THE SENATE The Senate meets for 1 hour of morning business followed by the start of up to 20 hours of debate on 2 stem cell bills. 13:00:08.6 if we answer the second moral question, if we can do this -- and we can through multiple ways -- why would we destroy the first embryo? we don't have to destroy the first embryo. 13:00:21.4 i think we ought to be considering the moral questions. but also the facts that will come about as a result of this fascination and hope for a cure. i've had mothers of juvenile diabetics in my office, family 13:00:39.4 members of alzheimer's disease, a parkinson patient plead with me. weapon i explained what's on the horizon, when i explain to them the potentials, all of a sudden the hope that has no substance to it yet, whatever, doesn't 13:00:56.0 have near the meaning of all the other things that are going on that do have meaning. so, we need to refocus on the real research, the real potential and answer this best, most important moral question: do we steal life from the 13:01:12.1 innocent to potentially give life to the maimed, injured, or diseased? or do we, in fact, do it in a way that never steals life and accomplishes the same goal? that's the real question before the senate. 13:01:26.7 s. 30 does that. s 5 doesn't. that's the division. one says, to heck with the ethics. to heck with the problems associated with it. 13:01:35.8 to heck with the rejection. to heck with the antirejection drugs. to heck with the idea we cannot clone ourselves, we want to go this way. s. 30 allows all the accomplishments, all the potential without violating the 13:01:50.9 first ethical clause. that's the question america needs to ask itself on this debate. we can give to all those that are desirous of all the needed benefits of cure and treatment. we can do it in an ethically responsible manner that will 13:02:08.3 send us the right road for this country. not the wrong road. i yield back the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mr. isakson: how much time remains? the presiding officer: five 13:02:24.7 minutes remain under the control of the republican leader. mr. isakson: i yield to senator coleman with one unanimous consent request that senator mcconnell be added as a cosponsor to s. 30. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. coleman: mr. president, i want it briefly touched upon 13:02:41.3 another aspect that we have not touched on. i thank my colleague from oklahoma who articulated the basic issue. can we move science forward without crossing a moral line. can we avoid the great division in america. 13:02:56.9 scientific research should be something as a society we embrace. s. 30 gives us the opportunity to do that. to do that. i hope my colleagues from all perspectives decide they will support s. 30. another aspect of s. 30 that's 13:03:12.9 important, a provision in there that calls for the secretary of health and human services to look into setting up a national stem cell bank. mr. president, there are three banks of stem cells this this country: wisconsin has the 20, 13:03:29.4 21 cells the president originally authorized. in minnesota there is a cord blood cell bank. there is a bone mayor oh bank. 13:03:43.6 what we hope to do is, based on research that has recently come to light, wade forest has done some of it, the use of amniotic and pla sental stem cells that can be grown in large 13:03:59.9 quantities. they do not produce tumors which occur in other stem cells. the scientists have noted that the specialized cells from amniotic cells may have -- this is potential -- there is the potential to have the elasticness and pluripotency we 13:04:19.9 see in embryonic stem cells and high growth potential resembling human embryonic stem cells. the hope is to put together a tissue sampling of 100,000 tissues to give the ability to cut across the diversity that we 13:04:34.7 do not have today with the research going on. again, if s. 5 is passed, it will be vetoed. and the science will not be moved forward. if s. 30 is passed, with the provisions providing for stem cell research that provides for 13:04:50.3 pluripotent research, provides for dead embryo research, which gives the same kind of stem cells from any other embryonic stem cells the new techniques out there. in addition, s. 30 contains a provision for moving forward with the national amniotic pla 13:05:10.0 sental stem cell bank which is the hope of the authors of this bill. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. 13:05:24.4 the presiding officer: under the previous order, the next 60 minutes are under the control of the majority leader or his designee. the senator from california. mrs. feinstein: mr. president, it's my understanding i have 20 minutes, is that correct? 13:05:39.6 the presiding officer: there are 60 minutes under the control of the majority leader. the chair is not aware of any designation within that 60 minutes. mrs. feinstein: thank you very much. mr. president, i rise in support of the stem cell enhancement act 13:05:54.7 of 2007. that is known as s. 5. it is, really, the only bill of the two that will allow scientists -- scientists to fully pursue the promise of stem cell research. 13:06:08.2 i thank senators harkin and specter, kennedy and hatch, who have really been in the leadership of this issue for the past several congresses. i also want to point out, in the case of the distinguished senator from utah, he is very 13:06:28.1 pro life. i have listened to him over these many years. i have listened to the real wisdom he has espoused on this 13:06:37.6 issue. i hope more people will pay attention to him because i think he is right on with respect to this issue. mr. president, on august 9th, 2001, 6 year ago, president bush 13:06:53.2 limited federal research funding to 78 stem cell lines already in existence. now, nearly six years have passed. in that time, two things have happened: first, most of the 78 stem cell lines are no longer 13:07:10.1 available for scientific work. many lines developed abnormalities and mutations as they aged. only 21 lines are available today. these lines are all contaminated with mouse cells and, therefore, 13:07:28.7 are useless for research in humans. they do not have the diverse gene makeup necessary to find cures that benefit all americans. researchers cannot use them to examine rare and deadly genetic diseases. 13:07:45.3 this was, in fact, the president's policy. it is now clearly established that that policy does not work. and yet, the president will not relent and federal research on 13:08:02.3 stem cells cannot go forward. secondly, public support for stem cell research -- full-blown stem cell research -- has grown. 61% of americans, spending to a poll in january of this year, 13:08:19.1 support embryonic stem cell research. so, this is also a bipartisan issue. 54% of republicans in an abc news poll, also support embryonic stem cell research. 13:08:34.2 the majority of the american public supports this bill. we know that the current policy is handcuffing our scientists. it is not allowing this research to move forward. so, the solution is obvious: we should pass this bill. 13:08:52.4 i think the time has come for the president to come to this realization. it is my hope that he will see he has been mistaken. the bill we are debating today offers a compromise. this bill will not destroy 13:09:09.7 inquire embryo that would not otherwise be destroyed or discarded. it will allow promising research to move forward. it would end the impasse. it would take off the handcuffs. president bush had the 13:09:25.3 opportunity to take a step forward nine months ago when the house and senate sent him the bill on which this bill is based. he made it the first and, so far, only veto of his presidency. my colleagues and i made a 13:09:41.2 commitment that we will raise this issue again and again, as long as it takes. today, we are fulfilling that promise. we know this bill will one day become law. if not this year, then next year. 13:09:56.3 if not next year, then the following year. the majority of the american people, the majority of the scientific community, other nations, many of our states, have embraced the promise of stem cell research. the president can stand in the 13:10:13.5 way of such an overwhelming consensus for only so long. with every passing week, the inevitability of this legislation grows clearer. just since the president's veto, officials from his own 13:10:29.0 administration have acknowledged the shortcomings of the current policy. more research has demonstrated the unique promise of pluripotent multipurpose stem cells. states and private institutions are forging ahead without 13:10:44.7 federal support. finally, and importantly, more americans are waiting for cures and treatments for catastrophic diseases. this is a very large lobby, indeed. so, today, we have another opportunity to move hope 13:11:02.2 forward. the do bills before us today present a very stark choice: only one bill, s. 5, the stem cell research enhancement act, embraces all forms of stem cell research. 13:11:16.7 this legislation provides a simple and straightforward way to provide american scientists and researchers with immediate access to the most promising stem cell lines. it states that embryos, to be 13:11:34.0 discards from inhave it troa fertilization clinics, may be used in federally funded stem cell research no matter when they were created. while opponents have suggested that this bill will lead us down 13:11:47.5 a slippery slope the parameters created by the bill are numerous and, in fact, strict. let me give some examples. the embryos must be left over, following further tilt 13:12:01.1 treatment. the people donating the embryosment of provide written consents. the donors may not be compensated for their donation. and, finally, it must be clear that the embryos would otherwise be discarded. this legislation will not allow 13:12:18.4 federal funding to be used to destroy embryos. with restrictions in place, over 400,000 embryos could become available while ensuring that researchers meet the highest of 13:12:33.8 ethical standards. let us be clear. we are talking about embryos that will be destroyed whether or not this bill becomes law. it's an indisputable fact and everyone would agree these embryos have no future. 13:12:53.0 when president bush adopted his ill-fated policy in 2001 he allowed lines already in existence to be used for federally funded research because "the life or death 13:13:09.0 decision" had already been made. the same is true here. in terms of the bake ideology of the president's earlier policy, this bill is not different than 13:13:24.3 the earlier policy. that is because the life or death decision has already been made with respect to these particular embryos. >> these will never be implanted. 13:13:38.9 they will never be adopted. they will never be used. this bill has not been held up because it's flawed. there's nothing wrong with this bill. this bill has been held up because of ideology. not policy. 13:13:55.5 there is a clear scientific consensus on this issue. embryonic stem cell research has been endorsed by 525 organizations and 80 n price laureates -- nobel prize 13:14:14.0 laureates. that represents the entire panoply of american health corps -- the young and the old. the american associations of retired persons which we know as aarp. the society of pediatric research, the american geriatric society representing a wide 13:14:31.7 range of medical experts. the american medical association supports this bill. the american academy of nursing supports this bill. they are from varying regions in the country. the university of california system, the university of 13:14:48.3 kansas. the university of arizona. the university of chicago. wisconsin alumni research foundation. they represent patients struggling with a wide variety of afflictions. the christopher reeve foundation, the lung cancer 13:15:04.8 alliance, the arthritis association, the als association, the juvenile diabetes research foundation. they represent a variety of religious faiths, including the episcopal church, the national 13:15:20.2 council of jewish women.n these groups represent a variety of patients, medical disciplines and religious faiths. they are from all over this country and they all support expanding stem cell research 13:15:40.8 this consensus now even includes bush administration officials. just last month, the n.i.h. director, dr. alijah zaruni, testified this -- quote -- "from 13:15:53.3 my standpoint as n.i.h. director, it is in the best interests of our scientists, our science, and our country that we find ways and the nation finds a way to go full speed across adult and embryonic stem cells 13:16:12.9 equally." that's a pretty unambiguous statement from the man that heads the institute of health. the united states senate and the president should listen to the scientists who best understand 13:16:26.1 this issue and give them access to the stem cell lines that 13:16:32.0 successful research demands. jennifer mccormack of stanford university's center for biomedical ethics has said -- and i quote -- "the united states is falling behind in the international race to make 13:16:47.2 fundamental discoveries in related fields." it is time to address and reverse this sentiment. in a letter to president bush, nobel laureates called discoveries made thus far by stem cell researchers a 13:17:05.2 significant mile shown in medical research. they go on to say that federal support for the enormous creativity of the united states biomedical community is essential to translate this discovery into novel therapies for a range of serious and 13:17:22.9 currently intractable diseases. and they are not alone. paul burg of stanford, george daly of harford, lawrence goldstein of the university of california at san diego recognized the promise and the 13:17:38.6 need for embryonic stem cell research. these esteemed researchers have said, "we want to make it very clear the most successful demonstrated method for creating the most versatile type of stem cells capable of becoming many 13:17:55.2 types of mature human cells is to derive them from human embryos." this is the science. now, you can quote a scientist here or a scientist there that will differ with that, but the 13:18:13.1 bulk of people in this field worldwide believe just as this statement reflects. as lucian depreoa of columbia university said, "this is 13:18:29.5 important and exciting work chght it's time that we use the -- work. it's time that we use the wisdom of these respected scientists and embrace the promise of biomedical research using embryonic stem cells." 13:18:47.3 scientists have lenders more about stem cells, how they work, how they may one day may be used for cures since we last considered this issue, i guess some ten months ago. in just this past august, scientists from the university of edinborough used embryonic stem cells from an african frog 13:19:07.1 to identify a protein that's critical to the development of liver cells and insulin producing beta cells. now, this could lead to a better understanding of diabetes and liver disease as well as new treatments. 13:19:21.4 then the next month or two, in october, scientists at novacell, a san diego biotech company, announced the development of a process to turn human embryonic stem cells into pancreatic cells that produce insulin. 13:19:38.3 this could be another significant step toward using stem cells to treat diabetes. in september last, researchers using human embryonic stem cells to slow vision loss in rats suffering from a genetic eye 13:19:56.1 disease that is similar to macular degeneration in humans. macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people aged 55 and over in the world. it affects more than 55 million 13:20:13.2 americans. now, this research means that stem cells could one day be used to restore vision in many of these patients. just think of that. 15 million people who were 13:20:28.3 surely going to go blind, that blindness might be stopped. in march, a team at the burnham institute in la hoya used embryonic stem cells in mice to treat rare degenerative disorder 13:20:44.1 called sanhoff's disease. this condition, which is similar tesack's disease, treated mice with stem cells. the mice treated with stem cells enjoyed a 70% longer life span and the onset of their symptoms 13:21:02.0 was delayed. the stem cells migrated throughout the brains of the mice and they replaced damaged nerve cells. no one ever thought that could be done before. this suggests that embryonic 13:21:18.1 stem cells may effectively treat this disease as well as other genetic neurological conditions, including tejsack's. 13:21:30.9 so all of this work is now beginning. scientists will now work to translate these promising advances into cures for humans. and such a feat will almost certainly require access to viable lines of human stem cells. 13:21:43.5 unless the president's policy is overturned, these lines will not be available. and without access to additional stem cell lines, the cures and treatments will never move from mice to humans. 13:22:04.7 many states, frustrated with federal gridlock and the loss of their best scientific minds, are moving forward. 13:22:15.0 i'm particularly proud of my state, california. in 2004, california voters by a whopping margin approved proposition 71 and created the california institute of 13:22:30.5 regenerative medicine. that instituted is spending $3 billion over 10 years supporting promising research conducted in california. this work will be done with careful ethical oversight. it also bans human reproductive 13:22:46.7 cloning, something we can all agree is immoral and unethical. over $158 million in research grants have now been approved, making california the largest source of funding for embryonic 13:23:02.7 stem cell research in america. promising projects include creating liver cells for transplantation at the university of california at davis, developing cellular models of parkinson's disease 13:23:18.0 and lou gehrig's disease, a.l.s., at the saulk institute. this will give a better understanding of how these diseases work and yield possible treatments. and work at stanford to more effectively isolate heart and 13:23:33.8 blood cells from embryonic stem cells. these are only some of the more than 100 labs in california now working. now, you might say, all right, why not let the private sector and the state address this 13:23:49.6 problem? why do we need federal research? and i want to concentrate a few moments on that. the actions of california and the actions of other private and public institutions do not substitute for federal funding 13:24:07.4 and a standardized national policy. much of this debate focuses on stem cell lines themselves, but scientists need much more to succeed. they need expensive equipment and lab space in which to work 13:24:23.8 and collaborate. and there's the rub. for scientists working on embryonic stem cells, this means taking great care not to intermingle their work on approved stem cell lines with 13:24:37.8 those that are not approved. if federal funds, for example, built a lab or bought a freezer, a petri dish or a test tube, these resources cannot be used on research involving lines not 13:24:55.5 included in the president's policy. now, as i said, there are no lines left for the president's policy. therefore, they can't be used. and this has created a logistical nightmare. the duplication and careful 13:25:10.9 record keeping required is an enormous disadvantage faced by united states stem cell scientists. many have gone to extreme lengths to ensure they follow these regulations. the stakes are high. 13:25:26.3 any mistake could result in the loss of federal grants for a researcher's entire lab. let me give you a few examples. the university of minnesota researcher, mary furpo, buys one brand of pens for her lab that 13:25:43.6 receives government money and another brand of pens for use in her privately funded lab. this helps her ensure that a ballpoint pen purchased with federal grant money is not used to record results in her lab 13:26:00.7 that works with stem cell lines not covered by the president's policy. ucla is using a complex accounting system to allocate federal and private dollars in careful proportion to the amount 13:26:14.9 of time a researcher spends working on either approved or unapproved stem cell lines. a stem cell researcher, jeani e 13:26:31.1 boham, designed labels for all her equipment. stem cells in a green circle denote equipment that can be used with all stem cell lines, while equipment bought with federal funds is marked with a 13:26:39.9 red circle with a slash through it. at the university of california in san francisco, biologist susan fisher worked for two years to cultivate stem cell lines in a privately funded makeshift lab. 13:26:58.1 unfortunately, the power, the electricity in her lab failed. she couldn't move her lines into the industrial strength freezers in the other lab because they were federally funded. the stem cell lines on which she 13:27:12.1 had worked for two years melted and were gone. so two years of work were out the window because of this ridiculous situation. money that could otherwise be devoted to research is instead 13:27:29.4 used to build labs and purchase duplicate equipment. and the cost is significant. scientists at the whitehead institute for biomedical research in cambridge, massachusetts, didn't want to fall behind international stem 13:27:45.9 cell leaders so they established a second lab. they had to buy a $52,000 microscope, two incubators, which cost $7,500, a $6,500 centrifuge. 13:28:00.0 they already owned this equipment, they had the equipment but they couldn't use it because that equipment was published with federal dollars. to me, this makes no sense. i don't think we can afford this kind of wasteful duplication 13:28:17.2 with what are very precious research dollars. our scientists should be focused on investigating disease not worried about who pays for their pens or their test tubes. so bottom line, we need a reasonable federal policy that 13:28:34.1 includes funding for viable stem cell lines. now, i don't need to tell you about the hope, the famous 13:28:48.2 faces, the average people that are behind this legislation. it's nearly 70% of the population. i don't have to tell you about michael j. fox, who showed the nation the true face of parkinson's disease. i don't have to tell you about first lady nancy reagan, who has spoken out in support of this 13:29:05.4 and other legislation. or christopher reeve, who lived his life refusing to accept that his spinal cord injury would never be healed. or dana reeve, who stood by her husband and then tragically lost her own battle with cancer. 