Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. It is a very brief question. As the Senator knows, I was the original sponsor of the V-chip that was first introduced in the Senate. The Senator from Vermont is describing an agreement. I am curious. The Senator mentioned a few of the outside groups who are party to the agreement. Which Senators were a part of that agreement? I was the original sponsor of the V-chip. I wasn't a part of that agreement.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have listened to this debate. It reminds me of the three stages of denial: The fellow says I wasn't there when it happened; if I was there, I didn't do it; if I did it, I didn't mean it. I have listened to the denial on this issue. We finally come to the point after three decades of debate, especially in the last 6 or 8 years, where the denial is to say we can't take a baby step forward on this important issue because somebody has reached an agreement somewhere with someone else. I didn't reach an agreement with anybody. We have a V-chip. I introduced the first V-chip bill in the Senate January 31, 1994. We have a V-chip in law. But don't anybody stand up here and say that because we have a V-chip in law there was some deal someplace with somebody that prevents Members from doing what we ought to do now. Don't anybody say that, because I was not part of a deal. The Senator from South Carolina was not part of a deal, and I daresay that 90 other Senators in this Chamber were part of no deal with anybody about these issues. This is common sense. This makes sense. It seems to me that we ought not have anybody ever come to the floor of the Senate again to talk about this issue if Members are not willing to take this baby step in the right direction. I am pleased to join the Senator from South Carolina in offering this amendment today to say we have had a lot of discussion, hundreds of studies, a lot of debate. Now we come to the time where we choose. Don't make excuses. Don't talk about some deal that doesn't exist for most Senators. Vote for this legislation.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise as a cosponsor, along with my colleague from South Carolina, Senator Hollings, of the amendment he has just introduced, the Children's Protection From Violent Programming Act amendment. That is kind of a long title. What it means is Senator Hollings and I would like to restore in television broadcasting a period of time during the evenings when children are likely to be watching television, where the television programming would not be containing excess violence. The reason we feel that way is study after study, year after year--in fact, for decades--studies have shown the excessive violence in television programming hurts our children. Yet, if you evaluate television programming during what would normally be considered family viewing hours in this country, you will find the language has become more coarse, words are used that were previously not used, that are not suitable for children. You will also find substantial amounts of programming violence, gratuitous violence, during those shows. Some would say, what about censorship? I think there are times when it is appropriate for the Federal Communications Commission to establish a family viewing period in the evening where the television broadcasting would be more appropriate, more suitable for our children, when children are watching those programs. We already have an instance dealing with obscenity, and the Supreme Court has upheld the opportunity and the responsibility given the Federal Communications Commission to carve out a period in which certain kinds of words and obscenities cannot be used because it is inappropriate for them to be used at a time when we expect children to be watching television. We believe the same ought to be true with respect to television violence. One might say, this is much ado about nothing; television violence is nothing new; it is really not very important. Yet that is in defiance of all the conclusions of virtually all the studies. By the time young children graduate from high school in our country, they will have gone to school in classrooms for about 12,500 hours of their lives. But they will have watched television for about 20,000 hours. They have sat in a classroom 12,500 hours and sat in front of a television set 20,000 hours. Regrettably, too many of them are more a product of what they have watched than what they have read. What is it they are watching? Some years ago I sponsored a project with a college on the North Dakota-Minnesota border that created a television violence report card. Volunteers at that college watched television programs for an entire week and cataloged each and every program and produced a report card on what kind of violence on television was being portrayed to our children. If you simply condense what our children are watching on television--yes, even during what would be considered family viewing hours--it is quite remarkable. Imagine if someone came to your door tomorrow and said: You know, you have two children. They are age 6 and 9. We would like to put on a dramatic play for them. We have a group of actors out here in our van and we have some stage props. We would like to come into your home, into your living room, and we would like to put on a little play for your children. So they come in. In the living room they put on a play. In this dramatic play they shoot each other, stab each other, beat each other up. Blood runs freely. There is screaming, there is horror. You would probably say to those actors: You are just committing child abuse in my living room, doing that in front of my children. What on Earth can you be thinking of? Yet that is exactly what happens in our living rooms with that electronic box, with programming coming to our children at times when children are watching television, programming that is not fit for children. So the response they have is, turn the television set off. Easy to say. Of course, most homes have a good number of television sets, probably two or three in different parts of the homes. In many homes there are circumstances where the parents are attentive parents, good parents, who try very hard to supervise the children's viewing habits, but it is very, very hard to do. In fact, if you were watching, one day recently, a television set that depicted the unspeakable horror that was visited upon those students in Littleton High School, in the middle of the live reports with SWAT teams and students running out of school, with the understanding that children had been murdered, in the middle of all that one television network took a break and on came a commercial--of course, louder than everything else because commercials are always louder--advertising that you really needed to pay attention to their next big program. The next program was ``Mr. Murder.'' You really needed to watch ``Mr. Murder'' because this was going to be exciting. All of this, coming at our children in television programming, study after study points out, hurts our children. This is not helpful to children. It is hurtful to children. Newton Minow, many, many years ago--1961 in fact--said, ``Television is a vast wasteland of blood, thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism and murder.'' He said, ``In 1961 I worried that my children would not benefit much from television. But in 1991 I worry that my children will actually be harmed by it.'' Television executives produce some wonderful programming as well. You can turn to certain programs on television and be struck by the beauty and the wonder and the information. I have sat with my children watching the History Channel, for example, or certain programs