[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 51 (Tuesday, April 30, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3515-S3522]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             ANDEAN TRADE PREFERENCE ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will now resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 
3009, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to the bill (H.R. 3009) to extend the 
     Andean Trade Preference Act, to grant additional trade 
     benefits under that act, and for other purposes.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
until 12 noon shall be equally divided and controlled between the 
proponents and opponents of the motion.


               RECOGNITION OF THE ACTING MAJORITY LEADER

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada is 
recognized.


                                Schedule

  Mr. REID. As the Chair has announced, we are now on the Andean trade 
bill. Until noon there will be remarks of those who favor it and those 
who are opposed to it. At noon we will vote on Michael Baylson and 
Cynthia Rufe to be United States District Judges for the State of 
Pennsylvania. There will be a half hour of debate on those two matters. 
Then we will vote this afternoon at 2:15, following our normal weekly 
party conferences.
  Following disposition of these nominations, we will again go back to 
the Andean trade bill. A rollcall vote on adoption of the motion to 
proceed is expected today, sometime this evening. We hope those who 
wish to speak on this matter will do so. In the meantime, I ask 
unanimous consent that time under the quorum call I will initiate be 
equally charged against the proponents and opponents of this 
legislation.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                        College Education Costs

  Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, last year, the Senate made significant 
strides in easing the burdens of American families facing the mounting 
costs of a college education. In an initiative that I have sponsored, 
and in which I take enormous pride--the tax reduction legislation of 
last year--there is a provision allowing partial tuition, for the first 
time in American history, to become tax deductible.
  Another measure that I successfully authored raised a cap on interest 
on student loans so that they could become deductible. In many ways, 
for middle-income families--indeed, for all American families--this was 
enormously helpful in easing the burden of an expensive college 
education.

[[Page S3516]]

  You can imagine how distressed I was to discover in recent days that 
the administration has a new initiative that would now increase the 
burden of financing a college education--just as we were making all of 
this progress. The proposal, of course, is to prohibit the 
consolidation of student loans at low, fixed interest rates. This will 
compound the problems of millions of American families who rely upon 
student loans to finance a college education.
  Under their current program, a family can take their various student 
loans, consolidate them in a single loan, and fix them at a determined 
interest rate, which is predictable and will not alter for the life of 
the loan. The savings, obviously, will allow students to consider going 
beyond college to graduate education. It allows young people who have 
these debts to begin families, buy homes, and start their lives.
  Under the alternative proposal by the administration, students 
graduating from college will have variable interest loans. That would 
make it impossible to plan young lives. The debts begin at high 
interest rates and they are then subject to the market.
  Young families having children, buying homes, in 5 years could find 
interest rates at significantly higher levels. They can go from college 
to graduate school and in the middle of graduate school discover their 
interest rates are going up and they cannot remain in school. This will 
affect an incredible 700,000 students per year who will have their 
finances radically changed by this inability to consolidate loans.
  The administration argues that most of this consolidation is being 
done by medical students or law students who are going to have very 
high incomes so they can face this burden.
  First, that is inaccurate. The average consolidated loan is $15,000. 
There are hundreds of thousands of students with these loans. Most of 
them are college students. They are getting bachelor's degrees. They 
may be going into teaching or social work or business; they may be 
young entrepreneurs; they could be of any walk of life; but they are at 
a stage of life when they cannot afford what amounts to a tax.
  Make no mistake, this is a tax proposed by the Bush administration on 
middle-income families and college students. There is scarcely a 
segment of American society that can less afford a tax increase. This 
Senate recognized that fact last year. That is why my amendments to 
make college tuition tax deductible and to raise the cap on the 
deduction of student loans were accepted. We wanted to reduce the costs 
of college education, not increase them.
  Even if the administration were right and many of these loans were 
going for medical students or law students or business students, does 
that make it the right priority for the country? Do we really want to 
make it even more expensive for people to go into medicine when doctors 
are already leaving the profession? Do we really want to make it harder 
for people to go to graduate school when we need engineers and 
businesspeople with real talents? This cannot be the right priority for 
the country.
  I hope the administration will reconsider this proposal. The 
administration needs revenue. This cannot be the right way to approach 
it. Strangely, in this same Congress, while raising taxes on middle-
income families and college students, the administration is proposing 
to revisit the estate tax, which we have already lowered, and increase 
the threshold so that only less than half of a percentage point of 
Americans are even subjected to the tax. And the rates on those people 
have been lowered. We are going to revisit that tax while taxing 
college students and middle-income families.
  I cannot be the only person in this institution who thinks this does 
not make any sense for the country or the Congress. I hope we do not 
have a confrontation with the Bush administration on this point. I hope 
they reconsider it. I hope they withdraw it. It is just the wrong thing 
to do.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum and the time be charged equally 
against both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Carnahan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I also ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized as in morning business and that the time I use come off the 
postcloture time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Spending Valuable Time With Constituents

