[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 120 (Wednesday, September 15, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H8356]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1700
             GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION FOR WTO TURNAROUND RALLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, this November, representatives from 
135 Nations are meeting in Seattle to decide the all-important global 
trading agenda for the World Trade Organization.
  Unfortunately, these trade bureaucrats and their army of attorneys 
are not going to discuss the overwhelming need to reform the World 
Trade Organization before expanding it. They are not going to talk 
about fighting the spread of AIDS in Africa or stamping out slavery in 
Thailand. They are not going to talk about Mexican workers who are paid 
pennies an hour to work in shiny American factories or Indonesian 
children who work 18-hour days for less than a dollar a day to make a 
pair of shoes that sell in this country for $120.
  Rather than address the fact that so many of the world's people 
continue to live in grinding poverty and continue to barely survive, 
most of them on less than $1 a day, the trade bureaucrats in Seattle 
are going to discuss how to sell them compact discs and cellular 
phones.
  My colleagues can count on this, our own United States Trade 
Representative is not going to mention that millions of American 
children are growing up in poverty while their parents continue to 
struggle to find jobs that pay a livable wage. Our own U.S. Trade Rep. 
is not going to mention that, even though Wall Street is booming, 90 
percent of its benefits go to the richest 5 percent of Americans, and 
our own United States Trade Rep. will not mention that the living wage 
for most Americans has not increased appreciably in nearly 30 years.
  The WTO has weakened the standards we erected to ensure our children 
are not exposed to imported foods soaked with the same pesticides we 
banned in the United States. The WTO has undermined the laws and 
regulations we created in Congress that were intended to protect our 
privacy, our health, and our environment. The WTO has made improving 
the lives of workers less important than improving the rights of 
property holders and intellectual property rights.
  Instead of creating a global supermarket for America's goods and 
Services, we have created a system of rules that puts more emphasis on 
property rights than on human rights. So it is vital that we in 
Congress, that the American people, realize just what is at stake when 
the world's largest assembly of millionaires meets in Seattle this 
year.
  We have got to keep fighting to make labor, standards, and 
environmental rights and human rights as important to our trade 
bureaucrats as intellectual property rights.

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