[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 155 (Friday, November 7, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H10328]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               FAST TRACK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, as we stand on the eve of the debate on fast 
track that is the giving of a major part of our constitutional power to 
the President and the Vice President and his negotiating team to 
negotiate trade arrangements with other nations, I think it is 
important for us to look at what the Founding Fathers said about the 
unfettered use of so-called free trade. In short, Mr. Speaker, they 
were not for it.
  I want to start with James Madison. James Madison said it should 
never be forgotten that the great object of the Convention was to 
provide by a new Constitution a remedy for the defects of the existing 
one and that among these defects was out of a power to regulate foreign 
commerce, that in all nations this regulating power embraced the 
protection of domestic manufacturers by duties and restrictions on 
imports. That means that James Madison believed that it was important 
for a nation, particularly the United States, to have the right to 
regulate goods coming into the United States and to establish tariffs 
so that American companies and American workers would not be hurt. 
Thomas Jefferson, who was a free trader before 1812, after he became a 
President became a pragmatist, and he said, ``The prohibiting duties we 
lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence requires us 
to establish at home, with a patriotic determination to use no foreign 
articles which can be made within ourselves without regard to 
difference in price, secure us against a relapse into foreign 
dependency.''
  Thomas Jefferson realized that we could become dependent on foreign 
products. And what would he say today to look at this $3 billion 
balance of trade deficit that we have each week that we have to either 
borrow or sell capital goods to pay for, this massive foreign debt that 
we have accumulated as a function of our trade deficit?
  Daniel Webster said, ``My object is and has been with the protective 
policy, the true policy of the United States that the labor of the 
country is properly provided for. I am looking not for such a law as 
will benefit capitalists, they can take care of themselves, but for a 
law that will induce capitalists to invest their capital in such a way 
as to occupy and employ American labor.'' That meant that Daniel 
Webster wanted to have tariffs and regulate trade so that American 
companies would invest in the United States instead of moving to 
Guadalajara or moving to other places that are offshore and using other 
workers from other countries to make goods that then would be sold back 
into the United States.
  And our own Abraham Lincoln, the founder of my party, the Republican 
Party, said in the platform, ``We commend that policy of national 
exchanges which secures to the working man liberal wages, to 
agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an 
adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise and to the Nation 
commercial prosperity and independence.''
  And that other great Republican who, with Abraham Lincoln, is on 
Mount Rushmore, Teddy Roosevelt, said in 1911, ``I can put my position 
on the tariff in a nutshell. I believe in such measure of protection as 
will equalize the cost of production here and abroad, that is, will 
equalize the cost of labor here and abroad. I believe in such 
supervision of the workings of the law as to make it certain that 
protection is given to the man we are most anxious to protect, 
the laboring man.''

  Mr. Speaker, I am a Republican, I am a capitalist, I think I have got 
a 13 percent AFL-CIO rating, but I understand that it is important for 
Americans to make good wages. We have driven wages down, and the record 
of NAFTA, the trade agreement that we allowed President Clinton to make 
with Mexico and Canada, has been disastrous for us. We had a $3 billion 
trade surplus over Mexico when we negotiated NAFTA. Today we have got a 
$19 billion annual loss. Today we have a $20 billion annual loss with 
Canada. That same bright team that President Clinton has sent forth 
through the world to negotiate trade treaties has given us this year 
with China a $52 billion trade loss.
  This team is a losing team, Mr. Speaker, and the idea that this 
Congress is going to give away the constitutional duty that was given 
to us by the Founding Fathers to a losing team which will negotiate us 
down the drain to the point where we have American industry having to 
move offshore to compete with the other industries that are employing 
people at $2.38 an hour, $1.50 an hour, $1.75 an hour to displace 
Americans, the Americans who carry our flag in wartime, the Americans 
that pay our taxes, the Americans that pay our wages, that idea is not 
consistent with the classic idea of being a good Republican.
  We should defeat this fast track, Mr. Speaker. We should keep that 
duty, that obligation to regulate trade within this House of 
Representatives where as Alexander Hamilton said, the people govern.

                          ____________________