Sam Brownback

I think we have had, hopefully now, enough debate about the military situation in Iraq. It is an important one, but we have not had much, if any, discussion about the political situation in Iraq. Last week, all the focus was on General…

I rise to speak on the DC Voting Rights Act today. It is a tough issue. It is one with which I am familiar. I have chaired the DC Subcommittee both on the authorizing and the appropriating side. I have worked in the District of Columbia on…

I rise to speak on a situation now developing to which I hope my colleagues will pay some attention. If we get involved at an early phase, it may be something we can head off rather than have it develop full scale. And I will have some…

I thank my colleagues for working on this issue. It is a gut-check issue about where you stand on life, where you stand on the U.S. role around the world, where you stand on whether we should be using taxpayers' funds for abortion, where…

There is a term that is starting to move around the world a fair amount today because they are seeing it in practice. The term is called gendercide. It is a product of family planning institutions in places, particularly, such as China and…

Over the past 4 years, we have been able to get some funding for democracy-building activity inside of Iran. It has been a difficult project. We have not been able to get much money secured, but it follows a long tradition of successful…

Several years ago, when I was chairing the South Asia Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, we held a hearing on a lady who went undercover in China and filmed and interviewed a number of women who had been forced into…

It is commonly referred to as the Kemp-Kasten legislation. It would require the reinsertion of what is known as the Kemp-Kasten law into this legislation. This law helps to ensure that American taxpayers do not subsidize groups and…

I submit that regardless of your position on abortion, we should not be using taxpayer funds to fund abortions here or overseas. A number of Americans would oppose on moral grounds that their taxpayer dollars are being used to fund…

I want to focus my brief comments on what we need to do on a political solution. I think we are caught up with the idea that we need to be on a military solution. A military solution is not going to ultimately solve the situation in Iraq…

I think it's fair to say that an open and transparent system of government, like ours, is less likely to produce defective products.

We should get very stern and clear, and hit them where it hurts. Hit them in the markets.

Would you like to have people in China--do you think that is important?

Chairman, I want to hear you say, 'These products are not going to enter our stores.'

Shoddy, defective and dangerous products being made in China and sold to American consumers has simply got to stop.

We're going to start shutting all of these down.

you're set up, almost, to see the occurrence of problems

And that that's what you're going to enforce.

you do get people manipulating the marketplace

And we're going to do everything we can to stop these problems, period.

I hope in the appropriations process we can insert some of this language, so that we not only increase the funding for the agency, but we give it the authority necessary to fix the problem.

Even if it's banning whole sets of products, until we are sure that there is no lead in any of them, period.

But isn't it best to say, 'Look, if there is any lead in any of these products, the products don't enter America, period.'

I hope we can--in looking forward--pass legislation to try to correct this situation, put standards in place so that people can be assured of the products they buy.

If you need any additional legislative authority from us to do it, let us know.