Jim Talent

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Madam President, I thank my friend for yielding. It has been a pleasure, in a sense, to be here. I will not take very much time. I have enjoyed hearing the remarks of my friends, the Senator from Hawaii and the senior Senator from Massachusetts. I have the pleasure of serving with them on the Armed Services Committee. They have often been eloquent on the floor of the Senate. My friend from Massachusetts has been eloquent on the subject of judicial nominations before. I am going to quote something he said about 5 years ago. I do it with respect and for a reason. He said on January 28, 1998: Nominees deserve a vote. If our Republican colleagues don't like them, vote against them. But don't just sit on them-- that is obstruction of justice. Free and full debate over judicial nominations is healthy. The Constitution is clear that only individuals acceptable to both the President and the Senate should be confirmed. The President and the Senate do not always agree. But we should resolve these disagreements by voting on these nominees--yes or no. We should resolve these disagreements by voting on these nominees-- yes or no. I have quoted this for a reason. The divisiveness over nominations, holding them up in one way or another, is not new to this Senate. This tactic of abusing the filibuster rule for a minority to stop court of appeals judges from even getting a vote, that is new; that is unprecedented. They have been blocking now or threatening to block a quarter of President Bush's court of appeals nominees. That is unprecedented, and the Senators doing it are responsible for doing it. They have to stand up for that. But the divisiveness and some elements of obstruction are not new. We have an opportunity with this debate, and we are all exhausting ourselves talking, trying to come up with a real bipartisan resolution. I hope we can end the debate by stepping back and coming up with a set of rules that will be fair to whoever is the President and whichever party controls the White House. If we could do that, then we could clear these nominees for a vote. We are coming to the end of President Bush's term. We don't know who is going to be President a year from now. But we know that President deserves a better procedure than we have given this President. Now is the opportunity to do that, and then we can get on to the other business of the Senate. I encourage both sides to do that, and I thank my friend from Georgia for yielding.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Are you aware with regard to any of those committee actions or inactions to which you refer, was there ever a case where a majority of the committee expressed a desire to vote up or down on those nominees?

Mr. TALENT. I wonder if the Senator knows how many court of appeals appointments Presidents on average have gotten over a 4-year term since Jimmy Carter? It is 40. There were 10 per year. I went back and looked. Does the Senator know how many court of appeals judges the other side has filibustered or will filibuster by Friday? It is six. I11Does the Senator know how many more they have threatened to filibuster? It is another six. I wonder if the Senator is aware of the fact that out of 40 court of appeals judges President Bush figures to get in a 4-year term, the other side has filibustered or threatened 12. So it is not four out of 168. It is 12 out of 40, or 30 percent. I don't know how the Senator feels about that. I wonder if he doesn't think that is a more relevant figure that maybe we should be using.

Mr. TALENT. Will my friend from New Jersey yield for a question?

Mr. TALENT. I wonder if the Senator from Minnesota will yield for a question.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I wish I could say it is a pleasure to be here with you at 4 o'clock in the morning. It is certainly always enjoyable to see you. This is a subject that is certainly worth discussing and it is extremely important. I have not been all that involved in it before. There are a number of other issues on which I have been working. I am here this evening because, when I look at the qualifications of the four nominees we are considering, Judge Owen, General Pryor, Judge Kuhl, and Justice Brown, those qualifications to me seem so outstanding that it seems that, had these nominees come up in the past, they would not only have been voted on but they would have been approved, and not only approved but approved by an overwhelming majority; as the Senator from Pennsylvania said a little while ago, approved by a voice vote. Now they are being filibustered. For the first time in the Nation's history, court of appeals nominations by the President of the United States are being stopped on the Senate floor by a minority using the filibuster. It never happened before. They filibustered four to this point. I hope that the minority will not filibuster two more on Friday. I understand there are six other nominations the President has made to the court of appeals for whom there is a threat of a filibuster. So it is quite possible that by the end of the year a minority of this body will have filibustered and stopped on the Senate floor, 12 court of appeals nominations, and that has never happened, not even once, in the history of the United States. Then there are some who stand here and say this is nothing new. It is not only new, it is unprecedented. It is not only unprecedented, it is action on a scale that nobody even contemplated before. You cannot look at the total number of nominations; you have to look at the nominations for the courts of appeals. You have to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges if you want these figures to mean anything. The President of the United States has nominated 46 people for the court of appeals so far; 29 of them have been confirmed, 6 of them have been filibustered or very probably will be filibustered by Friday; another 6 are threatened to be filibustered. I certainly invite my friends who have been part of this filibustering minority to stand here and tell us tonight if they don't intend to filibuster any more besides the six we are talking about. I don't think they are going to do that. That will make a total of 12 filibustered or threatened to be filibustered, 12 out of the 46 nominations the President has made to the court of appeals. One-quarter of the nominations the President has made to the court of appeals have been or are threatened to be filibustered. In the past 200 years, not one was successfully filibustered. It is an unprecedented usurpation or attempt to usurp the President's power from the Constitution, and the traditions of this body, to nominate people and get them appointed to the court of appeals. I heard the senior Senator from New York speak. He is my friend and I work with him on a number of issues. I find him to be delightful--well maybe not delightful, but he is my friend. He is a delight. He said the problem is, if they just come to me, I am the ranking member of the courts subcommittee, if the White House will just come to me before they make these nominations and consult with me. What he was saying is that together we could come up with good nominees. I think this is what the minority here is aiming to do. When I say the minority, I mean the group of people who are filibustering. They want a co-Presidency, as far as this is concerned; they hope the President will consult with them before making the nominations. I love my friend, the senior Senator from New York. Nobody from Missouri had a chance to vote for him. We have one President. He makes the nominations. The Senate's job is to vote to confirm. How has that job been conducted in the past, and exercised in the past? It is worth looking at. I say this not as a person who has been a Member of this body before this year, but as a citizen of the United States. I have looked at what happened in the past when we had these vacancies. When the President nominates, what do Presidents traditionally look at? What do you think? They look, first, at personal integrity. They want to nominate people who have integrity and a reputation for integrity. They look for