on the Discovery Channel. I should not begin naming them. There are some wonderful, beautiful things from time to time on television. But there are some ugly, grotesque things on television as well, some of which come through our television sets during times children are expected to be watching. What the Senator from South Carolina proposes is very simple: to go back to a time when we had in this country a period described by the FCC as a ``family viewing period'' that would be relatively free of gratuitous violence being displayed in those programs. Is that so extreme, so radical? Do we really believe that we have to hurt our children in order to entertain our adults? I do not think so. It does not make any sense to me. There is plenty of opportunity in a lot of areas to entertain adults in this country, but it seems to me perfectly reasonable that at certain times when you expect families to be watching with children in the household that we could try to reduce the amount of violence on television. I understand that some will portray this as a terrible idea. They will say we now have some ratings systems, and the ratings will give parents the capability of better supervising their children's viewing habits. That is true. I commend the broadcasting industry for having ratings. Not all do. One of the major networks has declined. The ratings themselves have not been used very much. We have a V-chip that is coming in all new television sets. I offered the first V-chip bill in the Senate some years ago. That is now law, and that will help parents sort out the programming with certain violent scenes. The fact is, we need to do more. The Senator from South Carolina and I have offered an amendment that we think will be helpful. We do not believe it has constitutional problems. This is not about free speech. You can say pretty much what you want to say and you can depict violence, but we are saying during a certain period of time, you cannot do it in a way that injures children. I thought it might be useful to go over a couple of the pieces of evidence that most all of us have become acquainted with in all of the studies and hearings that we have had. I guess I have been involved in this issue for 7, 8 years. We have had hearings in the Commerce Committee and elsewhere. I have a couple of young children who are now age 12 and age 10. We try very hard to make certain that we monitor their viewing habits. Our 12-year-old said to us: Well, friends of ours are able to go to movies that are PG-13 movies. We say: That might be something their parents let them do, but we don't. We don't want you to see material that is inappropriate. Movies have ratings, and so you make affirmative decisions whether you are going to go out or allow your child to go out with someone else and see a movie. But television is different. Television is in our family rooms, in our homes. When we turn that dial on the television, the programming that is shown on that television set is programming that is offered for entertainment and for profit. The first amendment allows people to produce all kinds of programming. As I mentioned before, there are some wonderful, wonderful things on television. There is also some trash on television. It seems to me it would be helpful for parents to have the assistance of the Federal Communications Commission and broadcasters in complying with an amendment of this sort adopted by the Congress that will give parents the feeling that during certain periods, they will not have to worry about what kind of violent scenes are going to be displayed to their children on that television set. I have a fair amount of things I want to say about the amendment in addition to this, but we have a conference committee meeting. The appropriations conference committee is ongoing in the basement of this building, and I am a conferee, so I must return. I know Senator Hollings and I will be back on the floor tomorrow morning and will be speaking on behalf of this amendment. My hope is between now and then we will be able to encourage other Members of the Senate to be supportive of this amendment. I know others have come out. I have been in the conference committee, and I have not been here for much debate on the juvenile justice bill. Also tomorrow, I want to take a moment to describe a visit I just made to the Oakhill Detention Center in Laurel, MD. I went out there because I wanted to sit down and talk with juvenile offenders. I wanted to try to understand from judges who were there, from prosecutors and from public defenders, and from the juvenile offenders themselves: What is going on? I sat with a young boy who had been in a gang and shot three times and sold drugs at age 12. I sat with a girl who was 15 years old. She had a baby 2 years previous to that. She was abused by her mother. She sold drugs at age 13. I sat with another young boy who was selling drugs at age 12 who had been involved with guns and very serious offenses. These are kids who shot people, kids who committed armed robbery, kids who were in a lot of trouble. One of the boys said something that was quite remarkable--most all of them came from circumstances of really difficult conditions, no parental supervision. In fact, the young girl said her mother was a drug addict and told her, from the moment she was able to understand what her mother was saying, that she would never amount to anything. She told this girl: You will never amount to anything and I never wanted you in the first place. That was from a drug-addict mother. This young girl is now locked up and has been convicted of selling drugs and other criminal acts. She has a baby and is only 15 years old. We talked about supervision, how do you get your life straight? Who cares about you? Somebody said: But you need to have a parent check up on you once in a while, don't you? This young boy said: No, you don't need a parent to check up on you once in a while. That's the problem. If you have maybe a grandparent or uncle and aunt and someone checks in once in a while, once in a while is not enough for children. Children need help, need parental supervision, not once in a while. I spent a half day out at the Oakhill Detention Center just talking with kids to try to understand. I should also say--I will talk a bit about it tomorrow--there is another part of that Oakhill Detention Center that left me feeling a little buoyant and hopeful. There were some young men--in this case it was older young boys, some young boys who had committed horrible crimes, who had been drug addicts from age 12 on to about 17, 18, young boys in a program to shed themselves of their drug addiction and to turn their lives around. One young boy was going to be released the Friday I was there. This is a couple weeks ago, and he had a job. He had gone out for an interview and had gotten himself a job. This young guy had gone through the drug program. He has become straight. It is fascinating to listen to him describe his background, where he wants to go, and what he now knows he needs to do to get his life back in order. The reason I want to talk about it is part of this issue of juvenile justice is, yes, detention and protection and law enforcement, and another part of it is to say there is something else here that we need to do to help. I know that is a debate that has occurred on this floor now for many, many hours. But mentoring programs, afterschool programs--there are a lot of programs that can make a difference in young people's lives, especially programs dealing with drugs. Drugs were at the root of a lot of the troubled lives of the young children whom I saw at this detention center. I hope we can come back tomorrow and talk a little bit about the Juvenile Justice Act.

