[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 29, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1968-H1982]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I will insert in the Record the statement by 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] under the remarks of this 
special order.
  Mr. Speaker, I would also say to my friend and colleagues that I am 
joined this evening by a distinguished colleague of mine from the State 
of Vermont who has been a champion on fair trade in this country, 
Bernie Sanders. If I could, I would like to make a few brief remarks 
and then yield to my friend from Vermont, [Mr. Sanders] or whomever 
else would like to engage in this debate.
  Mr. Speaker, we have been meeting here on a weekly basis to talk 
about the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Let me 
just begin by saying after 3 years, actually 40 months, we are now able 
to look closely at the effects of the North American Free Trade 
Agreement, and I would recommend to my colleagues an editorial today in 
the New York Times because this editorial really shows us how the 
issues of trade and protecting the environment are really inseparably 
linked. We are going to talk about the environment a little bit, and 
then we are going to get to some other issues with respect to 
corporations. The editorial discussed the environmental challenges that 
the Nation of Chile is facing.
  Mr. Speaker, I insert in the Record a copy of that editorial that was 
in the New York Times this morning.
  The article referred to is as follows:

                       Slighting Nature in Chile

       When Augusto Pinochet stepped down as President in 1990, 
     Chile's people hoped that democracy would bring an 
     improvement in the country's environment. The dictatorship 
     had listened mainly to its friends in industry, and Chileans 
     hoped that a new government would heed conservationists and 
     public health advocates. What they did not count on was that 
     in Chile, like most developing countries eager to attract 
     foreign investment, the desire for growth outweighed 
     environmental concerns.
       As a result, air and water pollution remain serious threats 
     to public health. Chile is also destroying irreplaceable 
     natural resources through logging of old-growth forests and 
     overfishing.
       Chile has some tough environmental laws but, as in other 
     Latin nations, they are not well enforced--in part because of 
     the desire for growth. Chile is justifiably proud of a decade 
     of growth at more than 5 percent, much of it from exports 
     from mining, forest products and fishing, which damage the 
     environment unless carefully regulated.
       These extractive industries exercise great political 
     influence. Moreover, unlike their American and European 
     counterparts, business leaders in Chile see no particular 
     public relations value in supporting environmental causes. 
     The Chilean industrialists' group has even hinted that it 
     will organize a boycott of ``Oro Verde,'' a prime-time soap 
     opera with an environmental theme.
       Businesses commission the required environmental impact 
     statements, and the government board that evaluates them 
     often cannot afford to hire experts to do a thorough job. On 
     several occasions when the board has rejected major 
     investment proposals, political commissions have allowed the 
     projects to proceed. President Eduardo Frei has often said he 
     will not let environmental concerns stand in the way of 
     growth.
       Chile's environmental groups are small and rely heavily on 
     volunteers. But they have helped raise public awareness of 
     environmental issues to the point where politicians cannot 
     risk ignoring them. And they have mounted successful court 
     challenges. Chile's supreme court just blocked a major 
     logging project by an American company, declaring that 
     Chile's basic environmental law was too vague. New 
     regulations were quickly passed.
       The court is surely on the right track. No one has 
     calculated the yearly cost of environmental damage to 
     Chileans' health and

[[Page H1969]]

     resources, but the figure is probably greater than the annual 
     increase in Chile's economy. Other Latin nations have found 
     profit in protecting the environment. That would be a natural 
     step for Chile, whose responsible Government and strong 
     regulatory structure have helped make it an economic model in 
     the third world.

  The linkage of trade and the environment is an issue that we will 
need to address in the coming weeks and the months ahead as a proposal 
for granting fast track negotiation authority for the Congress, the 
proposal that the administration wants. As the editorial shows us, we 
must realize that sacrificing the environment for growth will not be 
sustainable in the long run, while it may appear to be sustainable in 
the short run, and if we simply expand NAFTA to include other nations 
without including strong environmental standards, we will lock into 
place a trade agreement that will eventually include environmental 
degradation. Corporations should be held to the same high standards of 
the environment no matter where they operate, but under the agreement 
that we passed during this debate 40 months ago, under NAFTA, 
corporations are not held accountable. If they exploit the environment 
or if we find that a nation's environmental laws are not being 
enforced, all we can do is consult, just consult. There is no fines, 
there is no sanctions, there is just talk.

                              {time}  1945

  And that is not right. The last 3 years of experience we have had 
with NAFTA shows us that this system does not work. And it is true that 
our border areas with Mexico was an environmental mess before NAFTA 
went into effect. We were told that, once we pass NAFTA, the problems 
on the border would get better. Instead they have gotten worse.
  Mr. Speaker, the border area has grown rapidly. It is known as the 
maquiladora area. It is an area along the California, New Mexico, 
Texas, Arizona border with Mexico. Its workforce has expanded by 45 
percent. But with the population growth and the increase in 
manufacturing, not even the old environmental and health problems have 
been fixed. Families along the border continue to live near and bathe 
in water from rivers in a region that the American Medical Association 
has called a cesspool of infectious disease.
  Not a single meaningful grant has come out of the North American 
Development Bank, which was put together as an answer to try to resolve 
some of these problems. Our colleague, the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Torres], had this language adopted and has worked very hard, but 
folks have dragged their feet.
  So what we try to do is create an institution that will help finance 
border cleanup projects, but neither our Government nor the Mexican 
Government has shown a serious commitment to it. The Sierra Club 
guesstimates that it would cost about $20 billion, that is billion with 
a B, to clean up the serious environmental problems along the Mexican 
border. But at that rate, the bill is just going to grow. It is not 
going to get any smaller. And it is no longer that contaminated 
strawberries from Mexico could get into our school lunch program.
  Mr. Speaker, in Michigan we had a serious problem with our school 
lunch program and the strawberries. We see these conditions happening 
because of the open border. Most people probably know the story about 
the contaminated strawberries that came from Mexico about a month ago. 
Students in Michigan started to get sick, and they were coming down 
with hepatitis A. All told, 179 young people became sick, and more than 
11,000 students in Michigan and California had to get shots. Why? 
Because these strawberries, which were grown in Mexico, illegally got 
into our school lunch program.
  Now, no one will ever be able to say for sure how these berries 
became contaminated, but let me tell you the evidence seems clear to 
show that the plant in San Diego where the berries were processed had 
no evidence of contamination during a routine inspection conducted 
there at the same time that the berries in question were processed. And 
it is well known that there is significant pollution in the irrigation 
and drinking water of Mexico.
  In fact, listen to this figure, 17 percent of Mexican children have 
contracted a hepatitis virus from contaminated drinking water, 17 
percent. Now since NAFTA has gone into effect, fresh strawberry imports 
from Mexico have more than doubled, with only 1 percent of food coming 
in from Mexico getting inspected. And of this tiny portion of food that 
gets inspected, fully one-third of it fails inspection over dangerous 
pesticides. So what you have along the border in Texas, you have got 
11,000 trucks coming across the border every single day. They call it a 
wave line because just one out of every 200 get inspected. And of those 
that get inspected of this tiny portion, one-third fail the test for 
dangerous pesticides.
  Mr. Speaker, 99 percent of the food that comes across the border is 
not inspected. As a Nation we have seen food inspection decrease 
dramatically over the years in the name of free trade and deregulation. 
So it is not surprising that 33 million Americans become ill every year 
as a result of eating contaminated food.
  So, Mr. Speaker, the proponents of NAFTA told us that our food 
standards and food safety would be harmonized upward if we passed the 
NAFTA. What does that mean, harmonized upward? It means that their 
standards would increase to meet the high level of standards that we 
generally have here in the United States. But, well, they were wrong. 
Uninspected food is surging in from Mexico at an unprecedented rate. 
And we know that some of it is not safe and at the very least we should 
require imported foods to be inspected.
  But we must also strengthen the food safety requirements in our trade 
agreements. Now, free trade is not just about tariff rates and 
investment protection and intellectual property. It is an issue that 
affects us every day in ways that we do not even realize. We must begin 
to recognize the fact that the issue of human health must have a place 
in our trade agreement.
  As the debate on the fast track proceeds, we must make sure that 
human health and environmental protection are recognized as trade 
issues. We must give these issues the same standing as we give to 
corporate investment and intellectual property.
  Now I have just about a minute to make two more points, then I am 
going to yield to my colleagues, who have been so patient here. I want 
to talk about NAFTA's corporate bonanza. It is astonishing what some of 
these corporations have done.
  In February of this year, a group called Public Citizens did a study 
to look at the record of companies who had promised to create jobs if 
NAFTA was passed; and they tracked all the job promises, and they found 
that 90 percent of these companies broke their promises, 90 percent. 
They did not create jobs in America as a result of NAFTA.
  I want to show you this chart here, NAFTA's corporate bonanzas are 
good for profits, bad for workers. This new study points out just last 
week they tracked 28 named corporations that spent millions of dollars 
to pass NAFTA. They came here and lobbied, told us what a great deal it 
was, how it was going to create jobs. Their record is one of greed and 
profit at the expense of workers on both sides of the border. And 12 of 
these corporations laid off a total of over 7,000 workers and shipped 
those jobs to Mexico. These are the companies that promised to create 
jobs in America if we passed NAFTA.
  The sad thing is that all of this has paid off for these companies. 
They shipped our jobs over there. The main NAFTA boosters have seen 
their profits go up nearly 300 percent since NAFTA, compared to 59 
percent for the top 500 U.S. firms since 1973. So they are making these 
profits by plowing over the rights of workers. And when they get down 
there, they do not pay, you know, they reestablish these jobs in 
Mexico, they do not pay them anything.
  Mr. Speaker, during the NAFTA debate, workers were getting paid a 
dollar an hour. They were making a few dollars a day. Now they are 
making 70 cents an hour. I was down there just about a month and a half 
ago and workers were making $5 and $6 a day working in modern 
facilities, working very hard, very productive, but with no 
environmental safety standards, nobody to really bargain and organize 
for them, no unions to represent them. And they are making $5 and $6 
dollars a day, and their wages have dropped 40 percent.

[[Page H1970]]

  So where is all the money going? Where is it going? Well, it is going 
to the corporations. You see, six of these corporations bust the unions 
by threatening to move jobs to Mexico. And you know the story goes on 
and on and on.

