Lindsey Graham

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. I rise today to commend an initiative recently launched by the National Association of Broadcasters and its local radio and television station members. With more than 140,000 military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world, the resources needed to take care of our troops and their families are strained. As an Air Force reservist, I have seen firsthand the financial and emotional difficulties that many families face when a family member is on an extended deployment. Of course, the military takes care of its own. But, as the war on terror continues and needs escalate, the military cannot do it alone. To respond to this growing need, the four military aid societies have joined together to create a single umbrella organization: the Armed Forces Relief Trust. In support of this new relief organization, local commercial radio and television stations are airing radio and television public service announcements, asking viewers and listeners to contribute to the Trust. The over-the-air broadcast medium continues to be the most effective way to rapidly disseminate information to the public. Last year, the four military emergency assistance programs disbursed more than $109 million in interest-free loans and grants to more than 145,000 individuals and families in need. With the help of America's local radio and television stations, I am convinced that the Trust will be able to assist even more military families. I applaud the efforts of local broadcasters to support the families of those who defend us every day.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. If I may raise one more issue, I am concerned that United States Agency for International Development, USAID, has at times not followed report recommendations made by the Senate and House Appropriations Committees. Is it the manager's intention that USAID follow the recommendation in the report?

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. I thank Senator McConnell for his support of Water Missions and its inclusion as an USAID project.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President I rise to ask the bill's manager, Senator McConnell, about a provision in the Fiscal Year 2004 foreign operations bill of particular importance to me. This appropriations bill provides $100 million for water conservation, $1.5 million of which the committee report sets aside for Water Missions International for its safe water supply and wastewater treatment projects for several regional hospitals in Honduras. Water Missions is a faith-based South Carolina organization that delivers potable water engineering systems to towns and villages in developing countries around the world. I ask Senator McConnell if he is familiar with Water Missions International and this important demonstration project.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize this month as ``National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.'' This special month is meant to bring awareness to the continued prevalence of breast cancer and the importance of using early detection techniques to help reduce the number of women and men who lose their battle against breast cancer each year. This year it is estimated that more than 200,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed. Through the use of early detection, many of these cases will be successfully diagnosed and treated before the cancer spreads. However, breast cancer will also claim close to 40,000 victims in this year alone. To promote early detection of breast cancer, National Mammography Day is celebrated each October as a part of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This year, on October 17, many radiologists provided free or discounted mammograms in an effort to encourage more women to take part in this important screening. Mammography is an important tool to help detect breast cancer while it is still highly treatable. Unfortunately, not all women have easy access to mammograms either because they are uninsured or their health insurance does not cover this service. Further aggravating this issue is the low reimbursement of mammograms by Medicare, and the fact that not enough assistance is available to train and recruit more radiologists to perform this vital screening. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Assure Access to Mammography Act of 2003. This legislation increases the Medicare reimbursement for mammograms and helps in the recruitment of radiologists to perform mammograms. I am hopeful that it will be enacted soon. Hardly a family or group of friends has not been affected by breast cancer in some way. Events such as the annual ``Race for the Cure'' in support of breast cancer prove that there is widespread support for finding further treatment options and cures for this disease. I encourage those who are interested to visit the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month website to learn more at www.nbcam.org.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Yes.