[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 63 (Tuesday, May 4, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H2559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         PROBLEMS AMERICA IS CONFRONTING IN THE STEEL INDUSTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 2 minutes.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I join with the other Members who have been 
on the floor today to talk about the problems we are confronting in 
steel.
  I recently had a chance to visit Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point 
division. I had a chance to meet with many of the 4,000 dedicated 
workers at this facility. I also had a chance to talk with management, 
to go over the investment that management is making in the most modern 
steel equipment, hundreds of millions of dollars.
  Mr. Speaker, at Sparrows Point our workers can compete with any 
worker around the world. All they ask from us is a level playing field. 
They are not asking us to protect the steel industry from competition, 
but they are asking us to protect the steel industry from illegally 
dumped steel that is still coming into this country.
  Yes, what we need to do, we need to enact the legislation, that 
passed, that rolls back the level of steel imports to the pre-crisis 
level. We need to reform our antidumping and counterveiling duty laws 
to protect from the surge of illegal steel or any product coming into 
this country, so we can act decisively. The gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. English) and I have filed such legislation. We also need the ITC 
to take decisive action in their meetings today.
  This is sort of like a Whack-a-Mole game, where you hit one country 
on the head that is dealing with illegal steel and another country pops 
up. But for the 10,000 steel workers' jobs that we have lost, this is 
not a game. It is time for us to take decisive action.

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