to see us walk away from it and say: OK, we didn't get it quite the way we wanted to. They do not want to see us walk away at such a point that the soldiers or the foreign fighters follow us back here and we see another 9/11. The bottom line is the safety and security of the young people we have talked about so much. We want to keep this place safe and secure. And one of the best ways to do that is to keep on the offensive. Mr. President, over the last few years, and particularly this last year, we have debated a lot of Iraqi resolutions, and they have all failed except one. One resolution has passed. It is the one I want to talk about. It is the one I did with Joe Biden, the Biden-Brownback resolution on devolving power and authority in Iraq. We voted and voted and voted last year. Nothing passed but this one. And because of it, what we were talking about is the model of devolving power and authority, a federal system, in Iraq. I have met with Iraqis since that period of time, and a number of them have challenged and questioned: OK, is this really the right way to go? We don't want to see the country broken up in three parts. I say: We are not talking about breaking the country up in three parts. We have 50 States, and we are one country. We are talking about three or five states or regions there but one country. You devolve power and authority from the center so it is not just one group, a Shiite-dominated central government that is dictating to a Kurdish, Sunni, Shiite country. Let's devolve that power and authority out. That passed. That passed. Now, what has happened since that has passed on the ground? Well, we are seeing nice progress actually taking place, political progress at the local and provincial levels is happening. We saw recently the Iraqi Parliament pass a legislative package--three bills together. They did something we do here often. You can't get one bill through, you can't get two, but three you can somehow get a coalition enough to pass it through. That is what they did, establishing the 2008 budget, clarifying provincial powers, and then offering amnesty for Sunni political prisoners, all three very important. That middle one, clarifying provincial powers, is a key one. I talked with one of the respected scholars on this, Michael O'Hanlin, on the phone today. He is one of the authors of the federalism approach in Iraq. We have a military strategy that we are taking advantage of today that is providing political space, and he believes we need to devolve authority and power to the regions. You are seeing that now taking place legislatively by the central body in Iraq, clarifying provincial powers. As I was talking with Mr. O'Hanlin, and also in my own thinking, we recently mostly talked about regions, and he is saying: Well, whether it is a region or a province, it is devolving of power and authority, and it is happening. And it is a good thing to get that out of the centralized area. What is allowing that to take place is more local governance. It is allowing people, whether they be Sunni or Kurd, or Shiite, or in a mixed area, to be able to solve more of their own problems rather than being dependent upon the central government that may have a bit of ideology or edge that you don't agree with, as happens around this country at times where people don't agree with what happens at the Federal Government, but they are wanting that decision to be made at the State level. That is starting to happen in Iraq. And it is diffusing some of the powder keg. Now, we are far from solving this, but the political space that has been granted by the military surge in the area is allowing this devolution of power and authority to happen. So we now have clarifying provincial powers taking place. The laws, as I mentioned, are not perfect, but they are giving this power and authority out to the regions. We are now seeing political progress at the local and provincial levels, and that is driving some of the politics at the national level. None of that could happen without security at the national level in Iraq, without U.S. troops there on the ground. Iraqis can gain stability by continuing to decentralize and move more power closer to individual Iraqis. I believe provincial elections later this year will accelerate the importance of local politics in Iraq, and that is what we want to take place because what we were seeing coming together was Shiite against Sunni, and the Kurds sitting in the north refereeing from time to time but other times staying off to their own and saying: Look, we are just going to sit up here and hope someday we will be able to have a nation and let those two guys fight. But now, instead, you are seeing this going down to Sunni councils and Shiite councils, and in some cases mixed neighborhoods. You do continue to see an ethnic move in neighborhoods, particularly in Baghdad, and some going more Sunni and others going more Shiite in some regions or some mixed ethnic or other religious communities that exist there and some Christian populations that are there. But you are seeing it start to work because we continue to provide the security umbrella. Now, let's take the security umbrella off. Let's have the Feingold amendment pass and send the signal to the Iraqis that we are moving out; that we are going to take care of our own areas, you take care of your own areas. What do we think at this most critical moment would happen if you pull that security piece out, the U.S. security piece out? Well, I think you would stop this move toward local and provincial. You invite more Iranian-financed problems into the region, in the hopes that the Shiite can take over and then dominate and possess all of Iraq--Sunni areas