  So it is with great sadness that we have to come to the floor and 
talk about these issues, because it is very clear from the record that 
NAFTA has not lived up to the promises that were made by the 
corporations or those that were concerned about the environment.
  So at this point I yield to my friend from Vermont, Mr. Sanders, who 
has been vigilant, very watchful and determined that, before we move on 
and do any other trade deals, we have got to correct the ones we are 
engaged in. I yield to my friend.
  Mr. SANDERS. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding, and it is 
a pleasure to work with my colleague who has helped lead the anti-NAFTA 
effort for many years and has demanded a sensible trade policy which 
represents the needs of workers, as well as corporate America. It is 
nice to be here with the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Kucinich], who is 
also joining that fight in a very strong way.
  I remember some 4 years ago the gentleman from Michigan, [Mr. Bonior] 
came to the State of Vermont and addressed a rally in Montpelier in 
Vermont, where we had 300 or 400 Vermonters who were out protesting 
NAFTA; and the sad truth is that much of what he and I said on that 
day, much of what he and I predicted would happen has in fact occurred.
  NAFTA is part of a disastrous trade policy, which is resulting in 
record-breaking trade deficits, which is costing us millions of decent-
paying jobs. I wish very, very much, as important as the national 
deficit is, that the Congress would pay half as much attention to the 
trade deficit, which is costing us millions of jobs and which is 
lowering the wages of workers from one end of this country to the 
other.
  The essence of our current disastrous trade policy is not very hard 
to comprehend. You do not have to have a Ph.D. in economics to 
understand that it is impossible and wrong for American workers to be 
competing against very desperate people in Mexico and other parts of 
the world, who, because of the economic conditions in their own 
country, are forced to work for 50 cents an hour or 70 cents an hour.
  One of the interesting developments in recent weeks, I do not know if 
my colleague has seen it, is the front page of Business Week. Their 
cover story reported that CEOs last year earned 54 percent more than 
the preceding year. In other words, the compensation for CEOs in this 
country of the major corporations went up by 54 percent, while workers 
are struggling with 2 or 3 percent increases in their incomes.
  Now, these very same people who are now averaging over $5 million a 
year are precisely the same people who told us how great the NAFTA 
would be. Well, I suppose that they are right. NAFTA has been very good 
for them, but it has been a disaster for the average American worker.
  What we know is not only that hundreds of thousands of decent-paying 
jobs have disappeared from this country, as corporation after 
corporation has said, why should I pay an American worker $10, $15, $20 
an hour when I can get a desperate person in Mexico to work for 50 
cents an hour or a dollar an hour. Not only have they done that, but in 
addition to that, they are moving jobs all over the world.
  I was interested in this last week to read, if it were not so sad, it 
really would be funny, where Nike, which seems to have the inclination 
to move to that country in the world which is now paying the lowest 
wages, they have now gravitated to Vietnam. And my colleagues may have 
seen in the paper that in Vietnam there is now a demonstration that 
they are paying below what they even promised the Vietnamese workers, 
which I would imagine is 20 cents or so an hour.
  So what we are seeing is these corporations who used to hire American 
workers at decent wages are now running to Mexico, to other Latin 
American countries, they are going to China, they are going to Vietnam, 
where they are hiring people for abysmally low wages. And that is part 
of our current trade policy.
  I think I speak for the vast majority of the people in this country 
who say that what we have got to have is a fair trade policy which 
represents the interest of the vast majority of our people and not just 
corporate America, rather than a so-called free trade policy, which 
forces American workers to compete against desperate people throughout 
the entire world.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that concerns me terribly much is that 
every day that I turn on the television and I listen to the radio and I 
read the newspapers, I keep hearing about how great the economy is. I 
am sure the economy must be great for somebody, but it is not great for 
the vast majority of the people in my own State of Vermont.
  The fact of the matter is that while the wealthiest people in this 
country are doing phenomenally well, while CEOs now earn over 200 times 
what their workers earn, the middle class continues to shrink and most 
of the new jobs that are being created are low-wage jobs, many of them 
part time, many of them temporary, many of them without benefits.
  Mr. BONIOR. Would the gentleman yield on that point?
  Mr. SANDERS. I sure would.
  Mr. BONIOR. Because I want to elaborate a little about the disparity 
between those at the top and the average worker in this country. In 
1960, the difference between what a CEO earned and the average worker 
was about 12 to 1. In 1974, that increased to about 35 to 1. And as you 
have just correctly pointed out, now it is 209 to 1.
  The average worker in America today, the 80 percent of people who 
pack a lunch and go to work and make this country work, their wages for 
the last 20 years have basically been frozen, their real wages. They 
are not going anywhere. It is the top 20 percent that are doing very, 
very well; and the very top are doing exceedingly well. But they are 
not moving anywhere. They are frozen.
  If you have one of these people who have worked all your life at a 
company or part of your life at a company and they decided they are 
going to Mexico and your job is gone, those people are able to get jobs 
again but about at two-thirds of the wages that they had formerly been 
earning, at about two-thirds of the salaries that they were making. 
That is what is going on, there is an incredible downward pressure on 
wages.
  There was a study done by Cornell University for the Department of 
Labor, which the Department of Labor, by the way, suppressed; and you 
will understand why when I tell you what was in the study. They found 
that 62 percent, 62 percent of corporations in America today were using 
Mexico and other countries that pay low wages as a hedge against 
raising wages or keeping wages flat in this country.

                              {time}  2000

  They would tell their workers, listen, you want an increase in wages 
or salary, you are not going to get it. You are going to stay where you 
are, you are going to take a cut in health benefits or pension 
benefits, and if you do not we are going south. We are going to Mexico. 
Sixty-two percent of the companies are doing that.
  So I thank my friend for raising that point, because it speaks to the 
increasing disparity we have in economic reality in this country.
  Mr. SANDERS. Let me just say a few words and then I am going to yield 
to the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Kucinich]. As the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Bonior] knows, 23 years ago the United States led the 
world in terms of the wages and benefits our workers received. Today, 
as a result of a number of factors, not least of which is our absurd 
trade policy, we are now in 13th place as a result in terms of wages 
and benefits. The fact of the matter is that the average American today 
is working longer hours for lower wages and they need that extra time 
in order to compensate for the decline in their income.
  Clearly, there is something very wrong when from one end of this 
country to the other, we are seeing the loss of good paying 
manufacturing jobs and the substitution of those jobs in the service 
industry which pays people $6 an hour, $7 an hour, and often does not 
have benefits.
  So I think that probably the most important issue that this Congress 
should be debating is to demand in one way or another, and I have some

[[Page H1971]]

thoughts on it, you and Mr. Kucinich have thoughts on it, in one way or 
another we have got to tell corporate America who have made their money 
in this country that they have got to begin reinvesting in Vermont, in 
Michigan, in Ohio, back into the United States of America, put people 
to work at decent wages, rather than running all over the world to hire 
desperately poor people at starvation wages.
  I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich].
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join my colleagues on 
this issue which the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] has led the 
country on in examining and exposing the deficiencies in the NAFTA 
agreement.
  I come from a district in Cleveland, OH, which was really built with 
the labor of steelworkers, auto workers, people in machine shops. It is 
a blue collar town in many ways. It was part of that great industrial 
strength of America that helped sustain this country through two world 
wars and really made America preeminent among industrial powers in the 
world.
  I have seen the changes that have taken place in Cleveland and 
throughout Ohio since NAFTA, and it is not a pretty sight. The State of 
Ohio alone has lost many jobs. As a matter of fact, I was able to 
secure a list of jobs which I have here, and I would just like to read 
some of the cities which have lost specific plant to Mexico since 
NAFTA. When I read this list I would like my colleagues to keep in mind 
that these are not cold, sterile statistics: Franklin Disposables which 
lost 50 jobs to Mexico, Dayton Rich Products which lost 146 jobs to 
Mexico, Green Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company lost 60 jobs.
  In each case, the statistics have behind them a story of a family 
whose breadwinner could no longer produce and sustain a family. I have 
a story of a young person who lost out on an educational opportunity 
because the money was not there to sustain it. There is a story of a 
family which worked a lifetime to have a home and, suddenly, holding on 
to that home is impossible; a story of medical bills that cannot be 
met; a story of a dream that is shattered, a dream that is deferred, a 
dream that is denied.
  We in the Congress have a responsibility to come forward with 
information and to show that in Greenville, OH, for example, 180 people 
were laid off from Allied Signal. Those people made air filters, oil 
filters and spark plugs.
  Mr. Speaker, that is one snapshot because we have a $39 billion trade 
deficit because of NAFTA, and much of it, three-quarters of it is in 
the automotive related sector, so multiply one family, one dream times 
thousands and thousands across this country and we have a sea change 
occurring in this country, and the American dream is changing.
  This country was built with steel, automotive, aerospace. Basic 
industries provided the muscle for America, gave us might, helped to 
preserve this country and protect our democratic values, and any change 
which undermines those industries undermines, I contend, our basic 
democratic principles and traditions, because if we do not have the 
ability to produce steel, if we do not have the ability to have a 
strong automotive industry, if we cannot be strong and secure in our 
aerospace, we undermine our national security.
  Of course the greatest security we have, as we all know, is a job, 
and NAFTA has cost this country thousands upon thousands of jobs. As a 
matter of fact, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, as the gentleman 
from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] probably knows, because we were talking 
about this last week, the last count was 118,000 jobs.
  Mr. BONIOR. And that is a conservative estimate. If you use the 
formula that the proponents of NAFTA gave us in terms of creation of 
jobs, if we use that very formula we have lost about 600,000 jobs as a 
result of NAFTA. And of course we know many, many people just do not 
apply for trade adjustment assistance.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is correct, and the Trade 
Economic Policy Institute estimates that, in fact, jobs were lost or 
never created because they were created in another country due to 
NAFTA.
  Now, the next question is, What kind of jobs are being created. We 
know we are losing manufacturing jobs which are good paying jobs, which 
have enabled people to have a decent life, live in nice neighborhoods.
  Mr. BONIOR. Sure, buy a home, send your kid to college, take a nice 
vacation, be able to retire with dignity with good health care.
  Mr. KUCINICH. One needs to be making a good wage to do that, but what 
is happening is that this transition in our economy, while it is wiping 
out good paying manufacturing jobs, it is creating jobs, according to 
the Department of Labor, among the top 20 occupations having the 
largest numerical increase in the next decade in the United States: 
Cashiers, now cashiers are very important, very important jobs. 
Janitors, retail sales clerks, waiters and waitresses. Those are all 
important jobs and those are our constituents. But in order to sustain 
those jobs, in order to sustain this economy, we have to do it with 
manufacturing and we have to keep creating new industries, and we are 
not doing that.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker I yield to my friend from New York [Mr. 
Owens] to respond to the gentleman.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, as the ranking member of the Subcommittee on 
Workforce Protections of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, 
I want to go beyond what has been said here so far and say that what we 
have in motion here is that NAFTA has been giving an incentive to the 
corporate powers to wipe out the American work force as we know it. 
American labor shall not exist in 10 years as we know it if they are 
able to continue as they are moving.

  The incentive to make more and more profits on the backs of cheap 
labor has led to a situation where it has been concluded by corporate 
power that they have to wipe out the American labor movement. Working 
conditions and environmental conditions are just as important as wages 
in these considerations with respect to cheap labor costs, and they 
want a situation where they are in a position to dictate not only the 
low wages, but also the working conditions and to be free of any 
environmental regulations.
  As the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, 
what I have noticed is that all of the talk in this particular session 
of Congress about bipartisan cooperation and civility does not apply to 
anything related to organized labor. We have seen an assault start in 
this Congress on labor, unprecedented.
  Several hearings have been held on the right of labor unions to use 
their money for political education, and they have gone out to where it 
hurts a great deal in terms of how they can spend their own funds and 
they are challenging their ability to make decisions as a majority, 
that if one member of any union objects to his money being used some 
way, his money should be segregated from the rest and the majority 
rules as to how funds are spent cannot apply. That is one way to 
cripple unions.
  Another way is, of course, to come after the Fair Labor Standards 
Act. A lot of people think that the comp time bill is related to 
families, giving people an opportunity to have time off, but the comp 
time bill is all about the Fair Labor Standards Act as a major weapon 
of labor. If you get into the heart and soul of the Fair Labor 
Standards Act, you have to cripple unions.
  OSHA continues to be under attack. We just had a hearing on methylene 
chloride, a substance which causes cancer, causes pneumonia. Clearly 
every study has shown it to be more dangerous than they previously 
understood it to be, and OSHA regulations after 10 years are being 
resisted, and they will take the business of methylene chloride, all 
the businesses that need it will take it overseas.
  Airplanes, for example, have to use it in order to take the paint off 
when they check the body of airplanes to see if they are still sound 
and that is probably the largest use of methylene chloride. It is a 
huge business. They are threatening to take it to places overseas if we 
have the regulations installed by OSHA, just as they are threatening, 
of course, on any other environmental condition we set which safeguards 
the health of workers.
  So we have an attempt by corporate power to create a new class of 
workers, something between servants and peasants, in order to maximize 
their profits. They will come back and they will

