Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, just a footnote. Altogether, we had 16 Democrats come to the floor to speak about the importance of patient protection and we have had two Republicans. In one way I am not surprised because I don't think my colleagues have a defensible case. They don't want to bring this motion to the floor. They don't want to have a debate. They don't want to vote on the amendments. But that is what it is all about. We are not here to dodge; we are not here not to make difficult decisions. We are not here to not be willing to debate legislation that is important to people's lives. I say to the majority leader and my colleagues on the other side, it is true; we will have amendments. I have some great amendments in my- not-so-humble opinion. Others may have a different view. The point is, that is what it is about. Bring the amendments to the floor. As Democrats, we will discuss what we believe, we will talk about the legislation and the amendments we have that we think will lead to the best protection for people we represent in our States. And Republicans will come out and they can talk about why they think these amendments are a profound mistake and why their amendments will do better. They can talk about their legislation and we can talk about our legislation. Maybe we will have plenty of compromise and maybe we will come up with a great bipartisan bill. Who is to say? Right now, all we have on the other side is silence, an unwillingness to debate this issue. If I didn't think I was taking advantage of the situation, part of me is tempted to keep talking and asking Members to come on out and debate. I won't. I think I made my point about 20 different times in 20 different ways. Since the Senator from Alabama is presiding, I do want to say this for people who are watching: The Senator from Alabama can't debate because he is the Presiding Officer. He would. I know him well enough. I say to Senator Sessions, we will get a chance, and all the rest of the Senate will have a chance, to come out and debate patient protection legislation. Let's have a good, substantive, serious debate. I know the Senator from Alabama loves a debate and he is good at it. So are many other Senators. It will not be debate for the sake of debate. It will not be fun and games. It will be a very serious issue. Honest to gosh, I came here as a Senator from Minnesota to do good for people in my State. I can't do good for people in my State when I have a majority party that wants to block patient protection legislation. I didn't come here to represent the insurance industry. I didn't come here to represent the pharmaceutical industry. I came here to represent people in Minnesota. I want us to debate this legislation. I certainly hope Republican colleagues will come out here and we will get going on this. Otherwise, for as long as it takes, I think we are committed to using every bit of leverage we have to force a debate on this question. Mr. President, if there are other colleagues on the floor, and it looks as if maybe there are, I will yield the floor. I see my colleague from Tennessee. I say to my colleague from Tennessee, I am delighted he is out here. I hope this is the beginning of a discussion. Then we will have this legislation on the floor soon. Let's have the debate. Let's pass good legislation that will help people in our States. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, in case others come to speak--I don't want to take that time--I ask unanimous consent to extend the time until 5:10, with the time equally divided.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thought the Senator would yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Tennessee, if my colleague believes this legislation the Republicans introduced in committee--and I am on the same committee--is such a great piece of legislation protecting patients' rights, then what in the world is the delay in bringing it before this body? Again, what I am saying is self-evident. If my colleagues on the Republican side think this is such good legislation, why the delay? Why the delay and the delay? The only reason we are fighting it out on an ag appropriations bill is that we want to make it crystal clear we are here to represent the people in our States. This piece of legislation which my colleague from Tennessee has talked about--I was in the markup on that bill, which is when we write a bill in committee--has holes like Swiss cheese. No wonder they do not want to bring this bill to the floor. They have about a third of the people covered. I will start out with the question of who is covered and who is not covered. Their bill covers 48 million people. The Democratic bill covers 163 million people. My colleague says it is the States. Why should a child or a family in one State, i.e. like Mississippi, not have any protection because he or she lives in Mississippi but have protection in Minnesota or Wisconsin? Does that make any sense? Why should a small businessperson in Mississippi or a farmer in Mississippi not have any coverage whatsoever but have some kind of protection in Wisconsin or Minnesota? I would love to have that debate. I would love to have my Republican colleagues talk about why they only want to cover about a third of the people in the country. I would love for them to defend the proposition that many families will receive no protection whatsoever, vis-a-vis these large insurance companies that practice this bottom-line medicine which basically say, when people want access to specialists they need, specialists for their children, specialists for women, they are not going to have access and there is not going to be any protection for them, because they do not live in the right State. Let's debate that. There are 200 consumer, patient, and provider organizations that support the Democratic Patients' Bill of Rights legislation; not any that I can identify, except for the insurance industry, that support the Republican plan. Surely these consumer organizations and the providers, the caregivers, know something about this topic. Surely they have a position that is important. But I do not see any support for this Republican plan. The Democratic plan protects all patients with private insurance; the Republican plan, no. The Democratic plan holds these health insurance plans accountable; the Republican plan, no. In