[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 152 (Tuesday, November 2, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13632-S13640]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              AFRICAN GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY ACT--Resumed

  Pending:

       Lott (for Roth/Moynihan) amendment No. 2325, in the nature 
     of a substitute.
       Lott amendment No. 2332 (to amendment No. 2325), of a 
     perfecting nature.
       Lott amendment No. 2333 (to amendment No. 2332), of a 
     perfecting nature.
       Lott motion to commit with instructions (to amendment No. 
     2333), of a perfecting nature.
       Lott amendment No. 2334 (to the instructions of the motion 
     to commit), of a perfecting nature.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will 
report the motion to invoke cloture.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the substitute 
     amendment to Calendar No. 215, H.R. 434, an act to authorize 
     a new trade and investment policy for sub-Sahara Africa.
         Trent Lott, Bill Roth, Mike DeWine, Rod Grams, Mitch 
           McConnell, Judd Gregg, Larry E. Craig, Chuck Hagel, 
           Chuck Grassley, Pete Domenici, Don Nickles, Connie 
           Mack, Paul Coverdell, Phil Gramm, R. F. Bennett, and 
           Richard G. Lugar.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate 
that debate on the substitute amendment No. 2325 to Calendar No. 215, 
H.R. 434, an act to authorize a new trade and investment policy for 
sub-Sahara Africa, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are required under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) 
and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg) are necessarily absent.
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 74, nays 23, as follows: 

                     [Rollcall Vote No. 344 Leg.] 

                               YEAS--74 

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Allard
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bryan
     Burns
     Cochran
     Coverdell
     Craig
     Crapo
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Robb
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (OR)
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wyden 

                               NAYS--23 

     Boxer
     Bunning
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Cleland
     Collins
     Conrad
     Dorgan
     Edwards
     Feingold
     Helms
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Kennedy
     Levin
     Reed
     Reid
     Sarbanes
     Smith (NH)
     Snowe
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Wellstone 

                             NOT VOTING--2 

     Gregg
     McCain
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 74, the nays are 
23. Three-fifths of the Senate duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.


                Amendments Nos. 2332 and 2333 Withdrawn

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask consent that amendments 2332 and 2333 
be withdrawn.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendments (Nos. 2332 and 2333) were withdrawn.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I remind the Senate pending is the trade 
bill with the substitute amendment pending in the first degree. Cloture 
was invoked; therefore, there is a total time restriction of 30 hours, 
including quorum calls and rollcall votes. Under an additional consent, 
relevant trade amendments are in order in addition to the germaneness 
requirement under rule XXII. Those additional first-degree trade 
relevant amendments must be filed by 2:30 today.
  I urge all Senators to offer and debate their amendments in a timely 
fashion. I request relevant amendments not be abused so we can complete 
this very important trade legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The Chair recognizes the Senator 
from Delaware.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle for their support for the cloture motion. The vote reflects the 
strong bipartisan support for the bill.
  I also want to extend my thanks to the distinguished majority and 
minority leaders, who worked so hard to find the compromise that would 
allow the bill to move forward.
  Due to their hard work, we have the opportunity to send a clear 
statement to our neighbors in the Caribbean, Central America, and 
Africa that we are willing to invest in a long-term economic 
relationship--a relationship of partners in a common endeavor of 
expanding trade, enhancing economic growth, and improving living 
standards.
  Most importantly, this bill will also send a clear signal to our 
trading partners around the world who will join us shortly in Seattle 
for the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization. It signals 
that the United States is prepared to engage constructively in the 
wider world around us and to provide the leadership necessary to 
achieve our common goals.
  Most importantly, the bill means we will fulfill our commitment to 
the American workers and firms that will benefit from this bill--a 
commitment that means $8.8 billion in new sales and an increase of 
121,000 jobs over the course of the next 5 years in the U.S. textile 
industry alone.
  As I have emphasized again and again in this debate, this is not a 
bill that is good just for our neighbors in the Caribbean and Central 
America or our partners in Africa. This is a bill that is good for our 
workers here at home as well. It is a ``win-win'' situation 
economically for American workers and our friends abroad.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues over these coming hours 
to fashion a still stronger bill that would further those goals.
  Let me emphasize once more the strong bipartisan support reflected in 
the vote just taken. The motion for cloture carried by a vote of 74-23. 
I urge my colleagues to move as expeditiously as we can because time is 
limited. As we all know, the Congress is coming to the end of the 
current session and we want to make sure everybody has the opportunity 
to bring forward their amendments. It is important we do so in a 
fashion to expeditiously conclude action on this important piece of 
legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from New 
York.

[[Page S13633]]

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I wish to join most emphatically with my 
revered chairman in congratulating the Senate today, in thanking the 
majority and minority leaders. We have risen to a moment which was 
ominously in doubt.
  Last week, as the week progressed, two things took place: One, on the 
Senate floor, as we now have established, we had 74 votes just to 
proceed with the bill--we will have more when this is done. Even so, we 
found ourselves in a procedural tangle not unknown to the body which 
was thwarting the will of an emphatic majority--and not just a majority 
for this legislation but a majority for a tradition of openness in 
trade that began 65 years ago with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act 
of 1934 at the depths of the Depression, the aftermath of the Smoot-
Hawley legislation, with our system of government very much under 
challenge. That challenge would grow more fierce and would end in the 
great World War.
  We were then, even so, confident enough of the promise of trade that 
we could go forward in this matter. We have been going forward for 60 
years. However, 5 years ago we stopped. The President did obtain the 
approval of the Congress for the World Trade Organization. I shouldn't 
put it that the President ``obtained'' the approval of the Congress; 
Congress approved what Congress had sent our negotiators to obtain. 
There was a little side ripple there. An international trade 
organization was to have been one of the main institutions of the 
Bretton Woods system created in 1944. The International Bank for 
Reconstruction and Development--we call it the World Bank--the 
International Monetary Fund were created; the International Trade 
Organization didn't happen.
  Finally, we caught up with ourselves and we created the World Trade 
Organization which I believe now has 134 members with 30 observers 
currently applying for membership. I said there were two ominous, even 
menacing moments. The second was that there was almost no attention 
paid in the press and media to this week-long frustrating, seemingly 
unavailing effort. We have been on this a week and we got nowhere. No 
one noticed. It is as if no one cared.
  We woke up. Yesterday, the Washington Post in a lead editorial on 
this subject noted neither the administration nor the Congress had done 
anything they needed to do, and that at the end of this month the World 
Trade Organization will meet in Seattle. Our Ambassador, our Trade 
Representative, Ambassador Barshefsky, will open the meeting. Our 
President will be there, along with heads of state. We will be talking 
about the next round of global trade negotiations. They can take 9, 10 
years. They are fundamentally important.

  But our President will not have the authority to enter these 
negotiations--or rather to send the resulting agreements to the 
Congress for expedited consideration. If he were to have had the sub-
Saharan African legislation fail and the Caribbean initiative of 
President Reagan fail; if we were to have, in effect, allowed the Trade 
Expansion Act of 1962, President Kennedy's measure that led to the 
Kennedy Round, like the Uruguay Round, expire and say to the 200,000 
American families who are displaced by trade, as others are, that we 
should let economic forces work their way and tell them, that's too 
bad; if we allowed the Generalized System of Preferences to expire and 
say, no matter, how would our representatives look? What would they 
say? What could they undertake? Very little.
  It would be a moment in trade that would be shameful, after 65 years 
of bringing the world out of the depths of the Great Depression, now, 
in the longest economic expansion in the United States, the longest 
economic expansion in history.
  For so many years we talked about ``the longest peacetime 
expansion.'' No, no, this expansion is greater even than that from 
World War II. This is what trade has brought us. Not just trade, but 
without trade expansion we could not have had this economic expansion. 
Now, at least, we can go to Seattle and say: Here are our bona fides. 
We are still players. We still want to go forward.
  So, Mr. President, let the games begin. We have a long debate before 
us. It will be a bipartisan debate. The Senator from Delaware, the 
chairman of our committee, will be leading the debate. His deputy, if I 
may so deputize myself, will be at his side across the aisle. Let us 
now proceed, being of good heart and great expectations.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I ask the distinguished Senator from New 
York if he could articulate the importance of the legislation before 
us.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I certainly could attempt to do so. I would not risk 
overstatement. There would be a setting in which, having given the 
President negotiating authority for a new round of international trade 
talks, having arranged for Trade Adjustment Assistance to be continued 
as it has been for 37 years, we could say: The particular matters 
before us will be part of the trade negotiations--and so forth. We 
could say we will get to it next year.
  But we don't have that negotiating authority. The President goes to 
Seattle emptyhanded. The only thing he can bring with him is the trade 
legislation we have before us--which we still have to take to the 
House. But this is all the United States can show the world, the world 
which has been following us for all these years.
  So I hope, at a very minimum, the sense of tradition--even, if I may 
say, of honor--will drive us forward in this matter.
  Mr. ROTH. I would like to refer to fast track. Like my colleague, I 
am very unhappy that this authority has not been extended this 
President.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. And, sir, that this President did not ask for it when 
he could get it.
  Mr. ROTH. That is correct. That is correct.
  I also point out our committee in the last 2 years reported this 
legislation out because there is strong bipartisan support for fast 
track to be granted to the President, this President, by both 
Republicans and Democrats.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sure.
  Mr. ROTH. Unfortunately, there has not been strong leadership from 
the White House on this matter. It seems to me it is a matter of grave 
concern. But since that has not happened, I do agree with what my 
colleague has just said, that it is important we act on this 
legislation so it becomes clear to our friends and neighbors around the 
world that we continue to plan to provide leadership in this most 
important area of trade.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes, sir, and that it becomes clear to our friends 
around the world, as you say, and our friends downtown--give them 
heart; give them something to show.
  Mr. ROTH. Absolutely. I applaud and congratulate the Senator from New 
York for his leadership, not only during the current session but down 
through the years in this most important trade policy. We look forward 
to bringing home the bacon in the next 30 hours on this important piece 
of legislation.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the chairman.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the senior Senator from 
South Carolina.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from South 
Carolina.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the distinguished managers of the bill 
offered the $8 billion figure in sales and some 121,000 jobs. The truth 
is, we know from the Labor Department statistics that we have lost 
420,000 textile jobs nationwide and some 31,200 textile jobs in South 
Carolina alone. They said NAFTA was going to create 200,000 jobs. They 
claim today it is 121,000. In Mexico itself, it was going to create 
200,000 jobs. We know textiles alone lost 420,000, and it is undisputed 
that 31,200 jobs were lost in the State of South Carolina.
  I ask unanimous consent to print two articles with respect to the 
economy and how it has worked in Mexico, one from the Wall Street 
Journal and the other from the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S13634]]

