NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007--Continued -- (Senate - June 20, 2006)
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Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me begin, if I may, by once again commending our colleague from Massachusetts for his leadership on this issue. Over the years, no one has been a stronger champion, a louder voice, a stronger voice on behalf of the most disadvantaged in our society than the senior Senator from Massachusetts. Once again he is proving that point with this amendment he has offered. Frankly, as I recall in years past, increases in the minimum wage were the ones that were endorsed by both parties. I am old enough to remember when an increase in the minimum wage would have occurred in far less time than 9 or 10 years.
Nearly a decade has elapsed since the last increase. I am sure my colleague from Massachusetts can tell me on the average, it was probably every 2 or 3 or 4 years that the increase would occur. When it did, when the proposal was offered and it was worked out between the two parties, it went through almost unanimously if not unanimously. But here we are. This is an indication of what has happened in our beloved country over the last number of years.
Nearly 37 million of our fellow citizens, including 13 million children are currently living at or below the poverty level in the United States. Yet we somehow cannot find ways among ourselves here to reach a consensus to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next 2 years--a $2.10 increase.
I find that rather shocking. I suppose it is an indication of what has happened to the body politic in this country, that you cannot find common ground to make a difference in the lives of almost 40 million of our fellow citizens.
These Americans are struggling out there every single day and as I mentioned earlier, 13 million of them are totally defenseless--our children. Certainly, while Members of Congress may find it odd, the average citizen out there, even those who are making way beyond the minimum wage, were they here tonight in this Chamber, would tell you how difficult it is to meet the rising cost of living--food, housing, clothing--not to mention soaring energy costs. Yet in the midst of all of that, we find it impossible to provide an increase, after nearly a decade, of $2.10 per hour for these families in our country.
Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a moment?
Mr. DODD. I am happy to yield to my colleague from Massachusetts.
Mr. KENNEDY. As all of us know, the Senator has been the chairman of the Children's Caucus here in the Senate. He is the author of the Family and Medical Leave legislation. He worked 5 years to get that legislation passed. It has been a great success. There were extensive hearings in our committee over the course of the years on children and children's needs, children's education.
Does he agree with me that we have seen this remarkable growth of child poverty in the last 5 years? The Senator has just mentioned this. I just want to underline it. In the strongest economy of the world, we are seeing a significant growth in child poverty and child hunger in this Nation, and we have seen, as the Senator pointed out, the virtual lack of increase in the minimum wage and the reduction of purchasing power.
Does the Senator join with me in recognizing what we have seen? The U.K., which is the second strongest economy in Europe, will be going to $9.80 an hour in December. Gordon Brown takes pride in the fact that they have raised 1.8 million children out of poverty in the U.K. over the period of the last 5 years. In Ireland it is $9.60, and they have raised hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.
Does the Senator agree with me that the fact of the failure of increasing the minimum wage has had an extremely negative impact on the well-being of children in our country, resulting in the fact that there are hundreds of thousands, even millions more children who are living in poverty because we have failed to do that?
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I say to my colleague, if he will yield back, I couldn't agree with him more. This is one of the great myths about the minimum wage increase. You will hear over and over again; in fact, we have heard it here already today: If you increase the minimum wage, this hurts business. This makes it more difficult to hire people, to employ people.
I found it rather interesting that in surveys done among the business community, particularly the small business community, 86 percent of small business owners do not think the minimum wage affects their business.
The Senator from Massachusetts is absolutely correct that raising children out of poverty is directly related to the ability of their parents to provide for them.
Again, it should not take lecturing here to my colleagues in this great body to make the case, in the 21st century, that we are going to have to have the best prepared, best educated, healthiest generation we can produce if we are going to remain competitive in a global economy. When you have 13 million of your children growing up in poverty, how are these children going to effectively compete? How are they going to be well educated? How are they going to be healthy enough not only to be good parents themselves, but good workers, and good citizens?
