Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wanted to speak on the farm bill. I am glad to see we are taking baby steps forward. If the leaders have their things worked out, I want to go ahead and speak.

The farm bill obviously for my State is a very important issue. I appreciate that we are making some steps forward. I do think it would be wiser if we could start amending and start working as a legislative body and see how far we get. We have been on the bill now for 10 days. We have not had a vote. It seems it would be prudent to go ahead and try it. I realize the leaders are trying to work something out,

and I hope they can. But each day we do not get something moving, we are not moving forward on the farm bill.

I think we can trust each other in the process. I do want to recognize the work that has been done by the committee on the farm bill, the Agriculture Committee and their work. I think they have done a number of very nice things in the bill. I say that as someone from an agricultural State, from an agricultural family, who has been Secretary of Agriculture for the State of Kansas and has a degree in agriculture.

I can see some very positive things. I like the overall trend in certain areas of the bill and some of it not. I wish to comment on both of those and make one particular policy provision notice to my colleagues and friends in the Senate.

The Senate farm bill creates the Average Crop Revenue Program, a new safety net for farmers to utilize if they choose to do so. That is key for me, giving farmers the choice in how they manage their risk and not requiring that they take and use this program. Farmers may choose to stay in the current system or may opt into the new ACR Program. I think that flexibility is a good way to go forward.

Despite several threats throughout the year, the farm bill leaves direct payments at their current level. I think that is a victory and that is good for farmers in farm country. Direct payments are the only commodity title program that provides direct assistance to producers when they have no crop to harvest. Unfortunately, that happens all too often in my State.

It has happened in places of my State this year. In fact, 2 weeks ago, I was in a field of soybeans tilling them up. There was not enough there to harvest. It happens. There is nothing a farmer can do about it if the weather breaks that poorly against him.

So I am pleased to see those direct payments continue to exist, because when you have no crop, it does not matter how much the price is, it doesn't work, you have nothing to sell.

I also particularly appreciate the expanded research for energy coming from agriculture. To me, this has been one of the Holy Grails in agriculture for years and years, to expand the definition of the business from food and fiber, to food, fiber, and fuels. This effort recognizes our need to grow more of our own fuel to help in the environment in doing that, to help in the economy, the rural economy in doing that. It recognizes this fabulous chance we have in a world today to do things along that line.

If I could take a moment to set a root off to the side or shoot it off to the side, on this particular energy provision, I think there is another way we can also go that the managers have put in the base bill; that is, replacing oil-based products with starch-based products. This is again something the agricultural industry has worked at for a long time, is doing a much better job of, but we still do not have many of the products on the marketplace.

For instance, I had a company from my State, Midwest Grain Products, in my office 2 weeks ago with now 100 percent starch-based plastic utensils. He gave me some spoons and chopsticks that were made 100 percent out of wheat starch. They had been going 50 percent out of starch and 50 percent out of oil-based products. But he is now at 100 percent.

Yet they have not been able to crack through the marketplace yet on this, a totally biodegradable product made out of agricultural commodities, better for the environment, certainly better for our economy.

One of the things we have put in this farm bill is a New Uses Expo, where we would showcase on an annual basis, almost like you do at an auto show, the computer shows, on an annual basis, the new widgets coming out of agriculture, replacing, in many times and places, oil- based products with agricultural-based products, but showcasing that, having the Secretary of Agriculture and indeed even the Secretary of Energy cohosting that event. I think that is something that can help us expand the marketplace and expand value added coming out of agriculture, which is key for rural communities in my State and many others.

There are problems in the bill. That is why I hoped we could get some amendments moving. First, the bill contains a ban on packers owning livestock. This is a very contentious issue in my State and many places around the country.

Under this packer ban provision, processers would be prohibited from owning, feeding or controlling livestock more than 14 days before slaughter. You can look at this, and as someone raised in a farm family, I look at this and say: Well, that sounds like a pretty good thing. I do not want packers owning livestock. I want the family farm, I want my dad and my brother to be owning that livestock rather than the packers.

But then you start looking at the marketplace and the changes taking place in the marketplace and say: Wait. This is going to disrupt some good things happening. Ten days ago, I was on a ranch, a feed yard in Lyons, KS. They are raising certified Angus beef, natural, no artificial hormones, no antibiotics in the livestock, and then direct marketing that to consumers on the east coast, a great innovative product they have got coming out. They are getting a premium then for farmers when they can market this product that way.

But to do it, they had to enter into a contractual agreement with the packers that are set to process the animal and to deliver it to the end consumer, to the stores that they are going to directly to the consumers with.

So with this packer prohibition ban, this innovative market technique that is getting more in the pocketbooks of my farmers, because they are working with the packers, going straight to the consumer with a product they want, certified Angus beef, that is all natural, you are going to break that supply chain.

They are not going to be able to work with the packer on a contractual arrangement to do this. They are saying: Look, this is going to hurt us. We are not going to be able to do this. Now your ban that you are doing to try to save family farmers is going to hurt family farmers. So this is kind of the law of unintended consequences, that something people are trying to do on a positive basis to help family farmers is, in the end, going to hurt many of them in being able to increase the income they get from their livestock.

That is what they need. They need to be able to get more income from their livestock, and here is a key marketing tool and a way to be able to do that. I would hope that would be something we could deal with and something we can get passed.

Overall, I do not want to take a lot of time of my colleagues, other than to recognize the importance of getting this bill through. I would urge them on the Democratic side to let us start doing some amendments and working this bill through. I think we have a good base bill to work from. I think we can make some sensible decisions around here and get a farm bill through that is important to my State, important to the country, important to the future of the industry, and important to security in the United States on energy security.

But to do that, we need to get the process going. I would urge my colleagues to allow that to move on forward.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, thank you very much.

Mr. President, I will not take that much time, but I do want to draw my colleagues' attention to an issue that is going to be in front of the Judiciary Committee and my colleague, the Presiding Officer, this next week, and that is the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General of the United States.

Judge Mukasey is an outstanding nominee, highly qualified by anybody's definition, a consensus nominee who has now drawn fire. It strikes me as a situation of ignoring the forest for a tree. I want to talk about the specific tree that is here in the way, but I want to also point out the forest we have.

Judge Mukasey is an outstanding, qualified nominee, strongly supported, warmly put forward by Republicans and Democrats alike. He is not an ideologue by any means.

Senator Schumer said, at the outset:

[H]e could get a unanimous vote out of this committee.

Senator Schumer had previously discussed Judge Mukasey as a possible appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court--a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here again, Senator Schumer's words:

Let me say, if the president were to nominate somebody,

albeit a conservative, but somebody who put the rule of law

first, someone like a . . . Mike Mukasey, my guess is that

they would get through the Senate very, very quickly.

Well, it has now been 41 days that the nomination has been pending. That is longer than any other nominee for Attorney General in over 20 years. He is a consensus nominee.

I have my problems with Judge Mukasey on narrow issues. But if we look at the central issue of our day, which is the war on terrorism, the war we are having with militant Islamists that we are likely to be in for a generation, you could not ask for a more qualified Attorney General nominee than Judge Mukasey.

He is a gentleman who, as a judge, has handled some of the most difficult terrorism cases we have had in the country. He is an outstanding jurist. He is highly qualified. He handled the blind sheik case that came in front of his court. He has handled others. This is a nominee who is going to be in position for, well, the rest of this year and next year, and that is it, as Attorney General. I think he is so highly qualified he could well proceed into a next administration if he could get in in this administration. Yet he is not being put forward.

I want to quote--and this is an extraordinary quote. This is the Second Circuit Court of Appeals praising his work as a trial court judge in some of these difficult cases. I have not read before where a circuit court has praised the work of a trial court judge to such an extraordinary degree as they did of Judge Mukasey where they noted this. This is the Second Circuit saying this about him: ``extraordinary skill and patience.'' Further continuing to quote: ``outstanding achievement in the face of challenges far beyond those normally endured by a trial judge.'' That is the Second Circuit Court of Appeals about Judge Mukasey. This is an outstanding individual.

Now, he was sailing along, doing well as a nominee, going through a tough confirmation process, handling the hearings well, dealing with the issues, and then an issue came up about torture, and waterboarding in particular. Then there seemed to be some confusion being declared about this, so he has cleared up the record on that issue.

I want to read what he has stated on the record about this particular issue. And I want to say at the outset, it cannot be clearer that Judge Mukasey does not approve of waterboarding. He does not approve of it. He has called the procedure ``repugnant to me.'' He wrote to the Judiciary Committee Democrats that ``nothing . . . in my testimony should be read as an approval of the interrogation techniques presented to me at the hearing or in your letter, or any comparable technique.''

``[N]othing . . . in my testimony should be read as an approval of [this] interrogation technique. . . .''

He has pledged, if confirmed, he will examine interrogation programs thoroughly, and he has promised that ``if, after such a review, [he] determine[s] that any technique is unlawful, [he] will not hesitate to so advise the President and . . . rescind or correct any legal opinion of the Department of Justice that supports use of the technique.''

Now, do my colleagues doubt Judge Mukasey, whom they roundly praised just weeks ago, is a man of his word? Do they believe he would permit an illegal program to go forward? I do not think so. He will not. This is a straight-shooter. He is not a yes-man. He is not a yes-man to anybody. He has been on the bench for years. He has handled tough terrorism cases. He recognizes the threat terrorism is to this country. He also recognizes that the United States must stand for what is right. If we don't, that will be used against us in other places around the world, and it doesn't flow to the best image and it doesn't flow to the heart of what America is: a rule-of-law nation that stands up for what is right. He is going to do that. He has done that. He will do that.

He is not a yes-man to anybody. He is not a yes-man to people who would oppose him in this body. He is not a yes-man to the President. He has far too distinguished a career to be a yes-man, with less than 14 months left in an administration, for him to say: OK, I am just going to roll over and approve something I disagree with, in the final 14 months of an administration.

We need an Attorney General. We need an Attorney General in this country. This one has been pending far too long. I ask my colleagues who are seeking to oppose him--I think primarily on the grounds that they just want to oppose the Attorney General nominee of the United States or oppose the President--to back up and to take a second look at this gentleman and his great qualifications, his integrity he has conducted his entire life with, what he has specifically said about waterboarding, and find it in themselves to do the right thing and support him. This is an outstanding nominee who doesn't deserve this sort of treatment. We need to get this vote up and approved.

I believe the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, whom I have worked with a great deal and whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration for, is going to hold hearings on Judge Mukasey on Tuesday, and a vote. I am hopeful we can vote him out of committee and vote him through the Senate, clearly before the Thanksgiving Day break. We need to. We need an Attorney General. This is the right man at the right time for this job.

I thank you very much, and I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side of the aisle on morning business?

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. President, I want to speak from the heart on two matters: one on my good friend, Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash 5 years ago. Several speakers have spoken already, very eloquently, about Paul Wellstone, a wonderful man.

