Military Construction, Veterans Affairs And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BROWN. Sure.

Mr. DURBIN. I tell the Senator, I was back home in Illinois during the break and went to southern Illinois,

which is an area the Senator would be familiar with in a second. It is a small town, rural area. I love it. That is where my roots are in our State. I stopped at a hotel in the area of Marion, IL, and there is a nice lady who fixes breakfast in the morning for the guests. Her name is Judy. She could not be any kinder and nicer and always has a warm greeting.

She came up to me, as she was getting a cup of coffee, and said: Is this health care thing going to help me?

I said: Do you have health insurance?

She said: Oh, no. I've never had health insurance.

Judy, I am guessing, is about 60 years old.

I said: Well, I can tell you, if you just give me an idea about yourself, I will give you kind of an idea of what you might expect.

She said: Well, they keep cutting our hours at the hotel here. I am down to 30 hours a week, and I get paid about $8 an hour.

So I said: Well, I'll do a quick calculation. I think you make about $12,000 a year.

She said: Yeah.

Imagine, living on $12,000 a year, which is what her gross income is.

I said: By most of the bills that are going through Congress now, unless you are making over $14,000 or $15,000 a year, you will be covered by Medicaid, which means you are going to have health insurance for the first time in your life through Medicaid.

She said: I don't have to pay for it?

I said: No. You're in a low-income situation. You wouldn't have to pay for it at $12,000 a year.

I say to the Senator, I thought, as the Senator was just speaking, what if she were making $15,000 a year and her employer did not offer health insurance? As I understand it, at that point, most of the bills say: It is time for you to find a way to find health insurance. And the insurance exchange will give you some options from which to choose.

What the Senator is saying--what I believe, and I think what the vast majority of our people believe--is, one of those options should be a not-for-profit plan, the lowest cost for Judy to buy into. As the Presiding Officer pointed out in an earlier meeting we had, if we were to say we are going to impose an obligation on people to buy health insurance but only give them private health insurance options, I think most people would say: Wait a minute. If you are going to impose an obligation on me to buy health insurance, give me some affordable options.

Our support for a public option is to come up with a not-for-profit plan that is not trying to please shareholders, that is not advertising on radio and television, and that does not hire lots of people, clerks to say no. That, to me, is a sensible outcome for the obligation to buy health insurance because it gives people choices.

I salute Senator HARRY REID because, as our Democratic leader, he said maybe there are some Governors, some States, some people who just do not want a public option. Let them decide to opt out of the system. They can opt out. They are not going to be forced in. They can opt out. I think that is a reasonable way to move.

So I say to the Senator from Ohio, you probably have a lot of your constituents, just like mine--like Judy who works down at this hotel--who are uninsured at the moment. She has diabetes, incidentally. She told me she had some medical issues and could not even go to a doctor, see a doctor, because she just does not make enough money. That is the reality of life for a lot of hard-working people in Illinois, and in Ohio, I am sure.

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I speak with gratitude to Senator Brown from Ohio who regularly comes to the Senate floor to address this issue which will be pending soon before the Senate and which may be the most important issue we will face during our lifetime. So I am glad his leadership is demonstrated again this evening on this issue.

GUANTANAMO BAY

When people are asked about our troops on Veterans Day, there is a
warm feeling about the sacrifice and courage they show by volunteering to serve our country. We were all saddened by the tragedy at Fort Hood. We are saddened to learn that even more soldiers are dying overseas. We are worried about the multiple deployments and the conditions they face overseas. We are worried, when they come home, to keep our promise to them that they get the medical care they need.

One of the issues that relates directly to our troops and their safety is the issue of Guantanamo. Guantanamo is a detention facility that was created by the previous President after 9/11 in an effort to try to gather those we thought were dangerous to the United States and other places and hold them safely. That facility was opened and expanded at considerable expense, but, unfortunately, during the course of its early history it became controversial, particularly overseas. Guantanamo came to symbolize in the minds of many overseas an image of the United States of which they were critical. Whether that was just or unjust, it is a fact.