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 1999]

                           A Decade of Change

                        (By Jonathan Friedland)


the have-nots: the free-market revolution promised so much; To many in 
               latin america, it has delivered so little

       Texcalitla, Mexico.--Liberalization, privatization, 
     globalization. Mary Garcia may not be aware of them in so 
     many words, but she has felt their impact from behind the 
     two-frame stove of her cinder-block cafe, the Avenida 
     Nacional.
       Perched alongside the highway that was once the main road 
     between Mexico City and the resort city of Acapulco, Mrs. 
     Garcia's restaurant used to serve dozens of plates of rabbit 
     stew to travelers daily. But early this decade, amid a severe 
     downsizing of the Mexican state, the government let private 
     contractors build a swift toll road between the two cities 
     that bypassed the Avenida Nacional.
       Mrs. Garcia has far fewer clients nowadays. Not only that, 
     but the taxes she pays have gone up, in part because of the 
     new road. The Highway of the Sun, as it's called, has been 
     such a financial disaster that the government bought it back 
     two years ago from the companies that built it. The same 
     thing happened with a dozen banks, a pair of airlines and 25 
     other highway projects. After botched privatizations, they 
     are back in the hands of the government, and taxpayers are 
     facing a bill that may total as much as $90 billion.
       ``I am all for progress,'' Mrs. Garcia says wistfully, 
     straightening up the place settings in her empty restaurant. 
     ``But this kind of progress is killing us.''
       From Texcalitla, here in Mexico's rural Guerrero state, to 
     Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, there 
     are a lot of people who feel the same way. For many Latin 
     Americans, the free-market revolution that has swept the 
     region in the past decade hasn't delivered the kind of 
     progress they were told it would--easier lives, better 
     incomes and a more secure future. Instead, it has confirmed 
     many of their worst fears about capitalism.
       Since Chile embarked on its free-market experiment in the 
     late 1970s, widespread domestic market liberalization, 
     privatization of once-unwieldy state asset holdings and a 
     removal of barriers to foreign competition have made Latin 
     America a much healthier place in purely macroeconomic 
     terms. Government finances are in better shape than ever. 
     Foreign direct investment is up, and inflation rates have 
     fallen. And Latin Americans have access to a wider variety 
     of goods and services than ever before.
       But there has also been a big downside to the move from 
     closed to open economies. Buffeted by forces beyond their 
     control--such as the woes of other emerging markets as far 
     afield as Russia and Indonesia--Latin American economies have 
     posted frustratingly inconsistent growth rates in recent 
     years. Job creation has actually slowed while overall 
     unemployment in the region has remained stable, according to 
     Inter-American Development Bank statistics. That means that 
     more Latin Americans work in the informal economy than a 
     decade ago, and that income distribution, uneven to begin 
     with, has generally grown more so.
       In fact, from 1980 to 1996, the latest year for which hard 
     data are available, the trend has been for an ever greater 
     percentage of national income to end up in ever fewer hands 
     in all Latin American countries except Costa Rica and 
     Uruguay, says Elena Martinez, regional director of the United 
     Nations Development Program. Unlike their bigger neighbors, 
     Costa Rica and Uruguay have kept a lid on competition and 
     have struggled to maintain their state-run social-welfare 
     systems.
       Elsewhere, in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and other 
     countries, the pattern has been this: A handful of 
     entrepreneurs, often with close ties to their country's 
     political elite, have gotten richer. The middle class, never 
     large to begin with and traditionally propped up by plentiful 
     government jobs, urban food subsidies and trade barriers that 
     kept inefficient companies alive, has shrunk. And the poor, 
     whose safety net, never strong, has been strained by demands 
     for fiscal austerity from the international financiers these 
     countries depend on, keep getting poorer.
       ``In the 1990s, Latin American policy makers have put their 
     emphasis on overall performance, on making sure the 
     macroeconomic indicators were lining up,'' says Gert 
     Rosenthal, a Guatemalan economist. ``But there is a growing 
     consensus that something is terribly wrong when you have this 
     and 40% of your population is in worse shape than before.''
       The negative balance of the free-market experiment for many 
     Latin Americans has tipped the scales away from support for 
     further reform. Leading presidential candidates in Argentina, 
     Chile and Mexico--three countries with elections over the 
     next year--are all emphasizing the need to put people before 
     markets. ``There is a search for a kinder, gentler form of 
     capitalism,'' says Lacey Gallagher, head of Latin American 
     sovereign ratings at Standard & Poor's Co. in New York. ``It 
     is sad, but the reform process in a lot of countries is 
     getting stuck because political support for reforms has 
     dwindled so much.''
       No one thinks Latin America will return to the days of 
     import substitution and uncontrollable deficit spending, or 
     that social revolution is on the horizon. But observers like 
     Ms. Gallagher worry that although they have embarked on 
     the free-market path, many Latin American economies aren't 
     yet flexible enough to adapt to change in the global 
     economy. Nor can they deliver an improved standard of 
     living to the majority of their citizens. ``The first-
     stage reforms, which most Latin American countries have 
     already been through, worsen income distribution, make 
     economic cycles more profound and raise unemployment,'' 
     she says. ``The payoff comes with the second-stage 
     reforms.''
       But those reforms, which include strengthening tax 
     collections, making taxation fairer and labor laws more 
     flexible, and streamlining institutions like courts and 
     schools, have run into public opposition mainly because of 
     the financial and social costs associated with the first 
     round of reforms. Politicians generally realize these are the 
     steps they have to take, but in the fledgling democratic 
     environment in which they operate, consensus building is a 
     painfully slow process.
       In Argentina, for instance, President Carlos Menem has 
     tried for several years to scrap the country's antiquated 
     labor laws, but he can't because still-powerful unions 
     believe the old rules are the only remaining safeguard for 
     their workers. Lately, Mr. Menem hasn't pushed the point 
     because his Peronist party, built originally upon a base of 
     fervent worker support, needs union backing to prevail in 
     presidential elections scheduled for October.
       Economists say the cost of the delay has been high. 
     Argentina, which pegged its currency to the dollar earlier in 
     the decade to quash triple-digit inflation, has entered a 
     nasty recession because of a big currency devaluation by 
     Brazil, its No. 1 trading partner. With its inflexible labor 
     laws, Argentina can't reduce wages to remain competitive. The 
     result: Output has fallen and unemployment has soared.
       A similar though less pressing dilemma faces Mexican 
     President Ernesto Zedillo. In March, he floated a plan to 
     gradually privatize the country's electrical sector, arguing 
     that the government doesn't have the resources to invest the 
     $25 billion needed over the next few years to increase the 
     power supply. While many Mexicans agree with the president's 
     basic point--that state funds ought to be spent on things 
     like health and education rather than power plants--few trust 
     the private sector to do the job properly.
       It isn't hard to see why. Mexico's privatization binge has 
     been plagued by costly blunders that have many wondering 
     whether state finances are truly better off now, and whether 
     the Mexican economy is truly more competitive than before, as 
     the government contends. ``It isn't obvious to most Mexicans 
     that their lives have improved as a result of these 
     programs,'' says Luis Rubio, a Mexico City development 
     expert.
       The toll roads provide a case in point. With the passage of 
     the North American Free Trade Agreement on the horizon and an 
     urgent need to upgrade Mexico's crumbling road infrastructure 
     to handle a surge in trade, former President Carlos Salinas 
     de Gortari embarked on a crash public-works program in which 
     private construction companies built a network of pay-as-you-
     go highways. But in the government's rush to get the job 
     done, unrealistic traffic and income projection's were 
     made, local banks were muscled into coming up with the 
     financing, and companies without the necessary management 
     skills were signed up to do the work.
       ``Although it had a private-sector complexion, it was 
     really an old-fashioned public-works program,'' says William 
     F. Foote, a former banker who has studied Mexico's toll-road 
     blitz. ``It was done without reference to the realities of 
     the market.''
       That quickly became clear. Projects were plagued by cost 
     overruns, and once the roads opened for business, neither 
     truckers nor travelers could afford the high tolls demanded.
       Within a few years, the government stepped in to take over 
     many of the roads, leaving the companies that built them to 
     accept a more gradual return on their investment. Those 
     companies are, in several cases, still waiting to be fully 
     reimbursed and claim that their weak financial condition is 
     mainly due to their toll-road commitments. Meanwhile, roads 
     such as the Highway of the Sun remain glittering and 
     desperately short on traffic.
       The fact that the road hasn't delivered on its promise 
     isn't lost on Graciela Martinez, an elderly woman sitting 
     under a tree near one of its toll plazas. Mrs. Martinez, who 
     sells iguanas for a living, stands up to show off her product 
     each time a vehicle slows to pay the toll. There haven't been 
     any sales today, she says solemnly, because city people don't 
     appreciate a good lizard.
       But, she jokes, the dearth of traffic does have an upside. 
     While it isn't great for here pocketbook, she says,'' at 
     least it's easy on my feet.''
                                  ____


