WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) joined a bipartisan group of members of Congress focused on issues of religious freedom to urge Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to grant the unconditional release of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been unjustly detained in Turkey since October and denied regular and appropriate access to legal counsel and American consular services.

“Turkey’s treatment of Pastor Brunson appears to be in direct violation of the fundamental freedoms of religion and speech, which are enshrined in the Constitutions of both the United States and Turkey,” said Sen. Moran. “President Erdogan should end the wrongful imprisonment of Pastor Brunson and allow him to return to his family in North Carolina. Political disagreements must be put to rest when the universal human rights of religious freedom and freedom of speech are at stake. I would expect any of our nation’s allies to do the same.”

During his time in the Senate, Sen. Moran has been a steadfast defender of religious freedom whether under threat at home – like in the Zubik v. Burwell U.S. Supreme Court case – or abroad as when he advocated for the release of Pastor Saeed Abedini.

Please find below the full letter.

Dear President Erdogan,

We write to request that Mr. Andrew Brunson, an American citizen who has been unjustly detained in Turkey, be immediately released and deported.

Mr. Brunson has worked peacefully in Turkey since 1993. There appears to be no evidence to substantiate the charges against him for membership in an armed terrorist organization. Moreover, your government has repeatedly denied regular and appropriate access to legal counsel and American consular services.

Mr. Brunson’s imprisonment has been raised repeatedly by U.S. Government officials with officials of the Government of Turkey. Unfortunately, high-level efforts to secure Mr. Brunson’s release have been unsuccessful. We have closely followed developments with this case, and are deeply disappointed.

The United States and Turkey have benefited from a close partnership for decades, and we hope to be in a position to continue strengthening these ties. Now is the time for our countries to reaffirm respect for fundamental freedoms and the rule of law while reasserting our shared commitment to addressing security challenges through partnerships and cooperation.

In this spirit of partnership, we respectfully ask you to consider Mr. Brunson’s case and how the recent treatment of Mr. Brunson places significant strain not only on him and his family, but also on the robust bilateral relationship between the United States and Turkey.

We appeal to you to inquire as to the options for promptly deporting Mr. Brunson and to act on them expeditiously.

A copy of the letter is available here.

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The Natural Resource Conservation Service is one of the best opportunities we have, and some of the best stewards we have for caring for lands in Kansas, are our farmers and ranchers. And what a great combination in the public-private partnership when we work together to improve our water quality and quantity, work to make sure that our air is cleaner, make certain as best we can that the dust doesn’t blow in Kansas. And so while we talk about environmental issues, I want to mention the work that goes on in my home state and places across the country with the partnership that occurs by the Department of Agriculture, USDA, its agency, the NRCS, and land owners in my state. But, Madam President, I want to highlight how difficult those farmers and ranchers – what circumstances they find themselves in today.

In 2016, the price of wheat hit a decade-low. Wheat prices fell from a high of $7.60 a bushel in 2013 to $4.11 per bushel in 2016. So from $7.60 to $4.11 in just a short period of time and unfortunately those prices have continued to stay low. Often in Kansas when commodity prices are a challenge for those who raise crops, we’re able to supplement our income by the price of cattle. Our ability to raise quality beef and to sell that in markets and to compensate for the challenges that occur on the crop side of agriculture. Unfortunately, the same thing has happened in the livestock market as well. Live cattle prices dropped from $166 per hundred weight in January of 2015 to $132 per hundred weight in January of 2016. So again, a fall from $166 to $132. Those two things combined – low commodity prices, low prices for wheat, low prices for cattle – mean that agriculture and rural America is hurting greatly. This is a tremendous challenge and appearing to be perhaps the most difficult time that agriculture producers, farmers and ranchers, face in the Midwest since the Thirties.

I’ve come to speak about this today. Senator Roberts, the senator from Kansas who chairs the Agriculture Committee, is having a hearing of the Agriculture Committee in Kansas during the next few days, and I appreciate the opportunity he’s providing Kansans to have input as we begin the process – as the process begins – for a new farm bill. And I congratulate him and welcome the input that everyday folks who earn a living in agriculture will have as a result of his efforts.

