Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today, I rise to introduce legislation that will strike the consumptive demand clause from Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307). Section 307 prohibits the importation of any product or good produced with forced or indentured labor including forced or indentured child labor. The consumptive demand clause creates an exception to this prohibition. Under the exception, if a product is not made in the United States, and there is a demand for it, then a product made with forced or indentured child labor may be imported into this country. Let us be clear: forced or indentured labor means work which is extracted from any person under the menace of penalty for nonperformance and for which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily. Let us be really clear: this means slave labor. In the case of children, it means child slavery. Some examples of goods that are made with child slave labor include cocoa beans, hand-knotted carpets, beedis, which are small Indian cigarettes, and cotton. Throughout my Senate career, I have worked to reduce the use of forced child labor worldwide. It was in 1992 that I first introduced a bill to ban all products made by abusive and exploitative child labor from entering the United States. Over the years we have been making some progress. I was heartened last year when the International Labor Organization's (ILO) global report, The End of Child Labor Within Reach, detailed the progress being made on reducing the worst forms of child labor. The ILO projects that if the current pace of decline in child labor were to be maintained, child labor could be eliminated, in most of its worst forms, in 10 years--by 2016. Although there has been a tremendous amount of progress in ending child labor, there are still some obstacles to ending these abusive practices. One of those impediments is the consumptive demand clause. Today, hundreds of millions of children are still forced to work illegally for little or no pay, making goods that enter our country everyday. For this reason, the consumptive demand clause is outdated. Since this exception was enacted in the 1930s, the U.S. has taken numerous steps to stop the scourge of child slave labor. Most notably, the United States has ratified International Labor Organization's Convention 182 to Prohibit the Worst Forms of Child Labor. Currently, 162 other countries have also ratified this ILO Convention. Additionally, in 2003, my staff was invited by Customs to meet with field agents on Section 307 to discuss what appropriations were needed to enforce the statute. At the meeting, the field agents reported that the consumptive demand clause was an obstacle to their ability to enforce the law that is supposed to prevent goods made with slave labor from being imported into the United States. Yet there has been no action from the Bush Administration to support efforts to remove the clause. Retaining the consumptive demand clause contradicts our moral beliefs and our international commitments to eliminate abusive child labor. Maintaining the consumptive demand clause says to the world that the United States justifies the use of slave labor, if U.S. consumers need an item not produced in this country. Last year, Harvard University conducted a pilot study on the effects on sales of labeling towels, candles, and dolls as made under ``fair labor conditions.'' The study found that labeling the products and raising their prices slightly to cover the costs of ensuring fair labor conditions resulted in an increased demand for these products among certain consumers in New York City. There should be no exception to a fundamental stand against the use of slave labor. I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today, I rise to introduce legislation that will strike the consumptive demand clause from Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307). Section 307 prohibits the importation of any product or good produced with forced or indentured labor including forced or indentured child labor. The consumptive demand clause creates an exception to this prohibition. Under the exception, if a product is not made in the United States, and there is a demand for it, then a product made with forced or indentured child labor may be imported into this country. Let us be clear: forced or indentured labor means work which is extracted from any person under the menace of penalty for nonperformance and for which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily. Let us be really clear: this means slave labor. In the case of children, it means child slavery. Some examples of goods that are made with child slave labor include cocoa beans, hand-knotted carpets, beedis, which are small Indian cigarettes, and cotton. Throughout my Senate career, I have worked to reduce the use of forced child labor worldwide. It was in 1992 that I first introduced a bill to ban all products made by abusive and exploitative child labor from entering the United States. Over the years we have been making some progress. I was heartened last year when the International Labor Organization's (ILO) global report, The End of Child Labor Within Reach, detailed the progress being made on reducing the worst forms of child labor. The ILO projects that if the current pace of decline in child labor were to be maintained, child labor could be eliminated, in most of its worst forms, in 10 years--by 2016. Although there has been a tremendous amount of progress in ending child labor, there are still some obstacles to ending these abusive practices. One of those impediments is the consumptive demand clause. Today, hundreds of millions of children are still forced to work illegally for little or no pay, making goods that enter our country everyday. For this reason, the consumptive demand clause is outdated. Since this exception was enacted in the 