the Democratic plan, we make sure that the physicians, the doctors, the nurses, define ``medical necessity.'' We do not have the insurance industry's managed care plans dominate--unlike the Republican plan. In the Democratic plan, we do have a real point-of-service option where people are given a choice. It drives people crazy when their employer shifts plans and all of a sudden--they had been taking their child to a family doctor--they can no longer take that child to that doctor. Does the Republican plan assure they will be able to do so? No. When are we going to make sure that consumers really do have some due process? I heard my colleague from Tennessee talk about an internal appeals process. That is within the managed care plans, most of which are dominated, owned, by these large insurance companies. We are talking about a strong external appeals process. I say to my colleague from Wisconsin, we are talking about somewhere that a consumer can go and make an appeal. We are talking about an ombudsman program where you have an office, you have a telephone number, you have advocates to call. Do my Republican colleagues want to do this? No. Specialists who can coordinate care. Your child needs to see a pediatrician who specializes in oncology because your child is struggling with cancer. Do we make sure you have access to that specialist? Yes. Does the Republican plan make sure that you--a family in Minnesota or Michigan--have access to that specialist you so desperately need for your child? No. My colleagues come out on the floor--again, with the Senator from Tennessee that makes four Republicans who have been out here today--16 Democrats. They can come out, and they can give a speech and say: Well, we have a bill, and it's a very good bill. But you know what. If it is such a good bill, bring it out to the floor. If you have such a good proposal, bring it out to the floor. Let's debate this. We have had enough delay. That is all we have had--delay, delay, delay. Emergency room access is really important. I heard my colleague talk about that. But I say to the American people, Minnesotans, when you get a chance to carefully examine the ``Republican Insurance Company Protection Act''--that is what I call it--you will find out there is a little bit of protection for emergency room access but it is not really strong. Our plan does not equivocate at all. We make sure you have that access. We make sure it is covered. You get to keep your doctor throughout treatment. The Republican plan gives you a little bit of protection. We think you should have complete protection. I tell you, this has gone on long enough. My challenge to my Republican colleagues is, if you think your plan is so good--and I certainly believe you operate in good faith; you have to believe it is a good plan or why would you write it--then bring it out here. We have to have the debate. We have amendments. We are committed to making sure there is good patient protection legislation passed by this Senate. We are ready for the debate. We would love to debate a plan that covers only one-third of the Americans in our country. We would love to debate a plan that does not assure a family with a child who is gravely ill that that child will have access to the best care available, to the best care that is there. We would love to debate that plan. We would love to debate a plan that does not provide consumers with a real choice to be able to go out and get the very best care they need for their loved ones. We would love to debate a plan that does not give consumers the right to really challenge some of these bean counters, some of these managed care plans owned by these large insurance industries. We would love to debate the ``Republican Insurance Company Protection Plan'' versus our patient protection plan. But, again, I am on the floor, and now another speech has been given; but I have nobody to debate. I asked if anyone wanted to yield for questions. They do not want to yield for questions. Let's debate this. It will not be a bitter debate. It will not be a debate with hatred. But you know what. It is going to be serious. It is a pretty important question for families in our country. It is pretty important to people. In case anybody has not noticed--I imagine every Senator has; all you have to do is spend 1 minute in your State--people are really getting fed up with this. They do not much like the way in which the insurance industry dominates health care. They do not much like the fact that they believe they have just been left out of the loop. You know what else. The caregivers--the doctors and nurses--feel the same way. It is time that we pass legislation with teeth. The Republican plan, the ``Insurance Company Protection Plan,'' pretends that it is a patient protection act. It is full of loopholes. It is Swiss cheese legislation. It is hard to defend it. I can understand why my colleagues do not want to defend it. I can understand why they do not want to debate. I can understand why they have blocked our efforts, so far, to bring patient protection legislation to the floor. But I am telling you something: People in the country are demanding that we pass this legislation. We are on a mission. The Democrats are on a mission. We are going to bring these amendments to the floor. We are going to insist there be a good, strong, honest debate; and we are going to do well by the people we represent. I would be pleased to debate anybody, but in the absence of anyone to debate, I yield the floor. Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, what is the current situation?