Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I would like to ask a question of the Senator from California. I know she has to leave, so I will not take long. The Senator from California and the Senator from Iowa for the last few days have been using the figure 5,000 women a year who died from abortion prior to Roe v. Wade. I have before me, which I will enter into the Record, a chart titled ``Maternal Mortality, Vital Statistics of the United States, 1942 to 1974.'' This chart tracks the total maternal deaths in the country and total abortion deaths in the country. I ask unanimous consent that the chart be printed in the Record.

Mr. SANTORUM. In the year prior to Roe v. Wade, 1972, the total maternal deaths in the United States--total maternal deaths from all causes--was 612. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the total abortion-related deaths were 83. So I ask the Senator from California how they can continue to use the number 5,000, when the official statistics of the United States say the total number of maternal deaths in the country were 612, and those related to abortion were 83?

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. SANTORUM. I want to clarify and put a question to the Senator. Using my numbers--these are not my numbers; these are the numbers from Department of Health, Education and Welfare back in 1975. The Senator says people didn't want to report that. I want to clarify for the Record that these are figures derived from death certificates. My question is, Is the Senator suggesting that doctors lied on death certificates about the reason for the death? That is what the Senator is suggesting.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is not the number used. The Senator used the number of 1,000 deaths.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SANTORUM. In how many States in 1972 were abortions illegal?

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. I can't imagine that--first of all, this number was derived from death certificates. If a person is dead, they are not going to report an abortion. There is no concern about a woman reporting her own death because she fears being prosecuted. These numbers were derived from death certificates from hospitals and the cause of death of the women who died. It has nothing to do with self- reporting. They are dead. The idea that somehow these women aren't reporting because they are afraid of being prosecuted--with all due respect, they are dead.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Sure.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 1:40 the Senate resume consideration of the House message to accompany S. 3, the partial-birth abortion ban bill; provided further that time on the motion to disagree be limited to 1 hour equally divided in the usual form; further, that following the use or yielding back of the time the Senate proceed to a vote on the motion with all other provisions of the agreement remaining in effect. I further ask unanimous consent that following the vote, the Senate immediately proceed to executive session to consecutive votes on the following nominations on today's Executive Calendar: Calendar Nos. 352, 347, 348, 350, and 351. Further, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes equally divided between the two leaders or their respective designees prior to each vote; further, that following the votes the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then return to legislative session.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, this morning the Senate will resume consideration of the House message accompanying S. 3, the partial-birth abortion ban bill. The Senate will continue that debate until 10:30 this morning. At 10:30, the Senate will begin consideration of the Interior appropriations bill. Amendments are expected on that legislation. Therefore, rollcall votes will occur throughout the day. In addition, the Senate may consider judicial nominations that are on the Executive Calendar cleared for action. Therefore, if necessary, rollcall votes will be scheduled on those nominations throughout the day as well. I thank all Members for their attention.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I understand S. 1618 is at the desk and is due for a second reading.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I don't know. We will discuss it with the leader.

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I do not think the leader is prepared to say that yet.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be taken equally off both sides.