Mr. DORGAN. I will be pleased to yield.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this country made a promise years ago to the men and women who risked their lives in defense of this nation. They were promised that their health care needs would be provided for by a grateful nation. That promise is not being kept, and it is time to stop paying lip service to those who served this country so well. The current state of veterans' health care funding is shameful. Spending on veterans' health care has seen no significant increase for three consecutive years, at the very time that more and more of our World War II and Korean war veterans are relying on the VA health care system. In a memo to VA Secretary Togo West, Under Secretary for Health Dr. Kenneth Kizer expressed concern that a fourth year with a stagnant health care budget ``poses very serious financial challenges which can only be met if decisive and timely actions are taken.'' If increased funding is not secured even deeper cuts will be required such as ``mandatory employee furloughs, severe curtailment of services or elimination of programs, and possible unnecessary facility closures.'' Today, veterans' health care facilities are laying off care-givers and other critical staff. It is unlikely that the Senate will increase normal appropriations for veterans health care funding enough to correct three years of neglect. That is why Senator Conrad and I are proposing an additional $1.7 billion in emergency spending to address the health care needs of our country's veterans. We need to keep our promises to those who have served our country and risked their lives to preserve our freedoms. This bill is a step in the right direction. This legislation will help the Veterans' Administration keep up with medical inflation, provide cost of living adjustments for VA employees, allow new medical initiatives that the VA wants to begin (Hepatitis C screenings and emergency care services), address long-term health care costs, provide funding for homeless veterans, and aid compliance with the Patients Bill of Rights. In light of other emergency measures this Congress is considering, it is our opinion that preventing a health care catastrophe for our veterans is of equal, if not greater, importance than funding items like the NATO infrastructure fund and overseas military construction projects. Congress is debating right now, many new emergencies, new programs, and new initiatives. I'm not passing judgment on those decisions. What I am saying, is that because of insufficient funding, and unforeseen health care needs, we have an emergency right now, in our ability to honor our commitment to this nation's veterans. We must not break our promise. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to swiftly approve this legislation. The veterans who proudly served their country deserve no less.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this country made a promise years ago to the men and women who risked their lives in defense of this nation. They were promised that their health care needs would be provided for by a grateful nation. That promise is not being kept, and it is time to stop paying lip service to those who served this country so well. The current state of veterans' health care funding is shameful. Spending on veterans' health care has seen no significant increase for three consecutive years, at the very time that more and more of our World War II and Korean war veterans are relying on the VA health care system. In a memo to VA Secretary Togo West, Under Secretary for Health Dr. Kenneth Kizer expressed concern that a fourth year with a stagnant health care budget ``poses very serious financial challenges which can only be met if decisive and timely actions are taken.'' If increased funding is not secured even deeper cuts will be required such as ``mandatory employee furloughs, severe curtailment of services or elimination of programs, and possible unnecessary facility closures.'' Today, veterans' health care facilities are laying off care-givers and other critical staff. It is unlikely that the Senate will increase normal appropriations for veterans health care funding enough to correct three years of neglect. That is why Senator Conrad and I are proposing an additional $1.7 billion in emergency spending to address the health care needs of our country's veterans. We need to keep our promises to those who have served our country and risked their lives to preserve our freedoms. This bill is a step in the right direction. This legislation will help the Veterans' Administration keep up with medical inflation, provide cost of living adjustments for VA employees, allow new medical initiatives that the VA wants to begin (Hepatitis C screenings and emergency care services), address long-term health care costs, provide funding for homeless veterans, and aid compliance with the Patients Bill of Rights. In light of other emergency measures this Congress is considering, it is our opinion that preventing a health care catastrophe for our veterans is of equal, if not greater, importance than funding items like the NATO infrastructure fund and overseas military construction projects. Congress is debating right now, many new emergencies, new programs, and new initiatives. I'm not passing judgment on those decisions. What I am saying, is that because of insufficient funding, and unforeseen health care needs, we have an emergency right now, in our ability to honor our commitment to this nation's veterans. We must not break our promise. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to swiftly approve this legislation. The veterans who proudly served their country deserve no less.