It seems axiomatic. It should be understood on its face. If we continue on the road we are traveling, with the number of children in our country growing up in poverty increasing, it is going to make it more difficult for our country to compete in the 21st century.
There is a graph here which I know the Senator has seen, but it makes the case of what is happening. The United States has the highest child poverty rate in the industrialized world: Denmark, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Japan, Canada, U.K., Italy. All of these countries, major competitors in the world, do a far better job seeing to it that their children are better prepared to meet those challenges.
Our future is lagging behind when a substantial number of children are growing up, in our great country, in poverty. This is through no fault of their own. It is through the accident of birth, being born into a family where their parents are struggling to earn a decent wage and make ends meet. These are working families, by the way. These are not families collecting subsistence or some kind of charity. They are out there working, earning an income that does not allow them to meet the basic necessities of life.
Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DODD. I am glad to yield to my colleague.
Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator has given just an excellent statement about what happens to children when they live in poverty. I was wondering if the Senator would comment about the growth of hunger over the last 5 years. There are 5 million more of these people now, according to the USDA, and more than 20 percent of these are children. Five million more Americans are hungry or on the verge of hunger.
I wonder, I ask someone who chaired the Children's Caucus, I ask about the fact that children are increasingly pressured in terms of the issue of hunger, what does this do to a child in terms of a child's development?
Let me add one addendum. I believe the Senator may remember what happened, I think it was in Philadelphia, where they expanded the school lunch program to include a school breakfast program. They found out that the grades of the children all went up noticeably--I think it was somewhat close to 10 percent. In any event, it was clearly noticed, as they found out, when children have decent nutrition, their performance--in terms of educationally, culturally, socially, and from a discipline point of view--is very importantly impacted. I wonder if the Senator would tell us from his own experience what he knows about this.
Mr. DODD. I thank my colleague for bringing up this chart to emphasize the point. I think these numbers are from the Department of Agriculture.
Again, the Senator is making an excellent point. If you have a hard time understanding what the Senator from Massachusetts is saying or the Senator from Connecticut, ask any teacher. Ask any teacher in this country, particularly at the elementary school level, what sort of academic performance, what sort of attention spans you have with a child who has received adequate nutrition, a decent meal, compared to those who have not. You will hear anecdote after anecdote of what happens with children who do not have proper nutrition--not to mention the growing health care problems that can emerge.
This is just good, sound investment policy. If you really care about the future of your country, if you really care about whether or not our Nation's children are going to be able to perform adequately in this century, then clearly making sure that they have the basic essentials is, again, so obvious that it should not require a debate on the floor of the Senate to make the point.
Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for one more question?
Mr. DODD. Yes.
Mr. KENNEDY. Now we find out there is increasing hunger, and now we know it affects more than one million children.
Can the Senator tell us what he knows about Americans and their degree of support to relieve the hunger of children? It is truly overwhelming, is it not?
Mr. DODD. It is not surprising but it is worthy of being repeated.
Ninety-four percent of our fellow citizens across this country, regardless of geography and economic circumstance, of gender, ethnicity, whatever the differences may be, agree with the following quotation: People who work should be able to feed their families. Ninety-four percent subscribe to that notion.
The Senator from Massachusetts is talking about working families. Our fellow citizens believe that if you are a working family, you should be able to make enough money to feed your family.
This is the United States of America. This is not some Third or Fourth World country we are talking about. Yet with 37 million of our fellow citizens, adults and children, unable to meet the requirements of basic food and nutrition, it ought to stun everyone in our country.
What we are trying to do is make it possible for these people who are working hard to be able to provide for their families. That is all we are talking about.
I point out to colleagues who have offered an alternative to this proposal, that a $1.10 per hour increase to $6.25 per hour over the next 2 years, means that millions of children would be left behind.