and possibly Kurdish areas as well, although they are pretty well fortified amongst themselves. You invite Sadr back in with his militia, where he just recently, for another 6 months, asked his militias to stand down. I think you invite back into the picture at this key political moment for Iraq a bunch of forces that are going to hurt the long-term future. And so it seems to me this is a bad idea at a particularly bad time for us to pull troops out of Iraq. Now, I had trouble with the surge at the outset. I really questioned whether it was going to work. But the surge has worked, and this is coming from somebody who was a cynic as to whether this was going to work in that region. But that, along with the Sunnis deciding, okay, we are going to build up our region here, and these awakening councils that have taken place, along with evolving this political power and authority, and our better counterterrorism strategy. It is working. So why on Earth would we change something we have invested so much in now that is starting to produce the results we want? Why on Earth would we change that at this point in time? That does not seem to make much sense, of why you would do that at this point in time. I am a strong proponent of continuing to devolve this power and authority in Iraq. I think it is the way forward for them, as it was the way forward for our country when we had 13 original colonies that did not necessarily agree with each other but said, okay, let us have one Federal Government, but each one of us is going to maintain our own power and authority in a number of regions. Then over a period of years, we kind of worked things out. Over 50 years we have divided power and authority to State and local, Federal Governments, and this is going to take time for the Iraqis, but they need the political space our military provides. To pull out now, or to send a signal even of pulling out now, I think would be very harmful to the long-term investment we have made. I think it would send a signal to the region that we are going to allow the Iranian influence to spread. It would also invite much more aggressive actions, even toward us, and the pursuit of us here and other places around the world. That piece is speculation. We do not know what is going to happen in the future. But it does seem as though we are on a sort of track now that we can look to the future with some bit of optimism, whereas the other route of pulling out would certainly lead to a great deal of pessimism by the Iraqis and toward me about what we are going to be doing in providing the long-term security for the United States when we know that the terrorist objective is to attack and come after us, that you are likely to see a devolution to a terrorist state, or an Iranian- type of satellite state in Iraq if we pull out precipitously, either of which are options that I think would be completely wrong for us to do as a nation and something I cannot support. For those reasons, I certainly would be voting against the Feingold amendment. I urge my colleagues to do that. I say, let us stick with something that is starting to work. It is not perfect. Let us stick with something on a political strategy that is starting to work. It is not perfect, but we have a model for it ourselves in the United States in our own history. It seems this would be a particularly unwise time to move off of that one bit of resolution that we have agreed upon, on political authority being devolved and to change a strategy on the military at this point in time. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, the time of the agreement says at 5 o'clock the Senator from Wisconsin gets the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I am excited and encouraged that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pension today voted unanimously to pass the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act. This legislation will help parents receiving the news that their unborn child may be born with a disability by supplying them with current and reliable information about the many services and support networks available. This information will also be made available to parents whose children were diagnosed at birth or up until 12 months of age. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now recommends that the screening procedure used to detect Downsyndrome be offered to all pregnant women, not just those over the age of 35, as was recommended in the past. According to the American Journal of Medical Genetics, 80-90 percent of patients who are told that the child they are carrying has Downsyndrome choose to have abortions. The percentage is similarly high for children with other prenatally diagnosable conditions. A recent study by Prenatal Diagnosis actually puts the figure at between 91 to 93 percent. I believe that one of the main reasons for these disturbingly high figures is that many people in society still believe the outdated stereotypes and misconceptions that continue to exist about people with disabilities. In a study done by Louis Harris and Associates, the vast majority of adults with even the most severe disabilities reported being ``very satisfied'' or ``somewhat satisfied'' with their lives. The same study shows that there is virtually no difference between the proportion of Americans with disabilities and those without who are married and who have children. Many people with even the most severe disabilities live independently, have jobs, get married, have children, and pay taxes. Parent support groups and disability advocacy groups have tried to reach out to parents who have received prenatal diagnoses of various conditions, but they often have difficulty