Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. I ask for the yeas and nays on the first-degree amendment.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I offer this amendment and the second-degree amendment, which fills out the tree on behalf of myself, Senator Warner, Senator Roberts, Senator Hagel, Senator Dorgan, Senator Grams and Senator Harkin. Very simply, what this amendment does is codify what Members have expressed over the last several days that they would like to see accomplished worldwide. We eliminated last week the use of food and medicine to people as a sanction in the case of Pakistan and India. We felt that was an unwise use of the sanctions; that average people, poor people should not suffer at the hands of our Nation despite the decisions made by the power elite in their own nations. What my colleagues and I who have offered this amendment today are suggesting is that same principle ought to be applied worldwide. It is counter to everything we stand for as a people--everything we stand for. To deny people anywhere in the world food and medicine--basic food and medicine--runs contrary to the moral values that we embrace as a people. Whatever anger we may feel and properly focus on the leadership of nations, we should not cause the innocent people of those nations to suffer as a result of our policies. For far too long, we have allowed the use of food and medicine to be used. There are only two or three countries in the world that today allow their food and their medicine to be used as a tool in foreign policy or as part of a sanctions policy. Tonight we have an opportunity to change that law, to say that with regard to any sanctions policy, whatever other tools we may want to use depriving countries of certain economic issues, technical equipment, military hardware, availability of our lending institutions--whatever else we may want to use--that food and medicine will not be a part of that mix. I hope no one has any illusion that in the case of a Saddam Hussein or a Fidel Castro or the leaders of North Korea, the leaders of Iran, I guarantee you tonight that they are eating well. I promise you that if they get sick, they get medicine and they see doctors. Too often, we have allowed our foreign policy to also work against the innocent people who live in these regimes, in these terrorist countries. If this amendment is adopted, I am told that there will be an amendment offered immediately thereafter which will say that this provision should not apply to terrorist countries. None of us want anything to do with terrorist countries, but does anyone in this Chamber or America believe that the average Iraqi citizen, that the average citizen in Iran, that the average citizen in Cuba or North Korea, despite the leadership of their nation, should suffer because their leaders may engage in activities which are cruel or support terrorist activities? I happen to believe that ought not to be the case; that the use of food and medicine ought not to be a vehicle in the conduct of our foreign policy. Mr. President, it was noted earlier today that we have become extremely generous in the application of the sanctions policy. Since World War II, there have been 100 occasions where the United States has imposed sanctions. More than 60 percent of those sanctions have occurred since 1993. And 61 U.S. laws and Executive orders have been enacted authorizing various types of unilateral economic sanctions against 35 countries in the name of foreign policy. The sanctioned countries comprise 42 percent of the world's population. Roughly 2.3 billion people-- potential customers of U.S. goods and services--are being affected. Mr. President, I suggest that to deprive these people of foodstuffs-- I hear that one of the reasons that our farmers are not doing well in this country is because of the difficulty in foreign sales. Aside from the legitimate concern about seeing to it that innocent people are not going to be deprived of food and medicine, here is an opportunity to be able to sell some products that can actually benefit the people in these countries. Why not take an argument away from those terrorist leaders, those dictators, who constantly want to point to us, the United States, as the reason their economies are in trouble? Why not say this evening that: You can no longer point an accusing finger at America when it comes to the issue of your children, your innocent women, your innocent civilians, from getting food or medicine? We no longer use that tool in our foreign policy. If your people are suffering, it is not because the United States is banning the exportation of food and medicine. It is because of the economic policies of your own leadership. Tonight, no matter how angry and legitimate that anger may be at a dictator or a terrorist leader of a country, let us not say to the poor people who have to live under those dictators and terrorists that the United States, as a result of our own policies, will deny you the opportunity to get decent food and decent medicine. Let us not be a part of only two or three other nations--Third World countries--that I can find who use that kind of a vehicle in the conduct of their foreign policy. There is not a single member of the industrialized world, the civilized world, that utilizes food and medicine. We are the only example of it. Tonight we have an opportunity, across the board, to eliminate the use of food and medicine as a part of our sanctions policy--still have sanctions, still deprive them, if you will, of the advantage of our engineering, our technology, our military hardware, but we are not going to say that food ought to be a part of that. Let us join the rest of the world in eliminating that. We, the United States of America, we, the nation who embraces, with great legitimacy, the issue of human rights where innocents are involved, where the meals and the food they need and the medicine they require are involved, we are not going to be the nation that deprives them of the opportunity to use some of the best products in the world. Mr. President, the world looks to us, particularly in the area of medical devices and medicines. And to deprive poor people of an opportunity to get some of those medicines, to get some of the food-- the best grown in the world--I think would be a tragedy. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of this amendment. I note my colleagues are here from Nebraska and Kansas and may want to be heard on this issue. I yield the floor and request how much time may remain. We don't have time agreements, do we? No time agreements?

