[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 81 (Tuesday, June 18, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3659-H3666]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 TRADE, TRADE POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES, AND AMERICA'S RECORD TRADE 
                                DEFICITS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I scheduled this time to come to the floor 
tonight and talk about the issue of trade, trade policy in the United 
States, and our record trade deficits, the impact on the economy, and 
in the future.
  Before I engage in that, I could not resist. I had to sit through a 
good part of the previous hour, and I would like to comment upon a 
number of the points made by the gentlemen before me on the issue of 
prescription drug coverage.
  First off, they said it has a fiscally huge cost, the Democratic 
alternative. It would cost $800 billion. Guess what: That is the cost 
of the estate tax which they tried to permanently repeal last week over 
10 years, $800 billion. So we could have a trade-off. We could have a 
very meaningful, substantial prescription drug benefit for every 
American eligible for Medicare, or we could give back $800 billion to 
the wealthiest of the wealthy in this country.
  Even if we adopted the alternative, which I supported, which would 
have given a $6 million exemption, I think $6 million is quite enough 
tax free, we could have saved half that money, $400 billion. So if we 
matched it to the $350 billion, we could again have had a more generous 
plan.
  Mr. Speaker, also, there is a glaring deficiency. In fact, I am a bit 
critical of the Democrat proposal, also, because neither bill takes on 
the immensely powerful and wealthy pharmaceutical industry head on. 
Americans are paying 40 to 80 percent more than citizens of other 
highly industrialized, developed nations. Our neighbors in Canada pay 
about half what we do for drugs manufactured in the U.S. by U.S. firms; 
Mexico even less. The European countries all pay less.

                              {time}  1815

  The Republican bill would do nothing to control these outrageous 
costs, which means we are not going to get much of a benefit. If we do 
not crank down the obvious costs of pharmaceuticals, we are not going 
to get much of a benefit. We could spend the entire Federal budget 
within a few years, and we would not get much of a benefit. We have got 
to do something about the runaway pharmaceutical costs, but I do not 
think there is a lot of will on that side. Tomorrow night's $25 million 
Washington, D.C. fundraiser for the Republicans in the House and the 
Senate, the lead fundraiser is the head of GlaxoSmithKline, a large 
pharmaceutical company, one of the largest in the world, J.P. Garnier 
would not want to upset him too much when he is out raising money.
  Now they say, well, the rising costs are because of advances in new 
drugs. Actually, if one lifts up the covers and looks underneath where 
they are spending their money, the pharmaceutical companies are 
spending more money on their CEO salaries, administration, and 
advertising than they are on research. In fact, all their blockbuster 
drugs for profits are makeovers of drugs they invented 20 years ago. 
Clarinex, that is Claritin with a tiny molecular change so they can 
continue it under patent, so they can continue to charge 10 times as 
much per dose as the one that finally, after fighting in court, after 
trying to buy up other pharmaceutical companies that are going to 
provide a generic, after trying to get legislation through Congress, 
knock through a number of bills to continue their monopoly on Claritin,

[[Page H3660]]

they finally developed another dodge which is get the doctors to 
prescribe this new drug which is not any different but has a different 
name and they can charge ten times as much for it. So if we do not deal 
with the costs, we cannot have a meaningful prescription drug benefit. 
But I see no will on that side of the aisle to deal with that issue.
  Back to trade, let us talk a bit about trade. Later this week perhaps 
or next week, the House will take up at least perhaps an extraordinary 
proposal by the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) of the Committee 
on Ways and Means to adopt an arcane procedure called a self-executing 
rule on a motion to go to conference. Why is that? Because they are 
trying to help push through this fast track bill for President Bush. I 
opposed fast track authority for President Bush the First. I opposed 
fast track authority for President Clinton, and I oppose fast track 
authority for President Bush today. This is a bad idea. The United 
States Congress gives up all of its authority to amend, modify, or 
meaningfully review these trade agreements and instead says they will 
be adopted with an up or down vote only, no amendments allowed. Why 
would we do that? We would do that because these are really bad deals 
for the American people. That is why we would do that.
  The WTO, which I opposed, the GATT, that was a really bad deal for 
the American people, done through a fast track process. The NAFTA, 
total disaster. We are running over a $40 billion trade deficit with 
Mexico. That was done on one of these fast track deals. But what they 
said was, oh, Congressman, you cannot mean you want to vote to amend 
that. Well, in fact, first of all, you cannot vote to amend it, and, 
why, if you voted to amend it, the other countries who are agreeing to 
this might get upset.
  Come on. They want access to our markets. Reasonable amendments to 
deal with labor and the environment, consumers, those things would not 
be a problem in these trade agreements, but they want to keep those 
things out because the real people who dictate the trade agreements are 
multinational corporations who have had a direct pipeline to the last 
four Presidents of the United States, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush 
II. They are virtually identical in their position on trade.
  Is our trade policy working so well that we should rubber-stamp it 
yet one more time? That is what this House of Representatives will be 
asked to do, rubber-stamp one more round of fast track for the free 
trade of the Americas. Let us bring in all of the nations into the 
western hemisphere, into this wonderful construct that we have under 
NAFTA. Would that not be peachy? Maybe we can get cheaper labor in 
Bolivia than we can in Mexico because some people are demanding as much 
as a dollar an hour down there in Mexico now, Bolivia and Argentina. 
They might be more desperate. Maybe they could take more American jobs 
at a lower price than the Mexicans.
  I am about to be interrupted again, but I will certainly be happy to 
yield or suspend for the purposes of a unanimous consent request on the 
part of the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin).