  [From the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico--Business Mexico, 
                              April 1997]

What's Wrong With This Picture?: Optimistic Investors Overlook Mexico's 
                         Consumer Spending Gap

                           By Nicholas Wilson

       At first sight Mexico seems like an investor's dream: a 
     country of 93 million people, number 13 on the world list of 
     natural wealth per capita, recently opened virgin markets,

[[Page S13635]]

     and a government that is rapidly forging trade agreements in 
     the Americas and aboard. Mexico, however, is also home to 
     grinding poverty, so just how big is its market? The reality, 
     according to economists, is that only between 10 percent and 
     20 percent of the population are really considered consumers. 
     The extreme unequal distribution of wealth has created a 
     distorted market, the economy is hamstrung by a work force 
     with a poor level of education, and a sizable chunk of the 
     gross domestic product is devoted to exports rather than 
     production for domestic consumption. Furthermore, worker's 
     purchasing power, already low, was devastated by the December 
     1994 peso crash and the severe recession that followed. Even 
     optimists do not expect wages in real terms to recover until 
     the next century. `They say there are more than 90 million 
     consumers in Mexico, but less than 20 percent earn more than 
     5,000 pesos (US$625) per month. The rest of the population 
     lives just above subsistence level,'' says Pedro Javier 
     Gonzalez, economist at the Mexican Institute of Political 
     Studies. the figures make grim reading: the National 
     Statistics Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas, 
     Geografia e Informatica, INEGI) and the Banco de Mexico 
     estimate that nearly 68 million Mexicans live in poverty. 
     About a million homes do not have electricity and potable 
     water, and adult illiteracy is 13 percent. According to 
     UNICEF's most recent report there are 9 million Mexican 
     children living in extreme poverty (one third of Mexico's 
     population is under 15 years old); 800,000 between the ages 
     of 6 and 14 years working in various productive sectors; and 
     60,000 ``street kids,'' a number that is increasing by 7 
     percent annually. The United Nations says poverty is most 
     extreme in the informal sectors of the world's economies. The 
     World Bank estimates 42 percent of Mexico's economic 
     population is employed in the informal sector; the Finance 
     Secretariat put the figure at 50 percent during its recent 
     clampdown on tax evaders. The informal economy includes 
     street vendors as well as largely self-sufficient campesinos 
     who ``effectively neither buy from nor sell to the rest of 
     the economy,'' says Gonzalez. The formal sector, however, is 
     not exactly made up of affluent consumers either. Sixty 
     percent of the registered work force earns between one and 
     two minimum salaries per day, according to a recent study by 
     the Worker's University of Mexico (Universidad Obrera de 
     Mexico). The minimum wage is currently worth about US$3.00 
     per day. ``Minimum wage guys don't buy imports,'' says one 
     analyst who preferred to remain anonymous.


                           overly optimistic

       Despite the poverty indicators, foreign investors often 
     sound cheerful to the point of being almost blase about the 
     economic and social statistics. ``NAFTA will connect the 
     world's largest market (the U.S.) to the world's largest city 
     (Mexico City) says David Dean, promoter of a superhighway to 
     facilitate transport between the free trade agreement's 
     member nations. Yet many of Mexico City's inhabitants don't 
     even have access to drainage, electricity or basic education.
       ``Mexico has a teledensity of 6-8 telephone lines per one 
     hundred people, compared to 60 per hundred in the U.S. 
     There's a lot of potential in Mexico,'' says recently arrived 
     Bill Ricke, Global One international telecommunications 
     consortium president.
       The potential is here, economists agree, but it is unlikely 
     to be developed in the near future with most of the 
     population living in abject poverty. Telefonos de Mexico 
     (Telmex) last year disconnected more customers for not paying 
     their bills than it connected. ``Nearly all of the (US$4 
     billion) long distance telecommunications market in Mexico is 
     accounted for by businesses. Individuals only make 
     international calls in extreme emergencies,'' says economist 
     Patricia Nelson. In reality the market is only about the top 
     15 percent of earners and businesses, she says.
       Export businesses account for nearly 25 percent of the 
     gross domestic product (GDP), which in 1996 totaled US$326 
     billion. In 1980 export businesses only accounted for 10 
     percent of the GDP, says Gonzalez. At the same time, the 
     domestic demand per capita has actually shrunk in the last 20 
     years, he says. Given the population's low purchasing power, 
     production for the domestic market is minimal. Therefore, the 
     proportion of GDP represented by the export sector is 
     distorted, and is higher than in many developed countries, 
     says ING Barings economist Sergio Martin.
       The average salary in Mexico is only US$3,720 a year.
       It now takes a worker 23 hours to earn enough to purchase 
     the goods included in the ``basic basket,'' the price of 
     which has shot up 913 percent since 1987, compared to 8.3 
     hours 10 years ago, according to a report from the National 
     Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional 
     Autonoma de Mexico, UNAM).


                               select few

       Another distortion in Mexico's market is the eye-opening 
     difference between the rich and poor. Writer Carlos Fuentes 
     describes Mexico as a country where 25 Mexicans earn the same 
     as 25 million Mexicans. In the last two years, the 15 
     wealthiest families' fortunes leapt from the US$16.4 billion 
     to US$25.6 billion, which is equivalent to 9 percent of the 
     GDP or 23.9 million annual minimum wages.
       The result in economic terms is that ``there is a market 
     for luxury Mercedes cars, yet little demand for reasonably 
     priced shoes (relative to a country with Mexico's 
     population),'' says Gonzalez. There are nearly 100 million 
     Mexicans yet there are only 2 million credit cards, adds 
     Martin. ``As some people have more than one it means that 
     less than 2 percent of Mexicans have credit cards and some of 
     them have limits of 1,000 or 2,000 pesos (US$125 or 250).''
       Education, or the lack of it, has also played a role in the 
     steady widening of the gap between rich and poor since Carlos 
     Salinas took office in 1988. Between 1987 and 1993, urban 
     workers with higher education saw their wages jump 100 
     percent, whereas poorly educated workers (50 percent of 
     workers have only a primary school education) saw their wages 
     climb only 10 percent.
       The rising poverty is a continual thorn in the government's 
     side. While its tough macroeconomic policies have drawn 
     praises from the international financial community, the 
     benefits have not trickled down to the poor. ``I don't see 
     the government doing anything to address the wealth 
     imbalance,'' Gonzalez says. Many think the government had 
     better get started, however, if it wants to make its newly 
     opened markets attractive to foreign investors. Moreover, 
     there may be social and political consequences if only a 
     handful of Mexicans continue to enjoy the fruit of the 
     economic reforms. ``I think we're living on borrowed time,'' 
     said U.S. Ambassador to Mexico James Jones at the end of last 
     year. ``This generation of adults will probably survive on 
     hope but I think over the next five to ten years if that 
     isn't translated into benefits and real opportunities, you're 
     going to have demagogues rise up who want to turn the clock 
     back.''