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I am more informed than when I began this debate. That is good for me and good for the public. I did not know that. It makes a lot of sense. I find it a little odd that people would be opposed to the level that was being portrayed. The idea that we should not do this in Federal court, I think we can accommodate it. I am all for having more Federal judges, and we will talk about that in just a moment, but the bottom line, and the reason I am voting for this particular legislation is I think it corrects an abuse. It gets us back to the constitutional model that everyone envisioned where if you have a diversity--and this is what class action is all about, bringing a lot of people together from disparate places and groups to try it at one time, in a place that is convenient to everybody and in a logical way, that one would want a fair forum. I think Senator Feinstein's amendment was perfect. If there are two- thirds of the plaintiffs in any one State, it stays in State court. If there are half the people in one State, the judge can decide whether to remove it. If less than a third are in a particular State, then it goes to Federal court. To me, that is a perfect compromise. It makes a lot of sense. I have no problem voting for this because we are correcting abuses. This is one way to reform our State legal system. Let me give a quick statement about home cooking. I am sure, as the Presiding Officer said, in Tennessee people will treat you fairly. I am sure that is true in Alabama, and in South Carolina I am sure that is true. But there are places that one does need to know who they are up in front of. I can remember very well one of the first cases I had as a young lawyer getting out of law school. It involved a speeding ticket of a friend of mine. We were going to go to magistrate's court. I was going to be Perry Mason, and we were going to make this great injustice right. The highway patrolman was getting ready to testify and he said: Hello. And then he said: How are you doing, uncle? So the judge was the uncle of the police officer. That struck me as not being quite right, and I said: Your Honor, nothing personal, but do you mind if we have a jury trial? He said: Well, Lord, no. He called his wife out, the aunt of the police officer, and she called up some of the cousins and we had a jury trial. The point is, that was not a good experience. Part of it is true and part of it is embellished, but I do not want anybody to go into a situation, businesspeople or otherwise, where they believe they are being dragged to a place that is unfair, and that is what is going on. There is a group of plaintiffs attorneys out there and they have a right to use the law to their benefit, and they are using it very cleverly to their benefit but in a way that is unfair and is hurting our economy. I am glad and proud to support this reform measure because I believe it does more good than harm, and that is what we in the Senate are all up here to do. I ask unanimous consent to go into morning business or speak as if I was in morning business.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I am liking these rules. Nomination of William Pryor When we are speaking about judges and whether or not we need judges, we really do. There is a backlog in this country in certain courts, and one of the people being nominated by President Bush is William Pryor from Alabama. He has been nominated to a seat that has been declared a judicial emergency by the Judicial Conference of the United States. All I can say about this case is that my friend from Alabama should be very proud of the nominee who has been put forward by President Bush. Bill Pryor is the attorney general of Alabama. That is a political job, and ofttimes the hardest thing for lawyers to do is to be a good lawyer when politics are involved because the thing I love most about the law is that it is a place to go to where polling does not matter and where the popular cause does not always win out. Sometimes the unpopular cause has its day and would win in a forum it could never win otherwise. Our Founding Fathers were brilliant in creating a system where popularity meant a lot in the area that we live, but a courtroom is a place where it should be quiet, and there are good men and women who are listening to the facts of one's case and no matter whether someone is rich, poor, regardless of their background, it is a place they can go to be listened to, where maybe the crowd would not listen to them. That is what I love so much about the law. It is a place where people who could not get a fair shake in the popularity world of politics could get a fair shake where people would actually listen to their individual claim, where the unpopular may have its day. When one is attorney general, they get elected by their people, but they are also required to enforce the law, and the concept of the law is to give people who are not popular their day in court. What I am looking for in a judicial nominee is someone who can be very passionate about life's issues and questions but can also be very fair. President Bush has done us a great favor to send Bill Pryor forward. I have met him. I have talked to him. He is the kind of young man I think most of us would want our child to grow up to be, the son we would love to have. He is academically qualified, rated by the American Bar Association as extremely qualified. People from all walks of life who know him like him. If my colleagues met him, they would find he is a charming young man. He seems to be somebody who is sure of who he is and what he believes. A lot of this filibustering that is going on now has behind it the issue of abortion. Special interest politics is very strong in America, and it has its place. Groups need to ban together and speak out about things they have in common. I think our job as Senators, when it comes time to look at judges, is not to judge somebody on whether they are just pro-choice or pro-life. I am a pro-life person, and I agree with Bill Pryor. He is a very passionate man. He is a very honest man about his pro-life beliefs. There will come a day when there will be a Democratic President and maybe I will be in the Senate and that Democratic President may send up a pro-choice person. I think my job is to see whether or not they can take their beliefs on that issue and put them aside when it comes time to be a judge. All I can say about Bill Pryor is that when he was attorney general he had the obligation to review a statute that the State of Alabama passed--the Senator may correct me if I am wrong--about partial-birth abortion, something we just did today. This is an emotional area. People are very emotional about partial-birth abortion. We are evenly divided on early-stage abortions, abortions in the early