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. The piece by Mr. Ellis is entitled ``Non-Negotiable, War Criminals Belong in the Dock, Not at the Table.'' I wanted to bring this piece to the attention of my colleagues because Mr. Ellis says it well. He points out that we are at a time and a place, dealing with Mr. Milosevic in Kosovo, when it is all of our responsibilities to bring Mr. Milosevic to justice. Some would say, well, how do you arrest someone who is not accessible to you? It doesn't matter, as far as I am concerned, whether it's possible to apprehended and arrest him. We have a responsibility in this case, just as I felt we did in the case of Saddam Hussein, to make the case against these leaders for the war crimes they have committed and to bring them to trial before an international tribunal, try them, and, hopefully, convict them as war criminals. To not do that, it seems to me, will be to continue to have to deal with people who have committed genocide and war crimes that have brought unspeakable horror to the people of Kosovo, and to continue to have to deal with them in the future. I know some in this country and elsewhere say the problem is, if you push aggressively to try Mr. Milosevic as a war criminal and ultimately have to negotiate with him some sort of negotiated settlement in the Balkans, it is very hard to negotiate with someone you have identified as a war criminal. That is a lot of psychobabble, as far as I am concerned. We have already decided this fellow is a war criminal by virtue of our actions in NATO. NATO decided that the genocide and ethnic cleansing that were occurring in Kosovo could not be allowed to stand. I think it might be useful to read through a list of some of the allegations. By no means is this a definitive list, it is just a small sliver: the village of Goden, the execution of 20 men and then the burning of the entire village; Malakrusa, 112 men shot and their bodies burned; Pastasel, 70 ethnic Albanian bodies discovered; Pec, at least 50 ethnic Albanians killed and buried in their own yards; Podujevo, the execution of 200 military age men and 90 percent of the village burned as well; summary execution; robbery; rape; forced expulsion. We now have seen the march of nearly 1 million people displaced from their homeland, villages burned, looted, and plundered. One refugee said, ``16 special policemen appeared shooting their automatic weapons in the air. Two families had strayed from the group and the Serbs opened fire, killing every member of both families, except for a 2- year-old boy who had been protected by his mother. She hid the baby in front of her and saved him. I saw this with my own eyes,'' this refugee said, ``maybe 150 feet from me.'' In 1992, Secretary of State Eagleburger publicly identified Mr. Milosevic as a war criminal; 1992, 7 years ago. Mr. Eagleburger is one of the most respected foreign policy thinkers in our country. He said Mr. Milosevic was a war criminal in 1992. What does that mean, to say someone is a war criminal or for our country to allege someone is a war criminal, if we decide to do nothing about it, if an international tribunal exists by which someone can and should be tried but we decide, no, we don't really want to do that in the face of mass executions, in the face of ethnic cleansing? We say we really don't want to do that because we may need to negotiate a settlement to this conflict. It was a mistake not to go to an international tribunal and convict Saddam Hussein as a war criminal so that forever after he would be branded a war criminal. He is now, many years later, of course, still running Iraq. He does not have the stigma of having been convicted in absentia as a war criminal. He should have. The same, in my judgment, is true of Mr. Milosevic. To read a paragraph from Mr. Ellis's wonderful piece in the Washington Post, he said: When I watched the bus loads of new arrivals enter Stenkovec camp, I saw a small girl's face pressed against the window. Her hollow eyes seemed to stare at no one. History was being repeated. In his opening statement at the Nuremberg trials in 1945, U.S. chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson said, ``The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.'' Jackson was expressing the hope that law would somehow redeem the next generation that similar atrocities would never again be allowed. Today, we must hold personally liable those individuals who commit atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. To negotiate with the perpetrators of these crimes not only demeans the suffering of countless civilian victims, it sends a clear signal that justice is expendable, that war crimes can go unpunished. Inevitably, lasting peace will be linked to justice, and justice will depend on accountability. Failing to indict Milosevic in the hope that he can deliver a negotiated settlement makes a mockery of the words ``Never Again.'' I am not an expert in this region. I have been to Yugoslavia, when it was Yugoslavia. I sat at an outdoor restaurant on a beautiful evening and watched wonderful people, just like my neighbors in Regent, ND, just like North Dakotans or Kansans or other folks, and it occurred to me that it was a wonderful country with a lot of wonderful people. Of course, we now know that what has happened as a spark occurs in an area, and Mr. Milosevic follows up the spark with ethnic cleansing, producing a calamity. We see the horrors inflicted on people, in some cases by their previous neighbors, that you would have thought unthinkable. Something is dreadfully wrong when the rest of the world allows a dictator like Mr. Milosevic to inflict ethnic cleansing and the kind of horror he has inflicted on the people of Kosovo. That is why NATO and the United States have engaged in airstrikes. It is why all of us hope this conflict ends soon and that Kosovars are returned to their homes. Also, Mr. Milosevic, at least from my standpoint, should be brought before an international tribunal and tried even in absentia, if necessary, as a war criminal and convicted as a war criminal to send a signal to the world that this new world order will not allow this to go unpunished. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, May 9, 1999] Non-Negotiable, War Criminals Belong in the Dock, Not at the Table (By Mark S. Ellis) Just a few weeks ago, I stood among a sea of 20,000 desperate people on a dirt airfield outside Skopje, Macedonia, listening to one harrowing story after another. I had come to the Stenkovec refugee camp to record those stories and to help set up a system for documenting atrocities in Kosovo. As I collected their accounts of rape, torture and executions at the hands of Serbian troops, I was struck by the refugees' common yearning for justice. They wanted those responsible for their suffering to be held accountable. Their anger was not only directed at the people they had watched committing such savagery, but at the Political leaders--and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in particular--who had orchestrated the misery and continue to act with impunity. The means exist to hold Milosevic and his underlings accountable. In recent weeks, there have been calls from members of Congress for his indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering has said that the United States is gathering evidence that could lead to his indictment. And there is plenty of evidence. In the Kosovo town of Djakovica, for example, residents carefully documented the Serbian barbarity for investigators, recording the details of each murder, each rape, each act of violence, before they fled the city. The time has come to act on the testimony of these and other witnesses. To do so, of course, flies in the face of last week's much- ballyhooed optimism about reaching a negotiated settlement with Milosevic. However eager the Clinton administration might be to reach a political and diplomatic solution, we should remember that those who have recently suffered under Serbian attacks reject outright the notion that justice must sometimes be forfeited for the sake of diplomatic expediency. During the Bosnian conflict, accountability was sacrificed on the dubious premise that negotiating with someone who is widely regarded as a war criminal is a legitimate exercise in peace-making. We shouldn't make that mistake a second time around. Milosevic's broken promises still echo among the charred ruins and forsaken mass grave sites that defile the landscape of Bonsia. If Milosevic had been indicted for the mass killings and summary executions that the Bosnian Serbs--with backing from Serbia--are accused of carrying out, would he have acted so brazenly to ``cleanse'' Kosovo of its ethnic Albanians? Nobody knows. At the very least an indictment would probably have deterred him; an apprehension and a trial would have stopped him. But there should be no uncertainty about what occurs when Milosevic is allowed to act unencumbered. The time has come for the international war crimes tribunal to help put an end to that. Inaugurated by the United Nations on May 25, 1993, and based in The Hague, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal has, to date, tried just 16 defendants. With a staff of more than 750 and an annual budget of more than $94 million, it has the resources--and the authority--to indict Milosevic. Indeed, failure to indict would reveal the tribunal's impotence in the face of political controversy, and prove that this institution of international law and justice is merely an expensive and irrelevant relic. How difficult would it be to indict Milosevic? Not difficult at all. Under the tribunal's statute, the office of the prosecutor need only determine ``that a prima facie case exists.'' That's to say that the prosecutor must gather evidence sufficient to prove reasonable grounds that Milosevic committed a single crime under the tribunal's extensive jurisdiction. With this in mind, the chances of Milosevic being held accountable increase with the arrival of each new group of refugees driven from their homes in Kosovo. Their remarkably consistent testimony is providing crucial information--now being gathered by representatives of the tribunal as well as by human rights organizations--about what has actually taken place in Kosovo. These firsthand accounts are indispensable in building a case against Milosevic--and the refugees I interviewed during the days I was there are willing to testify about what they saw. But with refugees flooding out of Kosovo and some being relocated in distant countries, the prosecutor's office must ensure that testimony is taken swiftly, legally and professionally. The lack of access to Kosovo by independent journalists and human rights monitors and the extreme instability of refugee life heighten the importance of collecting these accounts while they are still fresh in people's minds. Yet the prosecutor's office was slow to act. A full five weeks went by before the tribunal sent a corps of investigators to the region. What crimes should the Yugloslav president be indicted for? The tribunal's statute provides jurisdiction over ``serious violations of international humanitarian law'' including both ``crimes against humanity'' and ``genocide,'' the most abhorrent of all. Milosevic should be indicted for both. Crimes against humanity are defined as ``systematic and widespread'' and directed at any civilian population; they include murder, extermination, imprisonment, rape and deportation. They are distinguished from other acts of communal violence because civilians are victimized according to a systematic plan that usually emanates from the highest levels of government. In Kosovo, the forced deportation of ethnic Albanians by the Yugoslav army and the Serbian Interior Ministry police force is an obvious manifestation of such crimes. The refugees with whom I spoke described being robbed, beaten, herded together and forced to flee their villages with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. By confiscating all evidence of the ethnic Albanians' identity--passports, birth certificates, employment records, driver's licenses, marriage licenses--the Serbian forces also severed the refugees' links with their communities and land in Kosovo. This attempt to make each ethnic Albanian a non-person is itself a crime against humanity. Emerging evidence of mass killings, summary executions and gang rape lends further credence to the widespread and systematic nature of these crimes. As to the crime of genocide, the tribunal's statute rests on the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, which defines genocide as ``acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.'' Arising as it did from the extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany, the convention invites comparison with the Holocaust and is intended to prevent such heinous crimes from happening again. This tragedy has not reached that perverse level of brutality but, like the earlier efforts to eliminate an entire people-- whether the Jews, the Armenians or the Tutsis--it should be prosecuted as a crime of