[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 71 (Friday, June 9, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4931-S4932]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     SANCTIONS ON FOOD AND MEDICINE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will speak for a few moments about the 
issue of the sanctions on food and medicine that exist in this country 
with respect to other countries.
  I have a chart that describes what has happened to our family 
farmers. I represent a State with a lot of wheat growers. This chart 
shows what has happened to the price of wheat. As my colleagues can 
see, it has collapsed. Over a period of a few years, the price of wheat 
has just flat collapsed. I guess it is because the grain markets have 
determined that the food our family farmers produce does not have much 
value.
  So our farmers, at a time when their prices have collapsed, are 
struggling mightily. They have a very difficult time trying to deal 
with collapsed prices. Yet all their expenses continue to increase. 
They have a difficult time understanding what is happening in the world 
relative to their prices and to people around the world who need what 
they produce.
  This is a picture that is in stark contrast to the graph that shows a 
collapse in the price of wheat. This is a picture of hunger. This 
picture is all too typical in some parts of the world. Starvation, 
deprivation, desperate hunger, hundreds of millions of people go to bed 
with an ache in their belly because they didn't have enough to eat. 
Millions and millions of children don't have enough to eat. Every eight 
seconds, one child dies because of hunger and hunger-related causes. 
Yet a family farmer who plows the ground in the spring and tends to the 
crop, and is lucky enough to get a crop off in the fall, takes that 
load of wheat to the elevator only to be told by the grain trade: The 
food you have produced doesn't have value.
  Farmers wonder if so many people in the world are so hungry, if so 
many live in starvation, and suffer from deprivation, and go to bed 
hungry, why is it that the food we produce in such abundant quantity in 
this country has no value?

  As we talk about this disconnection--indeed, it is a disconnection of 
what we produce and what the world so desperately needs and the hunger 
that exists around the rest of the world, and then for our producers to 
be told that what they have produced doesn't have value--we have a 
policy in the United States that says: There are certain countries in 
this world whose behavior is such that we want to impose an economic 
embargo. Included in that embargo, we, as a country, want to prohibit 
the sale of food and medicine to those other countries. That is current 
policy. In fact, almost 11 percent of the wheat export market in the 
world has been off limits to our family farmers because of sanctions 
that we have applied against other countries.
  North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and others have been told, the United States 
of America will not move grain and medicine to these countries because 
they are behaving outside the norm of international behavior and 
therefore, we impose sanctions. Those sanctions include food and 
medicine. That is wrong-headed public policy, and it should never have 
happened in the first place. It is a bipartisan mistake by 
administrations over the years that have included food and medicine in 
the economic sanctions. We should never include food and medicine in 
sanctions we impose against other governments. We should never use food 
as a weapon. We should never include medicine as a part of a sanction--
to use medicine as a weapon. We ought to decide now that we are going 
to change that policy.
  A bipartisan group of us, myself in the Appropriations Committee, 
joined by Senator Slade Gorton from the State of Washington, with the 
support of Senator Ashcroft, Senator Dodd, and a group of others, have 
offered an amendment in the Appropriations Committee to say: No more; 
let us abolish all sanctions on food and medicine shipments everywhere 
in the world. It passed. It is in the Agriculture appropriations bill 
that will come to the floor of the Senate.
  That is not new. We passed it last year as well, by 70 votes in the 
Senate. Because of one issue, it got hijacked by some legislative 
leaders and did not become law. They are planning to hijack it again.
  The issue is Cuba. We have legislative leaders who say Cuba is a 
different story. We must maintain sanctions against the shipment of 
food and medicine to Cuba. They want to retain the entire embargo with 
Cuba. But the 40 years of embargo has failed.
  The question is--when you have an experiment, a laboratory 
experiment, and this is a real experiment, a real laboratory, for 40 
years you have an embargo against Cuba and it doesn't work--who will be 
the first to stand up and say: This does not work; maybe we ought to do 
something else?
  We are not talking about the entire embargo with respect to Cuba. We 
are just talking about the issue of food and medicine and the sanctions 
that now apply to shipments of food and medicine to Cuba. The 
legislative leaders are intending to hijack this position once again. 
Our intent to repeal that sanction is going to be hijacked once again, 
unless we find a way to stop it.
  The Washington Post today wrote an editorial, ``Food for Cuba.'' They 
make the point that there is no justification for having sanctions on 
food and medicine for Cuba, and there is no justification. It is 
interesting that the debate over normal trade relations with China 
produces all these folks who come to the floor of the House and Senate 
and say: We must engage with China. Engaging with a Communist nation 
will inevitably move that nation in a more constructive direction. More 
trade and more direction towards open markets will inevitably improve 
things in a country such as China.