What I want to highlight today with the circumstances so challenging, we need to do things that reduce the input costs associated with production agriculture. But the focus I want to make today is that we need every market possible for our farmers and ranchers to sell into. Ninety-five percent of the mouths to feed, ninety-five percent of the consumers are outside the United States. And our ability to survive in agriculture in Kansas and in this country is related to our ability to export those agricultural commodities as well as food products around the globe.

In the confirmation hearings that I’ve been involved in, based upon my committee assignments and, in addition, in conversations with the nominee to be the Secretary of Agriculture, Governor Perdue, I have highlighted time and time again the importance of exports. So if we face this struggle, the struggle that we do absolutely face today, a way that we can help to improve that circumstance is to sell more grains, more meat products, more beef, more pork into foreign country’s markets. And it’s not happening the way it needs to happen to lift prices and therefore increase the chances that farmers and ranchers will survive the difficult and challenging economic circumstances. 

I almost said as an aside: ‘let me mention another challenge.’ It really isn’t an aside, it’s so important. We have difficult times in agriculture; it’s a cyclical world and prices are up and prices are down based upon the laws of supply and demand. But in difficult times, we’ve always in the past been able to count upon a lender. A banker who is willing to help that farmer, that rancher get through difficult times. And the regulatory environment that our banks now face, the regulatory environment that our bankers now face – particularly in rural communities where there is a relationship – we often operate in my state and certainly rural communities across Kansas as a result of a relationship. And so, our bankers, those who lend money to farmers, know those farmers they’ve known their families, they knew their parents, their grandparents and they were the financier. They were the ones who were able to lend capital, working capital to farmers in good times and bad. And our regulators and I have visited with the Cffice of the Comptroller of Currency, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, the state banking commissioner in our state all with the message that in these difficult times, we can’t let the consequences of Dodd-Frank overwhelm the ability for a banker to continue to make decisions about lending money to agriculture producers. e can’t turn the authority of making that decision based upon long generations of relationships between those in agriculture and those in financing agriculture to be overcome by the rules and regulations that followed the passage of Dodd-Frank, particularly as it relates to those relationships for community banks and lenders. So, while it’s challenging in agriculture due to the prices, one of the ways that we’ve been able to survive over the years in low-price times is because of that relationship and understanding that I know this farm family. This is the banker talking: ‘I know this farm family. I’ve lent money to them for a long time. I’ve lent money to their father or their grandfather, to their mother and grandmother and they have the integrity and the character and the ability to repay[EG(I1] .’ And if lending in rural America becomes nothing more than a computer program in which you punch in the numbers and character becomes something that’s irrelevant, there’s not a computer program to measure character. If we lose the opportunity for a relationship developed between a lender and a farmer, we lose the ability to make things work in difficult times. Those times are with us.

The primary focus I want to make today is: we need exports, and we need them now. And while there is always a debate about the value of a particular trade agreement and that debate is useful, we ought not ever lose sight that there is no real debate about the value of exports. And so we need to put in place the mechanisms that allow farmers and ranchers and others in my state to be able to export a product around the globe. And I would encourage the administration and Members of Congress as we develop our policies in this new session to make certain that exports are front and center in our economic policy, because the survival of the folks that I represent in Kansas and the communities in which they live are in jeopardy if we don’t get those markets back and we don’t retain those markets. So, exports are important to us, we can’t afford not to pursue each and every one of them. If we’re not going to have multilateral trade agreements, we need to have bilateral trade agreements and we can’t wait very long for those agreements to take place. Again, ninety-five percent of the consumers live outside the United States, and our ability in Kansas to have a bright future is determined by the ability to connect with those consumers outside the U.S.

Again, if I can take just one more moment to also point out that we have requested – I have requested – USAID and the Department of Agriculture in our food and hunger programs around the globe to increase the role that wheat and other commodities play in feeding a hungry world. We want to sell commodities in the export market; but as we develop our programs to combat hunger, we can get something that is very noble and something very valuable. Helping people around the globe be able to go to bed with a full stomach is a desirable and noble goal, and the utilization of an increasing amount of agricultural commodities growing in the United States in that effort would benefit farmers in our country as well. It’s the proverbial win-win: noble accomplishment helping people fight back food insecurity at the same time creating additional opportunity for the export of wheat for example. Which, because of significant amounts of harvest, is in an overabundant supply here in the United States.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) today joined Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) to introduce the Building Rail Access for Customers and the Economy (BRACE) Act (S. 407). The bipartisan legislation would further extend the short line railroad track maintenance tax credit that expired in 2014.