1930s, the U.S. has taken numerous steps to stop the scourge of child slave labor. Most notably, the United States has ratified International Labor Organization's Convention 182 to Prohibit the Worst Forms of Child Labor. Currently, 162 other countries have also ratified this ILO Convention. Additionally, in 2003, my staff was invited by Customs to meet with field agents on Section 307 to discuss what appropriations were needed to enforce the statute. At the meeting, the field agents reported that the consumptive demand clause was an obstacle to their ability to enforce the law that is supposed to prevent goods made with slave labor from being imported into the United States. Yet there has been no action from the Bush Administration to support efforts to remove the clause. Retaining the consumptive demand clause contradicts our moral beliefs and our international commitments to eliminate abusive child labor. Maintaining the consumptive demand clause says to the world that the United States justifies the use of slave labor, if U.S. consumers need an item not produced in this country. Last year, Harvard University conducted a pilot study on the effects on sales of labeling towels, candles, and dolls as made under ``fair labor conditions.'' The study found that labeling the products and raising their prices slightly to cover the costs of ensuring fair labor conditions resulted in an increased demand for these products among certain consumers in New York City. There should be no exception to a fundamental stand against the use of slave labor. I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, on April 21, some 360 young Iowa inventors will gather at Hilton Coliseum on the campus of Iowa State University for the Invent Iowa 2007 State Invention Convention. This gathering will mark the 20th year for Invent Iowa. Over the last two decades, thousands of Iowa students have participated in this important statewide event. The annual Invention Convention has showcased the skill, imagination and creativity of some of our best and brightest--and most creative--youngsters. From the Motorized Guinea Pig Walker invented by Nicholas Schrunk of Spirit Lake to the Oops! Proof No-spill Feeding Bowl invented by Alexis Abernathy of Cedar Rapids, students have created innovative solutions to everyday problems. In Nicholas' case, he needed to figure out a way for his guinea pig, Freckles, to get some exercise without running around the house and annoying his mother. Alexis got the idea for her invention by watching a 2-year-old child spill his cereal again and again. These two inventions were creative solutions that earned recognition for the young inventors. In the last 20 years, there have been thousands of other inventions. Each year, approximately 30,000 Iowa students begin the journey to the State Convention by participating in local and regional competitions. The staffs from Iowa's Area Education Agencies do a tremendous job working with educators on curriculum ideas and setting up the regional events. Since the inception of the program in 1987, more than half a million students have participated in Invent Iowa. The seed for Invent Iowa was planted at a statewide conference I sponsored in conjunction with Iowa State University in 1986 on the future of Iowa communities. In his keynote address, David Morris from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance focused on the need to rekindle the spirit of innovation in the United States, and he also spoke of his experience as a judge for the Minnesota Metropolitan Young Inventor's Fair. Following that event, my office, led by Dianne Liepa, began working with Carol McDanolds Bradley at the Iowa Department of Education, statewide education groups, nonprofit organizations and businesses to form a steering committee to establish a statewide invention program for students. Invent Iowa was born. In 1989, the Invent Iowa Board of Directors contracted with the Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development at the University of Iowa to serve as the home for the organization's State coordinator. Eleven years later, Invent Iowa would become a program under the full direction of Belin-Blank. Under the leadership of the dedicated staff at Belin-Blank, Invent Iowa has grown and flourished. In particular, I would like to salute the excellent work of Dr. Nicholas Colangelo, director of the Belin-Blank Center, and Dr. Clar Baldus, who serves a dual role as administrator of Rural Schools Programs and Inventiveness Programs at Belin-Blank as well as State coordinator for Invent Iowa. They have been tireless advocates for the program and are dedicated to its success far into the future. Invent Iowa is a great program, and I am very proud to recognize all of the people and organizations that continue to carry on Iowa's tradition for innovation and invention. Congratulations on reaching this important milestone to the advisory board for Invent Iowa and to the sponsors including the Belin-Blank Center, Iowa Area Education Agencies, Iowa Intellectual Property Law Association, Rockwell Collins Corporation, McKee, Voorhees and Sease patent attorneys Larry Engman and David Belin, Dean P. Barry Butler and the College of Engineering at the University of Iowa, and Dean Mark J. Kushner and the College of Engineering at Iowa State University. The most important partners in the success of Invent Iowa have been classroom teachers across Iowa. They help guide students through all phases of the invention process from the documentation of need, to the inception of the idea, creation of the prototype, research to ensure the innovativeness of the invention, and the final presentation to a panel of evaluators. Without these dedicated teachers working with the young inventors, there would be no Invent Iowa. On the 20th anniversary, I congratulate all the Iowans who have worked so hard to make Invent Iowa such a success. I wish them even greater success in their next 20 years. Also, good luck to the students who will be participating in the 2007 Invention Convention this weekend.