He and I disagreed on many issues in this body, and yet we had a wonderful relationship because of the nature of the person he was. He practiced the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. It is a tough art to do, particularly in legislative bodies it can be very difficult. But he did it, and he did it very well. And he had a number of friends on both sides of the aisle from wide across the political spectrum.

Because of that attitude--and here is something I really want to say to my colleagues--Paul and I could get together on what I deemed to be the most important piece of legislation that I have been a part of here, as far as a primary sponsor, and that is the human trafficking work that he and I started--actually, his wife got him focused on it, and she was killed in the same plane crash--where we started seeing people trafficked into the United States and different places around the world, and we wondered what is going on with this dark underside of the globalization that is taking place. The way they saw it was his wife first started to see Ukrainian women trafficked into Minnesota and showing up at battered women shelters. They had been trafficked into prostitution in the United States and then had shown up at battered women shelters. And they said, how did you get here? Then they started backtracking the trail through gang activities, criminal activities, organized crime activities, that moved them from the Ukraine into the United States, into brothels, and then they were battered.

As they started to piece this together, they were seeing organized crime which now we know is in many cases involved in human trafficking around the world and is the third leading source of income for organized crime now--trafficking. Much of it is women or young girls, in many cases if not most, that they are trafficking and trafficking into prostitution.

Paul's wife first observed this. Paul got involved in it. I got involved in it, seeing it from another angle, and we were able to put together a coalition around that issue of human trafficking at an early phase, before we noticed that much. That included people from across the political spectrum. Paul and myself--he a dedicated liberal, myself a conservative--we had Gloria Steinem and Chuck Colson in this coalition, pushing for a bill against human trafficking, the first legislation we did here on that topic.

Because we were able to work together and reach out across the aisle and disagree about a lot of things but not be disagreeable and find common cause, we were able to deal with something that is a scourge on this planet. As we globalize, walls come down, people are moved, many times illicitly, in many cases brutally, and in a lot of

cases are killed in the process, or seen as disposable people--which is a term of art used by one of the authors, experts on this topic, who has written a book called ``Disposable People.'' These are people who have been trafficked. Then after they get diseased or run down, they are thrown out on the street as a disposable person. It is a very ugly thing.

Paul, with his heart of gold, saw this. I remember him complaining to me one day as I was coming out on the Senate floor. He came charging up to me and he said: You do this to me.

I said: What?

He was showing me the rankings and he was only the second most liberal in the Senate. In the prior years he was the most liberal. He said: You did that to me. If I hadn't been working with you, I would be the most liberal still. He had that kind of sense of humor about him that he would blame me.

He came up to me one day, where I was talking about life being sacred and precious, and I was saying I believe all life is sacred, it is precious, a child of a loving God, and that includes Paul Wellstone and Ted Kennedy too. He came out and said I like your line on this, even if I don't agree with your position on life. He enjoyed life. He lived it well. I think he has also taught a good lesson for the rest of us about core convictions. There is no problem with having core convictions. It is a good thing to have core convictions and to stand by those. It is also a good thing to recognize when it is that the topics you are talking about are not your core convictions, so you can reach out across the aisle. I think maybe 30 percent of the topics around Washington, maybe more, could be less, are divisive ones, where there are divisions on both sides. But there is 70 percent we can work on. The country is desperate to see us make Washington work, to see us reach across the aisle, to see us make it work on core topics.

Joe Biden and I held a press conference in Iowa about a political solution in Iraq, and people were stunned, saying this is what we want to see; we want to see our country work on tough topics. We can do that on issues such as cancer, the war on cancer--there is no division between the parties on that--and reaching across the aisle we can show the American people a government that works. That is something we need to do. That is something I think would be in Paul Wellstone and his wife's legacy.

I remember them today and I hope all of us will remember them in our prayers, about what they gave to us. I often say you can't measure a tree very well until it is on the ground. Unfortunately, that is the case with Paul, a wonderful guy with a wonderful heart. I disagreed with him on a number of political issues, but I loved his style and loved the way he lived life.

Mr. President, I wish to talk about the situation in Sudan. The situation in Darfur has been widely noted and known. It is deteriorating. It is deteriorating slowly. We want to get the factions back together to try to talk about what it is we can do to bring some stability.

Something that is not widely followed right now is the deteriorating situation between the north and south. We have had a long-term peace agreement in place now for a couple of years between the north and south that ended the longest running civil war in Africa. It had been going on for 20 years. Two million people were killed. Now the south has backed away somewhat from the government. The north government is not complying with the peace agreement. I will be bringing out a more full statement to my colleagues. This is very dangerous, as far as the situation that now we could get back into a problem between the north and the south again, and have two fronts going.

In the south, long term, there was a genocide going on there before it took place in Darfur. We have to be vigilant toward the Sudanese Government, which is the problem. This is a genocidal government in Khartoum. We have to get on top of that situation and make sure it doesn't deteriorate between the north along with what is taking place in the west and Darfur. It could well be that Sudan in the future is a country that breaks up into three or four different countries because of the way the Khartoum government is trying to force people into their ideological box. It is a militant Islamist government started by Osama bin Laden, this iteration. It is the problem, but we have to deal with it, where it is in this situation. I don't want us to take our eyes off the ball.

In the south, where there has been a lot of work over a long period of time to get that peace, I hope that we not lose that peace in the overall situation.

Finally, the President of Congo is in Washington now. I met with him yesterday, along with a number of my colleagues. One of the issues I want to bring up here, and I will be developing some legislation, is that a number of radical militant groups are raiding in the eastern part of the Congo. They are dislocating nearly 450,000 people now. In these guerrilla movements, what they do is get control of an area and then they get mineral rights for individuals or to groups to come in and mine things, such as coaltan. It is a particular metal used in making cell phones. That is how they finance their rebel movement. We saw this in the blood diamond issue in western Africa. What we did then was put a certification process together, that you had to certify that the diamonds came from legitimate means, and that shut the financing down.

My hope is we can do something similar in the Congo, where we can have a certification on minerals like the coaltan and then shut the financing down for these groups that run civilian populations out of an area. I think that is something we can do credibly. Our markets and our economy are our key foreign policy tools. Here is a place where we can use the U.S. market to try to help bring stability to a region that is key for stability throughout Africa. If we get stability in the Congo it might bring stability throughout the region. I hope we can do those things.

I appreciate my colleagues' time and yield the floor.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I want to speak in favor of Judge Southwick and the nomination and would take up that 4 minutes.

A couple of quick points I want to make on this because the time is short, the hour is late, and I appreciate the Presiding Officer staying. I have met and I have gotten to know Judge Southwick. I have worked with him. I have seen him now through two Senates, the last Senate and this Senate. This is an honorable man. This is a good man. I think this is a smear campaign that people are trying to do on him, on a good man.

I think if he came up in different circumstances everybody would say: Why, absolutely he is the right person for it.

Part of the reason I say that is you look at the last Congress when he came up in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Judge Southwick came up in the last Congress, and he was unanimously approved by the Judiciary Committee, seen as a consensus nominee who should move forward. He has been through these parts before. Why is it he was unanimous last time around and now he is a controversial candidate? Why is it you are looking at 7,000 opinions and somehow now we found something in a couple of opinions but didn't find those last year when people were fly-specking it?

I think this is kind of a sign of the times and where we are and the President's time period and the President's approval ratings. He is in his last 2 years and people are looking and saying we don't want to get these many circuit court judges approved. But if you look at the record, this is not fair to this judge.

Look at the diversity issue. I just want to put a chart up on the diversity of the Fifth Circuit because that issue has been raised, the number of appointees to the Fifth Circuit. Under President Clinton and Bush: Women appointed under President Clinton, zero; President Bush appointed two; African Americans, one under Clinton, none under Bush; Hispanics, one under Clinton, one under Bush, and actually there was a third woman appointed under Bush. I don't think that stands the review and test of us being honorable and honest with what the situation is.

This is a judicial emergency situation. Senator Leahy has previously stated if a vacancy is deemed to be a judicial emergency, it should be addressed quickly. This is a judicial emergency, as determined by the nonpartisan Administrative Office of the Courts. They have declared the seat to which Judge Southwick has been nominated a judicial emergency.

Senator Leahy, for whom I have a great deal of respect and worked with on a number of additional issues other than this, has also said it is important whether the two home State Senators support the nominee. You have just heard from the two home State Senators who strongly support this nominee.

I think the criteria that have been previously set to fill a circuit court position have been met, in many cases even exceeded. Yet we have a controversy over a person who was seen, one Senate ago, one Congress ago, as a consensus candidate. This seems to be much more reflective of the time rather than the person, and I don't think that is meritorious of this body, to decide something on, OK, it is in this session of Congress rather than the prior session of Congress.

Here is an honorable, good man. If you have qualms with one of the nominees, fine. But let's make it a real set of qualms and let's not make it something that we invent this session, during this Congress, and try to take it out on somebody who is a good candidate.

Here is a person who served honorably in the military, even asked that his age be waived so he could join the Army Reserves at age 42. In 2002, at the age of 53, he volunteered to transfer to a line combat unit that was widely anticipated to deploy to Iraq.

This is an honorable man. I urge my colleagues to actually look past the way he is being painted and look to the reality of the facts and to the longevity of his service and what he seeks to do and to vote and to support this nominee.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to talk on two issues with my colleagues. One is about Iran. The President of Iran is now in the United States. Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad is in the United States enjoying liberties here that are not enjoyed in his home country by his fellow citizens. I want to make a point of that. I want to talk about what he has said and what he has done. I think there is a substantial difference. I want to point out that we should pass the Lieberman-Kyl amendment regarding the designation of terrorist organization by--that the IRGC be designated as a terrorist organization. Finally, I will wrap up with a discussion about the Biden-Brownback amendment on federalism in Iraq, which I think would be very important.

President Ahmadi-Nejad took advantage of the freedoms we enjoy to spread lies in the United States. I believe his appearance was disgraceful. I think the things he is saying are outright lies--what he is saying versus what he has done. He looked his audience in the eye and he lied. He knew he was telling lies, and the audience knew it.

Let's talk about the real truth inside Iran. I want to speak about what is taking place there.

I have chaired the Middle East subcommittee in the past. I have worked on issues regarding Iran. We have worked to secure and have secured funding for civil society development inside Iran. I worked with a number of Iranian dissidents who have been forced out of that country. We have seen it taking place on the news.

President Ahmadi-Nejad is enjoying liberties now in this country that are not available to his people. It would be easier to spend time in his own country developing these same civil liberties for individuals and renouncing terrorism rather than trying to go to the World Trade Center site where terrorists killed so many of our citizens.

President Ahmadi-Nejad and Ayatollah Khamenei are not trustworthy leaders. The Iranian people do not enjoy freedom of speech. Their people do not have a free press. The Iranian Government represses women and minorities. They do not tolerate religions other than their own extreme version of Shia Islam.