13:29:23.2 and just as important are the millions of americans who may not have a famous face but put everything they have in us in the hope that we will do the right thing. and the right thing is pretty simple. 13:29:36.4 it's to give them a chance to live. to live. that's what we're talking about. i don't think there's any other piece of legislation that more involves the right to life than this piece of legislation. 13:29:53.4 these are people that are going to die. they live with catastrophic, often terminal diseases. they suffer immeasurably. and suddenly there might well one day be a cure or their 13:30:11.7 disease might be put in remission. and the kind of research might be done that can mend a broken spinal cord. how can we not support this? how can we look at the fact. 13:30:28.9 what the president said, life or death is not involved in the embryo that's used, and that's what this legislation is. these are embryos that have no chance at life. all we ask is they be put to 13:30:42.1 work to protect human life. it seems to me that's not too much.p@p really i really hope that this bill not only will pass by a substantial 13:30:58.3 margin, but some way, somehow the 67 votes we need in this house to overturn a presidential veto will be present. i think the american people demand no less. thank you. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 13:31:13.1 senator from california, i thank her for her eloquent statement and for her many years of working on this issue and her support for this and so many 13:31:22.8 issues dealing with the health of the american people. i just thank senator feinstein for being a stalwart in trying to break down the barriers that we have to embryonic stem cell research. i thank her for that, and i yield ten minutes to my good friend, the senator from delaware. 13:31:37.2 the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: thank you. i thank senator harkin for yielding his time to me. mr. president, good afternoon. we made some truly amazing strides in medical research with the creation of new medicine and mapping the human genome, but i think we'll all agree that a 13:31:55.1 good deal can be done, and more should be done. we know that stem cells hold promise, and today we have an opportunity, not today but tomorrow, to pass critical legislation that enables us to take some of those next steps. in finding treatments and cures 13:32:10.5 for diseases like parkinson's, like juvenile diabetes, like heart stkaoerbgs and even cancer -- heart disease, and even cancer. like, i suspect, every member of this body, i have in my own family personal experiences and reasons for supporting stem cell 13:32:27.3 research. my mother passed away about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now, and she had in the last decade or so of her life been stricken by alzheimer's disease, by dementia. 13:32:40.5 her mother had lived and died with the same disease. her grandmother had lived and died with the same disease. her sister may be showing symptoms, early symptoms of the same disease. my mother's father was a butcher, worked five, six days a 13:33:00.7 week until he was 81 years old as a butcher in a little mom and pop super market in beckley, west virginia. but his hand would shake like this. you'd go into the butcher shop, hands shaking like this, you would wonder how many fingers is 13:33:14.9 he going to lose today trying to cut the meat. he never lost one. i remember watching as parkinson's took its toll on him as it has in others of our colleagues in the house of representatives, where senator harkin and i served. lane evans and mo udall and others we lived with, thought 13:33:31.0 the world of, still think the world of, to see what happens to them because of those diseases. i just lost my uncle in huntington, west virginia, last year to a form of cancer which is almost, always deathly. 13:33:49.4 and pancreatic cancer. those are just a couple of people in my own life, people very close to me in my family who we have either lost or seen a serious degradation in the equal of their lives. 13:34:08.8 someday i'd like to be able to say to my sons who are 17 and 18 you'll never have to worry about alzheimer's disease because of the research, the kind of work done in this legislation. you'll never have to worry about having parkinson's disease or pancreatic cancer because we 13:34:24.0 figured out how to deal with those as well. but today's more about just curing diseases. it's also about keeping america's research centers competitive and relevant. the united states has always been a key leader in the prevention and treatment of 13:34:41.7 illnesses. we developed vaccines, we developed antibiotics that have saved literally millions of lives. still do. we made tremendous advances in the field of biotechnology and pharmaceutical research as well. now we have the opportunity to make a national commitment to 13:34:56.9 expand the frontiers of medical research. stem cell research is, i think, a key part of doing that. and i know a lot of us agree. a nation that is able to take stem cell research to the next step and use it to truly 13:35:12.7 understand how our d.n.a. works and then to use that information to help find treatments and cure diseases will be in the driver's seat of medical research worldwide for some time to come. my friend and fellow delawarean, 13:35:30.0 congressman mike castle, has led the way to expand stem cell research. last year congressman castle introduced legislation that would allow the national institutes of health to support embryonic stem cell research. congress passed this bill, thanks to the leadership, in no 13:35:44.3 small part, by senator harkin and others here in this body. legislation, as we know, was vetoed by our president. and i just must respectfully disagree with the president's policy on stem cell research. on this front, i just think he's wrong. 13:35:59.1 this year several of my colleagues, including my friend, senator harkin, have introduced legislation very similar to the castle bill that we passed last year here. s. 5, stem cell research enhancement act of 2007, would advance stem cell research by expanding the number of stem cell lines that are eligible for 13:36:17.5 federal funding. it would also strengthen the ethical rules that govern stem 13:36:22.8 cell research, a concern that i know is on many people's mind, including my own. under the administration's current policy, the number of stem cell lines available for federally funded research, has continued to shrink. there are now only 21 cell lines 13:36:37.0 available, i'm told. 21. what's more, many of the current lines are contaminated or reach the end of their usefulness. a gentleman named dr. he will lie kwras zerhouni, recently 13:36:52.8 testified before a senate panel and made a similar claim that these 21 cell lines that national institutes of health has will not be sufficient for the research that they need to do at n.i.h. s. 5 would allow new lines to be 13:37:08.0 derived from excess in vitro fertilization embryos that would otherwise be discarded. to me, the choice seems clear. rather than allowing these embryos to be discarded, to be destroyed, we can use them to 13:37:23.4 further lifesaving research, that may save the lives of our loved ones, our spouses, our brothers, our sisters, our parents, our children, our nieces and our nephews. s. 5 would allow new lines to be derived from excess in vitro 13:37:39.7 fertilization embryos that are going to be discarded. i know some people are concerned about that, and they have an ethical dilemma that they face. i would just say to people who have those concerns, and who may have those deeply held beliefs, 13:37:55.2 does it make sense to you that these embryos that have been created in fertility clinics are just going to be destroyed? they are going to be destroyed at really the discretion of the, whoever is the person who donated the egg and sperm. does it make more sense to allow 13:38:13.1 those fertilized eggs to be destroyed or does it make more sense to allow them to be, at the discretion of the husband, the wife for those, that embryo to be used to help preserve life, to enhance life to, improve life? 13:38:29.1 these new stem cell lines will dramatically expand our ability to study and find treatments for a wide range of illnesses. and the benefits will come not only from having more lines, but from having better lines. by expanding our research policy, we can create stem cell 13:38:46.4 lines that help us study specific diseases or create specific treatments. i want to close by urging all our colleagues to join us, a majority of us, a large majority of us, in supporting s. 56789 i think it's been made better because the sponsors of the bill 13:39:03.3 that actual lint dued legislation -- that actually introduced legislation, i think it was legislation offered last year by senators specter and santorum, now as part of this legislation. i think it's made it better. but we shouldn't have to wait any longer to move forward. 13:39:19.4 we focus our resources and attention today to find cures, we'll save more lives now. it will also save money in the long run. i will close by saying for those who believe that this legislation would somehow divert us from pursuing the use of stem 13:39:37.1 cells, adult stem cells or stem cells that may come from umbilical cords, it doesn't do that. we should pursue those paths as well. in pursuing those paths, we shouldn't close the door on this 13:39:49.1 path. we should pursue this path too. and to those who have brought us to this day, our colleague, congressman castle from delaware, to the sponsors of this bill today and all who join in supporting it, and people around the country who join us in supporting it as well. thank you for doing a good thing 13:40:05.2 for a lot of people who need our help. thank you. mr. harkin: mr. president, again, i want to thank my good friend, tom carper, the senator from delaware for his eloquent and personal kind of statement. actually, that is what this is 13:40:19.6 all about. it is about helping people who are suffering some really bad problems, need some help in their health care. i thank him for his support. now i yield to the person who really has been the leader in all our health care issues here for so many years and i think is recognized as such by the entire 13:40:36.3 country, a great leader in all haourbg issues, he is -- health care issues, especially in our issues of stem cell research, i yield to senator kennedy. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. 13:40:53.5 mr. kennedy: mr. president i -- [inaudible] -- as well as senator specter for really the extraordinary leadership that they have provided on this issue, which is so important to the families in 13:41:12.3 our country. we deal with a lot of issues around this body, but this 13:41:23.1 particular legislation probably offers more hope to more people than perhaps anything else that we'll do here in the united states senate this year. we think of all of the various 13:41:37.9 kinds of illnesses and sicknesses, diseases, accidents that have affected so many families here in the senate; most importantly to the american family. 13:41:50.3 and we know that we have really the best in terms of the treatment of these illnesses and sickness here in the united states. those that are able to receive it. but there are still all of these 13:42:09.5 illnesses and sicknesses that have defied the ablest and most gifted minds until very, very recently, and that is with the 13:42:24.3 discovery that really started about ten years ago with the opportunity for using stem cells that can play a very indispensable role in providing a cure for these individuals. and that's what this is 13:42:42.3 basically really all about, an extraordinary opportunity that is out there, and whether we here in the united states are going to permit the great institution, the greatest institution for research -- the national institutes of health -- 13:42:58.3 to be able to unleash the vastness of the creativity, the brilliance, the ability of so many of those researchers and scientists to try and unlock the cures for so many of these diseases and do it in a way 13:43:15.6 which is ethically sound and for so many of the reasons that have been spelled out. so this is enormously timely, mr. president. i thank senator harkin for his persistence and -- in ensuring 13:43:36.3 that we were going to be able to have this on the floor of the united states senate in a timely way. i thank our leader, senator reid, for scheduling this. and i thank the broad bipartisan 13:43:52.4 coalition that has come together, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that have given strong support for this legislation. it's pretty popular at this time in washington to talk about the 13:44:06.5 differences that exist in our nation's capital, and there are some very important ones. but, mr. president, we have really come together, republican and democrat, house and senate, those that have over a long 13:44:24.3 period of time advocated the pro-life position, those that have felt that the ability for individuals to make judgments about their own future, all have come together in support of this 13:44:44.7 legislation. so this is a very special time, and it is enormously important, this vote that we're going to have tomorrow. and, again, i thank my colleagues and friends for bringing us to the point where 13:44:58.5 we are today. nearly a decade ago american scientists made the revolutionary discovery that tiny cells called stem cells held the extraordinary potential to offer new hope and new help in the fight against diabetes and parkinson's disease, spinal 13:45:15.7 injury, and many other illnesses. and six years ago many of us here in the senate joined millions of patients and their families in calling on president bush to support this lifesaving research.p sadly he 13:45:32.4 rejected the calls and imposed severe restrictions on the search if the cures. since those severe limitations were imposed, we have struggled to free american scientists from these unwarranted restrictions. last year, we scored a great victory when the house and senate, with broad bipartisan 13:45:51.1 majority voted to end the restrictions. but, those efforts came to nothing with a veto. we are back at the battle again. i think i share the view of my colleagues and friends in saying 13:46:05.4 if we are not successful -- although we are hopeful we will be -- we will continue this battle, day in and day out, until we are successful. so, today we renew our hope that the president will start anew 13:46:19.1 and consider the merits of this new legislation instead of automatically picking under the veto penn. when congress passed the bipartisan stem cell bill last year we voted for hope, we voted for progress, and for life. 13:46:35.1 for president bush, he close to veto the legislation. now we are taking up the cause once again. in our legislation, again, it brings together conservatives and progressives, members of congress on both sides of the debate over the women's right to 13:46:49.7 choose, representatives from big cities, small towns, rural communities. we all agree that stem cell research must go forward. this legislation before us is only six pages long. it's a short, simple bill with 13:47:06.7 enormous goals and vast potential. it overturns the unrealistic and unreasonable restrictions on the embryonic stem cell research imposed by the president's executive order five years ago. the unilateral action bypassed 13:47:22.2 congress and froze progress in its traffic by barring n.i.h. from using stem cell deprived after august of 2001, a date chosen to coincide with the 13:47:36.9 president's speech. many of us warned at that time that this policy would delay the search for new cures and put needless barriers in the way of medical progress. and at a health committee hearing just days after the executive order was issued, many of us raised concerns about the 13:47:53.7 new policy and urged the president to reconsider. our concerns were dismissed by the administration. by time has shown that each of the drawbacks we feared then, have become a real barrier to progress today. at the time of the executive 13:48:09.1 order the administration claimed only 60 independent stem lines would be available to n.i.h. researchers. we found, as our friends from california, and senator harkin pointed out, only 22 of the stem lines are available to n.i.h. researchers. 13:48:23.9 all of those were obligated using out of date methods and outmoded techniques. we listened carefully, mr. president, to the words of dr. landis, chair of the n.i.h. stem cell task force in testimony before the united 13:48:40.2 states senate in january of this year. "we are missing out on a possible breakthrough. federally funded research has monitoring oversight, transparently that privately funded research will not necessarily have. the cell lines available to the n.i.h. funding have been now 13:48:56.8 shown to have genetic instabilities" pointing out the missed opportunities being placed now because of the restrictions put on by the administration. scpefen the research that is being done -- and even the 13:49:12.4 research that is being done in the private sector, as limited it is, is lacking in monitoring and oversight. in many instances the enormously area of ethical considerations that have been included in this legislation. 13:49:28.3 as has been mentioned here earlier during the discussion but needs to be mentioned again, mr. president, the excellent statement by the director of the national institutes of health before the senate on march 19th where he points out the side line of the n.i.h. in such an issue of importance is 13:49:46.0 "in my view, shortsighted. i think it would not serve the nation well in the long run. we need to find a way to move forward." these are two of the most distinguished researchers, scientists. dr. zerhouni has a brilliant 13:50:03.0 record at n.i.h. and dr. landis has had a brilliant record. anyone who has the opportunity to listen to him and listen to him respond to questions cannot help but leave that kind of meeting, recognizing and supporting his position. 13:50:18.3 so, that is -- those are the issues. that is what this legislation is really about, mr. president. our legislation makes the basic change needed to reverse our current policy. as has been pointed out, 13:50:34.5 science, without ethics; like a ship without a rudder. for that reason, the legislation establishes essential ethical safeguards for stem cell research. enormously important. and has been reviewed earlier during this debate and 13:50:51.8 discussion. mr. president, our legislation authorizes new initiatives for obtaining the stem cells from sources other than embryos. we strongly support ongoing research for alternatives to embryonic stem cell research but 13:51:07.6 is fundamentally wrong to shut down the promise of new cures while that search is underway. in the end, this debate is not about abstract principles or 13:51:17.1 complex aspects of science, about the people would look with hope to stem cell research to help them with the challenges that they face. mr. president, it's as important to sergeant jason whittley. 13:51:36.0 let me read about sergeant whittley, injured in iraq, united states marine corps: "i was in charlie company, first 13:51:49.2 marine division. i spent 10 years one month, and 28 days in the marines corps -- but who's counting. on may 9th, 2003, in iraq, i was disposing of iraqi ordinances and the fuse went off 13:52:09.7 prematurely and, as a result of the accident," the vehicle overturned on him and "i had fractures of my c 6 vertebrae in my neck, broke my right wrist 13:52:21.9 and a number of other injuries." he's in his wheelchair now, brave and courageous marine. he believes, sergeant whittley looks to stem cell research for 13:52:35.7 new hope for his injuries. he has had multiple, multiple, multiple surgeries. here is lands corps ral -- lance corporal james crosby who enlisted at age 17, married, 13:52:52.2 living in california before service and the injury. march 18th, james was wounded by enemy fire while riding in the back of a united states military vehicle when a rocket fired and injured the driver and injured who marines. 13:53:09.4 shrapnel penetrated his side. james was immediately sent to a hospital in kuwait and had the first operation there. stabilized. finally, flown to a u.s. military hospital in germany. in germany, james underwent 13:53:23.7 several surgeries to remove shrapnel and repair wounds. james and his wife who was flown to germany to be with him, and he is now in a wheelchair. he has had multiple additional operations. 13:53:39.2 he has lost 50-pounds and requires a colostomy bags and now in a wheel chair, paralyzed from the waste down and has high hope that stem cell research can 13:53:55.8 be of help and assistance to permitting him to recover from the wounds. there are countless others that have similar injuries and recognize the importance of this 13:54:13.5 research. i'm going to conclude, mr. president, with a letter that i received from a 15-year-old lauren from massachusetts, who has juvenile 13:54:29.6 diabetes. in her letter she wrote of her hope of what stem cell research means to her and her family. she wrote me again this year. she is still full of hope, but you can also hear her frustration. these are her words: i'm now wearing a continuous glucose 13:54:47.7 monitoring system. it has a wire probe that i insert under my skin every few days on my own. when i first held the wire probe to my thigh i was scared to death. the needle was huge. i was going to be plunging it 13:55:03.5 into my body. would it hurt? what if it didn't work? was it worth the risk? after about 20 minutes of sweat and shaking, i found the guts to do it. and then as soon as i did, i knew almost immediately it was 13:55:18.5 the right thing to do. it went in fine. it did not hurt that much. it is helping me." those were her words. she goes on to write about our zigs on how to vote on this legislation now. here's what she writes: "some of you might be scared to vote yes. 13:55:34.8 you know it's the right thing to do. after all, if embryos are being discarded, how can it not be right to use them to help people like me? your hand is lingering over the lever like mine was, over the insertion device. 13:55:50.6 you can see it might do some good but you're afraid. someone might get mad. it might hurt a little. but follow my lead. be brave. do something that might hurt a little or scare you for a second but after, will make so many things so much better. 13:56:07.8 vote yes it allow scientists to do this valuable research to free kids like me from horrible 13:56:15.9 diseases. vote yes and take another step along with me in finding cures. no one ever said doing the right thing, the brave thing, the thing to make the world better would be easy. i elevenned the hard way. vote yes. 13:56:28.9 free me from the machines that keep me alike. clear away my future of kidney damage, blindness and fear of a shortened life." those are lauren's words. they compel us to act. tomorrow, we can cast a vote of courage by approving the stem 13:56:46.9 cell research enhancement act. we call upon the president of the united states to think anew and decide not to veto hope. i yield back the remainder of my time. 13:57:10.4 a senator: how much time remains? the presiding officer: eight minutes and 44 seconds. mr. webb: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