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

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask that the Chair lay before the House the message from the House accompanying S. 3, as under the previous agreement.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, we have before the Senate right now what is usually a procedural motion. When the House passes a bill and the Senate passes a bill and they are different, we procedurally just move to disagree with the House and their provision and go to conference, just as we did prior to the calling up of this bill, S. 3. The Presiding Officer, who is sitting here for the Vice President, said we were appointing conferees. The Senator from California has sought to have a debate about whether we are going to disagree with the House and therefore go to conference. I don't understand quite why this is necessary since it is purely a procedural motion. I have been in the Senate not that many years. I have been here about 9 years and have never had a debate on a motion to disagree with the House and to have this kind of time spent when everybody agrees that is what we need to do. I will support the motion to disagree with the House so we can go to conference and come up with a bill on partial-birth abortion that will be in a conference report that will then come to the Senate that will not be amendable. If we did not disagree with the House, and the bill came here to the floor, we would have the House bill here. It would be subject to amendments. We would go on again for a long time and have debates and discussions on other amendments. We would have to send it back to the House, and we would be going through this game again. So this is just a way to bring finality to this process of trying to get a bill which has now been hanging out here in the Senate. We passed this several months go. The House did also. We have sort of been on hold here because of this procedural motion. Now that we have agreed to allow 8 hours of debate--2 of which were last night--we will debate a couple hours tonight, and tomorrow morning we will have run a couple more hours, and then, hopefully, finish it sometime, maybe tomorrow evening. But the idea is to get this bill to conference where I am confident we will get a bill that will be to the liking of the vast majority of the Senate as well as the House and the President. With that, we will have this bill signed and for the first time have a Federal piece of legislation to ban a procedure which the late Senator from New York, standing at that desk right over there, referred to as ``infanticide.'' It is a gruesome procedure which is very difficult to talk about because it is so gruesome and graphic, this description of what this procedure is all about. It is used almost always on babies who would otherwise be born alive, who are post 20, 21 weeks in gestation, which is halfway through a pregnancy, or later. These babies are, as I said before, in most cases, healthy. The mothers are healthy. This procedure is used because late in pregnancy a mother decides, for some reason, that she no longer wants the child within her--which is a tragic situation to have a child that is unwanted. I think we all recognize the tragedy of that. But I think what most Members of the Senate have said is that this procedure--not that she shouldn't have the right to do it. Roe v. Wade, as interpreted by many subsequent Supreme Court cases, gives a woman the absolute right to an abortion at any time during pregnancy. Now, for those of you who have not listened to debates on abortion before in the Senate or who have not read the case law with respect to abortion, that may come as a surprise to you, that Roe v. Wade, and its subsequent line of cases, has developed to the point where there is no restriction--no restriction--on the right to an abortion up until the moment the baby separates from the mother completely. Up until that time, the Supreme Court now has decided that a woman has a right to kill the child within her. Or even, as in the case of partial-birth abortion, the Supreme Court ruled that the woman has a right to kill the child who is but an inch, 2, or 3 inches completely from being separated from the mother in the process of being delivered. That is how extreme the Roe v. Wade decision is. Now, I would say that for most Americans who are listening, that is further than they had thought Roe v. Wade had taken this country, and that it is not where the vast majority of Americans are. That is why 70 percent of the people in this country oppose partial-birth abortion and would like to see it banned. That is why the vast majority of people in this country are for some limitation on abortion. Depending on the poll you see, anywhere from 15 to 23 percent of the American public want abortions available at any time during pregnancy. Most Americans--the overwhelming majority of Americans--want some restrictions. Now, in the Senate we did something I would argue was unfortunate. A couple months ago we adopted an amendment offered by the Senator from Iowa which was truly an extreme amendment. We hear so much talk about people who are pro-life, who are against abortion, as being extremists. The definition of ``extreme'' is someone who is outside the norm. Well, when you have 15, 16, 17 percent holding this position, and 85 percent holding the other position, it is very difficult for the 16 percent to say the 85 percent is extreme. But that is what we hear on the floor of the Senate, that those who believe in the absolute right given under Roe v. Wade--the absolute right--to have an abortion at any point in time in a pregnancy, for any reason--because you