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first of all, I have been a little 
disturbed recently--I am not mad at anybody--about all of this 
discussion about what we are doing here and why it is necessary to be 
here on Mondays and on Fridays when on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and 
Thursdays we are spending most of our time in quorum calls.
  I think there is this Washington, DC, mentality that floats around 
that somehow if we are not here in Washington, DC, we, as Senators, are 
not doing our work.
  Let me tell you, for those of us who go back to the district and are 
with our people--in my case, the people of Oklahoma, who make much more 
sense than anybody makes around this place--that time is more valuable, 
and it is harder. Our hours are longer. We work long hours when we are 
back there. Yet we see the bed check votes such as the one that brought 
us back last night. We come back, and we vote on something we could 
have been voting on anytime--on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
  Then you see the press corps around Washington. They all think 
everything that is worthwhile is happening in Washington. You read the 
Hill and you read Roll Call and they say it is perfectly reasonable for 
the majority leader to say everyone ought to be in Washington all the 
time.
  I can tell you one of the problems we have is people who are in 
Washington all the time lose sight of who real people are. It is so 
hard to explain to people around here, but people in my State of 
Oklahoma understand it very well. There aren't any real, normal people 
in Washington. Everyone is either a Member or they are a staffer or 
they are a lobbyist or somebody else. To be able to get what is needed 
for America, you need to get back into real America. Oklahoma is real 
America. I can cite some examples.
  I will be talking to the Duma this afternoon, the Russian Duma, about 
our new relationship with Russia. When I go back to Oklahoma, they will 
say: Wait a minute; why do we still have an ABM Treaty that was set up 
in 1972?
  Fortunately, we are going to get rid of that thing. But why did it 
take this long? It took this long because people around this town don't 
understand pure logic. The logic is that at one time there were two 
superpowers, the U.S.S.R. and the United States. And I have to admit, 
as a Republican, this was done in a Republican administration. Henry 
Kissinger, back in the Nixon administration, put together something 
that said: I will make you a deal, U.S.S.R. We won't defend ourselves 
against you, if you don't defend yourselves against us. And if you 
shoot us, we will shoot you, and everybody dies and everybody is happy. 
It is called mutual assured destruction.
  That might have made sense to some people back in 1972. It didn't to 
me, but it might have to some other people. Now we have a totally 
different world out there in Russia, which is a friend and ally of 
ours; yet we do have Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya, other countries 
harboring terrorists, developing weapons that will reach the United 
States, missiles that will reach us. Already China, North Korea, and 
Russia have such missiles. So how does it make sense in today's world 
that we don't defend ourselves?
  I don't get the answers, but I get the questions when I go back to 
Oklahoma. Then I have to try to explain to them. I was criticized the 
other day by some of my conservative friends as to why I voted on some 
of the amendments in the farm bill. I voted on those because I went 
back. I have town meetings, as I am sure the Chair is aware. I get 
around and have as many as five, six in a day.
  Oklahoma, particularly in the western part of the State, is 
agricultural.

[[Page S3517]]

In Oklahoma, our farmers have three sources of income: Grain, 
livestock, and oil. They have this so-called marginal production. For a 
sustained period of time, all three of these were down, and they were 
really hurting. I sat down in places such as Shattuck, OK, and Gage, 
OK. I had farmers coming in and saying: For the first time in five 
generations, we will have to sell our farm. We can no longer stay in 
business.

  For that reason, I realized that we have to do something that is 
different than what we have done before in transitioning into a new 
farm policy. So we did. And some of the amendments I voted for were 
pretty expensive. Nonetheless, that came from going back to the State, 
being there and listening to them instead of staying around Washington 
on the weekends.
  On energy and ANWR, I can't believe we took all the time we did in 
trying to open ANWR for exploration. Here we are in a threatened 
position. Everyone is aware of it. After September 11, all of a sudden 
we find ourselves dependent upon other countries for 57 percent of our 
energy. We don't even pass something that will allow us to open up the 
Alaska Wildlife Refuge for exploration. I have yet to find one person 
to go up there to the ANWR on the North Slope of Alaska and come back 
here shaking their head, wondering why in the world we call that a 
pristine wilderness. It is nothing but a mud flat. It is a tiny area up 
there that would give us a great capacity of domestic crude.
  In my State of Oklahoma, if we had all of our marginal wells--a 
marginal well is one that produces 15 barrels or less a day--if we had 
them all opened, if we had those wells flowing that we have had closed 
over the last 10 years, that would have produced the same amount of oil 
as we are currently importing from Saudi Arabia.
  When you go back, you talk to real people. Last week, when we were 
having a town meeting, they were talking about this community planning 
bill that was going to come out, and now it has come out of the 
Environment and Public Works Committee. It will be considered on this 
floor. Do you know what that is all about? What that is about is a 
recognition that no good decisions are made unless they are made in 
Washington, DC.
  Many years ago when I was mayor of Tulsa, there was a guy named Dr. 
Robert Fryley. He had gone into San Diego. Pete Wilson was mayor at 
that time. I was mayor of Tulsa. He had drawn these concentric circles 
that said: This is the way you should plan your community.
  He came to Tulsa in the first 2 or 3 weeks that I was in office. He 
started talking about Tulsa. I said: Wait a minute. This property is 
owned by people. These people bought this property. You are going to 
change the value of the property to these people.
  They said: That is of no concern to us.
  That is what we now will be considering on the floor of the Senate--a 
bill that is going to allow us in Washington to decide what we in 
Tulsa, OK, do with our property.
  I see others seeking the floor. I was killing a little time.
  The other day I was at Eisenhower School. It is a school that has 
done some great things in the public school system that others are 
emulating. I received some letters. I will just read a couple. This one 
says:

       Thank you for my class. Your speech about rights and 
     responsibilities was great and interesting. I really enjoyed 
     you coming. It was fun. I learned a lot. Sincerely, Maggie.

  Here is another one:

       Thank you so much for your presentation today. Our class 
     really enjoyed it. I liked it a lot. I liked the part where 
     you answered my question. Once again I enjoyed it a lot. 
     Sincerely, Lauren Smith.