Mr. DODD. I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DODD. Will my good friend and colleague yield on that point?

Mr. DODD. It is a question. Mr. President, the authors and I could not be more clear. This is unilateral economic sanctions, and clearly in the case of some countries where we have applied that, food and medicine come off. Now, if the President wants to apply sanctions on some basis other than economic sanctions, he has all the freedom to do so. A wonderful example of that we have just debated over the last 2 weeks. Here India and Pakistan detonate two nuclear weapons. I do not know what you could argue may be more threatening to the long-term security of the United States than two nations detonating nuclear weapons. We voted 98 to nothing to take off food and medicine as a part of the sanctions policy there. All I and my colleagues are saying here in this case is that if the President wants to impose sanctions on the basis of something other than unilateral economic sanctions, he can do that without any restriction of this amendment. But when he only goes to impose, or we go to impose, Members of Congress--and we are far more guilty of this, by the way. Let's face it, we are talking about ourselves to some degree, and we all know what goes on here. We have a proliferation of these amendments. We all draft and issue the press releases to satisfy constituencies in this country. That is what happens. And we apply unilateral economic sanctions and deny people food and medicine, and we think that ought to stop, but not if you want to impose sanctions on bases other than economic and unilateral sanctions.

Mr. DODD. That was a question.

Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield on that point for a question?

Mr. DODD. I think I have a question at the end of this one. Mr. President, I know my colleague from Florida is very familiar with Cardinal Ortega, who is the leading Catholic figure on the island of Cuba. I know he knows who he is, and is aware of the recent visit by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, when he was in Cuba in January. Obviously, my colleague is well aware, as well, of the position of the U.S. Catholic Conference with regard to lifting the sanctions on food and medicine. I say and raise the question, certainly we all, I think, would know-- and my colleague, I presume, would agree-- that Castro, Fidel Castro, has no greater enemy on the island of Cuba, or anywhere, for that matter, than Cardinal Ortega, yet is it not the fact that Cardinal Ortega, the Catholic Conference, and in fact His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, has called for the lifting of restrictions on food and medicine sales when it comes to Cuba?

Mr. DODD. I am only referring to this particular proposal.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, is the answer to the question, regarding food and medicine, Cardinal Ortega has called for the lifting of the ban on food and medicine?

Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield for a second? We are going to have a vote in 10 minutes. I haven't had a chance yet. I made opening remarks, but I wanted to speak again.

Mr. DODD. Yes.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, first of all, I yield to my colleague from Kansas for a modification he wishes to make. Amendment No. 3159, As Modified

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I have sat here patiently listening to a lot of rhetoric associated with this amendment.

Mr. DODD. I am happy to yield for a question.