For example, consider the Baha'is of Iran. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has blocked the Baha'is' access to higher education, refused them entry into universities and expelled them when they are discovered to be Baha'is.

Recently, a 70-year-old man was sentenced to 70 lashes and a year in prison for ``propagating and spreading Bahaism and the defamation of the pure Imams''--a 70-year-old man, 70 lashes, a year in prison.

We must stand with the teachers who are getting purged from academic institutions in Iran for speaking their minds, with the Iranian- American scholars who are being arrested on trumped-up charges, and with newspaper editors who refuse to censor according to Government demands.

Isn't it amazing that President Ahmadi-Nejad would see that taking place in his country and yet come here to enjoy our civil liberties of freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, to speak his mind when he cannot do it in his country? We should be reaching out to the students, the labor activists, and the brave leaders of Iran's fledgling civil society and offer our support for their views and for an open society in Iran. It is not only a moral imperative, but I believe it is also in the strategic interest of the United States and of people of civil societies in the West and throughout the world.

This context is important as we consider the amendment offered by Senator Lieberman and Senator Kyl. Yesterday Ahmadi-Nejad claimed that Iran is a free country, where women are respected and life is good for the Iranian people. We know this is not true.

Yesterday, we also heard from Ahmadi-Nejad that Iran does not want to attack Israel, that it is not meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it does not want a nuclear weapon. We know this is not true. They are meddling in Iraq, attacking our troops with weapons developed in Iran. They have held conferences stating a world without Israel, a world without the United States.

Iran's leaders would say the IRGC is not a threat, but we have no reason to believe them. In fact, we know the IRGC is killing our soldiers in Iraq. It is working with Hezbollah in Lebanon and it is present in other countries around the world advancing the agenda of the Supreme Leader in Iran.

The IRGC is the very definition of a terrorist organization, and Iran as a nation is the lead sponsor of terrorism around the world. The IRGC should be designated formally as a terrorist organization so that the full power of the American Government can be applied to combating its activities. The IRGC is not a normal military arm of a sovereign government. It is the operational division of the world's most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism. If we think of terrorism as a threat, we must designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization.

I hope the President of Iran will renounce terrorism and the support for terrorism today, although I know he will not.

Mr. President, on another matter on which we are going to be voting shortly, the Biden-Brownback amendment, I wish to show this map of Iraq. I note to my colleagues in the time I have, when President Bush saw the military situation was devolving on the ground and was moving toward civil war, he called for a military surge. He said: It is not working; we are not getting control; we

need more troops. I had difficulty with that decision. I questioned whether it would work. But I think one has to say this has worked, that it has calmed down much of the situation. We don't know for what period of time. It certainly has produced a lot of results in Anbar Province.

I was at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas yesterday meeting with a number of key leaders in the military who have been in and out of Iraq several times. They were quite pleased with the number of positive events moving forward in Iraq with the military situation.

If we look at the GAO report of what is taking place on the political situation in Iraq where there has been a military surge, when the military surge has produced results, what I am contending now is we need a political surge. The military situation is more stable. It is certainly not completely stable in Iraq, but it has produced an environment where we need a political surge, and the current political setup is not producing that situation.

When the military situation was not producing results, we made changes. The political situation is not producing results, and I suggest we have to have changes in this situation as well. We did not hesitate to move forward with a U.S. strategy on keeping a civil war from going full blown in Iraq. We should work now with a political surge in Iraq because this current situation is not working. Two weeks ago, when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testified, the focus was on General Petraeus when I think the focus should have been on Ambassador Crocker.

As we see in the GAO assessment, the Iraqi Government has met 3 benchmarks politically, partially met 4 benchmarks, and did not meet 11 of the political benchmarks that we in Congress had set and that the administration had gone along with and said, yes, those are realistic. Out of 18 total, 11 have not been met at all, 4 partially met, and 3 met. That is not working politically.

I am showing a map of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire. It is broken into three categories, referred to as Mesopotamia at that point in time--Shia south, Sunni middle, and Kurdish north, with Baghdad as a federal city. They had it broken into three states. My point in saying this is--and the Chair will recognize this as he was raised in farm country, raised on a farm--you can work with nature or you can fight it. My experience is you are a lot more successful when you work with it than try to fight.

There is a natural setup in Iraq. There are divisions which people have lived with and in for a long period of time. We can try to force the whole country together and hold it together with a strong military force, or we can recognize these difficulties and say we are going to work with this situation. And we have in the north, in the Kurdish portion of the country. We said the Kurds run the Kurdish portion.

I was up there in January. It is stable, growing, with investments taking place, people moving into the area, the exact situation we want to see taking place across all Iraq. Wouldn't it be wise at this point in time to allow a Sunni state to develop, still one country, but devolving the power and authority more down to a state level of government and have the Sunnis have a police force and a military in their region, and the Shia doing the same in their region so they trust the structure, so they are willing to work with us?

This is a political structure that can meet some benchmarks we set and others set. Why would we be hesitant putting in a political surge and pushing? We were not hesitant about pushing a military surge and pushing that piece of it. I don't see why we wouldn't do a political surge.

This is a map of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was before the Dayton accords and then after the Dayton accords. This is a very diverse map of what was taking place. This is the former Yugoslavia. We can see the different ethnic groups. We can see them spread around.

I now wish to show a map of what took place after the ethnic sectarian buttons were pushed and you had people sorting out, you had people moving to various parts to feel more comfortable and more secure, and this sorted out.

Then we saw the Bosnia-Herzegovina lines under the Dayton peace agreement that the United States pushed. It was a political agreement because the people on the ground could not agree to this themselves. This is something they could not deal with on their own because their own people would say we don't trust these guys or we don't trust those guys, we can't deal with them. We had to go in with a very aggressive military force that is still sitting there to enforce an agreement that was uncomfortable on the ground. We came in with a political surge to say: OK, this is something that should take place. We forced the parties to come to an agreement, and they have been at relative peace. There have been different breakouts. There is tension in the region. We still have troops in the area, as many others do, 15 years later, but this has maintained a relative peace.

I wish to show a map of Baghdad now. My point in saying that is, at times in these types of situations, I believe we have to have a U.S. push for a political surge. I am suggesting that we have a well-known, well-regarded policy person--maybe a Jim Baker, maybe it is Condoleezza Rice, maybe it is Colin Powell--who goes over and knocks out the agreement between particularly the Sunni and Shia who have not been able to get along. The Sunnis have run the country for a century, but they are in the minority. They think they still ought to run the country, but that is not going to happen. The Shia who are in the majority are not confident at all that the Sunnis are not coming back to run the place again, and they don't trust them.

We see ethnic splitting. This is a map of Baghdad. The Tigris River runs through the middle. This is purifying more Sunni and more Shia. The hash lines to the left are Shia purifying, and Sunni purifying on the other side, and a lot of people moving out of this region.

This makes all the sense in the world. Instead of trying to fight against this situation and trying to force Sunni and Shia together into one government that has a strong centralized government, we are only going to get a weak Shia government because the Kurds and the Sunnis are not going to agree with a strong Shia government, and we devolve the power and authority mostly out to the states and let them run it. We would have the Sunnis running their region and the Shia running their region in Baghdad. That is a way we can work with the natural setup of the situation. That is what we are calling for in the Biden- Brownback amendment. It has a number of cosponsors from both sides. It is a political surge that recognizes the realities on the ground and says this is something that can produce results in keeping with what we are doing militarily in trying to give the political environment a setting in which it can work.

This current political setup is not going to work. It has not produced results. It has not produced results to date. It is unlikely to produce results in the future. I think it has failed as a political structure. We have seen a portion of this already work in the northern region, in the Kurdish region where the Kurds run their area and it is stabilized and moving forward. That is why I urge my colleagues to look at this amendment. This is a positive step on our part. It is a positive step for the Iraqis.

Some of my colleagues believe it is the U.S. dictating to them what they ought to do. I contend in the Dayton peace agreements we pushed awfully hard. They still had to make the decision, as the Iraqis will. I also believe because of these ethnic sectarian divisions that have existed for some period of time, that unless an outside force comes in and pushes aggressively, these things are unlikely to happen because the leaders are not going to be able to lead their people voluntarily; it is going to have to be something with some push.

We are going to have to work with the nations in the region as well to make sure the people we worked with a lot--the Saudis and Jordanians, in particular, and others within the region as well--are supportive of this plan. We have to assure them that Iraq will remain one country. One of the points they have all been adamant about is that Iraq remain one country. It would remain one country, as Bosnia- Herzegovina has remained one country, although it is split into two states.

We can do this. It is a positive step. It is a bipartisan step on a topic that certainly could use a little bipartisanship. We haven't had much on Iraq. That is the way we overall lose in a situation, when we split here. If we will stand together here, we will not lose over there. We need to start pulling people together around some sort of common idea and not say: Well, because it is a Democratic idea, I guess we can't do it, or because it wasn't proposed by certain individuals, we aren't going to do it.

Let's pull together. This is something that can and will work, and it is something we need to do because if we can get this situation to stabilize, we can start pulling our troop levels back. I do not believe we will pull our troop levels completely out of Iraq for some period of time, just as we are still in the Bosnia region for some period of time. We can pull our troop levels back, certainly pull them back to the Kurdish, Sunni, and Baghdad to keep as a stabilizing force for some years to come, but not losing troops on a daily basis and we will be able to get those troop levels down.

This is something we can work on in a bipartisan way and get us pulling together and get us into a stable political environment. It is not a perfect solution. There isn't a perfect solution that exists. I think it is a far better one and far more likely to produce political results on a benchmark basis of stability that we can work with and that we can then move forward in facing other more difficult situations, other equally difficult situations in the region, as I started off talking about--Iran, the lead sponsor of state-sponsored terrorism, which is one we have to address with what they are doing in the region.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Yes, I will yield to the Senator from Texas before I speak.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague for that, for this amendment, and for his insight and prophetic view of what is really taking place. Senator Biden has mentioned for over a year that the likely outcome in Iraq is going to be a federalism model where you have most of your power in the states--the Kurdish north, the Sunni west, the Shia south, and Baghdad as the federal city.

I think we have had, hopefully now, enough debate about the military situation in Iraq. It is an important one, but we have not had much, if any, discussion about the political situation in Iraq. Last week, all the focus was on General Petraeus, and there was another individual who testified, Ambassador Crocker. General Petraeus talked about the military situation, and Ambassador Crocker talked about the political situation.

Regarding the military situation, I think we have seen incredible progress by the dedicated men and women in uniform, but we have seen little to no political progress. This discussion is about a ``political surge.'' We have had the military surge. It is moving forward and getting things done and stabilizing. All it can do is provide space for a political solution. It cannot put forward a solution that will last. You have to have that politically. So what we are going to talk about with this resolution is a political surge. Those are not my words; they are Thomas Friedman's. I think it is apt and its timing is right. I urge my colleagues to look at this resolution and support what this is--that we need a political surge, and we need to recognize the demographics on the ground.

