Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I send the modification to the desk. I thank both Senator Leahy and Senator McConnell for their support. This is the first time we are going to have such a report. It is going to be very important to the human rights community and the law enforcement community. It will have a stigmatizing effect on countries involved in this, and it is going to make a huge difference from the point of human rights.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I wonder whether or not before colleagues speak, I could just send this amendment, the second amendment, to the desk so it is filed.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, with my colleagues' indulgence, I ask unanimous consent that I may follow the Senator for no more than 10 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this past Saturday was the 2nd annual U.N. International Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors. The practice of torture is one of the most serious human rights abuses of our time. According to Amnesty International, torture conducted by government security forces, or that is condoned by other government officials occurs in at least 120 countries today. We need look no farther than today's headlines about Turkey, Iraq, Kosovo, China and Ethiopia to know that we will be dealing with the problems that torture victims face for many years. We can and must do more to stop such horrific acts of torture, and to treat its victims. Focusing on treatment and rehabilitation for torture survivors is one of the best ways we can manifest our concern for human rights worldwide. As our recent intervention in Kosovo to stop a humanitarian crisis demonstrates, both the United States and the international community have become aware of the need to prevent these human rights abuses and to punish the perpetrators when abuses take place. Yet, too often we have failed to address the needs of the victims after their rights have been violated. The treatment of torture victims must be a central focus of our efforts to promote human rights. This commitment to protect human rights is one shared by many around the world. In 1984 the U.N. approved the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The U.S. Senate ratified it in April of 1994. And just last year the Congress enacted the Torture Victims Relief Act which authorizes funds for treatment services for victims of torture in the United States and abroad. I was pleased to learn that last week the Senate Committee on Appropriations recommended that the funds authorized by the act be appropriated in full in the foreign operations appropriations bill. Under this recommendation, AID will provide $7.5 million to support foreign treatment centers and the U.S. will contribute $3 million to the U.N. Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture. I hope this recommendation makes it through to the final bill which goes to the President. While these are significant achievements, we must focus on what more needs to be done. In many countries torture is routinely employed in police stations to coerce confessions or obtain information. Detainees are subjected to both physical and mental abuse. Methods include beatings with sticks and whips; kicking with boots; electric shocks; and suspension from one or both arms. Victims are also threatened, insulted and humiliated. In some cases, particularly those involving women, victims are stripped, exposed to verbal and sexual abuse. Medical treatment is often withheld, sometimes resulting in death. The purpose of torture is intimidation and the total destruction of an individual's character. Torture impacts on humanity in profound ways. The shattering of lives, dispersing of families, and destruction of communities all result from this politically-motivated form of violence. The destruction of people's humanity, cultures, and traditions are often the result for both the torturer and the victim of torture. Treating torture victims must be a much more central focus of our efforts as we work to promote human rights worldwide. Without active programs of healing and recovery, torture survivors often suffer continued physical pain, depression and anxiety, intense and incessant nightmares, guilt and self loathing. They often report an inability to concentrate or remember. The severity of trauma makes it difficult to hold down a job, study for a new profession, or acquire other skills needed for successful adjustment into society. Friday morning I met with Sister Dianna Ortiz and several other torture survivors courageous enough to share their stories. They related to me horrific tales of family displacement, sexual abuse, and mental and physical humiliation. Mr. Feltavu Ebba, a survivor from Ethiopia told me his horrific tale of torture he received solely based on his ethnic identification. He said: I was locked up in a room 4 meters by 4 meters with more than 50 other prisoners. I was not allowed to see my family and relatives for the first six years. Needless to say, the damage done to his relationship with his children can never be repaired. Also, every minute of his existence in prison was wrought with emotional and physical pain. He said: Again after three years of prison in 1982 I was physically and mentally tortured for a week . . . This time by dipping me head- down in a barrel filled with cold, dirty water and beating under my feet with interwoven electrical wire. Another survivor, Monica Feria, told me of her torture in Peru. Rather than attempt to speak on her behalf, I will let her words speak for themselves. We ran for our lives through the ducts that took us to another prison where the male prisoners accused of belonging to the Shining Path were kept. On the way many of us were shot. While crawling I saw bodies that had been blown up, arms, heads, and blood. Everything was covered with that horrible colour of burnt black. As