[[Page H1972]]

bring the jobs back once they do that. But NAFTA, GATT, allows them to 
make huge profits and use the cheapest labor in the world to make those 
profits and acquire the power necessary to destroy the labor force and 
the organized labor in this country.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, it is a good point the gentleman makes.
  I yield to the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] to answer it, and 
then I want to comment on it, because it is a very good point.
  Mr. SANDERS. Let me just pick up on the gentleman's point, and that 
is essentially, if you have desperate people in Mexico who are making 
50 cents an hour, who are living in shacks, whose kids may be begging 
out on the street, who are forced to work under the most horrendous 
conditions imaginable, what corporate America is saying is hey, if we 
can get people to work in those conditions over there, we can drive 
wages and working conditions down here, because what we say to the 
American worker is, hey, if you do not like what you are getting today, 
we are going to go over there.
  I just got a letter today from a corporate entity in the State of 
Vermont who told us about how high the wages are in Vermont, he could 
go elsewhere and so forth and so on. So I think it is not only a labor 
issue, it is an environmental issue, it is a union issue, and that is 
what our entire trade policy is about.
  It is the race to the bottom, it is saying to American workers, there 
are people in China, Mexico, throughout the world who are prepared to 
work for almost nothing, and we are going to lower your wages and lower 
your working conditions, lower the environmental standards that you 
work under, lower and lower and lower. Not raise the other people's, 
but lower ours until we have an equalized work force around the world. 
A very, very dangerous trend, which as the gentleman indicated, is 
wiping out the middle class and creating pathetically low-wage jobs.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, years ago there was a large middle class 
like we have today, people struggled the same way, they did not have 
good wages here, they did not have any benefits. But they got together 
and they believed that they had certain inalienable rights, and among 
them were the rights to organize, the right to assemble, the right to 
collective bargaining and the right to strike. And that is how the 
movement got started, because of the abuse of the labor movement in 
this country. It was only through the labor movement that we built this 
expansive middle class in this country.
  I saw something the other day, I was driving to work and I saw a 
banner over a bridge that said, let me recall the exact words, ``The 
labor movement, the people who brought you the weekend.'' And I thought 
to myself, that is really creative. There could have been a lot of 
things up there. The people that brought you a livable wage, the people 
that brought you safety protection, that brought you health care, that 
brought you Social Security, that brought you Medicare, that brought 
you compensation if you got laid off. I mean all of these things could 
have been up there on that banner. The gentleman is absolutely right.
  Mr. OWENS. The Fair Labor Standards Act, that is how the weekend 
came.
  Mr. BONIOR. That is right. What is going on is they are trying to 
break labor in this country today, the corporations, and they are doing 
it through a variety of different ways. There are hundreds of law firms 
in this country that specialize in nothing else but busting unions in 
America. That is how they make their living.
  I just came back from a very interesting discussion. I came from the 
Methodist Building across the street, and I was listening to a group of 
people talk about the K-Mart strike that occurred in Greensboro, NC, in 
1993.

                              {time}  2015

  A lot of workers wanted to form a union in Greensboro, NC. They were 
prevented from forming a union. They got together and they signed 
cards. And the majority of them wanted a union. And the union would not 
negotiate a contract. And they got the whole community involved that 
this was the right thing to do. It was the moral thing to do. People 
wanted to be represented and they needed to be represented. But the 
corporation, the multinational corporation, which, by the way, is 
located very close to my district, about 2 or 3 miles outside my 
district, they would not recognize them.
  So what happened and what has to happen today in America and in 
Mexico and in other places is that you have got to get the community 
involved to get people organized again so they can stand up for those 
basic inalienable rights of being able to assemble, to collective 
bargaining and the right to earn their own bread.
  And they did that down in Greensboro. They got the churches together. 
They got the progressive people in the business communities and they 
said, This is wrong. These people decided they wanted to come together 
for a decent wage and decent working conditions, and they ought to be 
recognized. Through a 3-year struggle they finally did it.
  But even more importantly, they formed a sense of community out of 
that process and that is now being used to work on education issues and 
a whole variety of other issues. We have gotten off the track a little 
bit.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I think that is very much on track. That 
process is being endangered now. If you wipe out the ability to 
organize and you wipe out unions, who have the resources and the know-
how to organize, then you are going to shut off that whole process.
  There is an article in the February issue of Atlantic Monthly by a 
very successful capitalist named George Soros where he is saying 
capitalism is out of control and capitalism is going to destroy itself 
because there is so much great abuse of power. It is going to end the 
open society, what I call the society of checks and balances. 
Institutions like organized labor become a check on the power of 
corporations. Corporations are running rampant over everybody so the 
process of being able to organize is going to be wiped out.
  Mr. BONIOR. There is no countervailing force today like there used to 
be. Unions and government used to provide a balancing against runaway 
greed.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, let me pick up on that point, if I could. 
Let us examine that point for a second.
  In terms of distribution of wealth in America, you have the richest 1 
percent now owning 42 percent of the wealth, which is more than the 
bottom 90 percent. One of the problems that all of us have is in 
dealing with the media. In terms of getting information out to people, 
one of the reasons that half the people in America no longer bother to 
vote is they are not getting information that is relevant to their 
lives. Who owns the media? When we talk about NAFTA, I remember this 
very clearly, it was quite unbelievable, poll after poll showed that 
the country was pretty evenly divided. Some were for NAFTA; some were 
anti-NAFTA.
  We went through every single major newspaper in the United States of 
America, every single one of them. Were they evenly divided? Were they 
two-to-one pro-NAFTA? Every single one of them was pro-NAFTA, as was 
virtually every corporation in America. So you see who owns the media, 
we are seeing in terms of contributions to both political parties. Not 
an accident that you have this trade policy. This is a trade policy 
that works well for corporate America. It hurts the working people.
  Where does the money come from to fund the parties? It comes from the 
wealthy people. And we see the results of that in terms of our trade 
policy. In almost every aspect of our lives we are seeing a greater and 
greater concentration of wealth and power. And in many ways I must say 
this country is beginning to look more like an oligarchy than it is 
like a democracy.
  Mr. OWENS. Every new NAFTA, every new GATT adds to that corporate 
power. It allows them to make higher and higher profits, 59 percent 
since 1993. That is light stuff compared to what is going on now, I am 
sure, in terms of the stock market still booming. They get more and 
more wealth to use to oppress the people who are, the overwhelming 
majority in America who do not have a voice. Like the gentleman said, 
they own the media. They snuff out open society. They snuff out the 
checks and balances. And they are going to snuff out the consumer, the

[[Page H1973]]

consumer market that is the driving engine for capitalism. As Soros 
puts it, they are going to destroy themselves if there is no check and 
balance on them.
  Mr. BONIOR. When you have people like Soros and the Goldsmith fellow 
from Europe, these are very wealthy and prosperous and well-known 
capitalists in the world starting to speak out like maybe we are going 
too far here, when you have that kind of voice starting to be heard, 
then you know something is really out of whack.
  When the people at the very top start to say, wait a minute, maybe we 
are piling up too much greed here by getting 294 percent profit 
increases since 1993.
  I want to make one other quick point here and that is with respect to 
labor unions. Then I will yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  When labor unions were at their peak in this country, when 35 percent 
of the American people in the work force belonged to a labor union, 
they would produce 90 percent. I will give you the figure. Late 1950's, 
they were producing 90 percent in productivity. They were getting about 
99 percent back in wages.
  In about 1974, they were getting about half of what they were getting 
in wages in what they were producing. And then in the 1980's, it was 
about a third of what they were getting back in terms of wages from 
what they were producing in productivity. So as labor's numbers started 
to decline in terms of representing people in this country, from 35 
percent in the 1950's down to the present, I think 14, 15 percent, 
their take, workers' take in terms of what they took home was less and 
less of what they produced in terms of proportion.
  And that is one of the tragedies of this equation that has now 
allowed the corporate folks in America to move with impunity down to 
places like Mexico and exploit workers down there at 70 cents an hour.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich].
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, when you think about the history of the 
growth, the economic growth in this country, which permitted the rise 
of the middle class, which permitted people to go from $10 to $15 to 
even $20 an hour, it is really somewhat of a miracle that America 
sustained this. And then comes trade agreements like NAFTA and people 
start to see those jobs slip away.
  And the question arises, why would someone pay $20 an hour, let us 
say, as opposed to 91 cents an hour, as some workers in Mexico, are 
making for basically doing the same work that someone who had a job 
that paid $20 an hour did prior to that job leaving?
  The reason why you pay that amount is, in order to maintain a 
democracy, you have to make sure people have a lot of choices, and they 
have to have a good income. And that income gives them the ability to 
be free economically. Because let us face it, if you do not have 
economic freedom, your political freedom is compromised.
  Mr. OWENS. And consumer spending is still two-thirds of our economy. 
We are going to wipe out consumer spending.
  Mr. BONIOR. There was a piece written by Stanley Sheinbaum, a friend 
of mine who lives in California, in his quarterly that publishes 
entitled, who is going to buy the goods. He kind of lays it all out. If 
we keep driving wages down, downward pressure on wages, at some point 
in this process, we are not going to have and our families are not 
going to have the wherewithal to make the purchases that make the 
engine of this country run.
  Mr. KUCINICH. In 1997 in January, the Economic Development 
Corporation of Tijuana was advertising that they would pay wages and 
benefits together of 91 cents an hour in maquiladora areas. Those are 
the kinds of jobs that are moving to Mexico from areas like Ohio, 
manufacturing jobs.
  The problem is, though, if you are making 91 cents an hour, you are 
not buying a new home that costs $60,000, $70,000. You are not buying a 
new car that costs $18,000 to $20,000. You are not purchasing an 
education for your child if you are making 91 cents an hour.
  The wage level promotes economic activity in this country that 
sustains the type of society we have. If we were to turn that around 
and say, what happens if you make 50 cents in some cases or 91 cents an 
hour, you cannot aspire to those kinds of things which we in this 
country have come to expect as what we call the American way of life.
  And the great thing about this country is that we think we can reach 
even higher. Once we reach a certain niche, we are going to reach a 
little bit higher. We get there, we reach a little higher. Now we are 
finding we cannot do that because the jobs are starting to go away and 
out of this country.
  My colleagues raised the issue earlier, the gentleman from Michigan 
[Mr. Bonior] and the gentleman from New York [Mr.Owens] and the 
gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], all raised the issue of the 
attack that is going on on working people due to NAFTA, how people are 
being threatened, look, if you start organizing, we are going to move 
your jobs, your jobs are gone. I got a hold of a Cornell University 
report which I am sure you are familiar with.
  Mr. BONIOR. That is the one I referred to, the Labor Department, 
Cornell did for the Labor Department. They suppressed it by the way. 
The Labor Department would not let it out, and it finally came out.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman has seen it because 
this is close to his district. And as I read it, I was shocked when I 
saw the kinds of tactics that were used. Would it please the gentleman, 
could I read this into the Record. This is a very interesting report 
from Cornell. Here is the kind of things that they found out:
  In our follow up interviews with organizers in campaigns where plant 
closing threats occurred, we learned that specific unambiguous threats 
ranged from attaching shipping labels to equipment throughout the plant 
with a Mexican address, to posting maps of North America with an arrow 
pointing from the current plant site to Mexico, to a letter stating the 
company will have to shut down if the union wins the election.
  This is just part of the kinds of things that were put. They gave the 
example of the ITT automotive plant in Michigan where the company 
parked 13 flatbed tractor trailers loaded with shrink-wrapped 
production equipment in front of the plant for the duration of an 
organizing campaign that had a hot pink sign on it which read, Mexico 
transfer job.
  Now, think about that. That is just one example. How can people then 
try to aspire to a higher wage? How can people hope for better 
benefits? How can they get their health benefits improved? How can they 
hope that they will have more time to spend with their families? They 
cannot, because they are held captive by this.
  That is one of the reasons why I appreciate, Mr. Speaker, having an 
opportunity to participate in this debate with these gentlemen and in 
this discussion of the importance of this issue to the American people, 
because it has real effects. I started off this discussion, I have a 
list of dozens of cities that are losing the life blood of the 
community because of this trade agreement.
  Mr. SANDERS. I think, picking up on the point of the gentleman from 
Ohio [Mr. Kucinich], that the truth of the matter is the average 
American worker is scared to death.
  Mr. BONIOR. Very scared.
  Mr. SANDERS. People are scared to death precisely because of what the 
gentleman is saying. Because if they stand up for their rights, their 
company is going to say, we do not need you anymore. We are going to 
Mexico; we are going to China.
  Ultimately I think, after all of this discussion, after all of what 
is said and done, it seems to me our challenge is a very simple one. It 
is to tell corporate America that they no longer have the right to run 
all over the world and throw American workers out on the street and 
then be able to bring their products back into this country duty free. 
You do not have to be a genius to know that you would make a lot more 
money paying a Mexican kid or a Chinese young lady 20 or 30 cents an 
hour than paying an American worker a living wage. And the problem is, 
we have allowed them to do that. We have allowed them to run all over 
the world. And the end result is what the chart of the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Bonior] tells us, corporate profits are soaring.
  The end result is what Business Week told us two weeks ago, that the 
top