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces be authorized to meet in open and closed session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 3 p.m. to receive testimony on Ballistic Missile Defense Programs in review of the defense authorization request for fiscal year 2008 and the future years defense program.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on The Constitution be authorized to meet on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 3:00 p.m. to conduct a hearing on ``Responding to The Inspector General's Findings of Improper Use of National Security Letters by the FBI'' in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Witness List: The Honorable Bob Barr, Former Member of Congress, Chairman, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances Atlanta, GA; George Christian, Executive Director, Library Connection, Inc., Windsor, CT; Suzanne E. Spaulding, Principal, Bingham Consulting Group of Counsel, Bingham McCutchen LLP, Washington, DC; and Peter Swire, C. William O'Neil, Professor of Law at the Ohio State University, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Washington, DC.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on ``Judicial Nominations'' on Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 10 a.m., in Dirksen Senate Office Building room 226. Witness List Panel I: The Honorable Richard Lugar, United States Senator, R-IN. Panel II: Debra Ann Livingston to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit; Roslynn Renee Mauskopf to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of New York; Richard Joseph Sullivan to be U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York; Joseph S. Van Bokkelen to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Indiana.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 10 a.m., to conduct an oversight meeting on the Smithsonian Institution. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. committee on veterans' affairs

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007, to hold a hearing on the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007. The hearing will take place in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building beginning at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the Session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 10 a.m., in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building, to hear testimony on ``An Examination of the Medicare Advantage Program.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities be authorized to meet in open session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 9:30 a.m., to receive testimony on nuclear nonproliferation programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and the Proliferation Security Initiative at the Department of Defense in review of the defense authorization request for fiscal year 2008 and the future years defense program.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 11, 2007, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on ``An Examination of the Availability and Affordability of Property and Casualty Insurance in Gulf Coast and Other Coastal Regions.''

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Transportation be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 10 a.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The purpose of this hearing is to examine the property and casualty insurance industry.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The purpose of this hearing is to examine efforts to improve airline passenger service.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 9:30 a.m. to hold a hearing on genocide in Sudan.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 103, S. Res. 76.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. HARKIN. I thought I had 12 minutes left, until 5:15. Well, anyway, in closing, first let me thank my colleagues, Senator Isakson, Senator Coleman, Senator Brownback, and others who have participated in this debate. It has been a very informed and a very good debate over the last 2 days. I thank my colleague, Senator Isakson, for his many courtesies. There were a lot of things we agree on and obviously there are things we disagree on, but that is the march of legislation in the Senate. I wish to thank Senator Isakson and others for their speeches and for their insight into this very important issue. I particularly wish to thank Senator Hatch and Senator Smith for their great leadership on this and so many other health issues in the Senate and for their very poignant, very powerful statements they made on the Senate floor. I started this whole debate yesterday morning by talking about hope, hope for cures for Parkinson's, to repair spinal cord injuries, to end the scourge of juvenile diabetes, to lift the death sentence of those afflicted with Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS, hope for families with someone lost to Alzheimer's disease. S. 5, the bill before us that will be our first vote, is a bill that provides this hope, not a hope based on dreams or fiction but based on solid scientific foundation. It is why 525 disease-related groups and research institutions and universities all support S. 5, because it has solid scientific foundation. It is why the Director of NIH, Dr. Zerhouni, recently said more embryonic stem cell lines needed to be investigated: It is clear today that American science would be better served and the Nation would be better served if we let our scientists have access to more cell lines. That is what S. 5 does: provides more cell lines. It is why the former Director of NIH, Dr. Varmus, a Nobel laureate, supports S. 5, to take the handcuffs off our