people who they know or people who they know, know. In other words, if you want to be nominated to a judgeship, you try to talk to people in the administration you know or talk to people who know people in the administration. So you contact your Senator or you contact somebody in the Department of Justice, just like applying for any other job. If you know somebody, you contact him. And, of course, Presidents look at qualifications. They look at the achievements of prospective nominees in particular fields and then they look at relevant biographical information that may be specific to that appointment. Perhaps they are looking for a particular ethnic diversity or geographic consideration. Then the President and Department of Justice put all that together and they nominate somebody and send him down here. And then the Senate votes to confirm. How has the Senate done that in the past? The Senate has acted as a kind of check. The Senate looks at these nominees to make certain they have the positive qualifications that the President has said they have. The Senate looks at nominees to make certain they have minimum achievements and experience so that a lawyer, looking at a nominee, would say, yes, that is what a person ought to have to be on the Federal court bench. The nominee may have been a law professor. They may have been a practicing lawyer or a public official. Have they been out of law school long enough, received awards, published in their fields, litigated enough cases? The Senate looks at that for a minimum. We don't want to confirm somebody where the bench and bar around the country would look at that person and say, no, they haven't been out of law school long enough to serve on the Federal bench. Then, of course, the Senate looks at integrity. That is really a negative check: to make certain what they don't have. To make certain that they don't have stains on their record such that they should not serve on the Federal bench. They didn't cheat in law school. They have not been found guilty of ethics violations in the practice of law. There are not any notorious examples of incompetence in their background. That is what the Senate has looked at in the past: where nominees have met those qualifications; had that minimum that the Senate looks for; have not had the negative things the Senate wants to make certain they have not had. In the past, those nominees got a hearing. They were voted out of committee. They not only were put on the floor, but they got a vote on the floor. They not only got a vote on the floor, but they were confirmed, and they were not only confirmed, they were typically confirmed by overwhelming majorities, even by Senators who were of a different party, who disagreed with their jurisprudence. That is what has happened in the past and we have had a tremendous break from that precedent and that tradition in this Senate. Of that action in the past--some here have said that the Senate should not be a rubberstamp. Was the Senate a rubberstamp for 200 years? No, it was not. What the Senate did was show a respect for the constitutional separation of powers, which a minority of this Senate now refuses to show. Let's suppose families have, in their own way, constitutional arrangements just as this country does. Let's suppose that in some family the husband and wife have talked about who is going to handle the finances. They have decided that because the wife is maybe better at those things, or better able to handle those things, that the wife is going to handle the finances. If this is beginning to sound like my family, the analogy is pretty apt. So the wife in this specific family makes decisions regarding investments, and then goes to the husband and says: What do you think, I would like to put some money in this? Or I would like to invest in this thing. The wife gives him the benefit of the doubt. Is that a rubberstamp? That is a recognition, then, of the tradition of that family. The wife in that case has traditionally done this because that is how it is set up. It is not a rubberstamp; it is giving the benefit of the doubt, when appropriate, according to the arrangements that have traditionally prevailed in that family. That is what the Senate did for 200 years and that is what the minority is not doing now. That is why we are losing perspective about it. I will say this to my good friend from New Jersey, who is accusing us of losing perspective: Yes, we are losing perspective because about a quarter of the President's nominees to the court of appeals have been filibustered or threatened to be filibustered; because the Members who are filibustering want to be consulted. They want to be the ones who make the nominations when nobody had a chance to vote for them for President. That is enough to cause us to lose perspective. Why has it changed? What is causing this to happen? My friend from Pennsylvania asked that: Why? Why are we doing this? It's disrupting this body, it's dividing us, and it's an injustice to these people. I am going to get to that at the end if I have time. The worst thing about it is these people, who should be confirmed, or would have been confirmed 10 years ago, deserve to serve. They worked hard and millions of people around the country are going to wonder what is wrong with them because we can't even get a vote. It is not right. Why has it happened? I hear different things. I don't know. I talked to some people. I hear things that maybe Members on the other side at some point went to a retreat and a bunch of law professors met with them and told them if they didn't do something like this there would be an imbalance in the Federal courts. If that is true--I hear this, I don't know--I can immediately see a basic part of the problem, because we have law professors giving advice about something besides the law. I have a rule that when law professors give advice about something besides the law, it is almost always wrong. I say this as a person who used to be a kind of law professor. I never actually made it. I was a fellow, an adjunct professor. And they are brilliant and you get them out of their field and it is risky to take their advice about anything. Let's go back to imbalance. Going back through the Carter Presidency, which is back about 26 years--the last generation in the modern era. In the last 26 years, there has been a Republican President 14 years, a Democratic President 12 years. By the way, I am going to give overall figures for district court and court of appeals numbers but they don't vary. If you break them out and separate them, they don't vary that much. President Carter had confirmed 265 nominees to the bench; President Clinton, 377, for a total of 644, which is about 53 confirmed per year. President Reagan had 384. He was there for 8 years. The first President Bush had 195. Up to this point the current President Bush has had 168, for 747 over 14 years which is, Mr. President, about 53 per year. Where is the imbalance? That a Republican President for 14 years, Democrat President for 12 years, they each got about 53 per year and it is the same basically whether you break it out for court of appeals. They each got basically 10 court of appeals judges per year. There is no imbalance. We have had balance for the last 200 years, and the reason it has worked pretty well, is that the people have elected Presidents from different philosophies and different parties. That is how you get balance. The only way you get imbalance is if you have Presidents of one particular philosophy or one particular party elected year after year, term after term after term, and that has happened and there is a technical term for that. It is called representative government. Yes, if you lose a lot of Presidential elections in a row, there is going to be an imbalance on the Federal bench. That is the way it happens. The only time it has happened in the 20th century, by the way, is when the Democrats had the White House more than 20 years in a row, through President Roosevelt, and then through the only President ever from Missouri, our great Harry Truman. I don't recall hearing Republicans filibustering and claiming imbalance at that time. How much time do I have left?