[[Page H1974]]

CEO's in this country saw an increase in their compensation last year 
of 54 percent, and they now earn 209 times what the average American 
worker earns. I had not realized that one person is worth 209 times 
more than another person, that their children are worth 209 times more 
than the children of a worker. It is obscene. It is wrong.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, it is possible that many Americans for 
years and years have understood and even accepted those kinds of 
disparities as long as they had jobs. We all expect that the bosses and 
the people that head the corporations are going to make more money. 
What is happening now, though, is that the salaries are going up for 
the officers, and I am all for people making good salary, but the 
workers are losing their jobs.
  Mr. BONIOR. They are losing jobs and finding other jobs that pay 
considerably less.
  What happens when that occurs? That starts a cycle. Well, you work 
overtime or you work two jobs or you work three jobs, and that cycle 
produces a situation where you are not home at night to see your son or 
your daughter's soccer game. You are not there for the PTA meeting. All 
those other social maladies that we all talk about and we all wrestle 
with and struggle with around here occur. And it is a vicious cycle. It 
starts with wages often.
  Mr. KUCINICH. It goes to family values and democratic values which 
underpin our ability to celebrate family values.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] was 
implying before that the challenge to us is to stop them from making 
products in other countries with the cheapest possible labor and then 
bringing them back here to sell them duty free. That option is gone 
already. NAFTA is like the international law. GATT is international 
law. You cannot stop them anymore from bringing those products back. We 
will be violating the treaties that we have already agreed to.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. SANDERS. That is why we have to repeal those pieces of 
legislation.
  Mr. OWENS. That is the task before us, to repeal those pieces of 
legislation; also to do everything possible to get laws in place which 
will not allow them to keep beating down the work force, to wipe out 
organized labor.
  There are a lot of things we can do right now to stop this. Our own 
tax laws allow the CEO's of American corporations to earn these obscene 
salaries. By the way, they earn the highest salaries in the world.
  Mr. SANDERS. By far.
  Mr. OWENS. The Japanese CEO's, the German CEO's, and other CEO's 
around the world are not earning those kinds of salaries.
  Mr. BONIOR. Not even close.
  Mr. OWENS. And if we had some tax laws with the people who are making 
the profits, instead of the present situation where individuals and 
families are paying 44 percent of the income tax in this country while 
corporations are paying a little more than 11 percent, there are a lot 
of things we could do to help to begin to bring some sense back into 
American capitalism.
  It was capitalism that worked before. It worked. Henry Ford 
recognized it when he said, ``I really need these people to make more 
money to buy my cars.''
  Mr. BONIOR. So he paid them 5 bucks an hour.
  Mr. OWENS. That was the basic principle that ought to be the bedrock 
of American capitalism, and they are throwing it away because we are 
not producing workers that can buy the products any more.
  Mr. KUCINICH. I remember a time when a label that said ``made in 
America'' was something you could not help but see no matter where you 
went, and now it is difficult when you shop for goods and check for a 
label to find things that are made in this country. Again, if they are 
made in America, somebody has made them, they had a job, and they were 
supporting a family.
  And I want to stay on that because, to me, the essence of supporting 
the Democratic tradition in America is to make sure that people have 
jobs.
  I take issue with our friends over at the Fed. In a Democratic 
society, I do not think there is any such thing as a certain amount of 
unemployment necessary to the functioning of the economy. The fact of 
the matter is that in a Democratic society, if we want to maintain that 
democracy, we have to make sure people have a chance to participate 
through their jobs and with a decent wage level.
  That is what NAFTA has affected. There is a myth. People talk about 
the benefits of NAFTA. We have heard people say that exports to Mexico 
have increased. That is true, but what they do not tell us is that the 
imports have increased at a higher rate so, therefore, the trade 
deficit grows and the job loss continues.
  We will hear people say that the Mexican workers have a better life. 
Well, that is not necessarily true. Because what has happened, and this 
will surprise many people, people think that it is the Mexican workers 
that are benefiting. Not necessarily true. In 1994, before the peso 
collapsed, real hourly wages were 30 percent lower than in 1980, in 
Mexico. After the peso fell, the wages fell another 25 percent.
  I know that the gentleman from Michigan has tracked this. Listen to 
this. The earnings in the maquiladora sector are only 60 percent of the 
former manufacturing sector. So the Mexican workers are being attacked 
as well.
  Mr. BONIOR. I was down in Mexico, in Tijuana, on the border, in the 
maquiladora area about 6 weeks ago, and I had the chance to talk with 
workers, visit their villages and their colonia. They work at very 
modern facilities. The Hyundai Company from Korea and Samsung from 
Korea and Panasonic. These are new plants, efficient.
  These workers are good workers, they work hard, but they get paid $5 
a day. 5 bucks a day. And they live in just very terrible conditions. 
Their housing is not good. They live, as I said earlier, in situations 
where the water that they bathe in and drink is contaminated. The 
American Medical Association called it a cesspool of infectious 
disease.
  These corporations do nothing about establishing any type of a tax 
base to improve the environment, to improve wages or health conditions. 
I talked to one leader of a colonia, that is a village, where most of 
the people worked at this factory, and he told me that a lot of his 
friends and relatives in this village were losing fingers and hands 
because the line was going so fast. Enough to alarm people. It was not 
just one or two.
  So since there was no real union representation, they decided to shut 
the place down for a couple of hours one day to protest. Of course, he 
was fired as the leader. He eventually ended up in jail when he tried 
to form an independent union.
  That is what these people are up against. They cannot buck an 
indifferent government and a corporate mentality that just does not 
want to deal with this at all. That is the hedge. That is the wedge, I 
should say, which our workers are competing against. It is this drive 
to the lowest standard, as the gentleman from Vermont has said. What we 
need to do is raise their standard up to our level.
  Mr. KUCINICH. And that is something that certainly fast track must be 
challenged to do, but it does not do that. It does not provide for the 
kinds of worker and environmental protections which we need to see 
established so that we do not find our standards under attack.
  Mr. BONIOR. These trade agreements have all kinds of wonderful 
protection for property. Intellectual properties, CD's, all this type 
of stuff. We have an agreement with Mexico where we can go to jail if 
we do that, if we pirate the stuff. When it comes to properties, there 
are sanctions and they are tough. But when it comes to people and the 
environment, there is nothing on the books to protect them.
  Mr. KUCINICH. The importance of us taking a stand on this cannot be 
repeated enough, because I remember when I was first starting my 
career, back in the city of Cleveland, and as all politicians do, I 
went through a crowd and shook hands, and I remember some of the older 
men in particular who worked in the assembly lines. I would shake 
hands, but occasionally someone would come up and they would be missing 
fingers or part of their hand was gone or part of an arm was gone, or 
maybe they lost sight of an eye because a piece of steel went into it 
or something at work.

[[Page H1975]]

  We realized in this country over a period of decades that it was 
important to maintain certain safe working conditions and America 
helped set world standards for that. We were the ones, because of the 
standards we set, which gave workers everywhere a chance to be better 
protected on the job and, therefore, also help industry become more 
efficient because they were not losing the services of workers who were 
performing needed work and did not want to interrupt it through injury. 
So through a whole series of laws, occupational safety acts and through 
acts that dealt with safety in the workplace and environmental laws, we 
were able to guarantee that workers would have a little bit of 
protection on the job.

  Now, what happens if we do not keep that standard up there, that 
standard starts to slip? Then we are back to the days where people are 
not safe in the workplace.
  Mr. SANDERS. If I can interrupt for a moment, it is not a question of 
is it happening. It is happening. Let us not be naive about this. What 
is going on now is the standard of living of the average American 
worker is in serious decline. The gap between the rich and the poor is 
growing wider. The control of the political parties is growing sharper 
by the very wealthy.
  Ultimately, I think as a nation, we have to ask ourselves how much is 
enough? When does it end? How much do they want: 209 times more than 
the workers, 500 times more than their workers? Will we hear a movement 
here to bring back slavery? When does it end?
  We have people in this country, in my State, that are not working one 
job, they are working two jobs and three jobs, as the gentleman from 
Michigan said. I have met a husband and wife who hardly ever see each 
other. They are both working three part-time jobs. When does it end?
  This is a wealthy country. This is a great country. But we need 
policy so that we redevelop our manufacturing sector; we create decent 
paying jobs in this country. With all of the new technology, the 
working hours should go down, should they not? With all these new 
machines, people should be producing more.
  Mr. BONIOR. And working less.
  Mr. SANDERS. And working less. Yet what is happening? Just the 
opposite is happening. And what is the end result? The end result is 
corporate profits soar, CEO salaries soar, and distribution of wealth 
becomes more and more unfair.
  Mr. OWENS. We had a capitalism that worked for both the owners and 
the managers and the corporations and the workers. We had a capitalism 
that worked. Common sense will tell us that the present measures that 
are being undertaken, the abuses by the corporate powers, are going to 
destroy that capitalism.
  I think one appeal we can make to the American people and the 
American voters is to say enough is enough. We will put some chains on 
the abilities of corporations to dictate how our economy is run.
  We need to begin right away to make the necessary laws, to stop the 
tremendous abuse of power that is taking place. We need to exercise 
common sense and say we will not take conditions like the present post 
office is about to negotiate for a single source for the postal 
uniforms. We should say to the post office, ``No, we demand those 
uniforms be made in this country. Do not go all over the world for 
these things.'' The policeman, the post office man, whatever uniforms 
are being made, we should demand that they be made in this country.
  There are a lot of other common sense arrangements that we should 
start demanding now before we move to try to repeal NAFTA and GATT and 
some of these other laws. We must wake up because the hour is quite 
late.
  Mr. BONIOR. The tragedy about all these trade issues, to me, is that 
we are moving backwards to the 19th century. We are establishing wages 
and working standards and human rights standards that are over 100 
years old and that our mothers and our fathers and our ancestors and 
grandparents fought very hard to change.
  People struggled hard to get a livable wage in this country, to get 
the right to organize, the right to strike, the right to collective 
bargaining, to establish a lot of the things in the environment that 
were important to us. And we are just kind of giving it all away 
because we are moving to this lower standard. We are moving to a lower 
standard.
  This is the most important fight I have been involved with since I 
have been in elected political life, and it is up to us, I think, to 
try to demonstrate and to show our colleagues and the country that we 
are in a very, very serious slide unless we develop some moral force 
and a countervailing force to this runaway greed.
  The capitalist system is what we have, and it works well when it 
works together with workers and the community. But when workers and the 
community are not part of the equation, what we see is what we find in 
our society today, and I do not think many people like it.
  So I thank my colleagues for joining me this evening. I guess our 
time is just about up, and I appreciate their efforts. If they have a 
last word or two, I would be delighted to entertain it.
  Mr. SANDERS. I thank the gentleman for organizing this special order. 
We are fighting for our lives, we are fighting for our parents, we are 
fighting for our kids, and I would hope the American people would get 
actively involved in this struggle.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, after 3 years, we need to ask 
the question: Has NAFTA been fair to the American people? Would its 
expansion be fair to workers and the environment? Would it be fair to 
American consumers? Based on the past 3 years, we'd have to say, 
``no.''
  The basic premise of free trade--that the manufacturer who makes the 
best product at the cheapest price wins--does not constitute fair trade 
unless consumers know what they are buying. Otherwise, that cheap price 
may mask dreadful working conditions, inadequate pay, exploitation of 
children or environmental practices that, were they known, would cause 
American consumers to make other purchase decisions: To avoid Mexican 
tomatoes sprayed with pesticides banned in the United States; to refuse 
to purchase vegetables picked by children who work in the fields 
instead of going to school; to reject tuna harvested by slaughtering 
thousands of dolphins.
  Most of us remember the TV commercials ``Look for the union label.'' 
Americans took that message to heart, and many shop specifically for 
products labeled ``Made in USA.'' Even in those cases where consumers 
purchase imported goods, however, they have a right--and some would 
argue an obligation--to know the conditions under which merchandise has 
been manufactured, and to avoid purchasing products manufactured under 
conditions considered abhorrent in this country.
  NAFTA is premised on the notion that consumers, not governments, 
should make decisions about what to purchase. But consumers cannot make 
those choices unless they are provided full information about the 
products offered to them. And make no mistake: When we purchase 
products manufactured under shocking conditions, we are encouraging 
those conditions to persist with our dollars.
  It seems like a simple premise: American consumers have a right to 
know what they're buying.
  Who can argue with it? The United States is the most sought-after 
market in the world. Americans purchase more food, more clothing, more 
cars, and more toys than anyone else in the world. It would follow that 
we'd like to choose our purchases wisely. What manufacturer or retailer 
wouldn't support the consumers' ``right to know''?