genocide. The convention addresses intent, and stipulates that acts designed to eliminate a people--in whole or in part-- constitute genocide. Among other acts covered by the convention, crimes of genocide include ``(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.'' In the former Yugoslavia, acts of genocide have been perpetrated through the abhorrent policy of ethnic cleansing--that is, making areas ethnically homogenous by expelling entire segments of the Kosovar population and destroying the very fabric of a people. Ethnic cleansing does not require the elimination of all ethnic Albanians; it may target specific elements of the community that make the group--as a group--sustainable. The abduction and execution of the intelligentsia, including public officials, lawyers, doctors and political leaders, for example, is part of a pattern of ethnic cleansing and could constitute genocide, as could targeting a particular segment of the population such as young men. It is clear from the refugees who have been interviewed that these acts are being systematically committed in Kosovo. An often overlooked but important element of the 1948 convention is that an individual can be indicted not only for committing genocide, but also for conspiring to commit genocide, inciting the public to commit genocide, attempting to commit genocide, or for complicity in genocide. The point is that criminal responsibility extends far beyond those who actually perform the physical acts resulting in genocide. In short, the political architects such as Milosevic are no less responsible than the forces that carry out this butchery. There is no immunity from genocide. Prosecuting Milosevic will require relying on a legal strategy based on the concept of ``imputed command responsibility.'' Under this theory, Milosevic can be held responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates if he knew or had reason to know that crimes were about to be committed and he failed to take preventive measures or to punish those who had already committed crimes. Since it is unlikely that Milosevic has allowed documentary evidence to be preserved that would link him to atrocities in Kosovo, the prosecutor's office will have to rely heavily on circumstantial evidence to build its case. This means identifying a consistent ``pattern of conduct'' that links Milosevic to similar illegal acts, to the officers and staff involved, or to the logistics involved in carrying out atrocities. The very fact that atrocities have been so widespread, flagrant, grotesque and similar in nature makes it near certain that Milosevic knew of them; despite his recent protestations to the contrary, it defies logic to suggest that he could be unaware of what his forces are doing. What will the consequences be if the Yugoslav president is indicted? First, an indictment would send a clear message that the international community will not negotiate or have contact with a war criminal. It is current U.S. policy not to negotiate with indicted war crimes suspects. And so it should be. Milosevic would be stripped of international stature except as a fugitive from justice. This might, in turn, open an avenue for Serbians to once again distance themselves from their leader's regime. Second, an indictment would likely result in an ex parte hearing in which the prosecutor's office could present its case in open court--without Milosevic being there. By establishing a public record of Milosevic's role in the crimes committed, such a hearing would be cathartic for both victims and witnesses, and also for citizens long denied access to the truth. Finally, the tribunal would issue an international arrest warrant making it unlikely that Milosevic would venture outside his country's borders. When I watched the bus loads of new arrivals enter the Stenkovec camp, I saw a small girl's face pressed against the window. Her hollow eyes seemed to stare at no one. History was being repeated. In his opening statement at the Nuremberg trials in 1945, U.S. chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson said, ``The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.'' Jackson was expressing the hope that law would somehow redeem the next generation and that similar atrocities would never again be allowed. Today, we must hold personally liable those individuals who commit atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. To negotiate with the perpetrators of these crimes not only demeans the suffering of countless civilian victims, it sends a clear message that justice is expendable, that war crimes can go unpunished. Inevitably, lasting peace will be linked to justice, and justice will depend on accountability. Failing to indict Milosevic in the hope that he can deliver a negotiated settlement makes a mockery of the words ``Never Again.'' Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I may address one additional issue, this deals with Kosovo and Mr. Milosevic. There was a piece published in the Washington Post on Sunday, written by Mark S. Ellis, that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks on Kosovo.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Anthony Blaylock be granted the privilege of the floor during morning business this morning.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 15 minutes following the presentation of the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I come to the floor briefly today to talk about two issues. First, tomorrow the appropriations conference begins between the House and the Senate on the emergency supplemental appropriations bill. That includes specifically the President's request for emergency appropriations to be made for some agricultural spring planting loans, some emergency appropriations to be made for the purpose of helping the victims of Hurricane Mitch in Central America, and then since that time the President has made new recommendations on emergency funding for the Defense Department needs as a result of the actions in Kosovo. The House of Representatives took a request by President Clinton for nearly $6 billion in added funds for the military especially, but including some humanitarian relief for the actions in Kosovo, and added to that $6 billion of emergency funding nearly $7 billion