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, in order to save time, let me speak to these amendments and then I will send up a modification. For just one minute, I do want to respond to my colleague from Texas and say that I think this vote today around noon on cloture on the Rockefeller amendment is a test of economic literacy. But I have a different definition of that than my colleague from Texas. One more time, I want to make about two or three points. The first point is that our administration has no problem when it comes to tariffs, or when it comes to imposing tariffs on European imports in support of Chiquita Bananas in Central America. But now when it comes to the steelworkers, there is opposition. My second point is that in many ways what happened with the Asian crisis was you had hot capital going in and out of those countries with no kind of regulatory framework that made sense. George Soros, a financier who knows something about this, is saying we have to have a different kind of framework for the global economy. Some of the financial interests that benefited most from financial liberalization and then were hurt the most from the Asian crisis were able to get some public money and public assistance through IMF bailouts. But again, when our steelworkers ask for some support under existing trade statutes, we don't get it. Finally, let it be clear that this is not all about whether we have free trade. This is about fair trade. That is what I think matters the most. Our workers can compete with workers anywhere. But when you see the dumping of steel below the cost of production in our markets and saturating our markets and prices going down and people losing their jobs, of course, working people stand up and fight back. That makes all the sense in the world. Finally, I want to argue a little bit of economics focusing on how we can help countries going through these crises --countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, and Mexico--how we can help those countries help their working class people consume more. Right now we are emphasizing that those countries should try to export their way out of their crises instead of relying on domestic demand, which does not make a lot of sense. We ought to be focused on how people in these countries can earn a decent living so they can, in fact, buy some of what they produce in their countries--some of their own products. I say to my colleague from Texas that economic analysis is a little bit different than his but one which I think makes more sense.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have two amendments that I want to talk about today. The first amendment deals with one of the most alarming human rights abuses in the world today. It is the growing use of child soldiers. Today, in 25 countries there are a quarter of a million, or more, children being used in government armies and rebel groups. Some of these children--if you are ready for this--are as young as 8 years old. Children are recruited in a variety of different ways. Some are conscripted. Some are forcibly recruited or kidnapped and literally dragged from their homes, schools, and villages. In some instances, children are recruited based solely on whether or not they are big enough to hold a gun. I think I need to repeat that. In some cases these children are recruited, abducted, or kidnapped on the basis of whether or not they are big enough to hold a gun. These young combatants are not only subject to grave physical risk but are all too often encouraged, or even forced themselves, to commit barbaric acts. Children are forced to do this. They are considered dispensable. Child soldiers are often sent to the front lines of combat, or sent into mine fields ahead of other troops. Children who protest or who cannot keep up with the march or attempt to escape are killed often by other child captives who are forced to participate in the killings as a means of breaking their wills and their spirits. Those who survive these experiences are frequently physically and emotionally scarred. In addition to dealing with severe emotional and psychological trauma, malnourishment, disease, and physical injury suffered while in captivity, many children worry about their basic survival--how they will feed, clothe, and shelter themselves. For example, in northern Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army, an opposition group, has abducted some 10,000 children. Children as young as 8 years old have been taken from their schools and homes and forced to march to rebel-based camps in southern Sudan. They are made to carry heavy loads, without rest, and with very little food and water. Accounts of the use of these children as soldiers by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and in the devastating Sierra Leone conflict make clear that child combatants may suffer not only physical injury or disability but also psychological damage or rejection by their home communities. Last year, I met with Ms. Angelina Atyam, the mother of one such child. Angelina's 14-year-old daughter, Charlotte--Charlotte is the first name of Charlotte Oldham-Moore, who is with me on human rights issues--was abducted from her school dormitory over a year and a half ago by rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army. Angelina described to me that fateful October morning when she arrived at her daughter's school to find all the windows broken, the girls' clothes scattered everywhere, and her daughter missing. The rebels had arrived at St. Mary's girls school the previous night, tied up the girls, beat them if they cried, and then took them away into unspeakable horrors. One hundred and thirty-nine students were abducted at gunpoint. That is why this amendment is a very important amendment. Thankfully, many of them have been rescued or escaped or their freedom has been purchased. But many others, such as Charlotte, have not returned. Charlotte turned 15 in the captivity of the Lord's Resistance Army. In Angelina's own words: Until peace comes, the kidnaping will continue. My daughter Charlotte turned 15 in Sudan. Like other parents in the Concerned Parents Association, my husband and I can only rely on those few children who manage to escape from captivity for news of our daughter. Two weeks ago, I spoke with a girl who had just escaped. She said the rebels are now intentionally impregnating the girls, to make them too ashamed to go back to their parents. She mentioned that one of the pregnant girls is a St. Mary's student named Charlotte. I pray that one day my daughter will come home, and my family can become whole again. Uganda's future depends on how the government acts to end this tragedy and how quickly society reintegrates the children. No nation can have a valid strategic interest in prolonging the captivity and abuse of children. President Clinton has a unique opportunity to help start this healing process. Important efforts are being made to address this moral outrage. Graca Machel, the former U.N. expert on the impact of armed conflict on children, has recommended that governments immediately demobilize all child soldiers. I believe the United States