“Short lines matter greatly to us in Kansas,” said Sen. Moran. “It is critical for Kansas farmers and factories that we have an efficient, cost-effective way to move the commodities and goods produced in our state – and the short line railroad network fits that need. This legislation will help support large areas of the country, including many rural communities across Kansas, where short lines serve as the main connection to the national railroad network and markets far from home.”

“The team members on the South Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad, Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad, Kaw River Railroad, and our Pittsburg headquarters staff come to work every day to focus on the needs of Kansas farmers, cement plants, as well as coal, chemical, steel and plastics shippers,” said Watco Companies Chief of Global Strategy Ed McKechnie. “Sen. Moran’s tireless efforts in support of rural transportation for more than a decade now to build an enormous bipartisan coalition – first in the House and now in the Senate –have made tremendous impacts. We appreciate his leadership and we will continue to put our customers first and invest in Kansas infrastructure with the support of this important bill.”

The tax credit was established by legislation introduced by then-Rep. Jerry Moran in 2004 to encourage railroads, railroad customers and suppliers – who depend the most on short line railroads – to invest directly in maintaining the more than 2,000 miles of short line rails in Kansas. Located in the center of America’s heartland, Kansas is one of the leading rail and distribution centers in our country and plays an integral role connecting farmers and factories with communities around the globe. The short line railroad track maintenance credit provides short line and regional railroads a 50 percent tax credit for railroad track maintenance expenses, up to $3,500 per mile of track owned or leased by the railroad.

In addition to Sens. Crapo and Moran, S. 407 is cosponsored by Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jonny Isakson (R-Ga.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Companion legislation was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS-02).

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Mr. President, thank you. I just want to take a few minutes. A lot going on in the United States Senate, and I’m grateful for that. I hope we can resolve our differences and begin to work on policy. Personnel do matter, but what I wanted to highlight as we look at the agenda for the United States Senate – before we look at the agenda for this congress and the federal government – is the appropriations process.

Mr. President, one of my goals as a member of the United States Senate – I didn’t expect this when I was elected, I didn’t expect there to be a problem – what I want to see is the United States Senate function. And all hundred United States Senators, whether they’re Republican or Democrat, ought to take a great deal of responsibility for seeing that this place, the United States Senate, gives each senator the opportunity to present his or her ideas to represent his or her constituents and to make a difference on their behalf.

One of the ways that we can do this is in the way that we appropriate money. The appropriations process is important and, at the moment, we’re operating under a continuing resolution that expires in a few months. And we’ve had lots of conversations about the first two hundred days of this congress, of the first two hundred days of this administration. We’ve talked about the importance of confirming executive nominations. We talk about the importance of dealing with the consequences of the Affordable Care Act. We’ve talked about the need, the desire to repeal regulations that are onerous and damaging to our ability to create jobs. We certainly talked about the need to do overhaul in a comprehensive way on the United States tax code. Mr. President, I want to raise to my colleagues attention, and hopefully generate awareness about one of the things that seem to be missing in that discussion about what our agenda is our agenda should be: the necessity of doing appropriation bills.

The way this place is supposed to work is by law, April 15th we are to have passed a budget, and then twelve separate appropriation bills march their way through the Appropriations Committee, come to the Senate floor where they are available for amendment discussion, debate by every member of the United States Senate. We ultimately pass each of those twelve appropriation bills and send them to the House or vice-versa. And those twelve appropriations bills fill in the blanks. But unfortunately, what has happened way too often is we’ve gotten into the habit of passing something we call a continuing resolution. Continuing resolution means that we’re going to fund the federal government its agencies and departments at the same level of spending next year as we did this year, and that suggests that there is no ability to prioritize how we should spend money. That’s poor government. And, in fact, if you’ve had continuing resolutions year after year, the priorities of spending that were in place two, three, four years ago become the priority of spending next year and so it would, in my view, be a terrible mistake for us to reach the conclusion that we can do no better than a continuing resolution in the appropriations process this year that takes us to the end of the fiscal year.