  The sad truth is, many manufacturers do not support that right, and 
neither do some high in our own government who should know better.
  Two weeks ago, while the parents of Michigan schoolchildren were 
still reeling from an outbreak of hepatitis traced to Mexican 
strawberries, Members of Congress from California and Florida 
introduced legislation to require that the country of origin be clearly 
labeled for all fresh fruits and vegetables sold in the United States.
  Who could disagree? Consumers should know whether their strawberries 
came from Mexico or California, or whether their tomatoes were grown in 
Florida or Chile. But amazingly, it's not at all that simple--because 
importers and many retailers--and some in our own government--don't 
want the American people to know where their purchases come from, and 
they certainly don't want you to know how they were grown or made. 
Because they know--and the polls indicate--that, given accurate 
information about the effects of a product on the environment, 
children, women, or worker rights, most consumers will purchase 
responsibly.
  Does all this sound melodramatic? Let's look at the facts.

[[Page H1976]]

  Right now, retailers and importers--led by the American Frozen Food 
Institute--are vehemently opposing requirements to label frozen foods 
with the country of origin on the front of the package, where consumers 
can see it clearly at the time of purchase. In fact, Canada has already 
filed a protest against such labeling. Why? Because other countries 
believe clear, easy-to-read, conspicuous labels are a ``nontariff trade 
barrier.'' In other words, American consumers may choose not to 
purchase an imported item.
  Nontariff trade barriers are trade-speak for anything that might help 
American consumers to choose American-made or American-grown goods over 
foreign products. And under the rules of free trade, nontariff trade 
barriers are illegal. In fact, under the rules of free trade as imposed 
by NAFTA, anything that restricts trade in any way is illegal--and that 
includes information labels on where and how your purchase was made, 
harvested, or grown.

  If Mexico has its way, and we expand NAFTA to other Latin American 
nations, American consumers will be unable to determine where the next 
load of hepatitis-infected strawberries came from, and they'll no 
longer be able to assure their children that their tuna fish sandwich 
wasn't caught at Flipper's expense.
  Within the next few weeks, Congress will be voting on a bill that 
will change the meaning of the famous Dolphin-Safe label found on every 
can of tuna in this country for the past 7 years. Dolphins will be 
chased with helicopters and high-speed boats, caught in nets, seriously 
injured, mothers separated from their calves--and as long as no 
dolphins are observed to die, that tuna will be labeled ``safe'' for 
dolphins.
  Why?
  Because Mexico insists on it. Mexico is well aware that American 
consumers will not choose to purchase tuna caught by harming dolphins; 
therefore, to gain a large share of the U.S. tuna market, they are 
lobbying to dupe American consumers into purchasing tuna labeled with a 
redefined ``Dolphin Safe'' label.
  The Administration, supporting this change, offers a thin defense for 
their capitulation to Mexico: the Administration asserts that no 
studies have been conducted to indicate that the capture method was not 
safe for dolphins. Applying this view to other products would result in 
the application of a ``Child Safe'' label to toys provided that no 
studies have been conducted to prove them harmful to children. This is 
a sweeping and damaging precedent for other U.S. labeling laws designed 
to protect and inform American consumers.
  This is where NAFTA has brought us.
  Now, I do not pretend that these problems exist only in other 
nations. Just last week, I joined with human rights and labor groups to 
release a report documenting the systematic exploitation of foreign 
workers--mostly young women--in the sweatshops and other manufacturing 
industries located in our own territory of the Northern Mariana 
Islands. My legislation would compel that territory to meet Federal 
standards for minimum wage and immigration, and would deny 
manufacturers there the right to continue to use the ``Made in USA'' 
label on their products unless they were manufactured in full 
compliance with our own labor laws.

  I conducted that investigation and introduced that bill for the same 
reasons that motivate me on NAFTA and international trade: American 
consumers should not inadvertently promote and support, with their 
dollars, the exploitation of workers, or the rape of the environment, 
or other practices that we will not tolerate in this country and should 
not subsidize in the name of ``free trade.'' The trade may be free, but 
the workers sure aren't.
  Let's face the fact that there are nations and there are businesses 
that rely on the exploitation of children, women, or the environment to 
attract investment in their country. And let's face the fact that these 
nations rely on the rules and rhetoric of the free trade game to pull 
all of us down to the lowest common denominator. The American people 
should be outraged.


            UNION JOBS LOST DUE TO CUTS IN DEFENSE SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. WELDON] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to focus 
on several major concerns of mine. But let me say at the outset before 
beginning my discussions that I am of the other party from the 
gentlemen who just appeared in the well and spoke against NAFTA, but I 
as a Republican opposed NAFTA, voted against NAFTA, and even more than 
that, appealed the ruling of the Chair on the bailout of Mexico which 
the President and the Speaker and the majority leader all had agreed 
should not come to a floor vote in this House and which we were not 
given privy to vote on.
  I think the loss of jobs in this country because of the North 
American Free Trade Agreement is very pronounced. It has certainly hurt 
the northeastern Midwestern area, the rust belt area, and it is 
something that continues.
  I would grant that the white collar industries have benefited from 
NAFTA, but by and large our manufacturing industry has, in fact, lost.
  But, Mr. Speaker, let me kind of move into the topic that I want to 
focus on tonight, because from the broadest possible context it, too, 
deals with the jobs issue, and for those Members who may be in their 
offices listening to the discussion of NAFTA, perhaps there is another 
segment of the job loss that was not even discussed over the past hour. 
That relates to the 1 million union men and women who lost their jobs 
over the past 5 years, Mr. Speaker, as this President cut defense 
spending to a level that we have not seen since before World War II.
  Now, we do not hear any talk coming out of the AFL-CIO leadership on 
this issue, and we do not hear much talk coming out of the mainstream 
side of the opposition on this issue, because they have largely not 
been supportive of stabilizing our defense industrial base. But let us 
talk about that impact, Mr. Speaker, as I start off my 1-hour session 
this evening.
  Over the past 5 years, under this administration, over 1 million 
American workers have lost their jobs, workers who worked for large 
defense companies, small machine shops, subcontractors, and because of 
the cuts that this Congress and this administration have imposed, 
largely through an administration totally unsupportive of adequate 
defense spending, 1 million union workers have become unemployed.

                              {time}  2045

  These are not the fat cat CEO's that we heard about being discussed 
during the previous hour. These are UAW workers, these are IUE workers, 
these are machinists workers, these are the building trades workers who 
do in fact the bulk of our construction work at our military sites 
around the country that are required under Davis-Bacon prevailing wage 
laws to be given a priority in terms of the jobs that are provided 
through our military construction budget.
  We have not heard the AFL-CIO issue a peep about the loss of these 1 
million jobs nationwide. Yet these workers too, Mr. Speaker, were 
paying their union dues, these workers too were out there concerned 
about their families and being able to feed their kids, but nothing 
came out of the AFL-CIO or this administration to protect those workers 
and the loss of their jobs.
  I will grant, Mr. Speaker, that it is a different world today. I 
would argue that one could make the case that it is actually more 
destabilized today than it was when we in fact had Communist domination 
of the former Soviet Union. Then there are those, Mr. Speaker, who 
would say we are spending so much more on the military today that it is 
outlandish, that it is outrageous.
  Let me take a moment, Mr. Speaker and talk about defense spending, 
because I think we have to put things into perspective. For those of 
our constituents who are thinking that we are spending so much more 
money on the military today, let me do a very simple and basic 
comparison. There are two basic ways that a country can compare its 
level of defense spending or its level of Federal spending in any 
particular given area. The first is what percentage of our gross 
national product as a nation is being used to fund our military.
  Let us take a period of time when we were at relative peace. The 
1960's, when John Kennedy was President, we were at peace. It was after 
the Korean war and yet it was before the Vietnam war. We were not 
involved in a major international conflict. During those Kennedy years, 
Mr. Speaker, we were spending 9 percent of our gross national product 
on the defense budget. In fact, 52 cents of every Federal dollar coming 
into Washington went back to pay for the military, 52 cents of every 
Federal dollar. That was during John Kennedy's era.
  What about today? In today's budget, Mr. Speaker, we are spending 
less than 3 percent of our gross national product on the military, and 
we are spending 16 cents of the Federal tax dollar coming