This resolution simply calls for the following things: A conference where Iraqis reach a political settlement based on federalism; in effect, an agreement on new and already constitutionally recognized federal regions. This doesn't require a change in the Iraqi Constitution. It is already there. They allow the Kurdish north as a state. This would be allowing other states within Iraq.

No. 2, it calls on the international community to respect the results of that conference and to support federalism in Iraq, which is a concept we are very familiar with in the United States. I think that is really the key for it to work in Iraq.

No. 3, it calls on the Iraqi Government to resolve the issue of distributing oil revenues, which is crucial to any federal solution in Iraq. It is the oil that will keep the whole place together.

I show my colleagues a map that I think is kind of interesting. It is a map of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire. It is prior to the World War I divisions in Iraq. I think we ought to study history to keep from repeating past mistakes. I think we are repeating history now because we have not studied it sufficiently. So here is a map from 1914. This is fascinating. You have the north Ottoman, which were called vilayets. This is in the State of Mosul, the Kurdish north. You had the vilayet of Baghdad, the Sunni area in Iraq. You had the vilayet of Basra, the Shia State. Baghdad was the federal city--a very effective city at that particular time.

As much as a third of the population there was Jewish at that point in time. Those were the governing bodies within this region. The Ottoman Empire was concerned about whether the Basra region and the Shia there would stay with them or go with the Persians at that time. It is a similar discussion we are hearing today.

My reason for saying this is, if you can put it in a certain term, this is natural in Iraq. Instead of us trying to force together a country under Shia domination--and under the current setup all you are ever going to get is a Shia government, but it is going to be a weak one because the Kurds are not going to agree with a strong Shia government, nor are the Sunnis. All you can ever get is a weak Shia government that has a lot of question marks in it from the Sunnis. They don't trust the Shia, and the Shia don't trust the Sunnis. The Sunnis think they ought to run the whole country, as they have for the past century. They think the Sunnis are going to come back.

I was in Iraq in January. I went to the north, and I was in Baghdad. The Kurds are prospering, stable, growing, and investment is taking place. I will show you a map later of people moving from Baghdad to the northern portion because it is stable. I was meeting with the Sunni and Shia leaders in Baghdad. The Shia said: We could get this solved if it wasn't for the Sunni. The Sunni leaders would say: We could get this solved if it wasn't for the Shia. The Shia leaders were saying: We could get this solved if it wasn't for the Sunnis.

I submit to this body that we have a flawed political design that we are pushing currently in Baghdad. That is why we have not seen the political progress that we need to see taking place. We have done the military surge, which has been successful. Now we need a political surge. We need to send in a Jim Baker or a Condoleezza Rice to get these people in a room to cut the deal to get different states, where you have the power mostly residing in the states. Right now, in the Kurdish north, they run their own military, their own police, and they are stable. So you allow that and you even encourage that to take place. It is in the Iraqi

Constitution to allow that. That is how the Kurds got their region in the first place. That is a political design that can lead to political stability on the ground so that we can pull our troops back.

This amendment says nothing about the troops. We have debated that a long time--the military side. This is all about the political side where we have failed to see the progress. But it does say, if we can get that political solution, we should push it forward. I submit that on the military side, if we can get some political stability in Iraq, we can start to pull our troops back from patrolling.

Ultimately, I think you are going to see long-term U.S. military bases in the north, probably in the west, and around Baghdad. But they can be bases where we can operate without our people being killed every day. As everybody in this body knows, we are still in South Korea 60 years after that conflict. We are still in Bosnia 15 years after that conflict. We can stay--and we usually do stay--in a place a long period of time to provide stability, as long as our people are not getting killed. Here is the design where you can stay for a long period of time--because I believe we will need to stay for a long time--without our men and women being killed. It reflects a demographic reality on the ground and the historic reality on the ground. It also recognizes that Iraq needs to have a strong state, weak federal form of government to reflect the different groups. Iraq, in many respects, is less a country than it is three groups held together by exterior forces. The Turks don't want the Kurds to be a separate country in the north. The Kurds already voted 90 percent that they want to have a separate country, but they are not pushing it today because they know they cannot do it at this point. So they are willing to stay within this situation.

The Sunnis believe they should run Iraq, but they are less than 20 percent of the population. That is not going to happen. The Shia lack a comfort that they can control the country, but they are certainly dominant in a particular region.

I wish to show an ancient map of this very same situation to give an another flavor and context. Of course, under the Ottomans, it was called Mesopotamia during that period of time. Again, here is a three- state solution that the Ottoman Empire put in place as a way of managing these different groups who do not agree with one another, who do not get along.

One can say: Wait a minute, there is a lot of intermarrying, there are a lot of Sunni-Shia relations that are taking place and have taken place over the years of being together as one country. You are trying to go back rather than go forward.

I wish to show a map of the former Yugoslavia right after Tito left and before some of the civil wars started in Yugoslavia because I think it is instructive. Here is a map of the ethnic composition before the war in 1991. It is an ethnic map that shows where the Croats, the Bosnians, and the Serbs were in this area in 1991. The reason I point this out is, I was in this country in 1991. I was there the week after the Slovenians voted to secede from the rest of Yugoslavia. I was in a conference with groups from all over the country. I couldn't tell the difference between the various ethnic groups.

When I would look, I couldn't tell if this person was a Croat or a Serb or a Macedonian, this, that. I couldn't tell the difference. It made no sense to me. These guys had been in a country together for decades. Why wouldn't they stay together? They knew the differences. They knew what happened. They knew the history. They had intermarried to where they had different ethnic groups who were married into the same families and spread, splotched all over the country. There were concentrations in different places, but over a period of, I think, 70 years, under a hard dictatorial rule, under Tito, with a tough military and a tough intelligence apparatus, if someone got out of control, they were dead or in jail--similar to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who ran roughshod and people intermingled.

Then we started to see political leadership come forward and say: We Serbs have been mistreated by this group and you know what they did to us a century ago and you know what they did to us in this war and you know what they did to us 500 years ago, and we shouldn't be treated that way. We had a leader come up that hit this visceral inside note and started a bunch of wars, to where they sorted themselves out.

This is what happens after you get a group of leaders standing up and saying they shouldn't treat the Croats this way, they shouldn't treat the Serbs this way. We can see the purity of the map--Bosnians, Serbs, Croats--and by 1995--this is the Dayton peace accords--you can see what takes place after that. That leader touched that visceral note about this is who we are and they shouldn't treat us that way and there were a bunch of people killed in the process as well.

Finally, there was enough fighting and we got a political surge in the Dayton accords and made the leaders come together. We drew a line, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the Dayton peace agreement. We still have troops in this area enforcing this accord, but they are not fighting and killing each other. There are still problems that take place. But this was a two-state solution in one country, with the United States pushing a political surge to take place and the United States still having troops there to make sure people do not get out of line.

I went to Sarajevo when it started to stabilize. The place was still shellshocked about what had taken place. People were still saying: We used to live in peace; what happened here? What happened was somebody pushed the ethnic button and it worked, and it works in too many places in the world, and it works in Iraq, unfortunately.

I wish to show a chart of what happened in Baghdad on ethnic splits and the movements taking place in Baghdad. This is a military chart. It is too busy of a chart, and there are some who dispute some of the movements. I am willing to grant them that there may be others with a slightly different factual variation.

Basically, the Tigris River is in the middle. We see the Sunnis moving and purifying west of the Tigris River and the Shia moving and purifying east of the Tigris River. These diagonal lines show communities that are going more Shia and the diagonal lines in the opposite direction are communities going more Sunni, and we see small ethnic groups, small Christian populations who are either going into smaller, tighter communities or going north into the Kurdish region of the country.

This is happening now. This is what is happening now. We have heard about the death squads, threats, and families forced to move taking place in Baghdad. When a number of leaders push the ethnic sectarian button, it hits this inside visceral note. It is a strange concept to us as Americans. They come from everywhere, and we say: Can't you guys get along? Believe me, this is a reality in the world, and it is a big reality in Iraq, particularly in a place that is more three groups than it is one country.

I wish to give a caveat. The New York Times on Monday questioned the purity of this information, saying there are some Shia moving into Sunni areas and there are some Sunni moving into Shia areas, and I am willing to give that taking place. These are the megatrends that are happening, and I don't think there is any question about it.

There has been a lot of death, killing with this taking place. It is the same with Bosnia-Herzegovina. What I am saying is rather than having a whole bunch of people get killed from this point forward, why don't we recognize the demographic realities on the ground and put this in a series of states where the ethnic group is running it and stop the killing or certainly reduce it substantially. That is what this amendment calls for.

I wish to show my colleagues some of the maps of current Iraq, to give an idea. I have shown the Ottoman Empire maps. This is modern Iraq, as far as the populations are going. We have the Sunni Kurds in the north. Again, this is the most stable, growing area. When I was there, there were cranes and building and investment taking place. It is moving forward. We have the Sunni area in the west and the Shia area in the south. There are areas of Sunni Arab and Shia Arab. There is a mix of Shia-Sunni with Baghdad in the

center. Again, we have three blocs who have pretty much split up. This is modern Iraq.

This is not a perfect solution by any means. As an American, I look at it as a subpar solution altogether because I think they would be much better off if they could get along and form one country and operate it as one country without having to give decentralization so much of the power.

The problem is it does not reflect the realities on the ground. The problem is, too--think about Ambassador Crocker's testimony, think about the GAO report on political progress and the benchmarks that the Congress set. Think about those because militarily--I think ``militarily'' we have done a great job and that is where all the focus is. But politically we are not getting it done because we are trying to put a square peg in a round hole. It doesn't work. We can push a long time on it and we can get some artificial setting to take place and we can enforce it with our military power, but as soon as we pull back, then we are going to have the same problems taking place in the region. This amendment recognizes we should put a round peg in a round hole, and it is something we can do.

There was a gentleman who said something to me years ago that stuck with me: If you see a straight-line border in the Middle East or Africa, you ought to raise a question as to whether it reflects demographic reality.

In the past, when different groups went into a region, whether the Ottomans, the British, the French, or others, they were trying to balance interests. They were trying to balance Hutus versus Tutsis. They were trying to balance previously the Armenians and Azerbaijanis. So they were always trying to get a balance of power because they didn't have enough troops to maintain the country, but if it kept these guys off center and not after each other, they could maintain the country.

When you pull the colonial power off or when you pull the dictator off who is ruthlessness, who is willing to use military and to use his intelligence operation to kill people, when you pull that off, what are you left with? You are left with these same groups, and they still don't like each other. That is why we have to look at it this way.