  I ask unanimous consent that the rest of these letters be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming to our 
     class. I really learned a lot like the pilgrims really wanted 
     to get to freedom so they traveled even though they knew a 
     lot of them wouldn't survive for a year. I also learned about 
     the government. I learned that there are 100 senators. Two 
     for each state. I felt proud that I got to meet you! It was a 
     pleasure to have you come to our class! You really made it an 
     interesting day!
           Sincerely yours,
                                                       Susan Diaz.
       P.S. I bet you have a big responsibility!
                                  ____

       Dear Mr. Inhofe: I wanted to thank you for coming to our 
     class. I had a very good time. I learned new things too like 
     there are 100 senators and 435 representatives. I really like 
     to learn new stuff like that. Thanks again.
           Sincerely,
     Noah Zeigler.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for teaching me 
     stuff I have never known before. You taught me that the 
     English fought England. It was an interesting visitation. By 
     by.
           Sincerely,
     Kyia W.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator: Thank you for coming to our school. It was 
     very very interesting. I learned that there are 435 State 
     representatives and 100 senators. I think it is amazing that 
     we won the revolutionary war.
       I learned that people would strap dynamite on themselves. 
     They thought God would bring them into heaven no matter what. 
     Thank you.
           Sincerely,
     Eva.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you so much for coming 
     to our class. That was a big opportunity that most kids don't 
     get to have.
       What I learned over your visit that I thought was really 
     interesting was that people think that God would send them 
     straight to Heaven if they killed themselfs.
           Sincerely,
     Danielle P.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: Thank you for coming to our school I 
     enjoyed your presentation. I learned a lot of stuff like how 
     the pilgrims won the Revolutionary War and about our freedoms 
     and laws. I also think it's great that Afganistan got a new 
     government. Thanks again.
           Sincerely,
     Colin Ferguson.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming to our 
     classroom. I really enjoyed your presentation. I learned that 
     in Afghanistan they have mountains that are about 12,000 feet 
     tall. I also learned that there are 100 senators. Two come 
     from each state.
           Sincerely yours,
     Bryce S.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: We really enjoyed you coming to our 
     school. It was one big pleasure that I will never forget. Now 
     I know what is going on in Afghanistan. It is really 
     terrible. I hope you can come back and talk more. I didn't 
     know there were 100 senators.
           Sincerely yours,
     Latoya.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: It was a pleasure to hear you talk 
     about lots of interesting facts on the Bill of Rights, our 
     religion, our responsibilities, and the revolutionary war. It 
     was a lot of fun having you come. You have taught us a lot of 
     interesting things like, different cultures, and the 
     constitution.
           Sincerely yours,
     Ben Rickman.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming to our 
     class. I enjoyed you talking to us. I learned a lot about the 
     government. I learned that there are one hundred senators in 
     the United States. It was a pleasure having you here.
           Sincerely,
     Matthew Breulo.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming today. 
     I think Maggie was glad you came today. It was our pleasure 
     to listen to you. Your subject was very interesting. I hope 
     you're right about war. I never knew that there were military 
     grounds in Lawton. I enjoyed listening to you.
           Sincerely yours,
     Abby Jones.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming and 
     talking about the Bill of Rights and lots of very interesting 
     stuff. I think the most interesting part was when you talked 
     about the Constitution. I enjoyed it very much. It was a 
     pleasure having you here. So thank you.
           Sincerely,
     Avery Boyd.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming to our 
     class. When you were here I learned that there were 435 state 
     representatives and 100 senators in the United States of 
     America. In each state there are two senators. I also learned 
     that the war with Afghanistan should last about four more 
     years. I hope you have a good day.
           Sincerely yours,
     Haley Holtzscher.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming. I 
     learned that there is a military base in Lawton. I enjoyed it 
     when we talked about the Bill of Rights.
           Sincerely yours,
     Jackson.
                                  ____

       Senator Inhofe: Thank you for coming to our class. I 
     learned a lot from you. I learned that the pilgrims fought 
     the toughest army

[[Page S3518]]

     on the face of the earth and won. I also learned that we've 
     had peace since 1776.
           Sincerely,
                                  ____

                                                        John Yuan.
       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for telling us 
     about some Bill of Rights. The things that you told us was so 
     interesting. I learned a lot about the pilgrims. How they 
     fought for our freedom. And thanks again for teaching things 
     that I didn't know.
           Sincerely yours,
     Aubri Settle.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: Thank you for coming to our classroom. 
     I learned there are 2 senators from each state. There are so 
     many things I learned they won't fit on this paper. I wish 
     you had more time in our classroom. I hope you have a good 
     spring.
           Sincerely,
     Ethan Gehring
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: Thank you for coming to 3rd grade. I 
     enjoyed you talking to us about the bill of rights. I learned 
     that there are 100 senators. There are 2 in each state.
           Sincerely,
     Lauren Russell.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Inhofe: I want to thank you for coming to our 
     class. Thank you for telling us about the Constitution. Thank 
     you for coming again. Thank you for telling us how you work. 
     Now we know it's a big job.
           Sincerely yours,
                                              John Philips Hughes.

  Mr. INHOFE. I wanted to stand in the Chamber and say if we ran this 
place the way it should be run, we could very easily handle all of the 
votes we need to handle on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and allow 
those of us who care about going back to our States, spending time with 
our people and sharing the wisdom we get from the States, as opposed to 
from Washington, I think we would be a lot better off.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, the Senator from South Carolina is 
going to speak for 30 minutes. I ask unanimous consent that I follow 
the Senator from South Carolina.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, with respect to the Andean trade 
compact and its re-enactment, and particularly with respect to the 
intent to put fast track on the particular Andean trade agreement, the 
contention is that without this fast track, we are missing out on all 
of these wonderful deals.
  I wish I had time to give the litany of the wonderful deals on how 
the United States of America--from the Tokyo Round, Uruguay Round, 
right on down to the present scheduled rounds with the WTO and 
otherwise--has been going out of business. Literally, intentionally, we 
are going out of business, I would say. What we were trying to do was 
win the cold war. We wanted to defeat communism with capitalism. We 
sent over the Marshall Plan, with technology and expertise, and it 
worked. Everyone is happy with that.
  Now, after 50 years, hometowns have been totally depleted of any 
industrial manufacturing.
  Let me get right to the point and bring out the actual facts, using 
not just the record made here by the U.S. Trade Representative, but by 
the morning news. Let's look and find out what we are talking about 
with respect to trade agreements that we have been missing.
  Well, if you look at the recent edition of the 2001 Trade Policy 
Agenda of the President of the United States on the trade agreements 
program, you will find in the glossary in the back that there are some 
200 trade agreements made without fast track.
  Do I need to remind the Senate that we just voted on--without fast 
track--a free trade agreement with Vietnam? Do I need to remind the 
body that we just voted on a free trade agreement with Jordan? I 
supported both of those. Do I need to remind them that we passed the 
Sub-Saharan Africa trade agreement, the Caribbean Basin Initiative 
Agreement, and the 1997 WTO telecommunications agreement? You can go 
down the list--and they are all listed in here.
  We have made some 200 agreements in the last 10 years--all without 
fast track. We didn't give total fast track authority to President 
Clinton because we wanted to deliberate and make sure the economy of 
the United States was protected. And it has been working. But look not 
only at the red book here, but with respect to the national news, in 
the Washington Post, it said this last Thursday:

       United States signs trade agreement with eight African 
     nations.

