[Congressional Record: May 19, 2003 (Senate)]
[Page S6574-S6575] >
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access
[DOCID:cr19my03-123]

GLOBAL AIDS

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last Thursday and early Friday morning, the Senate was in session for I believe 17 hours, and it took 36 rollcall votes. Many of us arrived at our homes at 1:30 or 2 in the morning. I had trouble sleeping despite the hour because of what happened on that day. I want to describe something that has bothered me all weekend.

In the middle of discussing the tax vote that came to us from the Finance Committee, the majority leader brought up the global AIDS bill. I guess it was about 10 o'clock at night. Those of us who prepared to offer amendments were told by the majority leader twice on the floor of the Senate that we would be able to offer our amendments and they would defeat them. Understand that this is a global AIDS bill that was done in committee, and none of us who do not serve on that committee had an opportunity to deal with that subject.

Yet we were told in the Senate we would be able to offer our amendments and they would defeat them. This was about 10 o'clock at night. We were, by the way, at that moment debating a $430 billion or $450 billion tax cut. And I proposed an amendment to the global AIDS bill to spend $250 million--one-fourth of a billion dollars--to address a famine, particularly in central and sub-Saharan Africa, that threatens 11 million people. But before we had a debate about the substance of that, we were told: Your amendments will be defeated. Why? Because they are not a priority.

We had already passed the level of food aid that was proposed in my amendment previously. That $250 million was already passed by the Senate in the omnibus bill and taken out by the House of Representatives in conference. But we were told we didn't have the capability in the Senate to do it last Thursday. So we had a record vote. I lost 49 to 51.

Just so we understand this is not about some abstract theory, let me read Nicholas Kristof's piece in the New York Times of May 13.

Ladawi is a 16-month-old girl with twigs for limbs, blotched skin, labored breathing, eyes that roll back and skin stretched tautly over shoulder blades that look as if they belong to a survivor of Auschwitz. She is so malnourished that she cannot brush away the files that land on her eyes, and she does not react when a medical trainee injects drugs into her hip in a race to save her life.

"She's concerned only with trying to breathe,'' says the trainee, the closest thing to a doctor at a remote medical center here in southern Ethiopia. "Most likely she will not survive.''

I don't understand this. I just do not understand. We have people dying, children dying, and we have substantial food in this country and the most productive farmers in the world. They are told at the grain elevator that food has no value. If you produce it in such abundance, it has no value. And then a young girl in Boricha, Ethiopia, lies on her bed dying because she doesn't have food.

I served on the Hunger Committee when I served in the House. I have traveled to many spots in the world to refugee camps. I have seen desperate hunger. I have held in my arms children who were dying because they didn't have enough to eat. We live in a world of plenty-- at least here in the United States. Obesity is a major problem. A substantial part of our country is on a diet. Our farmers can't make a living because they are told their food has no value. Yet we have 11 million people at risk. This Senate says no to the food aid that needs to go to those kids, to help those kids. I just do not understand it.

Let me read further from the Nicholas Kristof piece:

We've all been distracted by Iraq, but an incipient famine in the Horn of Africa has been drastically worsening just in the last few weeks. It has garnered almost no attention in the West, partly because it's not generally realized that people are already dying here in significant numbers. But they are. And unless the West mobilizes further assistance immediately to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, the toll could be catastrophic. . . . "

"We've been overwhelmed by this, especially in the last three weeks,'' said Tigist Esatu, a nurse at the Yirba Health Center, crowded with mothers carrying starving children. "Some families come and say, 'We've lost two children already, three children already, so you must save this one.' ''

He continues:

Since weapons of mass destruction haven't turned up so far in Iraq, there's been a revisionist suggestion that the American invasion was worthwhile because of humanitarian gains for the liberated Iraqi people. Fair enough. But as long as we're willing to send hundreds of thousands of troops to help Iraqis, what about offering much more modest assistance to save the children dying here?

"How is it that we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa that we would never accept in any other part of the world?'' asks James Morris, the executive director of the World Food Program. . . .

Fair enough. But as long as we're willing to send hundreds of thousands of troops to help Iraqis, what about offering much more modest assistance to save the children dying here?

Later in the article he quotes a mother:

"Now I worry about my other children,'' said Tadilech Yuburo, a young woman who lost one child last month and has three left. In her village, Duressa, population 300, five children have died in the last month. In nearby Falamu, population 400, six children have died. This famine has not yet registered on the world's conscience. I offered an amendment to provide some food aid which we have in abundance. We have plenty of food aid to give.

I offered an amendment at 10, 11 at night. We didn't have the time to do that, didn't have the willingness to do that. We didn't have the votes to do that. We were way too busy providing tax cuts, the majority of which will go to upper income Americans.

I had a friend who died of a car crash in 1981. He was a wonderful man, a singer, named Harry Chapin, who dedicated most of his life to fighting rural hunger. Harry wrote a song I want to read that describes why I feel so passionately about this. The song is called "The Shortest Story.''

I am born today. The sun burns its promise in my eyes. Momma strikes me and I draw a breath to cry. Far above a cloud tumbles softly through the sky. It is now my seventh day. I taste the hunger and I cry. Brother and sister cling to momma's side. She squeezes her breast, but it has nothing to provide. Someone weeps. I fall asleep. It is 20 days today. Momma does not hold me anymore. I open my mouth but I am too weak to cry. Far above a bird slowly crawls across the sky. Why is there nothing left to do but die?

Those were lyrics by the late Harry Chapin. Harry was a terrific friend. He dedicated the proceeds from one-half of his concerts every year to fight world hunger. He used to say, if one night 45,000 people died of hunger in New Jersey, it would make headlines around the world, giant headlines in every paper in the world. But the winds of hunger blow every day, every hour, every minute, and 45,000 people, mostly children, die every day, and it doesn't make the newspaper.

Now we have a gripping famine in a part of the world that some of us believe we have a moral responsibility to address in a much more aggressive way than we have been willing to address previously. Yet a relatively small amendment I offered on Thursday was defeated by two votes, and I was told before I offered it: Go ahead and offer your amendment. We will defeat it. And this was before they knew what the amendment was about.

That is not the kind of priority you would expect from the Senate. I regret very much that we passed this global AIDS bill and did not attach the $250 million in food aid to which the Senate had previously agreed. We don't have much time if we care about world hunger. If we care about saving these children, if we care about doing what we need to do, what our responsibility would call us to do at this moment, then we must regroup and pass legislation of the type I offered Thursday night.

Again, it was hard to sleep, and this weekend I thought a lot about that, wondering why was the Senate so much more interested in providing tax cuts than it was in providing assistance to those starving in other parts of the world.