don't like the color of your child's eyes or because your child may have a cleft palate or because something happened in your personal life that has upset you and you no longer wish to carry this child, even though you may be 37 or 38 weeks along-- it doesn't matter. Under Roe v. Wade, and under the amendment offered by the Senator from Iowa, we have said in the Senate--I believe wrongly and unjustly-- that should be the law of the land, that a woman's right, domain over a child, is absolute until complete separation. There are some who even argued after separation. But, thankfully, the Senate voted last year that a child who was born and completely separated has a constitutional right. That is how far we have come. We actually passed a bill last year which said that once a child is born it has constitutional protection. That is the biggest step we have been able to take to protect the life of innocent children in America. But what this Roe v. Wade language--this language which I anticipate being dropped in conference--says is that we believe in the absolute right--absolute right--of a woman to terminate a pregnancy, to kill the child within her, at any point in time, for any reason. That is what the law of the land says. Now, I would make the argument that Roe v. Wade, because of this twisting of the Constitution--it really is tortuous--has done something that we have not seen done in this country, that we have not seen done in this country since the Dred Scott decision. If we think back to the Dred Scott decision--well over 100 years ago, 150 years ago--the Dred Scott decision was based on a misunderstanding of ordered liberty, of ordered rights that we laid out in our founding documents. In the Declaration of Independence, the document on which this country was founded, we made a statement as a country that we hold dear. The Declaration of Independence--of maybe all the documents, of all the great works of craftsmanship of words that we have seen put forth in this country--there are very few that match the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence. What the Declaration of Independence said is: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. And then what--this is very important. The Presiding Officer is a great student of history and maybe the greatest advocate for the understanding of history and the knowledge of who we are as Americans. I would argue the Declaration of Independence tells us more about who we are as Americans than maybe any other single document. But what this document says is: We are endowed by--not a Congress or not the courts or not some king--our Creator, the God that you worship, Allah, Jesus, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a God who may be a God of the Hindu religion, whatever that creator is, the creator God, he has given us rights by the fact that we are human. What these rights consist of the Constitution laid out. They laid them out very particularly because there is an order to the rights that God has given us. There has to be. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They didn't say the pursuit of happiness, liberty, life. They didn't say liberty, life, happiness. They said them in a specific order because without that ordering of liberty, without that ordering of rights, they make no sense. For you cannot have happiness, true happiness, you cannot pursue true happiness, which the Founders really sought as truth--the ability to find what is true and what is right and what is just, and that would in a sense make you happy--you cannot pursue happiness without the freedom to do so, without the liberty, the right of liberty to think and to pursue your beliefs freely. But you cannot have liberty, obviously, if you are not alive. If you don't have life, then what good is liberty? And if you are not alive, if you have no right to your own life, you can't pursue happiness. So life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not just words that were thrown out there because they sounded lofty or because they were rolled off the tongue in a way that makes a nice impression. They are there because they are foundational in understanding how free people treat each other, how a free society must conduct itself in order for it to prosper. What did Dred Scott do? The Dred Scott decision put the liberty rights of the slaveholder over the life rights of the slave. It said that I, as a slaveholder, could own and control you, could kill you, could sell you as a piece of property--liberty rights over life rights. The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1850s said that was constitutional. As a result, many people believed that, because it was constitutional, it was therefore right. It was legal. It was just. It was moral. Why? Because our laws are a reflection of a collective morality. Our laws are a reflection of what we as a society believe is right. At first there were a few. As Henry the Fifth in Shakespeare said: We few, we band of brothers. In this country there were few who stood and said: No. It may be legal, it may be seen as just by the courts, but it is wrong. It is immoral; it is unjust; and it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the basis upon which this country was founded. As Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. The separation began to grow. And more and more people began to understand the injustice of taking the liberty rights of one to trump the life rights of another. There were many in this country and many in this very Chamber who believed we could sustain that, as unjust as maybe they even thought it was. Many would have said: Well, I am personally opposed to slavery. I