Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007
Floor Speech
CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words this afternoon on some of the issues with which the Senate is dealing.
Last week, I believe I was the first Member of the Senate to suggest very strongly that Michael Mukasey should not become the next Attorney General, and I am very pleased that in the last week, more and more of my colleagues are coming to that same conclusion.
The Attorney General of the United States must be a defender of our constitutional rights. Because President Bush thinks he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism, we need an Attorney General who can explain to the President what the Constitution of this country is all about. We need an Attorney General who does not believe the President has unlimited power. We need an Attorney General who will tell President Bush he is not above the law. We need an Attorney General who clearly understands the separation of powers inherent in our Constitution.
Regretfully, I have concluded that Michael Mukasey would not be that kind of Attorney General. I am gratified that more and more of my colleagues are coming to that same conclusion.
Let me be very clear. It goes without saying that the U.S. Government must do everything it can to protect the American people from the very dangerous threats of international terrorism, but we can do that in ways that are effective and are consistent with the Constitution of our country and the civil liberties it guarantees. We do not have to give up our basic freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism.
The Bush administration and the lawyers who have enabled it for the past 7 years cannot be bothered, it appears, with such technical legal niceties as the Bill of Rights. This administration thinks it can eavesdrop on telephone conversations without warrants, suspend due process for people classified as ``enemy combatants,'' and thumb its nose when Congress exercises its oversight responsibility. That is why I called on Roberto Gonzales to resign.
I had hoped that the confirmation process for a new Attorney General would give the President and the Senate an important opportunity to refocus on the core American principles embodied in our Constitution.
Unfortunately, it appears Judge Mukasey doesn't get it. At his 2-day confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he suggested that eavesdropping without warrants and using ``enhanced'' interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects might be constitutional, even if they exceeded what the law technically allowed. Mr. Mukasey said Congress might not have the power to stop the President from conducting some surveillance without warrants. He even, incredibly, claimed to be unfamiliar with the technique known as waterboarding.
``If Judge Mukasey cannot say plainly that the President must obey a valid statute, he ought not to be the Nation's next attorney general,'' wrote Jeb Rubenfeld, a professor of constitutional law at Yale Law School, who had appeared before Judge Mukasey as a prosecutor. And he has that right. It has become an American aphorism that ours is a government of laws, not men. We need an Attorney General who understands that so, unfortunately, he can explain it to a President who does not.
CONTROL IN BASRA
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times today.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1, 2007]
Britain To Hand Over Control in Basra--British Defense Secretary Says Iraqis Are Ready To Address the South's Persistent Violence
(By Doug Smith and Said Rifai)
Baghdad.--Saying that Iraqi forces are now capable of dealing with the violence that persists in the south, Britain's defense secretary said Wednesday that his government intended to hand over security for the area by mid-December.
Defense Secretary Des Browne acknowledged that sectarian power struggles and gangsterism continue in oil-rich Basra province, but said Iraqi forces were best able to address them now.
Browne, who spoke to reporters in Baghdad a day after reviewing the security situation in Basra, said he saw increasing evidence that Iraqi security forces, particularly the army but increasingly the police as well, were improving in their response to the infighting and violence.
``Unequivocally. I can see progress,'' Browne said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced last month that his government, the main U.S. foreign partner in Iraq, would pull out half its remaining troops by June, leaving 2,500 soldiers stationed outside Basra.
Browne said that contingent would be adequate to fulfill its primary responsibility of guarding the lone British base and would be capable of providing support to Iraqi forces.
In meetings with Iraqi officials Wednesday, Browne pledged Britain's continuing assistance in the economic development of the south.
Also Wednesday, Iraq's foreign minister said Baghdad was holding indirect talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, that would soon lead to the release of several Turkish soldiers the group seized in recent border clashes with Turkey. The PKK, fighting for autonomy for Kurds in Turkey, has bases in the far north of Iraq.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, an ethnic Kurd, made the comments after conferring with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki before this weekend's regional security conference in Istanbul.
In contrast to the tension surrounding a visit to Baghdad by Turkey's foreign minister, Ali Babacan, the atmosphere was cordial at a joint appearance after their talks. Both diplomats said the border disputes between Turkey and the PKK should not be allowed to destabilize the region.
Meanwhile, a car bomb exploded in the Alawi neighborhood near Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, killing one person and injuring four. The bodies of six unidentified victims of violence were found in the capital.