Mr. TALENT. I have read about a group of law professors concerned about an imbalance on the court of appeals. That imbalance just doesn't exist. The same statistics I read before show Presidents back through Jimmy Carter have had each around 10 court of appeals appointments per year. It is a little bit more for the Republican Presidents; a little over 10, and a little under 10 for the Democrats, but there is no real difference. That is why it is very balanced, and we are just coming off two terms of a Democrat President. We are now in one term of a Republican. The next election is probably going to be close. I think that is probably what is working here. I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle who are filibustering don't continue to compare apples to oranges. Let us at least be fair. If you want to talk about how many were filibustered, it isn't 4 out of 168. If they follow through on this threat, it will be 12 out of 46, which is about a quarter. That was not a high point, even though that is just about a quarter. That means that only around 75 percent of them are going to be given an up-or-down vote. My friend from Arkansas and I work on a lot of things together. She is a great Senator. She was saying if her kids brought home 98 percent in math, she would be pretty pleased about it. I would, too, if my kids brought that grade home. I have three kids. If they brought home 75 percent in math, I would be a little bit concerned, particularly when in the past it has been 100 percent.

Mr. TALENT. I thank the Senator for his clarification. I think that it is very important. In the remaining time, I will just close by reading a little bit more about Judge Kuhl. These are real people who are getting unjustly treated in this body which is supposed to be about justice. Here is what Gretchen Nelson said. She is the officer of the Litigation Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and a prominent plaintiff's attorney. She probably gave money to my opponent in the last election. Here is what she said: I am a life-long Democrat. I am also a plaintiff's attorney. My political views are and always have been liberal. I firmly agree with U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade, and I trust that the decision will remain viable. I am opposed to the appointment of any judicial nominee who is incapable of ruling based upon a considered and impartial analysis of all the facts and legal issues presented in any matter. Judge Kuhl is not such a nominee and she is well-deserving of appointment to the Ninth Circuit. That is what Senators would have said 5 years ago on this floor. Don't say it hasn't changed. Anne Egerton, former law partner of Judge Kuhl: I understand some have raised concerns about Judge Kuhl's commitment to gender equality and reproductive rights. I don't share those concerns. Anne Egerton goes through her background with the Arizona Women's Political Caucus. I have been a registered Democrat for 30 years, and I have supported [Democratic legislators]. I have no reservations in recommending Judge Carolyn Kuhl for appointment to the Ninth Circuit. I know her to be committed to the rule of law and the application of governing precedents in the area of reproductive freedom; that precedent, of course, includes Roe v. Wade and the many cases which have applied. I don't think there is anything more to be said. I wish we could get consent to vote on these nominees and then we could go on to other business of the Senate. This is important. What is happening to these people is wrong. What is happening to the Senate is unfortunate and bad for the country. That is why I am here and that is why we are all here at 4:30 in the morning. I yield the floor.

Mr. TALENT. I am not going to intrude on the Senator's time. He referred to a lack of respect. I think the reason is because I don't believe there has been a situation where a majority of the committee or body wanted to vote up or down on a nominee when they didn't have that chance. I thank the Senator for yielding.

Mr. TALENT. I certainly thank the Senator from Pennsylvania. How much time do I have left, if any?

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. This is from IBP. They are packers. They are reporting what their major retail customers are notifying them that they have to do. Here is what the retail customers want us to do. I quote: Stick all covered commodities with country of origin information that complies with the law and USDA regulations. Provide enough signage to ensure one sign for each retail display in every shipment of product that cannot bear a label. Contract to maintain records and a verifiable audit trail to establish the accuracy of the country of origin information that retailers receive from packers for covered commodities. I will not read the whole letter. But suffice it to say, the major retailers are going to reorganize their inventory and distribution lines so they can keep separate these different kinds of beef. That is going to generate cost. They are going to require that as much beef as possible be prepackaged. This is interesting. It may result, unfortunately, in their laying off some meat cutters and people on the premises of the store who have been cutting meat fresh there. They are going to get it prepackaged because then they have to do as little as possible at the store. That may tend to encourage vertical integration in the production chain, which is the opposite of what we want. They are going to set up an audit system and require packers to have software and other kinds of records that will network into the retailers systems so they can trace back. And with every piece of meat they have in the counter, they are going to want to be able to trace that back to a particular cow so they can protect themselves in the event they are audited. Then, of course, this will domino down the line of production. The packers are going to have to have this software. They are going to reorganize some of their warehousing and inventory facilities. The auction barns and feedlots are going to have to have software which is compliant with this whole system. I visited auction barns, and they showed me how they are going to have to change where the cows are. They are going to tell the producers that they are going to have to be able to be compliant and network into their systems of verification and tracing when they bring cows to the auction barns to sell. I don't think we intended any of this. As I read the statute, I can't even stand here and tell you that the statute suggests that is absolutely the intention. But that is a possible, plausible interpretation of it. Even if the regulation said something entirely different, I don't think it would make any difference. The statute is what imposes the liability. The statute is supreme over the regulation. And the lawyers for these various retailers who are interpreting this are going to look first and foremost at the statute. They are going to act in a manner that protects their clients from the downside risk of substantial liability that arises because of certain unintended but, I think, nevertheless very real vagaries and vagueness in the law. What are we left with? We can allow this process to play itself out, basically not do anything as the effective date of the act approaches, which is October of next year. It is already having an impact because people are raising cattle right now that they are going to sell after October of next year and that they are going to have to be able to trace back. That is the reason we are beginning to hear the lead edges of the concerns about this because they don't know what they are supposed to do to comply with the law. They are concerned they may have to do all these things I have talked about. We can allow it to play itself out, kind of like a tragic play that you watch and just hope for a surprise good ending, and maybe we will get one. Maybe all this will sort itself out. We can repeal the law and replace it with something that is voluntary. I know that is what a lot of people want to do. That is probably what a lot of people in the House want to do. I am going to say in candor to the Senate that my evaluation of the risk here is such that I would prefer at this stage, if the only two choices are no mandatory law or the law we have now with the downside risks we have now, I would rather have no mandatory law. But there is a third alternative. We can fix the law. We don't have to end it. We can mend it. We can go in and in the same good faith in which this law was passed and the same good faith in which Senators have spoken on the floor today, and look at the areas that have given rise to uncertainty within the retailing community and the whole rest of the chain of production of this food, all the way down to the producers we are trying to help, and we can say: We can make our intention clear; we can give you the level of certainty you need to be able to implement this law and comply with this law in the manner that we all are saying now we originally intended. The law we passed in the farm bill doesn't have to be our final statement on the matter. We don't have to be getting into these kinds of arguments. That is a third alternative in which I would be very happy to participate. I will say, I don't intend to support this sense-of-the-Senate resolution--not because I don't understand the frustration that has led up to it; not because I necessarily disagree with what I have heard on the Senate floor about the motives that may have been working in the House; not because I am against, personally, a mandatory country-of- origin labeling law; not because, as the Senator from Nevada said, I am against what he was saying about consumers knowing where their food comes from. Maybe there is a good niche market available. Maybe if we can do this in a way that works, consumers will look at this and they will want to buy that American beef and it will help our producers. That would be great. But it does seem to me now that nobody is really satisfied with these regulations. Some people believe the regulations are an accurate reflection of the law, and they are not satisfied with the law. But they don't like the fact that the regulations are the way they are. Then there are people who think the regulations are not an accurate reflection of the law, and they don't like the regulations the way they are. So it does seem to me that maybe the House has done the right thing--albeit, perhaps, for the wrong reason--in saying: Let's not implement the regulations. I will say, if the House feels that not implementing the regulations means the law isn't going to go into effect, they need to consult some different lawyers. That law reads that the effective date is in October of next year. Whether there are regulations or not, that liability is going into effect then. If we have a level of discomfort, as I do at this stage, with how the statute reads, we better do something about it in time so the people we are trying to help will enjoy the benefits of the law we passed 2 years ago. Mr. President, it has been an experience for me to investigate and oversee this implementation. At this point I will say I stand ready to work with anybody on either side in trying to make certain we get a result that is at least acceptable and, I hope, is good for our producers. In my discussions with Senators, I have come to have a great deal of respect for their sincerity and passion on this issue. I don't see, given that, why we cannot come up with something that will work better for everybody than what we have now. With that, I will yield.