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the reason I included these articles is 
because my distinguished mentor, the senior Senator from New York, 
voted with me on NAFTA and that is against NAFTA. We had misgivings. Of 
course, the proof is in the Wall Street Journal and the American 
Chamber of Commerce articles about how they are making less down there 
4 to 5 years since the enactment of NAFTA. We were told it was going to 
create a positive balance of trade. We had a $5 billion-plus balance of 
trade at the time of enactment. Now we have a $17 billion deficit in 
the balance of trade with Mexico since NAFTA.
  We were told it was going to solve the immigration problem. It has 
worsened. We were told it was going to solve the drug problem. It has 
worsened. As I said before, there is no education in the second kick of 
a mule. We have been through this exercise about how we are all going 
to put our arms together and hug and love and help our neighbors. Fine 
with me if it really would work that way. It has not worked that way 
and is not about to work that way in sub-Sahara and the Caribbean. I 
will get into those items in just a few minutes.
  With respect to the morning article--I try to get into the Wall 
Street Journal because a lot of my crowd in South Carolina reads it. 
They have me as the old isolationist: Hollings: ``Info revolution 
escapes him.''
  Really? I know a good bit more about the information revolution than 
the Wall Street Journal does. I helped bring a good bit of it to South 
Carolina, in fact, with my technical training for skills. I was in 
Dublin, Ireland, and walked into the most modern microprocessing plants 
of Intel outside of Dublin. My friend, Frank McKay, was there. He said: 
Governor, I want to show you your technical training program. We sent 
two teams to Midlands Tech in Columbia, SC, and we reproduced what was 
there, and that is how I got it up and going and operating and in the 
black.
  I told this to Andy Grove when he came by, and he thanked me again. I 
know a little bit about the information revolution. I am all for it. My 
problem is, on the one hand, it does not create the jobs they all 
advertise.
  The Wall Street Journal ran an article about Wal-Mart and General 
Motors. Wal-Mart exceeded the number of employees of General Motors for 
the first time.
  I ask unanimous consent this article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 28, 1997]

              Labor: The Changing Lot of the Hourly Worker

       For decades, the U.S. has been evolving from a 
     manufacturing economy to a service economy. But Labor Day 
     1997 marks a milestone: Earlier this year. Wal-Mart Stores 
     Inc., the discount retailer, passed General Motors Corp. as 
     the nation's largest private employer.
       The shift is more than symbolic. Union jobs with lush pay 
     and benefits, like those

[[Page S13636]]

     held by GM assembly-line worker Tim Philbriek, are 
     disappearing. In their place are nonunion jobs like that of 
     Nancy Handley, who works in the men's department at a 
     Missouri Wal-Mart.
       Both punch a time clock, and share a stake in their 
     employers' success. The Wal-Mart workday is less physically 
     taxing than GM's, but the hours are longer and the pay barely 
     supports even a thrifty family. Still, Wal-Mart offers a 
     measure of responsibility and path of advancement to hourly 
     workers, thousands of whom are promoted to management each 
     year.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I want the Wall Street Journal to read 
its own articles.
  The leading line:

       For decades, the U.S. has been evolving from a 
     manufacturing economy to a service economy. But Labor Day 
     1997 marks a milestone: Earlier this year, Wal-Mart Stores, 
     Inc., the discount retailer, passed General Motors 
     Corporation as the nation's largest private employer.

  General Motors' average hourly wage is about $19 an hour; including 
benefits, it is $44 an hour. Whereas at Wal-Mart stores, the average 
hourly wage is $7.50; including benefits, $10. In manufacturing, the 
salary is four times that in the service economy. That is why they are 
all talking about this wonderful economic boom that has to do with the 
service economy, so much so that the labor unions I see have buddied up 
with the American Chamber of Commerce. The American Chamber of Commerce 
has gone international. They are not representing Main Street America.
  On yesterday, Monday, November 1, ``Corporate, Labor Leaders Both 
Trumpet Backing for Clinton's Trade-Talk Plan.'' I ask unanimous 
consent this article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Wall Street Journal, Nov. 1, 1999]

Corporate, Labor Leaders Both Trumpet Backing for Clinton's Trade-Talk 
                                  Plan

                           (By Helene Cooper)

       Washington.--Depending on how you look at it, the joint 
     letter from corporate and union leaders supporting the 
     Clinton administration's agenda for global trade talks, was 
     either a huge win for big business or for labor unions.
       The way corporate America tells it, the letter was a 
     victory for pro-trade American companies because John 
     Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, signed it. ``How are the labor 
     unions going to protest in Seattle [at the upcoming World 
     Trade Organization's big powwow] if Mr. Sweeney is saying 
     labor supports the trade agenda?'' asked Frank Coleman, 
     spokesman for the U.S. Chambers of Commerce.
       Indeed, Mr. Sweeney's decision to back the Clinton trade 
     agenda rankled the more militant unions, such as the 
     Teamsters and the United Steelworkers of America.
       But AFL-CIO leaders said the letter shows Mr. Sweeney at 
     his savviest. For one thing, the AFL-CIO is backing Vice-
     President Al Gore's presidential campaign and wants to 
     minimize political damage to his election chances by 
     hammering him on trade.
       More significantly, several big company chieftains, 
     including John E. Pepper, chairman of Procter & Gamble Co., 
     Maurice ``Hank'' Greenberg, head of American International 
     Group Inc., and Robert Shapiro, head of Monsanto Co., also 
     signed the letter.
       The letter calls for a working group to be established 
     within the WTO to study core labor standards and trade, and 
     marks the first time many of America's biggest companies have 
     agreed to support U.S. moves linking trade liberalization 
     with labor standards.
       ``The U.S. government must further ensure that any 
     agreements enable the United States to maintain its own high 
     standards for the environment, labor, health and safety,'' 
     the Oct. 25 letter said.
       For years, Republican lawmakers, backed by big business, 
     have resisted linking trade expansion with labor and 
     environmental issues. While last week's letter makes no 
     mention of using trade sanctions against countries with poor 
     labor standards, Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO's trade policy 
     director, said that is labor's ultimate goal. ``What we want 
     is the ability to use trade rules to protect worker rights,'' 
     Ms. Lee said.
       While AFL-CIO leaders still plan to show up in force in 
     Seattle this month to protest WTO policies they see as 
     antilabor, they also said it's important to get a seat at the 
     table so that union views can be represented.
       Whether the Clinton administration will get the rest of the 
     WTO to sign on to its labor agenda for the Seattle meeting 
     remains to be seen. Developing countries, in particular, have 
     fought linking trade and labor, and many of these countries 
     see the establishment of a working group as the beginning of 
     a move to do just that. These countries are bound to fight 
     the issue in Seattle.
       America's labor unions are hardly united on the matter. 
     Teamsters spokesman Bret Caldwell said he was ``shocked'' and 
     ``disappointed'' in Mr. Sweeney. ``We in no way agree that 
     the administration's trade policies are good for working men 
     and women,'' he said. ``The Teamsters will play a very active 
     role in demonstrations in Seattle.''

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, ``Mr. Sweeney's decision to back the 
Clinton trade agenda rankled the more militant unions, such as the 
Teamsters, and the United Steelworkers of America.'' Those are the 
manufacturing jobs. Just as the fabric boys divorced themselves from 
apparel and now can toot for this kind of legislation, the head of the 
service economy, John Sweeney, has forgotten about manufacturing jobs, 
and he is going along. That is why we got this overwhelmingly 
bipartisan majority.
  But back to the point, this is what disturbs this particular Senator, 
that we are hollowing out the manufacturing strength, the industrial 
backbone of the United States of America.
  The so-called service economy or information technology, or 
information society, strikingly--why don't they read the November 5, 
1999, edition of the London Economist that has just come out? On page 
87, there is an article entitled ``The New Economy, E-Exaggeration: The 
Digital Economy is Much Smaller Than You Think.'' I ask unanimous 
consent to have that article printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the London Economist, Nov. 5, 1999]

The New Economy E-xaggeration: The Digital Economy is Much Smaller Than 
                               You Think

       Newspapers and magazines are packed with stories about the 
     digital economy, the information-technology (IT) revolution 
     and the Internet age. That their pages are filled with 
     advertising from IT firms presumably has nothing to do with 
     it. Such firms account for a quarter of the total value of 
     the S&P 500, and this week Dow Jones announced that 
     Microsoft, Intel and SBC Communications will be included in 
     its industrial average from November 1st. Not before time, 
     many say, for high-technology businesses now account for a 
     huge chunk of the economy. Actually, they don't.
       New figures published on October 28th by America's 
     Department of Commerce appear to support the view that IT is 
     very important to the American economy. The department now 
     counts all business spending on software as investment 
     (previously, it was a cost). This has both increased the 
     apparent size of IT investment and boosted America's rate of 
     growth in recent years.
       But measuring the size of the ``new'' economy is a 
     statistical minefield. The most generous estimate comes from 
     the OECD, which tracks the ``knowledge-based economy''. It 
     estimates that this accounts for 51% of total business output 
     in the developed economies--up from 45% in 1985. But this 
     definition, which tries to capture all industries that are 
     relatively intensive in their inputs of technology and human 
     capital, is implausibly wide. As well as computers and 
     telecoms, it also includes cars, chemicals, health, 
     education, and so forth. It would be a stretch to call many 
     of these businesses ``new''.
       A study published in June by the Department of Commerce 
     estimates that the digital economy--the hardware and software 
     of the computer and telecoms industries--amounts to 8% of 
     America's GDP this year. If that sounds rather disappointing, 
     then a second finding--that IT has accounted for 35% of total 
     real GDP growth since 1994--should keep e-fanatics happy.
       Perhaps unwisely. A new analysis by Richard Sherlund and Ed 
     McKelvey of Goldman Sachs argues that even this definition of 
     ``technology'' is too wide. They argue that since such things 
     as basic telecoms services, television, radio and consumer 
     electronics have been around for ages, they should be 
     excluded. As a result, they estimate the computing and 
     communications-technology sector at a more modest 5% of GDP--
     up from 2.8% in 1990. This would make it bigger than the car 
     industry, but smaller than health care or finance. In most 
     other economies, the share is lower; for the world as a 
     whole, therefore, the technology sector might be only 3-4% of 
     GDP.
       But what, you might ask, about the Internet? Goldman 
     Sachs's estimate includes Internet service providers, such as 
     America Online, and the technology and software used by 
     online retailers, such as Amazon.com. It does not, however, 
     include transactions over the Internet. Should it? E-business 
     is tiny at present, but Forrester Research, an Internet 
     consultancy estimates that this will increase to more than 
     $1.5 trillion in America by 2003. Internet bulls calculate 
     that this would be equivalent to about 13% of GDP. Yet it is 
     misleading to take the total value of such goods and 
     services, whose production owes nothing to the Internet. The 
     value added of Internet sales--i.e., its contribution to 
     GDP--would be much less, probably little more than 1% of GDP.
       This is not to deny that the Internet is changing the way 
     that many firms do business--by, for example, enabling them 
     to slim inventories--but, in the near future, as a proportion 
     of GDP, it is likely to remain small.