In the north, a policeman was killed and two others injured in an attack on a checkpoint about 12 miles south of the city of Kirkuk, police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir said.
Iwo Iraqi army soldiers were killed in Tuz Khumatu, 110 miles north of Baghdad, when a bomb went off under their patrol vehicle, Qadir said.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, what that article talks about is the fact that every day our main ally in Iraq, the United Kingdom, is withdrawing more and more of its troops. In the first paragraph of the article in the L.A. Times today, it states:
Saying that Iraqi forces are now capable of dealing with the violence that persists in the south, Britain's Defense Secretary said Wednesday that his government intended to hand over security for the area by mid December.
And later on in the article it says:
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced last month that his government, the main U.S. foreign partner in Iraq, would pull out half its remaining troops by June, leaving 2,500 soldiers stationed outside Basra.
In other words, it is the United States of America, more or less alone, that is continuing this war in Iraq. We have some 140,000 soldiers in Iraq. There are tens and tens of thousands of private contractors in Iraq. It seems to me time is long overdue for us to learn from our ally, the United Kingdom, that we have to begin bringing home our troops, as they are, as soon as we possibly can.
Senator Menendez made the case, I thought very impressively, about what this war is costing us in terms of human life, what it is costing us in terms of the tens of thousands of soldiers who are going to return home with traumatic brain injury, with post-traumatic stress disorder, without arms and without legs. This war has cost the Iraqi people almost beyond comprehension. No one knows exactly how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children are dead, but there are estimates that go way up to close to 1 million. There are 2 million Iraqis who have been forced to flee their own country, and there are 2 million who have been displaced internally who have had to leave their homes because of ethnic cleansing and because of the violence that existed in their neighborhoods.
This war has resulted, tragically, in the standing of the United States of America being diminished all over the world. Some of us remember years back, when a President of the United States would go to Europe, would go abroad, and hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people, would be lining streets with American flags, looking up to Americans saying: America, you are the kind of country we want to be. Now, when this President goes abroad, there are thousands and thousands of people who are coming out, but invariably they are demonstrating against the United States.
What poll after poll shows, to our great loss, to our capability in fighting international terrorism, is we have lost the moral high ground; that our standing throughout the world is significantly diminished. And certainly one of the challenges we face as a Senate is to restore the confidence the entire world used to have in the United States and restore that once again, so when our kids go visit in Europe and somebody says to them: What country do you come from, they do not have to say they come from Canada. They can say proudly they come from the United States of America, a country that, once again, we hope, will be respected throughout the entire world.
I hope very much we will follow the lead of our friends in the United Kingdom, who are now down to 2,500 troops. I suspect in the not-too-distant future those troops will probably be withdrawn. We should be bringing our troops home as soon as we possibly can.
ABOLISHING HUNGER
The last point I wish to make is that fairly soon, as I understand it, the agriculture bill will come to the floor of the Senate. In that bill, I think under Senator Harkin's leadership, there have been some very positive changes being made. But I think, because of the lack of funding, that bill does not go anywhere near as far as it should in addressing some of the very serious problems we face in our country in terms of nutrition and in terms of hunger.
At the same time this country is spending $10 billion a month on the war in Iraq, it has the dubious distinction of having, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, with almost one-fifth--almost one out of five--of the kids in this country living in poverty. Compare that with Scandinavia, where it is maybe 3 percent or 4 percent. And the rate of poverty in America is growing.
Last year, as you may recall, the Department of Agriculture, in the midst of this increase in poverty in our country, reported that 12 percent of Americans--35 million people--could not put food on their table at least part of the year. Thirty-five million of our fellow Americans could not put food on the table for at least part of the year. That is not what should be happening in our country.
When the Senate deals with the agriculture bill, I will be offering an amendment which will ask for a commitment from the Senate that says, at a time when the wealthiest people are becoming wealthier, when the poorest are becoming poorer, when hunger in America is increasing, this Senate, this Congress will make a moral commitment to abolish hunger in this country in the next 5 years. That is not asking too much for our country.
We have to fundamentally change the priorities of our Nation. When billionaires want tax breaks, we have money for them. We have money for war. But when children go hungry, I guess there is no money available. So I look forward to working with my colleagues to change the priorities of this Senate so we start paying attention to the vast majority of our people rather than the few and the wealthy who have so much power.
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