I crawled avoiding the bullets I felt under me dead bodies still warm. The horror . . . This is only a fraction of the horrific episodes relayed to me by these courageous survivors. Just last week the New York Times quoted the Human Rights Watch organization as being distressed at the continued prevalence of torture worldwide. In Minnesota, we began to think about the problem of torture and act on it, over ten years ago. The Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis is the only fully-staffed torture treatment facility in the country and was one of the first in the world; there are now over 200 centers worldwide. The center offers outpatient services which can include medical treatment, psychotherapy and help gaining economic and legal stability. Its advocacy work also helps to inform people about the problem of torture and the lingering effects it has on victims, and ways to combat torture worldwide. The Center has treated or provided services to hundreds of people over the last ten years. Some of the often shrill public rhetoric these days seems to argue that we as a nation can no longer afford to remain engaged with the world, or to assist the poor, the elderly, the feeble, refugees, those seeking asylum--those most in need of aid who are right here in our midst. The Center for Victims of Torture stands as a repudiation of that idea. Its mission is to rescue and rehabilitate people who have been crushed by torture, and it has been accomplishing that mission admirably over the last ten years. It is a light of hope in the lives of those who have for so long seen only darkness, a darkness brought on by the brutal hand of the torturer. I would like to thank the distinguished human rights leaders who have helped me in this fight, including those at the Center for Torture Victims in Minneapolis and others such as Sister Ortiz, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Committee (TASSC), the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, and those in the human rights community here in Washington and in Minnesota. Without their energy and skills as advocates for tough U.S. laws which promote respect for internationally-recognized human rights worldwide, the cause of human rights here in the U.S. would be seriously diminished. I salute them today. We recommit ourselves to the aid of torture survivors, and to building a world in which torture is relegated to the dark past, and in which torture treatment programs are made obsolete.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Tiffany Stedman, who is an intern, and Carol Rest-Mincberg, who is a fellow, be granted the privilege of the floor today.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I also want to make it crystal clear that I have been proud to join with my Democratic colleagues out here on the floor; and the sooner we have Republican colleagues joining us, the better. We have been focusing on the importance of patient protection legislation. Protection of medical records privacy is very important to the American people. I hope we will have an opportunity to debate the Patients' Bill of Rights because I want to offer an amendment for segregation of records. The right to privacy is deeply rooted in American culture. American citizens expect that we will continue that tradition. This amendment allows a person to segregate any type or amount of protected health information, and limit the use or disclosure of the segregated health information to those people specifically designated by the person. I want to just give one more example and, in this small example, tell a larger story. It would allow a person, any of us, to take some of the particular private health information, and make sure it is not a part of a total record by segmenting it off and preserving privacy. We are getting more and more worried about genetic testing. For example, if you are talking about a woman who has genetic testing for breast cancer, she may fear the results if she thinks the life insurance companies are going to get ahold of this information or employers are going to get ahold of this information. She might not want to even be a part of this testing. We want to protect the privacy rights of people. The same thing could be said for people who are talking to their doctor about mental health problems or substance abuse problems. The same can be said on a whole range of other issues. There is the whole question of making sure ordinary citizens have some privacy rights, some protection in terms of who gets to see their medical records and who doesn't, making sure it is not abused. I will give a perfect example. I have never said this on the floor, but I will to make a larger point, I had two parents with Parkinson's disease. Research is now showing there is probably some genetic predisposition. As we move forward with this research, I may want to be a part of whatever kind of test or pilot project is put together by doctors. But maybe I wouldn't, if I thought there would be no way that, whatever their research suggested, that I wouldn't have some right to ensure I had some protection. The right to privacy is relevant for the potential for genetic map research, for testing, and, for that matter, treatment, for maybe even finding cures for diseases. There are a lot of people who are not going to want to be a part of it, and there are a lot of people who are going to worry about that information if we don't have the privacy rights. Conclusion: The pendulum has swung too far. I think we should be talking about universal health care coverage as well, and we will. At the moment, here is what we are faced with. In the last several years, since we were stalemated on every kind of major national health insurance legislation or universal health care coverage bill, major changes have taken place in health care, not here in Washington but in the country. They have been revolutionary in their impact