[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 6, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1537-S1539]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE CHOICES TO MAKE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, yesterday was so-called Junior Tuesday, 
where there were a lot of Presidential primaries in our country. It is 
one more step in this public discussion that happens every even 
numbered year under the Constitution in our country whereby the 
American people make choices about their future.
  It is interesting to watch the political system this year because the 
discussion and debate in our political system is fascinating and 
interesting to me and, I think, millions of others. There is one area 
especially that has me confused. We have, at the same time, candidates 
for public office who will tell us that this country is in terrible 
shape, America is in deep trouble, the Congress cannot do anything 
right, and America is going down the wrong road. We have other 
candidates who say that the solution to at least one of our problems is 
to build a fence between the United States and Mexico to keep 
immigrants out.

  I scratch my head and wonder, why would we want to build a fence to 
keep people out? Why do people want to come? Because this is a 
wonderful place, a remarkable country, a country full of hope and 
opportunity, a country many others look to as a beacon of hope in the 
world. So what is the disconnection here? Why is it that one group of 
people say it is an awful place, this country is going to hell in a 
handbasket, and other people say we have too many people who want to 
come here, so let us build fences to keep them out?
  I could make the case as a politician, find a lectern and an audience 
and go on the stump and tell people about America: There are 23,000 
murders a year, and we are the murder capital of the world. The United 
States consumes 50 percent of the world's cocaine. There are 110,000 
rapes in a year, and there are a million violent aggravated assaults in 
a year. Ten million people are looking for work, 25 million are on food 
stamps, and 40 million people are living in poverty. There will be a 
million and a quarter babies born this year without a father present at 
the birth, and 900,000 of those babies will never in their lifetimes 
learn the identity of their fathers.
  I can talk about the challenges and the troubles in this country. We 
entertain ourselves with everybody's dysfunctional behavior. We, every 
day and every way, on television and elsewhere, hold it up to the light 
on Oprah and Phil and Geraldo and Ricki, all of those programs, and 
say, ``Is this not ugly?'' ``Is this not awful?'' Yes, it is ugly. But 
it is the exception. So it becomes entertainment, entertaining people 
with other people's dysfunctional behavior.

[[Page S1538]]

 This country is much, much more than any of that. The crime, the 
poverty, and the unemployment are challenges we have to respond to in 
this country. But this is a country that got through a civil war and 
united on the other side. This is a country that survived a depression 
and got through on the other side. This is a country that defeated 
Hitler and cured polio and put a man on the Moon. This is a country 
with remarkable resources and remarkable will.
  The question is, How do we as a country and as a government--a 
representative government as called for in our Constitution--together 
create the things and do the things necessary to advance our country's 
interests and make it a stronger, better country for everybody in the 
future? We have a chorus of people who tell us that the solution is 
just get rid of Government. The problem is our Government.

  We have done a lot of good things in this country together. I worry 
about a country where we treat as a public sport an effort to 
essentially try to denigrate our institutions. I worry about a 
democracy where there is not respect for the institution of government, 
because government is all of us. The people rule this place. Nobody but 
the people rule this Senate, because the people determine who serves 
here. Those they want out will very soon be out; those they want to 
retain, who they believe fight for the right public policies and the 
right kind of future for this country, will stay.
  There is an enormous capacity for good in all of us, to do the right 
thing for this country's future, if we decide to concentrate not on 
what is wrong with these institutions, but decide to make sure these 
institutions work to create real solutions to the real problems 
confronting the American people.
  Some would say the answer is just term limits. If we can impose term 
limits and get all these evil, venal people out of these institutions 
and move all the knowledge out the door with them, then we have 
something that is good for America. In fact, I saw all these folks who 
come to the floor of the Senate this year. I saw people who served here 
20 and 30 years march to the floor of the Senate and vote for term 
limits. They did not believe in term limits; not for a minute. They 
felt politically, I suppose, it is the thing to do. Make sure those who 
have experience are told, ``You cannot serve anymore.'' I would not 
trade one Bob Dole for 75 freshman Republicans in the House, just 
because I think the people here with the experience and the people who 
are here who understand the value of doing the right things through 
this institution of government, an institution that is all of ours, are 
the people who are finally going to advance this country's interests, 
not Democrat or Republican, but just Americans, working together to 
solve problems.
  What are the problems in this country? They are legion. There are a 
lot of them. Personal security issues--we must deal with crime and do 
it in the right way. Values--diminished standards and values in this 
country are of concern. We must deal with that in the families, the 
neighborhoods, and the communities all across this country.
  I want to talk today about the centerfold of what ought to be the 
debate in 1996. That is the economy and jobs. We have a circumstance in 
this country that is described well, I think, by two pieces in the 
Washington Post 2 weeks apart. First, ``Labor Cost Rise in '95 was 
Lowest on Record.'' Blue collar workers, this says, had benefits or 
labor costs increasing 2.5 percent. That is not even the rate of 
inflation, just under the rate of inflation. So, workers down at the 
bottom of this country--the people who work, manufacture, and produce--
are not quite keeping up with inflation. Two weeks later, ``CEO's at 
Major Corporations Got a 23 Percent Raise Last Year.'' Average salary? 
$4 million. Some of them got raises while they downsized and 
streamlined and cut out 10,000, 20,000, or 40,000 jobs to be more 
competitive.