getting practical information about raising a child with a disability and information about available services and resources to new and expecting parents. This bill will help to remediate this situation in five concrete ways. First, the bill establishes a toll-free resource telephone hotline parents can call after they have been given a prenatal or postnatal diagnosis for their child. The bill also calls for the expansion of the leading information clearinghouse on disability, so that it can more effectively provide parents with accurate, up-to-date information on their child's condition along with available resources and services. The bill also provides for the expansion and development of national and local parent support programs and disability advocacy groups, so that they can more effectively reach out to new parents. A national registry of parents willing to adopt children with these disabilities would also be established under this bill. Finally, this bill will help create awareness and education programs for health care providers who give parents the results of these tests. It is difficult, sometimes overwhelming, for new and expecting parents to receive the news that their new baby or their unborn child will have a disability. I hope that this bill will provide these parents with the information and support they so desperately need during this critical time. I hope this information will encourage parents that their child can live a meaningful and fulfilling life and that this bill will heighten society's awareness of the capabilities value and worth of people with disabilities. I would like to thank Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and all other members of the HELP Committee who have worked so diligently with my office to get this important legislation past the HELP Committee. I am hopeful that this bill will soon receive consideration by the full Senate. The quicker my colleagues and I move to pass this bill, the more people we can help with these critical services and information.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to acknowledge the sacrifice of our young men and women in the Armed Forces. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to meet my friend, Albert Carey Caswell, a respected member of the Capitol Guide Service staff, in the Halls of the Capitol. He has written a poem in honor of Army SGT Jeff Mersman from my hometown of Parker, KS. Sergeant Mersman died in Afghanistan while on his fourth tour of duty with the 2nd Battalion, 503rd, Airborne Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. I ask to have printed in the Record Mr. Caswell's poem in memory of SGT Jeff Mersman and all those heroes like him who gave their lives so valiantly for our country. We owe them a debt which can never be repaid. The poem follows: Who Will Go? Who Will Go? And who will live, and who will die? And not ask why! a Mother cries, as her sweet child has died. . . Who will go? A Mother cries! Who will lead? So that we all can so live in peace. Who will die, and who will bleed? Who will go, so that we all can so succeed? Who will serve? Who will hear that call, that cry. . .those most solemn words? Who will bring a better world? Who will go? Out into the face of hell, with but their magnificent flags unfurled! So our children can awake. . . In a better world, with but smiles in their hearts and souls. . .as their first steps they so take! Who will go? Who will leave, their loved ones behind so? With brothers and sisters in arms, together bonding into such an angelic glow. . . Who will go? Who will leave all that they so love? Out there into the darkest of all evils, to so rise above! Who will go? Who will give up their fine young lives? To Save The World, all in their most magnificent short lifetimes so unfurled? Who will go? All we have. . . Are but moments in time! In our short lives! To grab hearts, to Heaven rise. . .To Make A Difference. . .in all our short lives! Who will give? Give up their arms and legs, their bright eyes and faces so have all of they! And take up that charge? To so make our world, a better place to live? Who will go? What families shall live? With such heartache, because to this country their fine sons and daughters lives did so give! Who will cry? And who will go? Who up to Heaven shall so rise? All of those fine patriots, whom have so died. . . and all of those loving mother's now with tears in eyes! And all of those fine families, All of these, and all of those! To Heaven, They Will Go! They will go! Amen!

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I rise to discuss the Vitter amendment to the Indian Health Care Improvement Act No. 3896. It is an important amendment. I am a cosponsor. I want to give a bit of outline on this provision. This codified within the Indian Health Care Improvement Act a provision that is referred to as the Hyde amendment that has been public law for some 25 years. Congressman Henry Hyde, whom both the Presiding Officer and myself served with in the House of Representatives, who passed away last year, was a giant on the issue, bringing the issue of life to the Congress, to the country. The so-called Hyde amendment prohibits taxpayer funding for abortions other than in case of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. This is a provision which has really not been contested for some period of the time because while we have a contentious debate about abortion in the United States, the level of the contention of the debate is much lower regarding taxpayer funding of abortion when it involves anything other than rape, incest, life of the mother. That has generally been agreed to in this body, that we should not use