must do more to end this grave human rights abuse and assist its victims. Rehabilitation and social reintegration programs are essential to help former child soldiers regain a place in civilian society and help prevent their re-recruitment into subsequent conflicts. I believe strongly that the need for demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs of former child soldiers in conflict areas must be incorporated into U.S. policy. The United States must take a leadership role in demobilizing and reintegrating these children back into their communities. That is why this is a resolution that directs the State Department to study the issue of rehabilitation of former child soldiers, the positive role the United States can play in this effort, and to submit a report to the Congress on how we should address it. Armed conflict has already taken the lives of 2 million children in the last decade. Three times as many have been injured or disabled. With the continued use of child soldiers, those numbers will only rise. Our country must be a champion for children and their welfare. Consequently, the United States should be making the strongest possible effort to protect children of combat and to assist them in reentering their societies. It is the very least that we can do. This amendment represents a continuation of some work that the Senator and I have been doing in this area. Today we focus on the need to provide the support services for these children. Today we focus on the need to get a report from our State Department as to how we can play as positive a role as possible. In the past, I have talked about these abuses on the floor. I certainly hope that we will continue to be very active and play a positive role in efforts to have some kind of international protocol agreement to protect these children. I can't think, quite frankly, of a more important issue. I have talked with some parents. As a parent, I find it unbelievable that this happens to so many children in so many countries. It would seem to me that we really ought to, as a country, as a government, take the lead and play as positive a role as possible. I thank my colleagues for supporting this modification of this amendment. When Senator Helms comes to the floor, we will go ahead and do that. Mr. President, also in order to move forward, let me go on and speak about another amendment that I was going to introduce to this bill--the State Department authorization bill, which I will now hold off on for a little bit longer period of time as we continue to build support. This amendment also deals with another horrendous human rights violation in our time--the trafficking in human beings, particularly the trafficking of women and children for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor. Earlier this year, I introduced a bill called the International Trafficking of Women and Children Victim Protection Act of 1999, which addresses this issue and is cosponsored by Senators Feinstein, Boxer, Snowe, Murray, and Torricelli. If passed, this bill will put the Senate on record--or this amendment, which we will be introducing shortly. We are going to continue to work with people and work with the State Department and with other Senators and build the support. But we want to go on record in the Senate, the U.S. Congress, as opposing trafficking for forced prostitution and domestic servitude, and acting to check it before the lives of more women and more girls are shattered. One of the fastest growing international trafficking businesses is the trade in women. Women and girls seeking a better life, a good marriage, or a lucrative job abroad, unexpectedly find themselves forced to work as prostitutes or in sweatshops. Seeking this better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries--including our country--at wages they could never imagine at home. Every year, the trafficking of human beings for the sex trade affects hundreds of thousands of women throughout the world. The U.S. Government estimates that between 1 and 2 million women and girls are trafficked annually around the world. According to experts, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 women are trafficked each year into the United States alone. They come from Thailand, they come from Russia, they come from the Ukraine, they come from other countries in Asia, and they come from other countries from the former Soviet Union. Upon arrival in countries far from their homes, these women are often stripped of their passports, held against their will in slave-like conditions, and sexually abused. Rape, intimidation, and violence are commonly employed by traffickers to control their victims and to prevent them from seeking help. Through physical isolation and psychological trauma, traffickers and brothel owners imprison women in a world of economic and sexual exploitation that imposes a constant fear of arrest and deportation, as well as of violent reprisals by traffickers themselves, to whom the women must pay off ever-growing debts. Many brothel owners actually prefer foreign women--women who are far from home, far from help, don't speak the language--because it is so easy to control them. Most of these women never imagine the life in hell they would encounter, having traveled abroad to find better jobs or to see the world. Many believe that nothing would happen to them in rich countries like Switzerland, Germany or the United States. However, many of them now are put in a living hell. Last year, First Lady Hillary Clinton spoke powerfully of this human tragedy. She said, I have spoken to young girls in northern Thailand whose parents were persuaded to sell them as prostitutes, and they received a great deal of money by their standards. You could often tell the homes of where the girls had been sold because they might even have a satellite dish or an addition built on their house. But I met girls who had come home after they had been used up, after they had contracted HIV or AIDS. If you've ever held the hand of a 13-year-old girl dying of AIDS, you can understand how critical it is that we take every step possible to prevent this happening to any other girl anywhere in the world. I also, in the Ukraine, heard of women who told me with tears running down their faces that young women in their communities were disappearing. They answered ads that promised a much better future