Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. That is part of it; that he is insensitive to civil rights.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I don't have the numbers for Alabama particularly, but I saw a USA Today poll that said 77 percent of the people in the United States believe it is all right to have the Ten Commandments in the building.

Mr. SESSIONS. That is correct.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Bennett for his leadership today and the work he does. He is such an able part of this body. I will just say to Senator Reid, the assistant Democratic leader, that something has happened here in this body that has never happened before. Even though there are a majority of Senators prepared to vote and confirm a series of highly qualified nominees for the Federal bench, for the first time in the history of this Nation, the Democratic leadership--Senator Daschle and his team--have deliberately and systematically filibustered. That has never been done before on Federal judges. It should not be done. It is a complete change in the history of this body. I believe that Senator Frist is correct that we need to talk about these nominees, and we need to spend some time talking about them. We need to state what their records are, what their accomplishments are, why they are fine and decent men and women, and why they ought to be confirmed. I hope the American people will listen because everywhere I go people tell me they are concerned about the courts. They believe judges are stepping outside of their bounds. They are legislating when they ought to be adjudicating. They are taking over schools, prisons, hospitals, and whatever else, and running them for years and years. And people question that. President Bush has said: I am going to nominate judges who believe in the rule of law and who believe in doing the right thing, who do not legislate but adjudicate, who decide cases based on what the law says, not what they think is good politics. Now we have these filibusters for the first time in history. I cannot imagine why Senator Daschle and his team would object to utilizing the legitimate, historic rules of this body, to talk all night, if need be, about why filibustering is unfair. They are not going to be out here anyway doing business. We are not doing anything in the middle of the night anyway. To take a day of this session to talk it all the way through that day about the incredible, historical change in procedure that has occurred here is eminently justified. Why they would think they should, therefore, be offended is really amazing to me. There is just no basis for it. It is mock anger that they are going to now block legislation, which apparently was the intention all along. We passed the CARE Act 90 to 5. We can't move the bill to conference because that bill is being filibustered under the leadership of Senator Daschle and the Democrats. We passed the Healthy Forests Act 80 to 14, an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote. That is being blocked, so it cannot be sent to conference. This is obstructionism again and again. I believe it is not harmful for the American people to have a glimpse of what is going on in this body. When we saw what went on in the Intelligence Committee with the disclosure of this internal memorandum for the first time in history that I know of--the Intelligence Committee, which has always been organized and always been led to be a nonpartisan--not bipartisan, a nonpartisan entity dealing with the most sensitive secrets this Nation deals with, wrestling with the idea of whether or not we have enough intelligence, do we have enough interpreters, do we have enough agents, do we have enough high- tech equipment to defend our country and to give our men and women in uniform the best information they have; that is what this committee has been about. Now we know that the minority Democratic staff were plotting and making plans to drag out the committee hearings, then turn on the chairman who has tried his best to be fair and open with them, and then attack him and attack the President next year during the election year. This is what we are seeing here to an unprecedented degree. Let me talk now about Bill Pryor, the attorney general of the State of Alabama, who is nominated by the President for the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He represents the highest and best and finest qualities in lawyering in America today. I know Bill Pryor. I hired him as an assistant attorney general. I put him in charge of the most complex and important cases in my office. He was a partner in two of Birmingham's finest law firms, two of Alabama's finest law firms. He gave that up for public service. No more idealistic public servant exists in America today, a man of unquestioned integrity, unquestioned ability, a man who is willing to give up the high salaries he could make in any law firm in America and give his service to the people of America because that is the way he was raised. His daddy was band director at the McGill-Toolen High School in Mobile, AL, a Catholic school. He was raised to do right. He believes in doing right. His family believes in doing right. His mother has taught in African-American schools voluntarily for most of her career as a schoolteacher. They have done the right things. They are the good people, people who always wanted to make America better, to reach a higher level of morality and decency and faithfulness. That is the way he is. Bill Pryor attended Tulane University. I know the Presiding Officer knows Tulane is an excellent school, in the league with the Ivy League institutions. They think so at least. It is certainly a superb institution. He graduated magna cum laude. He was editor in chief of the Tulane Law Review. For those who understand law school, they know that the editor of the law review is the most respected graduate of the law class. Somebody might have higher grades, although few had higher grades than Bill Pryor. But if you are selected by your compatriots on the law review to be editor in chief, that is an additional indication of respect that even high grades don't have. That is what he came from. He then clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the very type of position he will be undertaking. He was a law clerk sitting at the right hand of Judge John Minor Wisdom on the old Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Wisdom is known as a champion of civil rights. He was one of the giants on the Fifth Circuit who was faced with rendering the decrees that dismantled segregation throughout the South. That is Bill Pryor's background. His father was a John F. Kennedy Democrat, Catholic Democrat, who believed in that and voted for President Kennedy years ago. So this is his background. He was very successful in his clerkship with Judge Wisdom. Then he served as an attorney with two law firms in Birmingham, first rate firms. I called on him to join my office-the office of the State Attorney General--and he took over the most important cases in my office. And, lo and behold, 2 years later I find myself in the Senate. The Governor made a decision to appoint Bill Pryor as my successor. He was one of the youngest, if not the youngest, attorneys general in America at the time. He handled that office with courage, with brilliance, with commitment to the rule of law, and with enthusiasm and commitment to a degree matched by few. In the course of it, he won tremendous respect throughout the State. He had case after case that were exceedingly difficult, tough cases, more than you would normally get, in which he was called on to make choices, make legal decisions in litigation that placed him at odds with his core supporters, friends of his, friends of mine. For example, there was a redistricting in Alabama. In the State legislature, the Republicans hold not many offices, well below half. But five of the seven Congressmen are Republicans. The Governor is Republican. Both Senators are Republican. But the way they organized those districts--some would say gerrymandered the districts--it favored Democrats being elected. Republicans filed a lawsuit to attack it. Unfortunately, the lawsuit was legally improper and not sound. Bill Pryor is attorney general of the State of Alabama. He has to speak for the State. This reapportionment plan, whether he liked it or not--I assume he didn't like it; I haven't liked it--he was empowered and required under the duty of an attorney general to defend the acts of the Alabama Legislature, the reapportionment plan they had, and defend it he did. It made them mad. A lot of our Republican friends were mad at Bill Pryor. They said he ought to work with them, he ought to help them. This was several years ago. He said: My job is to defend the law. My job is to do what an attorney general should do. An attorney general should defend the duly enacted laws of the State of Alabama, including the laws they passed to redistrict the State, as long as they are defensible. He lost in the court of appeals. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which he would be joining, ruled against him. But he didn't stop there. He knew he was correct. He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case, ruled against the Republicans, ruled with Attorney General Pryor, and kept in place the reapportionment plan in that State. I hear people say: Attorney General Pryor is an activist. He has political views. He is a conservative. He won't follow the law. I am telling you, this man, as much as any man I have ever known in my life--and I have spent 20 years in the full-time practice of law and I know a lot of lawyers--is committed to the rule of law. He is committed to doing what is right. That is the way he was raised. That is the way he always does. He has had many other difficult positions. Right this very minute, this very week, he has been drawn into the case of the Ten Commandments at the Supreme Court. Justice Roy Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, had a Ten Commandments plaque in his office as county judge. It was carved out of wood. And when he got elected to the supreme court, he was sort of known as the Ten Commandments judge. After that, he decided to put in a block of stone, not much bigger than these desks, and it had the Ten Commandments on the top. Frankly, I am not offended by it. At least three replicas of the Ten Commandments are in the Supreme Court Building right across that street. Right up on that wall in the Senate Chamber are the words ``In God We Trust.'' I don't see anything wrong with it, frankly. But Judge Moore had some very strong views about this. He had his own ideas about separation of church and state. He read all the papers of the Founding Fathers. He can quote from them at length. He thinks we are misinterpreting what the Founding Fathers thought about separation of church and state. He believes it deeply, and I respect him for it. Attorney General Pryor says: I am sympathetic with you, Judge, and I support your opinion. But as attorney general, I write the briefs for the State and we will argue it my way. Judge Moore said: No, I want you to argue it my way. He is chief justice. But, basically, what happened was the attorney general said: You hire your lawyer, and you argue it the way you want to; I am the attorney general, and I represent the State, and I will make the best argument that I think is worthy of merit and that could protect the ability to preserve the Ten Commandments. The story goes that the supreme court did not agree and the courts have not agreed. They have ordered the Ten Commandments block to be removed, and there has been quite a bit of stir about it. So what do you do? Under Alabama law, the attorney general is required to, and has a duty to, argue cases brought by the Judicial Inquiry Commission. The Judicial Inquiry Commission met and returned charges against the chief justice, saying he violated a court order to remove the Ten Commandments. The attorney general now is required to handle that case. There is no way he can get away from it. He is either going to violate his duty and obstruct the rule of law, or he is going to prosecute the case. So he is prosecuting the case. He is going forward. I say this: Go back and look at the documents put out by People for the American Way in opposition to the confirmation of William Pryor, and some of these other trashy, sorry, dishonest documents that were put out there. They have accused Bill Pryor of being in cahoots with Judge Moore to upset the rule of law, to impose religious views on people because he has expressed his personal belief in God and his personal faith in public statements. So they have accused him of being a religious extremist and are trying to attack him on that basis. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is just a false charge. As a matter of fact, when former Gov. Bob James--who was the Governor who appointed Bill Pryor--resisted the Federal court rulings that said teachers could not lead children in prayer, Governor James took the view that football coaches ought to be able to lead the boys in prayer. He didn't see anything wrong with that. He didn't think the Constitution prohibited that. Frankly, I don't think it does either. The Constitution says that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof. That is all it says. Anyway, the courts say you cannot have a football coach lead the kids in prayer before the ball game. So it caused a big stir. Some schools thought they could and some didn't. Lawsuits were being filed. Attorney General Pryor researched the law of schools and prayer and wrote a letter to every school board in the State asserting leadership. He acted in a way that the Atlanta Journal Constitution even said helped to bring a cooling voice in a heated period. He told them what they could do and what they could not do. As it turns out, that opinion he wrote was very similar to the position the Clinton Department of Education took on these matters. He researched the law and decided what the law was, and he followed it. So it is a pretty high price that some people are trying to put on him, because it is not true. Dr. Joe Reed is one of the most powerful political figures in the State of Alabama. Every Democratic Presidential candidate will know Dr. Reed. He is an important African-American leader in the State. When he speaks as chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference, an arm of the Alabama Democratic Party, and endorses a candidate for President, or Governor, or Lieutenant Governor, he has tremendous weight. His opinions are followed closely. He is a member of the Democratic National Committee. Dr. Reed is a vice chairman of the teachers union in Alabama--another source of influence and power. He is a man who has always been interested in Federal courts. He has endorsed Attorney General Pryor, saying, ``He is a first-class public official'' who will ``be a credit to the judiciary and a guardian of justice.'' Some of the national civil rights groups have attacked Bill Pryor. They don't know him, don't know anything about him, and they have accused him of being a southerner who is conservative; they try to say he is anti civil rights. Joe Reed is a serious leader in this State, and has been for 30 years, and he endorses him. Thurbert Baker, an African-American Democratic attorney general in Georgia, says that Attorney General Pryor ``has always done what he thought was best for the people of Alabama'' and ``know[s] that his work on the bench will continue to serve as an example of how the public trust should be upheld.'' Attorney General Baker strongly supports him. Former Democratic Governor, Don Siegleman, stated: Bill Pryor is an incredibly talented, intellectually honest attorney general. He calls them like he sees them. He's got a lot of courage, and he will stand up and fight when he believes he's right. That is absolutely true. They are not political allies, but that is true. State Representative Alvin Holmes, who is one of the most outspoken African-American leaders in the State senate, is very supportive of Bill Pryor. He told me he would come up here and speak for him and that he believes this very strongly. One of the stories he tells is that, under Alabama's constitution--and a number of States had this--was a provision that prohibited interracial marriage. Mr. Holmes opposed that. Attorney General Pryor was sworn in as attorney general of Alabama, and he made reference to that as being wrong. Of course, it is unconstitutional. Clearly, it is in violation of the Federal Constitution, and the courts, if they have not already declared it invalid, would do that at any time. But it was still in the document. It ought not to have been there. Bill Pryor led the charge around the State to remove this improper language in the Alabama Constitution that said people of different races could not marry. Alvin Holmes said no other state wide elected politician stood with Bill Pryor. Artur Davis, an African-American Congressman from Alabama, is a big supporter of Bill Pryor and also supports his confirmation. Mr. President, we will talk about this more tomorrow. I know the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch, is extremely impressed with Attorney General Bill Pryor. He has seen him as a witness. He has met him personally. He told me after Attorney General Pryor's confirmation hearing that Attorney General Pryor testified brilliantly. He was one of the best witnesses he had ever seen before the Judiciary Committee. They tried to give him a hard time and they never laid a glove on him. He spoke carefully. He spoke pleasantly. He spoke with conviction and with great intelligence and legal acumen. It was a tremendous performance. They questioned him about his views on abortion because he doesn't believe in abortion. I know that is a big subject with some people. He believes abortion is taking of innocent human life, and when pressed on it, that is what he said. He said: Senator, I believe it is taking of innocent human life. The reason I criticize Roe v. Wade is because I believe it is unprincipled, and I also believe it has led to the death of millions of innocent unborn. That is his view. That is the view of the Catholic Church, the largest Christian church in the world. It is the view of a lot of other churches and denominations, and a lot of people who don't go to church believe that is a life. We have to get our heads straight in the confirmation process. We have to get our thinking clear in this process. It makes no difference what he may believe personally about abortion. The question is, if the United States passed a constitutional law that deals with abortion, will he follow it? If the Supreme Court of the United States makes a declaration of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, will he follow it? Bill Pryor has proved he will. With regard to abortion, which he feels deeply about, Bill Pryor wrote a number of years ago, before he was ever considered for a Federal judgeship, to the attorneys