What the Senator from Massachusetts is offering--with a bipartisan group of support, we hope--is a $2.10 per hour increase to provide for the needs of working families. What the Senator from Massachusetts has laid out I couldn't agree more with him. If you are truly interested in making a difference in this country, that extra $1 per hour could make a huge difference in the ability of these families to make ends meet.
Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has increased by 50 percent since the 1970s. Minimum wage employees working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year are earning $10,700 a year. That is almost $6,000 below the Federal poverty guidelines of $16,600 for a family of three--$6,000 less than you ought to be able to have if you are going to meet the poverty guidelines.
Here we are in the 21st century, and the minimum wage is losing its value as well. Since the minimum wage was last raised nearly 10 years ago, its real value has eroded by 20 percent. Minimum wage workers have already lost all of the gains from the 1996-1997 increase.
Today, the real value of the minimum wage is more than $4 below what it was in 1968. To have the purchasing power it had in 1968, the minimum wage would have to be more than $9.25 per hour--not the $5.15 we are currently at.
I want to make a point as well about what the impact of this minimum wage increase would have on the lives of working families.
Nearly 15 million Americans would benefit from the minimum wage increase to $7.25 per hour. That is 6.6 million people directly affected in a positive way and another 8.3 million affected indirectly. Almost 60 percent of these workers are women, and 40 percent are people of color. Eighty percent of those who would benefit are adult workers, not teenagers seeking pocket change, as some have said, and more than a third of these are adults are the sole providers for their families.
Again, we are talking about an increase to $7.25 per hour, which is still hardly enough to make ends meet when you consider the cost of food, clothing, housing, not to mention the skyrocketing cost of energy that has hit everybody in this country. We all know how hard it is to provide for our families.
If you raise the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour, it would mean an additional $4,400 a year. That additional money would be enough for a low-income family of three to buy 15 months of groceries which they couldn't otherwise get, 19 months of utilities which they would not otherwise be able to afford, 8 months of rent, over 2 years of health care, 20 months of child care, 30 months of college tuition at a public 2-year college. Consider those numbers--20 months of child care that these working families need if they are going to keep their jobs and keep their children safe, not to mention 30 months of college tuition. It may not seem like much, but it is important.
In 10 years, the person earning minimum wage has received no pay increases, unless they have been lucky enough to live in a State that increased the minimum wage.
But for most of our fellow citizens, that has not been the case. And we now have nearly 40 million of our fellow citizens living at or below the poverty level.
I repeat this because I know my colleagues care so much about it. To have 13 million of our children in this country who, except by accident of birth, have found themselves living under these circumstances and having to survive at that level is unacceptable.
This is the United States of America. We ought to be doing far better.
To find out, as we recently pointed out on the chart, that almost every other industrialized country in Western Europe is doing far better by their children, far better by their minimum wage workers, ought to be a source of collective embarrassment for this great country of ours.
I don't think I have to make this case too often. We know how difficult it is going to be to compete in the 21st century. If we don't have a generation coming along that is well educated and well prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century, it is going to be hard for Americans to remain strong and competitive.
You just have to read about what is happening in our major competitive countries. We take great pride in 60,000 high school students in this country who competed last year in the science fair, a great number. Compare that with 6 million who competed in the same science fair in the People's Republic of China last year.
That is the challenge of the 21st century.
With 13 million kids in this country going without getting a decent meal every day, we are going to have a real problem on our hands if you do not begin to address that.
I feel strongly about this and I wish we could reach agreement quickly. I remember the days when the minimum wage increase was done by a voice vote. We worked out the differences and sat down and negotiated, and it was passed unanimously on a record vote or a voice vote. How sad it is that we have come to this, where nearly a decade later we are sitting here arguing with each other about whether 15 million of our fellow citizens could get a bump of $2.10 per hour up to $7.25 an hour.
This ought to be something we can all agree on and not engage in this kind of acrimonious debate.