in another place and they were never heard from again. Lest you think this is just in other countries, and this only happens in far off lands, let me talk about the United States. Earlier this spring, six men admitted in a Florida court to forcing 17 women and girls--some as young as 14--into a prostitution slavery ring. The victims were smuggled into the United States from Mexico with a promise of steady work, but instead they were forced into prostitution. The ring was uncovered when two 15-year-old girls escaped and went to the Mexican consulate in Miami. According to recent reports by the Justice Department, teenage Mexican girls were also held in slavery in the Carolinas and forced to submit to prostitution. In addition, Russian and Latvian women were forced into nightclub work in Chicago. According to charges filed against the traffickers, the traffickers picked up the women upon their arrival at the airport, seized their documents and return tickets, locked them in hotels and beat them up. The women were told that if they didn't dance nude in nightclubs, the Russian mafia would kill their families. Further, over 3 years, hundreds of women from the Czech Republic who answered advertisements in Czech newspapers for modeling were ensnared in an illegal prostitution ring. These victims are unfamiliar with the laws, they are unfamiliar with the language, they are unfamiliar with the customs, and quite often they don't know what to do. They are completely helpless. They are completely hopeless. Trafficking in women and girls is a human rights problem that requires a human rights response. Trafficking is condemned by human rights treaties as a violation of basic human rights, and it is a slavery-like practice. Women who are trafficked are subjected to other abuses--rape, beatings, physical confinement--squarely prohibited by human rights law. The human abuses continue in the workplace, in the forms of physical and sexual abuse, debt bondage, and illegal confinement, and all are prohibited. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to be free from slavery and involuntary servitude, arbitrary detention, degrading or inhuman treatment, as well as to the right to protection by law against these abuses. The United Nations General Assembly has passed three resolutions during the last three years recognizing that international traffic in women and girls is an issue of pressing international concern involving numerous violations of fundamental human rights. The United Nations General Assembly is calling upon all governments to criminalize trafficking, to punish its offenders, while not penalizing it's victims. Fortunately, the global trade in women and children is receiving greater attention by governments and NGOs following the U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing. The President's Interagency Council on Women is working hard to mobilize a response to this problem. Churches, synagogues, and NGOs are fighting this battle daily. But, much, much more must be done. My bill provides a human rights response to the problem. It has a comprehensive and integrated approach focused on prevention, protection and assistance for victims, and prosecution of traffickers. I will highlight a few of its provisions now: It sets an international standard for governments to meet in their efforts to fight trafficking and assist victims of this human rights abuse. It calls on the State Department and Justice Department to investigate and take action against international trafficking. In addition, it creates an Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in the Office of the Secretary of State and directs the Secretary to submit an annual report to Congress on international trafficking. The annual report would, among other things, identify states engaged in trafficking, the efforts of these states to combat trafficking, and whether their government officials are complicit in the practice. Corrupt government or law enforcement officials sometimes directly participate and benefit in the trade of women and girls. And, corruption also prevents prosecution of traffickers. U.S. police assistance would be barred to countries found not to have taken effective action in ending the participation of their officials in trafficking, and in investigating and prosecuting meaningfully their officials involved in trafficking. A waiver is provided for the President if he finds that provision of such assistance is in the national interest. This is a modest enforcement provision that will encourage governments to take seriously this extremely serious human rights violation. On a national level, it ensures that our immigration laws do not encourage rapid deportation of trafficked women, a practice which effectively insulates traffickers from ever being prosecuted for their crimes. Trafficking victims are eligible for a nonimmigrant status valid for three months. If the victim pursues criminal or civil actions against her trafficker, or if she pursues an asylum claim, she is provided with an extension of time. Further, it provides that trafficked women should not be detained, but instead receive needed services, safe shelter, and the opportunity to seek justice against their abusers. Finally, my bill provides much needed resources to programs assisting trafficking victims here at home and abroad. We must commit ourselves to ending the trafficking of women and girls and to building a world in which women and children are no longer subjected to such horrendous abuses. I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation. I say to the chair of the committee, I will not introduce the amendment to today's bill. What we want to do is have an amendment, and I hope to get the support of the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, which will set an international standard for governments to meet in their effort to fight trafficking and assist victims of human rights abuse. It will call on the State Department and Justice Department to investigate and take action against international trafficking. It will create an interagency traffic force to monitor and combat trafficking in the Office of the Secretary of State. It will direct the Secretary of State to submit an annual report to Congress on international trafficking. We will also take a look at what different governments are doing and which countries are involved