would never own a slave. I would never do something like that. But who am I to tell someone else they can't own a slave? Is that my responsibility? I may think it is immoral, but how can I impose my morality on a slaveholder who has his own economic interests? He has a family to raise. He has complications in getting his crops in. There are exigencies out there that those who promoted slaveholding said: We need this. We don't like it. I am sure there were many people on both sides of the aisle who said: We support slavery. We don't like it. We don't encourage it. Yes, we think it is probably immoral. But we need to have this option available for people if that is what they choose. We need to give people the right to choose. Eventually there were enough people in this country who decided they could not let that stand. Unfortunately, we had to fight a war to change it. After that war, I am sure there were many in this Chamber who thought this great scourge, this black mark, this pox upon the American existence had been wiped away, never to be seen again; that we would learn from history never to repeat this horrendous injustice, this immoral behavior as a society. We would never, ever again misorder our liberties. But they were wrong. For today in this country, as a result of Dred Scott 2, the Roe v. Wade decision, we have seen the same thing come about. We now have the life rights, the most important right given to us as children of the Creator, crushed and hidden away behind the concept of liberty. It repulses us now to think that people used liberty to defend slavery. They used the right of free people to live their life freely to defend slavery. I hope that 100 years from now--hopefully soon--people will be on the floor looking back at this time and saying: I can't believe they did it again. I can't believe they didn't learn their lesson. I can't believe they didn't see that a House divided against itself cannot stand. The Senator from Tennessee, the Presiding Officer, is honest. It has been said many times that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history. And so we are, and so we will continue, I suspect. But it is important that the few, we merry band of brothers, stand up, in spite of what may be majorities against us--and certainly the media and the popular culture is speaking against us--and speak the truth that our Founders laid out. They did not say we believe or we think we were endowed by our Creator. They did not say it is our opinion that these rights exist. They claimed truth. They claimed truth, and they devoted their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for that truth during the Revolutionary War. People who came from little hamlets all over the north and the border States did the same. Today, in their own quiet way, millions of Americans do the same. They fight the battle. They fight it with prayer chains. They fight it at home at night and through their prayers, through the counsel of those who are going through troubled times. They do it through the love they feel toward those who are going through difficult times in their lives, but they understand that the truth claim that our Founders chiseled into the Declaration of Independence will not be forgotten in our society. We will lose many more battles. There is no doubt we will lose many more battles, but ultimately, I have to believe, because I do believe in America, we will win the war and reestablish truth, justice, and righteousness--righteousness as defined by our Founders, as understood in the nature of humans. We will win that war one day. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent notwithstanding the passage of H.R. 2754, the energy and water appropriations bill, it be in order to consider the Bingaman amendment which is at the desk; that the amendment be considered and agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table without any intervening action or debate.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I was struck when we took this moment of silence to remember the second plane slamming into the World Trade Center. Thinking back to that day and recalling the events when the first plane crashed, there was confusion and no one knew what was going on. No one understood. It was an accident. Who knows. But with the second plane came understanding. We knew this was not a plane that got off course, an accident, but there was a stunning realization that the world had changed. It was that second crash. In the next half hour now, there will be another moment of silence, and then another roughly a half hour after that. Within that hour's time of that realization, America mobilized. America did not fall back on its heels. We obviously saw the response of the firefighters and the police, of the average citizen in New York. We quickly would see that reaction at the Pentagon. Then we will have forever etched in our minds the realization that came over the passengers of flight 93 that America was under attack and they were in a position to do something about it. They did not hesitate. They were ordinary people, as all of the heroes of September 11 were, ordinary people who did not sign up to fight a war, who did not even know until the moment they were pressed into service that a war was about to happen. Virtually without hesitation, at the moment they realized that what they loved so much, so much that they without flinching were willing to commit everything-- everything, to a mission for which the only preparation was living in this country, was experiencing the freedom, was recognizing the privilege of being in America. And that privilege, that honor, and that freedom were worth that