Mitosis

THE SENATE The Senate meets for 1 hour of morning business followed by the start of up to 20 hours of debate on 2 stem cell bills. 13:00:08.6 if we answer the second moral question, if we can do this -- and we can through multiple ways -- why would we destroy the first embryo? we don't have to destroy the first embryo. 13:00:21.4 i think we ought to be considering the moral questions. but also the facts that will come about as a result of this fascination and hope for a cure. i've had mothers of juvenile diabetics in my office, family 13:00:39.4 members of alzheimer's disease, a parkinson patient plead with me. weapon i explained what's on the horizon, when i explain to them the potentials, all of a sudden the hope that has no substance to it yet, whatever, doesn't 13:00:56.0 have near the meaning of all the other things that are going on that do have meaning. so, we need to refocus on the real research, the real potential and answer this best, most important moral question: do we steal life from the 13:01:12.1 innocent to potentially give life to the maimed, injured, or diseased? or do we, in fact, do it in a way that never steals life and accomplishes the same goal? that's the real question before the senate. 13:01:26.7 s. 30 does that. s 5 doesn't. that's the division. one says, to heck with the ethics. to heck with the problems associated with it. 13:01:35.8 to heck with the rejection. to heck with the antirejection drugs. to heck with the idea we cannot clone ourselves, we want to go this way. s. 30 allows all the accomplishments, all the potential without violating the 13:01:50.9 first ethical clause. that's the question america needs to ask itself on this debate. we can give to all those that are desirous of all the needed benefits of cure and treatment. we can do it in an ethically responsible manner that will 13:02:08.3 send us the right road for this country. not the wrong road. i yield back the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mr. isakson: how much time remains? the presiding officer: five 13:02:24.7 minutes remain under the control of the republican leader. mr. isakson: i yield to senator coleman with one unanimous consent request that senator mcconnell be added as a cosponsor to s. 30. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. coleman: mr. president, i want it briefly touched upon 13:02:41.3 another aspect that we have not touched on. i thank my colleague from oklahoma who articulated the basic issue. can we move science forward without crossing a moral line. can we avoid the great division in america. 13:02:56.9 scientific research should be something as a society we embrace. s. 30 gives us the opportunity to do that. to do that. i hope my colleagues from all perspectives decide they will support s. 30. another aspect of s. 30 that's 13:03:12.9 important, a provision in there that calls for the secretary of health and human services to look into setting up a national stem cell bank. mr. president, there are three banks of stem cells this this country: wisconsin has the 20, 13:03:29.4 21 cells the president originally authorized. in minnesota there is a cord blood cell bank. there is a bone mayor oh bank. 13:03:43.6 what we hope to do is, based on research that has recently come to light, wade forest has done some of it, the use of amniotic and pla sental stem cells that can be grown in large 13:03:59.9 quantities. they do not produce tumors which occur in other stem cells. the scientists have noted that the specialized cells from amniotic cells may have -- this is potential -- there is the potential to have the elasticness and pluripotency we 13:04:19.9 see in embryonic stem cells and high growth potential resembling human embryonic stem cells. the hope is to put together a tissue sampling of 100,000 tissues to give the ability to cut across the diversity that we 13:04:34.7 do not have today with the research going on. again, if s. 5 is passed, it will be vetoed. and the science will not be moved forward. if s. 30 is passed, with the provisions providing for stem cell research that provides for 13:04:50.3 pluripotent research, provides for dead embryo research, which gives the same kind of stem cells from any other embryonic stem cells the new techniques out there. in addition, s. 30 contains a provision for moving forward with the national amniotic pla 13:05:10.0 sental stem cell bank which is the hope of the authors of this bill. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. 13:05:24.4 the presiding officer: under the previous order, the next 60 minutes are under the control of the majority leader or his designee. the senator from california. mrs. feinstein: mr. president, it's my understanding i have 20 minutes, is that correct? 13:05:39.6 the presiding officer: there are 60 minutes under the control of the majority leader. the chair is not aware of any designation within that 60 minutes. mrs. feinstein: thank you very much. mr. president, i rise in support of the stem cell enhancement act 13:05:54.7 of 2007. that is known as s. 5. it is, really, the only bill of the two that will allow scientists -- scientists to fully pursue the promise of stem cell research. 13:06:08.2 i thank senators harkin and specter, kennedy and hatch, who have really been in the leadership of this issue for the past several congresses. i also want to point out, in the case of the distinguished senator from utah, he is very 13:06:28.1 pro life. i have listened to him over these many years. i have listened to the real wisdom he has espoused on this 13:06:37.6 issue. i hope more people will pay attention to him because i think he is right on with respect to this issue. mr. president, on august 9th, 2001, 6 year ago, president bush 13:06:53.2 limited federal research funding to 78 stem cell lines already in existence. now, nearly six years have passed. in that time, two things have happened: first, most of the 78 stem cell lines are no longer 13:07:10.1 available for scientific work. many lines developed abnormalities and mutations as they aged. only 21 lines are available today. these lines are all contaminated with mouse cells and, therefore, 13:07:28.7 are useless for research in humans. they do not have the diverse gene makeup necessary to find cures that benefit all americans. researchers cannot use them to examine rare and deadly genetic diseases. 13:07:45.3 this was, in fact, the president's policy. it is now clearly established that that policy does not work. and yet, the president will not relent and federal research on 13:08:02.3 stem cells cannot go forward. secondly, public support for stem cell research -- full-blown stem cell research -- has grown. 61% of americans, spending to a poll in january of this year, 13:08:19.1 support embryonic stem cell research. so, this is also a bipartisan issue. 54% of republicans in an abc news poll, also support embryonic stem cell research. 13:08:34.2 the majority of the american public supports this bill. we know that the current policy is handcuffing our scientists. it is not allowing this research to move forward. so, the solution is obvious: we should pass this bill. 13:08:52.4 i think the time has come for the president to come to this realization. it is my hope that he will see he has been mistaken. the bill we are debating today offers a compromise. this bill will not destroy 13:09:09.7 inquire embryo that would not otherwise be destroyed or discarded. it will allow promising research to move forward. it would end the impasse. it would take off the handcuffs. president bush had the 13:09:25.3 opportunity to take a step forward nine months ago when the house and senate sent him the bill on which this bill is based. he made it the first and, so far, only veto of his presidency. my colleagues and i made a 13:09:41.2 commitment that we will raise this issue again and again, as long as it takes. today, we are fulfilling that promise. we know this bill will one day become law. if not this year, then next year. 13:09:56.3 if not next year, then the following year. the majority of the american people, the majority of the scientific community, other nations, many of our states, have embraced the promise of stem cell research. the president can stand in the 13:10:13.5 way of such an overwhelming consensus for only so long. with every passing week, the inevitability of this legislation grows clearer. just since the president's veto, officials from his own 13:10:29.0 administration have acknowledged the shortcomings of the current policy. more research has demonstrated the unique promise of pluripotent multipurpose stem cells. states and private institutions are forging ahead without 13:10:44.7 federal support. finally, and importantly, more americans are waiting for cures and treatments for catastrophic diseases. this is a very large lobby, indeed. so, today, we have another opportunity to move hope 13:11:02.2 forward. the do bills before us today present a very stark choice: only one bill, s. 5, the stem cell research enhancement act, embraces all forms of stem cell research. 13:11:16.7 this legislation provides a simple and straightforward way to provide american scientists and researchers with immediate access to the most promising stem cell lines. it states that embryos, to be 13:11:34.0 discards from inhave it troa fertilization clinics, may be used in federally funded stem cell research no matter when they were created. while opponents have suggested that this bill will lead us down 13:11:47.5 a slippery slope the parameters created by the bill are numerous and, in fact, strict. let me give some examples. the embryos must be left over, following further tilt 13:12:01.1 treatment. the people donating the embryosment of provide written consents. the donors may not be compensated for their donation. and, finally, it must be clear that the embryos would otherwise be discarded. this legislation will not allow 13:12:18.4 federal funding to be used to destroy embryos. with restrictions in place, over 400,000 embryos could become available while ensuring that researchers meet the highest of 13:12:33.8 ethical standards. let us be clear. we are talking about embryos that will be destroyed whether or not this bill becomes law. it's an indisputable fact and everyone would agree these embryos have no future. 13:12:53.0 when president bush adopted his ill-fated policy in 2001 he allowed lines already in existence to be used for federally funded research because "the life or death 13:13:09.0 decision" had already been made. the same is true here. in terms of the bake ideology of the president's earlier policy, this bill is not different than 13:13:24.3 the earlier policy. that is because the life or death decision has already been made with respect to these particular embryos. >> these will never be implanted. 13:13:38.9 they will never be adopted. they will never be used. this bill has not been held up because it's flawed. there's nothing wrong with this bill. this bill has been held up because of ideology. not policy. 13:13:55.5 there is a clear scientific consensus on this issue. embryonic stem cell research has been endorsed by 525 organizations and 80 n price laureates -- nobel prize 13:14:14.0 laureates. that represents the entire panoply of american health corps -- the young and the old. the american associations of retired persons which we know as aarp. the society of pediatric research, the american geriatric society representing a wide 13:14:31.7 range of medical experts. the american medical association supports this bill. the american academy of nursing supports this bill. they are from varying regions in the country. the university of california system, the university of 13:14:48.3 kansas. the university of arizona. the university of chicago. wisconsin alumni research foundation. they represent patients struggling with a wide variety of afflictions. the christopher reeve foundation, the lung cancer 13:15:04.8 alliance, the arthritis association, the als association, the juvenile diabetes research foundation. they represent a variety of religious faiths, including the episcopal church, the national 13:15:20.2 council of jewish women.n these groups represent a variety of patients, medical disciplines and religious faiths. they are from all over this country and they all support expanding stem cell research 13:15:40.8 this consensus now even includes bush administration officials. just last month, the n.i.h. director, dr. alijah zaruni, testified this -- quote -- "from 13:15:53.3 my standpoint as n.i.h. director, it is in the best interests of our scientists, our science, and our country that we find ways and the nation finds a way to go full speed across adult and embryonic stem cells 13:16:12.9 equally." that's a pretty unambiguous statement from the man that heads the institute of health. the united states senate and the president should listen to the scientists who best understand 13:16:26.1 this issue and give them access to the stem cell lines that 13:16:32.0 successful research demands. jennifer mccormack of stanford university's center for biomedical ethics has said -- and i quote -- "the united states is falling behind in the international race to make 13:16:47.2 fundamental discoveries in related fields." it is time to address and reverse this sentiment. in a letter to president bush, nobel laureates called discoveries made thus far by stem cell researchers a 13:17:05.2 significant mile shown in medical research. they go on to say that federal support for the enormous creativity of the united states biomedical community is essential to translate this discovery into novel therapies for a range of serious and 13:17:22.9 currently intractable diseases. and they are not alone. paul burg of stanford, george daly of harford, lawrence goldstein of the university of california at san diego recognized the promise and the 13:17:38.6 need for embryonic stem cell research. these esteemed researchers have said, "we want to make it very clear the most successful demonstrated method for creating the most versatile type of stem cells capable of becoming many 13:17:55.2 types of mature human cells is to derive them from human embryos." this is the science. now, you can quote a scientist here or a scientist there that will differ with that, but the 13:18:13.1 bulk of people in this field worldwide believe just as this statement reflects. as lucian depreoa of columbia university said, "this is 13:18:29.5 important and exciting work chght it's time that we use the -- work. it's time that we use the wisdom of these respected scientists and embrace the promise of biomedical research using embryonic stem cells." 13:18:47.3 scientists have lenders more about stem cells, how they work, how they may one day may be used for cures since we last considered this issue, i guess some ten months ago. in just this past august, scientists from the university of edinborough used embryonic stem cells from an african frog 13:19:07.1 to identify a protein that's critical to the development of liver cells and insulin producing beta cells. now, this could lead to a better understanding of diabetes and liver disease as well as new treatments. 13:19:21.4 then the next month or two, in october, scientists at novacell, a san diego biotech company, announced the development of a process to turn human embryonic stem cells into pancreatic cells that produce insulin. 13:19:38.3 this could be another significant step toward using stem cells to treat diabetes. in september last, researchers using human embryonic stem cells to slow vision loss in rats suffering from a genetic eye 13:19:56.1 disease that is similar to macular degeneration in humans. macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people aged 55 and over in the world. it affects more than 55 million 13:20:13.2 americans. now, this research means that stem cells could one day be used to restore vision in many of these patients. just think of that. 15 million people who were 13:20:28.3 surely going to go blind, that blindness might be stopped. in march, a team at the burnham institute in la hoya used embryonic stem cells in mice to treat rare degenerative disorder 13:20:44.1 called sanhoff's disease. this condition, which is similar tesack's disease, treated mice with stem cells. the mice treated with stem cells enjoyed a 70% longer life span and the onset of their symptoms 13:21:02.0 was delayed. the stem cells migrated throughout the brains of the mice and they replaced damaged nerve cells. no one ever thought that could be done before. this suggests that embryonic 13:21:18.1 stem cells may effectively treat this disease as well as other genetic neurological conditions, including tejsack's. 13:21:30.9 so all of this work is now beginning. scientists will now work to translate these promising advances into cures for humans. and such a feat will almost certainly require access to viable lines of human stem cells. 13:21:43.5 unless the president's policy is overturned, these lines will not be available. and without access to additional stem cell lines, the cures and treatments will never move from mice to humans. 13:22:04.7 many states, frustrated with federal gridlock and the loss of their best scientific minds, are moving forward. 13:22:15.0 i'm particularly proud of my state, california. in 2004, california voters by a whopping margin approved proposition 71 and created the california institute of 13:22:30.5 regenerative medicine. that instituted is spending $3 billion over 10 years supporting promising research conducted in california. this work will be done with careful ethical oversight. it also bans human reproductive 13:22:46.7 cloning, something we can all agree is immoral and unethical. over $158 million in research grants have now been approved, making california the largest source of funding for embryonic 13:23:02.7 stem cell research in america. promising projects include creating liver cells for transplantation at the university of california at davis, developing cellular models of parkinson's disease 13:23:18.0 and lou gehrig's disease, a.l.s., at the saulk institute. this will give a better understanding of how these diseases work and yield possible treatments. and work at stanford to more effectively isolate heart and 13:23:33.8 blood cells from embryonic stem cells. these are only some of the more than 100 labs in california now working. now, you might say, all right, why not let the private sector and the state address this 13:23:49.6 problem? why do we need federal research? and i want to concentrate a few moments on that. the actions of california and the actions of other private and public institutions do not substitute for federal funding 13:24:07.4 and a standardized national policy. much of this debate focuses on stem cell lines themselves, but scientists need much more to succeed. they need expensive equipment and lab space in which to work 13:24:23.8 and collaborate. and there's the rub. for scientists working on embryonic stem cells, this means taking great care not to intermingle their work on approved stem cell lines with 13:24:37.8 those that are not approved. if federal funds, for example, built a lab or bought a freezer, a petri dish or a test tube, these resources cannot be used on research involving lines not 13:24:55.5 included in the president's policy. now, as i said, there are no lines left for the president's policy. therefore, they can't be used. and this has created a logistical nightmare. the duplication and careful 13:25:10.9 record keeping required is an enormous disadvantage faced by united states stem cell scientists. many have gone to extreme lengths to ensure they follow these regulations. the stakes are high. 13:25:26.3 any mistake could result in the loss of federal grants for a researcher's entire lab. let me give you a few examples. the university of minnesota researcher, mary furpo, buys one brand of pens for her lab that 13:25:43.6 receives government money and another brand of pens for use in her privately funded lab. this helps her ensure that a ballpoint pen purchased with federal grant money is not used to record results in her lab 13:26:00.7 that works with stem cell lines not covered by the president's policy. ucla is using a complex accounting system to allocate federal and private dollars in careful proportion to the amount 13:26:14.9 of time a researcher spends working on either approved or unapproved stem cell lines. a stem cell researcher, jeani e 13:26:31.1 boham, designed labels for all her equipment. stem cells in a green circle denote equipment that can be used with all stem cell lines, while equipment bought with federal funds is marked with a 13:26:39.9 red circle with a slash through it. at the university of california in san francisco, biologist susan fisher worked for two years to cultivate stem cell lines in a privately funded makeshift lab. 13:26:58.1 unfortunately, the power, the electricity in her lab failed. she couldn't move her lines into the industrial strength freezers in the other lab because they were federally funded. the stem cell lines on which she 13:27:12.1 had worked for two years melted and were gone. so two years of work were out the window because of this ridiculous situation. money that could otherwise be devoted to research is instead 13:27:29.4 used to build labs and purchase duplicate equipment. and the cost is significant. scientists at the whitehead institute for biomedical research in cambridge, massachusetts, didn't want to fall behind international stem 13:27:45.9 cell leaders so they established a second lab. they had to buy a $52,000 microscope, two incubators, which cost $7,500, a $6,500 centrifuge. 