general in Alabama and told them the Supreme Court had rendered an opinion on partial-birth abortion and that a large part of it had been declared unconstitutional; that it could not be enforced by them and they should not bring legal actions under it. Even though he deeply believes abortion is wrong and certainly even more strongly believes that partial-birth abortion is wrong, which is overwhelmingly the view of the American people, indeed overwhelmingly of this Senate because we passed a law declaring it unconstitutional, he told them they couldn't enforce it. They had to allow this procedure to go forward under certain terms. He was condemned by the pro-life movement of which he shares many friends and shares many beliefs. What we have to do as a Senate throughout this confirmation process is not ask what a person's political beliefs are or their religious beliefs but whether or not they understand the law of America and whether or not they will enforce it. That is the key to it. If we get away from that, we are going to be in trouble. Orthodox Jews have views I do not share and most Americans do not share. The Muslim faith has views I may not share that is in the Koran. Other denominations and church groups throughout America have views I do not share and in which I do not believe. Are we going to get to the point of asking these questions and saying: I don't agree with you and your religion; I don't agree with how you interpret the Scripture; therefore, I am not going to vote for you. How ridiculous can that be? We will never get anybody confirmed. We have to say to Mr. Pryor, as was asked of him: OK, Mr. Pryor, I respect how you believe this, but the Supreme Court has held otherwise, and I want to know whether or not you will follow that law. He has demonstrated time and again that he will follow the law. He believes in the rule of law. He will carry his duties on in a way that brings credit to the rule of law. The rule of law is the key cornerstone of American greatness, in my view. Bill Pryor is a champion of the rule of law. We couldn't have a finer nominee. I am so distressed his record has been distorted. I am so distressed people have tried to make him out to be something he is not. It is not right to have a decent, kind, Christian gentleman who has done nothing throughout his life but try to serve his Lord and his country with distinction and integrity, to have these skunks come in here, as Senator Hatch calls them, the usual suspects, with their distorted interpretations of his career and try to paint him as something he is not is just wrong. We need to stop it. It is wrong to have a filibuster, and it is wrong to distort a man's record--it is not correct--in a way that demeans him and undermines his true worth as a human being. He is first rate in every way. I am confident he will make a great judge. I see my time has passed. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. That is correct.

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, very similar. What he actually did, I say to the Senator from Tennessee, is that as attorney general he has the authority to superintend all of the State district attorneys who enforce the law.

Mr. SESSIONS. There was an already-passed partial birth abortion ban in Alabama. The Supreme Court ruled that big chunks of that were not constitutional and could not be enforced, and Attorney General Pryor, even though he strongly thinks that abortion is not good policy, wrote those district attorneys throughout the State and told them they could not enforce the law.

Mr. SESSIONS. May I say one thing on that?

Mr. SESSIONS. The pro-life groups in Alabama that supported Mr. Pryor criticized him for that letter, and the ACLU thanked him for it.

Mr. SESSIONS. That is correct. I think he could have not appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court doesn't take a lot of these cases. He could have probably justified that and rationalized that, but if he believed that the existing Alabama reapportionment system was duly enacted and defensible, an attorney general of integrity would appeal to the Supreme Court, and he did so, to the detriment of the interest of his political party.

Mr. SESSIONS. I remain and have always been impressed with the Senator from Tennessee since the day he came to the Senate. I did not know he clerked for or worked for Judge Wisdom. He gave some real insight into the prestige of an appointment to clerk for a judge like Judge Wisdom on the court of appeals, a very competitive thing. Bill Pryor is one of the best lawyers in America, and these charges from People for the American Way that he tried to undermine the separation of church and State, he had a majoritarian ideology-- actually, he stood firm for minorities and against the majority in many cases, as we just mentioned. They call him an extreme ideologue, a crusader to push the law far to the right. Anybody who knows him and knows the circumstances under which he has operated knows the courage he has shown and knows that these charges are just bogus. It is not fair, and we are doing that too often here. I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his fine comments. I believe Bill Pryor is the most principled, committed lawyer I have known in this country. I know he would be a magnificent Federal judge, and we will make a big mistake if this body does not see fit to confirm him. He needs an up-or-down vote, and we will have that vote tomorrow to see if he gets an up-or-down vote. If he gets an up-or-down vote, he will be confirmed. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Absolutely. He said it was bad law, but more than that, he said it was morally wrong and not to be accepted any longer in our Constitution.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today I rise to re-introduce legislation to help preserve the heritage of seven historic women's colleges and universities. The legislation would authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to provide restoration and preservation grants for historic buildings and structures at seven historically women's public colleges or universities. The bill directs the Secretary to award $14 million annually from fiscal years 2004 through 2008 to the seven institutions. The sweeping changes of the industrial revolution prompted Congress in 1862, with further action in 1887 and 1890, to provide Federal support for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges with growing emphasis on industrial and technical education. Unfortunately, these ``land-grant'' schools were only for men, leaving women untrained as they entered the expanded work force. Women's advocates, such as Miss Julia Tutwiler in Alabama, immediately recognized the need for institutions where women could receive an equal education. Beginning in 1884, seven institutions in seven separate States were established as industrial schools for women. These institutions include the Mississippi University for Women, the University of Montevallo in Alabama, Georgia College and State University, Winthrop University in South Carolina, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Texas Women's University, and the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. These seven institutions remain open, providing a liberal arts education for both men and women, but retain significant historical and academic features of those pioneering efforts to educate women. Despite their continued use, many of the structures located on these campuses are facing destruction or closure because preservation funds are not available. My legislation would enable these buildings to be preserved and maintained by providing funding for the historic buildings located at the colleges and universities I have identified. No more than $14 million would be available and would be distributed in equal amounts to the seven institutions. My bill also requires a 20 percent matching contribution from non-Federal sources and assures that alterations to the properties using the funds are subject to approval from the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and reasonable public access for interpretive and educational purposes. These historically women's colleges and universities have contributed significantly to the effort to attain equal opportunity through postsecondary education for women, many of whom would not have had the opportunity otherwise. I believe it is our duty to do all we can to preserve these historic institutions, and I ask my colleagues for their support.