[[Page H1977]]

into Washington on the military. Anyone who would compare numbers I 
think would admit that is a substantial decrease in the total amount of 
Federal revenues that we are spending on the military. As we have drawn 
down that military, we have in fact drawn down a significant number of 
jobs. But there are those who say, well, out of that 16 cents that we 
are spending of the Federal tax dollar on the military, it is providing 
so much money for these big corporations.
  Let us look at that issue, also, Mr. Speaker, because back when John 
Kennedy was the President, we did not have an all-volunteer military. 
Kids were drafted out of high school, 17, 18, 19 years of age. They 
were drafted and they served for far less than the minimum wage. In 
fact, it was 10, 15 cents an hour. They were required to serve their 
country for a period of 2 years. Today, Mr. Speaker, we no longer pay 
people peanuts to serve in the military. We have an All-Volunteer 
Force. Our kids in the service today, Mr. Speaker, in fact our men and 
women, are very well educated, many of them have college degrees, they 
have technical training. In fact most of them have families. They have 
spouses, they have children.
  So, therefore, Mr. Speaker, to support the new military we have 
today, a much larger percentage of that 16 cents goes to pay for 
education, health care costs, housing costs, benefits and all of those 
quality of life issues that are important for our new military. So even 
though we are only spending 16 cents of the Federal tax dollar on the 
military today as opposed to 52 cents when John Kennedy was President, 
a much larger portion of that 16 cents goes for the quality of life for 
the men and women who serve in the military.
  So when we talk about the defense budget, Mr. Speaker, we need to put 
things into perspective. When someone says there have been massive 
increases in defense spending, go tell that to the unemployed UAW 
worker who lost his or her job 2 years ago. Go tell that to the 
machinist who lost his or her job 3 years ago, or go tell it to the 
union member from the IUE who was displaced because his company was 
consolidated with another major defense company, or tell it to one of 
the building trades members who had their basic industry sold down the 
river because we have cut back so far in terms of military construction 
projects. The cutbacks in defense spending have been real, they have 
been substantive and they have caused a significant amount of turmoil 
in the lives of American people, not just a few hundred, not just a few 
thousand, but over 1 million men and women out of work. That does not 
include the cutbacks in the Pentagon itself. What I am talking about 
are the union workers across this country who have negatively been 
impacted by the cutbacks in defense spending.
  What can we do about this, Mr. Speaker? The President is driving all 
of this debate from the bully pulpit at the White House, and I want to 
end my comments later on this evening talking about how the President 
is using the bully pulpit to convey the wrong message to America and to 
our people. But let me talk about some options that we in the Congress 
are in fact pursuing. The President has some options in terms of 
defense spending, and I would support any one of these options.
  First of all, he could raise the top line in terms of the amount of 
money that we spend on the military, and I would vote for that and I 
would support it. I do not want a massive increase, but I do want a 
stable funding level, because the reason we have a strong military is 
not just to respond in wars but to deter aggression. There has never 
been a nation that has been attacked or taken down because it was too 
strong, and so a stable funding base for the military is the key number 
one priority that we should work for.
  I would support the President if he asked me to vote for additional 
money for the military, as this Congress provided in each of the last 2 
years. But the President has not yet said he would do that. There is a 
second alternative, Mr. Speaker, for the President. He could decrease 
the amount of money coming out of the Defense Department's budget for 
environmental mitigation. Most people do not realize this, Mr. Speaker, 
but as we have cut defense spending to 16 cents of the Federal tax 
dollar collected in Washington, we are currently spending $12 billion 
of that money not for guns and missiles, not for the salaries of our 
troops and not for the CEOs of the defense companies; we are spending 
$12 billion of that DOD money for what is called environmental 
remediation. In fact, much of that money is going to lawyers who are 
suing each other over how clean we are going to leave a former military 
site.
  What is especially troubling to me, Mr. Speaker, as someone who takes 
great pride in my pro-environmental voting record is that we have gone 
too far in this area. What was at one point in time a military base 
where the children of military personnel lived and played on the 
playgrounds and went to the schools on that base, as soon as that base 
has been closed through the base closing process, then we are told that 
that facility is unacceptable, that it is a danger, it is a toxic site. 
It was okay when the kids of those military personnel were there, but 
now all of a sudden it is being closed, we have to take extreme 
measures because that complex is no longer safe for human beings to be 
around.
  We do have to clean up sites, Mr. Speaker. Everyone acknowledges 
that. But $12 billion out of the DOD budget this year is too much of a 
price to pay when we have other needs that are currently not being met.
  So I have said to this President publicly that I will support him if 
he will work to help us reduce the amount of environmental spending 
coming out of the DOD bill. That would provide some support for these 
workers that we have heard about tonight who have been displaced from 
their jobs.
  There is a third alternative, also, Mr. Speaker, that I would 
support, and that is the need for this President to do more than just 
commit our troops around the world in terms of peacekeeping operations 
or stabilization operations. There was a huge debate on the floor of 
this House about whether or not we should commit to the President's 
decision to put our troops into Bosnia. The debate was not about 
whether or not we support America's need as the world leader to go into 
Bosnia with our allies. That was not the concern of most of our 
colleagues. The debate, Mr. Speaker, was why should the United States 
put 36,000 troops in the theater of operation of Bosnia when the 
Germans right next door are only committing 4,000 troops or perhaps the 
Japanese, who cannot provide troops, are not putting enough in the way 
of dollars in to support that operation?
  The problem in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, is that this 
administration has an internationalist foreign policy with an 
isolationist defense budget. There have been more deployments by this 
President in the last 5 years than in the previous 50 years, more 
deployments in the last 5 years than in the previous 50 years. Every 
time this President deploys our troops to Haiti, to Bosnia, to Somalia, 
to Macedonia, the taxpayers foot the bill. Where does that money come 
from? Since the President did not plan for any of those deployments, he 
goes into the defense budget and he robs the accounts to pay for the 
weapons systems that then cause these union workers to lose their jobs.
  That is unfair, Mr. Speaker, and so the third alternative for this 
President is to say that he will work with us so that when he commits 
to deploy our troops that he is willing to go out and get the support 
of our allies to help pay for that deployment. That is what President 
Bush did in Desert Storm. In fact, in Desert Storm the total cost of 
that operation was around $52 billion. The amount of money that we 
collected from our allies to help pay for that was around $54 billion. 
It was entirely funded by those people who benefited from our presence. 
That is not the case in Bosnia, and that is not the case in Haiti.
  In fact, we are going to be asked to vote in a few short days on a 
supplemental appropriations bill to provide more money for Bosnia. It 
is not again a question of paying our fair share, it is a question of 
why should the U.S. pay the brunt of this cost alone, especially when 
it has not been programmed in the defense budget and is simply robbing 
other programs that are important to the security of our kids as they 
serve around the world on the deployments made by this President.

[[Page H1978]]

  In fact, Mr. Speaker, we need to send a signal that while America 
will be a vital partner in helping to stabilize these regional 
conflicts, America cannot and should not go it alone in terms of 
funding these operations. We should not be the only entity in the world 
that picks up the tab.
  In fact, we found out in Haiti that we not only were paying for our 
troops, we were paying for the housing and food costs of other troops, 
in one case about 1,000 troops from Bangladesh. We found out in Bosnia 
that we were paying the housing and food costs of troops coming from 
other European and Scandinavian countries.
  Mr. Speaker, that is not what is in the best interests of our 
country, and that is not helping us maintain our defense industrial 
base and also these jobs that my colleagues talked about over the past 
hour that have been lost not just because of a free trade agreement 
like NAFTA, which I opposed, but also because of the unprecedented cuts 
in defense spending.
  There are some things this Congress is doing separate from this 
administration that I think we can be proud of, and I want to talk 
about those for a moment. We are looking at every possible opportunity 
to see where we can take the money that we are spending on the Defense 
Department and use that to help us solve other problems. In fact, Mr. 
Speaker, tomorrow we will have 2,000 of the Nation's emergency 
responders come to Washington. Many of them are already here this 
evening in their hotel rooms, perhaps watching our program this 
evening. They are coming to Washington because tomorrow evening we will 
have the Ninth Annual Congressional Fire and Emergency Services Caucus 
dinner.
  This dinner, Mr. Speaker, brings leaders from every State, from every 
large city and small community of those people who day in and day out 
respond to our disasters, not just fires. These are the men and women 
who respond to the Murrah office building in Oklahoma City, to the 
World Trade Center that was bombed, to the recent floods in North 
Dakota and the Midwest floods that occurred, to the Long Island 
wildlands fires, the California forest fires, the hurricanes in Florida 
and the Carolinas and the earthquakes in California. These are the men 
and women who day in and day out respond to every disaster this country 
has. They represent 1.2 million men and women in 32,000 organized 
departments across this Nation, in every county and every city. They 
are here tomorrow so that we can celebrate who they are and what they 
do.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, you will be our keynote speaker tomorrow 
evening and you will follow the speakers we have had in the past. Last 
year we had Vice President Al Gore and we had Senate Majority Leader 
Bob Dole. The year before that we had President Clinton, and the year 
before that we had President Clinton. In previous years to President 
Clinton, we had President Bush, we had Vice President Quayle, we had 
Ron Howard and the entire cast of ``Backdraft'' the year that it was 
unveiled. It is our way of showing our thanks to these men and women 
who respond to our disasters day in and day out in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of these people are volunteers. They are not 
paid for what they do. It is kind of interesting, we just had the 
volunteerism summit in Philadelphia and up until I raised a lot of 
stink with the administration the volunteers were not even invited to 
participate in that event. They are the only group of volunteers that I 
know of each year in America that lose 80 to 100 of their people, who 
lose their lives in the course of performing their volunteer 
activities, because that is how many fire and emergency services 
personnel are killed each year. On average between 100 and 120 and on 
average between 80 and 100 of them are volunteer fire and EMS 
personnel. They will all be here tomorrow as we talk about how we can 
assist them.
  What does that have to do with the defense bill? Our military is our 
international defender. It is the group of people who protect us 
overseas. The fire and EMS people are our domestic defender. But there 
are many lessons that could be learned one to the other. So as a major 
part of our day tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, we are going to focus on that 
interaction, an interaction that began years ago that we continue 
today.

                              {time}  2100

  In fact, in the morning we will have a 1\1/2\ hour session where I 
have the leading research and development people from the Army, the 
Navy, the Air Force and the Marines and the Department of Defense and 
DARPA coming in, showcasing new technology that we are developing for 
terrorist incidents that can be made available for fire and EMS people 
in every city in the country. We are going to be showcasing resources. 
We are going to be showcasing training so that these men and women who 
are first responders in this country to every disaster will have the 
best possible tools and resources as they approach these situations on 
a day-to-day basis.
  As 12:45, Mr. Speaker, here in the Capitol, actually outside the 
Rayburn Office Building, we will showcase the new Marine Corps 
capability to deal with chemical and biological incidents. We will 
simulate a gas attack on one of the office buildings, and our Marine 
Corps special response team that was initiated in Congress last year 
will be deployed from Camp LeJeune, and they will come up and they will 
showcase the way they would handle an incident of this type in any city 
in America.
  Now that is a beginning of a process of bringing together our 
military with those domestic responders who have to meet these needs on 
a daily basis in our cities and our towns. So what are we doing with 
the military? As we face the threat of terrorism in our cities and our 
towns, we are beginning to bring together the local emergency response 
personnel with the professionals and the Defense Department so that 
they can learn from one another, so that they have access to the 
resources that will allow them to respond to these situations wherever 
and whenever they might occur.
  In fact, we will also be announcing, Mr. Speaker, tomorrow a new 
series of legislative initiatives to assist the fire service. We will 
announce the fact that the Federal Communication Commission has decided 
to set aside the megahertz that are necessary to protect the 
communications capability of our emergency responders to the 21st 
century. We will be announcing a plan to allow the use of community 
development block grant monies, up to 25 percent to be used by local 
counties and cities to assist in fire and emergency planning and 
response. We will be announcing an effort to establish a national low-
interest loan program not to give money away, but to provide low-cost 
financing assistance so that local fire and EMS personnel can have the 
money available to them at a discounted rate to buy the equipment and 
the materials that we are going to showcase that are being developed 
through our military today.
  We are also going to announce efforts to establish an expedited 
process for excess Federal property so that local fire and EMS 
personnel across the country can get access to that surplus Defense 
Department material when it first becomes available. We are also going 
to be announcing the establishment of an effort to have in place a 
national urban search and rescue training center and a national 
chemical biological training center. And finally, Mr. Speaker, we will 
be announcing plans to complete a study as to what it would take to 
connect to the Internet all of our emergency response institutions in 
America, all 32,000 of them.
  The point here is, Mr. Speaker, that, yes, we are cutting back on the 
Defense Department's budget, but we are looking at every possible 
opportunity to showcase defense technology to be used and applied in 
our inner cities, to be used and applied in our small communities so 
that where we have training and where we have preparation taking place 
that can benefit and help us and we have disasters, that is in fact 
taking place on a regular ongoing basis. That is saving the taxpayers 
money, and it is making the best possible usage of our Defense 
Department investment.
  There is another area, Mr. Speaker, that we are also working on that 
is giving us a great return as we look to find ways to improve the 
investment in our Defense Department. In fact, last year in a series of 
hearings that I chaired as a chairman of the Research and Development 
Subcommittee, I found out