in this illegal practice, what police forces are involved, and whether or not we ought to be taking action with a clear message that we, as a government, will not tolerate that. On a national level, it will ensure that our immigration laws don't encourage the rapid deportation of women, that insulates the traffickers from being prosecuted. Women are terrified; they have no protection, and therefore, they can't even testify against what is happening to them. We want to make sure they are provided with some protection. We want to commit ourselves to ending the trafficking of women and girls and to building a world in which women and children are no longer subjected to this horrendous abuse. We don't agree on all issues, I say to the chairman of the committee, but I know him and I know he finds this practice abhorrent. Out of respect for him, I will not introduce this amendment to this bill because I know he wants to move the bill forward. There are a couple of issues we are trying to resolve in terms of getting support. I had a commitment from the chairman we will go forward with hearings. This will not be delayed. Perhaps even more importantly, I say to the chairman, because he has had nothing to do with delaying this, I have been waiting for the State Department to come forward with their modifications. I have asked for quite some period of time. My hope is within the next week we will be doing this work together. I will work with the chairman; I will work with Senator Biden; I will work with the State Department. We will come to some agreement on our language, which surely we can do. When the foreign operations bill comes to the floor, my hope is we will be ready with this amendment. If at that point in time I can't get the State Department to come forward and give me their suggestions and talk about their approach and have us work together, I will just bring the amendment to that bill and we will have an all out debate and a vote up or down and see where people stand. I am convinced with a little bit more time--not too much more time but a little bit more time--I will get to work with the chairman and I will be able to get the support of the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and Senator Biden and other Senators and we can move this forward. My goal is to get this passed. Members don't come to the floor to give a speech for the sake of giving a speech. Quite often, we don't even get to see, Senator Helms, the results of our work in a concrete way. But we do know if we can pass something like this and get it in a bill, it can help a lot of people around the world, and we have done something good. I want to do something good, do something positive. I will wait a little while longer. I do want the State Department to know I will not wait much longer. Let's go forward in the spirit of working together. This will not be something that we will delay and delay. We will pass this. Some good work is being done in the State Department. There is no reason we can't do this together. There is no reason this can't be a bipartisan bill. There is no reason why our government, our country, can't take the lead in trying to put an end to this abhorrent, unconscionable, vicious practice. This is a huge civil rights issue. As a Senator, I intend to address this with some good legislation. I say to the Chair, I have already had a chance to speak on the amendment dealing with child soldiers. We have a modification. What I would like to do now is call up amendment No. 697 and ask unanimous consent it be in order for me to modify the amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I send the modification to the desk.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I urge adoption of this amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for his help and his support.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, we are going to debate H.R. 975. I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to perhaps speak for 5 minutes on this bill.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent Kathleen O'Brien, a fellow, and Meagan Fitzsimmons, who is an intern, be granted the privilege of the floor today.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I think I will come back to the floor, and depending on how many Senators are out here, I will speak more on this. But in this short period of time I want to try to deal with some of the arguments on this very important cloture vote on H.R. 975. There are three arguments I want to address in 4 or 5 minutes. The first argument is that the steel crisis is over. That is what I hear from the White House. I say to my colleagues, I spent the weekend on the Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota, both in Duluth and on the Iron Range in Minnesota. If you were to speak to some of the 108 workers who have been laid off at EVTAC Mining, or talked to the workers at Minntac who had to make all sorts of concessions last fall to avoid layoffs, or if you were to talk to workers at LTV in Hoyt Lakes, you would find quite another reality. I think it would be hard for the administration or any Senator, Republican or Democrat, to go to the Iron Range in Minnesota, where we produce the iron ore for our steel, and tell these workers or their families that this crisis is over. This crisis is far from over. To go to the flip side of the coin, but it is the same coin, I ask unanimous consent a letter dated June 18 from the CEOs of the major steel companies to Secretary Daley be printed in the Record.