                           a luddite's lament

       If measuring the size of the technology sector is hard, 
     calculating its contribution to

[[Page S13637]]

     real economic growth is trickier still, because the prices of 
     IT goods and services (adjusted for quality) have fallen 
     sharply relative to the prices of other goods and services. 
     For example, official figures show that America's spending on 
     IT has risen by 14% a year in nominal terms since 1992, but 
     by more than 40% a year in real terms. This figure is so high 
     partly because it is extremely sensitive to assumptions about 
     the rate at which the price and quality of IT is changing.
       The Commerce Department calculates that the technology 
     sector has contributed 35% to overall economic growth over 
     the past four years. But because such figures are based on 
     spending in real terms, the Goldman Sachs study reckons they 
     are misleading. In nominal terms, IT has accounted for a more 
     modest 10% of GDP growth in the past four years.
       Another popularly quoted figure is that business spending 
     on IT has risen from 10% of firms' total capital-equipment 
     investment in 1980 to 60% today. But again, this is based on 
     constant-dollar figures, and so it hugely exaggerates the 
     true increase. In terms of current dollars (and before the 
     latest revisions), Goldman Sachs calcuate that business 
     investment in computers accounts for 35% of total capital 
     spending, not 60%. And even this exaggerates the importance 
     of IT, because much of the money goes to replace equipment 
     which becomes obsolete ever more quickly. The share of IT in 
     additional ``net'' investment is much smaller. Computers 
     still account for only 2% of America's total net capital 
     stock.
       For years economists have been seeking in vain for evidence 
     that computers have dramatically raised productivity. One 
     explanation for the failure of productivity to surge may be 
     that official statistics are understating its growth. Another 
     is that much investment in IT has been wasted: hours spent 
     checking e-mail, surfing the Net or playing games reduce, not 
     increase, productivity. A third may simply be that IT is 
     still too small to make a difference: for the moment, 
     appropriately enough, you can count the digital economy on 
     the fingers of one hand.
       That is changing, and firms are learning. And note this: if 
     you add in all computer software and telecoms (on the widest 
     definition), the share of IT in the capital stock rises to 
     10-12%. As it happens, this is almost the same as railways at 
     the peak of America's railway age in the late 19th century. 
     Railways boosted productivity and changed the face of 
     Victorian commerce. Hype is hype--but the new economy may yet 
     happen anyway.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. I quote from the article:

       . . . they estimate the computing and communications-
     technology sector at a more modest 5% of the GDP --up from 
     2.8% in 1990. . . .
       The value added of Internet sales--i.e., its contribution 
     to the gross domestic product--would be much less, probably 
     little more than 1% of the gross domestic product.

  Mr. President, another popularly quoted figure is that business 
spending on information technology has risen from 10 percent of a 
firm's total capital, equipment and investment in 1980 to 60 percent 
today. Again, this is based on constant dollar figures. And it hugely 
exaggerates the true increase.

       In terms of current dollars . . . Goldman Sachs calculate 
     that business investments in computers accounts for 35% of 
     total capital spending, not 60%. And even this exaggerates 
     the importance of [information technology] because much of 
     the money goes to replace equipment which becomes obsolete 
     ever more quickly. The share of [information technology] in 
     additional ``net'' investment is much smaller. Computers 
     still account for only 2% of America's total net capital 
     stock.

  I want to dwell on this for a moment, for the main and simple reason 
that this really is what is at issue and why the Senator from South 
Carolina takes the floor. It is just not textiles. Textiles is on its 
way out.
  And by another headline I saw in the New York Times, on the right-
hand upper column of the front page this morning, President Clinton is 
getting together with the People's Republic of China to admit them to 
the World Trade Organization. You can pass the CBI, the sub-Sahara, the 
NAFTA there, there, and there yonder, and pull it all around, but once 
that is done, once China gets into the World Trade Organization and 
starts with its transshipments and its appeals, it controls the general 
assembly.
  We had a resolution about 4 years ago to have hearings on human 
rights within the People's Republic of China. That crowd went back down 
into Africa and Australia and around and changed the vote, and they 
never had the hearing.
  So I am telling you, we really are going to be a minority in the 
World Trade Organization. They can change around your environmental 
protections, your labor protections, your high standard of living, and 
everything else. And the CBI and sub-Sahara, and everything else that 
we think we are doing something to help, we are going to China, I can 
tell you that right now with the front page article about President 
Clinton. So we know where we are headed with respect to that.
  But my friend, Eamonn Fingleton, has written a book, ``In Praise of 
Hard Industries.'' Obviously, I can't include the book in the Record at 
this particular time. But I refer to its comparisons where the Wall 
Street Journal time and time again has come out again and again with 
certain misstatements.

       In 1996, when everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the 
     Christian Science Monitor was dismissing the Japanese economy 
     as sluggish or stagnant or even mired in a deep slump, in 
     fact Japan's growth rate that year of 3.9 percent was the 
     best of any major economy and was significantly superior to 
     the rate of 2.8 percent recorded in the booming United 
     States. . . .
       Although experts like the Economist's editor in chief . . . 
     predicted a decade ago that Japan's savings rate would plunge 
     in the 1990s, the truth is that at last count Japan was 
     producing $708 billion of new savings a year--or nearly 60 
     percent more than America's total of $443 billion . . . Japan 
     has now decisively surpassed the United States as the world's 
     main source of capital . . . Japan's net external assets 
     jumped from $294 billion to $891 billion in the first seven 
     years of the 1990s. By contrast, America's net external 
     liabilities ballooned from $71 billion to $831 billion.

  With these things going on, you begin to worry where you are headed 
with the particular trade bill.

  Again, instead of doubling the volume of steel imports since 1983, 
the United States remains by far the largest importer.
  So we are importing the steel. We are not having a savings rate. 
According to the Financial Times article that was printed in the Record 
the other day:

       Fears of a slide in the U.S. dollar has haunted global 
     currency markets for several months now. The dollar was 
     granted a reprieve last week following better than expected 
     August trade figures. But many observers believe it is only a 
     matter of time before the dollar succumbs to mounting trade 
     imbalances.

  Quoting from the book I previously mentioned:

       In the 1960s----

  Since the distinguished Senator from New York went back 65 years--

       In the 1960s President John F. Kennedy felt so strongly 
     about this that he ranked dollar devaluation alongside a 
     nuclear war as the two things he feared most.

  There you go. Here we have it. We have a whole book written on it. 
Why, yes, it provides jobs. The information technology society or 
globalization, as they want to call it, the engine of our great 
economic recovery in the United States, our wonderful world leadership, 
it provides jobs for the best, the top 5 percent of the population. You 
have to be highly intelligent and everything else; like I have 
mentioned the 22,000 employees at Microsoft. All 22,000 are 
millionaires. More power to them. But that does not give you any 
exports, that does not give you any growth. That does not give you any 
strength of manufacturing in the industrial economy.
  That is where we are hollowing it out. That is why we cannot afford 
it. I would love to help the Caribbean Basin. I would love to help the 
sub-Sahara. But time and again, we have given over and over and over 
again with respect to--I remember back in the Philippines we had given 
there. We had other particular initiatives whereby we always sacrificed 
at the textile desk.
  I do not have it with me right now, but I have it down where we have 
given to Turkey. We gave to Egypt in Desert Storm. We have just 
eliminated, in the Multifiber Arrangement, over a 10-year period--now 
we are in the 5th year--all textile tariffs and everything else of that 
kind. So we do not have any protectionism about which to really talk.
  We have important jobs. The textile jobs, compared to those retail 
jobs--the average textile wage is $11 an hour. With benefits, it 
increases that. Those are good jobs that we are trying to hold onto--
the jobs of middle America, which is the strength of the democratic 
society.
  Let me go right back to the particular editorial. This is how silly 
they can get. I will quote from the editorial. This editorial is from 
the Wall Street Journal. So I ask unanimous consent to have printed in 
the Record the editorial of this morning from the Wall Street Journal. 
The title of the editorial is ``The Old Isolationists.''

