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   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

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   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.

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