I want to point out, as well, that there are other provisions that will be offered by the majority that are very troublesome to me, including a fundamental change in the overtime pay schedule that I think is very unfair to people. This goes beyond the minimum wage worker. Here we have always provided that if you work more than a 40-hour week in that week, then you get time and a half. That has been Federal law. We are now saying we are going to apply a 2-week standard. An employer could have you work 50 hours in 1 week and 30 hours in the next. That is 80 hours, but for the 10 hours more in the first week, you don't get the additional pay.
That is unfair to a lot of people in this country. If you work an additional 10 hours in a week, that can be hard labor, and you ought to get time and a half. The law requires it. That would be a $3,000 per year pay cut for a median income worker and an $800 pay cut for minimum wage workers. That additional 10 hours of overtime pay could make a big difference.
I don't know why the majority decided to add that provision. It seems to me that is unduly harsh to an awful lot of people.
We talked about the poverty level working with the minimum wage. I am talking about people who are above the poverty level but are struggling and don't have to be making $16,000 or $10,000 to be struggling in this country. You could be making $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000 a year. If you are a family of four, you may very well be struggling, considering the cost-of-living increases that have gone on. For that man or woman who works an additional 10 hours a week, 10 hours away from their families after putting in 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, that additional 10 hours can be hard. And to say I am not going to give time and a half for those 10 hours I think is unfair to those people.
If that ends up being adopted, I think it is a great step back as well.
I hope we will adopt the proposal that the Senator from Massachusetts has offered. I commend him, once again, for making a strong case.
Again, on behalf of 13 million children in this country, and million of people who are out there struggling tonight to take care of their families, to raise good families, I urge adoption of the amendment being proposed by our colleague from Massachusetts. I hope it will be adopted by our colleagues when voted on tomorrow. It is an important contribution. Nine years is too long to wait for an increase in the minimum wage.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. DODD. I appreciate the comments of others about Guantanamo Bay and the individuals who are being held here. I listened to the discussion earlier between the Senator from South Carolina, Mr. Graham, and my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, and Senator Sessions from Alabama, who discussed the issue of those who are being detained in Guantanamo and the very facility itself.
I had thought about offering an amendment on this matter, but it is getting confusing, with the number of amendments being offered tomorrow and the length of debate. Senator Bingaman is offering an amendment which I think is worthy of consideration. I may withhold the amendment I intended to offer until a later time, on another matter, when there is more of an opportunity to have debate. There is at best only a limited amount of time we may get tomorrow for discussion. I have been told I might have only a few minutes.
I regret that. I wish we had more time to offer this amendment. But I think in the interests of my colleagues here, given the seriousness of the issue, it probably deserves more time. So, I will reserve offering that amendment until another time when we have more of an opportunity to discuss it.
Let me, if I can, discuss some issues that have been raised here this evening that I think are important. I have listened to my colleagues talk about, first of all, the individuals being held in Guantanamo. We talk about people here, some of whom clearly have the very worst intentions for the United States. Some of these individuals have attacked our soldiers, attacked innocent citizens, and pose serious threats. There is no debate about that. We are not arguing about whether or not that is true for many of these people.
There may, obviously, be some exceptions that fall out of that category--individuals who have been improperly retained or restrained and sent to Guantanamo or elsewhere. That certainly may be the case. But there is no question that many of these individuals are people to worry about. That is not the issue.
The issue is: We are a nation of laws. We say this all the time. It is something about which we take great pride. We have celebrated it over and over again. It is one of the distinguishing features of this great country of ours. We proved that we are a nation of laws categorically 60 years ago this very year when, in a different set of circumstances, the United States, along with our allies, some of whom reluctantly joined us in this effort, held a series of trials in a place called Nuremberg. We made the decision at Nuremberg that the defendants in those trials--these thugs, these people who had murdered 11 million innocents, 6 million Jews because of their religion, not to mention the millions more who lost their lives as a result of the Nazi war effort--would be afforded a trial instead of just being summarily executed. Winston Churchill advocated summary execution, and many others did as well. Why would you possibly give these defendants, it was asked--these thugs that I have mentioned, who carried out the orders of Adolph Hitler--why would you give them a trial? Why would they get a lawyer? Why would they be allowed to present evidence in a court of law?