  What does that mean, being more competitive? It means they are global 
enterprises. They do not sing the National Anthem. They do not say the 
Pledge of Allegiance. What they want is profit for their stockholders, 
and they want to do that any way they can. If that means hiring people 
who work for 12 cents a day, 12 hours a day, even if they are 12 years 
old, in some foreign country to make tennis shoes, rugs, or shirts, and 
then ship the product to Pittsburgh, Fargo, or Denver and sell them, if 
that spells profit, that is just fine for those interests because it is 
in their economic interests, but it is not in this country's interest.
  The center of the economic debate in this country is how do we 
provide the incentives to keep good jobs here in this country and 
prevent jobs from leaving? Now, we have a trade deficit that I am not 
going to talk about at great length. Pat Buchanan is out there and that 
lit the fuse on the debate. On part of it he is right, and on part of 
it he is wrong. The debate ought to be this: We ought not in this 
country create circumstances where we tell enterprises, ``If you move 
your jobs and your plant overseas we will make a bargain with you. Your 
Federal Government will give you a tax break.''
  Can you think of anyone in the U.S. Senate who would decide to go out 
and hold a town meeting or announce for election and decide, ``My 
hypothesis is this: I am going to decide to run on this proposition. I 
believe that we ought to provide a tax cut or a tax loophole or a tax 
break for manufacturing firms who close their businesses in the United 
States and move them overseas.'' How many votes do you think that 
politician would get? They would get booed out of every single room in 
this country and should be booed out of every single room in this 
country.
  Do you know something? That provision now exists in our Tax Code, and 
we had a vote on it last October. I tried to get that provision 
repealed, saying we should no longer have an insidious provision in our 
Tax Code that pays companies to move their workers overseas--pays 
companies to shut down their manufacturing plant in our country and 
move their jobs overseas. Do you know how many people voted against my 
proposal to close that insidious loophole? Fifty-two. Fifty-two people 
said, ``We believe we ought to keep that tax loophole.''