[[Page H1979]]

that we had nine separate Federal agencies that were responsible for 
studying the oceans through oceanographic efforts, nine separate 
Federal agencies. I learned through our hearings, Mr. Speaker, one 
hearing in Washington, one up in Rhode Island and one out in 
California, that these agencies were not coordinating their effort, 
that each of them was doing oceanographic work, but none of them were 
sharing information and technology in a real-time way.
  I also learned, Mr. Speaker, that the largest funding for 
oceanographic work is done by the Navy. The Navy does this because it 
is important for our Navy to understand the mapping of the ocean floor. 
It is important for our Navy to understand sonar for transmitting data 
and information through the oceans. It is important for our Navy to 
understand literal waters. And so in convening these hearings we found 
out the Navy, in fact, through the Office of the Oceanographer, is 
leading the country in terms of research in the oceans. Yet we found 
out that we are missing a golden opportunity, because while the Navy 
was leading that effort dollar-wise, much of that data that is not 
sensitive was not being transmitted to NOAA or to NASA or to the Fish 
and Wildlife Service or to other Federal agencies that have similar 
responsibilities in understanding the ocean ecosystem and understanding 
why fishing stocks are declining around the world and understanding why 
coral reefs are being hampered and hurt or understand why we are having 
extensive pollution of the waters of the world.
  So with that in mind, last year Congressman Patrick Kennedy and I 
introduced the Oceans Partnership Act that for the first time would 
bring together all nine Federal agencies working with the Department of 
Defense and the Navy. Senator Lott worked the bill on the Senate side, 
and the bottom line is, Mr. Speaker, that bill is now law. The 
President signed that into law when he signed into law the Defense 
Authorization Act, and this year we now have a new oceans partnership 
arrangement. All nine Federal agencies are together under a steering 
committee chaired by the Secretary of the Navy so that now in this 
country, through our Federal Government, not only is the military doing 
what it needs to do to understand the oceans, but wherever and whenever 
possible they are sharing that technology and data with the 
environmental movement and with our environmental agencies so that we 
maximize the return on the taxpayers' dollars.
  The bottom line is we get more benefit for that. The taxpayers get 
more out of their dollar. It is not just for the military, for the hard 
cold facts of what it needs to understand to go to war or to prepare 
for war, but it also provides us with the resources to better 
understand and deal with the environment.
  With that in mind, Mr. Speaker, in this city on May 19 and 20 and 21 
I am pleased to announce that we will be hosting the world's largest 
ever conference on the oceans entitled ``Oceans and Security.'' This 3-
day conference is being co-hosted by ACOPS, the Advisory Council on 
Protecting the Seas of which I am the U.S. vice president, COERI which 
is the Council of Oceanographic and Educational Research Institutions, 
which represents every major oceanographic and marine science 
institution in America from Scripts to Woods Hole, and GLOBE which is 
an organization entitled Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment 
where legislators from the Japanese Diet, the Russian Duma, the U.S. 
Congress and the European Parliament come together at least twice a 
year on common environmental agendas. These three groups are all coming 
to Washington, and on those 3 days in the House Office Building, the 
Longworth Building, and in the Senate Office Building and on this Hill, 
we will have 300 delegates representing 45 nations who are coming here 
to focus for 3 days on how we can cooperate on oceans and security.

  Now when we talk about security, we are not just talking about 
military security. We are talking about food security, we are talking 
about environmental security, we are talking about research and defense 
and economic security.
  So for those 3 days we will have high-level delegations from China, 
from Russia, from the South American countries, Central American 
countries, European countries, the Middle East, Canada and Mexico, all 
coming together to focus on how we can cooperate, how our militaries 
can cooperate and how we, as nations, can cooperate to protect the 
oceans. In the end it will be a better investment of the American 
taxpayers' dollars to further assist us in understanding what we can do 
collectively with the world community to protect the oceans of the 
world and provide the security in the four areas that I have mentioned 
tonight.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, Vice President Gore will give the speech on 
Tuesday evening of the conference right here in Statuary Hall, and on 
Monday evening at what promises to be one of the most historical events 
in this city, Woods Hole Laboratory is bringing the newest 
oceanographic research ship, paid for by U.S. tax dollars through the 
Navy, to Washington where it will be unveiled in Alexandria. The ship 
will be tied up here for 3 days, we will be erecting tents, and on 
those 3 days, especially on Monday evening, we will unveil the 
Atlantis. We will take Members of Congress and the foreign delegates on 
board the ship, we will have on board the deep-diving submersible 
Alvin, we will showcase the technologies that we are working on to 
better understand and protect the world's oceans.
  The bottom line of these 3 days, Mr. Speaker, is that you and Senator 
Lott who will both be keynote speakers of the conference, Vice 
President Gore representing both parties, about 40 Members of Congress 
representing both parties, and representatives of 45 nations will come 
together to talk about how we can cooperate on understanding the oceans 
of the world, and, Mr. Speaker, the facilitator is the Department of 
Defense; again, Mr. Speaker, the primary purpose being to provide our 
security, but showing that we in fact can benefit in a number of areas 
from that investment that we are making in terms of the military.
  Now in each of these cases, Mr. Speaker, in the antiterrorism 
cooperation that we will showcase tomorrow on the Hill and later in May 
in the environmental context that we will showcase at the oceans 
conference, this Congress is taking the lead in showing that, yes, we 
want to find ways to better spend our DOD money. But, Mr. Speaker, we 
cannot continue to have a course that takes us in a direction of 
cutting back so dramatically the defense resources for this Nation as 
we have seen over the past 5 years.
  Mr. Speaker, let me shift for a moment and talk about that spending. 
I mentioned terrorism is one of our top priorities, and it is. Members 
on both sides of the aisle feel very strongly that we have to do more 
to protect our cities and our towns from the threat of a terrorist 
attack, and we are going to show some of that technology and that 
cooperation tomorrow. But, Mr. Speaker, one of the second biggest 
threats that many of us feel that we face is from the proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction and especially the proliferation of 
missiles.
  Mr. Speaker, if there has been one area where this Congress has 
disagreed more fundamentally with the President then any other area, it 
has been the area of missile defense. Over the past 2 years, Mr. 
Speaker, I have seen unprecedented votes in this body in disagreement 
with this President on missile defense spending. In fact, 2 years ago 
we plused up in our defense bill $1 billion over what the President 
requested in our missile defense accounts. We did the same thing last 
year. In the 11 years that I have been here, Mr. Speaker, I have never 
seen a defense bill, and I do not think we have ever had one in recent 
history where 301 Members of Congress voted in the affirmative, not 
just Republicans, but most of our Democrat colleagues, to support a 
defense bill that made a statement to this administration, and that 
statement was a very simple one. It was:
  Mr. President, you are not focusing enough on the threat that is 
there and emerging in terms of missile proliferation, and you need to 
understand that.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, that is an important point that I want to focus on 
because this President has been driving the debate nationwide that says 
that we do not need to focus on defense, the world is so much more 
safer today, There is no longer a threat to the security of the 
American people. While I do

[[Page H1980]]

not want to go to the other extreme, Mr. Speaker, and create some kind 
of a Cold War mentality, because I think that is equally wrong, the 
President is doing this country a terrible disservice. One hundred 
forty-five times the President has made speeches where he has included 
the following phrase. In fact, three of those speeches were right up at 
the podium right in front of where you stand, Mr. Speaker. In three 
State of the Union speeches, our President has made this statement. 
Looking at the American people through national television, he said:
  You can sleep well tonight because for the first time in the last 50 
years there are no Russian missiles pointed at your children.
  Mr. Speaker, as the Commander in Chief, the President knows he cannot 
prove that. We have had testimony in our House committees. In fact, the 
chief of Russian targeting for Russia has testified on national TV that 
they will not allow us to have access to their targeting processes, 
just as we will not allow the Russians to have access to ours. But on 
145 occasions, three times from the well of this Chamber, the Commander 
in Chief of this country has said you can sleep well, there are no 
missiles pointed at our children. Yet, Mr. Speaker, he cannot verify 
that. He cannot prove it. And, Mr. Speaker, furthermore, if he could 
prove it, which he cannot, and which his generals including General 
Shalikashvili have said on the record he cannot prove; if he could 
prove it, all of our experts on the record have said that you can 
retarget a long-range ICBM in less than 10 seconds.

                              {time}  2115

  But do you see, Mr. Speaker, the point is not so much that particular 
issue, but when the President makes that speech 145 times, 3 times in 
front of a national audience, on college campuses, in front of national 
groups, he uses the bully pulpit to create the perception that there is 
no longer a threat to the American people or allies. And that is so 
deadly wrong, Mr. Speaker, because it drives the American people into 
believing that we have a false sense of security. And once again, I do 
not want to recreate the cold war, but I want the President to be 
honest in his assessment of what the threat is worldwide. And that is 
not an honest assessment, Mr. Speaker, at least not according to the 
key generals who run the Pentagon.
  When the President makes that speech, he drives all of our 
constituents into believing that we are doing a disservice when we want 
to stabilize defense spending, that we are doing the American taxpayers 
a disservice when we want to protect programs that provide those jobs 
my colleagues talked about that were lost over the past 5 years. We do 
not want to dramatically increase defense spending; we want to 
stabilize it.
  Mr. Speaker, there is currently a major struggle going on between 
this Congress and both Members of the Democrat and Republican Parties 
and this President over how fast and how quickly we should deploy 
missile defense systems. Now this administration has come out publicly, 
Mr. Speaker, and they said they are for theater missile defenses.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, their new projections are that we will not have 
a new system in place until at the earliest 2004. Let me recount the 
importance of this for my colleagues, Mr. Speaker. In 1991, we had the 
largest loss of life that this country has experienced in recent years 
in one military incident, when our young, brave soldiers were killed in 
that desert in Saudi Arabia by that low-quality Scud missile. They were 
killed because we had no system that could warn them or take out that 
one Scud missile.
  When those 28 kids were killed, many of them from my home State of 
Pennsylvania, Congress was in a state of shock. Congress said, why do 
we not have a system in place? So the Congress, in a bipartisan move, 
passed the Missile Defense Act of 1991. Now that act was, rather 
simply, Mr. Speaker, it said two things: First of all, that the Defense 
Department shall deploy a highly effective theater missile defense 
system as soon as possible to protect our troops.
  The second part of that act said that by the year 1996, America 
should deploy a national missile defense system. Well, Mr. Speaker, 
1996 came and went. We are now in 1997. We are still fighting that 
battle even though it was the law of the land.
  Let me tell you what the most recent projections are. The 
administration is now telling us that they will be lucky to field our 
first highly effective theater missile defense system in the year 2004. 
What that means, Mr. Speaker, is, if the administration is right, and 
they are now hedging on that date, that it will have taken us 13 years 
from the date those kids were killed in Saudi Arabia until we have a 
system deployed that can prevent a future killing of our kids from a 
low-quality Scud missile.
  Now the missile defense organization, the Pentagon tells us they 
probably cannot even make 2004, that is probably too optimistic. Now is 
the threat greater today than it was in 1991? Unfortunately, Mr. 
Speaker, it is our intelligence community that told us a few years ago 
not to worry, there were no emerging threats coming forward that we 
have to worry about, we will handle the Scud missiles that are used, we 
will take them out, even though we did not take out all the Iraqi 
launchers both during and after the invasion of Kuwait and our response 
to that invasion.
  But let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, about some very troubling events 
that have occurred over the past several weeks. First of all, the media 
has been reporting that Iran has now deployed a version of a Russian 
rocket called a Katyusha rocket that has a range of around 800 to 900 
kilometers, which means it could hit Israel and many of our key allies 
in that part of the world. That was a development that many of us were 
not expecting, according to what our intelligence committee told us.
  Even more troubling, Mr. Speaker, are the press accounts that are 
coming out from Japanese sources and some United States sources that 
tell us that the newest missile coming out of North Korea, the No Dong 
missile, that we were told would not be deployed probably until the 
turn of the century, is now in fact either deployed or ready to be 
deployed by North Korea after just one test.
  What does that mean, Mr. Speaker? That means every one of our 70-
some-thousand kids, when I say kids I mean our troops, that are 
currently stationed in South Korea and Japan and in Okinawa are within 
the range of that missile that we know can go as far as 1,300 
kilometers.
  That means, Mr. Speaker, that we now have a risk either today or very 
shortly that we cannot defend against because we have not taken the 
aggressive steps that this Congress mandated to deploy a theater 
missile defense system quickly, and we are going to have to wait until, 
at the earliest, 2004 to have that highly effective system in place.
  Mr. Speaker, that is the heart of the debate over defense spending in 
this Congress between this Congress and this administration. Now we are 
also concerned, Mr. Speaker, because the administration does not want 
to work with us on a national missile defense system. They told us last 
year they were pursuing a three-plus-three system, 3 years of 
development and 3 years to deploy a system that would protect America's 
mainland.
  The American people and my constituents back home cannot believe and 
cannot imagine that America, with all of its might, has no system today 
that can defend our country against an accidental launch of a long-
range ICBM coming from Russia or China or any other rogue nation. You 
said that is not true currently, we have to have that capability. And I 
say no.
  As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Research and 
Development, I will tell you pointblank, we have no system or 
capability today to take out any incoming missile. Now the 
administration would say we do not need it, we have treaties. The ABM 
Treaty, Mr. Speaker, only applies to the United States and to Russia. 
Even though the administration is trying to expand it to include other 
former Russian states, it does not apply to them. So it does not apply 
to North Korea, to China, it does not apply to the rogue nations that 
are trying to get missiles that said they would use them if they had 
them against us; it only applies to us and Russia.
  So, therefore, Mr. Speaker, we cannot rely on the ABM Treaty. We need 
a