13:28:00.0 they already owned this equipment, they had the equipment but they couldn't use it because that equipment was published with federal dollars. to me, this makes no sense. i don't think we can afford this kind of wasteful duplication 13:28:17.2 with what are very precious research dollars. our scientists should be focused on investigating disease not worried about who pays for their pens or their test tubes. so bottom line, we need a reasonable federal policy that 13:28:34.1 includes funding for viable stem cell lines. now, i don't need to tell you about the hope, the famous 13:28:48.2 faces, the average people that are behind this legislation. it's nearly 70% of the population. i don't have to tell you about michael j. fox, who showed the nation the true face of parkinson's disease. i don't have to tell you about first lady nancy reagan, who has spoken out in support of this 13:29:05.4 and other legislation. or christopher reeve, who lived his life refusing to accept that his spinal cord injury would never be healed. or dana reeve, who stood by her husband and then tragically lost her own battle with cancer. 13:29:23.2 and just as important are the millions of americans who may not have a famous face but put everything they have in us in the hope that we will do the right thing. and the right thing is pretty simple. 13:29:36.4 it's to give them a chance to live. to live. that's what we're talking about. i don't think there's any other piece of legislation that more involves the right to life than this piece of legislation. 13:29:53.4 these are people that are going to die. they live with catastrophic, often terminal diseases. they suffer immeasurably. and suddenly there might well one day be a cure or their 13:30:11.7 disease might be put in remission. and the kind of research might be done that can mend a broken spinal cord. how can we not support this? how can we look at the fact. 13:30:28.9 what the president said, life or death is not involved in the embryo that's used, and that's what this legislation is. these are embryos that have no chance at life. all we ask is they be put to 13:30:42.1 work to protect human life. it seems to me that's not too much.p@p really i really hope that this bill not only will pass by a substantial 13:30:58.3 margin, but some way, somehow the 67 votes we need in this house to overturn a presidential veto will be present. i think the american people demand no less. thank you. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 13:31:13.1 senator from california, i thank her for her eloquent statement and for her many years of working on this issue and her support for this and so many 13:31:22.8 issues dealing with the health of the american people. i just thank senator feinstein for being a stalwart in trying to break down the barriers that we have to embryonic stem cell research. i thank her for that, and i yield ten minutes to my good friend, the senator from delaware. 13:31:37.2 the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: thank you. i thank senator harkin for yielding his time to me. mr. president, good afternoon. we made some truly amazing strides in medical research with the creation of new medicine and mapping the human genome, but i think we'll all agree that a 13:31:55.1 good deal can be done, and more should be done. we know that stem cells hold promise, and today we have an opportunity, not today but tomorrow, to pass critical legislation that enables us to take some of those next steps. in finding treatments and cures 13:32:10.5 for diseases like parkinson's, like juvenile diabetes, like heart stkaoerbgs and even cancer -- heart disease, and even cancer. like, i suspect, every member of this body, i have in my own family personal experiences and reasons for supporting stem cell 13:32:27.3 research. my mother passed away about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now, and she had in the last decade or so of her life been stricken by alzheimer's disease, by dementia. 13:32:40.5 her mother had lived and died with the same disease. her grandmother had lived and died with the same disease. her sister may be showing symptoms, early symptoms of the same disease. my mother's father was a butcher, worked five, six days a 13:33:00.7 week until he was 81 years old as a butcher in a little mom and pop super market in beckley, west virginia. but his hand would shake like this. you'd go into the butcher shop, hands shaking like this, you would wonder how many fingers is 13:33:14.9 he going to lose today trying to cut the meat. he never lost one. i remember watching as parkinson's took its toll on him as it has in others of our colleagues in the house of representatives, where senator harkin and i served. lane evans and mo udall and others we lived with, thought 13:33:31.0 the world of, still think the world of, to see what happens to them because of those diseases. i just lost my uncle in huntington, west virginia, last year to a form of cancer which is almost, always deathly. 13:33:49.4 and pancreatic cancer. those are just a couple of people in my own life, people very close to me in my family who we have either lost or seen a serious degradation in the equal of their lives. 13:34:08.8 someday i'd like to be able to say to my sons who are 17 and 18 you'll never have to worry about alzheimer's disease because of the research, the kind of work done in this legislation. you'll never have to worry about having parkinson's disease or pancreatic cancer because we 13:34:24.0 figured out how to deal with those as well. but today's more about just curing diseases. it's also about keeping america's research centers competitive and relevant. the united states has always been a key leader in the prevention and treatment of 13:34:41.7 illnesses. we developed vaccines, we developed antibiotics that have saved literally millions of lives. still do. we made tremendous advances in the field of biotechnology and pharmaceutical research as well. now we have the opportunity to make a national commitment to 13:34:56.9 expand the frontiers of medical research. stem cell research is, i think, a key part of doing that. and i know a lot of us agree. a nation that is able to take stem cell research to the next step and use it to truly 13:35:12.7 understand how our d.n.a. works and then to use that information to help find treatments and cure diseases will be in the driver's seat of medical research worldwide for some time to come. my friend and fellow delawarean, 13:35:30.0 congressman mike castle, has led the way to expand stem cell research. last year congressman castle introduced legislation that would allow the national institutes of health to support embryonic stem cell research. congress passed this bill, thanks to the leadership, in no 13:35:44.3 small part, by senator harkin and others here in this body. legislation, as we know, was vetoed by our president. and i just must respectfully disagree with the president's policy on stem cell research. on this front, i just think he's wrong. 13:35:59.1 this year several of my colleagues, including my friend, senator harkin, have introduced legislation very similar to the castle bill that we passed last year here. s. 5, stem cell research enhancement act of 2007, would advance stem cell research by expanding the number of stem cell lines that are eligible for 13:36:17.5 federal funding. it would also strengthen the ethical rules that govern stem 13:36:22.8 cell research, a concern that i know is on many people's mind, including my own. under the administration's current policy, the number of stem cell lines available for federally funded research, has continued to shrink. there are now only 21 cell lines 13:36:37.0 available, i'm told. 21. what's more, many of the current lines are contaminated or reach the end of their usefulness. a gentleman named dr. he will lie kwras zerhouni, recently 13:36:52.8 testified before a senate panel and made a similar claim that these 21 cell lines that national institutes of health has will not be sufficient for the research that they need to do at n.i.h. s. 5 would allow new lines to be 13:37:08.0 derived from excess in vitro fertilization embryos that would otherwise be discarded. to me, the choice seems clear. rather than allowing these embryos to be discarded, to be destroyed, we can use them to 13:37:23.4 further lifesaving research, that may save the lives of our loved ones, our spouses, our brothers, our sisters, our parents, our children, our nieces and our nephews. s. 5 would allow new lines to be derived from excess in vitro 13:37:39.7 fertilization embryos that are going to be discarded. i know some people are concerned about that, and they have an ethical dilemma that they face. i would just say to people who have those concerns, and who may have those deeply held beliefs, 13:37:55.2 does it make sense to you that these embryos that have been created in fertility clinics are just going to be destroyed? they are going to be destroyed at really the discretion of the, whoever is the person who donated the egg and sperm. does it make more sense to allow 13:38:13.1 those fertilized eggs to be destroyed or does it make more sense to allow them to be, at the discretion of the husband, the wife for those, that embryo to be used to help preserve life, to enhance life to, improve life? 13:38:29.1 these new stem cell lines will dramatically expand our ability to study and find treatments for a wide range of illnesses. and the benefits will come not only from having more lines, but from having better lines. by expanding our research policy, we can create stem cell 13:38:46.4 lines that help us study specific diseases or create specific treatments. i want to close by urging all our colleagues to join us, a majority of us, a large majority of us, in supporting s. 56789 i think it's been made better because the sponsors of the bill 13:39:03.3 that actual lint dued legislation -- that actually introduced legislation, i think it was legislation offered last year by senators specter and santorum, now as part of this legislation. i think it's made it better. but we shouldn't have to wait any longer to move forward. 13:39:19.4 we focus our resources and attention today to find cures, we'll save more lives now. it will also save money in the long run. i will close by saying for those who believe that this legislation would somehow divert us from pursuing the use of stem 13:39:37.1 cells, adult stem cells or stem cells that may come from umbilical cords, it doesn't do that. we should pursue those paths as well. in pursuing those paths, we shouldn't close the door on this 13:39:49.1 path. we should pursue this path too. and to those who have brought us to this day, our colleague, congressman castle from delaware, to the sponsors of this bill today and all who join in supporting it, and people around the country who join us in supporting it as well. thank you for doing a good thing 13:40:05.2 for a lot of people who need our help. thank you. mr. harkin: mr. president, again, i want to thank my good friend, tom carper, the senator from delaware for his eloquent and personal kind of statement. actually, that is what this is 13:40:19.6 all about. it is about helping people who are suffering some really bad problems, need some help in their health care. i thank him for his support. now i yield to the person who really has been the leader in all our health care issues here for so many years and i think is recognized as such by the entire 13:40:36.3 country, a great leader in all haourbg issues, he is -- health care issues, especially in our issues of stem cell research, i yield to senator kennedy. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. 13:40:53.5 mr. kennedy: mr. president i -- [inaudible] -- as well as senator specter for really the extraordinary leadership that they have provided on this issue, which is so important to the families in 13:41:12.3 our country. we deal with a lot of issues around this body, but this 13:41:23.1 particular legislation probably offers more hope to more people than perhaps anything else that we'll do here in the united states senate this year. we think of all of the various 13:41:37.9 kinds of illnesses and sicknesses, diseases, accidents that have affected so many families here in the senate; most importantly to the american family. 13:41:50.3 and we know that we have really the best in terms of the treatment of these illnesses and sickness here in the united states. those that are able to receive it. but there are still all of these 13:42:09.5 illnesses and sicknesses that have defied the ablest and most gifted minds until very, very recently, and that is with the 13:42:24.3 discovery that really started about ten years ago with the opportunity for using stem cells that can play a very indispensable role in providing a cure for these individuals. and that's what this is 13:42:42.3 basically really all about, an extraordinary opportunity that is out there, and whether we here in the united states are going to permit the great institution, the greatest institution for research -- the national institutes of health -- 13:42:58.3 to be able to unleash the vastness of the creativity, the brilliance, the ability of so many of those researchers and scientists to try and unlock the cures for so many of these diseases and do it in a way 13:43:15.6 which is ethically sound and for so many of the reasons that have been spelled out. so this is enormously timely, mr. president. i thank senator harkin for his persistence and -- in ensuring 13:43:36.3 that we were going to be able to have this on the floor of the united states senate in a timely way. i thank our leader, senator reid, for scheduling this. and i thank the broad bipartisan 13:43:52.4 coalition that has come together, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that have given strong support for this legislation. it's pretty popular at this time in washington to talk about the 13:44:06.5 differences that exist in our nation's capital, and there are some very important ones. but, mr. president, we have really come together, republican and democrat, house and senate, those that have over a long 13:44:24.3 period of time advocated the pro-life position, those that have felt that the ability for individuals to make judgments about their own future, all have come together in support of this 13:44:44.7 legislation. so this is a very special time, and it is enormously important, this vote that we're going to have tomorrow. and, again, i thank my colleagues and friends for bringing us to the point where 13:44:58.5 we are today. nearly a decade ago american scientists made the revolutionary discovery that tiny cells called stem cells held the extraordinary potential to offer new hope and new help in the fight against diabetes and parkinson's disease, spinal 13:45:15.7 injury, and many other illnesses. and six years ago many of us here in the senate joined millions of patients and their families in calling on president bush to support this lifesaving research.p sadly he 13:45:32.4 rejected the calls and imposed severe restrictions on the search if the cures. since those severe limitations were imposed, we have struggled to free american scientists from these unwarranted restrictions. last year, we scored a great victory when the house and senate, with broad bipartisan 13:45:51.1 majority voted to end the restrictions. but, those efforts came to nothing with a veto. we are back at the battle again. i think i share the view of my colleagues and friends in saying 13:46:05.4 if we are not successful -- although we are hopeful we will be -- we will continue this battle, day in and day out, until we are successful. so, today we renew our hope that the president will start anew 13:46:19.1 and consider the merits of this new legislation instead of automatically picking under the veto penn. when congress passed the bipartisan stem cell bill last year we voted for hope, we voted for progress, and for life. 13:46:35.1 for president bush, he close to veto the legislation. now we are taking up the cause once again. in our legislation, again, it brings together conservatives and progressives, members of congress on both sides of the debate over the women's right to 13:46:49.7 choose, representatives from big cities, small towns, rural communities. we all agree that stem cell research must go forward. this legislation before us is only six pages long. it's a short, simple bill with 13:47:06.7 enormous goals and vast potential. it overturns the unrealistic and unreasonable restrictions on the embryonic stem cell research imposed by the president's executive order five years ago. the unilateral action bypassed 13:47:22.2 congress and froze progress in its traffic by barring n.i.h. from using stem cell deprived after august of 2001, a date chosen to coincide with the 13:47:36.9 president's speech. many of us warned at that time that this policy would delay the search for new cures and put needless barriers in the way of medical progress. and at a health committee hearing just days after the executive order was issued, many of us raised concerns about the 13:47:53.7 new policy and urged the president to reconsider. our concerns were dismissed by the administration. by time has shown that each of the drawbacks we feared then, have become a real barrier to progress today. at the time of the executive 13:48:09.1 order the administration claimed only 60 independent stem lines would be available to n.i.h. researchers. we found, as our friends from california, and senator harkin pointed out, only 22 of the stem lines are available to n.i.h. researchers. 13:48:23.9 all of those were obligated using out of date methods and outmoded techniques. we listened carefully, mr. president, to the words of dr. landis, chair of the n.i.h. stem cell task force in testimony before the united 13:48:40.2 states senate in january of this year. "we are missing out on a possible breakthrough. federally funded research has monitoring oversight, transparently that privately funded research will not necessarily have. the cell lines available to the n.i.h. funding have been now 13:48:56.8 shown to have genetic instabilities" pointing out the missed opportunities being placed now because of the restrictions put on by the administration. scpefen the research that is being done -- and even the 13:49:12.4 research that is being done in the private sector, as limited it is, is lacking in monitoring and oversight. in many instances the enormously area of ethical considerations that have been included in this legislation. 13:49:28.3 as has been mentioned here earlier during the discussion but needs to be mentioned again, mr. president, the excellent statement by the director of the national institutes of health before the senate on march 19th where he points out the side line of the n.i.h. in such an issue of importance is 13:49:46.0 "in my view, shortsighted. i think it would not serve the nation well in the long run. we need to find a way to move forward." these are two of the most distinguished researchers, scientists. dr. zerhouni has a brilliant 13:50:03.0 record at n.i.h. and dr. landis has had a brilliant record. anyone who has the opportunity to listen to him and listen to him respond to questions cannot help but leave that kind of meeting, recognizing and supporting his position. 13:50:18.3 so, that is -- those are the issues. that is what this legislation is really about, mr. president. our legislation makes the basic change needed to reverse our current policy. as has been pointed out, 13:50:34.5 science, without ethics; like a ship without a rudder. for that reason, the legislation establishes essential ethical safeguards for stem cell research. enormously important. and has been reviewed earlier during this debate and 13:50:51.8 discussion. mr. president, our legislation authorizes new initiatives for obtaining the stem cells from sources other than embryos. we strongly support ongoing research for alternatives to embryonic stem cell research but 13:51:07.6 is fundamentally wrong to shut down the promise of new cures while that search is underway. in the end, this debate is not about abstract principles or 13:51:17.1 complex aspects of science, about the people would look with hope to stem cell research to help them with the challenges that they face. mr. president, it's as important to sergeant jason whittley. 13:51:36.0 let me read about sergeant whittley, injured in iraq, united states marine corps: "i was in charlie company, first 13:51:49.2 marine division. i spent 10 years one month, and 28 days in the marines corps -- but who's counting. on may 9th, 2003, in iraq, i was disposing of iraqi ordinances and the fuse went off 13:52:09.7 prematurely and, as a result of the accident," the vehicle overturned on him and "i had fractures of my c 6 vertebrae in my neck, broke my right wrist 13:52:21.9 and a number of other injuries." he's in his wheelchair now, brave and courageous marine. he believes, sergeant whittley looks to stem cell research for 13:52:35.7 new hope for his injuries. he has had multiple, multiple, multiple surgeries. here is lands corps ral -- lance corporal james crosby who enlisted at age 17, married, 13:52:52.2 living in california before service and the injury. march 18th, james was wounded by enemy fire while riding in the back of a united states military vehicle when a rocket fired and injured the driver and injured who marines. 