  There are eight more trade agreements. We aren't missing out on all 
these so-called trade agreements. I wish the chairman of the Finance 
Committee could read the morning paper. He could find out that we did 
it without fast track. According to the financial news--let me read 
this to you. This is in the morning Financial Times:

       John O'Leary, former U.S. Ambassador to Chile and 
     campaigner on a bilateral accord, said yesterday he expected 
     a deal to be signed this year whether or not Mr. Bush won 
     trade negotiating authority.

  . . . ``It's not a matter of consequence who is first past the 
finishing line,'' he said. ``But the deal with the EU is helpful for 
Chile because it gives fresh momentum to their negotiations with the 
United States.''

  We read it. If they brought a Chilean trade agreement--I would have 
to look at it obviously, but why would I vote for it? They have 
relatively the same standard of living. They have a respected 
judiciary, they have property rights, they have labor rights, and they 
are strong on the environment. I voted for NAFTA with Canada because we 
have relatively the same standard of living. But this total farce that 
we are missing out on agreements all over the countryside is just 
wrong, wrong, wrong.
  The problem is the loss of jobs. You only have to go to the morning's 
paper. I hope the chairman, who just left the floor, will listen to 
this one. Of course, right now the best bet for the next few quarters 
is probably a jobless recovery in which the gross domestic product 
rises but unemployment stays high. After all, the economy needs to grow 
at about 3.5 percent just to prevent the unemployment rate from rising, 
and the odds are at least even that the growth will fall short of that 
mark. The funny thing is that a slow jobless and profitless recovery is 
exactly what level-headed people, such as economists at the Federal 
Reserve, have been predicting for a long time. So how did a far more 
bullish view become not just prevalent but more or less mandatory on 
Wall Street? How, with the business landscape still strewn with the 
rubble from the bubble, did that manic optimism so quickly become 
popular again? It seems that hype springs eternal.

  That is the morning news, and that is why the Senator from South 
Carolina only asks for just a closer look.
  Let me fulfill my obligation under the Constitution. Article I, 
section 8, says that--not the President of the United States, not the 
Supreme Court--but this branch of Government, the Congress of the 
United States, shall regulate foreign commerce. Now, these pollster 
politicians who come to Washington and crowd around take the easy 
course. They say: Free trade, free trade, fast track, fast track--and 
they don't have to take any responsibility. So when you lose all the 
jobs in St. Louis and in Charleston, SC, and you look around, you have 
to sort of take it or leave it. I didn't want to be against free trade, 
and that is what I had to vote for.
  Madam President, it is just terrible when you read in that same New 
York Times this morning:

       Auto Parts Makers Grinding to a Halt

  I have another article on a poster board, and I will get into the 
board debate when some of the others come with their particular boards. 
But the automobile industry is moving out of the United States. We have 
foreign locations here. Mercedes is in Alabama, BMW is in South 
Carolina, and some others are trying to get into the market.
  As far as the American manufacturer making that profit is concerned 
and as far as the American manufacturer keeping on the cutting edge of 
technology--why did they move to China? General Motors was told by the 
Chinese they didn't know how to trade. They don't run around saying, be 
fair, be fair, level the playing field, be fair. That is outrageous 
child's talk. That doesn't happen in commerce. You trade for the 
benefit and economic strength and the profit of your company. So the 
Chinese told General Motors: Not only do you manufacture that GM 
automobile over here, but the most modern automobile design plant in 
the world is

[[Page S3519]]

in China. And that is as a result of that particular trade agreement 
that, of course, General Motors made with the People's Republic of 
China.
  The auto parts suppliers are grinding to a halt. They are moving 
those now. They used to send those down to Mexico, and we would get the 
finished product--the automobile--back. But you have here a quote from 
Paul Craig Roberts. Paul Craig Roberts served in the Reagan 
administration. This was an article in the Washington Times just the 
other day:

       The result is a decline in higher paying jobs in the United 
     States as companies move higher value-added operations abroad 
     to take advantage of cheaper labor.

  A recent Cornell University study:

       ``The Impact of U.S.-China Trade Relations on Workers, 
     Wages and Employment,'' concludes that U.S. companies shift 
     their production to China in order to produce for the U.S. 
     market with cheap Chinese labor. The study estimates that a 
     minimum of 760,000 U.S. jobs have been lost to China since 
     1992.
       ``An increasing percentage of the jobs leaving the U.S. are 
     in higher-paying industries producing goods such as bicycles, 
     furniture, motors, compressors, generators, fiber optics, 
     clocks, injection molding and computer components.'' The 
     shift in production is so extensive that the U.S. has run a 
     trade deficit with China in advanced technology goods since 
     1995.