Mr. TALENT. Yes.

Mr. TALENT. I appreciate the Senator's question. I am happy to answer him in complete candor. I have not had the capacity in my subcommittee and in my office to be able to quantify what the costs are. I do know that actors in the chain of production, who I don't think have a big ax to grind--I am not talking about the packers here--have told me they are very concerned with what they are going to have to do to comply with this. It is chiefly the retailers, but not just them; also auction barns, and I have had producer organizations come; and I think their sense is that the thing that we are basically intending--as the Senator is saying, let consumers know where the beef comes from--is something we probably could handle at an affordable level. But there is enough uncertainty in this, which they are not willing to risk, and the Senator can understand that they don't want to face-- or be the ones at risk of facing a huge liability if they get it wrong. So it is reasonable to believe that the potential cost of this is very substantial. I can say that to the Senator. I cannot say it is $2 billion or half a billion. I just cannot tell the Senator that.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I rise also to talk a little bit about country-of-origin labeling. I guess I ought to tell the Senate, first, why I am inflicting my opinions on this subject on the Senate. I have the honor of chairing the Subcommittee on Marketing, Inspection, and Product Promotion of the Agriculture Committee. I was not told, when I was given that assignment, that it included supervising the implementation of the country-of-origin labeling law, a law the Congress passed before I was here and on which I did not have an opportunity to express my opinion. I know feelings run high regarding that law. I have had the opportunity to study the issue, and I have tried, from the beginning, to be an honest broker in this whole process, just to try to see that this law--which was passed before I got here and which is part of the law now--is implemented in a way that accomplishes what it was originally intended to accomplish. In the course of doing that, I have, of course, read that statute. I have had a chance to talk to several of the Senators who were instrumental in writing it. It is pretty clear, from the statute, the gist of what the Congress intended. It is like reading an essay quickly; you sort of get the gist of it. The problem I will get to in a minute is, when you go into the details of it, a lot of it is rather vague. That is going to raise problems in the implementation unless we do something. But I think the gist of it is pretty clear. I am going to restrict my remarks to beef even though, of course, the bill covers a whole wide range of different products. But for simplicity's sake, I will talk about beef. From the bill, it is pretty clearly the intention is that all beef be labeled, that there be specific labels for American beef, that we begin to control what people are calling American beef. The legislation references and, in some respects, in some sense, seems to want to be modeled on some existing labeling programs. But, as I will say in a minute, it does not make clear exactly what the legislation is. It puts the burden of compliance on the retailers, which is very significant in getting us where we are now with the implementation of it. The legislation seems to contemplate that it be enforceable by the Department with some kind of a grace period. There is a section in the legislation relating to the grace period. So if you read the legislation, it seems to me the gist of it, of what it intended, is pretty clear. I think what I have said is consistent with the conversations I have had with Senators who were very responsible and have acted in good faith from the beginning in writing this legislation and are now interested in its implementation. The problem is, the legislation is vague in a lot of respects. It imposes a very serious potential liability on people, but in certain crucial aspects--in fact, in a lot of crucial aspects--it is really not clear exactly what they have to do to avoid that liability. It is not that anybody intended the vagueness. I know what it is like when you are in the middle of a conference committee and trying to come up with legislation under all the pressures of time and the need to compromise and to check with a bunch of different people. It is hard to do something that has 100 percent precision under those circumstances. Let me go through some of the respects in which I think the legislation is a little difficult to understand. As I said before, the statute lists certain model programs, and references them, such as the Florida labeling statute. It does not make clear, however, whether those programs are safe harbors--in other words, whether the people who are supposed to comply with this and who do it in a way that those programs operate, are safe from liability. As a matter of fact, the suggestion in the legislation is it is reasonably clear they are probably not safe because the legislation seems to require things that are not in some of these model programs. But if those models are not safe harbors, then what are they? What purpose do they really have? It is just not clear from the statute. The statute makes clear, it seems to me, that you can only call something American beef if that beef was born, raised, and processed in the United States. I think it is pretty clear that was one of the major purposes of the statute. But it does not say what the label ought to say, and it really addresses in no respect whatsoever what you should put on the label for beef that you do not want to claim was born, raised, and processed in the United States. It requires that foreign beef, within the meaning of the statute, be labeled, but it gives no clue whatsoever as to what that label ought to say--again, even given the fact that the statute does assign substantial liability if you get it wrong. So the intent is pretty clear, with regard to American beef, that it has to be born, raised, and processed in the United States if you want to call it American beef. It does not say exactly what that label should say and is very unclear and supplies really no guidance as to what the label should say if you do not want to call it American beef. The statute prohibits a mandatory tracing system in order to determine whether a label is correct. It says you cannot have a mandatory tracing system, but at the same time it requires that there be some kind of verification system. It certainly is not clear, I think, to anybody how we can have a mandatory verification system that does not include a mandatory tracing system. Now, I am not saying it is impossible; I am saying it is not clear. Again, there are very substantial liabilities for people who make the best guess they can from the statute and then get it wrong. The statute says the Department of Agriculture can enforce it at up to about $10,000, potentially, per violation. It does not say whether that is the exclusive means of enforcement. The statute is not clear whether there is some private cause of action, whether a class action in State or Federal court could be brought against a retailer that does have the burden of compliance that fails in some respect to comply with the statute. The statute does not say how this statute, the country-of-origin labeling law, relates to other labeling statutes. So it is not clear whether a violation of the country-of-origin labeling law is also a violation, for example, of the food safety laws or the other labeling laws or consumer protection laws or how that is going to relate to State consumer protection laws. I do not raise these issues as if this were some kind of a law school exam. I raise them because it is very important to understand this is a statute that people are going to have to follow regardless of what the regulations say, at least within limits. Let me go on to the next point because I think it is essential we make it in order to focus exactly on where we are now. We can concede, again, the good faith of both sides on this. We certainly can concede the good faith and intentions of the Senators who drafted this bill and the Congress