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today I rise to re-introduce legislation to help preserve the heritage of seven historic women's colleges and universities. The legislation would authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to provide restoration and preservation grants for historic buildings and structures at seven historically women's public colleges or universities. The bill directs the Secretary to award $14 million annually from fiscal years 2004 through 2008 to the seven institutions. The sweeping changes of the industrial revolution prompted Congress in 1862, with further action in 1887 and 1890, to provide Federal support for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges with growing emphasis on industrial and technical education. Unfortunately, these ``land-grant'' schools were only for men, leaving women untrained as they entered the expanded work force. Women's advocates, such as Miss Julia Tutwiler in Alabama, immediately recognized the need for institutions where women could receive an equal education. Beginning in 1884, seven institutions in seven separate States were established as industrial schools for women. These institutions include the Mississippi University for Women, the University of Montevallo in Alabama, Georgia College and State University, Winthrop University in South Carolina, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Texas Women's University, and the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. These seven institutions remain open, providing a liberal arts education for both men and women, but retain significant historical and academic features of those pioneering efforts to educate women. Despite their continued use, many of the structures located on these campuses are facing destruction or closure because preservation funds are not available. My legislation would enable these buildings to be preserved and maintained by providing funding for the historic buildings located at the colleges and universities I have identified. No more than $14 million would be available and would be distributed in equal amounts to the seven institutions. My bill also requires a 20 percent matching contribution from non-Federal sources and assures that alterations to the properties using the funds are subject to approval from the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and reasonable public access for interpretive and educational purposes. These historically women's colleges and universities have contributed significantly to the effort to attain equal opportunity through postsecondary education for women, many of whom would not have had the opportunity otherwise. I believe it is our duty to do all we can to preserve these historic institutions, and I ask my colleagues for their support.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Inhofe for his leadership on this issue. I recall several years ago, as a member of the EPW Committee, we served on the Clean Air Subcommittee and had field hearings and took testimony from a number of the scientists who are still speaking out and discussing the issue of global warming. I remember Dr. Lindzen from Harvard sat back in one of our hearings, kind of relaxed, and he said: We can debate this global warming, but even if we do, the things people are proposing are not going to have any significant impact on the global climate situation in which we are involved. I do think, as Senator Inhofe has ably pointed out, a lot of the scientific data is being disputed. One of the issues that I know about personally and have heard this witness, Dr. Christy, testify about, is the satellite data. Dr. John Christy at the University of Alabama at Huntsville studies NASA scientist space data, temperature readings in the upper atmosphere. According to the models that were supposed to predict global warming, those models called for the increase in temperature to show up first in the upper atmosphere. According to his rigorous analysis of the upper atmosphere temperatures, they have not increased in the last 15 or 20 years--maybe just the most minute fraction, but probably not any. So this contradicts some of the things we are hearing. I don't know what changes are out there in the environment. We know a lot of factors are involved. Professor Sallie Baliunas from Harvard, an astrophysicist, has recently discussed sunspots and Sun activity, and charts that show that tend to correspond with increasing or falling temperatures. I don't know. It could be increasing carbon dioxide, increasing soot, increasing other materials that have some impact on the environment, although it does appear--our best science shows in the early middle ages temperatures were hotter than they are today, before we had a lot of the things that people are complaining about. What I want to get around to saying is I believe there are legitimate disputes about the validity and extent of global warming. There is little or no dispute that what the United States does unilaterally is not going to have any impact on the situation that is happening in our global environment. We have countries, like India with a billion people and China with a billion people, that are growing dramatically and have almost no environmental controls and are not going to participate in environmental controls. What we do here, whether or not we can spend billions and billions of dollars, what impact will we have here? Not much, I submit. I remember all these world gurus that met in Kyoto and they passed the Kyoto resolution and they wanted us to adopt the Kyoto accords. That was wonderful, to be at this conference and everybody got excited, apparently, and passed this resolution and asked all the nations to sign. We studied that here in the United States. What they wanted to do, and this was in the late 1990s, I believe 1997-1998, they wanted the United States and the other countries to commit to reducing greenhouse gases 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Far from beginning to show a reduction, by the late 1990s we were 10 or more percent above the 1990 level. Projections of increased energy demands and other projections raised a clear indication that we were going to continue to show increases and not declines. What I would say is that was ludicrous. It was totally unrealistic, could not be accomplished. Yet these so-called scientists were saying you are not a good person, you are not politically correct if you didn't agree to the Kyoto Treaty. So we had a big debate about it. We talked about it, and it became so apparent that it was so bogus and so unrealistic that when we voted, it was 97 to nothing, as I recall, to reject the Kyoto Treaty. Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman have come back with a more modest proposal. One thing I would have to say about it is that the Kyoto accord at least proposed to bring other countries on board, to have them agree to these reductions. This one is a unilateral economic action, I suggest. It says that by 2010 we ought to be at 2000 levels. The projections for growth indicate that would be very costly to meet. The Department of Energy research group suggests that by 2010 it would create, that year alone, a $45 billion cost on this economy. Make no mistake, $45 billion is real money, and it comes right out of this economy. It is sucked right out of the growth of this economy. It adds to the bill of every business, every homeowner, and if it drives up the cost of natural gas as people say, it is going to take money out of the pockets of fixed-income Americans all over this country. We cannot expect that there will be no cost for this. The question is, Will the cost be worth the benefit? I suggest that President Bush has it right. Let us not focus on CO2. Carbon dioxide does not hurt you. We have to have it in the atmosphere. It is what plants breathe. In fact, the more carbon dioxide that exists, the faster plants grow. Plants will grow in desert environments much better with higher levels of carbon dioxide. It does not hurt our lungs. It doesn't hurt our health. It does not injure. Sulfur dioxide, mercury, other particulate pollutants are harmful to us. Also, we need to focus on those issues. As we focus on those issues, we will reduce CO2 at the same time and perhaps that will play a role in our meeting some of the goals we are facing today. But to commit ourselves to a political goal of reducing a gas that is not harmful, and reducing it by amounts suggested here that will have no impact on global warming but a significant adverse impact on our economy--which means jobs, jobs, jobs--is a mistake. We have people in this body who say: Oh, we have too much unemployment; we have too many people who can't find work; we are seeing too many jobs go over to China. Do you think China is going to be meeting these requirements? Do we think they will be spending $45 billion or more to get some minor increase that we were talking about here? I don't think so. This reduces our competitiveness in the world marketplace. It hurts us as we seek to maintain our manufacturing. It hurts our people on fixed incomes. It increases their cost of heating and cooling their homes. It is a big-time mistake. We do not need to make this mistake. I don't believe anybody will stand on the floor of this Senate and suggest that meeting CO2 emission goals will help this economy. It can only hurt this economy.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will not yield for a question. I have accepted the speech of the Senator while I held the floor. I am pleased to do so. He is a great advocate. But I repeat: It is going to hurt this economy. And everyone knows it. It is going to drive up the cost of energy. When you do that, it drives out jobs. It will be a unilateral economic disarmament--a unilateral act by this country in which other nations will not be participating. It will not help us.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for my time. I appreciate the commitment of the Senator from Arizona, and I thank the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, for his leadership and support him on this side. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from Vermont.