scientists. I wish to make it again abundantly clear, as there has been a lot of misinformation in the last couple of days on the floor, that S. 5 somehow contains money for the destruction of embryos. That is not true. I challenge anyone to show me in the bill anywhere where it contains any money for the destruction of embryos. It is simply not true. Anyone who says otherwise is simply not being accurate. There are those who say: Well, the Federal Government shouldn't get involved. We can leave it up to the States and private entities. Well, we can't do that. We need coherence. We need to have the crown jewel of the Federal Government, the National Institutes of Health, to oversee this so we have good, strong ethical guidelines, so we have compatibility, so we have the kind of interplay between scientists that is necessary to advance scientific research. To leave it up to the States means we will have a patchwork quilt of laws all over this country when it should be a national effort--a national effort. Then we will have States bidding against one another for scientists to come to their States to do this research. We don't want that to happen. Lastly, we cannot afford to lose our global leadership in biomedical research. We, the United States of America, have always been the world's leader in biomedical research. All the great scientific discoveries, whether it is the polio vaccine, smallpox, all these things that have made our lives better; all the new drugs we have for fighting AIDS around the world came from the United States. All the cancer interventions, the reason cancer is now on the decline is because of biomedical research in this country. We can't afford to lose that to other countries. We need to keep it in America. So what it comes down to in the final analysis is simply this: If you want to promote good science, vote for S. 5. If you want strong ethical standards, S. 5 has the strongest ethical guidelines, stronger than what the Bush administration has right now and stronger than any other bill that has come before the floor of the Senate. If you want to move ahead with more cell lines, as Dr. Zerhouni wants, S. 5 is the bill that will provide those cell lines. If you want to put embryonic stem cell research into overdrive, to make it a national priority to do this research, S. 5 will put it into overdrive. If you want to say to Karli Borcherding right here, age 12, using 120 needles a month to give herself insulin shots because she has juvenile diabetes; if you want to say to Karli Borcherding and all the other kids with juvenile diabetes, if you want to say to them that we are going to give you hope, we are going to give you hope that your diabetes will be cured, hope that you can live a full and normal life; if you want to say to those families who have a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's, we are going to give you hope; if you want to say to those who have a family member suffering from Parkinson's disease or under the death sentence of ALS, we are going to give you hope--hope not based upon fiction, not based upon some will-of-the-wisp thoughts that somebody might have but hope based on solid science that scientists know we can use. We have already taken embryonic stem cells and made nerve cells, motor neurons, bone cells, heart muscle cells. We know that it can be done. Yet our scientists are handcuffed today because of the policy laid down by President Bush on August 9 of 2001. It is time to lift those restrictions. Some say the President will veto this bill. We can't decide what we do around here because a President--any President--threatens to veto something. We have to do what is right. We have to do what the people of America want us to do. We have to do what is in the best interests of this country as we see our duty to do it. I hope the President will sign this bill. I hope he will see we have made our compromises, that we have strong ethical guidelines, that this is the way to give hope to Karli Borcherding. So I hope we don't fall prey to: Well, we can't pass this because the President will veto it. We have to do what we think is right. The right thing to do is to support S. 5. As Senator Hatch so eloquently said, let those thousands of embryos that are being discarded every year in in vitro fertilization clinics, let them be used to provide life to other people, hope to Karli Borcherding, hope for people suffering from multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries. To me, that is the true ethical course to take. That is the guideline I think we must follow. Let those embryos be used to provide hope to these people. Mr. President, I see my colleague and a cosponsor of our bill who has been a leader on this issue for so many years, and I yield the remainder of our time to Senator Specter of Pennsylvania.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we are getting close to the end of the debate, we have some floor time in the next hour or so to go back and forth. I thought I might take a few moments now to talk about why it is so necessary to have NIH do this kind of research, to oversee this research. The Senator from Oklahoma said that a lot of research is going on now on embryonic stem cells. To be sure, it is. It is going on in different States, in private institutions, in England and Australia and France and Japan and Singapore and a few other countries. Why do we want to get the Federal Government involved? First, there is no other area of medical research in which we say the Federal Government should step aside and let the States do it. I know of no other area of medical research. I always look at the human genome project. What if we had said to the States: We are not going to do it. You do it. They might have sequenced one gene or another or let the private sector do it. They would have been getting patents on it or everything like. Now we have the mapping