[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 2 (Thursday, January 5, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S458-S459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                POLICIES THAT ADVANCE STANDARD OF LIVING

  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, thank you very much. In the last day or 
so, we have seen in this Congress a shift of power, which is really 
quite a remarkable thing to see in a very successful democracy, the 
oldest and most successful democracy on this Earth. Power shifts not at 
the point of a bayonet or not in the track of a tank, but it shifts 
with one simple act of an American citizen casting a vote.
  Because of the vote last November, power shifted in the U.S. Senate 
and in the U.S. House. It is the way that our system works. There are 
ebbs and flows over the centuries in political fortunes of political 
parties, and the American people decided to suggest a change in course 
and have now done that.
  I think it is important not to misread the election. The election did 
not produce a massive national mandate. Twenty percent of those 
eligible to vote cast their vote for Republicans, about 19 percent of 
those eligible voted for Democrats, and 61 percent of those eligible to 
vote said, ``It doesn't matter to us. We're not going to vote.''
  Mandate? Not really. A change of direction? In this country, majority 
rules. The Republicans have won in the legislative races.
  Now the question for us is not just how do we serve those who voted--
Republicans and Democrats--because we serve all of them, but how do we 
get the rest of the American people interested and involved in this 
process. Democracy must be a participatory activity.
  Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and others who sat in that room in 
Philadelphia a couple hundred years ago and wrote the Constitution, 
always knew in a representative government there would be just enough 
people who were willing to work and participate to make this system 
work. And the storm clouds grow over our democracy largely because not 
enough people are involved. Over half of the people do not even vote.
  The task for us, it seems to me, as Democrats and Republicans, is to 
find ways of advancing policies that advance the standard of living for 
every American. If, at the end of the process, we have not advanced 
policies that improve the lives of the American people, then we will 
all be judged as failures.
  Oh, I have people say to me, ``Gee, the economy is booming, GDP is 
up, unemployment is down. Our economy is all revved up and I don't 
understand why people are upset.''
  However, in judging the economy, the American people do not spend 
their evenings reading the dials and gauges that economists study to 
make dertminations about our economy. When they sit down for dinner at 
night, the question for the American family is: Am I better off? And 
the answer for 60 percent of the American families is, no, we have less 
money now than we did 10 years ago and we're working harder. That is 
the standard by which they judge all of us, in our ability to manage 
this country's fortunes and its future.
  We have massive problems in a whole range of areas, and we have to 
come up with new approaches to resolve them and respond to them.


                           UNFUNDED MANDATES

  We were talking today about unfunded mandates in the Governmental 
Affairs Committee. It is an issue on which Republicans and Democrats 
will demonstrate wide agreement. Do we too easily decide to mandate 
someone else do something without providing the money? Of course, we 
do. But, as I said in the committee this morning, trouble runs on a 
two-way street. We are going to reform our ourselves on the trouble of 
unfunded mandates, and you Governors, mayors, and other local 
governments who are complaining about it--justifiably so--you have to 
reform the way you do business as well because while you complain about 
unfunded mandates, you want to hook your hose up to the Federal trough 
and suck money out in all kinds of schemes and ways, including a bogus 
phony tax called the provider tax, Medicaid, and I can describe all 
kinds of schemes in which they want the Federal money, and then they 
want to complain about the mandates.
  We should do something about mandates because it is right and 
necessary to reduce them. On the other hand, local and State 
governments have a responsibility to reform the way they do business as 
well because all of the money ultimately is the taxpayers' money.
  Next week, when we bring the unfunded mandates bill to the Senate, I 
intend to offer an amendment on something not a lot of people think 
much about: The metric system.
  Did you know there is a Federal mandate in this country to move 
toward the metric system? There is. Some people say that is just trying 
to provide 
[[Page S459]] leadership, and that our Government should be a leader in 
going metric. I do not care how many kilometers it is to the next rest 
stop when I am driving down the highway, and I don't want some 
bureaucrat to change the sign that says 65 miles an hour to a sign that 
says how many kilometers per hour I should drive. They do not need to 
do it on my account. Do not spend millions of dollars changing signs. I 
want to know how many miles it is to the next off-and-on ramp. I want 
to know how many miles it is to the next rest stop. I want to know how 
many miles an hour I am supposed to drive as a speed limit.
  We are building more than 20 houses on Indian reservations in North 
Dakota to house doctors from IHS. We should not use the metric system 
in such a project because it increases costs and the time to get things 
built.
  For 3 months, I tried to change that. They want to use the metric 
system because they say the current rules require it be a metric system 
construction design and engineering. I am saying, look, if we are going 
to get rid of mandates, let us get rid of mandates like that. Why on 
Earth would we want to require the metric system be used on that kind 
of construction? It makes no sense.
  I am pleased to tell the Members of this body that I am going to give 
us a chance to express bipartisan support on that issue. Incidentally, 
I have a Republican cosponsor who will join me next week on this issue.
                A TAX POLICY THAT EXPORTS AMERICAN JOBS