on people. The pendulum has swung too far. We have now moved toward an increasingly bureaucratized, corporatized, impersonal medicine where the bottom line has become the only line, where you have a few large insurance companies that own and dominate the majority of the managed care plans to the point where consumers, ordinary people, the people we represent want to know where they fit in. Right now they don't believe they fit in at all. So without going into all the specifics, because we have been talking about this for a week, what people in the country have been saying is, if you want to do a good job of representing us, please make sure we have some protection for ourselves and our children to make sure we will be able to get the care we need and deserve. That is what we hear from the patients. That is what we hear from the consumers. What we hear from the providers, the care givers, is, Senators, we are no longer able to practice the kind of medical care we thought we would be able to practice when we went to medical school or nursing school. We have become demoralized. Demoralized care givers are not good care givers. So we have a lot of work to do to make sure we have families in our States getting the health care they deserve. That is what this debate is all about. We have been trying for a week to get some commitment from the majority party that we would have a substantive debate. That is the Senate. I hope that we will have an agreement. I hope we can come back to this. I hope we will have an agreement, and then I hope we can have the substantive debate and Senators can bring amendments to the floor. There are several amendments I am very interested in, and probably a number of other Senators have amendments they are interested in. We will vote them up or down. We will all be accountable. We will all do what we think is right for the people in our States. The point is, we are not going to accept not being able to come to the floor and fight for people we represent on such an important question. That is what last week was about. That is what the beginning of this week is about. I hope there will soon be an agreement. I hope there will soon be a debate. My hope is that before it is all over, we can pass a good piece of legislation that will not be an insurance company protection act but will be a consumer or patient protection act. I yield the floor. Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I follow up on what the Senator from North Carolina said. Five years ago I introduced a bill on patient protection. This matter has been going on for a while. There is an issue that defines ``medical necessity,'' another issue the Senator from North Carolina raised about an external independent appeals process, another issue on ``point-of- service'' option--making sure the families have a choice, and they don't now have when the employer shifts from one insurer to another. There are two bills on the floor. People in the country have become more and more disillusioned with the politics that they think is dominated by money and special interests. Does the Senator from California agree people want to see a piece of legislation passed that has some teeth in it, that will make a difference and provide some protection? My question is, Do the Senators think this patient protection legislation, what we are trying to do, is a test case as to whether or not the Senate belongs to the insurance companies, or whether or not the Senate belongs to the people in this country? Is that too stark a contrast, or does it ultimately boil down to that core question?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, my colleague from North Carolina has 3 minutes. I wonder if he can speak, and I ask unanimous consent I follow him and Senator Boxer follow me.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Let me just thank the Senator from North Carolina. Having been an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, having done my doctorate work there, having had two children born in Chapel Hill, and having known Chancellor Hooker, I am also very sorry to hear of his death--a very young man. It is really a loss for North Carolina and the country. I appreciate the Senator's eloquence. There are other Senators on the floor, so I am going to try to be brief and take only an hour or so--less than that, much less than that.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, coming from an agricultural State, I just want to, as I think Richard Nixon would say, make one thing ``perfectly clear'' about agriculture. Senator Dorgan is right on the mark when he makes the point. It is sort of an inside thing, but it is very important to the outsiders, especially to farmers, and not just to farmers but to those of us who come from farm States. If yesterday the majority leader had been successful on the cloture vote, we would not have been able to bring this amendment to the floor on this ag bill that calls for an additional $6.5 billion of assistance. Let me just say that this ag appropriations bill that just funds existing USDA programs will not do the job. Let me also say, in my State of Minnesota, and I will not talk about a lot of statistics that I could talk about farm income having dropped 40 percent over the last several years. I could talk about this last decade where farmers have been wondering why they see a 35-percent drop in price, and yet the consumer price goes up while the farm-retail spread grows wider and wider between what farmers make and consumers pay. We want to know what is going on. Let me just tell you, in my State there are a lot of broken lives and a lot of broken dreams and a lot of broken families. Let me also just simply say that time is not neutral; time moves on. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. If we do not get this additional assistance to farmers, much of it directly related to income loss because of record low prices, then a lot of farmers are not going to be able to live to farm another day. We have to get this assistance to farmers. It has to be in this ag appropriations bill. I will tell you something. I do not even like coming out here and fighting for additional bailout for farmers or additional credit assistance, because most of the farmers in North Carolina and Minnesota, and around the country, are not interested in bailout money. They are interested in being able to get a decent price. That's what they are interested in. Let me go on. Let me say, again, this appropriations bill will be an appropriations bill that will really help. This amendment calls for this additional $6.5 billion in assistance. Second point: I do not know what the press conference was about here in Washington. I was back home with a lot of farmers. There were a lot of people from all around the State who came together for a gathering at the capital. But I will tell you this. I hope that some of the folks who held the press conference also talked about how we can make sure that family farms have a future several years from now. I think we have to speak the truth. And the truth of the matter is, this Freedom to Farm bill of 1996 is a freedom to fail bill. The fundamental crisis is a crisis of price. Right now our corn growers get $1.75 at the local elevator; our wheat growers get $3.13 for wheat. This is nowhere near the cost of production. They cannot cash flow. They cannot make a living. Unless we fix this freedom to fail bill and we go back to some sort of leverage for farmers in the marketplace, some kind of safety net which will give them a decent income, some sort of price stability, our family farmers do not have any future. That is what this is all about. I am not interested in semantics. If people want to say, I am still for the Freedom to Farm bill, I don't care. But I will say this. The flexibility in that legislation to farm a whole lot of different crops does not do any good if there are record low prices for all of them. So let's get the assistance to people so they can survive. But let's get beyond the short run, and let's be honest with one another. Let's fix that Freedom to Farm, or freedom to fail, bill, and let's make sure there is some price stability and there is some farm income out there; otherwise, our family farmers have no future. Finally, if there was a press conference yesterday, I sure as heck hope there was some focus on the distortions in the market. I would like to join all my Republican colleagues in calling for putting free enterprise back into the food industry. I would like to join with all of my Republican colleagues in being a true Adam Smith apostle and calling for a market economy. I would like to join with all my Republican colleagues, in other words, in calling for some antitrust action. How in the world can our family farmers make it when you have four large firms, the packers dominating the livestock farmers, the grain companies dominating the grain farmers? There has to be some fair competition. Everywhere our family farmers turn, whether it is from whom they buy or to whom they sell, we do not have the competition. Let's really be on the side of these family farmers and insist on some competition. Let's have the courage to take on some of these conglomerates that have muscled their way to the dinner table exercising their raw political power over our producers and over our consumers, and, I say to the Chair, who is my friend, I think over the taxpayers as well. So I am all for a focus on family farmers. This is a crisis all in capital letters. I hope we will have some action. But I want to make it crystal clear, I think these are the issues that are at stake.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Cleland be allowed to be in order as the Democrat to speak after I speak for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Alexis Rebane and Sofia Lidshog, two interns, be allowed floor privileges for the debate today.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, are we in a quorum call?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, on Tuesday, the Senate voted 57-42 to refuse debate on legislation that would provide some support to steelworkers. I think those of us who wanted to provide some protection to steelworkers and their families against the illegal dumping of steel from foreign exporters to our country lost mainly because of the White House, which used import data from the month of April and convinced a lot of Members that the steel crisis is over. Here we are, 2 days later, and there are new, important numbers out for May. We find out 2 days later that the steel crisis is not over. In fact, overall steel imports went up 30 percent from April to May. Most of the increase comes from the import of various kinds of semifinished steel, the very products that our taconite mines in Minnesota compete against. Imports of blooms, billets, and slabs are up a whopping 122 percent. Let me repeat that: 2 days ago the administration was telling us there was no crisis; the surge of imports is over. Now we find out a 30-percent surge of imported steel, the latest figures today, over a 1- month period from April to May, and for billets and slabs and blooms, a 122-percent increase in imports. This is a disaster. It is a disaster for the women and men who have lost their jobs on the Iron Range and may never get them back. It is a disaster for the workers who are hanging by a thread. It is a disaster for their husbands and their wives and children. For them the steel crisis is not over. If anything, the steel crisis is getting worse. The question I ask my colleagues who voted against our bill, who voted against even debating our bill, is: What next? To the administration, I say you were successful in defeating the Rockefeller bill. Now what do you propose? Are we going to simply give up on the steel industry? We cannot