that passed it. What we know is that the statute unquestionably does this. It imposes a labeling requirement with substantial liability for retailers, the last business organization to handle the food before consumers get it, if they violate that labeling requirement. What I want to suggest to the Senate is that what the regulations say, while, of course, it is important because it bears on how the statute might be interpreted, is a lot less important in determining how this is practically going to be construed and implemented than what the companies, the chief retailers in the country think, as their lawyers examine this law. How this law is implemented is going to depend on the advice the general counsel for Wal-Mart and Safeway and Giant give their executives as they consider how to implement this law. I have the documents. I have talked to people in this position. Given the vagueness in the law and the potential liability in the law, they are advising their clients to take the most conservative position possible in order to protect themselves against the worst case scenario for liability. They are not going to take a risk of some big class action lawsuit against them or some huge investigation by the Department of Agriculture with all the attendant negative publicity because they have taken a chance and interpreted this law as requiring less than perhaps it would require. This is why we are hearing back--all of us who have farm State constituents, and many who don't--from people in the production chain, in the distribution chain of food who are saying: This law is going to require us to do this and this and impose this cost and take that measure, not necessarily because of what was originally intended, but because the confusing aspects of the statute give rise to vagueness that creates the potential for liability that these companies are simply not going to risk. They are going to do what they have to do to protect themselves. Whatever it costs, they are going to do it and pass it down the production chain. That is my concern, that we end up, as a result of unintended vagueness in the law--I will concede to the Senate--passing these costs of production down where eventually they will settle on the weakest competitors in the food chain, which is, of course, the producers. So my cattlemen and yours may end up having to bear all these extra costs that are generated because of these concerns, and we end up hurting the very people, along with consumers, we are trying to help in passing this law. What are some of the things the retailers may do? We have been collecting a lot of information. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. TALENT. I have. I have heard a number of things from retailers. One chain told me they are probably going to have to end up laying off many meatcutters because more of it will be prepackaged. I mentioned that in my remarks. I have retailers telling me they are going to advertise less for beef. One fellow said: I don't want a lot of beef if I have this potential liability. I will simply advertise more for chicken. It will hurt the smaller stores in the more rural areas, and the bigger unionized stores to some extent. In fairness to the Senators who supported this, and in good faith still support it, I want to say a lot depends on how exactly these companies interpret the law and what risk level they are willing to go to. My concern as a lawyer--and I think the Senator would probably agree--is that their general counselors are going to say: We are not going to take a chance. Tell everybody all up and down the production chain, this is what we want from them, and they are going to have to bear the cost.

Mr. TALENT. I yield the floor.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I rise for a few moments to second the remarks of the Senator from Arkansas and say this amendment, although certainly well intended, is a threat to forests, including old-growth forests in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. We have 300,000 acres of forests in those States that right now, as we speak, are infested with pests such as the red oak borer. The Senate needs to understand what happens when these pests descend upon the forests. The red oak borer will bore into a tree, create a huge gash, a deep hole in the tree. If you have ever seen it, it makes you feel for this tree. It lays its eggs in the tree so it interrupts the tree's ability to pass nutrients up and down the trunk, eventually killing the tree and laying other eggs that burrow deep into the tree or fly out and infest other trees. The pest is getting stronger because we have not been able to manage it. They used to spawn every 2 years and now they spawn every year. We are in danger of losing whole forests, including old-growth forests. As the Senator from Arkansas said, it is the older trees that are the most liable and the most vulnerable to this infestation. I don't want that to happen. There is no reason for it to happen. All we have to do is empower our Forest Service to manage the forests to take care of these trees, the old growth as well as the new growth, and prevent the spread of these pests. I have talked to experts in Missouri. They are sad at what is happening. You cannot observe it without being depressed at what is happening. The trees die. When they die, the deadwood litters the floor of the forests. That is additional fuel which increases the risk of fire not only to the national forests but to the private landholders nearby. That increases the risk of property loss, of loss of life. We do not want to have happen in Missouri what is happening in other parts of the country. We want to stop those fires that are occurring in California, as well. This is a very important provision that a number of Senators have worked on for a long time. It is a carefully tailored compromise. It is a good compromise and one we ought to pass. I respect the purpose of the amendment, but I encourage the Senate to vote against the amendment, and vote to table it if that motion is offered. I yield the floor.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, it was not really my intention to come down on this particular debate and speak. I would like to give a broader statement on the war at some point. But I thought I would come for a few minutes today because I have been watching from time to time our friends on the Democratic side, particularly the Presidential candidates who seem to be vying with each other to show their base, to show the left how much they are against the war. They are trying to appeal to the left, which is certainly understandable given that they are running in a primary. That has distressed me because I think the growing opposition to the war on the left is a tremendous historical mistake. People in that movement will view it that way 20 or 30 years from now. I say with all good faith to my friends in that movement that this is not the 1960s. Iraq is not Vietnam. Saddam Hussein is not Ho Chi Minh. The terrorists are not some kind of utopian movement that wants to create a workers paradise around the world. The terrorists stand for everything that this country hates, and in particular, everything the left in this country has always stood against. They are bloodthirsty cutthroats. They don't believe in diversity. They are racial and religious bigots. They are sexists. They hate the idea of international law. They have no respect for international norms. We should all be opposing them. This is a war in which we should all be involved. We should all get in the same boat and row. I know it is hard to support a war which is led by a President you do not support. I was in that situation when we were involved in Bosnia. We are still there. It is hard to support a war led by a President whose very election you question. I understand what it is like to lose a contested election and, in fact, to lose one, the outcome of which is disputed. I was in that situation when I ran for Governor in 2000. I believe very strongly that this is an American war. This action in Iraq is part of it. There is a tremendous strategic aspect of this war. We can and will win it, if we pull together, if we get in the same boat and row. There is no reason we should