It was the conclusion of the United States, under the leadership of people like Justice Robert Jackson, that the rule of law should be paramount. Justice Jackson and others argued very strongly that it was going to be critically important that the United States and others join in showing the world that there is a difference between these fascists--who had summarily executed people merely because of their ethnicity or religion--and this great country of ours.
In fact, Nuremberg was an interesting choice for the venue of those trials. In a sense, the Nazis chose Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Laws created a legal justification for every atrocity they committed, and so having a trial at Nuremberg, trying the very people who perpetrated these crimes, was somehow a fitting coincidence.
I speak about this because as a child growing up I heard night after night my father, who was the Executive Trial Counsel under Robert Jackson at Nuremberg, speak of these days. I was 1 year old in the summer of 1945 when my father left for a few short weeks merely to be an interrogator of these defendants at Nuremberg. He ended up replacing Judge Story as Executive Trial Counsel under Robert Jackson, and spent a year and a half trying a number of defendants at Nuremberg. He wrote my mother every single day 15 to 20-page letters describing in great detail his views and thoughts about the defendants and our allies in that effort, the Russians, the British, the French. He had some choice thoughts about a number of those people who were at Nuremberg. And he talked to his children growing up over the years about what happened at Nuremberg.
There was a great debate. In fact, half of the Supreme Court argued against Robert Jackson even going. There were colleagues here who argued that it was ex post facto juris prudence--that we had no right to go back and create a body of law to try the defendants at Nuremberg.
My father and others argued strenuously that the natural law should require that individuals who had committed such crimes--who had committed summary executions based on religion or ethnicity--that these people should be taken to task for what they had done, but also, critically, be afforded rights--the right to a fair trial, the right to have legal representation.
Imagine--people like Goering and von Ribbentrop and Keitel and Speer and others--actually be given a lawyer to represent them in a trial, so that they could stand up and make a case for themselves, as Goering did for days on end at Nuremberg.
Obviously, the facts are different here. At Nuremberg, the war was over. There was a different set of circumstances. I would be the first to acknowledge it.
That is not the comparison I am trying to draw. The comparison I am trying to draw here is about the rule of law.
We can characterize these individuals at Guantanamo in words that none of us are going to terribly argue about. But I come back to the point that those who were at Nuremberg, who made the case for the trial such as I described, need to be heard again today, 60 years later.
We are a nation of laws. We are different. We are not like these people who are being held at Guantanamo. The rule of law is something we cherish in this country, even to the point where we are willing to stand up and defend the rights of people who do things we find abhorrent.
Whenever I talk to students about the Bill of Rights and the first amendment, I tell them that it doesn't just protect their rights when they say something I agree with. It is important also to protect those individuals who stand up and say something I totally disagree with or find obnoxious, to put it mildly.
That is the rule of law. That is what makes us different. That is what distinguishes us.
What has happened already is that there is confusion. Are these prisoners of war? If they are, obviously the Geneva Conventions prevail. If they are not prisoners of war but enemy combatants, the Supreme Court has ruled already that they have certain rights, that they have a right to appeal that status. Yet, we find that a substantial number of these people are being held without any definition of who they are, what their status is legally, whether or not they are POWs, enemy combatants, or something else.
When Senator Bingaman offers his language here to get some clarity, why is that important? I think it is important because we are, again, a nation of laws. We determine that people ought to be given one status or another. We need some clarity as to who these individuals are and how they are going to be dealt with.
Why do I say that? First, because we ought to care, particularly in this a body, the U.S. Senate, that the rule of law is defended. But second, and not unimportant, is the question of how we are being perceived in the fight against terrorism--something that requires international cooperation. It is critically important that the United States not only lead on this issue but that other nations around the world and their citizenry following us, join us, if you will, in this effort.
