[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 163 (Thursday, October 25, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13395-S13396]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING SENATOR PAUL WELLSTONE

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I want to speak from the heart on two 
matters: one on my good friend, Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane 
crash 5 years ago. Several speakers have spoken already, very 
eloquently, about Paul Wellstone, a wonderful man.
  He and I disagreed on many issues in this body, and yet we had a 
wonderful relationship because of the nature of the person he was. He 
practiced the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. It is a 
tough art to do, particularly in legislative bodies it can be very 
difficult. But he did it, and he did it very well. And he had a number 
of friends on both sides of the aisle from wide across the political 
spectrum.
  Because of that attitude--and here is something I really want to say 
to my colleagues--Paul and I could get together on what I deemed to be 
the most important piece of legislation that I have been a part of 
here, as far as a primary sponsor, and that is the human trafficking 
work that he and I started--actually, his wife got him focused on it, 
and she was killed in the same plane crash--where we started seeing 
people trafficked into the United States and different places around 
the world, and we wondered what is going on with this dark underside of 
the globalization that is taking place. The way they saw it was his 
wife first started to see Ukrainian women trafficked into Minnesota and 
showing up at battered women shelters. They had been trafficked into 
prostitution in the United States and then had shown up at battered 
women shelters. And they said, how did you get here? Then they started 
backtracking the trail through gang activities, criminal activities, 
organized crime activities, that moved them from the Ukraine into the 
United States, into brothels, and then they were battered.

  As they started to piece this together, they were seeing organized 
crime which now we know is in many cases involved in human trafficking 
around the world and is the third leading source of income for 
organized crime now--trafficking. Much of it is women or young girls, 
in many cases if not most, that they are trafficking and trafficking 
into prostitution.
  Paul's wife first observed this. Paul got involved in it. I got 
involved in it, seeing it from another angle, and we were able to put 
together a coalition around that issue of human trafficking at an early 
phase, before we noticed that much. That included people from across 
the political spectrum. Paul and myself--he a dedicated liberal, myself 
a conservative--we had Gloria Steinem and Chuck Colson in this 
coalition, pushing for a bill against human trafficking, the first 
legislation we did here on that topic.
  Because we were able to work together and reach out across the aisle 
and disagree about a lot of things but not be disagreeable and find 
common cause, we were able to deal with something that is a scourge on 
this planet. As we globalize, walls come down, people are moved, many 
times illicitly, in many cases brutally, and in a lot of

[[Page S13396]]

cases are killed in the process, or seen as disposable people--which is 
a term of art used by one of the authors, experts on this topic, who 
has written a book called ``Disposable People.'' These are people who 
have been trafficked. Then after they get diseased or run down, they 
are thrown out on the street as a disposable person. It is a very ugly 
thing.
  Paul, with his heart of gold, saw this. I remember him complaining to 
me one day as I was coming out on the Senate floor. He came charging up 
to me and he said: You do this to me.
  I said: What?
  He was showing me the rankings and he was only the second most 
liberal in the Senate. In the prior years he was the most liberal. He 
said: You did that to me. If I hadn't been working with you, I would be 
the most liberal still. He had that kind of sense of humor about him 
that he would blame me.
  He came up to me one day, where I was talking about life being sacred 
and precious, and I was saying I believe all life is sacred, it is 
precious, a child of a loving God, and that includes Paul Wellstone and 
Ted Kennedy too. He came out and said I like your line on this, even if 
I don't agree with your position on life. He enjoyed life. He lived it 
well. I think he has also taught a good lesson for the rest of us about 
core convictions. There is no problem with having core convictions. It 
is a good thing to have core convictions and to stand by those. It is 
also a good thing to recognize when it is that the topics you are 
talking about are not your core convictions, so you can reach out 
across the aisle. I think maybe 30 percent of the topics around 
Washington, maybe more, could be less, are divisive ones, where there 
are divisions on both sides. But there is 70 percent we can work on. 
The country is desperate to see us make Washington work, to see us 
reach across the aisle, to see us make it work on core topics.
  Joe Biden and I held a press conference in Iowa about a political 
solution in Iraq, and people were stunned, saying this is what we want 
to see; we want to see our country work on tough topics. We can do that 
on issues such as cancer, the war on cancer--there is no division 
between the parties on that--and reaching across the aisle we can show 
the American people a government that works. That is something we need 
to do. That is something I think would be in Paul Wellstone and his 
wife's legacy.
  I remember them today and I hope all of us will remember them in our 
prayers, about what they gave to us. I often say you can't measure a 
tree very well until it is on the ground. Unfortunately, that is the 
case with Paul, a wonderful guy with a wonderful heart. I disagreed 
with him on a number of political issues, but I loved his style and 
loved the way he lived life.

                          ____________________