give up on the steel industry, and we cannot give up on the iron ore industry in our own country. We have to do something. I am troubled by the arguments that were made in our Senate debate. I am troubled by some of the newspaper opinion pieces, because they seem to be suggesting that we ought to just give up on this industry. They seem to be suggesting that the extraordinary surge of steel imports, the dumping of cheap steel, the illegal dumping of steel sold below cost of production in our country is actually good for the economy, good for the economy because it keeps prices down in other sectors of our economy. If that is the case, we should actually encourage foreign countries to dump on our markets. If we want to lower steel prices, then we shouldn't have any antidumping laws. We should repeal them all. We shouldn't even have any antidumping laws on the books. If that is the case, we ought to get rid of a section 201 law which provides for WTO legal quotas to import surges, the likes of which we have been experiencing. The fact of the matter is, we have had this surge of imported steel, and the argument is, it is good for the country because it keeps prices down. That means we are not going to have a steel industry. That means we will not have an iron ore industry. That means many of these workers and their families are going to be spit out of the economy. Our workers can compete with anybody, any place, any time, anywhere. But they cannot compete with a surge of illegally dumped imports. Our steelworkers, our iron ore workers are the most efficient in the world. They can compete with fairly traded steel, but they cannot compete with this. I am real worried, because I think this administration and I think too many of my colleagues in the Senate have sent the following message when it comes to trade policy: If it is a top contributor, Chiquita bananas, we are there for you. We will make sure that we put on a real strong import quota. When it comes to investments of Wall Street investors, when they go sour in Korea or Indonesia, Thailand or Mexico, Brazil or Russia, we will pick up the tab. But when the global economic crisis boomeranged on American steelworkers, the message from the administration and the Senate was: You get stuck with the bill. The crisis is not over. The May import numbers prove it. The question for all of you who oppose the Rockefeller bill, the question for this administration, a Democratic administration that is supposed to care about working people is: What do you propose to do now? Let me just repeat this one more time. I was thinking to myself, I wonder why the administration hasn't released figures, since they were making the case that the crisis was over. Surely they will release the May figures. They must have had them a few days ago. Two days ago, one of the major arguments used for opposing our legislation was ``the crisis is over.'' Now we find out 2 days later, overall steel imports are up 30 percent from April to May, and imports of blooms and billets and slabs, which compete against our taconite on the Iron Range, are up 122 percent. We didn't get those figures from the administration 2 days ago. I think I know why. I say to the President, I say to the administration, and I say to Senators who voted against an opportunity to even debate this legislation: The crisis is not over. The statistics prove it. My question is: What do you propose to do now? What do you propose to do now? Mr. President--not the President that is presiding on the floor of the Senate, but Mr. President of the United States of America--what do you propose to do now? Your administration told us 2 days ago this crisis was over. Now we have the figures: 30 percent increase in imports of steel, 122 percent in imports of blooms, billets, and slabs. It is going to be an economic convulsion for the Iron Range of Minnesota. It is going to be an economic convulsion for steelworkers, illegally dumped steel. We will compete against anybody. But if you are going to make the argument that we should not do anything about illegally dumped steel, that we can't provide any protection for our workers, that we can't have an administration and a Government that negotiates a fair and a tough trade policy that provides protection to our workers, then what in the world are we here for? I speak with a little bit of--not bitterness but outrage. I heard what was being said just two days ago. Now the numbers have come out. Now we know we have this crisis. Now we know we have this surge of imports. It is illegally dumped steel. My question for the President of the United States of America is: What are you going to do? You defeated our legislation. What are you going to do now? I am not going to give up on this. I hope the steelworkers and their families won't give up on this. My suggestion is that we need to have a meeting with the President and the administration because I have to still believe that they are concerned and they will be willing to take some action. We need to talk about what kind of action we will take soon, because if we don't, there are going to be a lot of broken dreams, a lot of broken lives, and a lot of broken families all across our country, including in Northeast Minnesota, the iron range of Minnesota. I can't turn my gaze away from that. I can't quit fighting because of the vote a couple days ago. I yield the floor. Mrs. FEINSTEIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded so we can have debate.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, so we can debate health care, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded so we can debate health care, a matter that is very important to the people in Minnesota.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, so we can speak as Senators, Democrats and Republicans, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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