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The House of Representatives has answered the President's call. It has taken our obvious energy needs into account--along with concerns of many interest groups--and produced reasonable and comprehensive legislation that will help provide stable energy prices and long-term confidence in our economy.

[Page: S12144]  GPO's PDF

   It is signed by Michael Baroody, National Association of Manufacturers.

   Last, the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth.

   They indicate, representing 1,100 businesses, large and small, and over 1 million employees:

   All of the members of the Alliance enthusiastically welcome the President's strong appeal for action on a national energy policy. We are also committed to work with Senate Majority Leader Daschle to move forward in a spirit of bipartisanship with comprehensive, national energy legislation.

   The Alliance spokesman is Bruce Josten.

   That completes my comments to some extent. I will not tax the Presiding Officer further at this time. I will take a little break.

   But I think it is important that we all listen carefully to these groups. They are sending a message to the Senate to get on with its obligation to move an energy bill. We have that energy bill here in the Chamber. It is the pending business for the first time in several years.

   I think it is very important that we look at the political ramifications associated. We have elections coming up. We have a great deal of unknown exposures relative to the instability in the Mideast.

   I remind my colleagues that in about 1973 we had the Arab oil embargo, and the gas lines were around the block. The public was blaming everybody. They were outraged and inconvenienced. Just one terrorist act could bring that situation back.

   Some say it will take time. In 1995, this body passed a bill. It included ANWR. The President vetoed it. Had he not vetoed it, we would very possibly have oil flowing from ANWR today and oil coming down in new U.S. ships. But that was the loss of yesterday which is reflected in the vulnerability of our country today.

   I urge my colleagues to think seriously before voting Monday about what you are voting for. Are you voting to be responsive to America's somewhat extreme environmental community that has used their ANWR issue as a cash cow to generate revenue and funding for their organizations? When this passes, they will move on to something else. You might say I am perhaps being overly critical. I have seen their actions. I know what this issue means to them. It gives them a cause.

   Members are going to have to determine whether it will be a responsive vote for the environmental groups that oppose this effort or a responsive vote to do what is right for America at a time when we are not only at war but we are having a recession in this country.

   Indeed, this energy bill would be a significant economic stimulus and would dramatically help remove our dependence on imported oil--particularly at a time when we are contemplating moves in the Mideast, and our dependence on Saddam Hussein's oil is over a million barrels a day. Yet at the same time we are enforcing a no-fly zone. In enforcing that no-fly zone, we are probably using his oil in our aircraft to take out his targets, and he is using our money to pay his Republican Guards and to develop weapons capability. We already lost two U.S. seamen the other day when that tanker sunk.

   My time has expired. I defer to the next Senator seeking recognition.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.

   Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I rise to speak in favor of the pending business, which is the amendment put forward by Senator Lott containing the energy bill of Senator Murkowski and a number of other Members in a bipartisan fashion.

   It also contains a 6-month moratorium on the issue of human cloning . That is the pending business. We are in morning business. I want to speak to that particular issue, the pending business itself.

   I think the Senator from Alaska has adequately and very well described the need for an energy bill and what is in that energy package. He has been very aggressive in expressing the need to do that. I wholeheartedly agree with what he is saying. We need an energy bill. We need an energy package, and we need less energy dependence.

   If we move soon to address the issue of mass destruction in Iraq, we are going to be in far worse shape if Iraq starts cutting down their oil and not making it available to the United States. If some other countries follow suit, then that means we are going to feel a great pinch. Even though we are doing the right things to address the weapons of mass destruction, we are going to feel a real pinch if they cut down on oil supplies when we have such an international dependence on oil from the Middle East in particularly.

   I think what the Senator is putting forward for reducing our energy dependence abroad--particularly from the Persian Gulf--and having our energy sources here is a valuable thing, a necessary thing, and something we need to do today. We need to get it addressed today. I applaud the Senator from Alaska. That is why I am a cosponsor of the amendment which is the pending business on the floor.

   CLONING

   The issue I wish to address specifically is another issue of great concern and immediacy. It needs to be addressed. I think the world was shocked when they read the papers Sunday about the first human clone. It is something that was theoretical and something that was talked about. It was something in the movies. Now there is a ``Star Wars'' movie coming out this year called ``The Clone Wars.'' It has been something everybody has been discussing.

   I think people were shocked when they read this headline about the first human clone. It isn't something that happened in Europe or South Africa. It was in the United States of America.

   People were looking at this and saying: I thought this was in a theoretical mode. I didn't realize we were actually at a point of cloning humans.

   The House of Representatives passed a bill to address this issue, saying we should not be cloning humans. The President addressed this issue and said: Send me a bill to ban human cloning ; I don't think this is something we should be doing.

   The Senate is the only body of the three that has not addressed the issue yet.

   In the underlying amendment today on the issue of cloning is a 6-month moratorium. It is not a complete ban. It is a 6-month moratorium on all cloning to say time out. Let's hold up just a little bit while we start catching up philosophically and thoughtfully in this body on what is taking place on human cloning in the United States of America today--not tomorrow, not next month--that we need to address this before we get more stories such as this or we start seeing the face of a child appearing before this body takes its position on addressing the issue of human cloning . Presently, this country

   has not addressed it.

   You can clone in this country, if you choose to do so, even though I have a list of other countries that have acted on this issue. Twenty-eight other countries or bodies such as the European Parliament have already acted on the issue of human cloning . We have not. The Senate has not yet acted on this. Twenty-eight other mostly developed countries have already acted on this issue in some way or another.