and sequencing of the entire human gene, and you can go online and get it, free to everybody. Any researcher anywhere can get it. Now they may take that and develop it into drugs and therapies. That is fine. That is that sort of symbiotic relationship we have developed very well between the private pharmaceutical industry and the basic research industry, which is NIH. Again, our National Institutes of Health should be involved in overseeing this, because if we don't have a coherent Federal policy on stem cells, each State writes its own rules. That means that different States may have different ethical guidelines. One State would be different from another. You would wind up with a patchwork quilt of laws. Then you would wind up with States competing against each other. So California gets to doing stem cell research, and what it does is, it hires researchers away from Missouri. Then Missouri is hiring people away from Iowa and then Ohio. Then New York is trying to bid people away from Ohio. You get this terrible State-versus-State kind of competition in stem cell research. We don't want that. We ought to be doing it on a national basis, a national effort, and we should not lose the international leadership we have always had in biomedical research. Should we give it up to Singapore or to Korea or England? No. We have always been the leader in the world in biomedical research, and we should continue. Secondly, the issue of why we have to expand our stem cell policy. Again, I repeat, for the sake of emphasis, of those 78 cell lines that were supposedly available on August 9, 2001, only 21 have been available. A lot of them are sick. They are not propagating properly. They are unhealthy. Right now NIH is only using between four and six of these lines and even they, I have been told, are not very healthy. So the restrictions we have had by the Bush administration, since August 9, 2001, have resulted in a situation where fewer and fewer viable good stem cell lines are available for NIH researchers. However, during that same period of time in other sectors, we have derived over 400 different cell lines. Yet no one who gets NIH funding is able to do any research on these healthy embryonic stem cell lines. That is why we need to develop these. We need to expand it. That is what S. 5 does. S. 5 takes off the handcuffs. It lets us use, under strict ethical guidelines, those embryos that are slated to be discarded at IVF clinics. With all due respect to my friend from Georgia, S. 30 does not do that. S. 5, if passed, will do everything that S. 30 wants to do. If S. 5 passes, what they want to do in S. 30 can be done by NIH. The problem with S. 30 is, if S. 30 passes and S. 5 doesn't, then S. 30 is very limited. It says you can only use these few embryos that are naturally dead which, by the way, I don't think there is such a scientific term, but it has been bandied about here and it is in the bill. There is no such scientific delineation of what is naturally dead. So that is the situation we are in. S. 5 will do both. It will open new stem cell lines with ethical guidelines. It will allow them to extract stem cells from these nonviable embryos. S. 30 will not. S. 30 still will not permit us to get the healthy stem cell lines our researchers need. That is why we need to pass S. 5. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland for her very eloquent statement and for her strong support of hope and health and healing, as encompassed in S. 5. Mr. President, while I wait the arrival of our next speaker, I want to point out that time and time again I hear those who are opposed to S. 5 use the phrase that they are opposed to funds being used for the destruction of embryos. Earlier today I had corrected one Senator who said that. I said: Show me in the bill where it is. Well, then other Senators--the Senator from Kansas and others--have gotten up and talked about not using money for the destruction of embryos. I challenge anyone, any Senator to come and take S. 5 and show me anywhere in there where there is one dime used for the destruction of embryos. It is not there. I get the feeling that a misrepresentation repeated and repeated somehow seems to take hold so that people say: Well, there must be money for the destruction of embryos in this bill. There is not. That is covered by the Dickey-Wicker amendment which pertains to appropriations bills, and I am an appropriator, and that is covered there. So none of this money is used for the destruction of an embryo. All it is used for is for the research on stem cells that have been derived, which is what is being done today, by the way--which are derived. Now, those derivations can come from private entities or State sponsored or wherever, maybe some international, maybe foreign countries--wherever. But none of the money here in our bill, S. 5, can be used for the destruction of an embryo, period. If anyone says so, please come and show us where it is in the bill that says that. Mr. President, I see the distinguished Senator from Missouri is here. I yield 15 minutes to the Senator from Missouri.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining?

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Missouri for a very eloquent and poignant statement. I know the Senator mentioned that recently she came off a campaign in Missouri. I know that, in listening to her statement, she is reflecting the wishes and hopes of so many people in her own State who want to make sure we move ahead and find cures and treatments. I thank her for her eloquence and for her forthright statement on behalf of embryonic stem cell research. Mr. President, I now yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Colorado.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Stevens be added as a cosponsor of S. 5.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now stand in recess until the hour of 2:15 p.m.