13:53:09.4 shrapnel penetrated his side. james was immediately sent to a hospital in kuwait and had the first operation there. stabilized. finally, flown to a u.s. military hospital in germany. in germany, james underwent 13:53:23.7 several surgeries to remove shrapnel and repair wounds. james and his wife who was flown to germany to be with him, and he is now in a wheelchair. he has had multiple additional operations. 13:53:39.2 he has lost 50-pounds and requires a colostomy bags and now in a wheel chair, paralyzed from the waste down and has high hope that stem cell research can 13:53:55.8 be of help and assistance to permitting him to recover from the wounds. there are countless others that have similar injuries and recognize the importance of this 13:54:13.5 research. i'm going to conclude, mr. president, with a letter that i received from a 15-year-old lauren from massachusetts, who has juvenile 13:54:29.6 diabetes. in her letter she wrote of her hope of what stem cell research means to her and her family. she wrote me again this year. she is still full of hope, but you can also hear her frustration. these are her words: i'm now wearing a continuous glucose 13:54:47.7 monitoring system. it has a wire probe that i insert under my skin every few days on my own. when i first held the wire probe to my thigh i was scared to death. the needle was huge. i was going to be plunging it 13:55:03.5 into my body. would it hurt? what if it didn't work? was it worth the risk? after about 20 minutes of sweat and shaking, i found the guts to do it. and then as soon as i did, i knew almost immediately it was 13:55:18.5 the right thing to do. it went in fine. it did not hurt that much. it is helping me." those were her words. she goes on to write about our zigs on how to vote on this legislation now. here's what she writes: "some of you might be scared to vote yes. 13:55:34.8 you know it's the right thing to do. after all, if embryos are being discarded, how can it not be right to use them to help people like me? your hand is lingering over the lever like mine was, over the insertion device. 13:55:50.6 you can see it might do some good but you're afraid. someone might get mad. it might hurt a little. but follow my lead. be brave. do something that might hurt a little or scare you for a second but after, will make so many things so much better. 13:56:07.8 vote yes it allow scientists to do this valuable research to free kids like me from horrible 13:56:15.9 diseases. vote yes and take another step along with me in finding cures. no one ever said doing the right thing, the brave thing, the thing to make the world better would be easy. i elevenned the hard way. vote yes. 13:56:28.9 free me from the machines that keep me alike. clear away my future of kidney damage, blindness and fear of a shortened life." those are lauren's words. they compel us to act. tomorrow, we can cast a vote of courage by approving the stem 13:56:46.9 cell research enhancement act. we call upon the president of the united states to think anew and decide not to veto hope. i yield back the remainder of my time. 13:57:10.4 a senator: how much time remains? the presiding officer: eight minutes and 44 seconds. mr. webb: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

IN TOO MANY CASES.. ANTIBIOTICS AREN'T DOING WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO.. A LOOK AT WHY AND WHO'S AT FAULT

THE SENATE The Senate meets for 1 hour of morning business followed by the start of up to 20 hours of debate on 2 stem cell bills. 18:00:00.2 jersey, support for stem cell research is overwhelming. in fact, rutgers university, new jersey state university is one of the leading advocates of stem cell research. one thing, mr. president, that 18:00:16.4 this country has always been, it's been about hope, about the chance for a better life.? when president bush talks about 18:00:32.9 vetoing stem cell research bill, it denies hope to millions of americans. last year, congress passed similar legislation that would 18:00:45.0 have eased the president's policy on stem cell but the president vetoed that bill based on "ethics and morality." what's ethical about the non-cure of children's suffering 18:01:01.6 from diabetes? is there anything moral about denying people who have paralysis the chance, possibly, to walk again? any real ethical issues are addressed by this bill. new stem lines come from embryos 18:01:19.3 donated by further tilt patient -- fertility patients under strict guidelines. there will not be embryos for research. that is fiction. what we are talking about is embryos that otherwise would be disposed of, discarded, thrown 18:01:36.2 away. we stand at a cross road in america. we can take the position that cells in a petri dish are a gift for healing. or we can throw away the opportunity to alleviate human suffering. 18:01:53.4 mr. president, the men, women and children who suffer from diabetes are racing against time. the statistic is around now that says that children born today will, one out of three children 18:02:09.9 born today, will suffer diabetes before their death. because of the president's veto, we have wasted so much time and opportunity. these men, women and children simply cannot afford to wait for 18:02:25.5 the president to put aside the politics and deal with the fact -- i would love to see president bush meet some of these families or see the children who come in, the 18:02:46.1 diabetes group, when we have 300 children in one of the meeting rooms in a senate building. to see those children. to see how beautiful they appear to be. 18:02:58.7 to see how desperately they want help. but we, for some unexplained reason, don't think that is important in our government. when we see the president with his threat of a veto, coming 18:03:19.2 back again and saying we are not going to permit this, it is a terrible thing, a terrible message to try and have to listen to across the country. so, mr. president, i salute the 18:03:36.3 bipartisan leadership of senators harkin and specter on this issue. i want my colleagues to look at their own children. if they are all normally healthy, they are blessed -- 18:03:52.3 blessed. but i also know that everybody in this country has had contact with someone who is suffering from a condition that desperately, desperately needs help. when it looks like there's such 18:04:07.2 an easy way to think these problems through, to try to allay the conditions of discomfort that come with these diseases, it's hard to understand why we woin have 100 18:04:24.7 votes in this -- why we wouldn't have 100 votes in this body to say yes, we want to do whatever we can for children who are sick or who are likely to encounter problems that our country is 18:04:38.5 facing -- talking about the conditions that thread throughout our society. yet, the president has insisted on turning his back on these opportunities. it's a pity. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. 18:04:58.1 mr. harkin: mr. president, how much time remains on our side? the presiding officer: the senator's time has expired. mr. harkin: mr. president, i obviously yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum. 18:05:09.7 the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. without objection. 18:15:53.3 18:16:01.7 quorum call: 18:17:56.1 mr. brawn back: mr. president, i ask that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brownback: mr. president, i want to resume the discussion on embryonic stem cell research. i want to resume the discussion on adult stem cell successes and why we should not move forward on destroying more human life 18:18:14.0 for the purposes of research. i'm going to start out with a simple picture and a -- a picture of one child, hannah, that was a frozen embryo, and i want to just go through this briefly because we -- we talk 18:18:29.9 about frozen embryos as if just -- this is kind of something you can discard and there's really no significance here. or if there is, it's minimal, it's not really human, it's just something that's sitting there in a frozen state and we should just research on this -- this 18:18:46.3 person. i just want to note this because hannah was a frozen embryo, was adopted, was implanted and then here we are looking at her april of 2001 at age 28 months. i met hannah. 18:19:02.6 she has been in my office. bright, young, vivacious girl. i just want to point out that she starts out as what we're talking about researching on here. she starts out being conceived, frozen alive, adopted as an embryo, arrives in a clinic, 18:19:18.6 then is thawed, confirmed implantation, heartbeat audible at may 14, 1998. age 21 weeks, here's a picture of her at 231 weeks. we can see -- here's a picture of her at 21 weeks. 18:19:33.5 and we can see her and we can see the development. and the reason i point this out, and it should be obvious to everybody, but what we are talking about is something under elm yolg books is defined as a human. it's defined as a person with a human number of chromosomes. it's defined as a unique person, 18:19:50.9 never to be recreated. we are defining and talking about somebody that if these frozen embryos are adopted can be implanted and grow into human beings. 18:20:03.9 and hannah, as she was, in april of 2001, the hannah that was in my office. i would urge more people look at this as a possible option. people -- a number of people have embryos at i.v.f. clinics, frozen embryos at i.v.f. clinics. 18:20:19.6 this is a viable option if people don't want to have them implanted in themselves. if they're extra, that they would consider that are there, they are a number of people that cannot conceive that want to adopt. i would urge people to look at this as a possible and a viable 18:20:36.8 option and a very beautiful -- a beautiful option that people would look at. this is happening quite a few times in places across the united states. it's important. it is a great option. my wife and i have adopted two 18:20:54.4 children. not at the frozen embryo stage but at a later stage. and i can say with all candor, it is a wonderful thing. it has been a great gift to our family to have two of our 18:21:09.2 children that are adopted. and with the rest of our family, it's just been a fabulous thing for all of us. and i hope people would look at this as a viable option. it is a viable option technologically. this is something people can do. 18:21:24.0 you can do this today. this can take place. it does take place. it is a regular event that takes place. it is something that you can feel good about in doing and having a beautiful child that is here and functioning and in the world and bringing joy to 18:21:39.7 people's eyes. i've got our two adopted children are both nine and they just bring great joy to everybody they're around. even when they're bugging their older sister, they bring her joy. and it's just a great thing to do, and i really hope we could 18:21:55.7 do a lot more of this. if people would consider this as a real option rather than just saying, okay, these are extra embryos or these are throwaway or they're going to be disposed of anyway, why not look for the best option? why not look for this beautiful 18:22:12.1 option that's out there and -- instead of saying, just, well, aren't doing anything with them any way, let's just discard them. there's another option here. there is a different chance, there's another hope and that child then can bring so much joy and possibilities into the world 18:22:29.5 that are endless. why not that one? what's -- what's wrong with that option? and i would hope people would really look at -- at this as a real chance and something that they can do. in my earlier remarks, i read a 18:22:46.9 definition from an embryolgy textbook which anairmd each individual life begins as a 46-chromosome embryo. the presiding officer did, i did, senator harkin from iowa did. textbook definitions are good but living examples are often 18:23:01.7 even better and that's what i'm showing on this chart. of course, each one of us alive today is an example that life begins at an elm yonic stage -- embryonic stage because we were all once embryos. another clear example of this truth are those children alive today, 137, i'm told, with 16 18:23:19.1 currently in utero, who used to be numbered among the so-called spare or leftover embryos. that's not as many as i would hope it would be and i'd hope in the future we could have a lot more. as i mentioned, last year i had the privilege of meeting one of these children, a young girl by 18:23:33.5 the name of hannah, can see her growth along the live continuum detailed in this chart. and of course, if she is terminated at any phase along this way, she's not out here. life is that continuing. i'd like to draw my colleagues' attention to this, in particular 18:23:49.3 and ask how can we just wantonly destroy these embryos for research purposes with taxpayer funding because they're allegely spare, left over or just going to be destroyed anyway? it's wrong to turn living, human persons into research objects to 18:24:06.3 be exploited. and i believe that those embryos which have been adopted make this point very, very well. i also want to note on this that currently in the united states, it is not illegal anywhere in the country for a person to donate an embryo to develop a 18:24:25.8 stem cell -- an embryonic stem cell line. that's not illegal anywhere. what we're talking about is expanding the taxpayer funding -- federal taxpayer funding for human embryonic stem cell research. so we're talking about taxpayer funding of this that is 18:24:41.3 considered and is highly unethical to a number of our fellow americans and it's something we don't need to do. and on that point of not needing to do, i want to just enter into the record -- and i'd ask 18:24:54.5 unanimous consent that this article could be submitted into the record at the end of my statement. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brownback: thank you, mr. president. this was an article posted on cnn at 4:05 today eastern daylight time about type 1 diabetics live without insulin 18:25:11.9 in stem cell experiment. this was just out on cnn this afternoon. 13 young diabetics in brazil -- and i want to get to that point. it's the point that i've been making, that this research should be done in the united states. 18:25:26.4 instead, it's going other places. 13 young diabetics in brazil have ditched their insulin shots and need no other medication thanks to a risky but promising treatment with their own stem cells. apparently the first time such a 18:25:42.4 feat has been accomplished. this is just the highlighting of this particular article. again, the research being done in brazil. you'll see some consistency on 18:25:52.5 points. if any followed my earlier comments, i was talking about a gentleman who is getting a heart treatment with his own stem cells in bangkok, thailand. a young lady in illinois who received treatment for her 18:26:08.0 spinal cord injury, a paraplegic, in portugal. and now this diabetic work being done in brazil. all of these adult stem cell work that's taking place, and it's outside of the country rather than being done here and 18:26:22.8 us funding and doing it here. we're losing the battle in the research anywhere, it's in the adult stem cell field that's producing these type of cures. let me proceed. this is an a.p. story. it was on cnn. i'm reading from it. "though too early to call it a cure, the procedure has enabled 18:26:38.9 the young people who have type 1 diabetes to leave insulin-free so far, some as long as three years. the treatment involves stem cell transplants from the patient's own blood. it's the first time in the history of type 1 diabetics -- diabetes where people have gone 18:26:56.3 with no treatment whatsoever, no medications at all, with normal blood sugars, said study coauthor dr. richard bird of northwestern university's medical school in chicago, illinois. while the procedure can be potentially life threatening, 18:27:11.3 none of the 15 patients in the study died or suffered lasting side effects but it didn't work for two of them. larger more rigorous studies are needed to determine whether stem cell transplants could become standard treatment for people with the disease once called juvenile diabetes. 18:27:28.5 it's less common than type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity. the hazards of stem cell transplantation also raises questions about whether the study should have included children. one patient was as young as 14. dr. lani ross, a medical 18:27:44.1 ethicist at the university of chicago, said the researchers should have studied adults first before exposing young teens to the potential harms of stem cell transplant, which include infertility and late onset cancers. in addition, ross said that the study should have had comparison 18:27:59.2 groups to make sure the treatment was, indeed, better than standard diabetes care. bird -- dr. bird, who wrote the study protocol, said the research was done in brazil because u.s. doctors were not interested in the approach. the study was approved by ethics committees in brazil, he said, 18:28:15.4 adding that he personally believes it was appropriate to do the research in children as well as adults as long as the brazilian ethics panels approved. dr. burt and other diabetic experts call the results an important step forward." "quote -- "it's the threshold of 18:28:32.8 a very promising i'm for the field, said dr. jay skyler of the diabetes research institute at the university of miami. skyler wrote an editorial in the journal of the american medical association which published the study, saying the results are likely to stimulate research 18:28:48.2 that may lead to methods of preventing or reversing type 1 diabetes." now, that's exciting. these are exciting results. they look impressive, said dr. gordon wier of jocelyn die bets center in boston, 18:29:03.8 mississippi. still, he cautioned more studies are needed to make sure the treatment worked and is safe. quote -- "it's really too early to suggest to people that this is a cure." the patients involved were ages 14 to 31 and had newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes. an estimated 12 to 24 million people worldwide, including 18:29:21.4 one million to two million in the united states, have this form of diabetes, which is typically diagnosed in children or young adults, an autoimmune disease that occurs when the body attacks insulin producing cells in the pancreas. insulin is needed to regulate blood sugar levels which when 18:29:35.8 too high can lead to heart disease, blindness, nerve problems and kidney damage. dr. burt said the stem cell transplant is designed to stop the body's immune attack on the pancreas. a study published last year described a different kind of experimental transplant using 18:29:52.6 pancreatic cells from donated cadavers that enabled a few diabetics to give up shots. but that requires lifelong use of antirejection medicine which isn't needed by the practice disblil patients since the stem cells were their own. the 15 diabetics were treated at a bone marrow center at the 18:30:09.5 university of san paolo. all of them had insulin producing diabetes and their stem cells were not destroyed. the timing is key, dr. burt said. if you wait too long, he said, you've exceeded the body's ability to repair itself. again, he talks about repairing 18:30:23.7 itself later in this article and i want to hit that point. "the procedure involves stimulating the body to produce new stem cells and harvesting them from the patient's blood. next comes several days of high-dose chemotherapy, which virtually shuts down the patient's immune system and stops destruction of the few 18:30:41.0 remaining insulin producing cells in the body. this requires hospitalization and potent drugs to fend off infection. the harvested stem cells when injected back into the body build a new, healthier immune 18:30:53.1 system that does not attack the insulin producing cells. patients were hospitalized for about three weeks. many had side effects. one developed pneumonia, the only we're complication. @doctors changed the drug regime 18:31:11.7 after the treatments failed in the first study. the other patient relapsed. the remaining 13 -- quote -- "lived a normal life without requiring insulin" said a doctor of the university of sapallo. 18:31:28.1 they went back to their lives. the length of time they have been insulin-free differs. they used the procedure in 170 patients with other autoimmune diseases including lupus and multiple sclerosis. 18:31:42.9 one patient with an autoimmune form of blindness can now see, dr. burt said. and he had this quote -- quote -- "the body has tremendous potential to repair" he said. the study was partly funded by the brazilian ministry of 18:32:00.0 health, the maker of a blood-sugar monitoring products. now, why aren't we doing this here? why wouldn't we be funding this sort of work here? and we don't have unlimited 18:32:15.8 amounts of funds to go around, and we're putting $620 million into speculative embryonic stem cell research that's produced no cures. 18:32:30.3 and yet, we're having people from the united states go to bangkok and to portugal and to brazil to get this work done that's financed by the brazilian ministry of health along with a private corporation that's the maker of blood-sugar monitoring products. 18:32:47.2 why isn't it being done here, where we have now 13 young diabetics have ditched their insulin shots. that's beautiful news. and it should be here. and yet, we're starving this field that's producing so much results, putting in $620 million 18:33:06.2 into embryonic stem cell research that's highly speculative, that is considered by many to be unethical of our fellow citizenry in the united states, producing no treatments or cures, and people are going 18:33:20.1 to brazil to be able to get their, be able to deal with diabetes. or to portugal to deal with spinal cord injury. or thailand, to be able to deal with congestive heart failure and difficulties with the heart and heart disease. 