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I spoke last night about my concern over our inadequate attention given to the substantial problem of health care transmission of AIDS in Africa. As part of this bill, we are moving forward with a $15 billion program to deal with AIDS in Africa. Some of the agencies involved have been too slow, frankly, to recognize how significant the transmission of AIDS is in Africa as a result of medical transmissions. It occurs in two primary ways. One, throughout Africa they are reusing needles for injections. When people come in, they are given shots. There is one story of an elementary classroom where all were injected with an immunization using the same needle, something we would not tolerate in America. As a matter of fact, we have taken extraordinary steps to make sure that no one in America who goes to a physician or doctor or hospital or clinic comes home infected with AIDS. We did that with the Ryan White Act. We dealt with hemophiliacs who have blood transfusions. We knew that was a major cause of the transmission of AIDS. We stopped that. We test all blood. We know it is clean or we will not allow it to be injected in someone's body. That is not true now in Africa. Twenty-five percent of the blood in Africa is transfused without being tested. We also know that in some countries in Africa as much as 40 percent of the adults have the HIV virus. We know that many more transfusions take place in Africa than in the United States. You would be surprised to know that; most people would. Diseases such as malaria cause anemia, and frequently physicians utilize transfusions to deal with that. They have other problems that lead to the need for transfusions. Many more transfusions take place in Africa. Many more injections take place in Africa, surprisingly. We find that when people go to the doctor in Africa, they can receive a pill, but they tend to get a shot for whatever their problem is. We believe at least as much as 40 percent of the injections in Africa are unnecessary. Perhaps even more of the transfusions are unnecessary. But in addition to being unnecessary, they are highly risky. That is the problem. When you reuse a needle, you put patients at risk. In America, we have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure our blood is clean and our needles are clean. In addition, we have gone to great lengths to make sure that health care workers, through accidents, won't prick themselves with a needle that might be contaminated. Remember, we have only about a 1 percent infection rate in the United States, whereas in Africa it is much larger throughout the continent. We have numbers from a study in South Africa that between ages 2 and 15, there are 670,000 children infected with HIV. Studies have shown that some of their mothers are not infected with HIV. How did they get it? This is not a sexually caused problem for most of them. This is a problem caused, I am afraid, from unsafe health care practices. Senator Leahy knows Holly Burkhalter of Physicians for Human Rights. They have been dealing with this issue for some time. They have concluded that it may be the single most significant act we can take to prevent AIDS in the short term in the world. We have also discovered that it would take only a relatively small portion of the $15 billion to fix it, the combination of testing and certifying that every transfusion is done with blood that is clean and safe. You take every injection in Africa, even some that are unnecessary, but every injection in Africa, if you examined all of those and gave a free and clean non-reusable needle for every injection in Africa, we are talking about less than $100 million, really about $75 million. That is what it would take. We are going to be spending $3 billion a year in Africa on AIDS over the next 5 years. There has been some dispute over how much of HIV is caused by medical transmissions. The WHO says the number is 10 percent. They say that blood transfusions are 5 to 10 percent. They also say that needles account for 2.5 percent. I have conducted two hearings before the Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Senator Enzi, the Presiding Officer, is an able member. We have taken the best witnesses we could get. Dr. Gisselquist and others who are familiar with the issues have testified. I have become more convinced than ever that those numbers are conservative. But at the 10-percent number, the numbers come in at 250,000 to 450,000 infections per year from health care in Africa. Imagine that: 250,000 to 450,000 human beings, many of them children, many of them infants, going to the doctor to get health care, to get a shot, coming home infected with a disease that will lead to their early death. Because it is a matter of such colossal error, we need to confront it, and we can. We can do so much better. I will be offering an amendment to urge that we earmark at least $75 million to fix the problem. I believe in very short order we can completely fix it. There is no excuse for any blood in Africa being used that had not been tested. Seventy-five percent of it is tested now. Why don't we go the rest of the way? Do you think that is not a large number, the 25 percent? It is a tremendous number. Particularly, women who go for transfusions after birth or because of malaria and anemia, those kinds of conditions, are the ones causing the transfusions. They are coming home with AIDS, and they are dying. These numbers don't consider the fact that people who have been infected by a health care injection or transfusion can go out and infect others, their spouses, or other people. It creates a cycle of growth in the spread of AIDS that is unacceptable. Dr. Gisselquist says the numbers should be declining in Africa today. They are not. The only explanation for the failure of the numbers of infections in Africa to decline, in his view, is medical transmissions. He has studied every study of this issue that has ever been done in Africa. From that, he considers it as high as 30 percent, three times the number I mentioned before, three times that number. And on the WHO numbers, we are talking about 1,000 infections per day, a number that can be fixed. It is time for us to ensure, as part of this bill, that the people who are running our AIDS program for the United States and the world understand we expect them to confront the medical transmission issue. The good news is, the great news is that we can bring these percentages to virtually zero. We can stop 1,000 to 2,000 infections per day. We can take it to zero and eliminate this problem for less than $100 million a year. I say let's do it. We need to have a sense of urgency. Mr. Tobias, heading this effort, needs to have a sense of absolute urgency. This has been talked about for years. Last night I had a chart that depicted a headline article in the San Francisco Chronicle, dated October 27, 1998--5 years ago yesterday-- detailing needles of death, talking about this very problem. Nothing has been done about it. It will not undermine the effort to deal with the sexual transmission of the disease and it will not, in my view, scare people from going to health care clinics to get treatment--the only two excuses I have heard to date as to why we should not go forward. I thank the Chair and Senator McConnell for his leadership in managing this bill and his willingness to listen to my concerns.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to share a few comments about the DeWine-Durbin amendment. It is well meaning. It is dealing with a critical subject that I am particularly interested in: the spread of AIDS in Africa. I think we can do better in a lot of ways about how to confront that issue. I appreciate Senator McConnell and Senator Leahy today agreeing to an amendment that I proposed to deal with the medical transmission of AIDS. But I would just say a couple of things here. We are moving to a historic increase in the amount of money we are spending for AIDS. The $15 billion we have approved is quite a significant increase in this important effort throughout the world, particularly in Africa. If this amendment is passed, it would add another $289 million to the $2 billion that was requested by the President. I would like to offer into the Record and quote from a letter dated October 16 to Chairman Stevens of the Appropriations Committee from Mr. Joseph O'Neill, deputy coordinator and chief medical officer, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator. As I said, this is in his letter of October 16: Dear Chairman Stevens: It is my understanding that an amendment regarding funding for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria may be offered today to the Fiscal Year 2004 Supplemental Appropriations bill currently under consideration on the Senate floor. I want to reiterate the Administration's strong support for the Fiscal Year 2004 budget request of $2 billion for all international HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria activities, including $200 million for the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as part of the President's larger commitment to spend $15 billion over the next five years through the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. I also want to highlight that it is by careful design that the President's Fiscal Year 2004 budget request is for $2 billion. The cornerstone of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is its focused approach to use $9 billion in new funding over the next five years to bring comprehensive and integrated HIV/AIDS prevention, care and large-scale antiretroviral treatment to 14 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. These countries are home to nearly 70 percent of HIV-infected persons in Africa and the Caribbean and 50 percent of the HIV-infected persons in the world. There are considerable challenges inherent in meeting the