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, they make it clear the crisis is far from over as well. The global conditions at the root of the crisis have not gone away. Imports from the major foreign producers have declined, but other countries have taken their place and we see major producers shifting to different steel products to get around the dumping orders. We need this Rockefeller bill to plug the loopholes. Dumping cases take time. In many cases the relief is too little too late, or it gets negotiated away in suspension agreements. I am afraid someday we are going to wake up and we are not going to have any steel industry at all. In my State of Minnesota we were a part of what happened in the 1980s, when we lost 350,000 steelworker jobs and 28,000 people left the Iron Range for good. As a Senator, I do not want to let that happen again. The second argument that is made by the administration is that we cannot go forward with this bill because this is quota relief, and the question is whether or not quota relief is WTO-legal. I see here a bit of a double standard. When Mr. Carl Lindner from Chiquita Bananas had a trade complaint, the administration did not hesitate to slap a 100-percent tariff on imports from Europe. But when our workers and working families ask for some relief under Section 201, which provides for quotas and is WTO-legal, then all of a sudden there is no relief forthcoming. Finally, I make a point that this crisis is not the fault of steelworkers. They should not be the ones asked to pay the price. I am in complete agreement that we ought to care fiercely about what happens in Russia, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, and other countries as well, but again I see another double standard. When our financial interests, when a lot of our Wall Street interests, if you will, wanted to be able to invest capital in these countries and take capital out at a second's notice, when they wanted to put hot capital in and take hot capital out without any regulatory framework in place, they were pleased to do so as long as they were making huge profits. Then when they decided to pull their capital out, these countries were left in terrible trouble. When it came to whether or not there would be IMF bailouts and whether or not there would be any kind of public dollars to help these financial interests out, again we had an administration that was all for these Wall Street interests. I come to the floor of the Senate today to say this administration ought to really put working families--steelworkers of the Iron Range, steelworkers all across the country--as high on its list of priorities as Wall Street investors. And not just those steelworkers but the communities where they work and the communities where they live. This bill, H.R. 975, is a good place to start. I thank Senator Rockefeller for his leadership. I am proud to be out here on the floor speaking on this legislation. I hope we not only get votes for cloture, but we get more than enough votes to override any Presidential veto. This is a critically important vote that is going to take place within the next hour. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I say to my colleague, Senator Dorgan from North Dakota, I will be very brief. I did not come to the Chamber with prepared remarks, but I do want to pick up on the closing remarks my colleague from Kansas was making; by the way, a Senator who has lived and breathed agriculture for many years and whose expertise I certainly respect. I think the appropriations bill raises a lot of questions that we better answer and we better answer soon. I do not really think we can have a discussion about agriculture--the Senator from Kansas at the very end said: Listen, as I speak today, I am mindful of the economic pain out there in the countryside. We are experiencing an economic convulsion in agriculture. Frankly, I do not think there is any way to talk about what is happening in the countryside without talking about this Freedom to Farm, what I have always called the ``freedom to fail'' bill. In my State of Minnesota, the Minnesota Star Tribune--which is the largest newspaper in our State, which editorialized very strongly in favor of this bill not that long ago--had an editorial saying, listen, we need to revisit this. Clearly, we do not have any safety net any longer. Clearly, we do not have a way that farmers--family farmers, family farmers, family farmers; we need to say that three or four times --have any leverage in the marketplace to get a decent price. I think one of the really bitter ironies of what is going on is we are spending--this was supposed to be the market--$25, $30 billion of bailout money--and actually I am all for getting the credit to farmers so they can live to farm another day, but most of the farmers in Minnesota basically say, thank you, but, in fact, they are going to need even more to be able to keep on going. But what they also say is: Senator Wellstone, what's even more important to me is, where will we be 5 years from now? Where will our kids be 5 years from now? I am just telling you that I know on our side, the Democrats, we are going to be out here--and I am hoping with a lot of Republicans as well--with a whole package of proposals. Time is not neutral. We cannot wait around. Time is not neutral at all for these farmers. The projections for the number of farms we have lost in Minnesota and we will lose on our present course are devastating. We have to change that course. I think maybe we need more of a reality check. We can talk about the fact that we all care about agriculture, and we have this bill, and we are spending this much money, and all the rest, but this isn't business as usual. We are talking about a crisis, all spelled out in capital letters. We have to take some action. If we do not take some action, then I think this will be kind of the last stage of just losing the family farm structure in agriculture. By the way, when I am talking about family farms, I am talking less about the size of the farm, though I do think there are clearly some limits, as far as I am concerned, when we talk about any kind of subsidy or support. I am talking about the pattern of the decisionmaking; I am talking about entrepreneurship; I am talking about the family farm as in the people who work the land, live on the land, that they make the decisions. That is what I am talking about. So I just want to make it really clear, whether or not you take the cap off the loan rate, whether or not you figure out a way to have corn and wheat in the same kind of ratio in relation to the price that we now have for soybeans--a lot of farmers in Minnesota are planting soybeans, soybeans, soybeans. This whole Freedom to Farm bill is a nightmare. The sooner people here are going to be willing to face up to it, the better. As I said before--I will say it again--it was a great bill for Cargill. It was a great bill for the big grain companies. And it is a living nightmare for family farmers. They cannot cash flow on the price they receive. If we do not talk about price, price, price, then, frankly, we are not going to enable people to make it. So that is my first point. My second point, speaking just for Senator