18:33:36.6 is there something wrong with this? i think it clearly is, where we're not getting this done here, it's going other places. and we're not funding it. we need to do more in the adult stem cell field and the cord blood field. 18:33:51.0 we need to do more in amniotic fluid. we need to do more in the placenta of stem cells and harvesting there so that we can get these treatments here for our own citizenry instead of people having to go to brazil and other places to get this cutting-edge technology. 18:34:08.3 and yet, we'll spend a lot of time debating on the floor that, yes, we need to do this and we need to do all of them. but the problem is we don't have infinite amounts of money. you do have a limited research budget, and the money that we're putting into the embryonic 18:34:25.5 field, destroying human life at taxpayer expense doesn't go into adult stem cell work. it doesn't go into other areas that we could do more of this work in to get the results out that would treat people so that diabetics don't need their 18:34:39.3 insulin shots. this is cutting-edge work that's being done somewhere else because we're not funding it. i want to talk too about another aspect of this that i haven't 18:34:56.4 brought up previously, and that's private-sector funding. i note on this diabetes story that was just out on the a.p. wire that was private corporation gensmen corporation, 18:35:13.4 as maker of a blood sugar monitoring products. it is not illegal anywhere to do embryonic stem cell research in this country if it is so promising in the health care field, one would think there 18:35:28.9 would be heavy private-sector investment taking place in embryonic stem cell research. if this is producing and holds the key to curing alzheimer's and parkinson's and diabetes, then one would think there would 18:35:45.5 be a flood of private-sector money coming into this field to develop and to get the early 18:35:51.0 patents on some of the work. let's see what's happening in the investor community on this. how many private investors are going into it. 18:36:06.1 we can talk about following the money into the field. this is july 17, 2006, edition of the "new york sun," an article written by harold fujgod 18:36:28.0 roth, a former f.e.c. commissioner. he notes quotes, and i just want to quote some from this article, 18:36:38.0 and i will just put this in. he says this, "for investors, the debate over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research is an indication that profits are remote, in many areas of technology. 18:36:53.2 the frontiers of research and development are spearheaded by private business, where profits are powerful inducement. innovation needs little federal funding. from pharmaceutical to electronic monitoring equipment, much of medical research advances to the drumbeat of 18:37:10.3 capitalism. innovative ideas are rewarded. tens of billions of private dollars in america and around the world finance new research because it offers visible roads to rewards. what does he say about then stem cell research? we know this to be true. there's heavy investment in the 18:37:24.7 commercial sector and pharmaceutical supplies and electronics and computing. this has been the, one of the big driving areas is the private-sector investors are going into these fields and investing heavily. so what are they doing in stem 18:37:40.9 cell research and embryonic stem cell research? to date private investment in stem cell research has been relatively small and unrewarding. several publicly traded but relatively small american companies, list a couple, conduct research and development on stem cells. 18:37:56.9 many privately held companies also pursue stem cell research, but venture capital backing for stem cell research is waning. it's not growing. it's waning. nor is there evidence of 18:38:13.2 substantial private research and development migrating abroad. american financial institutions raise enormous funds to invest in businesses engaged in medical research both in america and abroad. we certainly know that to be true. but little, if any, of that money targets foreign 18:38:29.6 investments and stem cell research companies. the current policy does not appear to have left america back in the basic science of stem cell research. the recent study in the nature biotechnology, american 18:38:45.2 scientists account for the dominant share of research publications on embryonic stem cell research and the number of publications is growing rapidly. perhaps american science will be even more dominant with greater federal funding but the stimulus for that funding should not be that we are falling hopefully behind the rest of the world. 18:39:02.1 mr. president, i ask that the rest of this article in its entirety be in my comments, at the conclusion of my comments. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. brownback: thank you, mr. president. my point? saying this is that we know this is -- my point in saying this is we know this is true. 18:39:18.0 we know in the medical health field, if there are some great results that are coming on that could be patentable or treatment that the medical sector of our economy is growing as a percentage of the gross national product, and i think it's somewhere around 15% now, going 18:39:34.1 faster, that there's a heavy investment into medical research taking place. we know that in the pharmaceutical industry. we know that in the medical treatment areas that's taking place. and so why isn't that happening in stem cells, in the embryonic 18:39:52.2 stem cells? the reason is because it's not producing any results. and instead we have people, ministries and korpgs going ab-- and corporations going abroad to make these investments in the adult field where they feel like 18:40:05.4 there isn't sufficient interest here and taking place. that should tell us something. if the private sector is not putting money in, indeed if the private sector research is waning. these are all indicators that we ought to be looking at and 18:40:21.0 asking ourselves what's taking place. now, earlier i covered some of the advances in stem cell research that's happened. i note that, and i want to build on this statement here that 18:40:37.5 we've had put forward about this a.p. story out just this afternoon on diabetes being treated in brazil with adult stem cells, on the lack of private-sector investment. 18:40:49.6 i want to hit another point as to why the private sector isn't investing in embryonic stem cell research,. i made part of this presentation earlier but i want to make it 18:41:04.5 stronger now, and that is embryonic stem cells produce tumors. and this is continuing to come out in all the data. and i think it's part of the reason why you don't see private investors going into this field. if this was a pharmaceutical field and the drugs that you're 18:41:21.5 treating people with are producing tumors, it's unlikely that that drug's going to get approved by the f.d.a. it's unlikely that that's going to move forward of taking place of any sort of drug delivery system, or it's going to be 18:41:36.5 accepted by the public if there's this high likelihood that you're going to get tumors. and here, mr. president, i'd like to ask unanimous consent to put this set of documents in at the end of my statement. the presiding officer: is there objection? 18:41:50.9 without objection. mr. brownback: thank you. this is a series of the front-page articles of the various publications where we have had to date tumors being developed by embryonic stem cell 18:42:09.1 work. and these are in animal models because, of course, we don't have any human clinical trials that are taking place yet. and these are all in the animal field. but we are seeing continuously in the research results, as i 18:42:23.2 stated earlier, that the embryonic stem cell, once injected into an animal model, is creating teratomas, creating tumors. this, as i noted earlier, happened to us in the fetal 18:42:38.1 tissue debate of 15 years ago, that they were creating teratomas or tumors. and we're now seeing it again come up consistently in the research data on embryonic stem cell work. and here, this gets quite technical, but i want to read 18:42:56.4 just some of the quotations from these various articles that any of my colleagues or others would like to look it up, this will be in the record. here is a research article from 2004, when the cultures were transplanted in diabetic mice 18:43:11.7 -- we were talking about a successful diabetic treatment in humans. this is in diabetic mice. they formed teratomas and did not reverse the hypertkpwhraoeu see mick state -- hyperglycemic state. 18:43:30.2 this is just the front page of this article that's out in a 2006 article. embryonic stem cell derived neuroprogeny, more than 70% of mice received these types of embryonic stem cells, developed 18:43:48.1 teratomas, thus posing a major safety problem, is what this article noted. 70% of mice developed tumors. it doesn't sound like that one's going very well. we've got another one in stem cell publication. 18:44:01.5 this is again, a 2006 publication. developed severe teratomas. this particular publication using human embryonic stem cells in a, in lab rats, grafted into lab rats. 18:44:17.8 that one's not going very well. here's a 2005 article from a publication, four weeks post-implantation, cells implanted in high numbers, formed teratomas in the majority of the animals implanted. 18:44:35.0 that one's not going very well. here's a brazilian publication. they were doing very nicely, doing very well on the adult stem cell. this is on human embryonic stem cell. this one, unlimited 18:44:51.0 self-renewing high differentiation poses the risk of tumor inductions after ingraftment. this is in brain tissue, and this is december of 2004. but that one's taking place, that one's not going very well.p 18:45:09.4 here's another publication. this is out in 2003, conclusions transplanted e.s. cells can be grafted but the cells form a 18:45:20.9 tumor if they leak into an improper space such as the thoracic cavity. now we have a bigger problem. if the stem cells leak in another area they form tumors in other pars of the body. that's not going very well. 18:45:36.6 here's another publication. this is a 2005 publication, when the cultured cells were transplanted into diabetic mice, they reversed their state for 18:45:48.6 three weeks but the rescue failed because of immature teratoma formation so they did something for three weeks and then formed cancer cells. that does not work out very well. here's another publication. 18:46:04.5 this is out of washington university, 2004. results suggest a transplanted e.s. cells into the injured spinal cord does not improve locomotive rover and can lead 18:46:22.9 to -- rover and can lead to tumor like growth of cells accompanied by increased mortality. that's not going very well. that's the set of publications, 18:46:36.4 just the front pages of these i am entering into the record. my point is not to belittle introirks but this is highly consistent with the fetal tissue work earlier. it's consistent with all the research that was taking place. 18:46:51.4 we have something that is working. why move forward, putting $620 million, or more now, of federal dollars into an area that has not worked for 25 years? i recognize my colleague. mr. sessions: i ask if my 18:47:08.6 colleague will yield for a question. the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: mr. president, i would just thank my colleague, senator brownback, for the many hours of effort he has put into this to analyze the data that's 18:47:25.0 out there about this important issue. i think it has been helpful to us. i know some people think that it is an easy question for them. senator brownback has taken the 18:47:41.0 road less traveled. he's been willing to dig into the issue because it does, i think, touch on real moral and ethical questions. it's not a light matter, here. 18:47:56.9 let me just ask the senator a question: is it true that the embryonic stem cells we are talking about here, if allowed to grow and mature, would be a human being, and that human 18:48:14.9 being with hair, eye color and height, would have been determined at that very moment when it was at that embryonic stem cell, how they would grow can mature? mr. brownback: yes. 18:48:28.9 my colleague states the obvious that we all know. it is when we get that first set of chromosomes from your mother and your father that your hair color, so many of your features are determined. 18:48:44.7 and it doesn't change. that's your genetic material you get from the early instance as a human embryo. embryo. mr. sessions: the life that is being proposed -- it is a living organism -- this life, if 18:49:01.2 allowed to develop, will it be developed into a distinct human person? so, i think that implicates some questions to us, all of us. 18:49:19.4 i think it is -- it's not something outside the realm of reason that good people question whether we should experiment on that life. 18:49:37.5 now, you had, i believe, a number of children that were brought here, snowflake babies, is that right, that i didn't get to be with us on that occasion but it was reported to me, would you tell us about those children that you saw. 18:49:54.3 mr. brownback: i have a picture of one here. anna, one of the first snowflake babies. it's pretty simple and direct story. just like you and me they started out as embryos. they went into a frozen state 18:50:10.2 for a period of time. and then, they were adopted and allowed to be adopted by other individuals and implanted into a mother's womb and then grew in a normal process that takes place. the point that you made earlier that should be so obvious to all 18:50:26.7 of our colleagues is that this is hannah here and hannah as an embryo as we were at one point in time. mr. sessions: this very tight embryo is what we are talking 18:50:42.8 about experimenting with in the 18:50:46.5 legislation before the senate? mr. brownback: at federal taxpayer dollars is what we are talking about here. mr. sessions: now, with regard to this, we know that good people can differ. i certainly believe good people can differ. 18:50:59.4 i don't count myself morally superior to anybody on these questions. i'm not a scientist. i certainly haven't studied it to the extent that you or other members of this body have. senator coburn, senator hatch, and others have studied it. some have different opinions 18:51:15.5 about it. however, i don't think it is an insignificant matter that this is a piece of life, a small embryonic life that would go into a distinct human being and that is what we are going -- what we are talking about 18:51:30.8 providing federal funds to experiment with. now, it's not a crime, today, for a private person or a university to experiment on this, even if it causes people moral and ethical problems, is 18:51:49.5 it? mr. brownback: that is correct. not a crime today. anybody can do so. mr. sessions: and it is -- private people are doing that today? mr. brownback: yes. mr. sessions: and, i guess in 2001, president bush 18:52:09.0 acknowledged that there were embryonic lines available at that time and that any action we took at that moment against those lines, really, did not 18:52:21.2 implicate human life. he said that those lines would be available for embryonic stem cells for any university that would apply, is that correct? mr. brownback: that's correct and the federal taxpayers funds could be used to experiment on 18:52:35.6 those human embryonic stem cell lines where the life and death decision had already been made. mr. sessions: and i'm informed that -- let me just say this. i heard at some point that those lines may not be continuing. but i'm informed that, in fact, 18:52:53.3 those lines do continue -- at least some of them -- and that there's a substantial number of embryonic cells available for research if they were asked for, but they haven't been all 18:53:09.0 utilized, is that correct if. mr. brownback: that is correct, as well. mr. sessions: so, when we get up to this line of experimenting with human life, one of the things i would ask myself is, is this medically necessary? 18:53:29.3 is this a matter about which we are debating here that would prevent some sort of research? the way i see it, there are federally funded stem cells available for research today, as 18:53:47.1 you have just explained, and then there's no limit whatever on the number of stem cells that are available in the private sector, in the universities, and the great research centers in the world and in the united states, is that correct if brown 18:54:01.1 brown that is correct. as i also noted to my colleagues, any sort of private sector investment can take place; any sort of state or local investment, state sector can take place. although, as i noted in the 18:54:16.6 article, the private sector does not seem to be putting much money in the field and i believe that is clearly because of a lack of results coming forward. mr. sessions: i think that is. i think it is important for you to share it with us because decisions become easy when there 18:54:33.4 is not a crisis. we deal with self-defense issues and moral issues and a lot of times -- but it doesn't seem to me we are at that critical juncture in our scientific activity that would require the american people, through the 18:54:54.1 expenditures of their dollars, to affirm this procedure. would the senator not agree that if the american people fund this procedure, then it represents a 18:55:15.2 national blessing of the procedure -- in effect, an approval of this procedure as moral and legitimate? mr. brownback: well, it clearly does. and it says that you treat the 18:55:27.9 youngest of human lives as property, not as a person. you noted earlier that this is alive. yet some would say it is not a life. it's alive but it's not just risen to the level of being a 18:55:42.6 human life. 18:55:44.1 this would say, we can treat humans at the youngest age of their life as property and that we will use federal taxpayer dollars to destroy them, and to research on them at that point in time. if you can do that at the 18:56:00.5 earliest stages, why not at later stages. what's the differentiation? at what point in time does this become moot from being property which we treat it as in this bill, to becoming a person, as it somehow does magically in this process if my point is, the 18:56:17.8 place to start at this is at the beginning. as to when life begins. otherwise, there is no significant place where you can draw any line, saying, at this point in time it becomes a person entitled to the the protection and law of society. 18:56:33.4 right now we are treating the youngest of humans as property. mr. sessions: well, i'm uneasy about it. i don't claim to know all of it. i haven't studied it to the extent that you have. i know entities of great 18:56:55.7 augustness -- like the catholic church -- who have serious theologians who consider this issue, and scientists, they are uneasy with this. i'm not catholic. but i understand that people 18:57:08.8 have really invested a lot of time and effort and feel like this is crossing a line that's dangerous for us to cross. from what i hear from the remarks here and the science you 18:57:23.0 have been giving us, you do not think it is necessary to cross that line to do the kind of research that could actually save lives and that we all hope will save lives one day. mr. sessions: if our objective is healing people -- if that's 18:57:38.9 our objective -- we have a far more likely route, a route that's already producing substantial success, that's lying in front of us, without ethical concerns or dilemmas. and the adult stem cells, cord 18:57:55.5 blood, and increasingly in the future, and i believe in amniotic fluid that we find abundant supplies of stem cells have no moral problems whatever. so, that is what does not make any sense to me, either, is that we are going to take away all 18:58:11.4 human dignity from the youngest of humans. we are going to do so in an arbitrary fashion because we are not saying where you develop a status of human dignity at some point in time. but we're going to take it away from you here. and we're going to use federal taxpayers dollars to destroy 18:58:27.7 you. yet, we have another way that is producing good results in the adult stem cells -- stem cells in your body; stem cells in mine -- and this route is producing tumors. this just doesn't seem to make a 18:58:42.9 whole lot of sense why we would invest $613 million more into the future as we have in the past since 2002. why would you put more into this square that has all these problems to it? i respect my colleagues on the 18:58:11.4 human dignity from the youngest of humans. we are going to do so in an arbitrary fashion because we are not saying where you develop a status of human dignity at some point in time. but we're going to take it away from you here. and we're going to use federal taxpayers dollars to destroy 18:58:27.7 you. yet, we have another way that is producing good results in the adult stem cells -- stem cells in your body; stem cells in mine -- and this route is producing tumors. this just doesn't seem to make a 18:58:42.9 whole lot of sense why we would invest $613 million more into the future as we have in the past since 2002. why would you put more into this square that has all these problems to it? i respect my colleagues on the 18:58:57.7 other side of this debate and that they want to produce results. they want to cure people. this seems like all the evidence is leading us the other way. and without ethical dilemma. so, why would we then do that if all of the evidence is pointed another way and we don't have 18:59:15.4 unlimited resources, we can put this in better, higher use, and not having, hopefully, people in our country to leave our country to get adult stem cells from out of country. 18:59:29.8 session session i just say this, senator brownback. i thank -- mr. sessions: i just say this, senator brownback. i thank you for utilizing the tree speech the senate allows, and raising questions that some, perhaps, would scwuf as soon not talk about. and, i do think that a decent 18:59:48.4 respect for those millions of americans who strongly believe this is not a good thing to do. that this is crossing boundaries that we ought not to cross.