  There are a couple of other issues I am going to be involved in next 
week. I am going to introduce a bill, again, that I hope this Congress 
will do something about this time.
  We are all concerned about jobs in this country and income. The 
bottom line answer to the question of whether the standard of living of 
the American family is improved is this: Does the family have decent 
jobs that pay a decent income? Do you know, we still have in our 
Federal Tax Code this perverse, insidious incentive that says to 
somebody, If you have a choice, don't build your plant in America, 
don't keep the plant you have open in America; close the darn thing and 
move the jobs overseas to a tax haven, manufacture there and then ship 
back to the United States. We will give you a tax break if you do that.
  We have something called deferral, which is deferral of income tax 
obligation. It occurs in cases where a U.S. business closes its plant 
doors in the United States, moves the plant overseas, manufactures the 
same product and ships it back here. Our tax policy says: ``Hooray for 
you, not only did you ruin the opportunity for jobs for Americans and 
move them overseas, we're free to give you a tax break for doing so.''
  I tell you what, that is a tax break that ought to be gone in a 
nanosecond. We ought to decide here and now that our jobs in this 
Congress are to find ways to nurture and protect and support and 
provide incentives for jobs here in the United States of America.
  So I am going to offer that amendment next week, or at least offer 
the legislation and find an appropriate time to offer the amendment. 
Congressman Gephardt, who offered that legislation on the House side 
last year, will do the same, I believe.


                NAFTA RESULTS: LESS EXPORTS, FEWER JOBS

  Let me make one additional point that deals with jobs and income. 
Today I want to make the point about a subject that was very 
controversial, debated here in the Senate last year called NAFTA, the 
North American Free-Trade Agreement. I want to make the point that we--
all of us--have been left holding the bag on NAFTA.
  Do you recall those glorified claims of new jobs, new opportunity, 
new expansion if we can simply pass this trade agreement with Mexico? 
Gee, if we can just build this highway to heaven, this trade agreement 
with Mexico, there will be massive new opportunities for the American 
people.
  Has anybody paid any attention to what has happened since then? What 
has happened since then is the trade surplus we had with Mexico has now 
vanished. In the first 9 months of NAFTA we lost 10,000 jobs.
  It is interesting, the administration only puts out the good news. 
They said, ``You know, we sent 30,000 more cars to Mexico,'' and you 
think, ``Boy, that is quite a success record, we sent 30,000 more cars 
to Mexico.''
  But, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story that they did 
not tell you is Mexico sent 70,000 more cars to the United States. That 
means we had a net inflow of 40,000 additional Mexican-built cars into 
our market. The fact is, if you look at the whole picture, we lost 
jobs, but the surplus we had with Mexico in recent years has now 
vanished, turned to a deficit.
  And do you know something else? In recent days, the devaluation of 
the peso in Mexico has meant that United States-made goods now cost 40 
percent more in Mexico, and Mexican-made goods now cost 40 percent less 
in the United States. In one swipe they far more than wiped out every 
single advantage we gained in this country by negotiating a reduction 
in tariffs under NAFTA. The advertised benefit of NAFTA was to get more 
American goods into Mexico.
  Have you heard anybody talking about that? Do you hear the trade 
negotiators talking about that? The ones that boasted as if they had 
just won the gold medal in the Olympics when they finished the trade 
agreement? ``What a wonderful thing it is for our country,'' they said, 
busting their suit buttons talking about what a wonderful thing NAFTA 
would be for Americans. Do you hear them now talking about the fact 
that we were left holding the bag? The trade surplus is gone; the peso 
is devalued. Every single gain that was achieved in negotiating for 
lower tariffs on American goods going into Mexico is now gone, just 
vanished. In fact, much more than the gain is gone.
  The fact is we have been ill-served by Republican and Democratic 
administrations who, if you put a blindfold on, you cannot tell the 
difference in their trade policy. They stand around like the Hare 
Krishna chanting ``free trade, free trade, free trade.'' Free trade 
means absolutely nothing if it is not fair and you do not have 
protections to deal with currency fluctuations and other things that 
determine which way trade moves and who it benefits.
  The plain fact is, after only 12 months, we now know NAFTA has cost 
this country jobs, and after the devaluation of the peso we now know 
that we are left holding the bag.
  I hope, I really hope, that we can find a way for all of us to 
finally get involved in a meaningful real debate about trade and what 
it means to jobs in this country. Every time some one of us stands up 
to talk about trade, we are put in two camps. There are the free 
traders who are big thinkers and they can see over the horizon and have 
a world view, and then there are the xenophobic, isolationist stooges 
who do not know anything and want to build a wall around our country.
  Debate on that basis is meaningless. However, trade policy is a very 
important issue for every American family. American trade policies that 
are fundamentally unfair to this country are creating conditions in 
which American personal income is pressed down and opportunities are 
diminishing.
  Should we build a wall around America? No, I do not suggest that. 
Should we have open trade? Yes. But we ought to finally insist on fair 
trade opportunities, and we ought to insist there is an admission price 
to come into the American economy. And the admission price is you have 
to pay living wages. You have to have safe workplaces. You have to help 
take care of your environment.
  We have to start standing up for our economic self-interests. If we 
do not care about American workers, who will? If we do not negotiate on 
their behalf, who will? Every other country with whom we have 
negotiated on trade has had negotiators who have worn their jersey that 
says, ``We are for our side.'' I want our trade officials wearing our 
jersey, saying we insist on fair trade for American producers and fair 
trade for American workers.
  Madam President, I appreciate the patience of my colleagues who are 
waiting to speak, and I yield the floor.

                          ____________________