[[Page S13638]]

  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                         The Old Isolationists

       We've got the ideal subject for President Clinton's next 
     speech on the ``new isolationism'' in Congress: Senate 
     Democrats. They've been abetting a filibuster that may kill 
     the Africa and Caribbean free-trade bill that Mr. Clinton at 
     least claims he still wants.
       No doubt they think they can get away with this because the 
     media have barely noticed. Jesse Helms gives affluent, 
     powerful Carol Moseley-Braun a hard time for an 
     ambassadorship, and it becomes page one race-baiting mews. 
     But the President's own party stonewalls a trade bill that 
     would help millions of Africans escape their desperate 
     poverty, and the story lands back among the real estate ads.
       The bill has everything Dan Rather and other good media 
     liberals claim to love. It's bipartisan, with support ranging 
     from New York liberal Charlie Rangel to Texas conservative 
     Phil Gramm. It'd help Africa not with handouts, but by 
     reducing U.S. tariffs and quotas so these countries can share 
     in the wealth of the global economy. And it repudiates Pat 
     Buchanan-style trade protectionism.
       It's also a helluva good political story. Fronting for the 
     textile lobby, Ol' Fritz Hollings of South Carolina has been 
     leading a filibuster like he just walked out of the 19th 
     century. His hilarious rants cite as protectionist 
     authorities both Pat Buchanan and left-wing economist Paul 
     Krugman.
       ``And so Buchanan comes out, and was the best voice we had 
     in a national sense. I have been talking trade while that boy 
     was in GoZANga. Is that the name of tat high school around 
     her, GoZANga?'' Ol' Fritz was yelling on the Senate floor 
     last week, referring to Gonzaga High School.
       ``We are in trouble,'' the Senator from Milliken & Co. said 
     later. ``This boom they are talking about in the stock market 
     is the information society; it doesn't create the jobs.''
       Self-parody aside, his strategy is obvious: run out the 
     Senate clock. That's why, after more than a week of debate, 
     GOP leader Trent Lott wants to get on with the vote and other 
     Senate business. Enter Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, 
     who says he's for the bill, but spent last week aiding Mr. 
     Hollings by rallying fellow Democrats to support Fritz's 
     filibuster.
       Mr. Daschle's gripe was that Mr. Lott hadn't allowed a 
     wish-list of protectionist amendments: Pennsylvania's steel 
     front-man Rick Santorum on ``anti-dumping negotiations,'' 
     Iowa protectionist Tom Harkin on child labor, Michigan's Carl 
     Levin (a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Auto Workers) 
     on ``worker rights,'' among others. None of this has anything 
     to do with Africa trade.
       The Senate is supposed to be full of statesmen. But on this 
     subject the House has been more worldly. When protectionists 
     tried a procedural ruse to kill Africa trade in the House, 
     Mr. Rangel gathered the names of 79 Democrats who would vote 
     for a GOP rule to limit debate. Mr. Lott has 48 or so 
     Republicans in favor of the bill in the Senate, but the White 
     House hasn't yet been able to get even a dozen Democrats for 
     the 60 votes necessary to shut off debate. Democratic Party 
     to Africa: Get lost.
       These columns have often saluted Mr. Clinton's achievements 
     on trade policy, notably Nafta and Gatt. But it's been 
     downhill since then. The President hasn't pushed a trade bill 
     through Congress in five years, mainly because of Democratic 
     opposition. He's also taken to soft-selling fast-track 
     negotiating power lest it hurt Vice President Gore with Big 
     Labor. Rest assured this flagging enthusiasm for free trade 
     has been noted in Democratic circles.
       Later this month Mr. Clinton traveles to an international 
     trade meeting in Seattle, supposedly to rally the world back 
     to the free-trade flag. But if he can't deliver through 
     Congress something as small as lower tariffs for Africa, Mr. 
     Clinton might as well stay home.
       New York Democrat Pat Moynihan made the point with his 
     usual delicate bluntless on the Senate floor last week. ``The 
     chairman (Republican Bill Roth) and I were planning to spend 
     a few days in Seattle just meeting with people. We were not 
     going to speak. Dare we go? I suppose Ambassador Barshefsky, 
     is required to go,'' he said of the predicament the U.S. 
     trade rep would be in if the Africa bill failed. ``I don't 
     want to show my face.''
       Late yesterday Mr. Daschle finally agreed to oppose Mr. 
     Hollings, but only after he got Mr. Lott to guarantee him 
     votes later on such domestic political and non-trade matters 
     as the minimum wage. This shows where his priorities lie. 
     When the final Africa trade bill votes are toted up, we'll 
     also see who the real isolationists are.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. Daschle is right. Mr. Lott had not allowed a wish 
list of protectionist amendments. You see, Mr. Lott had given fast 
track to this particular bill, until this morning, he said yesterday 
afternoon, but that was without notice. I went back to get some 
amendments. When I was getting those amendments at 5:30, they closed 
this Senate Chamber down. They didn't want amendments. Now he says you 
can get amendments. Here is what the Wall Street Journal thinks:

       Pennsylvania's steel front-man Rick Santorum on 
     ``antidumping negotiations,'' Iowa protectionist Tom Harkin 
     on child labor, Michigan's Carl Levin (a wholly owned 
     subsidiary of the United Auto Workers) on ``worker rights,'' 
     among others. None of this has anything to do with Africa 
     trade.

  It doesn't? Child labor doesn't have anything to do with Africa 
trade, with Caribbean Basin Initiative trade? It doesn't? Wait until 
the Senator from Iowa comes out here and presents his amendment. That 
is how arrogant they have gotten. They splash a bunch of things people 
would not understand. It has everything to do with it. In fact, those 
are the principal amendments the Senator from South Carolina has. If 
the Senator from Delaware would agree to them, we could move on with 
this bill.
  Specifically, in NAFTA we had the labor side agreements. They are not 
included in the CBI/sub-Sahara. In NAFTA, we had the environmental side 
agreements. Not in CBI/sub-Sahara. In the Mexican NAFTA, we had 
reciprocity. Not in CBI, not in sub-Sahara. In fact, when the Senator 
from New York jumped back 65 years, to 1934, I didn't hear him 
enunciate clearly reciprocal trade agreements of Cordell Hull, 
reciprocity. They had hard, good businessmen. Trade was trade, not a 
moral thing of foreign aid. That is our problem today. Too many in the 
political world think about trade as aid, another Marshall Plan. And 
the Marshall Plan has worked. But there is a limit to what you can give 
away.
  I have time and again said that two-thirds of the clothing I am 
looking at is imported. One-third of all consumption in the United 
States is imported right now. If this train continues, it will be over 
half within the next 5 years. That is the hollowing out. If we are 
going to follow the London economists and the Brits who went from the 
production of goods to the providing of services--a service economy--we 
are going to have minimal growth. They got a British Army, but it is 
not as big as our Marine Corps. But we are going to lose influence in 
the World Trade Organization, in GATT, treaties in the Mideast and 
everywhere else, because money talks. We don't have those things going.
  Now, Mr. President, reciprocal trade. I have an amendment on 
reciprocity, one on labor rights, and I have one with respect to the 
matter of the environment. It was all included. Let me just note, this 
is with tremendous interest to this particular Senator because I have 
just picked up this week's Time magazine. What we really have, in 
essence, is the campaign finance bill of 1999. They say they are not 
going to pass it, but this is the campaign finance bill of 1999.
  In the middle, on pages 38 and 39, is an open-page Buyers Guide To 
Congress. Down here listed is the Caribbean tariff relief, a bill to 
let the Caribbean and Central American countries export apparel to the 
United States duty and quota free. Then you can go down to the 
contributions. The clothing firms want access to cheap-tax-advantage 
offshore production both Clinton and Republicans favor as a free trade 
measure.
  They have in here--yes, the manufacturing and retail side is Sara Lee 
Corporation, Gap, the ATMI, and everything on the one side, and the 
AFL-CIO anti-sweat-shop groups. We have seen where that sort of split 
is. They are going along now with service labor leader John Sweeney and 
not with the manufacturing jobs in America.
  Then we go to last week's edition, and we have the fruit of its 
labor. We see that, in addition to Sara Lee, we have Bill Farley and 
the Fruit of the Loom group. It is just embarrassing to me when you 
take Farley, who already moves 17,000 jobs out of Kentucky and some 
7,000 from Louisiana, and then he gets a $50 million bonus when this 
bill passes. They are talking about how we are going to help working 
Americans. Then, all we have to do is go back to this week's London 
Economist again, in the very first part of the magazine section. We can 
put that in the Record.
  I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled ``Politics and 
Silicon Valley'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S13639]]

                  [From the Economist, Oct. 30, 1999]