not. I urge both parties and all different parts of the philosophical spectrum to do that. I want to take a few minutes to talk about this package, and in particular the need for reconstruction. There are three reasons this is very important, why it is in America's interest to spend this money and reconstruct Iraq. First, we have to get the lights on there so that we can do the job we have set out to do. It is very difficult to hunt people down, hunt the terrorists down, if you can't turn on the lights. We need this infrastructure in order to do our job. Second, we have to create a basic infrastructure in Iraq so that the country can have the stability that will allow us to leave honorably. None of us want to be there. But we have engaged in this war for our interests, and it is now our responsibility to make sure the country is stable enough so there is not chaos when we leave. To do that, they have to have an electricity grid, among other things. The third point was made powerfully by Prime Minister Blair in the House Chamber. Part of what we have to do in this war is not just defeat the terrorists but vindicate our values against which they stand. It is not enough just to curse the darkness. We have to light a candle. One of the terrorists' goals is to spread their philosophy and their ideals all throughout the Islamic world, from Morocco to Indonesia. We need to show that the ideals of our democracy--dignity, freedom, the rights of the individual--are not just for us; they are for everybody. They don't just work for us; they will work for everybody. That is why the creation of a stable, benign Iraqi democracy is so crucial an aspect of this war. It would be an enormous strategic victory for us if we could create such a democracy there. I believe we can. I believe we are. We can and will win, if we don't quit. I don't believe the people are going to quit. I don't believe this Congress is going to quit. This money we are spending today is in our interest to spend. That bears on the loan versus grant problem. Certainly I hope we get this money back. I would love to get this money back. We all should do what we can to enhance the Treasury and FSC and the American taxpayer. But if it is in our interest to do it, we should do it the same way we do everything else that is in our interest--we just spend the money. If it is not in our interest, we should not loan it to them either. I don't want to loan money to a country just to help them. I am representing Missouri and the United States of America. We spend money. We loan money to advance America's interests. If it is in our interest, and we believe that, we ought to be willing to give it to them in the form of a grant, especially since everybody knows, if we give this money in a loan, eventually we will forgive it. We will not get the money back anyway. We are going to urge everybody around the world to forgive it. This is in America's interest. We can light a candle. We can defeat these terrorists. We can win this war. We ought to do it. I hope we will all pull together in the debate on this bill and get it done. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the upcoming groundbreaking on Saturday, October 4, 2003, for construction of Missouri's third farmer-owned ethanol plant, Mid-Missouri Energy Ethanol Plant, which will be located in Malta Bend, MO. Mid-Missouri Energy, the farmer-owned cooperative that is building the plant, began its grassroots efforts in early 2002 and has since added over 720 farmer-investors. This plant will process 15 million bushels of corn each year, producing 40 million gallons of ethanol annually, creating more than 35 new jobs in Saline County. It will boost the value of locally grown corn and generate revenue for the farmers who have invested in the cooperative. In addition, the site preparation and construction of the plant will provide a boost to the area's economy. This plant is being built at a cost of $60 million, and it is expected to be in operation by Spring 2005. The technology for ethanol-blended fuel will only get better as the distribution network continues to grow. Ethanol is already marketed in a number of places at the same price as gasoline, and its increased use will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and help agricultural producers. There are currently 73 ethanol plants in the country, with the capacity to produce 2.9 billion gallons annually. The Malta Bend plant is one of 13 new plants under construction, which represent more than 400 million gallons per year of new ethanol production. I am confident the energy bill that emerges from the Congress will retain the Renewable Fuels Standard, which will double the production and use of ethanol over the next ten years. I am proud of the hard work and commitment that the farmers of Mid- Missouri Energy have shown in getting this plant built. Their efforts are crucial to helping our agricultural industry in Missouri and providing jobs and growth for the Missouri economy. I am pleased to congratulate them, as well as the farmer-investors of Missouri's two operative ethanol plants, Northeast Missouri Grain, LLC and General Triangle Energy Cooperative, for all that they have done to support Missouri job creation and economic growth.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, it is a real pleasure for me to rise on the subject of opportunity scholarships for kids in the District of Columbia. Before I make my statement, I am going to ask that a couple of items be printed in the Record. My good friend and colleague from Louisiana, I understand, has suggested that the administration does not or may not support those aspects of this bill which provide funds for DC public schools directly or for charter schools. I have a letter signed by the Secretary of Education. I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. TALENT. In relevant part, it refers to the three funding initiatives in the bill, and then says each of these three elements of the initiative is critical and each must be retained in the final bill. That is on behalf of the administration. I think that makes clear the administration is strongly supportive of all three aspects of this measure and feels they are a package, and I think that is true. That is how all of us who support this measure feel. I know suggestions have been made with regard to Mayor Williams' support of this measure, that it was somehow foisted upon him by somebody or some group. I refer the Senate to an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, and I also ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. TALENT. It is written by the Mayor, along with Councilman Chavous and the President of the District of Columbia Board of Education, in which they go into their reasons for supporting this measure. It is a rather passionate explanation of why they believe this measure is so important; in fact, not just important but absolutely necessary to thousands of kids in the District of Columbia who otherwise would have little hope of getting a good education. That is the feeling I have noticed in all of us who have encountered this issue over time feel. I encountered the issue of opportunity scholarships for kids when I first started working on community renewal, which is what our little group used to call urban renewal, and as some people call it. I got involved in that in the mid-1990s. As part of that involvement, I toured a lot of places in Missouri and in the country where people were revitalizing their neighborhoods. They were doing it by adopting the kind of measures that brought small business investment in their neighborhoods, working with the police and community policing, working with local organizations on substance abuse programs and on home ownership. It was all tremendously inspiring. I ended up filing the Community Renewal Act first in 1995 on the House side with then-Congressman J.C. Watts and Congressman Floyd Flake. Subsequently, a Senate bill was filed by then-Senator Abraham and my good friend from Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman. We were all involved in this and believed in it passionately. I remember I was in Indianapolis talking to some residents about their community renewal efforts. They