Mr. DODD. I thank my colleague for the question. If I thought for a single second that anything I might offer in this amendment would win his support, I would engage it with a higher degree of seriousness. Obviously, I can be confident that any American President would want to make sure that any program we were endorsing on the sale of food and medicine was going to maximize the potential for it to reach the intended consumer, and that is the innocent people in these countries. But let me, if I can, come back to some points that have been made here over the last hour and a half or so. First of all, we have heard about Lockerbie. I take a backseat to no one in my sense of outrage, nor do any of my colleagues who support this amendment, over the grotesque and violent shooting down of Pan Am Flight 103 that caused such a tremendous loss of life over Lockerbie, Scotland. But let me take Libya off the table. There are multilateral sanctions against Libya. There is nothing in this bill that affects Pan Am Flight 103. And to suggest so is to not have read the amendment nor to understand the sanctions regimen against Libya. It is multilateral sanctions. This bill is unilateral sanctions only on economics. So to raise the prospect of the tragedy over Lockerbie in the face of this amendment is either not to understand what exists in Libya or not to understand what this amendment proposes. So Libya is not in play at all. I point out that many of my colleagues over the last few days have indicated their own strong feelings on the subject of the use of food and medicine as a tool of our sanctions policy with unilateral economic sanctions. My colleague from Idaho, Senator Craig, quoting him in his remarks of the day during the debate on Pakistan and India, and I quote: ``Cutting ourselves off through unilateral sanctions seldom benefits us as a nation, and almost always hurts the producer. Food should never be used as a tool of foreign policy.'' Our colleague from Montana, Senator Burns: ``Let me tell you a little bit about sanctions. I have never been convinced that sanctions on food really worked.'' Our colleague from Kansas says, who is the Presiding Officer, if I may in his presence quote him in that debate: ``Food being used as a tool of foreign policy should never ever occur.'' Senator Dorgan: ``We ought to decide as Congress right now that sanctions do not include food shipments.'' I can go on. Our colleagues, I think, across party lines, across the great spectrum of this country, have come to realize that, as my good friend and colleague from Nebraska so eloquently pointed out, we are a great nation. We are the most powerful nation on the face of this Earth economically, and militarily. We are the envy of the world politically. And for us on this evening to say that this great power still finds it necessary in order to advance its foreign policy interests that food and medicine that would go into the mouths and bodies of innocent people who live in these dreadful regimes may be the subject of unilateral economic sanctions, I think, is sad. I think it is sad. We who sit here this evening and have full meals--those who oppose these policies and never worry about whether or not their child can get an inoculation, or an immunization, whether or not they are ever going to have food on their table--look in the face of an innocent North Korean child, if you want to, or look in the face of an innocent Cuban child who has to live under Fidel Castro--that child didn't make that choice. That family didn't make that choice. Are we in this great power of ours, the United States of America, saying this evening that we will not allow the sale of food or medicine to help out that child of those countries? I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I think we are bigger, I think we are better than that. I think this debate on sanctions has been healthy. It is beginning to recognize the awakening in America that, as our colleague from the farm States and others have pointed out, we need to have policies that work--not that make us feel good. This is not about press releases. It is not about satisfying constituencies here at home. It is about doing something that advances our legitimate foreign policy interests. Do we do that by causing injury to our own people and causing injury to innocent people in these countries while the elite economically and politically grow fat on their own dictatorships at the expense of their own people, and we in our own unwitting way assist them in that process? Mr. President, I hope as our colleagues come over here--this is not about endorsing terrorism or excusing Libya in Flight 103, or any other dreadful atrocity that a dictator has imposed. It says that with regard to unilateral economic sanctions the United States of America, at the close of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, that we take food and medicine with regard to unilateral sanctions off the table--we take it off the table--and we will advance our cause by building support on the suggestion in the minds and hearts of innocent people in these countries that they overthrow these very dictators, and we let them know this evening that we are not going to allow our wealth and our technology, which has produced the largest abundance of food and the best medicines in the world--that if we can get them to these people, we want to see that it happens and that we stand for that. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of this amendment which has been offered by a bipartisan group of us--from the East, in the Midwest, the far West--this evening, and that it be supported by our colleagues. I yield the floor. Mr. STEVENS addressed the Chair.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, the Senate has just expressed its will on this issue. My colleagues, Senator Roberts, Senator Hagel, Senator Warner, Senator Grams, and Senator Dorgan and I offered the amendment and, in fact, included language by Senator Roberts which very specifically allows the President to retain or impose any of the above sanctions if he determines such sanctions to be in the national interest of the United States. Our underlying amendment only deals with unilateral economic sanctions. On any nation where there are multilateral sanctions, such as Libya and Iraq, this amendment would not apply. It is only in those countries where there are unilateral sanctions being imposed. Now, it should come as no great surprise to my colleagues that the nations on whom we impose unilateral sanctions are the very nations that my colleague from New Jersey would now like to exempt. What we have been suggesting here this evening is that this great Nation, as my colleague from Nebraska, Senator Hagel, so eloquently said--this great Nation, with its great economic and military power, we ought to be able to take food and medicine out of the arsenal of sanctions we use for the very economic elite and political elite of these terrorist countries. They do not suffer for lack of food. They do not suffer for lack of medicine. It is the innocents who live under these regimes who pay the price, and also the very farmers of this country who grow the products who are suffering today as a result of a farm crisis, denied the opportunity where there are nations who can afford to buy these products who pay the price. And we do not change policy in these countries. With all due respect to my good friend from New Jersey and those who would support this amendment, we have provided for language here that would allow for an exception should that occasion arise. But let us not undo the will that the Senate just expressed on the underlying amendment to take food and medicine off the table. Use whatever other sanctions we will or we might, but food and medicine ought not to be a part of the unilateral economic sanctions regime that this country would seek to impose.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the yeas and nays be vitiated.