  If that is the case, why is it not the case with Cuba, also a 
Communist country? Why is it the case that engagement with China is 
productive in moving them towards better human rights and towards a 
more constructive direction, but it is not the case in Cuba? The answer 
is the current embargo that exists with Cuba makes no sense at all. 
Sanctions against the shipments of food and medicine, not only to Cuba 
but to the other sanctioned countries in the world, is not moral 
policy. It is not moral for this country, in my judgment, to use food 
and medicine as part of sanctions. It is wrong.
  I started by talking about farmers. Yes. I have an interest to try to 
make sure farmers have the opportunity to serve markets. Those who 
support Freedom to Farm. I don't; I don't think it has worked. We need 
to ask the same question with respect to markets. If you say the 
Freedom to Farm approach is something that is important for farmers, 
what about the freedom to sell? Freedom to Farm--what about the freedom 
to sell? Farmers are told they have the freedom to farm. What about the 
freedom to sell their products to Cuba, or the freedom to sell their 
wheat to Iran, or the freedom to sell their wheat to Libya?
  If we have in the coming weeks the kind of chicanery that went on 
last year to hijack this policy, to hijack those Republicans and 
Democrats who say we must end these sanctions on the shipment of food 
and medicine to all countries--and, yes, including Cuba--if

[[Page S4932]]

they intend to hijack that again through legislative chicanery, they 
are going to have a whole load on their hands, because they did it last 
year and they were successful, but they are not going to do it twice.
  If there is an up-or-down vote on this to eliminate the sanctions on 
food and medicine with respect to all of these countries, including 
Cuba--there were 70 votes in the Senate last year, and there was a 
majority in the House. By an overwhelming margin Republicans and 
Democrats in the Congress believed that we ought to eliminate sanctions 
on food and medicine shipments. The only conceivable way they can 
detour our effort is to prevent a vote in the House and to try to strip 
out the provision that the Senate Appropriations Committee put in when 
that bill comes to the floor of the Senate.
  I serve notice to all who think about these issues that it is not 
going to happen the way it happened last year. You might have the 
muscle and you might have the cards up your sleeve to try to derail 
this once again. But it is going to cost in terms of the way this place 
works.
  We have a clear, large majority in the House and the Senate on the 
side of the American farmer, who believe they ought to have the freedom 
to sell in these markets; on the side of those who say this policy of 
using food as a weapon is fundamentally immoral; on the side of doing 
the right thing with Cuba and yes, other countries; consistent with 
what we described and talked about with respect to China. We have a 
large majority in the House and the Senate to do the sensible thing 
this year.
  I am not prepared to step aside and quietly go away on this issue. If 
leaders do to us what they are suggesting in the papers, they will try 
to do to us what they did last year successfully through legislative 
slight of hand.
  Our farmers deserve better than that. Hungry people around the world 
deserve to look at this country and understand that this country will 
never, never ever impose sanctions on food and medicine.
  This country in its zeal and desire to take aim at a dictator hits 
hungry people, hits poor people, and hits sick people. We are not 
hurting dictators. Does anybody here believe that Fidel Castro has ever 
missed a meal because we have an embargo or sanction on food and 
medicine? Does anybody here ever think that Saddam Hussein has missed 
dinner because we have not sent food to Iraq? We haven't hurt 
dictators. All we have done is hurt sick people, poor people, and 
hungry people around the world with this foolish policy. And, at the 
same time, we have hurt our farmers here at home.
  This must stop. It must stop this year. And it must not be a 
halfhearted notion of putting on the brakes halfway and saying we will 
eliminate the sanctions with respect to these couple of countries but 
we can't do it with respect to Cuba. Nonsense. It must be done across 
the board, and it must be done this year.
  Those, as I have said, who think they are going to hijack this policy 
are in for a long, hot summer.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.

                          ____________________