Look at Sudan today. I can give another example: The north Arab Muslims with a radicalized government started by Osama bin Laden. The south is Black, primarily Christian--long conflict, 20 years of civil war, millions killed. Finally, the Bush administration, to their credit, was able to negotiate a Sudan peace agreement, and the southern Sudanese will vote whether to secede. I believe they will in large numbers. It will pass big, and there will be a second Sudan.

We now have a second genocide in Darfur. I have been to many of these places. I have worked with many of these people. The west is Black Muslim. The capital is Arab Muslim. They don't get along. One is a group of herders and another is a group of farmers--farmers and ranchers not getting along. I think we are going to see ultimately that Darfur will break away.

Sudan is the biggest country in Africa landmasswise, but when the Brits put it together, they put several groups together who don't agree with each other and don't get along and the Government favors one. They favor the herders in Darfur; the jingaweit, the Arab Muslims. They are trying to drive the farmers off the land, and they are in their second genocide, with 400,000 people killed, because somebody, again, hit the ethnic-sectarian button, and it is very effective. One can motivate a lot of people by hitting that button.

Why do we have to kill all the people to get to a political solution? Why do so many people have to die? It is past time--the military discussion has been a good discussion, but it is time for us to look at the political situation in Iraq and get on a model that can actually produce long-term stability so we can pull our military back into bases. We are going to need to be there for a long period of time. This resolution does nothing on the military side, but I think we are going to need to be there for some period of time. We need to be in the north to assure the Turks that the Kurds are not going to try to separate into a separate country, and I think we need to be there to protect the Kurds from Iran, and somewhat from the Turks, and the Sunnis will ask us for a long-term military presence in the west to protect them from the Shia. I think the Saudis are going to push for that to take place.

Again, Iraq is a lot more three groups held together by exterior forces than it is a country. But that is the reality. The Shia area has to sort out who is going to be the leaders in that country, and they are fighting amongst themselves. It may be more than three states. It may be a couple of Shia states will evolve. We shouldn't stop that from taking place if that is the natural reality.

We can fight against these things in nature or we can recognize them and try to build political systems around them. This resolution urges us to build the political solutions around them.

Again, the political surge, led by Jim Baker, of stature, or Condoleezza Rice--cut the deal, get us into a political solution that can produce the benchmarks we want so we can pull our troops back and stop getting killed.

I urge my colleagues to look at this amendment. I urge my colleagues to look at the history of what we are dealing with. There are many papers that have been written on this issue. O'Hanlon is one of the lead authors on it who got back recently. This is something that can work, can make progress and move us forward.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, if my colleague will yield, I wish to thank my colleague also for working on this and for leading when it was a lonely battle. He was talking about this over a year ago, and I was hearing him saying it and thinking, he is probably right, but that is not the way we are headed. And it probably doesn't help him, running for President, to be associated with me, and it doesn't particularly help me, Senator Biden, to be associated with you. But that is exactly why the country gets mad, because they do not see us doing things like this on something that really makes sense.

I talk a lot about this on the campaign trail, running for President on the Republican side, and people look at it, and I don't think I have had even one or two people come up to me and say they disagree with it. Most people say: OK, that makes sense. And when you talk with the Sunnis and Shias and particularly with the Kurds, they all say yes, and particularly the Kurds do. The Sunnis are coming more and more around to it, and I think the Shias are recognizing it as well.

But my best successes on this floor have come when I have associated with somebody on the other side who disagrees with me on a lot of political

issues but we look at this one together and we say: This is something which can work. We did that with Senator Wellstone on human trafficking. We were as different as could be on different issues, but we got that one done, and today there are fewer people being trafficked.

This is something which can work, and I appreciate my colleague for leading on it, and I really hope the rest of the body can look at this and say: This is where we have not seen progress, is politically, and let's get this moving forward. I am delighted at the Senator's leadership on it.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on the DC Voting Rights Act today. It is a tough issue. It is one with which I am familiar. I have chaired the DC Subcommittee both on the authorizing and the appropriating side. I have worked in the District of Columbia on a number of different issues. I reside here when I am not in my home State of Kansas. My home is in Kansas, but I have an apartment that is here, so I am living in the District. I have talked with many people about the Voting Rights Act issue. I am sympathetic with the people of the District of Columbia not having an elected delegate to represent them, although I know very well the lady who is representing them in the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is an outstanding Representative for the District of Columbia, although she does not have the right to vote on the floor. I have worked with her on many issues to rebuild the family structure in Washington, DC with things such as Marriage Development Accounts. I worked with her on revitalizing the District of Columbia with an economic revitalization bill that passed when I first came into the Senate in 1996. I worked with her and others on the schools in Washington, DC, and the deplorable state of the schools in Washington, DC.

I have worked on all these issues and I am familiar with this issue and the Voting Rights Act of 2007. Yet I cannot support this bill. I can and would support a constitutional amendment allowing the District of Columbia the right to vote in the House of Representatives, but I cannot support this Voting Rights Act. I want to speak here on the floor this morning and outline why I cannot vote for it.

Congress has long recognized we can only grant District residents the ability to participate in Federal elections through constitutional amendment. Congress has recognized that. Prior to 1961, for example, District residents were not permitted to vote in Presidential elections. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution expressly provides that the electoral college should be comprised of electors from each State, in a number equal to the State's combined congressional delegation. In the face of this express constitutional language, Congress recognized that a change in the law would require a change in the Constitution itself, looking at the plain meaning of the statute and the plain meaning of the Constitution. That is why, when we granted DC residents the right to participate in Presidential elections, we went about it the right way, by passing what would become the 23rd amendment to the Constitution, allowing DC residents the right to participate in a Presidential election.

We saw the plain meaning of the Constitution and we did the right thing; we amended the Constitution. Just as article II of the Constitution, which deals with the Presidency, limited the right to appoint Presidential electors to the States, article I, which deals with the Congress, clearly and repeatedly limits representation in the House and the Senate to the States. That is what it says. Article I says that the House:

shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the

People of the several States, and the Electors in each State

shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the

most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

It requires that each Representative:

when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he

[was] chosen.

It mandated that:

each state . . . have at Least one Representative,

and provides that:

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State,

the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election

to fill such Vacancies.

Rarely do we have an issue in the Senate that has so much plain language from the Constitution involved. This one has a lot of plain language from the Constitution. I believe in strict construction of the Constitution. I think it would be hard for me to call myself a strict constructionist and say that we can, as a Congress, bypass the clear words in the U.S. Constitution and say we are just going to grant these rights to the District of Columbia to have an elected representative voting in the House of Representatives, even though I support that. That is something we should do, but we should do it the right way by amending the Constitution and not the wrong way by passing a law here that is clearly unconstitutional--and I will go through the court cases that have declared it unconstitutional--and then say: We will let the courts sort it out. I am a Federal officer, sworn to uphold the Constitution. I need to do so in this body and not just say I will hand it off to the courts.

Congressional Democrats in 1978 recognized this fact. That year, Congress passed an amendment giving District residents a voting seat in the House. When the House Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Democratic chairman Peter Rodino, reported out the amendment, the accompanying report properly recognized that ``[i]f the citizens of the District are to have voting representation in the Congress, a constitutional amendment is essential; statutory action alone will not suffice.'' Sadly, the 1978 amendment failed to garner the support needed from the States to secure ratification.

We all recognize that amending the Constitution is difficult, but it still remains the right way to deal with something of this nature. I am certainly not alone in concluding that this bill, although well intentioned, violates the plain language of the Constitution. The very court that will hear challenges to this bill under its expedited judicial review provision has previously ruled that District residents do not have a constitutional right to congressional representation.

In Adams vs. Clinton in 2000, a three-judge panel of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia concluded that the Constitution plainly limited congressional representation to the States. The court explained that ``the overlapping and interconnected use of the term `state' in the relevant provisions of Article I, the historical evidence of contemporary understandings, and the opinions of our judicial forebears all reinforce how deeply congressional representation is tied to the structure of statehood. . . . There is simply no evidence that the Framers intended that not only citizens of states, but unspecified others as well, would share in the congressional franchise.''

The District residents who brought suit in Adams v. Clinton appealed their case all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's ruling. That is the same court which would hear this case.

When Congress granted the DC and territorial delegates a broader role in the House by allowing them to vote in committee, several House Members sued to challenge the delegates' expanded power. In Michael v. Anderson, the Federal court for the District of Columbia Circuit took care to note that their expanded roles passed constitutional muster only because they did not give the essential qualities of House Representatives to the delegates.

In light of the Constitution's clear limitation on House membership to representatives from the States, I cannot vote for cloture on the motion to proceed to this bill. I don't believe we in Congress should act to pass legislation that we know violates the Constitution, essentially passing the buck to the Federal courts to strike down what we never should have enacted in the first place and to strike down what they have already spoken on as recently as 2000. When we neglect our duty to the Constitution, we fail to uphold our oath as Senators to defend this great document.

My friends in the Senate who support this bill rely primarily on two arguments, neither of which outweighs the clear mandate of article II.

First, they claim that another provision in the Constitution, the so- called District clause, allows Congress to essentially grant any sort of legislation related to the District of Columbia, including legislation to give DC residents a voting House Member. This clause permits Congress to pass laws to provide for the general welfare of District residents. This bill, however, does not propose to provide for the welfare of DC residents; it seeks to alter the fundamental composition of the House.

Second, they correctly point out that there are certain instances in the Constitution where references to ``citizens of the states'' have been interpreted to include District residents. Many of these cases, though, involve individual rights, and it is obvious that DC residents do not lose their rights as citizens of the United States by choosing to live in the District. For example, they retain the right to trial by jury. They may bring civil suits in Federal courts against citizens of other States. This bill, however, is not a bill about individual rights such as the right to free speech, freedom of religion, or due process of law. This is a bill about the makeup of the House of Representatives itself. It is about the delicate balance our constitutional Framers struck in affording representation to the States in the House and the Senate. It is about the fundamental structure of our Government. We simply cannot override the clear language of the Constitution which limits congressional representation to the States simply by legislative fiat.

While I sympathize with the supporters of this bill, I also take seriously my duty to the law, to upholding the Constitution. I will support and do support a constitutional amendment allowing DC the right to gain the vote. I do not support this bill as I do not believe it to be constitutional under the clear reading of the Constitution and under recent interpretations by the court.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I rise to speak on a situation now developing to which I hope my colleagues will pay some attention. If we get involved at an early phase, it may be something we can head off rather than have it develop full scale. And I will

have some pictures. I am talking about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We have seen a situation there where thousands of people have been dying on a monthly basis. It had been stabilizing some with the U.N. policing force that was in the area, the largest in the world. Now it is escalating again. It had stabilized. It is something we have to get after right now and, if we can, it might be such that we can stop it from spreading. But we have to pay some attention to it and look at it now.