sacrifice. That is what they had been taught in their history courses. But more important, that is what they had seen in their common, ordinary American experience: That which we cherish so dearly in this country is worth sacrifice; if, by some odd set of circumstances, you are placed in a position to respond to protect that freedom, that you have an obligation to do so. That is really remarkable. It is really remarkable to think of these ordinary people, as Senator Frist said, going about their jobs, traveling on a plane, going on a vacation, riding to work, sitting in their offices answering the phone, responding to an emergency call-- going about their typical American lives--that within an instant they were able to put on the armor of defending this country. We are a blessed nation, and the people who represented us that day, the heroes that day, we can thankfully say were like us. That is the great pride I think all of us can take from the events of that day because they were not any different from the rest of us, and these ordinary people did extraordinary things to protect us. God bless them. We thank them. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to withhold.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Maybe not until that time, but no longer than that time. I will certainly stop whenever we are ready to move forward with any pending business. Madam President, a couple months ago we had a very good debate, late at night on the floor of the Senate, on the issue of AIDS in Africa. We made a commitment in that authorization bill to follow through with the President's plan, his announcement earlier this year to put forward $15 billion over the next 5 years to meet this scourge that is ravaging so many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the scourge of AIDS. The President had the moral courage and provided leadership to the world prior to the G-8 summit to come forth with a big commitment of American dollars, of $15 billion over the next 5 years, to combat AIDS, in terms of education, prevention, treatment, transmission--all of the areas that are so important and were, frankly, being neglected by the world community. America had done a reasonable job in providing some funds--roughly $1 billion a year--toward this problem. The President stepped up and said: No, that is not sufficient. We need to do $15 billion over the next 5 years. The President made a budget request that put us on the road to that. It was not $3 billion a year for 5 years, but it was an aggressive increase in the amount of funding the United States would provide. Subsequent to his budget request, we passed an authorization bill which said the following: that this country would come up with $10 billion in bilateral aid, through our agencies of the Federal Government. We would be contributing money either directly to other countries or to nonprofit, sometimes faith-based, organizations for prevention, education, treatment, and other means of dealing with this problem. Unfortunately, in this bill, and in the foreign operations appropriations bill, the combined amount of money for the accounts for the President's AIDS initiative comes not to $3 billion but to a little over $2 billion, $2.050 billion. Now having said that, this is a tight budget year. And it is a significant increase over the amount of money that was provided for last year, which was an increase in last year's appropriations. So I do not want to cast any aspersions on any of the appropriators for the work they have done. They have provided a significant amount of increase appropriate with the President's--close to, not exactly but close to what the President originally suggested prior to his big AIDS initiative. I would suggest that what we need to do in the Senate is, to the best of our ability, meet the expectations we set with respect to the passage of the authorization bill a couple months ago--the expectations of the world community, which in the G-8 summit responded generously with contributions they were told would be matched by Federal dollars to the tune of for every $2 of international contribution to the Global Fund there would be a $1 contribution from the U.S. Government for up to 1 billion of U.S. dollars going into the Global Fund. To date, we have received roughly $700 million in commitments from the international community, which means that to fund our match in this bill we would need roughly $350 million. So for $700 million of international commitment, $350 million--$1 for every $2 pledged--would be necessary in either this bill or the foreign operations appropriations bill. I am happy to say in the two bills combined, there is $400 million for the global fund earmarked for matching, and that is in anticipation of some additional dollars being pledged by some other countries. There are a couple of other very significant countries yet that have not pledged, and I think with great foresight the members of the Appropriations Committee put forward roughly $400 million to match the anticipated contributions from the rest of the world. So on that score, I would make the argument that the authorization levels we had committed have been fulfilled. Some have suggested--in fact, others who have offered an amendment on this subject suggested-- we need to appropriate $3 billion to meet our commitment of $3 billion a year for 5 years. The commitment was $2 billion a year plus whatever was necessary to match up to $1 billion. It seems fairly obvious the match necessary is only going to be no more than $400 million. So I would argue the $400 million that is in these bills is sufficient to meet the commitment this country made, this Senate