HOUSE FLOOR DEBATE: The House meets for legislative business. Consideration of H.Res. 861 - Declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary (Closed Rule, Complete Consideration) (Sponsored by Rep. Hyde / International Relations Committee) 09:03:18.7 house will be in order. and the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speak's rooms. washington, d.c. june 16, 2006. i hereby appoint the honorable paul e. gillmor to act as 09:03:35.0 speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, j. dennis hastert, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the prayer will be offered by the chaplain. chaplain coughlin: as one nation, indivisible, constant and chidgele lance seeking 09:03:51.1 liberty and justice for all, we place all our fears, anxieties, problems, and concerns under your protection, almighty god. as we pray for our troops, first responders in times of 09:04:08.0 emergency, peacekeepers and all who fight the war against terrorism, this chamber also seeks your goidance in all decisionmaking. that we may prove ourselves worthy of their noble 09:04:22.6 sacrifice. motivated by their bravery and willingness to shed their blood for our life and liberty as a nation, we ask what is it you require of us that we may become the virtuous people 09:04:41.2 responsible to uphold the sound principles that rock this country into being. -- wrought this country into being. may law and order not enl be the words that go in the laws of government and courts of 09:04:55.4 this land. but let us give firm evidence to our promise to uphold the constitution of this nation by deeds. may goodness flow from the way we live. may integrity be found in the 09:05:12.3 common practice of business and in the daily discourse of our people. lord, finally awaken from our indifference to violence, ignorance, and poverty. may we be a people truthful in our words and committed only to 09:05:30.0 those actions which exhibit justice and lead to peace. now and forever. amen. the speaker pro tempore: the 09:05:42.7 chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1, the journal stands approved. we will be led in the pledge of allegiance by the gentleman from new jersey, mr. pallone. 09:05:58.6 mr. pallone: thank you. please join me in the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the speaker pro tempore: the 09:06:23.1 chair will entertain up to five one-minute speeches on each side. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? mr. poe: request permission to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. poe: mr. speaker, a self-proclaim sadistic pervert, jerry inman, is branded with tattoos of skulls, daggers, 09:06:41.4 bats, and the penninga gram, the symbol of hell. the two-time convicted sex offender after serving time in two southern states for several rapes, kidnappings, and robberies has been released and has struck again. he recreated hell for 20-year-old clemson university 09:06:58.8 student tiffany souers. he broke into her apartment, strangled her, raped her, and murdered her. thisself of the south should not have been in south carolina but good behavior got him released from another prison. 09:07:16.5 rapists try to steal the souls of their victims then they steal their lives. as we file the global war on terror, we need to fight the street terrorists in america. repeat rapists are never cured. we cannot say they are misunderstood or need therapy or counseling because some are 09:07:31.3 just evil. and if we don't lock then um indefinitely, then it seems -- up indefinitely, then it seems that outlaws like him are wasting good air breathing. that's just the way it is. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from ohio rise? mr. kucinich: mr. speaker, wish 09:07:47.3 to address the house. revise and exten. 09:07:50.2 the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized to address the house for one minute. mr. kucinich: our soldiers are killing insurgents. insurgents are killing our soldiers. iraq's prime minister is considering amnesty "as long as hands weren't stained by iraqi 09:08:06.7 blood." this talk will only encourage more aggression against u.s. troops, more u.s. casualties, more u.s. deaths. our sold remembers sitting ducks in a shooting gallery. if we really cared about them we would bring them home. iraqis' leaders will ultimately 09:08:21.4 seek peace and reconciliation with its diverse armed groups through renouncing u.s. presence. it is time for our nation to seek truth and reconciliation over 9/11 and the war in iraq, otherwise our national agenda 09:08:37.9 will continue to be held captive in iraq. the bible says you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. the truth is iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, did not have weapons of mass destruction, the truth is that in the neighbor of fighting terrorism we are creating more terrorists. 09:08:53.6 you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. we must free ourselves from this war. we must reconcile with those who wrongly took us into iraq. we must seek the truth. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentlelady from north carolina rise? ms. foxx: permission to address 09:09:10.4 the house for one minute, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized. ms. foxx: house republicans have been working hard to exercise fiscal restraint and keep taxes low. these pro-growth policies are not only helping our economy grow at a fiery pace, they are helping drive down the federal budget deficit as well. 09:09:25.0 this past tuesday the "wall street journal" published a story i would like to quote. "surging individual and corporate income tax receipts in may continue to help the federal government shrink the budget deficit to $227 billion for the first eight months of the fiscal year, down 16.6% 09:09:40.8 from the same period a year earlier. to date much of the deficit reduction stems from taxes being made pade by corporations which are seeing increased profits and high-income individuals who are paying taxes on capital gains. mr. speaker, fiscal restraint 09:09:55.5 and tax relief is boosting the economy and increasing tax revenues. the treasury department predicts if these republican-led trends continue, we'll cut the federal deficit in half well before president bush's goal of 2009. i yield back the balance of my 09:10:10.4 time. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from oregon rise? mr. defazio: to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. defazio: the republican leaders say that this unamendable, nonbinding resolution crafted behind 09:10:27.2 closed doors is a referendum in the war on terror. and it is. but not in the way they characterize it. it is a blanket endorsement of the failed policies, of the diversion of troops and resources from afghanistan, and the effort to eradicate the 09:10:43.5 taliban, al qaeda and osama bin laden. remember him? the leader of the 9/11 plot in we haven't heard much about osama bin laden. he's still out there. it's about the redirection of the bulk of our military intelligence effort to an unnecessary preemptive war 09:10:58.1 against a bloody, loathsome dictator who didn't have weapons of mass destruction. wasn't involved in 9/11. was contained and no direct threat to the united states. secretary rumsfeld, vice president cheney said we would be in and out of iraq in 90 days. 09:11:11.9 three years, three months later, 2,500 dead, we are still there in the middle of a civil war. a vote for this resolution is a vote to stay the course unconditionally, indefinitely in iraq, and leave our troops in the middle of that where. -- of that war. 09:11:28.7 you should not support it if you want to lead our troops out of the middle of a civil war in iraq, redirect these efforts to more productive defense of our nation and put an end to al qaeda, the taliban once and for all. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. for what purpose does the 09:11:44.5 gentleman from south carolina rise? mr. wilson: mr. speaker, i ask permission to address the house for one minute, revise and extend my remarksment the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. wilson: mr. speaker, today is another significant day in the global war on terrorism. as the house will adopt the resolution supporting our troops to achieve victory over terrorism to protect american 09:12:02.6 families. i know firsthand of the capabilities and competence of our troops as a veteran with 31 years' service with the army reserves and national guard. as a member of the armed services committee, i have visited our troops eight times in debate, iraq, and afghanistan. 09:12:18.3 i know especially firsthand of the progress from my oldest son who served with the national guard for a year in iraq and this year i will have four sons in the military keeping me informed. today we can join with the senate's 93-6 vote for success in iraq. 09:12:34.9 and i urge my colleagues to put aside partisanship. to stand with our troops promoting freedom. i want to especially commend chairman henry hyde for the clarity and vision of the resolution. as co-chairman of the victory 09:12:50.5 in iraq caucus, i believe our choice is to defeat terrorism overseas or we will face them again on the streets of america. the only way to achieve peace is through victory. in conclusion, god bless our troops, we will never forget september 11. the speaker pro tempore: for 09:13:05.9 what purpose does the gentleman from new jersey rise? mr. pallone: to address the house for one minute, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. pallone: mr. speaker, the republican leadership is doing nothing to help with rising college education costs. the average cost of colleges at a state university is now over 09:13:24.7 $40,000. and the cost to attend a private university now tops $107,000. these massive costs are far too much for many families to cover. republicans have limited the availability of student aid and both students and their parents are forced to take on huge loans in order to earn their 09:13:42.7 college degree, the average college senior graduated with more than $17,000 in student debt. another problem looms for them, however, if they do not consolidate their loans before july 1. that's when interest rates were nearly double on their federal 09:13:55.9 student loans. mr. speaker, to avoid dramatic hikes in interest rates and to lock in rates as low as 4.75%, i strongly encourage students and graduates to consolidate their federal loan payments before july 1. consolidating your loans could 09:14:12.0 save you thousands of dollars over the next decade. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from pennsylvania rise? mr. pitts: permission to address the house for one minute, revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized without objection. mr. pitts: mr. speaker, i m the privilege of visiting our 09:14:29.4 troops in iraq last month. i asked general casey how the political carping in washington affected the troops. he responded, it doesn't really affect the troops so much, but it really grates on their families back home. during vietnam i'll never 09:14:44.9 forget as a young air force officer flying combat how much we despised the politicians in washington who were undermining the war effort. we visited the iraqi leaders and prime minister al-maliki said welcome to it a free and 09:15:01.1 democratic iraq. he said please tell the american people of our deep gratitude for the sacrifices that you -- your sons and daughters have made to give us our freedom. he said, please finish the job. don't abandon us. don't go backward. mr. speaker, i don't question 09:15:17.5 the patriotism of our opponents in this matter, just their judgment. the cause of freedom is too important to quit, the world and the terrorists are watching, let's not lose our resolve. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from virginia rise? 09:15:32.6 mr. moran: to address the house for one minute, to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. moran: mr. speaker, the full day's debate of yesterday was of no consequence because the premise of the resolution before us is a false one. it suggests that the goal of a 09:15:52.2 secure, stable, and unified iraq is an achievable one. it's not. iraq has always been a failed state because it was created artifically by the british to serve the british's interests, not the iraqis' interests. and the fact is when you have 09:16:08.3 no tradition of civil institutions at the local level, the only way that a country can be governed is by a brutal secular dictator or by a repressive religious theocracy. and neither of those options is going to be in america's interests, certainly not the 09:16:24.4 pro-american liberal democracy that we've talked about. but neither of those options, most importantly, will be worth the cost of the thousands more of american men and women who will lose their lives, the tens of thousands who will be seriously wounded, or the 09:16:40.5 hundreds of billions of dollars that we will have to borrow to finance this war. this resolution is not in america's interests, and it should be defeated. thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentlelady from ohio rise? ms. and mid: i wish to speak -- 09:16:59.7 ms. schmitt: i wish to speak for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. schmidt: mr. speaker, as we talk about the war on terror, i'm reminded of matt mopen, the only soldier captured and 09:17:13.6 missing in iraq in april of 2004. matt and his family live in my district. his parents continue to support our military through their yellow ribbon campaign, sending literally thousands of boxes of food and other items to the iraq and afghanistan for our 09:17:30.5 brave men and women. please continue to pray for matt and all who are fighting for us. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to house resolution 868, proceedings will now resume on house resolution 861, 09:17:46.8 which the clerk will report by 09:17:50.5 title. the clerk: house resolution 861, resolution declaring that the united states will prevail in the global war on terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary. the speaker pro tempore: when 09:18:04.4 proceedings were postponed on thursday, june 15, 2006, 61 minutes of debate remained on the resolution. the committee on international relations has two minutes remaining, the committee on armed services has 5 1/2 minutes remaining, the committee on judiciary has 23 09:18:21.6 minutes remaining, and the minority leader's designee has 30 1/2 minutes remaining. who yields time? the gentlelady from florida. ms. ros-lehtinen: thank you, mr. speaker. i'm pleased to yield the remainder of our time to the 09:18:36.7 gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. gerlach, with whom i had the honor of visiting our troops in iraq and afghanistan at the frontlines of the war on terror. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from pennsylvania is recognized for two minutes. mr. gerlach: i thank the gentlelady from florida. 09:18:52.2 mr. speaker, i think most of us understand we must succeed in iraq if we're to win this global war on terror. like any war, we may not want to be there, but we mao must successfully complete the task before us. it will not and is not easy but there is no substitute for victory. 09:19:08.0 we must prevail. but at the same time we must make it undeniably clear to the iraqi government that our patience and support are not blank checks that can be cashed with american lives and tax dollars ad infin night at some. to do that properly and in-- ad infinitum. 09:19:23.8 toose that properly and effectively it is imperative congress do its job to evaluate the current level of progress of the iraqi government and clearly report its findings to the american people. by doing so we'll be firmly pushing the iraqis themselves to stand up and take charge of 09:19:41.7 their destiny. the american people are looking to us for answers to questions on how much progress is being made, what are iraqis willing to do for themselves to fight for their freedom and when will our men and women come home? for this very reason i recently introduced a resolution calling 09:19:57.8 on certain committees to evaluate specific findings and conclusions of the iraqi government to take over operational control, to maintain proper civil order, to foster economic growth and self-sufficiency, and to preserve the iraqi people's freedoms as set forth in their constitution. it's my firm believe if this fact-finding and reporting 09:20:14.3 process is undertaken, it will set the stage for further evaluation and consensus building both inside and outside of congress on our role iraq and will go a long way to ensure our future involvement there continues to be the right policy, both for iraq and america. thank you, mr. speaker. and i yield back. 09:20:31.3 the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. who yields time? the gentleman from pennsylvania . mr. murtha: i yield to the gentleman from missouri, mr. skelton, for four minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from missouri, mr. skelton, is recognized for four 09:20:46.4 minutes. mr. skelton: mr. speaker, as a member of the armed services 09:21:09.9 committee, through the years, i've had the opportunity to visit and watch those in uniform as they trained, as they sailed aboard ship. i've visited with them in 09:21:30.3 difficult places through the years, more recently in iraq and afghanistan. and i must tell you how immensely proud i am of those young men and young women who wear the uniform of the united states. 09:21:49.2 we asked for a debate on the issue of iraq. we were led to believe we would be debating and discussing at 09:22:02.6 length the issue of iraq, and then the resolution was put forward for us which we're discussing today, which is a 09:22:19.9 shotgun blast all across the middle east and its problems and terrorism and a footnote is iraq. so we should be discussing the future of our young people as 09:22:36.7 they proceed in iraq, not everybody else, because the issue we thought was before us 09:22:49.2 was that. i must tell you that i take a back seat to no one in providing for the troops, the young people in uniform, and their families, because their families are so very, very important. 09:23:02.9 and having members of my family in uniform, i understand the importance thereof. but sadly, this is not about iraq. last year, this congress drafted and the president 09:23:19.1 signed into law words that said calendar year 2006 should be a period of significant transition to full iraqi sovereignty with iraqi security 09:23:34.1 forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign iraq, thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of united states forces from iraq. that's what we should be 09:23:49.1 discussing. it should be narrow, intellectual discussion, a serious discussion about that country and its future. full sovereignty transition to their government and how it's 09:24:06.3 being stood up, how their iraqi security forces and how their police forces are being stood up and how we are training them, and also creating conditions for the phased redeployment of american forces from that country. 09:24:24.8 that's the law of the land, signed by the president and passed by this congress. that is in conflict with the resolution before us. as we say back home, that 09:24:42.6 didn't gee and haw very well together. the law of the land we should be discussing today and all the parts thereof. but what concerns me most of all is at the end of the day, what about the future of our 09:24:57.5 military? our force will come out of this effort seriously strained both in personnel and in equipment. the equipment in iraq is wearing at two to nine times 09:25:12.4 the peacetime rate. some equipment has added as much as 27 years' worth of wear and tear in the last three years in iraq. we must continue to fund defense requirements to meet unpredictable future security needs. 09:25:27.3 thank you. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from north carolina rise? mr. coble: mr. speaker, after i recognize the distinguished gentleman from virginia, i ask 09:25:43.1 unanimous consent that the distinguished gentleman from california, mr. lungren, who sits on the judiciary committee, be allowed to control the remaining time on our side. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, it's so ordered. and what was the amount of time for the gentleman from 09:25:57.5 virginia? mr. coble: i'm now pleased to recognize the distinguished gentleman from virginia who chairs the house agricultural committee and sits on the house judiciary committee, mr. goodlatte of virginia is awarded three minutes. the chairman: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. goodlatte: thank you, mr. 09:26:13.1 speaker. mr. speaker, just over three years ago, the world watched as a treacherous tyrant disregarded united nations resolutions and burroughed into the bunkers of baghdad. within a short period of time, coalition forces dismantled saddam hussein's regime which 09:26:28.9 was built on fear, murders, assassinations, torture, and lies. and today this despotic dictator stands on trial before the iraqi people in a courtroom that is a stone's throw from his prison cell. while insurgents and terrorists continue their attempts to 09:26:45.5 dismantle the progress that the iraqi people have made, our resolution to see a free iraq must remain as strong as ever. iraqis have also demonstrated their commitment to rebuilding their nation from the ashes of tyranny by their overwhelming 09:27:01.3 participation in three democratic elections. on the eve of completion of iraq's democratically elected government, coalition forces and iraqi police tracked down and killed the man osama bin laden referred to as the prince of al qaeda in iraq, abu musab 09:27:18.5 al-zarqawi. zarqawi led one of the most deadly insurgent groups in iraq in a bloody campaign of bombings, shootings, beheadings, and kidnappings aimed at derailing democracy in iraq. america is the world's leader 09:27:33.4 in laying the foundations for freedom and future peace. we have stood for the spread of democracy around the world. we believe in it and have stood for it not only for ourselves, 09:27:46.8 for europeans, latin americans, asians, and africans, we have stood for it in the middle east for the israelis and now for arabs in the wider muslim world, in afghanistan and in iraq. with our leadership, the ideals 09:27:59.6 that have inspired our history, freedom, democracy, and human dignity, are increasingly inspiring individuals in nations throughout the world because free nations tend toward peace. the advance of liberty will 09:28:14.9 make america more secure. americans have felt the sting of the terrorist threat on our own soil, and we must make clear that we're dedicated to preventing any future attacks by tracking and eliminating terrorist threats. america is more secure today thanks to the brave men and women of our armed forces whose 09:28:32.0 dedication, patriotism, and bravery are helping advance freedom and democracy in iraq and around the world. president bush said it best while speaking to our troops during his recent visit to iraq. this is a moment, this is a time where the world can turn 09:28:46.8 one way or the other, where the world can be a better place or a more dangerous place. the united states of america and citizens such as yourself are dedicated to making sure that the world we leave behind is a better place for all. support freedom. 09:29:03.7 support peace. support our troops. support this resolution. mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from pennsylvania. mr. murtha: i yield myself -- i yield to the gentleman from 09:29:19.4 north carolina unanimous consent request. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from north carolina. mr. etheridge: thank you, mr. chairman. and i thank you for yielding. i ask unanimous consent to insert my statement in the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. the gentleman from pennsylvania. mr. murtha: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the 09:29:34.3 gentleman is recognized. mr. murtha: i want to go over a couple things here that -- some of it was talked about yesterday. i said we need a plan. we also need a change of direction. now, why do i say we need a change of direction? a number of people brought up beirut. 09:29:52.1 i remember being on the floor and the speaker of the house asked me to go to beirut after the president deployed 1,400 troops to beirut. i go over to beirut to see what's going on. a friend of mine who had been in vietnam was there with me, 09:30:09.2 the commanding officer. and the rules of engagement were very loose. they only had 1,400 people. they didn't even have people on the high ground to protect themselves. they were shooting down at the marines down in the valley. i came back and i told the president, i told weinberger, i 09:30:28.0 told tip o'neill, you have to get them out of there. they didn't. 241 marines were killed. the president saw it was a mistake. he changed direction. one thing about president reagan, he understood when to change. 09:30:40.0 he understood when you change direction. he had one of the biggest tax cuts in the history of congress and then he had one of the biggest tax increases in it. people forget he had a tax increase because he wanted to change direction. and he changed direction also in central america. 09:30:56.1 i support him. he burned me in hey gi back at home because -- effigy back at home. but he came to a compromise at the end and he changed direction. somalia, i told president bush one, don't go into somalia 09:31:12.4 because if you go into somalia you won't be able to get out. he said to me, i'll have them by inauguration day. he had lost the election. but he went in after the election was over and he said i'll have them out by inauguration day. he didn't get them out by 09:31:29.6 inauguration day and we changed direction there. we changed direction in the wrong direction. we want after aideed who was a tribal leader. we sent in special forces. they fired the secretary of defense. they had accountability. and president clinton changed direction. 