stages of pregnancy. It is about 50/50. But when it gets to the seventh, eighth, and ninth month, about 75 to 80 percent of Americans say we should not be having abortions on unborn children at that stage in pregnancy unless the mother's life is at stake. We had about 60 Senators today vote for that. For 8 years now, we have been voting on that concept. So it is an extremely popular concept. A lot of people buy into it who are not strictly pro-life. There are some pro-choice people today who voted to ban partial-birth abortion. So that is an issue that has a lot of emotion and a lot of momentum behind it. He read the statute and he issued an opinion that had to make him the skunk of the garden party. He issued an opinion that said: I read the statute and I do not think it will meet constitutional muster. If anyone has talked to him at all, they know he is a very serious, pro-life person. So I argue to my colleagues, this is exactly the kind of young man or woman they would be looking for to promote, to be able to take the politically popular event, put a good legal analysis on the event, and make a decision that is not going to sell well. That is exactly what I am looking for in somebody to be a judge, and the Senators from Alabama should be very proud they have sent a very noble person forward. There are other examples of doing things that just are tough. My State of South Carolina had in our constitution for the longest time a ban on interracial marriage. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how that all came about. Those of us in the South who have grown up in the South have had tremendous struggles to be fair to African-American citizens. There is a legacy there that no one should be proud of, but things are getting better, thank God. When we look into the past--and it is in other parts of the country, but it is particularly true in the South--when that is put into a State constitution, one can only imagine the passion that went into placing something like that in the constitution. Well, now, later on in life, all of us realize that is unfair, that should never happen, but who wants to be the person to step forward and get that argument started all over again because it really was never used? Well, Bill Pryor, as attorney general, had the courage to tell everyone, whether they agreed with him or not, that there is no place in our constitution for this kind of prohibition, and he led a charge to get rid of it, something I think tells a lot about the young man. The bottom line is, we are going to have a lot of time to talk about Bill Pryor because there is a movement to keep him from being on the Federal bench, a movement that is driven by politics, a movement that, if it continues, will change over 200 years of how the Senate and the executive branch work. The worst thing we could do, in my opinion, is to take the political disagreements we have in the early part of the 21st century and change the constitutional process, probably forever, the consequence being that good young men and women such as Bill Pryor can't become judges because a few special interest groups don't like them. If Bill Pryor can't be a Federal judge, given his academic background, the way he has lived his life, and the qualifications he brings to the job, then America is hurting because we have let politics get into the judicial process in an unhealthy way. There will be many more days and many more hours to talk about this. I look forward to talking to anybody who will listen about why I believe so strongly that we should allow the nomination of this young man to be voted on on the Senate floor--he has come out of committee-- and why he would make a fine Federal judge. I, again, let the Senator from Alabama know I am sorry that he and his colleagues from Alabama have to go through this. I am sorry for Mr. Pryor's family, that they have to go through this. But there will be some fighting back going on. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if you continue to do this, inevitably here is what will happen. The next time there is a Democratic President there will be special interest pressure placed on our party over here on the Republican side to do exactly the same thing to some other nominee who may be equally qualified. The next thing you know, we are going to have a situation where good men and women will not put themselves through this. They are going to say it is not worth it. One of the things that came up in the hearing about Bill Pryor was that he and his wife were going to take their daughters, I believe, to Disney World. Disney World had Gay Pride Day that day, and they made a decision not to go on that particular day. It is uncomfortable for me to talk about that. I imagine it is very uncomfortable for Bill Pryor to have to talk about things like that. That has no place in the evaluation process, because what is the purpose of that? ``Yes, we got you now. You must hate gay people because you and your wife decided not to go to Disney World on a particular day.'' His answer was: It was a family decision that my wife and myself made. But I promise you that if anybody comes before me as a judge, that I will honestly and fairly deal with him. We are getting into areas of people's personal beliefs and family decisions that are unhealthy, that will drive good men and women away if that is what you are going to have to put up with to try to serve your country. The bottom line is, we are going to have some fussing and fighting about what is right for Bill Pryor and others, but if we don't wake up we are going to ruin 200 years of history that has worked and we are going to drive good men and women away from wanting to serve their country as a judge and all of us lose then. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. I am trying to change subjects. May I make an inquiry to the Presiding Officer? Can I speak about Mr. Pryor's nomination as a judge now? Is that appropriate?