brought up the whole subject of opportunity scholarships, or school choice, or whatever one wants to call it. This was a depressed urban area like many parts of the District of Columbia, and they said we have to have good local schools because it does not do any good for us to get jobs and safety on the streets and the other things that are vital to community renewal if we do not have good local schools because, what happens is people get jobs and then they leave. They do not stay because they have to have a good education for their kids. I got involved with this issue at the time, and in the bill we filed we had a little piece of it that was simply directed to opportunity scholarships for the urban poor for kids going to failing schools. I remember we introduced it at a press conference, and the press asked: Is this just something you are doing to try to help the Catholic Schools? That was one of the charges: They said this is something the Catholic Church is doing to help its schools. Spence Abraham thought about it, and he started to answer it. Then he looked at the five of us standing there and he said: Wait a minute. Jim, what denomination are you? I said: I am a Presbyterian. He said: J.C., you are a Baptist youth pastor, are you not? J.C. Watts said: Yes. Then he asked former Congressman Floyd Flake: You are a pastor in the AME Church? Floyd said: Yes. Then he turned to Senator Lieberman: Joe, of course, you are an Orthodox Jew. Joe said: Yes. And he said: I am Greek Orthodox. We are doing this as part of a conspiracy by the Catholic Church to get money into those schools? Those Catholics play a pretty deep game. For the next few years, we debated that measure and eventually passed the Community Renewal Act without the opportunity scholarship part of it. The point I am trying to make is, I have been back and forth for years now with all of the arguments, pro and con, on this. I have heard them all. I have participated in them all, in the House, and then in a race for Governor in Missouri in the year 2000, then in the race for the Senate in the year 2002. It is not that those arguments are not important, because they are. They have usually been argued with great eloquence. They have been on the floor this morning. They were yesterday, and I was listening to some of them on both sides and appreciating the eloquence and vigor with which they argued. But I am at the point where I have to ask myself, what difference do those arguments really make in the face of the brute reality that every day thousands of kids in the District of Columbia get up and go to school where their parents and they know they are not safe, they will not learn, and it is not going to change? That is the position real people are in every day. They do not have any other options. That is the reality. I think of this more and more from the standpoint of the parents, because I have talked to a lot of them over the years. I have three kids. They are 13 and 11 and 7. You will not be surprised to find out that my wife and I spend a lot of time talking about the education of these kids, trying to make the same decisions parents all over the country have to make about education: Which first grade teacher would be better for the 7-year-old? We spend a lot of time talking about that one. What kind of electives should the 7th grader take, now that he can finally take electives? Should he be in the public presentation class or Spanish or what? We talk about this, and these decisions are very important to our kids. These kinds of decisions for our kids might make a difference in terms of how far they go in life. It might make a difference in terms of how successful they are in life, so we spend an awful lot of time on it. But I am going to tell you these parents I talk to about this issue, they are not making those kinds of decisions. Those are not the kinds of things they are debating. When I talk to them, there is a sense of urgency and sometimes a sense of panic in their eyes because they know a lot more is at stake than which teacher their kid is going to get in first grade. They know what is at stake for their kids may be not how successful they are in life or how far they go in life but whether they have a real shot at it at all. This is the difference between a good education and not a good education when you are trying to raise kids on your own in these neighborhoods and you don't have any help from anybody else anyway. That is why they feel this sense of panic, because they are looking at their kids and they know, if something is not done quickly--and it is not going to be done in the traditional system--if something is not done quickly for their kids, they are looking at kids who, if they are trapped in that school for their whole educational career, are a whole lot more likely to end up by the time they are 25 years old in a gang or on drugs or in jail or wounded or maybe dead. That is what these parents are thinking. That is why this bill is important to them. We ought to give them a chance. That is for all they are asking. They have been looking for this kind of relief for years. The House has voted it for years. The Senate has voted on it. The idea that this is something new this President has presented is just not correct. There are a bunch of us who have been involved in it one way or another for a whole lot of years. Now we actually have a chance to pass it. Now we have a chance to give these parents and their kids some options, and we just ought to do it. The upside for these families is tremendous. The downside is just not that great. If it doesn't offer them a better education, they will not take advantage of these scholarships and the money will revert--I guess to the District of Columbia. Or does it revert to the Treasury? To the District of Columbia. OK, the arguments against it. I guess the argument--I had not heard this but I suppose it could happen--the District of Columbia voted against vouchers 20 years ago. It was 20 years ago. The argument I hear a lot, that opportunity scholarships or school choice will hurt the public schools. This is kind of ironic and I have discussed this with parents. Of course, everybody else in the country, except these, usually, single moms in these neighborhoods, has school choice. Talk to somebody in the realtor business if you do not believe that. When people buy a house someplace what do they ask about? They ask about the schools, don't they? Because, for the average person in this country, if your school is a school where you think your kid is missing out, it is not a marginal question. If that school is really failing your kid, for whatever reason, you are going to do one of three things. You are going to move, you are going to put your kid in a private school or a different school of some kind, or--and this is an increasing number of people--you are home schooling your kids. You are going to do something. But these moms can't do that because they don't have the money to move, they don't have the money to put their kids in a private school, and they are working, so they don't have the time to stay home and home school. So they are stuck. Everybody else in the country has this kind of opportunity and that has not hurt the public schools. This is a country that believes in, and is enriched by, diversity, by people having different opportunities and different choices. Everybody has it except them. They think that argument is quite ironic. The argument against this, that it will cost the public schools money--Mr. President, do words have meaning? It gives the public schools more money, $13 million more than they would otherwise get. If the scholarships don't work, they will get more. The $13 million will revert to the Treasury and we can give that to them as well. I have already gone over the argument that it was foisted on the Mayor. It wasn't. Boy, if it is, he is doing a pretty good job dealing with something that was foisted on him. I saw him down here in the Senate the other day. I don't like to burden the Senate too much with my speeches. It is only when I have dealt with something for a while where I feel strongly about something. I do about this issue. I appreciate the opportunity to talk and I appreciate the passion and the sincerity of those who oppose this. I would like to reach out and say to folks, let's try this year. I think it is going to work. These parents think it is going to work. We had 10,000 people line up in 1997 for 1,000 part-time scholarships. Let's give these kids a chance. I think we will be glad we did, if we will vote this in. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. TALENT