                      Politics and Silicon Valley

     The rise of America's high-tech industry is not just a 
         windfall for presidential hopefuls. It could also be a 
         godsend for the liberal political tradition.
       Until recently, computer geeks hardly noticed politics. 
     Washington was ``the ultimate big company''. Policy wonks and 
     political theorists--let alone the poor saps sitting in 
     Congress--``just didn't get it''. And the policy 
     establishment, doers and thinkers alike, was only too happy 
     to return the compliment. In the last presidential election 
     campaign, references to a high-tech future were vague and 
     perfunctory, and Silicon Valley or Seattle were not 
     particular ports of call. Washington, DC and the geeks 
     existed in different worlds.
       How things have changed. According to the Centre for 
     Responsive Politics, a Washington watchdog group, by the end 
     of June this year contributions from the computer industry 
     were already three times those given to Bill Clinton and Bob 
     Dole combined during the 1996 campaign. Of the $843,000 in 
     direct industry contributions, over one-third went to George 
     W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, with the two 
     Democrats--Vice-President Al Gore and Bill Bradley--both 
     netting about half of the Texas governor's total. These 
     figures tell only part of the story, however. They do not 
     include contributions from telecommunications and biotech 
     companies, nor the millions of dollars the candidates have 
     received in fund-raisers organised by computer executives and 
     venture capitalists: entrepreneurs who helped fuel the high-
     tech boom, and are now helping pave the way to the White 
     House.
       Mr. Bush has courted the computer chiefs of Texas since 
     before he became governor, in 1995. Heading the committee of 
     computer luminaries advising him is Michael Dell, the 
     Godfather of Austin's high-tech revolution, who is actively 
     recruiting other computer executives into the Bush camp. 
     Among the other members of the committee are James Barksdale, 
     founder of Netscape, and John Chambers, president and CEO of 
     Cisco Systems. But if Mr. Bush has Texas sewn up, other 
     candidates have been prospecting elsewhere. In Colorado, 
     which now has the second-highest concentration of high-tech 
     jobs in the country, the state's prosperous telecom industry 
     has been donating generously to both Senator John McCain and 
     Mr. Gore. Trips to the Pacific north-west have been 
     especially lucrative for Mr. Bradley and Mr. McCain, with 
     Microsoft giving both candidates their largest computer-
     industry donations to date. Nor are the contributions only 
     for the men at the top: the computer industry gave $8m to 
     congressional campaigns in 1998, more than twice what it gave 
     in 1994.
       This money is all the sweeter for coming with few strings 
     attached. The computer industry has yet to develop a coherent 
     lobbying strategy, in which campaign donations are implicitly 
     exchanged for influence over the political process. This is 
     partly because the ``computer industry'' is really just a 
     collection of assorted (and often competing) interests. As 
     one industry analyst puts it, ``Just as there is no `Asia' to 
     Asians, there is no `technology community' to technology 
     companies.'' The interest of hardware companies are not 
     necessarily those of software or e-commerce companies, and 
     therefore a focused, industry-wide lobbying effort has been 
     difficult to co-ordinate.
       Slowly, this is changing, as high-tech executives finally 
     learn the rules of political gamesmanship. Eric Benhamou, 
     boss of 3Com, dates the politicisation of Silicon Valley to 
     1996, when California's trial lawyers sponsored a ballot 
     measure that would have exposed high-tech companies to a 
     barrage of litigation. Since then the Valley has woken up to 
     the fact that it helps to have friends in Washington. The 
     government has the power to turn off one of the Valley's most 
     important resources: the supply of foreign brains. The 
     Microsoft antitrust case may even prove that it has the power 
     to restructure the entire computer industry. In short, the 
     two sides simple have to talk to each other.
       The Technology Network (TechNet), a political action group 
     founded two years ago in Silicon Valley, has just set up a 
     second office in Austin, and plans to open more chapters in 
     the future--an attempt to influence policy at both state and 
     local level. Companies in Washington, DC--home of America 
     Online, America's biggest Internet service provider, and a 
     city where the computer industry has just taken over from 
     government as the biggest local employer--have also started 
     their own lobbying group, CapNet.
       According to Steve Papermaster, an Austin entrepreneur who 
     heads TechNet Texas, there is a greater sense of urgency 
     within the technology industry to have more of a say in 
     politics. Like it or not, high-tech businesses have to work 
     in a world of taxes, regulation, lawsuits and legislation; 
     they need politicians just as much as politicians need them. 
     If not more: for political contributions from the high-tech 
     hives are still well below those that come in from such old-
     fashioned sectors as banking or even agriculture. There is a 
     lot of catching-up to do.


                       the geeks and the parties

       The Republican and Democratic candidates who are now 
     trawling the high-tech industry, hands out, hope that this 
     new political awareness has a partisan tinge. Republicans 
     seem to have more grounds for optimism. After years when it 
     looked as if computers favoured big organisations over small 
     ones, and companies such as IBM appeared to be breeding 
     grounds for conformism, the high-tech industry is arguably 
     putting technology back on the side of individual liberty.
       The average computer geek is convinced that the rise of 
     clever machines and interlinked networks is inexorably 
     shifting power from organisations to individuals, 
     decentralising authority and accelerating innovation. Not 
     only big companies and big unions, but also big government, 
     seem to be on the point of disappearing. The sort of world 
     the geeks are now conjuring up is a throwback to that of the 
     Founding Fathers, so admired by Republican revolutionaries of 
     the Gingrich mould, where (morally upright) yeomen farmers 
     pursued happiness quite undisturbed by government.
       Yet Democrats, too, think they have natural friends in the 
     high-tech industry. There is a growing feeling in some 
     quarters that--as in the case against Microsoft--government 
     is not always a force for evil. Indeed, the public sector may 
     hold the key to solving the social problems that now plague 
     the high-tech industry: the shortage of educated labour, the 
     over-strained transport system and the rapidly growing gap 
     between rich and poor.
       Some computer bosses are already appealing to politicians 
     to get their act together. Andy Grove, the head of Intel, has 
     told congressmen that the Internet is about to wipe out 
     entire sections of the economy--and has warned them that, 
     unless politicians start moving at ``Internet rather than 
     Washington speed'', America may see a repeat of the social 
     disaster that followed the mechanisation of agriculture. The 
     high-tech industry is beginning to realise that it is doing 
     nothing less than ``defining the economic structure of the 
     world,'' says Eric Schmidt, the boss of Novell. And with that 
     realisation comes, for some at least, a heavy sense of 
     responsibility.
       So which party will gain from the computer industry's 
     belated entry into politics? It is hard to say. Mr. Schmidt 
     points out that most computer folk are seriously 
     disillusioned with the established parties: with the 
     Democrats because they are too soft on vested interests, with 
     the Republicans because of their ``Neanderthal'' social 
     views. They think politics is not about ideology, but about 
     fixing things, a tidy-minded approach that comes easily to 
     scientists and engineers--and which carries echoes of the 
     earlier, not-so-crazy Ross Perot.
       It is often claimed that ``libertarian'' and 
     ``progressive'' groupings are emerging in the computer 
     industry. Yet these sound not dissimilar from the sort of 
     shifts that are occurring anyway inside the Republican and 
     Democratic Parties. Libertarians are represented by men like 
     T.J. Rodgers, the boss of Cypress Semiconductor, and Scott 
     McNealy, the head of Sun Microsystems, who argue that 
     government is being rendered largely irrelevant by the power 
     and speed of computers, and that the best way to deal with 
     problems such as the ``digital divide'' may well be to extend 
     the market, not invent new government programmes. This is 
     ``compassionate conservatism''--perhaps operating even 
     through beneficent computer companies themselves, offering 
     training and education--of the sort that George W. Bush might 
     recognize.
       The progressives, who originally appeared under Bill 
     Packard at Hewlett-Packard in the 1990s, have now fanned out 
     to a growing number of institutions, from Joint Venture-
     Silicon Valley, a think-tank dedicated to tackling local 
     problems, to TechNet, which now consists of no fewer than 140 
     high-tech bosses. They argue that there is still an important 
     place for the government in a computer-driven economy--albeit 
     a much smaller and more intelligent government than the one 
     that currently resides in Washington. They love to point out 
     that government funded the research that gave birth to the 
     Internet, and one of their key complaints is that the federal 
     government's R&D spending over the past 30 years has declined 
     dramatically. Doesn't that sound just a bit like Al Gore?