As a result, GEN Colin L. Powell, who served as Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Secretary of State under President George Bush, said--and I paraphrase him--I wouldn't close Guantanamo tomorrow, I would close it this afternoon. Similar statements have been made by Admiral Mullen, who is now Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the danger that Guantanamo poses as long as it is open. GEN David Petraeus, who has served and commanded our troops overseas and knows terrorism, as it has stared him in the face, and who has seen its results, has said Guantanamo should be closed. Former President George W. Bush on eight different occasions called for the closure of Guantanamo. It has been a strongly held position by the former President and many in his Cabinet, a position shared by many of us in Congress, and a position which was the leading position taken by our new President when he was elected earlier this year--the closure of Guantanamo.

The obvious question was, What do we do with the remaining prisoners? Some of them are safe to release; others are not. What happens to those who are not? We have had a debate back and forth on the floor of the Senate. The position taken by most on the Republican side of the aisle is to oppose the closure of Guantanamo. They oppose the position taken by General Powell and General Petraeus and so many others, but that is their right to do. Many of them have challenged this President, if he is going to close Guantanamo, to say what he would do with these detainees.

Over the weekend there was a disclosure of a plan the President is developing. They have not made a final decision on where these detainees will go, but one of the options they are considering is in my home State of Illinois. It is in a small community called Thomson, IL, in Carroll County. You will find it on the northwest corner of our State about 50 or 60 miles north of the Quad Cities, Rock Island area, about 50 or 60 miles southwest of Rockford. It is a very rural county. It is a county that has faced enormous difficulties in the past and faces high unemployment today.

About 8 or 9 years ago, the State of Illinois built a state-of-the-art, maximum security prison in Thomson, IL. It holds 1,600 beds and the latest technology to safely contain the prisoners who were sent there. Then my State fell on hard times and couldn't open the prison, and it sat there. The town of Thomson, Carroll County, made infrastructure investments in anticipation of this prison coming and new employment coming to the area. Now, for the last 8 years, they have paid the bills on that infrastructure but have had very few jobs at the prison.

Currently, there are about 100 inmates being held in a minimum security setting. The prison has not been utilized as it should be or could be. So the mayor of the town, who is a very good man--we call him Village President back in Illinois--Jerry ``Duke'' Hebeler, wrote a letter to me and to Governor Patrick Quinn and to the President and said: I hope you will consider our empty prison sitting in Thomson, IL, as a place for Federal prisoners, including the detainees at Guantanamo.

Well, I saw this letter and thought that may be the answer. I submitted the letter to the administration. Governor Quinn hand carried it to the President of the United States and asked him to consider the Thomson facility.

They are now, as of today, on the ground looking at what they would do to convert this into a Federal prison, but also a prison that would house the Guantanamo detainees. It is a little complicated because under the Geneva Convention, those who are arrested in war have to be held in a setting separate from the ordinary corrections facilities of our government. So the Department of Defense maintains a military prison at Guantanamo and would at Thomson as part of that prison facility, but it is separate. It is run by the Department of Defense, not by the Bureau of Prisons.

So the idea is to take about one-fourth of the Thomson facility and set it aside for the Guantanamo detainees. I don't know the exact number we would have transferred there, but we are told it would be fewer than 100 prisoners. That leaves the rest of the facility with over 1,000 beds to alleviate some of the overcrowding we have in Federal prisons today.

The net result of this would be dramatic in terms of the local economy. It is estimated it would create anywhere between 1,800 to 3,200 jobs, some 1,800 at the prison itself and others in the community for businesses that would support the prison. The economic activity associated with this new prison is estimated to be over $200 million a year, which means in a 4-year period of time anywhere from $800 million to $1 billion will be spent in this community.

I need not tell the Presiding Officer, as you reflect on your own home State of Oregon, what it means for a small town in a rural community to have that kind of influence of people and spending. Twenty percent of the jobs will likely go to people living in Iowa across the river, easily accessible, 80 percent on the Illinois side. That is just the best estimate. But the net result of it would be a positive injection of jobs and economic activity into a very tough environment economically.

When we talk about creating jobs, most of us would turn cartwheels as Senators and Congressmen to announce 100 jobs coming to any town. The notion of 2,000 to 3,000 jobs coming is unimaginable, and it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Governor Pat Quinn has endorsed it. I have endorsed it as well. We are working out the details and getting questions answered to see if we can move forward and do it on a timely basis.