Not even 12 months after their first free elections in 40 years, the fragile stability of the entire country is at stake. Senator Durbin and I visited there about a year and a half ago. It was starting to achieve some stability. They hadn't voted yet for the election. Now we are seeing the present situation in eastern Congo, specifically in an area called North Kivu, gravely deteriorating. According to the U.N. relief agencies, we have seen nearly 40,000 people displaced this month. We saw another 100,000 displaced in June, in addition to the 100,000 displaced in January, all from this year. So nearly a quarter million people have been displaced in this one region.

These displacements come from rising tensions between the renegade General Nkunda and those loyal to the Congolese Government. Nkunda says he is protecting the Tutsi-Congolese minority from the Congolese Government and from the Hutu militias. These are militias that fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994. So this has a connection to Rwanda. That is what is so deadly about it. We have seen it activated before, and it is deadly.

Neither General Nkunda nor the Hutu militias have ever been disarmed, raging havoc on the civilian population for years. The fighting between Nkunda's rebels and Congolese forces has spilled into the Virunga Mountains where the mountain gorillas reside, the sole place where this endangered species lives, a species so close to extinction already, yet nine were killed this year in fighting.

President Kagame of Rwanda said Monday that Nkunda has legitimate political grievances against the Congolese Government. We have to call him on that. President Kagame stated Nkunda was simply protecting a section of the Congolese from extermination, but there are no reported actions against the Tutsi-Congolese.

This can be kind of convoluted on names, but this is how it started the first time around, a rebel general saying: I am protecting the people in the minority. Then they started attacking the people. People fled into refugee camps, and more died. When you flee for your life in these areas of the Congo, there is not always another town or village to go into. One area where there was fighting over the weekend took place in a settlement village--a refugee camp from a conflict 10 years earlier. It burned the village simply because the people could not return to their previous homes. Now, due to fighting, they are homeless and fleeing once again.

I want to show a few pictures because it always seems we talk about numbers when we talk about distant places. People say: Well, I am sure that goes on all the time. It doesn't. It doesn't need to go on at all. It helps people to see that there are real people who suffer.

Here is a picture of a mother who brought her child into a therapeutic feeding camp because the child was dying of starvation due to constant movement of the family from village to village. The child became sick when they had no other place to go but the jungle to seek refuge. That happens when there is no stabilized place; children die in particular. Others do too.

Here is a 2-year-old who caught malaria due to the family hiding for so long in the bush after having fled their home. Malnourishment was quick to follow, as the family could find no food in the bush. So we have a 2-year-old with malaria, malnourished, on the verge of death.

This room is where about 75 to 90 women and children stay when they are receiving medical treatment and food supplements from a village clinic in the village of Kitchanga in North Kivu Province of Congo. This shows the crowded conditions into which people are forced.

Here is a 3-year-old who was diagnosed with malaria, tuberculosis, and malnourishment from hiding in the jungle with his family. Every breath he took was preceded by a raspy cough due to the stage of tuberculosis. His mother wanted to get him to a health clinic earlier but had to hide the family in the bush for several weeks because the road into town had been blocked by a militia.

These are real people suffering, dying because of this situation.

This is a 3-year-old diagnosed with malaria. They began treatment for the malaria, and his body rejected the treatment. They found that while he had been eating about once a day, he was anemic due to lack of nutrition in the food his family had been able to find in the jungle as they hid from militia groups that had burned their village and home to the ground. His body began to shut down. He rejected the oral and IV treatments. This 3-year-old passed away within 6 hours of rejecting the IV treatments, 15 minutes after this photo was taken.

These are real lives and real people. I have shown a few of them from this raging war that goes on while we have a blind eye to it.

Sexual violence and rape is also on the rise in Congo. The Washington Post reported the intensity and frequency of the rape is worse in the DRC than anywhere else in the world. The U.N. emergency relief agencies report that 4,500 cases of sexual violence have been reported since January of 2007 in this one province alone. We are looking at, in less than 9 months, 4,500 cases of sexual violence in one province. Women are brutally raped in front of crowds, families, husbands, resulting in serious physical and emotional trauma. I visited a hospital with Senator Durbin in the eastern city of Goma where women could be treated for ailments due to brutal rapes. Because of their condition, many women are outcasts from their community and families, and the pain goes on.

I have made a number of trips to Africa, most recently to Ethiopia in January. We must be engaged in this continent. It is a humanitarian cause. It is a growing strategic cause. As China tries to integrate more into Africa and militant Islamists engage more as well, we need to be engaged--if not for a strategic reason, look at the faces of the people who are dying--in helping them out.

I urge my colleagues to examine this troubling situation. Today, there will be a letter circulating to Secretary Rice urging the State Department to take more action against these atrocities in a forgotten area of the world and find ways to be an increasing force for good in this part of the world. We can help with the malnourishment situation. Ultimately, we also have to speak to the Rwandan Government and to the Congolese Government and to the U.S. forces in that area to take care of the people and to knock it off and for us to step up our engagement.

Ultimately, I speak for the people of Congo because I think we should care about them. It is our goodness that leads to our greatness as a country. It is something we should be interested in. We said about Rwanda: Never again. Now we are seeing even sections of that fight continue 15 years later and infecting Congo. We said never again; we should mean never again. We should be engaged. We need to become the kind of people who are strong to protect the weak.

This week, we had an excellent report from General Petraeus on military action in a key part of the world. I am delighted that press was delivered and that we can now discuss the political solution. I don't think we are on an effective political track. We need to do that. I just came from a consumer product safety hearing on Chinese products, the failure of those products. We need to address that. But we also should not ignore places that are less obvious to us in the world, where there is carnage and deprivation and humanitarian need. We can be more involved.

I urge my colleagues to sign on to this letter. I urge them to get interested. Let us mean ``never again'' and do something about it.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I have two amendments I will be offering to this Foreign Operations bill dealing with international family planning. I would like to call up both of them and discuss them as a way of being able to deal with this in a timely fashion for my colleagues. I ask unanimous consent that these two amendments be called up and put in order.

Yes, it does. There is a dispute on international family planning and the dollars. I was asking here--and I ask my colleague from Vermont about this--would it be appropriate to bring the two amendments up on the floor at this time? I am willing to work on any sequencing that the Senator from California or anybody else would feel appropriate. I want to get votes on these issues; they are important. They are matters of longstanding policy. Frankly, they are policy issues that if either of them ends up in the bill, it will be vetoed. I think it is a significant issue for debate on the bill. If the Senator from Vermont would like to sequence things in a different way----

I call up amendment No. 2708.

Madam President, I want to describe the overview of this and go into the specifics. This amendment No. 2708 deals with the Mexico City policy. The second one deals with the Kemp-Kasten legislation. They are both policies the U.S. has in place. Kemp-Kasten has been in place over 20 years. The Mexico City policy has been in place since President Reagan. It was repealed under President Clinton and put back in place under President Bush. These are long, well-known policy issues. They are significant policy issues. There is significant policy debate about it.

The centerpiece of this debate is whether the U.S. should use taxpayer funding to fund abortion overseas. That is at the centerpiece of the debate--whether the U.S. Government should use taxpayer dollars to fund abortions overseas. I submit that regardless of your position on abortion, we should not be using taxpayer funds to fund abortions here or overseas. A number of Americans would oppose on moral grounds that their taxpayer dollars are being used to fund abortions here or overseas but particularly overseas. They would object to that. And a number of people would say why are we even doing something like this overseas.

People who are pro-choice might say: I am OK with abortion, but why are we using taxpayer dollars to do this overseas? Why not let those countries and governments deal with their own problems rather than us funding these issues?

There is a taxpayer angle on this issue and there is an overseas meddling angle on this issue, and there is obviously a major moral issue of our day that is involved with this issue.

These amendments raise important issues. Should, as I mentioned, U.S. taxpayers be forced to subsidize international groups involved in abortions? Should U.S. taxpayers support organizations involved with coercive abortion policies? Some people support abortion but not coercive abortion. And should U.S. taxpayers be involved with organizations that are connected to involuntary sterilizations?

I hope everybody in this body would be opposed to those last two points.

As drafted, the Foreign Operations bill, unfortunately, answers yes to all three questions, and that is what this first amendment, the Mexico City language amendment, seeks to turn around.

The bill is a radical departure from both current policy and common sense, and it should make us pause. Do we want to go down this road?

The first amendment I offer today addresses what is known as the Mexico City policy. This policy originated with President Ronald Reagan, as I stated previously, in 1984 and has been continued by the current administration. The Mexico City policy prohibits Federal taxpayer funds from going to organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations. The Mexico City language is this: prohibits Federal taxpayer funds from going to organizations that ``perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.'' However, the language in the pending bill would gut this policy. In fact, the language in this appropriations bill implies that elective abortion is an acceptable method of family planning.

No matter how one feels about the taking of human life through surgically induced abortions, surely we can reach some consensus that abortion is not a legitimate means of family planning.

Further, I hope we can agree that taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize groups that provide abortion, many of whom object to abortion and find it morally wrong. The Mexico City policy is common sense and aligns with the values of most Americans.

The bottom line is, U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize or support organizations that perform or promote abortions for overseas family planning programs.

In case my colleagues think, OK, that was the language in 1984, that was the world situation in 1984, let me read from a newspaper article, an AP story that was filed on August 30, 2007. The article is ``Chinese victims of forced late-term abortion fight back.''

The article is dated August 30, 2007. It reads as follows:

Yang Zhongchen, a small-town businessman, wined and dined

three government officials for permission to become a father.

Yes, permission to become a father. It didn't work. Even though he wined and dined, his wife was taken out of town and her baby was killed by injection while still inside her. This is her quote. I want to read this for my colleagues:

``Several people held me down, they ripped my clothes aside

and the doctor pushed a large syringe into my stomach,'' says

Jin Yani, a shy, petite woman with a long ponytail. ``It was

very painful. . . . It was all very rough.''

The article goes on to say:

Some 30 years after China decreed a general limit of one

child per family, resentment still brews over the state's

regular and sometimes brutal intrusion into intimate family

matters. Not only are many second pregnancies aborted, but

even to have one's first child requires a license.

Why would we want to be associated with any sort of family planning that is coercive of an abortion, regardless of where you are on the choice issue? Whether you are pro-choice or not, you wouldn't want to be associated with a government, with a group that does forced abortions, coercive abortions such as I am reading about in an AP story written at the end of August of this year. Why would we want to be a part of that?

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article on ``Chinese victims of forced late-term abortion fight back.''

Madam President, several years ago, when I was chairing the South Asia Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, we held a hearing on a lady who went undercover in China and filmed and interviewed a number of women who had been forced into abortions. She talked about the brutality. She brought the interviews forward. This continues to go on to today.

There is no reason that we as an American Government should be associated with it. Period. The Mexico City language has been a longstanding policy of the United States. It makes sense. It is something we should continue. It is gutted in the bill.