  That is the old wag I was given when as Governor of South Carolina I 
testified 42 years ago before the old International Tariff Commission. 
We were about to lose so much of our textile industry that 10 percent 
of the consumption of clothing textiles in the United States would be 
represented in imports. In looking around the Chamber right this 
minute, two-thirds of the clothing I am looking at is imported, 86 
percent of the shoes.
  Then Tom Dewey, who represented the Japanese at the hearing and ran 
me around the hearing room, he said: ``But, Governor, let them make the 
shoes and the clothing. We will make the airplanes and the computers.''
  Fast forward to the reality of today. They make the shoes, they make 
the clothing, they make the airplanes, they make the computers. We have 
a deficit in the balance of trade in computers and semiconductors.
  High-tech, globalization, you have to understand it. Come on. Do not 
tell this Senator what globalization is. I do not want to sound like 
Vice President Gore, that I invented it, but I did travel 40 years ago 
to South America and Europe as a Governor, soliciting their investment. 
I was looking for jobs. I have been in this game for over 40-some 
years. Today, we have 117 German plants in little South Carolina.
  I will never forget calling on Michelin in June of 1960, down in 
Paris, France, and I have now four beautiful plants of the French 
company. I also have the North American wonderful plant of Bowater. I 
see that rather than me trying to move corporations from overseas to 
the United States, which I am still trying to do--or more particularly 
carpetbagging New York in the Northeast--they are overjumping me into 
Mexico, into China, into Malaysia, into India.
  Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and all the rest of these big-name 
companies, the high-tech companies, are not saving us. We have to 
retrain.
  I have another page of the Washington Post, ``Dupont Plans to Cut 
2,000 Jobs.'' Some of them, of course, are in South Carolina. 
Everywhere we turn, we hear about cutting jobs, and it is not textiles 
or low wage jobs. It is high-tech jobs.
  I hope the Finance Committee will give me a hearing sometime. I would 
be delighted to educate that crowd because this is a fix. They have a 
bunch of oil people and a bunch of farmers and they could care less, as 
long as they get their depletion allowance and their subsidies, and 
then they come around hollering, ``Protectionism, protectionism.''
  Well, that is the fundamental of government. We have the Army to 
protect us from the enemies without, and the FBI to protect us from 
enemies within. We have laws to protect clean air, clean water, the 
environment. We have Medicare to protect us from ill health. We have 
antitrust laws to protect us from monopolization and predatory 
practices. We have safety laws to protect us, safe machinery, safe 
working places and everything else.

  I was in the Rotunda on a cold January day when President Reagan was 
sworn in for his second term. He raised his hand to preserve, protect, 
and defend, and everybody clapped. We were all overjoyed, and then we 
came down into the Senate Chamber and had to listen to a bunch of 
children running around hollering, ``Protectionism.'' That is the 
function of government, and the security of this Nation.
  It is like a three-legged stool. There is the one leg of the values 
as a nation, unquestioned. We are admired the world around for 
America's stand for individual rights, freedom, and democracy.
  The second leg is the military. We are the superpower, unquestioned.
  The third leg, economics, that is my point. It has been fractured, 
fractured intentionally, with this so-called free trade. We knew we had 
to sort of spread the wealth, spread the capitalism in order to defeat 
communism. It has worked, now to a counterproductive point. We will not 
be in a position to produce foreign aid, we will not be able to defend 
freedom the world around unless we have a strong economy.
  I will never forget Akio Morita of Sony. We were in Chicago. We had a 
seminar, and he was talking about Third World nations. He turned and he 
said: In the Third World, the emerging nations, they have to develop a 
strong manufacturing capacity in order to become a nation state. Then 
talking along, he pointed over, and he said: Senator, that world power 
that loses its manufacturing capacity will cease to be a world power.
  And we wonder why we do not have the influence?
  They try to transfer it to hate. It is not hate. I have traveled. We 
have all traveled around. They admire and they like Americans in the 
Arab countries and everywhere else. You can go into downtown Baghdad, 
you can go into downtown Tehran in Iran right now, and they will come 
up to you and talk to you and say glad to see you. Do not give me all 
that hate stuff.
  What is happening is we are losing our economic clout and our 
economic strength because we are exporting the jobs faster than we can 
create them.
  In the Los Angeles Times, April 2, ``High-Paid Jobs Latest U.S. 
Export,'' the No. 1 story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
  I do not believe they read over in the Finance Committee. They give 
you all of this: We are missing out on agreements; we have to retrain.
  They sound like Mao Tse Tung: You have to go out and re-educate.
  Let us try it on for size. I had a plant close not long ago, Oneida. 
They made T-shirts. At the time of their closing, they had more than 
400 employees. The average age was 47 years old, and tomorrow morning 
we have done it Washington's way. We have retrained. We have more than 
400 people who are now skilled computer operators. Is a company going 
to hire the 47-year-old computer operator or the 21-year-old computer 
operator? You are not taking on the health costs for the 47-year-old 
and above. You are not taking on those retirement costs. You are going 
for the youngster who is just as expert. There you go, like we do not 
understand what is going on.
  ``Levi Strauss Closing Most U.S. Plants,'' another article, again in 
April. Every time I look around, they are closing, and what we have, so 
it is understood, is we have an affirmative action plan to get rid of 
the jobs. Mind you me, that is what I say, an affirmative action plan 
to get rid of the jobs.
  Why? Well, let me refer to this article from Business Week. Business 
Week, in 1999, reported on, of all people, Mr. Industrial Success, Mr. 
Industrialist of All Times, John F. Welch--Jack Welch.
  I ask unanimous consent to have the article printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record as follows:

                   (From Business Week, Dec. 6, 1999)

                       Welch's March to the South

                           By Aaron Bernstein

       Washington, Dec. 6.--One of General Electric Co. CEO John 
     F. Welch's favorite phrases is ``squeeze the lemon,'' or 
     wring out costs to maintain the company's stellar profits. In 
     the past year, the lemon-squeezing at GE has been as never 
     before. In a new, superagressive round of cost-cutting, the 
     company is now demanding deep price cuts from its suppliers. 
     To help them meet the stiff goals, several of GE's business 
     units--including aircraft engines, power systems,