bold goals the President has set for these 14 countries which must be addressed in the early years of implementation. We believe it is important to ramp up spending on these countries in a focused manner, increasing the amount spent each year to efficiently and effectively create the necessary training, technology, and infrastructure base needed to deliver appropriate long-term medical treatment in a sustainable and accountable way. That is a mouthful, but I think it says some valuable things. This administration believes we have to effectively utilize the money, and it takes some time. It is certainly necessary for training, technology, and infrastructure that there be a base of that before we can fully implement and spend this extra amount of money we intend to spend. It goes on to say: Similarly, the U.S. Government support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is strong. Currently, the United States is responsible for 40 percent of all contributions made to the Global Fund. We have reached a critical time in the Global Fund's development, and other nations must join the United States in supporting the work of the Global Fund. For the reasons stated above, the Administration strongly opposes any efforts to increase funding beyond the $2 billion requested in the President's Fiscal Year 2004 budget. I appreciate your support on this issue and look forward to the continued strong bipartisan support of the Senate in ensuring the success of this lifesaving initiative. It is signed: Joseph F. O'Neill, MD, Deputy Coordinator and Chief Medical Officer, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator. One of our Senators, Mr. Alexander, on September 3 made this statement. It has a lot of truth to it. He came back from a trip to Africa. He wrote an op-ed piece. He gave 10 very wise and practical bits of advice to the leadership in this AIDS effort on the Senate floor on September 3. This is one of his final bits of advice on how to handle the situation. Finally, move fast, but do not spend too fast. I imagine we are going to have a pretty good debate about that in the Senate. I have already heard some people say let's spend $2 billion and others say let's spend $2.5 and others say let's spend $3 billion. The fact is, we are going to spend $15 billion of taxpayers' money in fighting HIV/AIDS in 14 countries and the Caribbean. We are going to do it over 5 years. We need to keep in mind that the African system cannot absorb too much money too quickly. There are treatment guidelines to prepare and to teach. They are very complicated. There is a staff to recruit. There are patients to find and persuade. There are health care organizations to establish. This amendment unfortunately is not offset. I would be very interested in seeing if we could fund this or we could utilize this money. I am very reluctant to not support an amendment Senator DeWine has worked so hard on. He is a person committed to doing the right thing. He is a person committed to fighting AIDS. He wants to see us do even more than we are doing. I respect that. I admire him terrifically. He has been around this world. He has met people who are suffering. He wants to help, as we all do. But the problem is, we agreed to a budget. I serve on the Budget Committee. That budget is a very serious matter. We decided we could spend only so much money. This foreign operations bill has a limit on the amount of money we have agreed to spend in foreign operations. If this amendment were to frame itself in terms of having an offset, that it would fund this $289 million out of the billions of dollars in this account and would show where we could withdraw and reduce some of those other accounts, I would be very tempted to support Senator DeWine's amendment. Unfortunately, it does not. It spends on top of the budget. It increases and breaks the budget. It is $289 million above the amount we have agreed we could afford to spend. I can't see us doing that. There are so many good ideas here. There are so many things we can do in this country and outside of this country. We have another increase in spending this year in our Federal appropriations bills. We would all like to spend more on projects than we are able to. But we have an increase that is not slashing our budget. We are not cutting our budget, even though we are going to set a record this year for deficit spending. We are going to set a record in deficit spending this year. But we can't continue to break the budget we fought so hard to create, a budget most of us committed to staying with. Maybe somewhere, as this process goes along, there can be some offsets that can help increase funding for the Global AIDS Program. I hope so. But I have, as so many have, voted against extra spending for things I care about--IDEA, kids in school, education, highways, matters I believe in and care about, when they exceed our budget. I have not been able to support them. I will not be able to support this one. I know all of us have priorities, items we care passionately about. I certainly do. I know Senators DeWine and Durbin do. I respect their concerns and their passion. We are going to have a huge increase in spending for HIV/AIDS in Africa. It is the right thing to do. I have had two hearings in the HELP Committee on which I am a member on the AIDS problem in Africa. I have concluded we can do more for medical care. The amendment I crafted deals with rearranging the moneys we plan to expend to focus on that problem which can result in the greatest immediate decline in infections of any other action we could take. I cannot go along with breaking the budget on this matter. I hope we can work on it. I will certainly be willing to work with the Senator and we will see what we can do to increase this funding as we can. The budget is an important matter. We don't need to get in the habit of breaking it. I will not vote to break it in this instance. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, as the Senate considers the Foreign Operations bill, we are considering President Bush's proposal to spend $15 billion to deal with the crisis of AIDS in Africa. It is something I believe is a necessary thing. I supported the President on this. It is a tremendous amount of money, but it is a tremendous problem. There are many aspects of the problem. Not everybody agrees on every single part of it. I would just say I have done some work on it and I have looked at a number of the issues. I believe strongly that there are some things we can do. If we do them correctly and promptly and effectively, we can dramatically impact the transmission of AIDS in Africa and prevent people from becoming infected and thereby serve a great and noble purpose. I think this: We know thousands of people are infected in Africa every year. According to conservative numbers generated by the World Health Organization, 250,000 to 450,000 Africans each year contract AIDS, a death sentence ultimately, through healthcare routes. They contract that not from dangerous activities, but from seeking to improve their own health by going to a hospital, a doctor's office, a clinic, and getting a shot or receiving a transfusion. One thousand a day at a minimum are infected by these procedures. It is totally preventable. It goes beyond just policy, and it is in my view a moral imperative. There is no doubt we can reduce this problem in Africa. We can do it by good policy and strong leadership and I believe we need to speak as a Congress on this issue. In March of this year I had occasion to read a newspaper article that was in the Washington Times. It quoted a published article in the International Journal of STD and AIDS, a publication of the British Royal Society of Medicine, that presented evidence that the reuse of needles and syringes has played a major role in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. At the time, the article challenged conventional wisdom and the belief in the international public health community that heterosexual sexual contact was the primary route of transmission for HIV in Africa and that medical transmission of the disease did not require the foremost attention of health care specialists. Dr. David Gisselquist pointed to a number of pieces of evidence supporting his conclusion that medical exposures account for a large proportion of HIV transmissions. He conducted an extensive review of refereed journal articles on the epidemiology--that is the history of the transmission, the people who get it--in the African HIV epidemic. A careful analysis of the data behind these studies enabled him to identify the following trends: No. 1, multiple studies he reviewed found HIV-infected children whose mothers test negative for the virus. Many of these children are far too young to have contracted the HIV virus through sexual practices or drug use, leaving their infections unexplained by conventional assumptions about the spread of the disease. It was found, however, that these children bearing the HIV virus had, on average, received nearly twice as many injections of vaccines and medicines than their uninfected peers, leading researchers to conclude that there was a strong correlation between the number of injections a child received and that child's chances of contracting HIV. As we looked at the issue, we found it was not a newly discussed matter but in fact had been out in the field for some time, unfortunately not receiving the kind of attention it should, in my view, have received from the people who were required and authorized to participate in the