09:31:46.1 we redeployed. so these are not times to criticize presidents. this is something that needed to be done. we are in the same position here. iraqi civilian deaths, 2003, 250. iraqi civilian deaths in 2006, 1,500 a month. 09:32:05.2 1,500. went from -- we are there. we are not someplace else. we are there. that's how many deaths we had. iraqi kidnappings per day, 2003, two. today there's 35 a day. 35 a day. u.s. troop fatalities, there 09:32:20.8 were 37 in may of 2003. in may of 2006, 68. we are there. we're there as occupiers in iraq. iraqi army police fatalities 09:32:37.4 were 10 in 2003. 149 in may. 09:32:44.3 now, this is not progress. the estimated number of insurgents. we are on the ground with 138,000 troops. number of estimated insurgents, i don't know how they find out who they are, but he said 09:32:56.3 there's 3,000, mr. speaker, in may of 2003. there's now 20,000 insurgents. why did that come about? because they look at us as occupiers. only the iraqis can solve this problem. the united states cannot solve 09:33:11.2 the problem as a foreign occupier. our troops are caught in between a civil war. daily attacks by insurgents. 2003, there were five per day. today there's 90. monthly incidents of sectarian 09:33:28.9 violence. do you know what sectarian violence is? it's civil war. may, 2003, five. may of 2006, 250. we're there. we're there in the country and it's increased from five to 250. 09:33:44.3 don't tell me stay the course is the answer. we need a change in direction. we need to assess the situation. all of us want the same solution. we want a stable middle east. this is important not only to the united states, it's important to the international 09:34:01.0 community. and bush one worked with the international community and he got a coalition together and it was successful. he knew the limitations of what he could do. he didn't go into iraq even though there were some zealots that wanted to go into iraq. 09:34:17.4 he knew, he said into his book, if i go into iraq i'll have to occupy it, reconstruct it, and i'll lose the coalition. he didn't go into iraq and he was absolutely right. i supported him at the time even though a lot of people said they didn't support what he was doing. let me talk. 09:34:32.2 somebody yesterday said, you can't measure the amount of water they have per day. that doesn't mean anything. the amount of electricity. let me tell you something. i was without electricity for eight hours last winter. it is not pleasant. it was cold. 09:34:47.3 it doesn't get that cold in iraq. but i was without it it for eight hours and the house got cold and i thought to myself, in iraq they only have sometimes eight to 10 hours of electricity a day. you can't have commerce. you can't have natural things. water, they have one hour a day of water. 09:35:03.8 less oil production than they had before. deputy secretary wolfowitz said, he said we are going to pay for this with the oil production. well, it's fallen far short of that. the o.m.b. chairman i think he was at the time predicted this war would cost maybe $50 09:35:21.7 billion and wolfowitz said it would cost nothing but they would pay for it. right now we spent $450 billion. the longer we stay the more we pay in lives, in hurt to the families. 09:35:34.5 the more we pay in financial resources. it took us 15 years to get over the vietnam war. we had 18% interest rates. we had 13% unemployment. through the reagan administration the federal 09:35:52.8 reserve had to increase rates to 21%. i remember because at the time i was trying to buy a house. i remember trying to buy it at first and i said 7%? i'm not going to pay 7%. it went up to 21%. so we suffered because it was 09:36:07.2 guns and butter. here it's tax cuts and troops in the field paying for the war. so stay and pay is not a solution. i say redeploy and be ready. get our troops out of harm's way and put them on the periphery and let the iraqis 09:36:23.8 set it themselves. only the iraqis can settle this , mr. chairman. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from california. mr. lungren: mr. speaker, i yield myself 15 seconds just to say i don't dispute the figures 09:36:39.5 given by the gentleman from pennsylvania. i dispute his logic. i question the cause and effect relationship. our presence hasn't created terrorists. terrorists were around much before that. and the instance he cited with previous presidents. 09:36:56.0 yes, they did react. but obviously the totality of their reaction did not stop terrorism. we have a different plan. different approach. that's what this president is following. with that i would be pleased to yield two minutes to the distinguished gentleman from indiana, a member of the judiciary committee, mr. pence. 09:37:11.4 the speaker pro tempore: gentleman from indiana is recognized for two minutes. mr. pence: i thank the gentleman for yielding. i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. pence: mr. speaker, i rise in strong support of this resolution and commend the republican leadership of the house of representatives for facilitating this extraordinary 09:37:29.2 debate over the war on terror and our military efforts in iraq. i have made three trips to iraq over the last three years. i have led delegations to 09:37:40.9 baghdad, basra, ramadi, belad, and mosul. i have two items to contribute to this discussion. in the course of those trips i have met with our soldiers in mess halls. i have flown in the belly of c-130's. 09:37:55.5 i have talked with soldiers far away from anyone with any brass on their soldiers and -- shoulders and i never met soldier that didn't believe in the effort in iraq. let me say again, mr. speaker. in all of my three different travels throughout the lengths and bounds of iraq, i've never 09:38:13.6 met a u.s. soldier in uniform who didn't believe in the mission. each and everyone i met believed in the mobility of the cause and each expressed the view of a indiana soldier by the name of jim newland, he's 09:38:29.6 with the third i.d. in baghdad. i said to jim, what do you think, jim? are we doing the right thing here? and he looked me in the eye and said, congressman, we are out on patrol every day. on the streets of baghdad. we look this enemy in the eye every day. 09:38:44.0 and he said to me very solemnly, we've got to stop these people right here. they kill americans because they like it. that's the sentiment i heard from our soldiers. my other message is very simply and plainly and humbly, while it will be hard for some around this country to hear we are 09:39:01.4 winning the war in iraq, we are defeating the enemy in every engagement. the enemy has never taken down so much as a full platoon in every military engagement. we have had three national elections. 09:39:15.8 we stood up a quarter of a million iraqis in uniform. and there is now a freestanding elected government in iraq. we are winning the war in iraq, mr. speaker. it's a message that i would deliver. from the hearts and soldiers i met i would also say i believe in this mission. 09:39:32.7 support the resolution. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from pennsylvania. mr. murtha: i yield myself two minutes. vietnam was the same thing. i believed in my mission in vietnam. all of us believed in it. but in 1967 when i came back from vietnam they had an 09:39:51.3 election. president lyndon johnson says everything's all right. matter of fact i have a billie continue they gave me that the first marines gave you to us when we left there. we all believed in our mission. that didn't mean we were going to win the war. that's the problem. at times we have to change 09:40:07.7 direction. here when we look at the vietnam war, there was an election right after i came back in 1967. and president lyndon johnson said now it's all over they'll be able to do this themselves. 37,000 americans killed after that. you know the results. it wasn't because of public. 09:40:23.3 it was because of the enemy kept forcing us and the type of war they were fighting a war we couldn't fight. if we could go all out obviously destroy hanoi. we had to worry about the russians and chinese. it's a guerrilla-type war. when we fight we have to use 09:40:39.4 overwhelming force. we use overwhelming force you are going to make enemies. when you make enemies you lose the hearts and minds. that's our problem. i'm saying the same thing you are. we want to approve, we want to win some kind of -- don't say victory, we want to win stability in the middle east. that's the key because it's 09:40:55.2 important to the free world. that's what's so important. we all are saying the same thing. as one of the top generals said to me we are only that far apart. cannot be won militarily. general pace said that. 09:41:10.8 how do we do it? diplomatically, politically. when the iraqis say, we are going to give amnesty to people that killed americans, they are fire the guy, ok. but that's a signal to them. we have 47% of the iraqis say that they want to kill 09:41:27.6 americans. they think that's patriotic for them to kill americans. that's disturbing to me. the reason i started speaking out, one of the reasons. i remember i was at a hospital. one young woman said to me, with her husband lying there on the bed wounded after a second 09:41:43.0 trip, he said, you know, he didn't enlist, this woman said, to fight for the iraqis. he enlisted to fight for america. it's got to be in the national security interest of america. that's what this -- and it is. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the 09:41:58.1 gentleman reserves the balance of his time. who yields time? the gentleman from california. mr. lungren: i would be pleased to yield two minutes to the gentleman from pennsylvania, a member of the homeland security committee and the government reform committee. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from pennsylvania is 09:42:13.2 recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. speaker, i rise in support of this resolution. today the global war on terror is being waged on two primary fronts. as we know afghanistan and iraq. in afghanistan a resurgent taliban is attempting to undermine the efforts of the united states and our nato allies. 09:42:29.7 the threat from these terrorists remains real. if one does not believe this, then i suggest reviewing the events of recent days in canada where the terrorists motivated 09:42:39.0 by can ma da's 6 -- canada's participation in afghanistan unsuccessfully attempted to decapitate the canadian government. mr. speaker, the united states and our nato allies must remain resolute in afghanistan. in iraq which i visited last year i believe it's important 09:42:53.2 and imperative this congress must have the serious sober discussion about the consequences of failure in iraq and what that means for the future. failure in iraq means a more destabilized middle east that will be manifested by increasing sectarian strife and 09:43:08.5 the political vacuum that will be filled by murderers, anarchists who most assuredly are not committed to the rule of law. what's worse, the war will continue not only in a destabilized middle east, but elsewhere. and in places we would rather 09:43:24.2 not fight. our friends and allies will be at greater risk. and more exposed than is currently the case. to be sure, mistakes have been made in iraq. from prewar intelligence, and 09:43:40.8 to the destructive events of abu ghraib. these mistakes should not stop us from our goal. the establishment of a stable representative national unity government that can manage the security situation much better itself and that lives in peace with its neighbors. 09:43:56.7 mr. speaker, i, too, would like to submit additional remarks for the record detailing the efforts of the house homeland security committee's contributions in fighting this global war on terror. i yield back the balance of my time. 09:44:10.2 the speaker pro tempore: does the gentleman request unanimous consent to revise and extend? it's so ordered. the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. mr. murtha: i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from pennsylvania reserves. who yields time? the gentleman from california. 09:44:26.9 mr. lungren: i'm pleased yield time to the distinguished gentlewoman from ohio, sits on the government reform committee, two minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from ohio is recognized for two minutes. ms. schmidt: i rise today to celebrate the new freedoms women have recently discovered 09:44:42.7 in the middle east. freedoms that the hard-working heroes in uniform have given them. freedoms they now not only cherish but themselves will fight for. there are 50 million new lovers of freedom in iraq and afghanistan. 09:44:58.5 their liberation from oppression should compel every freedom-loving citizen on earth to rejoice. i, too, am so proud of the freedom we as a nation have brought to the oppressed. however, some are more 09:45:13.7 oppressed than others. women had no voice, no opportunity, no hope, no dreams . all of that is changing, changing because we have championed the cause of freedom. millions of young girls this very day are getting something they dare not dream about a few 09:45:31.8 short years ago -- an education. today women are voting, they are also serving in legislatures and town councils in places where, before our commitment to liberation, they dared not even look a man in the face. 09:45:47.0 they have been liberated. we are their liberators. we can and should be proud. yes, more needs to be done, but in lands where women were treated worse than cattle, a revolution is occurring, a revolution of respect, a 09:46:04.5 liberation of lives. our actions have made the lives of millions of women not just better on the margins, but have actually given them hope, endowed them with freedom, and dared them to dream. we have much to be proud of. i am proud of our men and women 09:46:21.1 in uniform who stand in harm's way. i am proud that this great country stands for good and opposes evil. i am proud that this congress and this president understand that freedom is god's gift to all mankind and that evil 09:46:38.1 tolerated is evil assisted. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields back. who yields time? mr. murtha: i yield one minute 09:46:54.4 to the distinguished democratic leader, who on her first trip overseas, went with me on iraq to talk to the troops and tell them how much she supported the troops, the gentlewoman from 09:47:11.5 california, i yield to her. the speaker pro tempore: the distinguished minority leader is recognized for one minute. ms. pelosi: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, at the opening of the debate, mr. skelton asked the house to observe a moment of silence for the 2,500 troops that we have lost in the war in 09:47:28.3 iraq. the number is astayingering one, but we warned -- a staggering one, but we warned 09:47:38.0 them one person at a time. i hope their families live with great pride. i know they will live with great sorrow. my uncle was killed at the battle of the bulge, and for my father's entire life, it was as if it had happened yesterday, as if it had happened 09:47:53.6 yesterday. we know that experience has been repeated over and over again across our country. in remembering those who died and their families who mourn them, let us also salute all of our men and women in uniform 09:48:10.6 who are doing their jobs with great courage, with great patriotism and dedication and their families who are making enormous sacrifices. 2,500 killed, 18,000 wounded, more than half of them 09:48:26.7 permanently, the strain on our military readiness and the eroding of our reputation in the world and the president of the united states says, stay the course. stay the course? i don't think so, mr. president. 09:48:39.8 it's time to face the facts. on every important aspect in the iraq war, president bush and his advisors have been wrong, wrong on the reason to go to war, wrong on the reception our troops would receive, wrong when the rapidity with which the iraqi 09:48:57.2 economy would be able to pay for the war and the reconstruction, and wrong on the willingness of the international community to join in efforts to stabilize iraq. but don't take my word for it. this gross incompetence has been driven -- has driven some 09:49:13.3 of our fighting generals to level devastating public criticism. major general john batist, who led the first infantry division in iraq has said, and i quote, my own decision to speak out goes back to watching firsthand 09:49:31.1 the arrogant and contemptuous attitude of rumsfeld as he ignored the advice of military experts during preparations for war and then living with the impact of those strategic blunders as a division 09:49:45.9 commander in iraq. secretary rumsfeld and his team turned what should have been a deliberate victory in iraq into a prolonged challenge. that is why over two years ago i asked for the resignation of 09:50:02.2 secretary rumsfeld, and i do so again today. no one has been held accountable for all of these mistakes in iraq. the incompetence comes at a great cost. the bush administration is so 09:50:16.7 obsessed with the effort to paint an optimistic picture of the situation in iraq that it refuses to face the facts. the facts are these -- more than 2,500 american troops have been killed, again, more than 09:50:33.9 18,000 have been injured, half of them permanently. and as the war costs have grown to over $400 billion, he can reconstruction projects remain 09:50:49.2 unfinished. as defense and intelligence expert anthony cordesmann wrote, and i quote, the u.s. aid process has failed. it has wasted at least half of the sum -- the $22 billion in u.s. funds and much of the 09:51:08.2 $34.6 billion in iraq funds it attempted to use and secure to develop iraq's economy. i repeat, defense and intelligence expert anthony 09:51:23.1 cordesmann recently wrote, the u.s. process has failed, it has wasted at least half of the $22 billion in u.s. funds and much of the $34.6 billion in iraq funds in an attempt to secure 09:51:36.0 and develop iraq's economy. this is outrageous. where is the accountability? in fact, he concludes that the u.s. managed iraq reconstruction efforts has been as failed as the u.s. response to hurricane katrina. the bush iraq policy has 09:51:53.5 diverted resources and attention from what should be the focus of our effort against terrorism in places like afghanistan. the lack of stability and the deteriorating security situation in afghanistan is a casualty of the war in iraq. 09:52:09.4 the war has not made our country safer, it has not made our military stronger, and it has caused great damage to our reputation in the world, and it has hindered the fight against terrorism. in the face of all of this 09:52:26.6 incompetence and the cost of the war, i repeat, the president urges us to stay the course. stay the course, mr. president, 09:52:36.8 is not a strategy. it is a slogan. i will vote against this resolution because it is an affirmation of the president's failed policy in iraq, and in doing so, i'll be pleased to join mr. murtha and mr. skelton 09:52:53.3 . and i would like to, at this moment, salute them for their patriotism and their dedication to our country. they are second to none, as mr. skelton said in his remarks, they are second to none in this 09:53:10.7 congress and in this country in looking out for the troops and being concerned and knowledgeable about troop readiness, about the strains on our military that this war is putting and in detering our ability to respond to other 09:53:27.7 threats. i salute them for their leadership, and in fact, their courage, because here we have the republicans putting on the floor a vackcuse resolution -- a vacous resolution, a 09:53:44.3 challenge -- if you want to say you support the troops, you have to vote for this. that day is over. that day is over. the credentials on real security for our country, be it homeland security, be it willing to project military 09:54:00.6 might to preft america's interests at home and abroad, we all share that. so don't put something on the table that says you either vote for this if you support the troops or you don't. this resolution is one thing and one thing only, it is an affirmation of president bush's 09:54:17.8 failed iraq policy. the american people know the policy has failed. the american people know that. hopefully, it will dawn on the president and he, instead of stay the course, will change the course. 09:54:31.6 he will stop digging the hole that he's digging in iraq and come out and see the light of day as to what is the right direction. across the country, americans have had free and open debate about this war, but when the time came to debate iraq in 09:54:48.1 this congress, republicans shut down debate with a closed rule. this is not only an affront to the democrats, it is an affront to the american people. closed rule, limited debate, twice as many people on our 09:55:03.9 side of the aisle would like to have spoken, but there wasn't enough time, there wasn't enough time to give members of congress the opportunity to give voice to the concerns of their constituents about a matter as important as sending 09:55:20.3 and keeping our troops at war. what a sad commentary on our democracy. we supposedly are going to iraq to promote democracy. we don't even have it on the floor of the house of representatives. 09:55:34.5 what's sad about that is we owe so much better, so much more to the american people, particularly to the brave men and women we have sent to fight in iraq. democrats are calling for a new direction in iraq. 09:55:50.4 our new direction would say to the iraqi people, we will not be in your country indefinitely , we will not construct permanent bases, and we will not control the flow of your oil. we will work with you and your neighbors diplomatically to ensure that reconstruction of 09:56:06.7 iraq is successful. we will do, as mr. murtha advocates, redeploy and be ready. republicans in congress continue to try to mislead the american people by suggesting a link between the war in iraq 09:56:22.5 and the war on terror. they are distinct, as mr. skelton has repeatedly and eloquently stated. they are distinct, and efforts to portray one as part of the other are a disservice to the truth and to the men and women 09:56:37.3 sent to fight in baghdad, kirkuk and ramadi. the huge cost of the iraq war in lives, life-altering wounds sustained, and billions of 09:56:55.5 dollars spent demand better than us. the defense authorization bill, again as quoted by mr. skelton, enacted last year declares 2006 to be a year of significant chance significance in iraq to full iraqi sovereignty, 09:57:10.4 creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of united states forces from iraq. that's in the 2006 d.o.d. authorization bill, the phased redeployment of united states forces from iraq. that's the law of the land. 09:57:26.4 you-all voted to support it. we are halfway through 2006, significant transition has not occurred, and the only re 09:57:36.4 deployment has been of u.s. forces into iraq, not out. the war in iraq has been a mistake, i say a grotesque mistake. it must be our resolve to end the war as soon as possible and to resolve to not make similar 09:57:51.1 mistakes in the future. we owe it to the american people, we owe it to the young men and women that we send in to fight the fight. again, democrats take our responsibility to provide for the common defense very seriously. 09:58:04.6 we're proud to have leaders like mr. murtha and mr. skelton to lead that charge for us. thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the one minute yielded to the 09:58:21.8 gentlelady has expired. the gentleman from california. mr. lungren: mr. speaker, it's my privilege to yield to the distinguished gentleman from virginia, the chairman of the government reform committee, a real three minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the 09:58:37.5 gentleman from virginia is recognized for three minutes. mr. davis: i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. davis: mr. speaker, i rise in support of the resolution before us today. i'd like to first take and offer my gratitude to those brave men and women who are fighting or have fought in iraq and afghanistan. we owe you a debt which we could never repay. 09:58:54.8 since the united states invaded iraq, i've seen this as a high stakes gambit. if we're successful, not only defeating -- iraq, but the more difficult task of establishing a democratic government we'll be far down the road to 09:59:10.9 effecting a paradigm shift in the middle east, one which would replace potentates, dictators, and repression with representative government, transparency, and opportunities for both men and women. if we fail, the costs could be incalculable. 09:59:27.2 it would be a reaffirmation in the world that the united states lacked the fortitude to see the completion of its mission, it would embolden terrorists. regardless, the situation in 09:59:42.6 iraq is what it is. there's no question iraq is a petri dish for terrorists now. our main nemesis in oork is called al qaeda in iraq. thus our activities in both iraq and afghanistan are now clearly linked to a global war on terror. there's no other way to view the situation. 09:59:58.1 i'm eeger to build on the recent success in iraq -- eager to build on the recent success in iraq. i'm truly hopeful we've turned the corner with the death of zarqawi and the reform of government. they had a higher turnout in iraq than we did in virginia