made, and this President made in matching dollars from the international community, which leaves us with the bilateral commitment. The bilateral commitment was $2 billion in the authorization bill. The President has said from the start that he was not going to start out at $2 billion. He was going to start out at a lesser number and ramp up as capacity was going to grow. I respect that. I know the President is trying to stay within a very tight budget with respect to both foreign and domestic programs, other than what would be considered war-related expenditures. He came forward with a proposal for about $1.6 billion. The two bills dealing with AIDS funding come up to the level of $1.65 billion. So the combined amount, the 400 and 1.65 is $2.50 billion, which is short of the authorization level by $350 million. That $350 million would allow us to fully fund our $2 billion commitment under the authorization. Again, I understand that the House level is lower than that. I think it is important for us in the Senate to come forth with a number that is closer to what the expectation was when we put forward this authorizing legislation a couple months ago. I am going to be offering an amendment a little later--because I told Senator McCain that I would not be conducting any formal business, that I would just be talking about my amendment--to transfer $350 million to provide treatment and prevention programs to combat global HIV/AIDS. I underscore this: I am trying to do this so we can win this with 50 votes, in case of so many Members missing, maybe 46 or 47 votes. I would like to see this pass. I would like to see us make that commitment. Two point four billion dollars does meet the commitment that this Congress was put on the record for a couple months ago. This is a rather big bill, almost a half-trillion-dollar piece of legislation before us. What I am requesting my colleagues to do is to support an across-the-board reduction of .0741, seven hundred forty-one thousandths of a percent reduction in all other funding so we could meet our commitment to the millions of people suffering in Africa and the Caribbean from this scourge of AIDS. I know there are a lot of people in the Chamber who don't like across-the-board cuts, thinking they are a gimmick. I assure you, those agencies that have experienced across-the-board cuts do not believe they are a gimmick. They are real. They reduce the amount of money in their appropriated account, and they have to deal with the consequences. There are lots of programs that have received substantial increases in funding that surely a seven-hundredths-of-a-percent reduction is not going to have any kind of dramatic impact on them. But I assure you, a $350 million commitment to providing treatment and prevention--one of the programs that is underfunded in this legislation that Senator DeWine has an amendment on is mother-to-child transmission. The money provided in this bill is actually lower than what the President requested. We are doing a lot for people in America. I know there is a lot of need in America. But I think when you compare the need in America to the abject poverty and horrific health conditions in this area of the world, I cannot imagine that any one of these organizations that are providing help to those who are struggling here in this country, through health problems or whether it is improving the quality of education, that they wouldn't be willing to give seven-hundredths of a percent of their dollars up to save hundreds of thousands of lives across Africa. That is what we are asking. I know it is not a popular thing to do. It is probably easier to say we will just borrow the money or we will advance fund or we will forward fund or backward fund or sideways fund, do some other gimmick to get around the budget rules so we don't have to count. It is important to put your money where your mouth is. I don't think asking for a seven-hundredths of 1 percent across-the- board reduction to provide the money for those in the most need of the brother and sisters that we have in this world is too much to ask. I ask my colleagues on this side of the aisle, those of you who voted for the President's plan on HIV/AIDS, those of you who have just come back from Africa--I know there are many Members who were in Africa over the break who saw firsthand the tremendous human suffering that is going on there as a result of this pandemic. Seven-hundredths of a percent to provide the much needed medicine to treat those mothers suffering from HIV/AIDS, to prevent the next orphan from occurring in Africa, to prevent mother-to-child transmissions so we don't have children born who will be orphans if the mothers don't get treatment and then they themselves will contract AIDS--we can do something that is real, tangible, that saves lives and improves the quality of the life of the people and gives, more importantly, some hope to those who have no hope. To a world that has in many respects turned their backs to this problem, we will show here in the U.S. Senate that we are willing to give up a little bit, a little bit across the board from programs that may get us votes back home, seven-hundredths of a percent to provide for those who have no voice in the Senate. I know at 5:20 we were hoping to try to get some votes. We are reaching that time, so I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Madam President. I thank the Senator from Arizona, who I understand has a legitimate concern about the way this bill is proceeding, and I appreciate his indulgence in allowing me to talk about an amendment.

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Durbin Amendment be the pending business.