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

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I really do appreciate the opportunity to come this morning and say a few words about this momentous event that is in the minds and hearts of every American today. I thought rather a lot about what I ought to say. I certainly do not want to be guilty of presumption to lecture to the American people about what they ought to reflect upon as we all remember this attack upon our Nation that today is 2 years old. We are going to talk about it tonight at our dinner table. I have three children. We are going to spend a few minutes--which is about all that young children spend thinking about anything, I guess--talking about this. I think it is important, and I thought maybe what I could do and would be appropriate to do is to share what our family is going to talk about tonight, at least if the dad in that family has anything to say about it. I think this is a good opportunity for us to reflect upon what a nation is and what America is as a nation. We are not just a place where 250 million people happen to live together. We are not like a big apartment complex, where the only thing people have in common is the proximity of their living arrangements. Any nation, especially America, which, as rich as we are in cultural and ethnic diversity and different traditions that have added to our national life, is also a nation that is held together by some common beliefs. We don't have a monarchy here, thank God. We don't have an established religion that defines us as a nation. We do have a commitment to certain shared values, certain transcendent codes about how people should live in a decent and civilized country. Those codes have a claim, by common recognition, on our actions. Each of us, even if we don't realize it, makes hundreds of decisions every day in response to those shared beliefs. Maybe at the core of those beliefs is a common recognition on the part of the people of this country that human beings have an inherent dignity. As the Framers of the Declaration of Independence said: They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Inalienable means you can't give it away, you can't sell it, and it can't be taken from you. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--we are equal in the possession and the enjoyment of these rights. Pursuit of happiness is just the right to participate in an orderly fashion in the institutions of private, social, and economic life, and in the political activities of the day. One thing Americans recognize is that we as a people, and indeed people all over the world, are, by virtue of our humanity, in possession of these rights and they cannot be taken away. I believe very strongly that we were attacked 2 years ago precisely because that is what we believe. It was an attack upon this common heritage and because we stand for that in this world. It is because we stand for that, that hundreds of millions of people around the world look to this Nation as a beacon of hope--what Lincoln called the last and best hope of all mankind. I certainly agree with that, in the secular sense of it anyway. That is the reason we were attacked. I want our family tonight to reflect upon three things. First, I want us to take satisfaction as Americans--and I hope all Americans will take satisfaction--in what we as a nation have achieved in the war against terrorism this last year. We are safer than we were 2 years ago--not in the sense that attack is impossible; that is not true. But in the sense that it is less likely to succeed than it was 2 years ago. That is because of the resolution of the American people which has motivated this Congress, in a bipartisan way, and the President of the United States to conduct this war against terrorism with vigor. We have put thousands of these terrorists in places where they cannot hurt us and our families anymore. We have built a great international coalition, in which we are at the center, that is every hour of every day organizing its intelligence and its police forces with the utmost vigor to track these people down and put them away. We have taken the fight to the enemy in Afghanistan and now in Iraq, where our men and women are heroically defending this Nation. It is hard to plan an attack on us here at home when you never know when the 101st Airborne may be descending on you in Iraq or the FBI may be descending on one of your cells or one of our Allied Nations with our police forces may be chasing you around the corner. I want us as a nation, and we will as a family, to resolve to continue this fight until we win. I believe we are winning. I believe we will win. I do not believe this Nation is going to quit. We are going to have our squabbles about how we ought to conduct it. Other people are going to look at us and wonder how we can continue with all this in-fighting. There are many people around the world who consider us to be, as Winston Churchill quoted somebody referring to us, as ``a numerous, remote, and talkative people.'' We certainly are numerous, sometimes we are remote, and we are often talkative. But no one should mistake the resolve of every American, and every Member of this body, to continue this fight until the end, until we remove the shadow of this tyranny, this ruthlessness, and this evil not just from this country but from the lives of everybody around the world who loves freedom. The third thing I want our family to do, and I hope America will do, is reflect on the sacrifice of those who are fighting this war on the front line. There is a sense in which we are all fighting this war. I was asked by the press a couple of days ago how it has affected the lives of people on a day-to-day basis. I said, you know, in your personal lives it has, to some extent, every time we go into a Federal building or fly on an airline. But in people's business or trade or jobs, it has affected it a lot. Almost everybody's job has been affected to some degree, if you stop to think about it. The computer system is different because you or your employer may be cooperating with Federal authorities in some way, or tightening up security. There are just all kinds of ways in which our lives are different. There is a sense in which we are all fighting this. But I want us to think about the sacrifices of the people on the front line and especially to reflect upon those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, those who gave everything they had to give: the firefighters who fell in the towers, the men and women who have given their lives in the battle against terrorism in Afghanistan and now in Iraq. I often--not often, but too often, I guess, in the sense it happens too much--have occasion to communicate with somebody from Missouri who has lost a loved one in that struggle. I think a lot about what to say to them. In a sense, there is no way in which words can possibly begin to assuage the grief they feel. But one of the things I do try to remind them is to take comfort from what this sacrifice of their loved one says about the things their loved one held dear. These men and women who have died in this fight knew when they went into it that they were putting their lives on the line. I am not saying they talk about it all the time. I don't think they do. They are not the kind of people who wear their feelings on their sleeves. But they know why they are doing what they are doing. They know the risks. They know the potential cost. And they know, and have resolved in their hearts, why it is worth it. In conclusion, I hope that those who are close to those who died-- and, indeed, all of us--will reflect today that the sacrifice of those who have fallen is a measure of the love they have for their families and the value they place on the freedom of their country. I yield the floor.