taxpayer money in those particular situations. What the Vitter amendment does is take that particular provision and puts it in the Indian health care bill and says that we should not fund abortions through the Indian health care provisions or Indian health care facilities other than in cases of rape, incest, or the health of the mother. Federal taxpayer dollars should not be used. Most people agree. They may be pro-choice, they may be pro-life, but they are saying still--most people in this country do not want their Federal taxpayer dollars used for this purpose. And what we are doing in this particular provision is codifying within the Indian Health Care Improvement Act this provision. The Hyde amendment is normally put in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. It has typically not been put within the Interior appropriations bill where Indian health care is normally funded. Indian health care legislation being an authorizing piece of legislation, I think it is important that we codify this particular provision. This will be a key vote. It will be a key vote on people's views toward taxpayer funding of these types of abortions other than in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother. I would hope that most of our colleagues would say, even if they are pro-choice: Well, I do not think that is something we should be doing with Federal taxpayer dollars. I would hope a number of people would look and say: This is such a contentious debate and so many people in the country do not agree with abortion and particularly do not want their dollars, their taxpayer dollars used to fund selective abortions, that people say: Okay, you are right, an individual may be pro-choice, but I do not think we ought to do that in this particular situation, and would then vote for the Vitter amendment. It is very carefully drafted. It is narrowly cast. It is a policy issue where there has been agreement between the House, the Senate, and the President. There has been agreement on the Hyde amendment provision for over 20 years, particularly cast on this contentious issue. That is why I hope colleagues will look at this carefully and say: I have supported Hyde amendment-type language in the past. This makes sense. It is a commonsense provision. I hope my colleagues will support the Vitter amendment because of this particular provision and will agree that it makes sense to them as well. Overall, it is a contentious issue, but this particular provision should not be. I urge my colleagues to look at it carefully and see if they could not support the Vitter amendment. I strongly urge its passage. I ask unanimous consent that any time I did not use be kept on the Vitter amendment. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask consent to speak for 10 minutes in support of the Vitter amendment. I believe there is a time agreement for 30 minutes on each side of the Vitter amendment.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, if my colleagues need to interrupt, I would be happy to yield to them. I yield to the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to raise the awareness of my colleagues to an issue. I will be putting in a bill on it and hope to attract their attention. I have worked on Africa for some period of time. A humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions is taking place in many places in Africa. We need to do more, and a lot more people are doing more. I think we are at a moment where Africa is becoming a focus in both Europe and the United States, left and right; for economic reasons, the Chinese are going in very aggressively; for militant Islamic reasons, people are coming in trying to penetrate into the continent. One of the first things we need to do to be able to grow the continent and allow people there to develop some sort of standard of living, some sort of quality of life and to be able to live, is to get the conflict out. One of the key things we need to go at in reducing the conflict is getting the money out of the conflict. We have had some success about this in the past. A decade ago, people were talking about blood diamonds in Western Africa and getting those out of the trafficked portion, out of the commodity business, and getting them into legitimate means of commerce. Out of that, we reduced the money into the conflict, and, as a result, had a substantial impact on the conflict and reducing the conflict in Western Africa. I wish to show a picture to my colleagues, many of whom I think probably are not aware of what it is. This is coltan. It is a booming commodity that is in this item. I realize, and I hope my colleagues, particularly the Senator from West Virginia, will allow me to show this, what should not be on the Senate floor, but to show this for purposes of demonstration of what this is doing and why it is important. This is a BlackBerry. Cell phones used to get hot when people would use them for a period of time. They tried to figure out what can we do to try to cool them down. They found a substance called coltan that they were able to transition into tantalum. It now carries the current in this electronic equipment. It doesn't get hot. Eighty percent of Africa's coltan comes out of Congo. Eighty percent of the world's coltan comes out of Africa, and most of this comes out of a conflict region in Eastern Congo. I believe most of this is funding a good portion of the conflict in Eastern Congo, where 1,500 people a day are dying because they cannot get access to medical care, they cannot get access to water, they cannot get access to food--because of the conflict. And the conflict is funded by this stuff: It is funded by coltan. There is a long history