[[Page H1981]]

physical capability to defend our country. Do we need a massive system 
that the media has trivialized in the past that would protect our 
entire country. We are not talking about that. We are talking about a 
very limited system that could protect us perhaps against five incoming 
missiles, that is all.

  Two years ago we pulled provisions in the defense bill to require 
that kind of system to be deployed by the year 2003, and the 
administration would not buy that. And today we are now looking at a 
situation we probably will not have a national missile defense 
capability until perhaps 2005. That is totally unacceptable, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Why do I say it is unacceptable? Am I fearful that the Russians are 
going to attack us? No, I am not. I worked with Russia perhaps as much 
as any Member of this body, and you know that, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I 
will be taking a delegation of our colleagues, bipartisan delegation to 
Moscow in May of this year for the second time I have been there this 
year. It will be my 9th or 10th trip. I share the new initiative with 
the Russian duma. My counterpart is the deputy speaker Mr. Shokhin. I 
want Russia to succeed.
  I am not concerned about Russia attacking us. But Mr. Speaker, as we 
all know, Russia is an unstable country today. Many of their military 
has not been paid for months. In fact, they are trying to sell off 
their hardware and technology. The evidence of the further reliance on 
their strategic weapons is such that, because their conventional 
military is suffering and because the Russians are fearful, they rely 
much more on their offensive strategic weapons than ever before in 
their history.
  Now what does that mean? That means a higher potential for risk of an 
accidental launch. Is there evidence of that? Just 2 years ago, Mr. 
Speaker, in January, the Russians have been notified by the Norwegians 
that Norway was going to launch a weather rocket to do some weather 
monitoring. The Russians were told in advance this was going to take 
place. The Russians, however, are so paranoid because of their 
conventional force breakdown; and, so, relying on their strategic force 
that when this weather rocket went off from Norway, the Russian 
defensive alert system put the entire country on an alert that would 
have caused within 60 seconds an offensive response.
  They admitted on the record in Moscow media and media all over the 
world, Boris Yeltsin admitted that it was one of the first times in 
recent years that the black box carried around by the President of 
Russia himself was activated in response to a weather rocket that they 
had notified the Russians they were going to launch in advance.
  That meant Russia was within 60 seconds of activating that response 
that all of us fear would have happened one day. Would it have been 
deliberate? No. But those are the kinds of concerns that we have in 
this country.
  Now there is also an attempt to sell a mobile version of Russia's 
most sophisticated rocket, called the SS-25, that can be hauled in the 
back of a trailer. They have over 400 of these launchers in Russia. How 
long is it going to take before one of those launchers gets in the 
hands of a Third World nation and then we have a threat that is not 
covered by the ABM Treaty that we have to be prepared to respond to?
  Those are the issues that we face, Mr. Speaker, and those are the 
issues that dominate our defense debate this year. Over the next 
several weeks, we will be moving into markup of the 1998 defense 
authorization bill. We are being very up front with the administration, 
Mr. Speaker; we do not want business as usual.
  Over the past 6 years, this administration has decimated the defense 
of our country, it has caused the loss of over a million jobs. We, in 
the Congress, have tried to make up for that. Each of the past 2 years, 
Democrats and Republicans alike joined together and plussed up $10 
billion 1 year and $5 billion in the other year to put money back into 
programs that our service chiefs said they could not live without. That 
is going to be the same battle this year, Mr. Speaker.
  It is not about parochial issues of weapon systems in Members' 
directs because 98 percent of the funds that we put in the defense 
addition last year and years before were items requested by other 
chiefs. In fact, General Shalikashvili briefed Secretary Perry last 
year, said to the Secretary, we need $60 billion just to buy 
replacement equipment for the military. We never saw that briefing in 
Congress.
  When Secretary Perry came in and briefed us in the House and the 
Senate, when he had Shalikashvili sitting next to him, unable to tell 
what he was really thinking or said, Secretary Perry said, we could 
live with $40 or $45 billion.
  What does that mean? That means 1 billion people have been cast out 
of their positions in this country all over America. But more 
important, it meant, Mr. Speaker, that we are jeopardizing the lives of 
our young soldiers.
  What do I mean by that, Mr. Speaker? I can tell you, as we slip 
programs out, as this administration does day after day after day, we 
drive up the cost of those programs and we make it so that they will 
not be into full production for 5, 10, or 15 years down the road. That 
is the battle we are facing this year.
  The administration wants to keep all these major programs alive. They 
want to build three new tactical aviation programs. They want to build 
the F-22, the joint strike fighter, the F18F. They want to build a new 
attack submarine. They want to build another aircraft carrier. They 
want to build the arsenal ship. They want to build the Comanche, the V-
22. They want to build the battlefield master program of the 21st 
century. And they want to do all of this with a budget that is 
impossible to meet the needs of the military today.
  What we are saying this year, Mr. Speaker, is you cannot do that. 
This President and this administration has got to say no to some 
programs. If they are not going to raise top-line defense numbers, if 
they are not going to cut into the vertical costs, if they are not 
going to help us get our allies to pay for the cost of our operations 
when we deploy our troops around the world, then they have got to cut 
some systems; they cannot keep treading water because we are holding 
companies' and workers' lives outside there thinking that some day down 
the road some new administration is going to rapidly increase defense 
spending.
  That is where the debate is coming down this year. We are doing our 
part, Mr. Speaker. We are trying to show ways where we can use defense 
activities to help us in other areas. I said two of them tonight, in 
the environmental area and in the area of terrorism. But that is still 
not enough, Mr. Speaker.
  We are in an impossible situation; and I would ask our colleagues, as 
we approach a debate on the defense bill, to understand that we are at 
a historical crossroads. If we are not going to find other ways to free 
up some money out of that 16 cents that we spent in this year's Federal 
tax dollar, then we have got to cut some programs and cause more people 
to lose their jobs or we have got to transfer more people out of the 
military because this administration will not address any one of the 
three areas that I talked about that would help us deal with this 
budget problem that we are facing this year. Cut the deployment rate or 
get our allies to pick up more of the cost of it. Cut the environmental 
costs or raise the top-line number.

                              {time}  2130

  If you do not do any of those three things, then you have no choice 
but to cut the troop strength, the end strength, which I know they do 
not want to do, or cut some big ticket programs. When you cut big 
ticket programs, I hope all of those AFL-CIO members out there who 
listened to the hour before me talk about NAFTA's impact will remember 
the 1 million brothers and sisters of theirs who were laid off over the 
past 5 years in defense plant after defense plant around this country. 
These were not people making 15 cents, these were people who were 
middle income Americans. These were UAW workers, machinist workers, IUE 
workers, building trades workers, all of them today who are out of a 
job.
  The hypocrisy of this administration, Mr. Speaker, scares me. But I 
want to say to this administration, because Members of both parties in 
this Congress have been trying to tell the story of what the threat is 
and what we must do to meet the need that is provided to us as a 
threat, how we must provide the dollar commitment to our troops

[[Page H1982]]

to fund these priorities that are identified as being critical to our 
military and also look for opportunities to share technology.
  Now I talked about what the impact is when we cut these programs. 
Well, let me give one example. The workhorse of the Marine Corps is the 
CH-46 helicopter. It has been the workhorse of the Marine Corps since 
the Vietnam War. We should have replaced the CH-46 10 years ago. We 
have now slipped the replacement program to a point where it is going 
to cost us $5 billion extra dollars. We are going to be flying CH-46 
helicopters when they are 55 years old. Now, what does that mean to a 
Marine?
  Well, Mr. Speaker, if the constituents that we serve have young sons 
who are flying Marine helicopters, they need to understand that those 
young kids flying those 46s during a combat situation have to carry 18 
troops. Oh, by the way, they cannot train carrying 18 troops, they only 
can carry 6 to 8 because of the age of the aircraft.
  Those young pilots, when they fly this CH-46 in a combat situation, 
have to be able to do evasive maneuvering. But Mr. Speaker, those young 
pilots cannot train doing evasive maneuvering because of the age of the 
aircraft.
  Mr. Speaker, those young pilots have to be able to fly at night in 
combat situations. But Mr. Speaker, because of the age of the aircraft, 
they have to put masking tape over the instrumentation panel so they 
can fly during evening hours.
  What does that mean? That means we have more accidents with CH-46s. 
That means we have more kids killed and more kids injured. So by 
slipping these programs out, Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about CEOs 
of companies, we are not even talking about jobs. We are talking about 
threatening the lives of those people who are there to protect our 
country and our allies. That is the worst possible decision that we 
could make, to delay a program that directly affects the life of a 
young person serving our military.
  Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to pay attention to the 
debate this year on the defense bill. I would encourage my colleagues 
tomorrow to come out and show their enthusiastic support for the 1.2 
million men and women who serve this is country as our domestic 
defenders, to look at some of the ways that we are involving the 
military in helping us deal with terrorism incidents. I would encourage 
our colleagues to come out on May 19, 20 and 21, the largest oceans 
conference ever, against showcasing our militaries taking a lead in 
helping to understand environmental problems.
  I would also encourage our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to get real. The 
defense spending in this country is at a critical crossroads. We must 
provide the support against this administration making further cuts in 
our defense budget. We must provide the bipartisan support we have had 
over the past 2 years to stand up and say no. Not because it is right 
for jobs, even though it is, and not because it is right for companies, 
even though it is, but because it is right for the kids who serve this 
Nation and who put their lives on the line every day.

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