  The old advice in medicine, to save the party you stop the bleeding. 
If we are going to start talking about jobs--and we ought to be; that 
ought to be the central issue in this Chamber--we ought to start with 
step one. Every person in this Chamber ought to stand up on this 
question, and I will give them the opportunity a dozen times if it 
takes it this year, because we will vote on this proposition again and 
again and again: Do you believe we ought to have a provision in our Tax 
Code that says shut your plants down here, move your jobs overseas, and 
we will reward you, we will give you a big fat tax break worth billions 
of dollars. That is going to be closed this year, one way or another. 
This Senate is going to vote, and the vote is going to be different 
than the 52 votes against me last October. I believe we ought to do 
that as a first step--shut down that insidious tax provision.
  The second step we ought to do is take the advice of the Senator from 
New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, and many others who worked on the high-
wage task force, and start providing incentives to those who create 
good jobs in this country. Stop the hemorrhaging of jobs out of this 
country and start rewarding and providing incentives for those who 
create jobs in this country. We can talk forever about all the other 
ancillary issues, but what is important to the American family is this: 
60 percent of them sit down for dinner these days and around the dinner 
table talk about their lot in life. What they discover is that they are 
working harder and, after 20 years, have less income. After 20 years, 
they have lost income when you adjust for inflation.
  That is not the American dream. The American dream is to work harder 
and do better and hope your kids do better than that. But we now have 
an economic circumstance where the largest enterprises in our country 
and in the world have decided they want to produce where it is cheap 
and sell into established markets, which means American jobs leave. We 
have to decide as a Congress and as a country what it is we are going 
to do to rebuild once more an infrastructure of good manufacturing jobs 
in America.
  I have said before and I will say it again until people are tired of 
it, you cannot measure America's economic strength by what we consume. 
The people at the Federal Reserve Board with

[[Page S1539]]

thick glasses, living in concrete bunkers, every month they measure 
what we consume. They think heart attacks are a source of national 
strength and an earthquake is a source of national economic enterprise. 
Hurricane Andrew added one-half of 1 percent to the gross domestic 
product in our country. That is true. That is the way the Federal 
Reserve Board measures economic progress, what do they consume. They 
document what we consume, not the damage. That is not what economic 
health is.

  Economic health in this country will be measured by what we produce. 
Do you have a vibrant, working manufacturing sector that is competitive 
and produces in a way that is competitive with the rest of the world, 
and also produces good jobs with good income for American workers? If 
you do not have that, nothing else much matters to those families who 
are having dinner and losing money and talking about their lot in life, 
knowing that their wages are going down, their job is less secure, they 
have fewer benefits, and they know that the future for their children 
is less bright than that which they face.
  That is why Senator Bingaman and others--all of us have worked 
together to try to create a circumstance where we can begin to debate 
in this Chamber the center of the economic debate in the country: How 
do you create and retain good jobs in America? There is not any way 
that we ought to lose on the international economic stage. We just 
should not.
  I grew up in a town of 300 people, which is probably the case with 
many Members of the Senate. It was a small town. When I walked to 
school I knew I came from the country that was the biggest, the best, 
and the strongest. We could beat anybody in the world at anything and 
we could do it with one hand tied behind our back.
  Our competitors are shrewd, tough, international competitors. The 
world has changed. We cannot countenance unfair trade. We cannot 
countenance dumping in our markets. We cannot countenance economic 
enterprises that decide they want to produce where it is cheap to 
produce and sell back to our established market, even if it means fewer 
American jobs.
  We must decide to stand up for the economic interests of this 
country. It is not to say we ought to build a wall to keep things out. 
It is to say, whether we are talking about the Japanese trade surplus 
with us or our deficit with them, that we insist you buy more from us. 
If you have a $50 billion trade surplus with us, or we a deficit with 
you, then we insist you buy more from us because that is what 
translates into more American jobs. Our failure to do that consigns us 
to a future of lower standards of living because of these trade 
deficits, and that is not something I am prepared to accept. It is not 
something I believe my constituents are prepared to accept.
  It is something we can alter, we can change, if we, in this Chamber, 
finally get rid of all these distractions and get to the center of the 
economic debate: What about good jobs in America's future? How do we 
create them and how do we keep them? And can we take the first baby 
step by deciding, all of us, that we will finally and completely close 
the insidious loophole in our Tax Code that actually rewards companies 
to move jobs overseas, and then begin to take other steps to say we 
want to, in addition to stopping jobs going overseas with juicy tax 
breaks, we want to provide incentives that will help create new jobs, 
good jobs, good paying jobs in this country? And that represents part 
of the work that we have done in the Democratic caucus, especially with 
the task force headed by Senator Bingaman.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Ford] is recognized.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business. Several 
Senators have reserved time to speak.
  Mr. FORD. I did not want to interrupt anything. Could I have 5 
minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All Senators may speak for up to 5 minutes 
each.
  Mr. FORD. Well, could I have 5 minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.

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