of what has been taking place in Congo. Many people remember reading such books as ``The Heart of Darkness'' and ``King Leopold's Ghost'' and about the raiding that has taken place in Congo for a century. Unfortunately, we are in the latest chapter of that conflict. In Joseph Conrad's ``Heart of Darkness,'' Conrad describes King Leopold's colonial project of the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Congo Free State, as ``the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.'' Solely for the purpose of extracting a very precious manufacturing resource of the day--and that resource was rubber--King Leopold seized Congo and exploited the local population by turning it into a slave colony. During his 24-year tyranny of Congo Free State, 13 million Congolese died. Leopold's legacy lives on in the coltan mining processes of today. That is chapter one. Chapter 2: In November of 1965, Lieutenant-General Mobutu seized power of Congo, then known as Zaire, in a bloodless coup. During his 32-year dictatorship, he consistently exploited the natural resources of then Zaire. He evaded international humanitarian human rights standards, and by the mid-1980s, Mobutu's personal fortune was estimated at 5 billion U.S. dollars. The end of the Cold War brought internal and external pressure upon Mobutu for a democratic transition. In 1997, with the support of Burundi, Uganda, and the Rwandan Tutsi Government, Laurent Kabila and his forces pushed Mobutu out of Government in a full-scale rebellion. A repetitive pattern of alliances made and broken began, and by 1998 Kabila's former allies in Uganda and Rwanda had turned against him. In 2001, Kabila was assassinated. While he succeeded his father and took charge of the country in 2001, it was not until November 2006 Joseph Kabila was democratically elected as the Congolese President. However, his control of Congo is limited. Today in the mineral-rich eastern region of Congo, violent thugs from at least four factions wage near constant war for control. Chapter 3: Sadly, 100 years later, Conrad's statement about the Congo was not only astute but prophetic. The corruption and exploitation of natural resources in the Congo has never stopped but has moved from hand to hand and moved from one resource to another; from rubber to diamonds, from diamonds to gold, from gold to coltan. The issue of conflict coltan--so we are calling it ``conflict coltan'' and ``conflict commodities''--is not new. The coltan rush hit in the late 1990s, as the consumer electronic industry figured out we have a problem, we have to solve this, and coltan arrived to the rescue. By December of 2000, a pound of coltan was worth as much as $400. In 2001, a panel of experts for the United Nations went to eastern Congo and wrote a report on their findings concerning the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth. The U.N. report documents the rebel groups' use of forced labor, illegal monopolies, and civilian murder in their high-stakes game to extract these valuable resources. I wish to show you a picture. This picture was taken in 2007 of some of the mining techniques of this coltan in the coltan rush. You can see a child here, in a very shallow mine, using a hammer and a pick to dig out coltan. What is taking place is, many of these rebel groups will overrun a village, scatter the men, go directly to the coltan area, taking the women and children, and then start the extraction of coltan, to mine it and put it on the backs of people to carry it out at $400 a pound. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified that most of the coltan mining in Congo is ``artisan.'' According to the U.N. report, most coltan mining is done by poor people, and many of them are children. These novice miners, who are often held against their will, sift for coltan in riverbeds or dig it out of abandoned mines. A report issued by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a review in 2002, found that the ``supply chain'' of coltan is extensive and distorted. The SAIS review report states that Rwanda and Uganda were directly or indirectly appointing local rebel faction leaders and field commanders to serve as conduits for illicit trade originating from the occupied territories of eastern Congo. The war appears now to be self-financing. Rebel movements were motivated by economic incentives rather than the pursuit of political ideals. Middlemen were then hired to form relationships with clients. They then facilitated transactions between those who controlled the resources and foreign corporations without the question of legitimacy. At the time of the U.N. report of 2002, 34 foreign companies were identified in importing minerals from the Congo via Rwanda. The war in Congo officially ended in 2003 with a signed peace agreement between the Congolese Government and the rebels. Yet, at the same time, rebel factions still controlled the east, and there was no centrally elected government in Congo. Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers were still attacking territories in the provinces of Ituri and the Kivu across the boarder in eastern Congo. With the election of President Kabila in 2006, it was reported that neighboring governments withdrew their troops from Congo. But now chapter 4. The story continues. The U.N. and SAIS reports I have cited were published in 2001 and 2002 respectively. However, these pictures I am showing you were taken within the last 12 months. The current fighting in eastern Congo--there was a peace agreement recently signed, and then it was broken 2 days ago--involves renegade GEN Laurent Nkunda and his group, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the Mai-Mai rebels, the Hutu extremists, and those loyal to the Congolese Government. Now, if all these names can seem a bit blurring to people, at the bottom line, I hope you can remember two factors here: 1,500 people a day dying because of this; $400 a pound for coltan, financing this death and destruction daily. After the release of the U.N. report, we saw companies within the high-tech industry respond to the report by asking suppliers to certify that the tantalum--that is what coltan is processed into--tantalum they were purchasing did not originate from the eastern region of DRC. These same companies stated that without certification they would not buy from the region of Central Africa. They were requesting that their tantalum be ``conflict free'' and from legit sources, and I applaud their efforts. Today, we know that most of the world's tantalum is supplied by Australia. That is the processed coltan. But now where does Australia get the coltan and these companies get the coltan? Recent reports state that the channel in which coltan was once being smuggled out of Congo is still alive and active. And in this chain of supply and demand, one simple bad actor involves us all. Recent reports state that Rwanda and others are using the war in Congo to continue the exploitation of coltan. Once it is extracted, we are told, it is then sent down to Australia, where it is mixed with Australian coltan--where 20 percent of the world's coltan comes from-- before being processed into tantalum. Processed tantalum is then traded among countries and private companies on the international market. But as some private companies and some foreign countries are not required to produce public records of their tantalum trade, tracking exact amounts is extremely difficult to obtain. Australia, specifically, has a confidentiality clause for private companies that purchase their tantalum. So we do not know. From 2002 to 2005, Australia accounted for 54 percent of the world's tantalum. Unfortunately, it is impossible to say with any certainty that the tantalum supply coming out of Australia is conflict free. While we know this exploitation continues today, as it did 10 years ago, and we see the immense difficulty in tracking it, we will not turn a blind eye to this. I met with people from the consumer electronics industry today to tell them we are going to focus on this because if this can defund the conflict so people can live free and be able to survive--get some clean water, get some health care, get some food--then we need to go at this. We should not fund this conflict. We should not be buying the product if it is coming from conflict areas. We should be able to certify that is the case. I commend to my colleagues a recent report from the International Rescue Committee entitled, ``Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo, An Ongoing Crisis.'' This was released on January 22 of this year, citing that 1,500 people a day are dying. In this report, we learn that since 1998, 5.4 million people have died in Congo--5.4 million. These deaths can be directly or indirectly attributed to the ongoing conflicts in the region, which can be attributed to the exploitation of natural resources, primarily coltan mining. Death comes at the butt of a gun and with the bite of a mosquito. There casualties stem from the violence of this brutal ongoing war, which has marred the country for the past 10 years, and from the resulting displacement of the Congolese. When you flee for your life in these areas of Congo, there often is no other town or village in which to take shelter. When you ask a Congolese about becoming displaced, their response to you is: Which time? They flee into the bush for months at a time with only the clothes on their back and a child in their arms. Senator Durbin and I went to Congo together 2 years ago. We saw some of the impact. Chapter 5. I want to show you a specific story here, a heartbreaking story of one young boy and his family. This is a picture of a 3-year-old boy. He is one of the millions of victims of displacement and malnourishment. His family fled into the jungle from a rebel group that had burnt their village to the ground in the North Kivu Province in the eastern part of Congo. They lived in the jungle and had been constantly on the move. Food became scarce, and meals became as sporadic as two to three a week. When his mother brought him and his younger brother to the local health clinic, they were immediately referred to an international humanitarian organization in the area. There, this young boy was diagnosed with malaria. They immediately began his treatments, which his small, frail body rejected. His doctors then discovered he had been eating that which his mother could gather in the jungle and only once every 3 to 4 days. Due to lack of nutrition, he was anemic. As they started his anemia treatment, his body began to shut down; he rejected the oral and IV treatments. This 3-year-old passed away within 8 hours of first being diagnosed-- minutes after this photo was taken. He is one of the millions of victims from this raging, complex conflict. As the IRC reports, the war is having direct and indirect impact on these deaths. While a small portion is dying directly from the conflict--bullets, bombs, and rifle butts--the majority are dying from malaria, malnourishment, diarrhea, and poor neonatal care. While children under the age of 5 make up 19 percent of the population in the Congo, they comprise over 47 percent of the deaths in the recent mortality study. Nineteen percent of the population under the age of 5, 47 percent of the deaths in Congo. The national rate of mortality is 60 percent higher in the Congo than the average mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa. Sexual violence and rape is also on the rise in the Congo and has become a symptomatic tool of war there. The U.N. reported 4,500 sexual violence cases had been reported in South Kivu the first half of 2007. Most of these cases reported have been committed by some of the 6,000 to 7,000 members of foreign armed groups operating in the eastern part of the Congo, funded by coltan that we purchase to put in our Blackberries. The U.N. reported that the Congolese national army, national police force, and increasing numbers of civilians were also brutalizing women, often during violent clashes with political rivals. Perpetrators are now making no distinctions between women and children. The local hospital in Goma, Congo, where Senator Durbin and I both visited, a hospital named Heal Africa, tells a story of a 13-year-old girl who had been raped so viciously by her perpetrators that she couldn't walk for 2 weeks. She then walked approximately 7 miles to a facility for treatment. Her doctors reported her internal injuries were beyond their imagination. A collapse in infrastructure such as the one we see in the Congo does not happen overnight. This is due to an ongoing 10-year conflict which has exploited that country, its people, its children. Coltan and other natural resources are at the root of that exploitation. I want to show another display here. In spite of their sad history, the Congo is a beautiful country with resilient people. It is a country with so much potential for growth and development. Unfortunately, the Congo's story is one of devastation, forced labor, child soldiers, rape, curable illnesses left untreated, and deaths of 1,500 a day, as I have stated, and all because, all because of--and funded by this--a Blackberry that we buy. My colleagues can see here in the pictures taken of a very rudimentary mine, but a mining operation of coltan in the Congo; rebel child soldiers--very common in this part of the world--well armed, deadly; a coltan battery, and cell phones. Peace agreements call for implementation of a commission to oversee the conflict in this region. The Goma peace agreement was signed on January 22, 2008. I mentioned that previously, and that has recently been broken. The immediate cease-fire of the peace agreement was broken the first time within 5 days after it took place. While we must play our part, they must play their part as well, and I strongly urge all parties in that region to respect their commitments within this agreement. The peace agreement calls for implementation of a commission to oversee disarmament of the Nkunda rebels and the extremist fighters. These fighters will either integrate into the Congolese national army or demobilize. I strongly urge the implementation of these terms. This is another step in the right direction for the Congo and its people. However, I feel that as long as there is demand for valuable Congolese resources and thugs with the power to control these resources, this will not be the final chapter of this conflict. It has happened for too long. The United States is completely dependent on foreign supplies of tantalum, and we admit to this. Both the ``Minerals Yearbook,'' published by the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Department of Strategic and Critical Material Report to the Congress, coltan, also known as tantalum, is classed as a ``critical'' mineral. We have come to a point where we cannot live without this mineral. However, neither can we ignore nor will we sit idly by while others suffer. We need to be responsible as a nation and as consumers. We must hold our suppliers accountable. In the coming days I will be introducing legislation requiring certification of the origin of coltan for all U.S.-based companies that use tantalum in manufacturing. It will further require manufacturers who use tantalum to have a certificate of origin. All we want to do with this is make sure that the coltan, the tantalum we are using, comes from legitimate sources. That is all we are asking. As a supply chain, the Congolese government can set this up, saying that we register and license and saying this is the coltan that is coming out of here, coming from legitimate sources. I am fine with that. But we want that and we want to know where it is coming from and that is that it is not conflict coltan that is used to pay for the suffering of so many people. We all must be good actors in this chain. With 1,500 people dying a day, there is no room for turning a blind eye on this matter. American greatness has always been founded on our fundamental goodness. We need to be a nation where the strong protect the weak and people of privilege assist those in poverty. It says a lot about the kind of America we all should work for when we speak out against this type of tragedy and commit ourselves to those who are suffering there. I will be sending around a ``Dear Colleague'' letter about this. I will be happy to supply more information. There are a number of reports from the United Nations and from Johns Hopkins that I have been citing, and others. We have some photographs of what is taking place presently, and I ask simply that if people are going to cause this suffering which we completely disagree with, they are not going to do it by us paying for it. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, this is an amendment brought up at the very outset of this debate. I understand there has been an agreement that we can move forward with this amendment. So I have worked with the chairman of the committee and the ranking member, and the modifications have been made. I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.