[[Page S3520]]

     and industrial systems--have been prodding suppliers to move 
     to low-cost Mexico, where the industrial giant already 
     employs 30,000 people. GE even puts on ``supplier migration'' 
     conferences to help them make the leap.
       GE's hard-nosed new push could spark other companies to 
     emulate its tactics. The supplier crackdown is reminiscent of 
     a similar attempt by former General Motors Corp. parts czar 
     Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua. His efforts largely failed 
     in the face of stiff supplier resistance. But if GE succeeds, 
     other companies could be inclined to try again. GE officials 
     at headquarters in Fairfield, Conn., say the business units 
     are simply carrying out Welch's larger campaign to globalize 
     all aspects of the company. Says Rick Kennedy, a spokesman at 
     GE Aircraft Engines (GEAE): ``We're aggressively asking for 
     double-digit price reductions from our suppliers. We have to 
     do this if we're going to be part of GE.''
       GE's efforts to get suppliers to move abroad come just as 
     World Trade Organization ministers start gathering in Seattle 
     on Nov. 30. That timing could help make the GE moves an issue 
     at the talks, where critics will be pointing to just such 
     strategies--and the resulting loss of U.S. jobs to low-wage 
     countries--as the inevitable fruit of unregulated trade. GE's 
     14 unions hope to make an example in Seattle of the company's 
     supplier policy, arguing that it's paving the way for a new 
     wave of job shifts. They plan to send dozens of members to 
     march with a float attacking Welch. PALTRY WAR CHEST. The 
     campaign by GE's unions, which bargain jointly through the 
     Coordinated Bargaining Committee (CBC), is also the opening 
     salvo of bargaining talks over new labor contracts to replace 
     those expiring next June. Because GE's unions are weak--fully 
     half of their 47,000 members at the company belong to the 
     nearly bankrupt International Union of Electronic workers 
     (IUE)--they'll have a hard time mounting a credible strike 
     threat. Instead, the CBC is planning a public campaign to tar 
     Welch's image. They plan to focus on likely job losses at GE 
     suppliers. The unions also suspect that GE may move even more 
     unionized GE jobs to Mexico and other countries once it has 
     viable supplier bases in place. ``GE hasn't moved our jobs to 
     Mexico yet because our skilled jobs are higher up the food 
     chain,'' says Jeff Crosby, president of IUE Local 201 at GE's 
     Lynn (Mass.) jet-engine plant. ``But once they have suppliers 
     there, GE can set up shop, too.'' His members from parts 
     supplier Ametek Inc. picketed the plant on Nov. 19 to protest 
     GE's pressure on Ametek to move to Monterrey, Mexico.
       Although it has never openly criticized Welch before, the 
     AFL-CIO is jumping into the fray this time. Federation 
     officials have decided that Welch's widely admired status in 
     Corporate America has lent legitimacy to a model of business 
     success that they insist is built on job and wage cuts. 
     ``Welch is keeping his profit margins high by redistributing 
     value from workers to shareholders, which isn't what U.S. 
     companies should be doing,'' charges Ron Blackwell, the AFL-
     CIO's director of corporate affairs. Last year, the AFL-CIO 
     proposed a bold plan to spend some $25 million on a massive 
     new-member recruitment drive at GE, but the IUE wasn't 
     willing to take the risk. So the federation is backing the 
     new, less ambitious campaign that focuses on traditional 
     tactics like rallies and protests. STRONG TIDE. GE's U.S. 
     workforce has been shrinking for more than a decade as Welch 
     has cut costs by shifting production and investment to lower-
     wage countries. Since 1986, the domestic workforce has 
     plunged by nearly 50%, to 163,000, while foreign employment 
     has nearly doubled, to 130,000. Some of this came from 
     businesses GE sold, but also from rapid expansion in Mexico, 
     India, and other Asian countries. Meanwhile, GE's union 
     workforce has shriveled by almost two-thirds since the early 
     1980s, as work was relocated to cheaper, nonunion plants in 
     the U.S. and abroad.
       Welch's supplier squeeze may accelerate the trend. In his 
     annual pep talk to GE's top managers in Boca Raton, Fla., 
     last January, he again stressed the need to globalize 
     production to remain cost-competitive, as he had done in 
     prior years. But this time, he also insisted that GE prod 
     suppliers to follow suit. Several business units moved 
     quickly to do so, with GEAE among the most aggressive. This 
     year, GEAE has held what it calls ``supplier migration'' 
     conferences in Cincinnati, near the unit's Evendale (Ohio) 
     headquarters, and in Monterey, where an aerospace industrial 
     park is going up.
       At the meetings, GEAE officials told dozens of suppliers 
     that it wants to cut costs up to 14%, according to documents 
     about the Monterey meeting at Paoli (Pa.)-based Ametek, whose 
     aerospace unit makes aircraft instruments. The internal 
     report, a copy of which BUSINESSES WEEK obtained, says: ``GE 
     set the tone early and succinctly: `Migrate or be out of 
     business; not a matter of if, just when. This is not a 
     seminar just to provide information. We expect you to move 
     and move quickly.''' Says William Burke, Ametek's vice-
     president for investor relations: ``GE has made clear its 
     desire that its suppliers move to Mexico, and we are 
     evaluating that option. We have a long relationship with GE, 
     and we want to preserve it.''
       GEAE officials argue that heightened competition leaves 
     them no choice. Jet engines sell for less than they did four 
     years ago, says Kennedy, the unit's spokesman. Almost all 
     GEAE's profits have come from contracts to maintain engines 
     already sold. And that business is getting tougher, with 
     rivals such as United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney 
     laying off thousands of workers to slash costs. ``This 
     company is going to make its net income targets, and to do 
     it, we will have to take difficult measures,'' says Kennedy.
       Still, even some suppliers don't see the Mexico push as 
     justified. They point out that GEAE's operating profit has 
     soared by 80% since 1994, to $1.7 billion on sales of $10.3 
     billion. GE, they argue, is leading the cost cuts. ``It's 
     hard to give away 5% or 10% to a company making so much money 
     when most of the suppliers are marginally profitable,'' says 
     Barry Bucher, the CEO and founder of Aerospace International 
     Materials, a $30 million distributor of specialty metals in 
     Cincinnati. Nonetheless, Bucher says he's looking into a 
     joint venture in Mexico in response to the demands from GE, 
     his top customer.
       The unions, for their part, worry that GEAE will follow in 
     the footsteps of GE's appliance unit. To remain competitive 
     in that low-skilled, low-margin industry, GE Appliances has 
     slashed its workforce nearly in half at its Appliance Park 
     facility in Louisville, to some 7,500 today. Much of the work 
     has been relocated to a joint venture in Mexico. Union 
     leaders have tried to stave off further job shifts by 
     offering concessions. In early November, the company agreed 
     to a $200 million investment in Louisville in exchange for 
     productivity improvements and lump-sum payments instead of 
     wage hikes for its members. ``We hope GE will see this as a 
     solution they can adopt in jet engines and elsewhere,'' says 
     IUE President Edward L. Fire.
       Labor's new campaign may embarrass Welsh and even prompt GE 
     to tone down its demands on suppliers. But it won't rebuilt 
     the union's clout at the bargaining table the way a serious 
     organizing drive might have done. Until that happens, Welch 
     probably has little to fear from his restive unions.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. I read:

