Amendments Nos. 1150, 1151, 1152, 1153, 1154, 1155, 1156, 1157, 1158, 1159, 1160, 1161, 1162, and 1163, En Bloc to Amendment No. 1136

AMENDMENTS NOS. 1150, 1151, 1152, 1153, 1154, 1155, 1156, 1157, 1158, 1159, 1160, 1161, 1162, AND 1163, EN BLOC TO AMENDMENT NO. 1136

AMENDMENT NO. 1198

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, earlier we cleared an amendment on the State Department authorization bill that I want to talk about briefly. The reason I want to do it is I especially want to read some passages from the Wall Street Journal today, an article by a man named Roger Thurow. We are deeply indebted to the article he has written about famine in Africa.

The amendment passed today provides the requirement for the Commodity Credit Corporation to authorize another $250 million, which the Senate had previously done, incidentally, on the supplemental bill previously. We authorized $500 million in food aid to Africa to respond to the desperate famine that is occurring there. That was cut in conference to the $250 million. This additional $250 million will reach, then, the same level that we previously agreed to in the Senate.

It will mean additional food, grain will move from America's family farms to Africa, to those in desperate need of food. I think it is very important to do this. It does respond to famine, to starvation, to the needs of people who are in desperate straits, and does so by using what is an asset in this country, something of significant value, food that is produced on our family farms.

We are told these days as farmers drive their trucks to the elevator with a load of wheat, barley, or other grain, that food has no value; prices are collapsing. In a hungry world, it has substantial value. We ought to be using the Commodity Credit Corporation to help respond to the famine and starvation that is occurring in Africa.

I will read just a part of this article. There are some 11 million people at risk at this point who do not have enough to eat, who go to bed with an ache in their belly, some of whom are dying every day. Let me read part of this article because it is such a gripping firsthand description of what it is we are trying to do. Myself, Senator Daschle, and Senator Leahy offered the amendment that was accepted just a bit ago. I say thanks to the chairman and the ranking member for doing so because I think it addresses this in a very real way.

The article begins:

[From the Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2003]
(By Roger Thurow)

Their father died in 1999, their mother in 2000, both of them from what social workers and village officials believe were complications from AIDS. Since then, Makhosazane Nkhambule, now 16 years old, has been caring for her four younger brothers and sisters in their one-room mud-brick shack.

They sweep the floor of the house and the dirt yard with homemade straw brooms. They try to patch holes in the thatched roof and plug cracks in the mud walls. They fetch water from a well nearly a mile away. They scavenge wood for the fire.
They go to an informal school in a neighbor's house.

Makhosazane says they can do everything they need to do, except feed themselves. "I would like to plant corn and vegetable, but we have no money to buy seeds or tools," she says. Her parents' cattle could have helped with plowing, but they have also died. The garden beside the hut and the two-acre field behind it haven't been planted since their mother died.

For two years, the orphans scrounged what they could, asking neighbors for scraps of food and waiting for relatives in distant villages to bring something to eat. Last year, the United Nations' World Food Program came to Swaziland to distribute food to those suffering from the drought that has gripped southern Africa. Although the Nkhambule children had no crops to be killed by drought, they began receiving the food aid. So, too, did thousands of other households where the adults who had been tending the fields have died. Most of the victims likely died of HIV/AIDS, which, according to government estimates, infects more than one-third of adults in this tiny, hilly kingdom.

    The Nkhambule siblings, barefoot and wearing dirty, shabby clothes, embody what is being called an entirely new variety of famine. It breaks the historical mold of food crises, according to people who are studying it. It isn't caused by weather, war, failed government policy or crop disease, all of which prevent or discourage farmers from bringing in a harvest. Rather, this is a food shortage caused by a disease that kills the farmers themselves. Recovery won't come with weather
improvement, new government policies, a peace treaty or improved hybrid crops. Once the farmers die, there is no rain that will make their empty fields grow. *    *    *

    Now, I have heard testimony of people who have been to this part of the region who say they find old ladies, old women, climbing trees to forage for leaves to eat because it hurts to be hungry. People are dying every single day. The question is, What can we do about it?

    Every day, as more and more die, with 11 million people at risk, 11 million orphans currently living in Africa at risk of severe malnutrition, even as people die, our farmers are told the food they produce in such abundance has no value. That is why the Commodity Credit Corporation has the authority for $30 billion worth of food to be moved to places in the world where it is needed.

    This amendment would simply provide for less than 1 percent of it to be added to that which is already on the way, to provide some assistance and relief to those who are suffering.

    It is easy, I suppose, for some to ignore this. But when millions of people face famine and illness, the world—and especially our country—cannot turn its head. We know what we produce in great abundance has value. It has value to help people around the world who are starving.

    Again, thanks to Roger Thurow, a reporter who is in Swaziland, for telling us specifically about the ravages of this famine, what it is doing.

    We just talked about AIDS in legislation we passed recently. President Bush is in Africa talking about AIDS. The fact is, this famine relates directly to AIDS. These children are hungry. These children are starving—not because it didn't rain but because they have nothing to eat. Their parents are dead. The cattle are dead.

    So if we can do this small amount through this amendment I have offered for myself, Senator Daschle, and Senator Leahy, if we can add to this $500 million, half of which was taken out in conference—if we can add the money to make that whole once again, there will be bags of food going to these villages to feed hungry people and our country will do something, again, that not only makes us proud but represents the best of this great country of ours.

    I thank Senator Lugar and Senator Biden and my colleagues, Senators Daschle and Leahy. We deeply appreciate this amendment being accepted by the Senate today.

    I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.