treatment and prevention of the disease. Let me just show this article, a blowup from the San Francisco Chronicle dated Tuesday, October 27, 1998, 5 years ago this date. The title of it is ``Fast Track To Global Disaster.'' The subheadline under the top is ``Deadly Needles.'' This is what the subheadline said: For decades, researchers have warned that contaminated syringes could transmit deadly viruses with cruel efficiency, but efforts to defuse the crisis failed, and today, it has become an insidious global epidemic, destroying millions of lives every year. You ask why, perhaps, did we not deal with that back in 1998 when these matters were being raised. Apparently, there was a debate and a concern that panic would ensue and maybe people wouldn't seek medical care, or that it would deflect attention from WHO's primary view that sexual transmission was the way AIDS was transmitted. I note this statement by Mike Zaffran of the World Health Organization. You can tell they were wrestling with it, although they did not take action. The subject quote is: We want to avoid creating a panic. But maybe there is a need to create that panic to solve this problem. According to WHO, 10 percent of the AIDS transmissions in Africa come from reused needles or contaminated transfusions, both of which are totally preventable, as I will discuss shortly. But I just want to say right now that there is evidence to suggest that the true figure is far larger than 10 percent. Remember, people who contract AIDS and who have no reason to believe they have AIDS are then in a position to unwittingly transmit that disease to their spouses and to others with whom they come in contact. Those who ultimately pass the disease by those contacts may not have done so had they known they had been exposed. I think it has a multiplier effect on the crisis in Africa, clearly affecting and involving the infection of millions of Africans. I have hosted two hearings in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on this issue. We have had witnesses from the World Health Organization, from USAID, and from private groups such as Physicians for Human Rights. They have presented evidence. At the conclusion of that testimony, I am even more concerned that the numbers the WHO has acted on or not acted on are low, that more than 10 percent of these HIV cases are being transmitted through unsafe healthcare. Certainly, that is the conclusion Dr. Gisselquist reached after extensive study. Let me talk about a couple of things: The good news and the bad news. Injection safety is a critical issue in America. Our health care community has long recognized the risks associated with unsafe injections. At the outset of the HIV epidemic in America, one of the top priorities in this country was to quickly ensure that patients and health care workers were educated about these risks and that steps were taken to provide ample supplies of single-use syringes--syringes that could not be used again--with safety features to ensure that both patients and providers were protected. In fact, one thing we dealt with in this Congress was the Ryan White Act that was passed in response to the infection of young Ryan White as the result of a tainted blood products that he received to treat his hemophilia. In fact, long before the HIV virus emerged as a significant epidemic in the United States, health care workers and policymakers were well aware that unsafe injection practices could spread many dangerous diseases and posed a public health hazard. There was ample evidence that unsafe practices can kill. From the 1950s through 1982, the Egyptian Government carried out an ambitious program to eliminate schistosomiasis, a serious parasitic disease. Infected Egyptians received multiple injections to kill this parasite--up to 16 injections over 3 months. The needles used in these campaigns were rarely sterilized sufficiently to kill viruses such as hepatitis C. By the 1980s, it became clear that Egypt was in the grip of a tremendous epidemic of hepatitis C, a disease that frequently leads to liver failure, cancer, and death. In a country of 67 million people, it was estimated that 20 percent of the population had been exposed to hepatitis C. Neighboring Sudan, in comparison, had a rate of less than 5 percent. This is still thought to represent ``the world's largest iatrogenic transmission event.'' The World Health Organization's data suggests that unclean needles contributed to an appalling 18.9 percent prevalence rate of the deadly hepatitis C virus in the Egyptian population. Altogether, over 12 million people were exposed to this virus and 7.2 million infected. Those are stunning numbers, and they are the result of using dirty needles. One of the University of Maryland researchers who chronicled this disaster stated emphatically that the practice of reusing inadequately sterilized or unsterilized syringes ``before the danger of exposure to blood was so well known, and before the availability of disposable needles and syringes provided a very potent means for the transmission of blood-borne infections.'' That is something we don't doubt in America today. Unfortunately, however, the same conditions that permitted this tragedy to occur continue to exist in Africa and other areas of the world, and these unsafe practices spread not only hepatitis but also the HIV virus, leading to AIDS and leading to death. Health care workers around the world continue to devote time and resources to treating medically transmitted infections, many of which remain incurable even by the best medical science. Since the recognition that unsafe injections pose an unacceptable risk in vaccination campaigns, international vaccination programs now almost universally include adequate injection safety training and supplies. These limited efforts are commendable but much more needs to be done. To understand the proportion of the problem that remains to be addressed, one must note the distinction between injections given for vaccination and therapeutic injections, or injections given for the purpose of treating infections or other diseases. It has been estimated that worldwide, therapeutic injections outnumber vaccinations by 9 to 1, totaling approximately 12 billion injections administered each year in the developing world, including the African nations of the Global AIDS Initiative. Despite this fact and the demonstrated risks associated with unsafe injections, researchers and leaders in the field of HIV prevention have warned that ``little attention has been paid to the systematic correction of widespread unsafe practices resulting in disease transmission through therapeutic injections''--the very problem referenced in this chart where, at the beginning, it says ``Deadly Needles''--dated October 27, 1998--5 years ago today. At the outset of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, our Government and the public declared that blood supplies must be absolutely safe. The Federal Government and the public health community moved rapidly to ensure that every single unit of blood donated in this country is tested for the HIV virus before it is given to any person. It is estimated--get this number--that 25 percent of the blood donated in Africa is never tested for HIV--75 percent is but 25 percent is not--and that up to 80 percent of the blood is not tested for hepatitis. It is estimated by the respected group, Safe Blood For Africa--their name indicates their concern about this problem--that as a consequence of this breakdown, approximately 15 percent of the sub- Saharan African blood supply is infected with HIV and 20 percent with hepatitis. Fifteen percent of the blood supply in sub-Saharan Africa is infected with HIV, a deadly disease. People go there and they get transfusions on a regular basis. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 10 percent of new HIV cases in Africa are due to contaminated blood transfusions. Once again, it is clear that transfusions of contaminated blood represent yet another hidden source of transmission of this disease, fueling the epidemic. Seventy percent of the recipients of these high-risk transfusions are women and children, making blood safety a critical component of our larger effort to fight HIV/AIDS and to protect the mothers and children. I will repeat that: 70 percent of the recipients of these high-risk transfusions--15 percent of which is contaminated with HIV-- are women and children. So what does that mean? That means that 15 out of every 100 women who go to get a transfusion in Africa--and many of them get transfusions because malaria leads to a lot of transfusions, really more than is needed to be performed but they are performed--and from those transfusions, thousands come home with AIDS. Instead of being healed and cured, they are infected with a deadly disease. It is important to recognize, too, that in the treatment of anemia, which is related to problems such as malaria, best medical practices would dictate that many of these transfusions are not necessary. So the combination of reducing the number of transfusions is the first step, along with making sure every blood unit that is utilized in Africa is tested for AIDS before being used in a blood transfusion. We have an HIV rate in the United States of less than 1 percent, and we test our blood supply. In some countries in Africa, the HIV prevalence rate is as high as 40 percent. Every blood donation in the world, and particularly in Africa, should be tested before we do transfusions. This is one more example of the potential