And it’s not just about priorities. I mean, we need to get spending under control, and in fact the appropriations process has generally done that. That’s a reasonably flat line in the growth of government spending on the discretionary side – the things that the Appropriations Committee deals with, the things that we as senators deal with on an annual basis. But in addition to determining priorities and levels of spending the other reason that this is important—it is our opportunity to influence decisions made by various agencies, departments and bureaus of the federal government. In my view, the Constitution of the United States created the Congress, congressional branch, the legislative branch, for reasons of trying to restrain executive power. And when we do a continuing resolution, we leave so much discretion, so much power, in the executive branch. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Republican president or Democrat president, Congress is here to protect the American people from an ever-encroaching desire on any administration to garner more power and to make more influence in the nation. Congress has the ability, if it will use that ability to restrain executive action.

We’re going through a series of Congressional Review Act procedures in which we are rejecting regulations made in the final days of the past administration. But a more effective, long-term approach to dealing with the expansive nature of the bureaus, departments and agencies is to have an appropriations process in which the agency head, the cabinet secretary, the bureau chief, knows that his or her relationship with Congress may determine how much money he or she has to spend within that agency. When we do a continuing resolution there is little reason for an agency head, a cabinet secretary or bureau chief to pay attention to congress; and that’s contrary to the constitutional provisions giving us the responsibility to appropriate money. And it continues the practice of an administration expanding their role in the lives of Americans and its businesses.

So, we need an appropriations process different than just a continuing resolution. We need to have the opportunity for agency heads to know that the appropriations process is going to matter to them. It causes them to have conversations and discussions with us gives us the ability to tell an executive branch official: ‘This doesn’t work in my state. This is very damaging. This rule or regulation that you’re proposing is harmful. Can you go back and do it a different way? Do you understand what this means in this circumstance?’

And again, our leverage to have those conversations is often whether or not the level we’re going to appropriate money and what that level of spending will be for that agency. The other aspect of this is, in the absence of that dialogue and change of heart by that agency head, we then have the ability we then have the ability to say as a Congress, ‘no money can be spent to implement this idea, this regulation, this rule.’ So while we focus attention rightfully so on Congressional Review Act in its limitations, its ability to limit and, in this case, repeal and reject regulations; the long-term ability to reign in any administration that exceeds its authority and operates in a way that develops regulations that lack common sense and appreciation of how they might affect everyday Americans is through the appropriations process. And a continuing resolution will, once again, take away the constitutionally mandated, the constitutional responsibility we have in doing our jobs to protect the freedoms and liberties of the American people.

So, Mr. President, we’ve had a lot of conversations about what we’re going to try to accomplish and one of the things that I want to make sure is on the agenda, that when the time comes – which is now – the conversation is – well, I hope the conversation isn’t: ‘Well, we’ve run out of time. We’re just going to do another continuing resolution and fund the federal government for the next few months at the same level as we did last year.’

We need to exert our authorities to make sure that the American people are out of harm’s way from what the government can do. The constitution was created to protect Americans from an ever-expansive government, and it only works when Congress works.

Mr. President, the time is short. We hear that the administration is going to offer supplementals or amended requests for additional spending, especially in the defense arena. We need to get our appropriations work completed so they have an opportunity to supplement to make suggestions to congress about what that appropriation bill should finally look like, and we are close to failing in our responsibility to do that.

Congress needs to do its work. Every hundred members of the United States Senate can have their opportunity to have input in how money is spent. We can defend and protect the taxpayer. We can defend and protect the consumer. We can defend and protect the job creator. We can defend and protect the employee, but not if we don’t do our work. Not if we don’t do appropriation bills and we rely once again upon this technique of shrugging our shoulders, throwing our hands in the air and saying the best we can do is to tell an agency their spending authorities are the same next year as they were last year. We need to do our work. We need attention, the appropriations process should begin, and I ask my colleagues to give serious thought to helping accomplish that. Mr. President, I yield the floor.