Not surprisingly, critics have appeared, some within our own State. The Republican--not all of the Republicans in Congress in our State, but many of them--have held press conferences opposing the sale of the Thomson prison to the Federal Government. They are entitled to their point of view, and I respect them even though we may disagree. But I will tell my colleagues that several of the arguments they are making against the use of the Thomson prison are just plain wrong.

One of them--I think the overriding argument--is that we should be afraid of what it means to bring Guantanamo detainees to the United States, on our soil. What they fail to acknowledge is that currently we have 340 convicted terrorists in America's prisons today, and 35 in the State of Illinois, some of them convicted for al-Qaida activities. It has not endangered the people living near those prisons. In fact, they may not even be the most dangerous people in these prisons. The fact is, they are there. The idea of bringing in fewer than 100 into the Thomson prison is not going to change this calculus much, if any. There will still be terrorists held in other prisons in our State, and terrorists would be held there, and that is something our prison people do, and do well. The guards and the administrators know how to handle these prisons safely and securely.

When this Thomson prison is reconfigured, if it is chosen, it will be safer than any supermax facility in the United States, and there has never been an escapee from a supermax facility. That is a fact.

The second argument made by one of the Congressmen is one that is troubling because he said he feared that these detainees would be released into the United States. That Congressman should know better. We have passed two bills signed by President Obama which prohibit releasing detainees from Guantanamo into the United States. It is not going to happen. It shouldn't happen. So that is a fear that should be dispelled.

The third argument this Congressman made was that under the rules, every detainee would be entitled to 10 visitors a year, which meant if there is 100 detainees there would be 1,000, as he called them, Islamic followers, jihad followers, coming into the State of Illinois, landing at O'Hare and heading over across our State to the Thomson area.

Well, he is just plain wrong. The detainees currently held at Guantanamo are not entitled to any visits from family and friends. None. The only visits come from attorneys, their legal counsel, and that rule would still apply at the Thomson prison.

So this notion of a thousand jihadist visitors coming to Illinois isn't going to happen. It wouldn't happen.

The fourth point that has been raised is one that I really think gets to the heart of the issue. It is the argument that if we brought these detainees to the United States and put them in a prison, there would be retaliation against the United States.

This one Congressman has gone so far as to pinpoint specific buildings in Chicago in which he thinks the terrorists would try to destroy and kill innocent people. I think that kind of designation of specific buildings crosses a line we should not cross. I don't know that it gives ideas to terrorists, but to speak of this so casually is wrong. I wish he hadn't said that. Think about what he is arguing. He argues that if we capture, prosecute, and incarcerate those who would terrorize the United States, we run the risk of retaliation. His argument is: Let's not make them mad. Well, I couldn't disagree with him more. As heartbreaking as 9/11 was, after that day we came forward with a determination to tell the world that the United States was going to make those responsible answer for the violence of that day and any other violence perpetrated upon the United States. That is what we are doing.

We have 340 terrorists currently incarcerated across America. The fact that we have successfully prosecuted 195 of them since 9/11 says we are going to use our system of justice to bring justice to this situation. If we are going to cower in fear, believing the enforcement of our laws and the incarceration of terrorists will provoke more terrorism, then we will have lost our way as a nation. We need to show the courage of our convictions to let people know the rule of law will be applied in the United States to all who harm us. That is what this incarceration at Thomson would do.

I don't know if President Obama will make the final decision to send these detainees to his home State of Illinois. I believe we can work with the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Defense to make certain that they are held safely, that they pay the price for what they have done, and that they are held as long as necessary to avoid any danger to people of the United States. We can do this in a humane fashion, and we can do it in a professional fashion. We don't have to apologize or run scared, as some of the critics of this idea are today.

In conclusion, I am proud of the people of Carroll County in Thomson, IL, for stepping up and realizing they desperately need help economically, seeing a great asset in that community that can be utilized to not only serve our State but to serve our Nation and to put our best foot forward to show we will apply standards of justice there that are applied across America--standards that are fair, standards that recognize the basic freedoms we hold dear and the system of justice we hold dear that says those who are guilty of crime will pay a price.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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