Today, as I speak about this issue--unfortunate symbols are important. Guantanamo has become a symbol of things that have gone wrong without clarity, without definition, and that lack of clarity is hurting our cause.
As we try to build a coalition, it is crucial that we win support for what we are trying to achieve. Without allies in this effort, we will never ever win this war on terrorism. It is a transnational problem that insists upon a transnational response.
It is critically important that we understand the necessity of building the kind of relationships that are going to be absolutely critical if we are going to succeed in this effort, as I believe we must. We have no choice but to succeed in this effort.
But to disregard the feelings or sentiments of others on whom we must support and depend in the future, if we are going to succeed in this effort, is something that ought not to be lost on the membership of this institution.
I am deeply concerned about the direction we are heading here, one that is lacking clarity, any clarity at all, in dealing with these individuals that are being held. What is their status? Is it one thing or do we need a determination of that.
The administration I think bears the responsibility to come forward and say what the status is. Just saying we are going to hold people without some clarity is not good enough. If you want to hold them, fine. Decide what they are. Are they prisoners of war? If they are, then that is one set of circumstances. If they are not prisoners of war but enemy combatants, that is a different set of criteria that applies. But the rule of law must apply.
The criticism we are receiving here is that again we just do not have any definition. This ought not be an issue that divides us and people trying to inflame the passions of others: Who cares more about terrorism or who is willing to stand up and fight against terrorism more than anyone else. That is not the issue. The issue is the rule of law which joins people of different political persuasions but of like mind about insisting that the rule of law be applied. That has never divided us. When we move that important criteria, that important definition of who we are as Americans--the rule of law--and engage in this sort of demagogic debate about who cares more about terrorism, or you don't care about terrorism at all, if you are only willing to talk about the rule of law, that somehow makes you weak on this issue, that you lack the kind of conviction and spine when it comes to dealing with terrorists because you start talking about the rule of law, how strong an American are you, if you only get up and talk about the rule of law?
We have all learned painfully when you begin to disregard the rule of law because you don't like the individuals that you want to apply it to, it comes back to hurt all of us.
Those who made the case more than 50 years ago at another place in another set of circumstances but facing the same criticism--the emotional response was certainly warranted. The Nazis brutalized people, incinerated millions, and certainly lit passions that said, Why would you ever give that kind of individual a lawyer and a right to present a case? And you can understand the emotions that people felt at the time--to give them the right to present a case? Did they ever give any of their victims a right to present a case in the incinerators of Buchenwald or Dachau? They never did. Why should we do it now?
Because people stood up and said we are different than they are. That is why we insist upon the rule of law.
Today, we need to remind ourselves--conservative, liberals, centrists--who we are. The rule of law unites us. It ought not divide us when we have these debates and discussions.
Guantanamo has unfortunately become a symbol of things that need to change.
The President himself, to his credit, a week or so ago in a press conference on June 14, acknowledged that fact. He said:
No question, Guantanamo sends ..... a signal to some of our friends ..... provides an excuse, for example, to say, ``The United States is not upholding the values that they're trying to encourage other countries to adhere to.'' He also stated clearly that he ``would like to close Guantanamo.''
That was the President of the United States. I am not making a case on my own. He recognizes what is happening with the symbol of Guantanamo, and how difficult it is to build the kind of relationships that are critical if we are going to succeed as we must in this war against terrorism.
I am not going to be offering an amendment. I think there is not adequate time to debate and discuss these things at this late hour in the evening. But I will find an opportunity at the appropriate time to raise the issue.
I hope we can build a broad, bipartisan consensus on these points. We ought not have division over the rule of law; to get clarification about how we talk about POWs, enemy combatants, and what the status of these people is because different sets of rules apply. Having no status at all and not fitting into one category or another is something that ought to be unacceptable to all of us.