                           brave new politics

       It is tempting to conclude that the high-tech industry, 
     flush with its new success, is claiming an impact on politics 
     that goes far beyond the facts. Yet politics is a theoretical 
     discipline, as well as a practical one; and here the 
     collusion with high-tech is leading in fascinating 
     directions. Computer-folk are beginning to look outside 
     cyber-land for the answers to their questions about the 
     future of society and government. At the same time, the 
     intellectual and policy establishments are increasingly 
     looking to the Valley, and other high-tech corners, for clues 
     as to the shape of things to come.
       The latest think-tank in Washington, DC, the New America 
     Foundation, is largely funded by Silicon Valley money and is 
     devoted to exploring the sort of political topics that will 
     be at the heart of the digital age: digital democracy, the 
     future of privacy and the digital divide. New America is in 
     one of the few funky bits of Washington, Dupont Circle. It 
     has scooped up a good proportion of the brightest American 
     thinkers under 40 in its fellowship programme, including 
     Michael Lind, Jonathan Chait and Gregory Rodriguez, and it is 
     making sure that these bright young things interact with the 
     cyber-elite at regular retreats and discussions.
       So far, the person who has straddled the worlds of social 
     theory and Silicon Valley most successfully is Manual 
     Castells, a sociologist at the University of California. Mr. 
     Castells enjoys a growing reputation as the

[[Page S13640]]

     first significant philosopher of cyber-space--a big thinker 
     in the European tradition who nevertheless knows the 
     difference between a gigabit and a gigabyte. His immense 
     three-volume study, ``The Information Age'' (Blackwell), 
     echoes Max Weber in its ambition and less happily in its 
     style (the ``spirit of informationalism'', for example). He 
     writes about the way in which global networks of computers 
     and people are reducing the power of nation states, 
     destabilizing elites, transforming work and leisure and 
     changing how people identify themselves.
       Mr. Castells ruminates obscurely about ``the culture of 
     real virtuality'', ``the space of flows'' and ``timeless 
     time''. He also castigates the cyber-elite for sealing 
     themselves off in information cocoons and leaving the poor 
     behind. But this former Marxist and student activist cannot 
     restrain his enthusiasm for the way that it is diffusing 
     1960s libertarianism ``through the material culture of our 
     societies''. The result is that his sprawling boo, is now an 
     important fashion accessory in Palo Alto cafes.
       Will the views it enshrines be more than a passing trend? 
     Very probably. The last time America underwent a fundamental 
     economic change, a fundamental political realignment rapidly 
     followed: the transition from an agrarian to an industrial 
     society in the mid-19th century soon gave rise to mass 
     political parties with their city bosses and umbilical ties 
     to labour and capital. The cyber-elite not only suspects that 
     changes of a similar magnitude are inevitable. It hopes to be 
     able to help shape the new politics.
       Today's sharpest intellectuals are fascinated by Silicon 
     Valley for the same reason that thinkers early in this 
     century were intrigued by Henry Ford: the smell of huge 
     amounts of money made in new ways. But the Valley has more 
     interest for them than Motown ever had, because it deals in 
     the very stuff of intellectual life, information: and because 
     this, more than any other place, is a laboratory of the 
     future.
       Individualism has been losing out as a practical doctrine 
     for the past century because the invention of mass production 
     encouraged the creation of big business, big labor and, 
     triangulated between the two, big government. this has been 
     the age not of Jefferson's yeoman farmer, but of William 
     Whyte's Organisation Man. Now, however, computers are 
     shifting the balance of power from collective entities such 
     as ``society'' or ``the general good'' and handing it back to 
     those whom governments once condescendingly referred to as 
     their ``subjects''.
       This cult of individual effort, completely detached from 
     the old hierarchical or social structures, can be found 
     everywhere in Silicon Valley. The place is full of bright 
     immigrants willing to sacrifice their ancestral ties for a 
     seat at the table; almost 30% of the 4,000 companies started 
     between 1900-96, for example, were founded by Chinese or 
     Indians. The Valley takes the idea of individual merit 
     extremely seriously. People are judged on their brainpower, 
     rather than their sex or seniority; many of the new internet 
     firms are headed by people in their mid-20s.
       The Valley's 6,000 firms exist in a ruthlessly 
     entrepreneurial environment. It is the world's best example 
     of what Joseph Schumpeter called ``creative destruction'': 
     old companies die and new ones emerge, allowing capital, 
     ideas and people to be reallocated. The companies are mostly 
     small and nimble, and the workers are as different as you can 
     get from old-fashioned company men. As the saying goes in the 
     Valley, when you want to change your job, you simply point 
     your car into a different driveway.


                         the disappearing state

       This twofold Siliconisation--the spread of both the 
     Valley's products and its way of doing business--is beginning 
     to challenge the rules of political life in several 
     fundamental ways. And it is doing so, of course, not merely 
     in America but the world over--though America is both farther 
     ahead, and represents more fertile ground.
       First, the cyber-revolution is challenging the expansionary 
     tendencies of the state. Over the past century the state has 
     grown relentlessly, often with the enthusiastic support of 
     big business. But corporatism has no future in the new world 
     of creative destruction. (It is a safe bet that imitation 
     Silicon Valleys that have been planned by politicians are 
     going to hit the buffers.)
       The spread of computer networks is also moving commerce 
     from the physical world to an ethereal plane that is hard for 
     the state to tax and regulate. The United States Treasury, 
     for example, is currently agonizing over the fact that e-
     commerce doesn't seem to occur in any physical location, but 
     instead takes place in the nebulous world of ``cyber-space''. 
     The internet also makes it easier to move businesses out of 
     high-taxation zones and into low ones.
       One of the state's main claims to power is that it ``knows 
     better what is good for people than the people know 
     themselves''. But the Siliconisation of the world has up-
     ended this, putting both information and power into the hands 
     of individuals. Innovation is now so fast and furious that 
     big organizations increasingly look like dinosaurs, while 
     wired individuals race past them. And decision-making is 
     dispersed around global networks that fall beyond the control 
     of particular national governments.
       The web is also challenging traditional ideas about 
     communities. Americans are accustomed to thinking that there 
     is an uncomfortable trade-off between individual freedom and 
     community ties: in the same breath that he praises America's 
     faith in individualism, Tocqueville warns that there is 
     danger each man may be `'shut up in the solitude of his own 
     heart''. Yet the Internet is arguably helping millions of 
     spontaneous communities to bloom: communities defined by 
     common interests rather than the accident of physical 
     proximity.
       Information technology may be giving birth, too, to an 
     economy that is close to the theoretical models of capitalism 
     imagined by Adam Smith and his admirers. Those models assumed 
     that the world was made up of rational individuals who were 
     able to pursue their economic interests in the light of 
     perfect information and relatively free from government and 
     geographical obstacles. Geography is becoming less of a 
     constraint; governments are becoming less interventionist; 
     and information is more easily and rapidly available.
       So far--Mr. Castells apart--Silicon Valley has not produced 
     a social thinker of any real stature. Technologists tend not 
     to be philosophers. But at the very least, computerization is 
     helping to push political debate in the right direction: 
     linking market freedoms with wider personal freedoms and 
     suggesting that the only way that government can continue to 
     be useful is by radically streamlining itself for a more 
     decentralized age.
       It is a little early to expect that this sort of thinking 
     will colour next year's campaigns; the new alliances between 
     politicians and the cyber-elite have mostly sprung up for the 
     most ancient and pragmatic of reasons. But it may only be a 
     matter of time before America sees, on the back of the 
     computer age, a great new flowering of liberal politics.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. It says:

       How things have changed. According to the Centre for 
     Responsive Politics, a Washington watchdog group, by the end 
     of June this year, contributions from the computer industry 
     were already three times those given to Bill Clinton and Bob 
     Dole combined during the 1996 campaign. Of the $843,000 in 
     direct industry contributions, over one-third went to George 
     W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, with the two 
     Democrats--Vice President Al Gore and Bill Bradley--both 
     netting about half of the Texas Governor's total. These 
     figures tell only part of the story, however. They do not 
     include contributions from telecommunications and biotech 
     companies, nor the millions of dollars the candidates have 
     received in fundraisers organised by computer executives and 
     venture capitalists: entrepreneurs who helped fuel the high-
     tech boom, and are now helping pave the way to the White 
     House.

  And on and on. If they can see it in downtown London and on Main 
Street America with the headline, ``The Buyer's Guide To Congress,'' 
and list in this particular bill the Caribbean tariff relief bill, we 
Senators don't have any pride. Is there no shame? Can't we understand 
what is going on and that NAFTA doesn't help the workers in South 
Carolina? We lost all the jobs. What few remain, they are saying the 
high-tech revolution has passed by, and it says the info revolution 
escapes them.
  If I could get Gates to South Carolina tomorrow morning, I would 
bring him in. He is a wonderful industry and everything else. At least 
give President Reagan credit; we subsidized the semiconductor industry 
by putting in a voluntary restraint agreement and Sematech.
  That is why we would have Intel and otherwise gone. Yes; we have 
moments of sobriety in this particular body. But it is election 2000. 
It is all financing, and the buying of the Congress. They ought to be 
ashamed to bring this bill.
  But I will make the Senator from Delaware a deal. If he will accept a 
side agreement on labor similar to what we have on NAFTA, and a side 
agreement that we have on NAFTA with respect to the environment and 
reciprocity, we would not even have to. Those amendments ought to be 
accepted. They were on the NAFTA agreement. If he will accept those, I 
will sit down, and we can go ahead and vote on this particular bill. I 
make that proposal to the distinguished Senator from Delaware. After he 
has had a chance to study it, I hope to hear from him because it would 
save all of us a lot of time.
  I have had relevant amendments, instead of the ``Hollings 
filibuster'' all last week. The majority leader filibustered. He knew 
how to do what he wanted to do. He filled the tree where you couldn't 
put up those amendments. You couldn't put up any kind of amendment with 
respect to child labor. You couldn't put up in any amendments with 
respect to trade. He filled the tree. He forced fast track. It was a 
bill with his amendments, take it or leave it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Iowa.




                          ____________________