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I will be brief. I wish to speak about class actions and echo what my friend from Alabama said. I have tried very hard during my time being a legislator at the State and Federal level to make sure when legal reform is accomplished it is done so in a balanced way. I am not a big fan--I think many of my colleagues know this--of the Federal Government taking over State legal systems. If you can do it at home, it is better to do it at home. I am not a big fan of deciding what is fair before the jury meets. We have honest differences on some of those issues. Having said all that, there is a huge need for legal reform. I cannot tell you one system in America that really doesn't need to be reformed, the legal system included. My friend from Alabama is absolutely right. What we are trying to do today is correct an abuse. The Constitution, as he read to us, envisioned a dynamic where we would have two people from different States and we would not want to put one person in the other person's backyard. The Constitution has survived so long and so well, and it spoke to that and said: Let's take that into Federal court, a neutral side. As the diversity clause of the Constitution has been interpreted, it requires complete diversity of all plaintiffs and all defendants. About 100 years later, maybe 200 years later--I don't know when class action lawsuits came into being--there is another way of suing people. It has its place in our society to bring a bunch of people affected by a similar event in different places to try as a unit rather than doing hundreds or thousands of individual cases. But this class action concept flies in the face of why the Constitution speaks about diversity. My friend from Alabama is exactly right. It is being abused. We have a situation where you may have many plaintiffs throughout the country with a single defendant, and it allows people to go into an area that is equivalent to home cooking. It really destroys the purpose of the diversity provisions in the Constitution. What we are trying to do is correct that. There are no damage limitations. There are no limitations on anybody making a claim at all. If you buy the idea this is unfair, then you buy the idea that the Federal court is unfair; that you can't get a good hearing by a Federal judge. I think that is absolutely wrong. Justice Rehnquist has a problem on his hands. He has a lot of cases. He has a lot of overworked judges, and I am going to get to that in a minute. I have a way to help Justice Rehnquist. There are a bunch of people who need to help him, and I will talk about that in a moment.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the call of the quorum be rescinded.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I am new to the Senate. This has been a terrific debate in the best traditions of the Senate. I come to this conclusion after having listened to people I admire and respect, such as our leader, the President, the Vice President, and Secretary Powell. I asked myself: Who are you to disagree? I thought about it, and I came to this conclusion. I do disagree. I know they are genuine in their beliefs, but I just do not believe we are being unfair to the people of Iraq. We have lost 332 lives liberating Iraq. We are spending $1 billion a week, and all we are asking for is once the country gets something going--we are going to build schools and hospitals, we are going to do great things for the Iraqi people--but once the oil refineries are fixed, because that is what makes the money, and once we do other things to get you back in business, consider helping us because we are deep in debt. We borrowed every penny of this $87 billion. And I would vote tomorrow to borrow more money to make our country safe. We have one of the highest deficits in our Nation's history because our economy has turned down. But we have to win this war. The only way we will lose this war--here is where I am tonight--is if the American people leave. It is very hard for me to go home and explain how you have to give $20 billion to a country that is sitting on $1 trillion worth of oil and the net result of this policy we are pursuing is the people who died to liberate Iraq are going to be left holding the bag, and the only people who will get paid back are the people who lent money to Saddam Hussein. If we follow that policy, people will leave us because it is not fair to the taxpayer. We need to make sure we don't divide ourselves here at home. This is very important, not just for international politics but for domestic politics. The French and the Germans voted today for a resolution, but in the same breath they said they would send no troops and no money. We are pretty much alone for a while. Let us stay together