I want to make another point on this issue. If this language remains in the bill, if the Mexico City language is not put back in the bill, or if the current language remains in the bill and it goes to the President, it will be vetoed. The President has issued a very clear statement to the Congress to maintain the language of Mexico City and Kemp-Kasten, saying very clearly, if this is in the bill, the bill will be vetoed.

I don't know why we would want to overturn a policy that has been in place for a number of years, a policy that makes common sense, to get a veto on a very important Foreign Operations bill.

I thank my colleague from Vermont who chairs the committee and my colleague from New Hampshire who is the ranking member for many good provisions in this Foreign Operations bill. I know my colleague from Vermont has a heart for foreign operations issues, for taking care of people overseas and domestically, to do whatever he can in situations that are difficult, that are dire. We have talked about it many times. I am very appreciative of his efforts in this field. This is not the way to go. This is something that will divide us. This is something that is harmful. It is something that will be vetoed. It is something that will bring this bill back in front of us. I believe we will have the votes to sustain the President's veto. We should not go this route on this particular bill.

Yes, I will.

Yes.

I would be agreeable to that request.

Without yielding the floor, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I yield to the Senator from Vermont.

Reserving the right to object, I want to make sure I understand the point. We will have votes on all three amendments. I am assuming that the Senator from California----

I will be happy to yield.

Madam President, I thank my colleagues from Vermont and New Hampshire for getting this play set. These are well-known policy issues. They have been debated a long time in this country. My guess is that most people in this body know where they stand on these particular issues. A lengthy debate is not necessary.

What I want to do is clarify what we are talking about, No. 1, and No. 2, factually these conditions continue to exist in the world and this is not something that is an old policy and not needed any longer.

I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Corker as a cosponsor to my amendment No. 2708.

Madam President, I thank my colleagues for working on this issue. It is a gut-check issue about where you stand on life, where you stand on the U.S. role around the world, where you stand on whether we should be using taxpayers' funds for abortion, where you stand on whether we should be using taxpayers' dollars to promote abortion overseas. I think those are important and key issues. They are issues on which people know where they stand, and I hope we will be able to have a positive vote on all of these amendments.

I also say to my colleagues that if these particular provisions as currently exist in the bill, as I already stated, pass through this body and are in the ultimate bill, I believe the bill will be vetoed and we will be right back talking about this bill which has a number of very good provisions in it on foreign affairs, foreign operations that are very important, but this is certainly going to hold it up.

Continuing my comments, as we all know, many Americans are deeply opposed to abortion. If you poll the issue of taxpayer funding of abortion, a solid majority of Americans is opposed to taxpayer funding of abortion. They do not want a part of it. They may say: I am okay with a woman's right to choose, but I don't want us to pay for that. I don't see why the taxpayers should be paying for it, let alone abortions overseas. Many who support abortion question whether it should be used for family planning purposes, which these funds are designated to be used for. We should not force American taxpayers to subsidize organizations that perform or actively promote abortion. That is a position--if you polled that--that would be supported by 75 percent of the American public, probably. I don't have actual poll data on it, but people don't support doing this, and there is no reason we should do it.

If anything, they would like to see us cut foreign operations and foreign aid budgets, and here would be a prime spot. They would be happy to see this cut taking place, and it would support their view of the role of the United States in the world and the moral authority with which the United States leads.

These are very difficult moral issues, and then we go and insert ourselves in a moral debate overseas--a moral debate about which we are very divided here--and it doubles the negative view of the United States meddling in a country's domestic issues and one of such key significance as life, human life; that we would meddle with U.S. taxpayer dollars.

I would like to argue a few other points. First, some will argue incorrectly that Federal tax dollars would not have to be used for actual abortions but could still be used to support the organization's other activities. This is something you will hear a lot about: We are not actually funding abortion, we are funding an organization that happens to be associated with abortion, but it is not for abortions. Well, I think most people see through that figleaf. It fails to properly understand the fungibility of money.

If I represent an organization, and I have money in this pocket and money in this pocket, but the budget all flows together--it supports staff, it supports overhead--it is used to support the full organization, and that is U.S. taxpayer money. Again, we are talking about overseas. It is used to support that organization. Sure, they will show us that, yes, in our bookkeeping and recordkeeping we don't support abortions with U.S. taxpayer money, but it does support the overall organization, and the image of that organization overseas is they support abortion. So you are funding abortion, even if the actual dollars themselves don't go for abortion. People get it.

I don't think we should fall for the figleaf they are going to keep a separate set of books. It is one organization, and the money goes to support one organization that has one policy, and that policy is to support and promote abortion overseas. The organization receives funds, and they can simply reallocate private funds or other sources of financial support away from their nonabortion-related activities into their abortion activities. It frees up other money they have that they can get from us and then use the money they have from private sources to fund abortions. So we are still helping out with abortions.

Second, the Mexico City policy also prohibits organizations that actively promote abortion from receiving funds. This means our Federal tax dollars should not be used to support the lobbying efforts of pro- abortion organizations that are attempting to change the abortion laws in other countries. These are groups that are trying to push pro- abortion laws, pro-choice laws

in many other countries. Why should we be involved in lobbying efforts in other countries on a controversial topic such as abortion? That makes no sense whether you are pro-life or pro-abortion as to why we should do that.

These are basic considerations I believe we should take into account with the amendment I have offered today to strike the language in this bill which guts the Mexico City policy. The current bill language guts the Mexico City policy. In effect, my amendment would ensure the Mexico City policy stands as is. It would stand.

I wish to recognize, too, that my colleagues, particularly the Senator from California, she and I have had various debates about this. I certainly don't question her ability. I don't question her heart. We view this differently. I don't think we should be anywhere near policies that promote abortion overseas. I see no reason the United States should be involved in policies that promote abortion overseas or the support of organizations that promote abortions overseas. My colleague from California looks at this differently. I respect her and her opinion on this.

I would hope our colleagues would look at this and simply ask-- particularly those who are voting on this for the first time--is this something they want the United States to be associated with. A lot of people get mad at the United States for pushing its weight around overseas. A number of people get in our face and mad at the United States for pushing cultural changes overseas. I would think most of my colleagues would be very sensitive to our pushing cultural changes overseas, saying: OK, we have policies about democracy, we have thoughts on that; and people should be allowed to govern themselves. We don't necessarily want to push our views on major moral issues around the world today. Yet here is one of a most offensive nature to many Americans, to many people overseas, and the United States is funding it.

Why not take the money and use it to do water well promotion or provide AIDS drugs to help people to be able to live or malaria or tuberculosis, where there is no controversy associated with that. In those situations, people would applaud us helping them out with a problem they have, instead of getting involved in a very divisive moral issue in their country as well as ours. This doesn't make sense that we would do this.

Amendment No. 2707

Madam President, in the order of agreement, I would like to call up now the second amendment that I would propose, and I ask unanimous consent that the current one be set aside and the second amendment be called up.

I do not have a number. It deals with the Kemp-Kasten language.

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

Madam President, this is a provision similar to the last one, as far as the issue. It is more specific. It has been the policy of the United States since 1985, and consistently been the policy of the United States through Republican and Democratic Congresses, through Republican and Democratic administrations. It is commonly referred to as the Kemp-Kasten legislation. It would require the reinsertion of what is known as the Kemp-Kasten law into this legislation. This law helps to ensure that American taxpayers do not subsidize groups and organizations with ties to coercive abortions and forced sterilizations. So this is a narrower subset of the past amendment, the last amendment that I put forward. I would like to read it to my colleagues. It is a short amendment. It is well-known language. I would hope it would get near unanimous support in this body. We would put this language in the bill:

That none of the funds made available in this Act nor any

unobligated balances from prior appropriations may be made

available to any organization or program which, as determined

by the President, supports, or participates in the management

of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary

sterilization.

Coerced abortion. Involuntary sterilization. It says you cannot support groups or organizations that participate in each of those. Now, I don't know of anybody in the Congress who I have ever run into at all that supports coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization.

We have seen involuntary sterilization at times in the past in this country, and it was a bad, dark chapter. This is not something we want to be a part of. What we are saying is you cannot support any organization overseas that is involved in involuntary sterilizations or coerced abortions, commonly referred to, as I said, as the Kemp-Kasten legislation. This has been the law on the books for 20 years, and I think my colleagues can see why.

This is something people don't support. It has been in place since 1985 through Republican-led Congresses and Democratically led Congresses, Republican administrations and Democratic administrations. However, year after year the language has been watered down in the Foreign Operations appropriation bill and essentially gutted. That is why in this amendment my colleagues will support it. This is language we would reinsert into this bill.

This commonsense provision prohibits funding of these organizations. One important effect of this law has been to prohibit taxpayer funding of the United Nations Population Fund. That is what this narrow piece of the debate will be about, because of that agency's support for and participation in the management of the population control program of the People's Republic of China. This program relies heavily on Government-coerced abortions.

This gets a bit personal with me. One of our children is adopted from China. I think often of the woman who had our child, Jenna; that somehow she fought through a system that would have paid for, in places and cases, a coerced abortion. But she fought through this system to have the child who is my daughter, who is 9 years old, and who won her third grade spelling bee contest. She is, I think, a beautiful gift to society. A beautiful gift to the world. Why would we want to be anywhere closely associated with any government or organization that would have forced people, such as my daughter's mother, to have an abortion? I don't know why anybody would want to be associated with that or come anywhere close to that.

I read to my colleagues, and we inserted in the Record an AP story about this still going on today. This is not an isolated incident. This happens in many places. We have held Senate hearings with people where the local population control officials in China are very aggressive on pushing a one-child policy, and that you have to get a license for that child. Many women will flee a local community when they are pregnant in order to have their child somewhere else. My daughter was left on the doorsteps of an orphanage by somebody who fought through that system. Maybe she was from a community that was some ways away, but somehow she fought through to have this child. Why would we want to be anywhere close to something like that?

The Appropriations Committee-approved bill has inappropriately removed the Kemp-Kasten provision by changing the language in important ways. It requires evidence that the UNFPA directly supports coercive abortion. We, as a civilized society, should reject the brutal practice of forced abortion, whether it is promoted directly or indirectly. If you have local population planning authorities in China who are indirectly supporting coercive abortion, do we want to be anywhere closely associated with that? I don't think so. The bill removes the language giving the President the explicit authority to invoke the provision.

We ought to allow the President to enforce this provision, as it is essential, I believe, to a civilized society. A civilized society doesn't do forced abortions, coercive abortions or involuntary sterilization. The Brownback amendment would restore the Kemp-Kasten language that has been the law for over 20 years.

While we have had a rigorous debate in this country about abortion, we have come to some fundamental agreements, I believe. One of those agreements is we should not use tax dollars to fund coercive abortion. It is a brutal practice and it should be stopped. We should not use this as an occasion for partisan politics. Whatever your thoughts on abortion, we should be able to agree that forced abortion goes too far. It is not worthy of the America we all know is possible. I envision an America where the strong protect the weak.