I think having a facility that has become the symbol of something which none of us believe we stand for--we know we stand for the rule of law, we know we believe in that, and we embrace it--is raising serious reservations and concerns among people who ought to be joining us in this effort. If that is the case, as General McCaffrey said in talking about Guantanamo, close it down. He said he would like to close it down, and others believe as well that we ought to find other venues to deal with these issues as well as, of course, determining the legal status of these individuals so we can move on and again build the kind of coalitions necessary to have a successful coalition to fight the war on terrorism.
I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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Mr. DODD. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, it is an interesting point. Going back, there was a body of law that had emerged prior to Nuremberg that, in fact, those who advocated that there should be a trial at Nuremberg relied on a point. But one of the great crimes that was argued against was crimes against humanity at Nuremberg. Many argued that this was sort of making it out of whole cloth. I don't think it was. But that was debated at the time.
The people who my colleague described as committing crimes against humanity, it clearly seems that those who were not enemy combatants in the traditional definition of that word but engaged in the kind of brutality against humanity, today there is a codified body of laws that would certainly make those people subject to international law let alone our own kind of crimes.
The point I am trying to make is, it just gives it some clarity. What are they? What is the legal status in that category? If you are a POW, there is one set of laws that apply. If you are an enemy combatant, there is a set of laws and regulations that apply. If you are a non-enemy combatant and have engaged in the very activities my colleague described, what is the law that applies to those individuals under those circumstances? There is no status at all being attributed to these people. They are in limbo. That is what I am concerned about.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I certainly respect the Senator's thoughts about that. I must follow up a little bit.
First, what happened at Nuremberg happened after the war was over.
Mr. DODD. I agree.
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Mr. DODD. If my friend will yield further, I am sure he is a good lawyer. In the Rasul v. Bush case in 2004, of course, the Supreme Court ruled ``a state of war is not a blank check for the President,'' and ``enemy combatants have the right to challenge their detention before a judge or other neutral decisionmaker.''
That took a court case basically going to the highest Court of our land--I don't know what the ruling was, 5 to 4 or 6 to 3--and they ruled in that case enemy that combatants have a judicial right to challenge their status.
All I am saying, I am not trying to determine the outcome, just what is the status for the people to be detained or moved other places.
Our highest Court has said it is not a blank check, that they have a right to make a case. I don't want to be seen as perceiving--because I am saying they have a right to make a case, do I like these people? Am I trying to befriend them? I am saying the rule of law has to apply.
We are different. That is what makes us different from these people. These people would never give their victims a right to a judicial system proceeding as they engage in the kind of activity my colleague from Alabama properly described.
What makes my colleague from Alabama, and I hope myself and our colleagues, different is this very point the Supreme Court made. Even these enemy combatants have the right to make a case before a judge or other ``neutral decisionmaker,'' that the state of war is not a blank check for the President. That is the point I am trying to make. I am not trying to characterize the people in any other way than what my colleague has described.
The point the Senator and I need to come together on is the rule of law. That is all I am trying to suggest. I don't have an amendment to offer, but we have to find this common ground on this issue because it is who we are. It is what we want the world to know and appreciate what the United States is. That is really what did so much for us in the wake of World War II where we became this symbol of nations that rise above their passions and their emotions.
He is absolutely right on Nuremberg. Several people got limited sentences, some got off, and many got executed, as they should have, but it went through a legal process. To read those transcripts, where people went on and talked as Goering--I am tempted to draw the comparison of Goering to Saddam Hussein, who talks endlessly. Goering did almost the same, and there was concern by some that he might have gotten away had it not been for a very aggressive prosecution.
It was the rule of law, and how proud these people were that showed the world--and the United States led--we were different.
The fact situations are very different between the end of a conflict and an ongoing conflict and how you deal with it, but the rule of law does deserve stronger support than I am afraid we are giving. That is my concern.
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