and not ask more of the American people. It would be unfair to ask. I really do love my country. We give $15 billion in aid to Africa and we don't want a penny back. We are giving $10 billion in grants, and we don't want a penny back. But if we are going to build your infrastructure to make you prosperous, help us because we are in debt. And if other countries will do the right thing, we will even forgive that. The biggest thing we have done for Iraq is give our young men and women, and more are going to die. That is a fact. Tonight is important. We need to stay together and look at the American taxpayer, and say, Yes, you can be helped too. Don't feel guilty to ask for some of your money back, because you have given and you have given, and there is more to give. Please vote for this amendment for the sake of the American people.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, probably by the end of the week, if things stay the way they have been, unfortunately we will have some injured troops and maybe some will lose their lives. There is a resolve by the American people and this body to stay the course. If anybody has looked at what we have done in a reasonable, rational manner--and that is all I ask the world to do--they will see great resolve on our part. The biggest contribution we have made to the Iraqi people has nothing to do with money. It is the 350, somewhere in that number, growing by the day, young men and women. That is our biggest contribution. We have spent a lot of money, a billion dollars a week, to try to transform a country from tyranny to civility, and the middle is chaos. We are making great improvements. That is an honest statement. Having been to Iraq, one can see the resolve in the soldiers' eyes. I dare say there may be some men and women in the Armed Forces who are so decent that they would say: Give the Iraqi people money, we do not want to be paid back. That is the strength of our country. We are in it for the long haul. There is more dying to come. There is more money to be spent. If we try to build up the infrastructure in the next months to come, chances are it will be attacked because we have not secured the country yet. To expect it to be secured in 6 months is impossible, because the Iraqi Army and all the bad people who are in it have gone into the civilian population. Senator McConnell is right; they are not just killing Americans. They are killing people who are trying to transform the country into democracy. People may say, oh, this loan proves they were over there for our oil. I cannot tell my colleagues how much it bothers me to hear that because my colleagues know it is not true and I know it is not true. Nobody in a rational thought process would send 350 people and climbing to their death, spend $70 billion and climbing, to make a $10 billion loan that may never be collected. So people can say what they want to say. If our country gives in to that way of thinking, and if we are swayed by people who hate us to begin with and we change our policy based on people who are never going to be with us, we will never get this right. My hope is that the Iraqi people who see our soldiers on the ground, see the schools being opened and built, and the hospitals being repaired would be the first to reject this kind of reasoning, because God knows we are not there to take anything they have. We are there to help them, but we are also there to help us. Why did we go to war? Why did we pick people from South Carolina, California, and all the places in between to go to a foreign land and risk their lives and have some die? To make sure that Saddam Hussein could do no more damage to the region or us than he has already done. President Bush has shown great leadership. He has said that the 21st century will not be ruled or dictated by terrorists, dictators, and murderers. He is absolutely right. God bless him for his resolve. This amendment puts $10 billion on the table, unencumbered, to spend however you would like. This chart shows from $95 billion to $153 billion of debt incurred to Saddam Hussein. The reason I am so passionate about this, I do not want to give in to a great lie. We cannot buy our way out of this problem. We cannot take $10 billion of taxpayer money and people are losing their jobs to buy our way out of a great lie. It would be terrible if the people of this country, who have sacrificed so much, wound up not getting a dime back for doing a good thing, and all they invested in Iraq to produce profit and money went to pay the people back who kept Saddam Hussein in power. That is unacceptable to me, and that is the scenario we are charting. Please do not do that. It would be bad for everyone. It would not make the world safer. How much time do I have remaining, Mr. President?