       One of General Electric Co. CEO John F. Welch's favorite 
     phrases is ``squeeze the lemon,'' or wring out costs to 
     maintain the company's stellar profits.

  How did you squeeze that lemon? I am thinking now that he is 
squeezing something else. Squeezing that lemon in Mexico, he said to 
all of his suppliers two years ago. You have to go down to Mexico and 
cut the cost of your particular supplies, or you will not be a supplier 
of General Electric.
  When the best of the best blue-chip corporations of America has an 
affirmative action plan to get rid of the jobs and the industrial 
security of the United States of America, we are really in trouble. How 
does it occur? It is a natural thing.
  In manufacturing, 30 percent of volume is in the labor costs. As much 
as 20 percent of sales can be saved by moving offshore to a low-wage 
country or down to Mexico, India, or China. If you retain your 
executive office, of course your sales force, but move your 
manufacturing offshore, if you have $500 million in sales, you can reap 
a profit of $100 million before taxes. Or you can stay in America, 
continue to work your own folks, and go broke. That is how they look at 
it.
  So with the policies we have, they are not only moving their 
manufacturing, they are moving the executive office to Bermuda. They 
want the protection of the United States of America, but they don't 
want to participate in building up that protection. They want a free 
ride. That is why I say, in the Senate, we are in the hands of the 
Philistines. When my friend Bobby Kennedy really came in to national 
recognition he had published a book ``The Enemy Within.'' He was 
talking about organized labor. Now I can write the book ``The Enemy 
Within,'' and I can talk about management.
  Who is opposing us in the Senate, trying to create jobs, trying to 
hold together the strength of our economy, trying to maintain our 
industrial backbone? Who opposes this? The Business Roundtable, the 
Conference Board, the National Association of Manufacturers, the 
Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, 
the retailers that make a bigger profit, newspapers that take the 
handouts from the retail associations. They make the most of their 
profits in newspapers from retail advertising. So they put out those 
things, free trade, free trade, fast track, fast track, and here comes 
the whole K Street crowd.
  I came here 35 years ago on the Commerce Committee. The very first 
person in the office on trade was a Japanese representative. No longer 
now. I haven't seen anyone from Japan in Lord knows when. I am trying 
to get there to see our Ambassador over there, Howard Baker. I respect 
their productivity and I have watched as we cry babied along. We never 
did open up their market. It was always a one-way street.

[[Page S3521]]

  In fact, the Japanese got to the position of saying, wait a minute, 
we are not going to buy your bonds if that is what you want to do in 
trade. We found out long since that the Secretary of the Treasury 
really is trying to sell, as in the morning headlines, which says we 
have a deficit, so he is trying to issue $1 billion in bonds, borrowing 
$1 billion. We have had the Japanese juggle our trade policy.
  But more than anything else, we have the arrogance now of the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce. I speak advisedly of that body. Ten years ago I 
was their man. I was the Man of the Year of the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, if I quote correctly, Robert Thompson, who was the national 
president. He had me going around making talks and everything else 
because I had a standoff with my good friend Russell Long of Louisiana. 
We had labor law reform. On eight votes, up and down for cloture, I won 
and prevailed.

  I don't come here as an enemy of business. I know way more in 
experience, I should say, about getting jobs and creating jobs, 
instituting technical training, imparting the tools, high tech, and 
globalization than most because I have been in the game. I am a friend 
of business, but I am a greater friend of the United States. I hate to 
see my country go to pot with this childish nonsense of free trade. We 
are missing out on agreements. Since NAFTA, I have lost 53,900 textile 
jobs alone. My friend, the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Helms, lost 
124,000; 27,000 have been lost by the Senator from Mississippi. I don't 
know whether he is with us or not.
  This is what the Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, says, and he knows 
nothing about trade. In yesterday's National Journal's Congress Daily, 
I quote Tom Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He 
said the Chamber would not accept a bill weighted down by amendments 
that exceed the average man or woman's sense of what is appropriate for 
the bill. We will kill it and the people who loaded it up will pay a 
political price. Donohue also said that the business community has been 
patient and supportive through the political process to get the trade 
authority bill before the Senate, but there will be dire consequences 
if the bill collapsed under partisan politics.

       I know of many manufacturing companies that will move their 
     operations offshore. I brought that message home to specific 
     legislators about firms and their States and districts.