more, to reach a total of close to $13 billion in emergency funding. A number of us believe that, while we are on the subject of emergencies and in a supplemental appropriations conference, it would be inappropriate to add $7 billion to the defense budget for emergency needs relating to Kosovo--although some of it has very little relationship to Kosovo, it has a relationship to what is called ``readiness'' in defense accounts and other things--that it would be inappropriate to consider that without considering other emergency needs here at home on the domestic front. One of those is agriculture. The plight of the family farmer in this country has been pretty well described by myself and others on the floor of the Senate in recent months. The Congress did some emergency work last fall to provide some income support to family farmers above and beyond the current farm bill. But it is not nearly enough. We now come to May of 1999, at a time in which prices for many commodities in agriculture, in constant dollars, are at Depression level, and we are going to lose thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of family farmers if we decide to do nothing. Tomorrow's conference between the House and Senate may be the only opportunity that exists this year to provide support for emergency funding, to add some income price support to family farmers, which they desperately need. This chart shows what is happening in rural America. This map shows counties marked in red which are being depopulated in our country. These are counties that have lost at least 10 percent of their population in the last 18 years. You can see on this map the large red area that shows the middle of this country--the farm belt--is being depopulated, people are leaving. Why are people leaving the farm belt in droves, and especially now in more recent years? Why are people leaving their family farms, leaving the farm belt, and leaving rural counties? The answer is, family farmers cannot make a living when they produce grain and then have to sell it at a price far below their cost of production. It does not work that way. You go broke. Bad trade agreements, concentration in agricultural industries--there are a whole series of reasons--but the central reason, it seems to me, is low prices. If you do not get a decent price for that which you produce, you are not going to be able to make a decent living. The question for this country is, What kind of price supports are available to farmers when market prices collapse? Every one of us in this Chamber would prefer that farmers received their prices from the marketplace. But when the marketplace collapses, farmers load a couple hundred bushels of wheat on their trucks, drive to the elevators, are told that wheat has no value, or has very little value, then the question for Congress is, Do we want family farmers in our future? And, if we do, What kind of income support are we willing to offer to create a bridge over that price valley when prices collapse? The largest enterprises, the big agrifactories, will make it across that valley. They are big enough, strong enough, have the financial resources to make it across that price valley. It is the family farmer who will not make it. So the question for the Congress is, Do we care about family farming? And, if we do, what can we do to provide some income support when prices collapse? A number of us will offer, during this deliberation in the conference between the House and the Senate on emergency needs, a proposal to restore some emergency funding to family farmers. There are lots of ways of doing that. I have my own feeling about how to do it. Senator Harkin and I, along with Senator Conrad and others--Senator Harkin and I, incidentally, will be in the conference tomorrow, are prepared to offer some proposals to deal with emergency needs, it is not just the Defense Department that has emergency needs, family farming is in a full-scale emergency in this country. This Congress must take steps to save it. Tomorrow, again, Senator Harkin, myself and some others in the conference on appropriations, of which Senator Harkin and I are conferees, intend to raise this question in a very forceful way and push very aggressively for action on an emergency basis with our colleagues. Republican and Democrat colleagues here in this Chamber understand that we face a very serious problem. All of my colleagues who come from the farm belt have said the same thing. Family farmers are in trouble. There is no disagreement about that. There might be some disagreement about the mechanism by which we address this question, but I think everyone here, with whom I share the long-term interests of the welfare of family farming, believes that we need, during periods of collapsed prices, to provide some income price support. The question is how do we do that. My hope is the first step will be tomorrow during the conference that we have with the House of Representatives.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Texas, based on the previous agreement, is to be recognized to offer two amendments. I heard his call for other Members to come with amendments. I have a couple of amendments which I intend to offer. I would not expect the Senator to include those in the list of amendments he intends to accept, but nonetheless I also wish to make a statement about the bill generally today. I have come over several times, as the Senator knows, and it has not been convenient to be able to do so with respect to other schedules, and I understand that. But I wonder if the Senator could give me some notion of when I might be able to be recognized, at which time I would make the statement I intend to make about the bill generally and then offer an amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Texas is most courteous. I would like about 5 minutes to gather some charts.

Mr. DORGAN. I wish to speak for about 20 minutes this morning.

Mr. DORGAN. May I inquire, if I can ask a question of the manager, if we have amendments when will they likely be considered? The Senator from Texas has now an opportunity to offer two amendments, right? Will there be substantial debate on those amendments?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Texas will yield for a question.