We ought to value each life and every life, everywhere and without exception. That is why I talk often about being pro-life and whole- life. I believe the life in the womb is sacred. I believe the life of a child in Darfur is sacred and a child in China. It is a hopeful message and a unifying message and it is one that should apply in this bill on this language.

I urge my colleagues to support the Brownback amendment to prohibit funding for forced abortions and return to the sensible policy of the past 20 years and to advance a culture of life; to not get involved in other countries' internal debates on abortion, particularly ones involving forced abortions and sterilizations.

I yield the floor, I reserve the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, in the time I have allotted, I would like to respond to some of the arguments put forward by my colleague from California, who is a tremendous advocate on the cause and the case. We certainly see it a different way, different light. There is a term that is starting to move around the world a fair amount today because they are seeing it in practice. The term is called gendercide. It is a product of family planning institutions in places, particularly, such as China and India. There are laws in India, particularly, that you cannot reveal the sex of a child in utero because so many of the female babies are being killed. Even then they are not working as laws. The people doing the sonograms will wink or nod to tell whether it is a girl or a boy child. And if it is a girl child, a lot of times the parents will go on and go forward with an abortion.

It has a result and effect that is taking place--normal balance ratios. You normally have a few more male children born than female children. In China your average now is 115 males

born per 100 females. In some areas in China the ratio is 120 to 130 males to 100 females in the country.

As I mentioned, my own experience with adopting a child from China, Jenna--Jenna, a joy in our household. And if you go into a Chinese orphanage, it is virtually all female children in a Chinese orphanage. There will be some male children. They are the ones who have some physical, sometimes mental difficulties, but otherwise it is all girls in the orphanage.

My colleague talks about that women are dying through these policies. Yes, they are dying through these policies. Female children around the world are being killed through these policies. Female babies are being left at orphanages or other places around the world because of these policies. I think that is a powerful indictment of a system that still forces abortions on people, still forces people to have forced sterilizations. I do not think we should be anywhere around these. That is why the second bill, on the Kemp-Kasten, I hope would pass the body nearly unanimously because it is about forced abortion and forced sterilization that is taking place.

My colleagues may say, well, I do not think it still goes on. I mentioned an article. I only read a piece of the quote in it, but I wanted to read further in it.

Radio Free Asia reported this year that dozens of women in a small city in a central province in China were forced to have abortions because local officials failed to meet their population targets.

From a report in Radio Free Asia:

In one province thousands of farmers rioted in May after

family planners levied huge fines against people with too

many children. Those that didn't pay were told their homes

would be demolished and their belongings seized.

This is in an AP article and reported by Radio Free Asia. In that second amendment I put forward, we are saying: We do not want any part of this. We do not want any part of an organization that does support this. We do not want to support a coercive family policy in China. We do not want to associate with any organization that does. I would hope all of my colleagues would say: I do not want to see or be a part of anything like that.

My colleague from California talks about us gagging other people. They are free, organizations in every country are free as they want to be to advocate any policy they want to. We just do not want to fund it. We do not need to fund it. If they want to advocate different abortion policies, that is fine. We do not have to pay for it, and we should not pay for it, on something that is so controversial here and there. These are policies that are controversial in other countries.

If we dispute over the money, let's use the money to fight malaria or AIDS or tuberculosis. We will all agree on doing that. We do not gag them. They can do whatever they want. People in those countries get it too. If the United States is funding them, we are funding that voice. We are associated with that voice. I agree there are terrible things that happen in various parts around the world. But these abortion policies are not something that we should be supporting or funding, with its controversy here and there.

There is a basic right around the world, a basic right that I think trumps all other rights. It is the right to life. It is the right to live. Why would we support policies, promote organizations that are promoting policies that are opposed to that very basic right? If you do not get that one, any of the others do not matter a whole lot, do they? If you do not get to live, if you continue to have the kind of gendercide and gender imbalances in various countries taking place, you are not going to have the voices there. You are not going to have the female voices that are there because they are being killed. This is happening in our world today. We do not need to do it.

There is a thought--it is a Proverb actually that says:

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it

is death.

One can argue for the saying: Well, OK, this is right for us to do. We need to support family planning. I do not think so. I do not think that is the right way. There are ones who could look at this and say: This is about women's rights and we should use this for women's rights. I do not think you have to support abortion or abortion provider organizations to support women's rights. I think we can do that through other means.

But at the end of the day what this does, and what these policies do, is it ends in death. This ends in the death of a lot of children. The numbers are there, and they are huge. They are the ones we should not be associated with. So I would ask again, my colleagues, on Kemp-Kasten to support this language that we would not fund any organizations or support any groups that support forced abortion and involuntary sterilization. That one I do not think anybody should disagree with, and that we should reinsert the Mexico City language that we will not support organizations that directly or indirectly support abortion or lobby for abortion. These are matters that countries there should take care of. If these provisions remain in the bill, the bill is not going to become law, and it will be back to us.

Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on the Lieberman amendment for up to 7 minutes.

Madam President, this is the Lieberman-Brownback amendment; and several others are on the amendment as well. I have worked on this issue for some period of time. Over the past 4 years, we have been able to get some funding for democracy-building activity inside of Iran. It has been a difficult project. We have not been able to get much money secured, but it follows a long tradition of successful efforts at targeting regimes that do not support democracy, that undermine democracy, indeed, even support terrorism around the world, by building civil society organizations within that country.

It is very interesting to me you can get a message into Iran, and there is a good possibility, there is an excellent prospect of building civil society organizations inside Iran. You can look at some of the things that have taken place recently where there has been a bus driver strike and the possibility of a labor union movement forming there or even with some of the teacher strikes or some of the student strikes.

You are clearly seeing the people inside Iran are opposed to the regime. We

need to work, I believe, with them and with others to form civil society organizations inside Iran to go at the regime itself, and to undermine the regime itself, of saying: If you are not going to support our civil rights here, we are going to oppose you.

We saw some of these things taking place with some fruit of success inside the Ukraine, where you had a revolution that took place there, where you had a number of civil society organizations that had built up over a period of years, over time, so that when there was a movement of the people where they decided they didn't like that autocratic dictatorship, that autocratic rule that was taking place, there was an underlying group that said: Yes, here is where we should go as a group and as a society.

Plus, I think we have to recognize what Iran is. The Iranian Government is the lead sponsor of terrorism around the world. The Iranian people do not support the Government. They are in direct conflict with the United States now in their support and development and funding of troops, of people being trained in Iran or supplied in Iran to go into Iraq. We can oppose, exterior-wise, the Iranians. We can oppose the regime that way. But one of the key things we can also do is say, internally, there should be a development of a civil society within Iran, an internal support for people there.

The Iranian regime not only threatens us, they directly and violently threaten a key ally of ours in the region in Israel. In addition to the well-publicized extremist rhetoric from President Ahmadinejad, Iran directly funds groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran directly funds them, which are designed--these groups--to perpetuate violence and thwart efforts for Middle Eastern peace.

Their regime is engaged in a campaign against the United States interests in Iraq, as I have stated. Some in the United States would prefer to ignore Iran's threats to our operations or pretend they do not exist at all. It is increasingly clear Iran's leaders are deliberately and purposely targeting U.S. forces in Iraq. The Iranian regime does not want the United States to succeed in Iraq and is consistently resorting to violence to underscore that threat. I also note we are also learning of the regime's sponsorship of violence inside of Afghanistan as well.

In short, it is not enough to contemplate what might happen if the United States and Iran came to blows. Based on the actions of the regime in Tehran, Iran is already in conflict with the United States.

On our current course, the future is not bright. Iran is moving ever closer to a nuclear capability that will allow it to threaten the security of anyone who opposes its dreams of dominating the Middle East.

This amendment provides for the full $75 million for democracy programs. It would take the first step in this direction. We must call the regime to account for its flagrant human rights abuses committed against the Iranian people.

I have worked with a number of Iranian dissidents. I have done talk radio programs that have broadcast into Tehran.

The regime is brutal in opposing its own people. It is a huge sponsor of terrorism, the largest in the world. It is one we should oppose, and this is a key method that needs to be adequately funded--and I think hardly funded very much at $75 million. But if you cut that down to $30 million, you are below a target that probably even can be of much effect at all. We clearly need to do this.

Madam President, before I yield the floor, I want to add Senator Collins as a cosponsor to this amendment. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Collins be added as a cosponsor to this amendment.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Martinez and Vitter be added as cosponsors to both of my amendments I previously spoke about, amendments Nos. 2707 and 2708, related to Mexico City policy and the Kemp-Kasten law.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this amendment simply reinstates the Kemp-Kasten language that has been part of U.S. policy for 25 years. I will read the amendment:

. . . none of the funds made available in this Act nor any

unobligated balances from prior appropriations may be made

available to any organization or program which, as determined

by the President, supports, or participates in the management

of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary

sterilization.

All we are saying with this amendment is no U.S. funds for coercive abortion or forced, involuntary sterilization. I hope everybody in the body would be opposed to forced abortion, whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, and opposed to involuntary sterilization. These are things which have no place in U.S. policy and funding by U.S. Government agencies. If this is part of the bill, the bill will be vetoed, and it is bad policy and it is a bad idea and it is morally reprehensible.

I hope all my colleagues will vote for amendment No. 2707 and oppose forced abortion and forced sterilization.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

amendment No. 2719

Mr. President, if the Senator from California is accurate on what she stated--and I don't have any doubt she is--why don't we fund groups that support groups that are for women's rights but not ones that support abortion. The Mexico City language--and it has done this since Ronald Reagan was President--said: We will not use U.S. taxpayer funding to fund abortions overseas. We won't support groups that fund abortions overseas. You can be pro-choice and say: I think that makes sense, because I don't think we should use taxpayer funding to support abortion or to promote abortion policies overseas. We should let them decide this deeply moral subject that is a very difficult subject in our country, let alone in places around the world. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Boxer amendment. We don't need to do this. I respect the Senator from California, but I believe there are better places for us to use taxpayer funding than to fund abortions or groups that are promoting abortion overseas. It is a tough enough issue here. I urge Members to vote no.

Mr. President, this is a simple amendment. It reinstates what U.S. policy has been since 1984. It was repealed under the Clinton administration and then brought back in, and it is simply that the United States would not fund abortions or groups that promote abortions overseas.

I wish to make one quick note to individuals. There is a new term that has entered into the lexicon, and it is called ``gendercide.'' It is in countries where abortion is being forced and promoted, where they are now having male-female ratios where the girls are being killed in utero because they are girls. It is called ``gendercide.'' I do not think it is a policy or something we should be any part of.

This amendment simply reinstates U.S. policy that we will not be involved in countries promoting abortion policies or promoting abortion with our taxpayer dollars. I ask my colleagues to vote aye on this amendment.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.