Mr. DODD. If the leader would yield, the Roberts amendment is a second-degree amendment.

Mr. DODD. Will the leader yield? I say, Mr. President, that is not a second-degree amendment. It is a freestanding amendment.

Mr. DODD. None whatsoever, I say to my colleague.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I, too, rise and commend our colleague from Indiana for this amendment. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the amendment, along with a number of my colleagues. To use the language in another situation, this is indeed a very modest proposal. This is prospective. It affects none of the sanctions that are presently in place. As the Senator from Indiana has rightly pointed out, sanctions are a very effective and useful tool when applied well. I think the threat of sanctions may have an even greater impact in utility. I certainly agree with him on that. What he is merely asking us to support today is that when a proposed sanction is being suggested by the executive branch--by the way, I wish we were applying this to ourselves because too often, when the Congress of the United States offers sanctions legislation, which is oftentimes where these bills originate, we should also be asking the question of what is the cost-benefit effect of this proposal. It doesn't say don't impose the sanction. In fact, there may be situations that arise when, in fact, the outrage is so egregious that is the subject of the sanction that we would be more than willing to pay the economic price to impose it. This amendment does not preclude that result. It merely suggests that we have some ability to make an analysis of what that relationship would be and to ask for a few days to allow for objective analysis of what the sanction cost might be. I hope this will enjoy strong, unanimous, bipartisan support. We have heard eloquent statements made on the floor of this Chamber, Madam President, over the last several weeks, as I think all of us have begun to focus on sanctions policies as a result of the tragic events in India and Pakistan with the detonation of nuclear weaponry. That was a very sad occasion, still a very worrisome occasion in terms of what it means and the implications for us in the near term and longer term. If there has been any silver lining, if you will, in these clouds, to draw an even tighter analogy, it is that I think everyone in this Chamber has stepped back a little bit and said, What are these sanctions policies and how do they work? What is going on here? Are we really achieving the desired results that are the subject of our rhetoric in speeches? Are we causing policies to be changed in countries on whom we impose sanctions? Are the political elite of these nations affected by our policies? Are they in some way being impacted by these decisions? What damage do we do to ourselves in the process as a result of sanctions being imposed? Are average people in these countries, who have nothing to do with setting policies, being affected in some way? What does that do in terms of eroding support for our country and our policies where public support in foreign countries can be pivotal in unpopular decisions that may have been made by allies of ours around the world? What sort of corrosive effect do sanctions have on those decisions? I think these are good questions that deserve answers. What the Senator from Indiana has suggested is that, at least in one aspect of these, that we know and understand what the cost-benefit relationship is. Madam President, at a later point in this debate, I will offer another amendment dealing with food and medicine, to merely just take food, medicine, and agricultural products off the table as a tool of sanctions, for the primary reason that I don't think it has any impact on trying to modify the behavior of nations on whom we have a substantial or less-than-substantial agreement. I will wait for the appropriate time to do it when this debate is concluded. I also have authored, along with my friend, whom I see on this floor, who has cosponsored that amendment, Senator Hagel from Nebraska, Senator Roberts from Kansas, Senator Warner from Virginia, Senator Burns from Montana, Senator Dorgan from North Dakota, proposals that will deal with a broader issue of how sanctions ought to be dealt with. But I will save that debate for a later day. It is a broader question and one for which we have a task force taking a look at some of these issues. I certainly want to make sure we are heading in the right direction. On the food and medicine and agricultural products, I think that makes a lot of sense, and I will offer that at the appropriate time. I conclude by urging my colleagues to be supportive of the Lugar proposal. It is a significant step in the right direction and one that I think deserves broad-based support as we try to sort out how best to advance our foreign policy interests while not unnecessarily doing damage to our own Nation and to innocent people around the world, particularly in the unilateral application of these sanctions. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor. Mr. HAGEL addressed the Chair.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, in response to my colleague's question, that is correct. That is the language of the bill.