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

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator would like to proceed----

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to tell a story as I describe this amendment. About 10 years ago, I was serving in the House of Representatives on the Ways and Means Committee. Ten years ago, as you might recall, in this country we had the marketing of junk bonds; that is, noninvestment grade bonds by Drexel Burnham and Michael Milken. Junk bonds were used increasingly for hostile takeovers. It was a go-go economy. They held conferences and talked about how you could turn a minnow into a whale and arm a minnow with junk bonds and they will go and bite the tail off the whale. You had little companies buying big companies. It was a remarkable thing to see. One of the things that occurred to me was how unhealthy and unholy it was in this country that junk bond sellers were parking junk bonds with savings and loans. Our savings and loans, whose deposits were insured by the Federal Government, were then ending up with junk bonds, noninvestment-grade bonds, in their portfolios, so that if the enterprise went belly up, the American taxpayers would end up paying the bill. Let me give you the creme de la creme, the hood ornament on the excess. The hood ornament was that we had one of biggest casinos in the country built in Atlantic City, glitzy and big. Junk bonds were for the casino, noninvestment-grade bonds. With junk bonds they build the casino. The junk bonds get parked with the savings and loan. The savings and loan goes belly up. Guess who ends up with the junk bonds that are nonperforming and a big casino. The American taxpayer. The U.S. Government and the American taxpayer end up holding junk bonds that are nonperforming junk bonds in a casino. How did that happen? Because it was all right according to our regulators, and all right according to law, for our savings and loans to go out and buy junk bonds and load up. One California S&L had, I think, nearly 60 percent of its assets involved in junk bonds. So I got an amendment passed. It is now law. Some people have never forgiven me for it, because I got an amendment passed that said savings and loans--that is, those whose deposits are insured by the Federal Government--cannot purchase junk bonds and must divest those they have. I had a devil of a time getting it passed, just an awful time. I got it passed. It became law and caused all kinds of chaos for those who were parking all these bonds at S&Ls, playing the financial roulette game they were playing. It was the right thing to have done for the taxpayers of this. I mention that only because financial institutions will do what they must and will do what they can under the rules as long as we are looking the other way. I am not saying they are all irresponsible. I am saying they are all going to try to pursue the largest rate of return they can possibly pursue, especially if you have the deposits underwritten. Those institutions are going to take advantage of these opportunities. It was true in the 1980s; it will be true in the next decade as well. The lesson with respect to junk bonds, the lesson with respect to derivatives and hedge funds, is that we have to be vigilant. Did the bank regulators jump on this and deal with it? No. In fact, the Secretary of the Treasury would come to the Ways and Means Committee. I would say: Mr. Secretary, we have a crisis going on here. What on earth are you doing? Sitting on your hands? Oh, no, Congressman Dorgan, there isn't a crisis at all; there's no problem. There is no problem here at all. Well, the problem turned out to be hundreds of billions of dollars for the American taxpayer, because those who were supposed to be involved in regulation looked the other way. As we pass this piece of legislation today, we would do ourselves a favor, I think, passing an amendment that would prohibit proprietary trading in derivatives by banks and also passing the amendment I just sent to the desk that would provide regulation for risky hedge funds that have at least $1 billion or more in assets. It is a handful of hedge funds, perhaps fewer than 50. They have aggressive leverage. It seems to me that while I would like to be more aggressive in the regulation of hedge funds, at least this should be a start in dealing with this issue. Mr. President, I will not offer a third amendment. I will offer only these two amendments. I believe that the legislation is inappropriate at this time, and I intend to vote against the legislation on final passage. As I have said on a couple occasions this afternoon, I think this is a giant step backward. I think it is exactly the wrong direction for our country. I think it does nothing for ordinary people, does not address any of the issues. It is something that will make a number of the largest enterprises in this country that are already making substantial profits very, very happy. I guarantee every Member of this body that if this legislation is passed, when you wake up day after day, week after week, and month after month, you will read the news of more and more and more mergers and greater concentration. Then don't you come to the floor of the Senate and talk to me about competition and don't you come to the floor of the Senate and started preaching about free markets. The opportunity to respond to real competition and free markets, in my judgment, is, by turning this legislation down, enforcing strong antitrust enforcement, and being thoughtful about the things we have to do in the future to preserve the safety and soundness of our banks and, yes, to encourage investment and encourage economic activity in other sectors of our economy. Let me conclude by saying I am not someone who thinks that big firms are bad. I don't believe that at all. Nobody is going to build a 757 jet airplane in the garage in Regent, ND. Economies of scale are important. Some of the largest enterprises in our country have contributed mightily to this country and its economy. But I also believe that what contributes most to this country is good old- fashioned healthy competition, broad-based economic ownership. I know it is a timeworn and, some consider, old-fashioned Jeffersonian notion of democracy that broad-based economic ownership is what eventually guarantees economic freedom and what eventually underscores and guarantees political freedom as well. That is something that is very important to this country's future. We do not advance in that direction by passing legislation that will further concentrate and further provide inducements for more mergers and bigger, more concentration and bigger companies. That will not advance this country's interests. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will not explain this in great detail, except to say, as I described in my earlier remarks, my intention is to say it is inconsistent with the obligations and our expectations of institutions whose deposits are insured by depository insurance and, in fact, guaranteed by the American taxpayer for them to be trading in derivatives on their own proprietary accounts. I understand banks being a conduit for the trading of derivatives for customers, but for banks in their own proprietary accounts to be taking the kinds of risks that exist in derivatives I think exposes all taxpayers in this country who are the guarantors of that deposit insurance to those kinds of risks. They may just as well put some kind of a slot machine in the lobby of a bank if they are going to trade in derivatives on their own account. I say to the people who own the capital in these banks, if you want to gamble, go to Las Vegas. If you want to trade in derivatives, God bless you. Do it with your own money. Do not do it through the deposits that are guaranteed by the American people and by deposit insurance. My amendment prohibits the trading of derivatives on their proprietary account. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send a second amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.