  That is a threat from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
  Tell him to wake up. He headed the Trucking Association when Jack 
Welch was putting in his affirmative action plan to get rid of the jobs 
and move to Mexico. Donohue now will warn you they will move. Everybody 
knows this has been going on for 10 years. We are going out of 
business.
  I wanted to bring that story home in this debate, not asking to vote 
pro or con with respect to a particular trade measure. As I say, I 
voted for Vietnam; I voted for Jordan; I voted for NAFTA with Canada. 
It is protecting not only your economy and your industrial strength but 
your standard of living.
  Incidentally, on the one hand, you can certainly bar child 
employment, children and youth production. But you are not going to get 
Mexico to pass environmental laws we have. Or the labor laws. They have 
that advantage. In China, in India, in Malaysia, the competition can 
keep on whistling ``Dixie,'' keep talking. It will not happen. It is 
not going to happen, and you can't blame them. If you were running the 
country of China, you would do the same thing. You wouldn't run around 
and say we have to get with the Americans and level the playing field, 
and put in these labor reforms, and put in these environmental 
requirements because we want to be seen as being fair. It is just 
absolute nonsense.

  Madam President, what happens is Republican and Democrat Senators 
unanimously support these requirements before you open up Carnahan 
Manufacturing. Think about it. Before you open your manufacturing 
plant, you are going to have to have minimum wage, clean air, clean 
water, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, plant closing notice, 
parental leave, safe working place, safe machinery, antitrust 
provisions. And everything else of that kind.
  You can go down to Mexico and pay 90 cents an hour and have none of 
those requirements.
  In order to compete, is it the case we are going to go back and 
retrench on this high standard of living? No; not at all. That will 
never happen. But we will have to maintain a balance with respect to 
the economic strength. We have to maintain our steel production.
  I will never forget, in 1961, before we got President Kennedy to 
enunciate his seven-point textile program, under the law--and, 
incidentally it is the law today--that before the President can take 
executive action unilaterally on a trade measure, he must prove that 
product is important to the national security of the United States. At 
that time we corralled five Cabinet members--one sub-Cabinet of the 
five, George Ball, because Dean Rusk was too busy, from the Department 
of State; Luther Hodges, Secretary of Commerce; Orville Freeman, the 
Secretary of Agriculture; Douglas Dillon, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, was there; and the Secretary of Labor, Arthur Goldberg.
  They had hearings and we brought the witnesses. They made a finding, 
and the record is still there, that second to steel, textiles was the 
most important to our national security. The wag at the time was you 
cannot send them to war in a Japanese uniform--because they were 
bringing in all those textiles. The Japanese don't fool with textiles 
anymore. They have gone high-tech. Now you would say you wouldn't send 
them to war in a Chinese uniform and Gucci shoes. You have to have the 
clothing. You have to have the uniforms. So you have to have that 
measure because it is important to our national security.
  We have to maintain a modicum of textile manufacturing. We certainly 
have to maintain the ability to produce steel. We have to retain these 
other industries--electronics, with respect to watch-making, and fine 
tooling, and hand tools, and computers. We have to retain some 
production of semiconductors and the like.
  In doing that, let's correlate, if you please, our 28 agencies and 
departments into one department of trade and commerce. We are all over 
the lot. It is our fault. We have to begin to enforce our trade laws 
against dumping. We can't let Wal-Mart sell below cost. They would be 
in trouble. We would get them for antitrust, Robinson-Patman 
violations, and we would send them to the hoosegow. In international 
trade that happened in steel. Bob McNamara went running the world 
around saying to the Third World countries that in order to be a nation 
state, you have to have steel for the tools of agriculture and the 
weapons of war. So they had 2-percent steel plants built all over Latin 
America and the Middle East.
  I have been into that game. Yes, the President was correct in moving 
on steel because they are dumping steel. I see it. My office is in 
Charleston, SC. I can look on the dock and see all of this Brazilian 
steel coming in at less than cost, putting out of business, 25 miles 
away, Nucor, the most productive of all steel plants in the world.
  Please, spare me from the idea of productivity. If you go to the 
international section of the United Nations, if you go to the Labor 
Department, Department of Vital Statistics or otherwise, you will find 
they will agree the world around, the most productive industrial worker 
is the U.S. industrial worker. We keep nagging: We have to get 
productivity up. My steel plant is the most productive in the world, 
and they are dumping steel at less than cost and criticize the 
President for moving on this particular score. He was right. He is 
right. We have to maintain that.
  We have to get a value-added tax to pay for this war on terrorism 
that is costing the country and offset the 17-percent value added tax 
advantage. For example, in Europe where it is rebated, it is costing us 
a 17-percent differential in trade right there.
  Enforce our dumping laws, but please do not say you have to get more 
productive. What is not producing is not the industrial worker in the 
United States, it is the U.S. Congress. We haven't produced. We have 
been running around like lemmings: Free trade, free trade, fast track, 
fast track--having no idea in the Lord's world what we are doing; 
whereas we are exporting jobs faster than we can create them.
  My time is up. I yield the floor.

[[Page S3522]]

  Mr. REID. Madam President, we are, in a minute or 2, going to turn to 
two judicial nominations. We have had a number of Senators wishing to 
speak on the motion now before the Senate, so I ask unanimous consent 
that when the votes are completed this afternoon on the two judges, the 
Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, be recognized for up to 15 minutes; 
following her remarks, Senator Wellstone be recognized for up to 1 
hour; following that hour, someone designated by the Republican leader 
would speak for 1 hour; and following that, Senator Baucus, chairman of 
the Finance Committee, would be recognized for 1 hour.
  The majority leader wanted to have a vote on this tonight with the 
consent of Senator Hollings and others, but it appears now there are a 
significant number of people who want to speak so that will probably 
necessitate carrying the vote over until tomorrow. I have not checked 
with the leader on that for sure.
  I propound the request for the speakers who have been lined up. I 
have checked this out with the minority.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, what is now the business before the 
Senate?

                          ____________________