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, do I have 30 seconds? If you wonder what he did with the stock options, he assigned them all to charities. Look at the facts before you vote because the facts do not sustain these allegations. The allegations are off base. I promise you, I will send you a memo. Please look before you vote. I move to table.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, in 2 minutes it is hard to respond the way the Vice President deserves to be defended. I tell every Member this: I am preparing a memo on the statement on ``Meet the Press'' with the Vice President, his relationship with Halliburton, his financial disclosure form, what he did in 1998, what he did in 2000, and what he did in 2002. Vote however you like. I am going to join sides with most of my Democratic friends in a minute and oppose the Vice President and the President on something very important to them. This amendment is political slander. This amendment has as its basis untruth and is factually incorrect. In 1998, the Vice President chose a deferred compensation package that was irrevocable. He couldn't change his mind. He insured that package with a private insurance policy because the Office of Government Ethics told him that is what everybody does, and he was exempt from going to the Office of Government Ethics. I will ask unanimous consent to introduce the Vice President's financial disclosure form. He went above and beyond the call of duty. He has no financial interest in Halliburton. You are trying to accuse him of being a liar. Your facts are wrong. This is manipulation. This is politics at its worse. Please, look at what you are doing before you vote here. The Vice President doesn't deserve this, and I am going to send you a memo with what I believe to be the true facts, and we are going to get to the bottom of this.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Yes, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 3 minutes for the Senator from Kentucky so he may speak on this amendment.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 1905 be called.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Madam President, this is a sense-of- the-Senate amendment. I think it is very important, as we deal with the Iraqi situation, for us to address as many issues as we can about the nature of how this is going to unfold. The President has asked for $87 billion. I am glad to support the funding. Most of it, two-thirds of it, I guess, goes to the men and women in uniform to make sure they have the assets necessary to protect themselves and do their job. This resolution speaks to the idea of when the mission is complete, and this resolution addresses the French position. The French have proposed as recently as September 16 that within a month--a matter of 1 month and no later than 2--all authority be turned over to the Iraqi people and that the umbrella we have today cease to exist. Not only is this irresponsible but the Coalition Provisional Authority ruling the country is a necessary entity until we can get a constitution written, voted on, and a government elected. But if we did what the French are suggesting, we would take a country that has been brutalized and raped--literally and figuratively--with Saddam Hussein still on the loose, and basically say, Here. I think that would not only be a disservice to the Iraqi people but it would undermine the reason we went to war to begin with; that is, to take tyranny and turn it into stability. This sense-of-the-Senate resolution says in no uncertain terms that it would be irresponsible to follow the French proposition--to turn back over to the Iraqi people the country while it is still in transition. In going from tyranny to stability, there will be a certain amount of chaos. We are training the Iraqi police. We are training the army. They are having elections at the local level. There are a lot of good things going on. Schools are now open. Schools used to house weapons. Now they are housing kids. No young girl has to worry about being taken out of school and taken to one of Saddam's sons because she strikes his eye. Iraq is a better place. But the French position of just leaving and turning it over within 30 days would undo the recent accomplishments. It is irresponsible. I think it would be in order for the Senate to speak on this matter. The United Nations rejected an amendment that set a hard and fast deadline in terms of when control will be given to the Iraqi people. This makes good sense. Let us give them a chance to write a constitution, give them a chance to ratify a constitution, give them a chance to have a national election, get some infrastructure in place, and allow the rule of law to be in place. Then, at the appropriate time, we will be glad when it comes time to leave Iraq. Most Americans who have family members in the military can't wait for that day to come. We can't wait to be able to bring our troops back home. Having said that, most Americans understand that if you leave before the job is done, the problems will come back to haunt you. After September 11, the easy way out is no longer the right way--to shoot a missile or two and say, Boy, did we deal with that group which led to 9/11. There are people who are infiltrating Iraq who are trying to destabilize the efforts of the Iraqi people to become a free democracy. There are people in the region who hate the idea that Iraq may be a free country with a democratic system. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people and fight those forces, not only for the good of the Iraqi people but for our own security. This resolution I think is very appropriately timed. The United Nations has rejected the hard and fast deadline. This resolution basically says we are going to stay until the country is stable, we are going to stay until the job is done. Having said that--by making that statement--it means more Americans are going to die. The forces in Iraq are small in terms of the population as a whole, but they are committed to creating chaos. It breaks my heart--and every Member of this body and all Americans-- to have a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine lost in this conflict. But just as surely as I speak, losses will come and more money will be spent. The day has not yet arrived when we can, in good faith and good conscience, turn all matters over to the Iraqi people. They need help. They need money. They need assistance. They need our support. But we need to do it for ourselves. If we cut and run, and if we take the French position to get out of there before the infrastructure is in place, we will take one form of tyranny and replace it with another. It is an irresponsible position. I hope this body in a unanimous fashion will agree with the proposition that we should not leave Iraq until the job is done--until a constitution is written and ratified, until a government has been elected and the people have a chance to have a secure environment for their new nation that is emerging out of the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime. I ask my colleagues to support this resolution saying we will not leave until the job is done. Leaving in the next month is irresponsible. Reject the French position because the French position is irresponsible and undermines our national security.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I hope this sense-of- the-Senate resolution will pass unanimously. The purpose of this resolution is to try to put in perspective what has been achieved by Operation Iraqi Freedom. We have suffered greatly in this country. The Iraqi people have suffered. We have lost soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. We have spent a lot of money, but I argue that we are much more secure as a nation; that there is one less dictator in the world to help terrorists; and that dispensing with Saddam Hussein's regime has been of particular benefit to our Nation, the region, and the world. But there is one nation where this has made a dramatic difference. That is the State of Israel. This resolution says in very simple and strong terms that disposing of the Saddam Hussein government has made the State of Israel a more secure place. Why do we say that? During Saddam Hussein's period of ruling, he paid suicide bombers, homicide bombers, in Palestine money, and families of suicide and homicide bombers, to go in and kill innocent Israeli citizens. So when he left, there is one less person to fund people who are trying to destroy peace. Israel and the Palestinian people deserve to live side by side in peace with two independent states. Saddam Hussein was providing money to people, the Arab Liberation Front, whose goal was to put Israel in the sea. There is an element of people in that region who don't want to make peace with Israel. They want to destroy the State of Israel. Saddam Hussein made that possibility more likely by providing aid and comfort and money. So when we took Saddam Hussein out, we made Israel more secure. That is a good thing. I hope the Senate will join in unanimous support of that concept. The government under Saddam Hussein gave money to the master mind of the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. The government of Saddam Hussein launched 39 Scud missile attacks against the State of Israel. People debate, should we have done it? Was it worth it? I argue strongly that it was worth it, not only for us but for the State of Israel. The men and women who have died to replace Saddam Hussein have died to make the world more secure. It is heartbreaking to lose soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, but one of the reasons we have a military is to protect ourselves and our allies. Every now and then in history people such as Saddam Hussein crop up. If they are left alone, innocent people die unnecessarily. If they are left alone, the forces of evil become stronger. I admire our President who chose to stand up to Saddam Hussein. For over 12 years he has violated every effort to rein him in. Force was necessary. Force was costly. But the benefits of that force have made the region safer, made the Iraqi people free for the first time in decades, and made the State of Israel a more secure place to live. Israel has been a good ally. I would ask all of my colleagues, if at all possible, to legitimize Operation Iraqi Freedom in terms of making Israel more secure because to say otherwise would be an untruth. Let it be said that the men and women who sacrificed to make the Iraqi people free have sacrificed in a way to make people in Israel and our own country safer, more secure, and their hopes and dreams maybe will be realized. I ask for the yeas and nays. Senator McConnell would like to speak on the measure, and I ask unanimous consent to make him a cosponsor of the amendment.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. If I may, Senator McConnell would like to speak. He is here. You are right. I am sorry about the scheduling problem. I ask the body to let Senator McConnell speak for whatever time he needs on the amendment.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I thank the Chair. Madam President, it is a pleasure to return to this great institution at a time when we are debating a truly significant issue for the future of our Nation. The fundamental question to me is what should be our standard in resolving the myriad of questions which surround the President's request for $87 billion in occupation and reconstruction expense in Iraq. My answer to that question is that we should test each of these proposals against the standards of: Will this give us an honorable and an expeditious exit from Iraq? Will this contribute to our ability to leave Iraq, to take American troops out of the quagmire and the killing field which Iraq has become, but to do so with honor? We basically have two options that are presently available to us as to how to reach that objective. One is the go-it-alone approach; that we will conduct the occupation and the reconstruction essentially alone, without significant allies. Second is that we should internationalize the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. We should do this by increasing the control of Iraqis who have the confidence of their country men and women by involving