   What does the public say about it? I want to read from today's Roll Call magazine on page 10 about the issue of cloning . There was a poll of the American public. This is in today's Roll Call magazine, November 29. It says:

   The majority of Americans clearly remain opposed to cloning , with 87 percent telling ABC News interviewers in early August that cloning humans should be illegal. Respondents were told the following about therapeutic cloning :

   There is a debate going on about that. I am opposed to reproductive cloning . Some people are saying they want to try to do therapeutic cloning , which I think is a misnomer of the highest order. Therapeutic cloning is where you create a human clone. You grow it for a period to two weeks. You kill it. It is certainly not therapeutic to clone. You harvest the cells out of that for some supposed research or other benefit for another individual. That is so-called therapeutic cloning . I call it destructive cloning . Some call it therapeutic.

[Page: S12145]  GPO's PDF

   Let's see what the respondents said. This is how the question was put forth:

   Some scientists want to use human cloning for medical treatments. They would produce a fertilized egg, or human embryo, that's an exact genetic copy of a person, and then take cells from this embryo to provide medical treatments for that person. Supporters say this could lead to medical breakthroughs. Opponents say it could lead to the creation of a cloned person because someone could take an embryo that was cloned for medical treatments and use it to produce a child.

   That was the question. That is the way it was phrased on therapeutic cloning . It might produce medical breakthroughs but also a reproductive clone.

   How did the people respond to the question?

   Sixty-three percent said therapeutic cloning should be illegal and 33 percent held the opposing view.

   Even framed on just the issue of therapeutic cloning , 63 percent say: No, I don't want to do that. I don't want us to go there. Yet we continued to dawdle in this body. We did not take up the issue. We would not hear it or bring it up on the floor until now. It is the pending business with a 6-month moratorium. It is not a complete ban. It is a complete ban for the 6 months. But after that, this would sunset.

   I think this is a very prudent move that this body should take in addressing this highly controversial, highly problematic and monumental bioethical issue. Our Nation is currently wrestling with monumental bioethical issues.

   As I mentioned, the House of Representatives has dealt with this issue. They have passed a ban on human cloning with a 100-vote margin. The President keeps calling for it. This body has not acted.

   On these bioethical issues, many of which I have raised on the floor previously--and I am going to keep raising in the future--we need to debate all these issues, but we need to act now to have a moratorium on human cloning so the Senate can properly debate the issue and hopefully resolve it in the coming 2 or 3 months. That is what we are asking for in the underlying amendment.

   I would like to take this opportunity to address some of the profound moral issues that this Nation is going to need to wrestle with and the Senate is going to need to wrestle with for us to deal with the issue of human cloning .

   Human cloning demands the public's attention, in part, because it implicitly revolves around the meaning of human dignity, around the meaning of human life, and the inalienable rights that belong to every person. Should a clone belong to someone or should a clone not belong to someone? I think we ought to resolve that issue before it starts being forced upon us by private companies creating clones.

   Some will argue that the issue simply needs to be studied before any research begins, a notion which does not respect the rights of the clone. Some people say: Let's just create a group of clones out there, and let's see and let's research and let it evolve.

   Shouldn't we fundamentally deal with the issue first about what is a clone? Is it the property of somebody who created it? Is it a person? It is genetically identical to the person from whom it was created. It is physically identical. Is this a person or is this a piece of property?

   We should be debating that ahead of them being out there in the public. Should we allow people to create clones of themselves for spare body parts? That would be down the road a longways, but people are thinking about those sorts of things now. We now have the creation of the first human clone.

   I think clearly we should err on the side of caution at this point in time. We should call a timeout. We should have a 6-month moratorium so we can all sit down and think about this.

   This is not going to kill the research into helpful areas of research. Some people looking at this are saying: OK. They are confusing it with embryonic stem cell research, which I personally have a deep problem with because you are destroying an embryo to create that research. But this moratorium does not apply to embryonic stem cell research. That is going on. There is even Federal funding for some embryonic stem cell research, as the President outlined in an August speech with the NIH, much with which I continue to disagree.

   I think we ought to focus on the adult stem cell. Be that as it may, the embryonic stem cell work is going on and would not be affected by this moratorium.

   What this moratorium goes at is saying: Do not create human clones for any purposes. Do not create that. After a period of 6 months it expires.

   So for those purposes, I think this is an entirely appropriate issue for us to push the pause button. The alternative of this is for us to do nothing. But if we do nothing, if we do not put a pause on this, you are going to see a lot more headlines such as the one shown on this magazine. You

   are going to see a lot more human clones or you are going to hear about them being implanted in women once they get to the point where the technology is such that that can take place. You are going to see all that taking place and this body will not have even spoken. We will not have said, yes, we agree or we disagree. The President has spoken and the House has spoken, but we will not have even said, OK, we agree we should or we disagree. We will not have done anything.

   That is why I plead with the sponsors of the bill that we should take up this particular issue. We would allow this amendment that has the important energy language in it for energy security that contains the important moratorium on human cloning . And that would be allowed to be voted on by this body. We would not have a cloture vote that rules out the vote on these two imminently important issues that need to come before this body at this particular time.

   So I plead with my colleagues, do not vote on a procedure that knocks off these two very important issues. Let us have a vote on these two issues.

   We are going to be in town. We should take up these very important issues that are of immediate importance and need to be considered. I look forward to discussing this further with my colleagues as we get a chance to bring this amendment up for a vote.

   Mr. President, I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. NELSON of Nebraska). The Senator from Ohio.

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