ways in which we can reduce the risk of this deadly disease. I would also like to share some thoughts about why I think this is not just a public policy issue for discussion but why it is a moral imperative. We will be spending $15 billion over 5 years, on average $3 billion a year. I know there is debate whether we should have the full $3 billion this first year. I have my doubts the money can be assimilated, but we are going to be spending that over 5 years. Let me talk to you about the cost of completely fixing the medical transmission problem. One of the most startling facts and best news about health care transmissions of HIV in Africa is the fact that injection safety and blood safety have been specifically singled out by researchers as the most cost-effective means of preventing the spread of HIV. A study by the World Health Organization, in 1999--a year after the San Francisco Chronicle article--suggested that addressing the problem of unsafe injections might well result in actual savings for the governments and organizations financing the fight against AIDS. It can actually save them money. These savings would be generated both by a reduction in the number of unnecessary injections and transfusions, which, amazingly, may account for a majority of the therapeutic injections actually given--and a majority of the therapeutic injections in Africa are probably not necessary and could be handled without any shots or with a pill--and by avoiding the tremendous financial drain that occurs as a result of these infections, including hepatitis. In testimony before the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee at a hearing which I chaired in July, one of the leading World Health Organization researchers confirmed both his own conclusion that ending unsafe injection practices would be eminently cost effective and his projection that blood safety efforts would prove to be similarly cost effective. In fact, on a day when we are discussing $15 billion for Global AIDS, the benefits of an additional $1 billion here or $289 million there--I think you would all be stunned at the numbers involved in solving this problem. These estimates I am going to give you were provided by the World Health Organization. Clean, new needles and syringes for every injection, given by medical personnel educated in the proper use of injections in Africa would cost $24 million for all 12 nations included in the Global AIDS initiative. Just $24 million would provide safe and clean needles for every necessary injection in Africa. Clean, safe blood transfusions, administered by medical personnel trained in the proper indications for transfusions--$46 million for all 12 nations. So for $46 million, we can completely eliminate the problem of transfusions, which WHO admits could be 10 percent of the problem of all the problem of AIDS in Africa. There are so many tragic aspects to this problem. Hard-working frontline doctors and nurses inadvertently contribute to the spread of the very diseases they are struggling to prevent. At the HELP Committee hearing, it was very encouraging to hear the testimony of Dr. John Ssemakula, a physician from Uganda, who was able to describe the great strides his country has made in cleaning up injection practices. Dr. Ssemakula was also able to convey the plea of the dedicated men and women on the frontlines of health care in Uganda, that they be provided with the equipment they need to provide safe injections. These are intelligent, educated, well-intentioned people, and they simply want enough syringes to provide patients with safe health care. The health care system in developing nations frequently does not provide either necessary education in proper injection procedures or, for those providers who are striving to follow model practices, the relatively inexpensive supplies necessary to succeed. We are dealing with, frankly, with our health care providers worldwide, a double standard that is indefensible. You are tempted to say, it is an immoral double standard. Let me tell you about this troubling aspect of the problem. In developed nations, the general public has been made aware of the risk associated with unsafe medical care. We know in America you want safe health care. We insist on it. We spend what it takes to do it. We have needles that are safe to protect nurses and doctors from accidental pricks, much less the patient who goes to get a shot. When the use of contaminated blood and blood products results in the spread of HIV here, we act. The health community, the Federal and State regulators, and the American public immediately demand guaranteed safety, and very quickly we see that they get this. The safety of blood and blood products is now something Americans take for granted. Every unit of blood in this country is screened for HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. When it became clear that the reuse of contaminated needles put patients at risk, we acted. It is clear that many developing nations, including those in Africa within the President's Global AIDS initiative, have not yet been able to achieve similar results. This is where a disturbing double standard arises. The World Health Organization, the U.S. Government's Centers for Disease Control, and other organizations with employees in the developing nations openly caution their travelers to these areas, including their own workers, that blood is likely unscreened and needles likely reused. This is described as posing a risk of infection of hepatitis B, C, and HIV. Numerous workers, including our own embassy employees and AIDS workers in Africa, can tell of being instructed to ask for plasma expanders rather than dangerous blood transfusions or being cautioned to purchase and provide their own new, clean syringes when they go to the doctor. When formulating public statements and policy for these very same African nations, however, many of these organizations continue to maintain that contaminated blood and reused needles are not significant problems and do not pose substantial health risks to African patients. We have made some progress. We have had a number of hearings on this subject. I have become more convinced than I was when we started that this is an unacceptable practice. It is an unacceptable situation in Africa and one that can be fixed for less than $100 million a year. We can provide tested, safe blood for every transfusion in Africa, and we can provide clean, unused needles for every injection at a cost of less than $100 million a year. That is tremendous news. We are on the road to making some progress. I have talked to top officials in the World Health Organization and the U.S. Government. We believe that with Director Tobias' new position in the State Department as sort of an American global AIDS czar that he is attuning himself to this issue, that the CDC, at my request, is conducting research to develop a plan to attack this problem. Health and Human Services is conducting a study which we expect to receive back in a matter of weeks that will review independently all the other existing studies of AIDS transmission in Africa to attempt to determine just how big a problem this really is. And now we are at a point where we are putting this new money into the program. I urge my colleagues to act now to ensure that a certain amount of this money--it would be less than 5 percent, probably closer to 2 percent--be dedicated to dealing with the medical transmission problem. We need to do that. Sure, they can spend more than that if they want to, but this is the minimum amount that virtually guarantees tremendous success against medical transmissions. Let's do that as part of our legislation. We can go home and know that we made a difference. Some say: Well, Jeff, we are picking up on this issue. We really don't need any direction on how to spend our money. Just give it to us, and we will spend it like we want. I generally am sympathetic to agencies not being micromanaged. But with the resistance we continue to see from the World Health Organization and American organizations that deal with this issue, we need to ensure that this much money gets spent. There was a conference in September in Africa. Thousands of people attended who deal with the AIDS epidemic. The WHO entity issued a press release after that meeting--again just a matter of weeks ago--WHO issued a news release dismissing the significance of medical transmission. This caused a group of scientists who were at the meeting to issue a statement of their own contracting it. They said in effect, WHO continues to reject evidence that stopping HIV transmission through unsterile health care could slow the spread of disease. So we have a continuing problem, continuing to stick with numbers that do not appear to be justified and policies that need to be changed. It is time for us to take a step to save lives. The very thought that we could knock down maybe in 18 months' time, instead of 1,000 people being infected a day by the health care transmission of HIV in Africa, why it could be down to 200; and then in 2 or 3 years down to virtually zero? That is possible. Which would we rather do? Prevent the contraction of a deadly disease or try to deal with the consequences of the disease once a person is infected? This is the right step. I thank Senator McConnell for his interest and the President for his leadership. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I further ask unanimous consent that at 12:30 p.m., the Senate proceed to a cloture vote on the motion to proceed on S. 1751.