other countries in the shared burden and responsibility of the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, and we should be sensitive to the international presence that we are setting by our action. Why do I believe providing these reconstruction dollars through a loan rather than through a direct grant would more likely achieve the goal of internationalization and, therefore, the goal of an honorable and expeditious exit from Iraq? First, it will maintain American domestic support, or at least it will serve as a brake on what I sense is the increasing loss of American domestic support for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. We all can read the polls and see what the American people feel about this $87 billion request. They dislike it in overwhelming numbers, but there is even more than what you can state statistically. There is what you can feel intuitively. I sense all across the country an increasing question of what are we doing in Iraq? Why are we in a situation where one American is killed and 10 Americans are maimed every day, where we are spending $1 billion every week? What is our exit strategy? I believe this approach of providing that at least a part of these expenditures will be repaid to the American taxpayers will help to build some foundation under what now appears to be a straight tunnel toward the loss of public support. Second, this would not further add to the national debt. We have basically three choices as to who is going to pay for this war. The first choice is our generation. We are in the war for what we consider to be important national security reasons. If that is the case, we ought to be prepared to pay for it, not ask future generations to pay for it. But last week the Senate rejected the Biden amendment which would have caused our generation to pay for our occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. So that is off the table. The second is, we are going to ask our grandchildren to pay for this occupation and reconstruction. If we do this, we are engaged in a sharp break with tradition and precedent. Let me just state these numbers. The Marshall plan started in 1948. The public debt of the U.S. Government in 1948 was $216 billion. Four years later, as the Marshall plan was coming to a close, but the United States was at war in Korea, in 1952, the public debt of the United States was $214 billion. So we actually reduced the public debt of the United States during the period of the Marshall plan and the early phases of the Korean war. We are not following that precedent today. We are saying we are going to put all of these additional expenses into the most enormous annual deficits the United States has ever seen. Finally, we should do this because it will require Iraqis pay for the reconstruction and have a substantial amount of control over the reconstruction. One of the characteristics that made the Marshall plan so successful was that while we provided funds--and incidentally, on a $1-to-$1 matching basis, not a 100-percent to 0-percent basis, as is being proposed here--we provided funds on that basis and then let the leadership of the individual countries, whether it was our allies, such as France, or enemies, such as Germany, make the judgments as to what they believed the priorities should be for the use of those funds. Here we are unilaterally deciding by action of our administration and our Congress what the priorities should be. Finally, in another domain, I think this sets a dangerous precedent for our relations with other countries. In this same legislation, we are providing a relatively small grant to Afghanistan, both for security and for reconstruction. I think that is defensible. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Afghanistan is a country which is key to a victory on terrorism. But now we apply exactly the same standards to the country which sits on the second largest oil reserve on this planet and a country which, in my judgment, was not a legitimate part of the war on terror until we made it a part of the war on terror by the war itself. We also have Mexico. In the 1990s, Mexico was in very difficult financial status. There were some who speculated it might even go into bankruptcy. We came to Mexico's financial support. How did we do it? We did it by collateralizing the future oil revenue of Mexico to pay what we had advanced to give them greater fiscal solidity during a time of great instability. How do we tell the Mexicans that when we were lending money to them, a country which in natural resources is considerably less endowed than Iraq, we are going to give it to Iraq as a straight grant but for Mexico it was a loan with their oil revenue as the collateral for repayment? The question that is asked all over this country is, Why can we rebuild the roads, the bridges, the schools, the electric grid of Iraq, but we cannot do it in the United States? Why can we do it as a grant to one of the richest countries in terms of petroleum in the world, which will never be repaid to help us rebuild our own bridges, roads, and schools? This represents a key turning point, in my judgment, for the beginning of the 21st century. Will Iraq be the Germany of the 1950s or will it be the Vietnam of the 1970s in terms of the United States? I believe voting for reasonable burden sharing between Iraq and the United States, and other proposals that will share the burden on a more international basis, will be a key to answering that question.

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina

Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. I want to add one thing. There was an article in USA Today yesterday: ``Army Reserve Fears Troop Exodus.'' The Army National Guard is 15,000 below its recruiting goal. ``Soldiers are `stressed' on yearlong deployments.'' I really honestly believe that this benefit made available will help retention and recruitment because the problems with these deployments are coming down the road. The further we can get ahead of this by beefing up the benefit package, the better America will be. I ask unanimous consent to print the article to which I referred in the Record.