Kohl, who stepped off the floor briefly--and I include myself in his camp; I know Senator Feingold has the same belief--one of the reasons we are on the floor is because we are not going to see any extension of the dairy compact. Those of us from the Midwest are not going to let that happen. If there is one thing I do agree with, it is the adage that all politics is local. We are here to fight for people in our States. We are not going to let dairy farmers in our States come out on the short end of the stick. So just to be crystal clear about that, that is just not going to happen. My third point--and I will have two others, I say to Senator Dorgan; the third and fourth point I can do in 2 or 3 minutes--is that we have a good piece of legislation which ought to be slam dunked. It ought to be slam dunked. There ought to be 100 votes for it. The sooner we get to it, the better--price disclosure. You have this situation where it is not just the grain farmers; it is not just the dairy farmers; it is our livestock producers as well. I have said it many times, but it is worth saying again on the floor of the Senate. You have this bitter irony of our hog producers facing extinction, our pork producers facing extinction, and the packers are in hog heaven. They are making record profits. We want to know what is going on. So at the very minimum, our family farmers who are not vertically integrated, our family farmers who do not represent the conglomerates that have so effectively muscled their way to the dinner table, exercising their power over so much of the food industry, want to know exactly what people are being paid for their product. We think that ought to be public information. We think our family farmers have a right to know that. I just will say that this ought to be slam dunked. There ought to be 100 votes for it; the sooner the better. What are we waiting for? I could go on and on, and later on, when it is appropriate, I will bring out any number of different studies, with a lot of data, because I think it is really worth talking about. In some ways I almost find this ironic. I think maybe I am going to pick up on an argument that some of my Republican colleagues like to make about the problem of just throwing money at a problem. With all due respect, if we do not change this structure of agriculture, a lot of the family farmers in the Midwest, South, all the family farmers who are left in the country, are just not going to make it. They are not going to make it. Everywhere you look, in all sectors of the food industry, whether it be the input side or the output side--from whom the farmers buy, to whom they sell--you are lucky if you have four firms that dominate only 50 percent of the market. Quite often it is more than 50 percent of the market. It isn't even an oligopoly. It isn't even four firms dominating 50 percent of the market. It is a monopoly structure. Whether it be the packers, the stockyards, the USDA, or the Justice Department, we need antitrust action. We need antitrust action. We need to put some free enterprise back into the food industry. Give the family farmers in Minnesota a level playing field, give them a fair shake, and they can compete against anybody. But right now what you have is a situation where these conglomerates have muscled their way to the dinner table and exercised their raw political power over family farmers, over consumers, over taxpayers, and we need antitrust action. That means we have to take on big economic interests. That means we have to take on some of the largest contributors on the floor of the Senate. My colleague, Senator Feingold, said the other day he was going to start calling a kind of rollcall of big contributors as we go to different bills. On agriculture I probably ought to come out here and just go over the list of contributions. It is not for a particular Senator but the Senate. All of us need to change the system of contributions that come from these packers, that come from these big agribusinesses, that come from those corporate giants, because, frankly, we seem to be afraid to take them on. But if we are not willing to take them on and we are not willing to have antitrust action for real competition, our family farmers cannot make it. So I just say that now is the time. We have legislators coming in to Washington, DC tonight. Many of them travel out here with their own income. They do not have a lot of income. Many of them are farmers from State legislatures. Many of them work with really good grass-roots organizations. This isn't business as usual. So sometime, whether it be on this bill, whether it be within the next month, whether it be in the fall, this Senate has to take some action that makes a real difference to family farmers so they have some kind of future. One of the first things we have to do is be honest, just declare that the Freedom to Farm bill has been a ``freedom to fail'' bill. We need to change this legislation.

Mr. WELLSTONE

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with so I may have 3 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator from North Carolina. It may take less than 3 minutes. I refer colleagues, and I will include in the Record, to a piece today in the New York Times, front-page article, the title of which is ``New Lenders With Huge Fees Thrive on Workers With Debts.'' Some of my colleagues remember that Senator Metzenbaum did a lot of work on this. When we do bring up the bankruptcy bill, I will have an amendment which will prohibit claims in bankruptcy which rise from these high-cost transactions such as ``payday'' loans, car title loans, or any other credit extension that extends beyond 100 percent per annum. I will go into this in detail. I cannot right now in 3 minutes. I will put this piece in the Record. I hope colleagues will read it. It is really quite outrageous what these companies have been able to get away with. I look forward to having a debate on this amendment on the bankruptcy bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article to which I referred.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator. I wonder whether or not Senator Domenici is going to come back and speak. I wonder whether Senator Nickles wants to speak. I wonder if I can address the Senate, after Senator Nickles and Senator Domenici, and be allowed to speak on this bill. I thank the Senator.