[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 143 (Wednesday, October 22, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8980-H8981]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    FAST TRACK TREATY AUTHORIZATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Kolbe] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to take this five minutes to 
begin what I hope will be a constructive and important debate on the 
subject of fast track, a debate which I think will certainly rank with 
among the most important debates that this Congress will undertake this 
year or next year, whenever we finally do actually take this debate and 
cast a vote on fast track.
  I recognize in beginning this discussion tonight, and this will only 
be the beginning of a long discussion I think we need to have, that 
there are many Members in this body who have come to the Congress of 
the United States since the Congress last voted on any kind of 
substantive trade issue, an issue where the fast track was the essence 
of the debate. It also ranks as one of the most unusual, some would say 
arcane, but certainly one of the most complex pieces of legislation 
that

[[Page H8981]]

we have in our panoply of legislative tools.
  It ranks as that because it very uniquely delegates to the President 
certain responsibilities that normally Congress would not delegate to 
the President. It gives up certain powers of its own in order to get 
trade legislation enacted.
  During the course of the next several days and weeks, I hope that we 
can discuss the importance of trade, how the fast track process works, 
why fast track is an essential element to getting trade negotiations 
and trade agreements in place, why fast track does not represent 
something that will damage workers and consumers in this country, why, 
indeed, these trade agreements are essential, why it should be 
considered constitutional, why we should or should not consider it and 
what elements of labor and environmental considerations should be 
included in any kind of fast track negotiations, and, ultimately, how 
fast track and trade agreements can protect the U.S. health and safety 
standards.
  But today let me just begin with a little bit of background of where 
we have come from to get to this position today, where we now have a 
bill that has been reported from the Committee on Ways and Means, 
another bill in the other body that has been reported from the Senate 
Finance Committee, how we have gotten to this stage and why we are here 
today.
  Fast track is legislation that goes back more than 20 years, about 25 
years, to a time when we began to see that the complexity of trade 
negotiations required something that gave the President the authority 
to negotiate these kinds of agreements with other countries, and 
usually multiple numbers of countries, as we have found in the Uruguay 
round of GATT talks or the other multiple trade talks that preceded 
that.
  We decided we needed this kind of fast track authority because the 
complexity of the negotiation itself meant that at the end of the 
negotiation, we had to be able to submit something to the Congress of 
the United States that would be voted yes or no.
  The reason for that is simply our trading partners do not want to 
negotiate with the United States if they do not know at the end of that 
time there is going to be a yes or no vote. They want to know with 
certainty that the agreement they reach is the agreement that will be 
voted on. That is why we gave fast track authority to the President of 
the United States, and it has worked for every President since 1974, 
Republican and Democrat.
  This is the first time that we have been, for several years now, 
without trade negotiating authority for a President. The results tell. 
During the course of the next several times that I will speak on this 
floor on this subject, I will outline some of the problems that we now 
have, because we have not had fast track authority for the President.
  But let me just say in closing, Mr. Speaker, that this is absolutely 
vital legislation. It is vital because I think literally the economic 
future of this country depends on having fast track. We must have fast 
track because we must have trade, and trade is the engine of economic 
opportunity for the future, for American workers, for American 
consumers, for American entrepreneurs, for the security of the United 
States. It depends on having fast track authority.

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