                       Auction Reform Act of 2002

  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 4560) to eliminate the deadlines for 
spectrum auctions of spectrum previously allocated to television 
broadcasting, with a Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the Senate 
amendment.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The Clerk read the Senate amendment, as follows:
       Senate amendment:
       Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert:

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Auction Reform Act of 
     2002''.

     SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

       Congress finds the following:
       (1) Circumstances in the telecommunications market have 
     changed dramatically since the auctioning of spectrum in the 
     700 megahertz band was originally mandated by Congress in 
     1997, raising serious questions as to whether the original 
     deadlines, or the subsequent revision of the deadlines, are 
     consistent with sound telecommunications policy and spectrum 
     management principles.
       (2) No comprehensive plan yet exists for allocating 
     additional spectrum for third-generation wireless and other 
     advanced communications services. The Federal Communications 
     Commission should have the flexibility to auction frequencies 
     in the 700 megahertz band for such purposes.
       (3) The study being conducted by the National 
     Telecommunications and Information Administration in 
     consultation with the Department of Defense to determine 
     whether the Department of Defense can share or relinquish 
     additional spectrum for third generation wireless and other 
     advanced communications services will not be completed until 
     after the June 19th auction date for the upper 700 megahertz 
     band, and long after the applications must be filed to 
     participate in the auction, thereby creating further 
     uncertainty as to whether the frequencies in the 700 
     megahertz band will be put to their highest and best use for 
     the benefit of consumers.
       (4) The Federal Communications Commission is also in the 
     process of determining how to resolve the interference 
     problems that exist in the 800 megahertz band, especially for 
     public safety. One option being considered for the 800 
     megahertz band would involve the 700 megahertz band. The 
     Commission should not hold the 700 megahertz auction before 
     the 800 megahertz interference issues are resolved or a 
     tenable plan has been conceived.
       (5) The 700 megahertz band is currently occupied by 
     television broadcasters, and will be so until the transfer to 
     digital television is completed. This situation creates a 
     tremendous amount of uncertainty concerning when the spectrum 
     will be available and reduces the value placed on the 
     spectrum by potential bidders. The encumbrance of the 700 
     megahertz band reduces both the amount of money that the 
     auction would be likely to produce and the probability that 
     the spectrum would be purchased by the entities that valued 
     the spectrum the most and would put the spectrum to its most 
     productive use.
       (6) The Commission's rules governing voluntary mechanisms 
     for vacating the 700 megahertz band by broadcast stations--
       (A) produced no certainty that the band would be available 
     for advanced mobile communications services, public safety 
     operations, or other wireless services any earlier than the 
     existing statutory framework provides; and
       (B) should advance the transition of digital television and 
     must not result in the unjust enrichment of any incumbent 
     licensee.

     SEC. 3. ELIMINATION OF STATUTORY DEADLINES FOR SPECTRUM 
                   AUCTIONS.

       (a) FCC To Determine Timing of Auctions.--Section 309(j) of 
     the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 309(j)) is amended 
     by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
       ``(15) Commission to determine timing of auctions.--
       ``(A) Commission authority.--Subject to the provisions of 
     this subsection (including paragraph (11)), but 
     notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Commission 
     shall determine the timing of and deadlines for the conduct 
     of competitive bidding under this subsection, including the 
     timing of and deadlines for qualifying for bidding; 
     conducting auctions; collecting, depositing, and reporting 
     revenues; and completing licensing processes and assigning 
     licenses.
       ``(B) Termination of portions of auctions 31 and 44.--
     Except as provided in subparagraph (C), the Commission shall 
     not commence or conduct auctions 31 and 44 on June 19, 2002, 
     as specified in the public notices of March 19, 2002, and 
     March 20, 2002 (DA 02-659 and DA 02-563).
       ``(C) Exception.--
       ``(i) Blocks excepted.--Subparagraph (B) shall not apply to 
     the auction of--

       ``(I) the C-block of licenses on the bands of frequencies 
     located at 710-716 megahertz, and 740-746 megahertz; or
       ``(II) the D-block of licenses on the bands of frequencies 
     located at 716-722 megahertz.

       ``(ii) Eligible bidders.--The entities that shall be 
     eligible to bid in the auction of the C-block and D-block 
     licenses described in clause (i) shall be those entities that 
     were qualified entities, and that submitted applications to 
     participate in auction 44, by May 8, 2002, as part of the 
     original auction 44 short form filing deadline.
       ``(iii) Auction deadlines for excepted blocks.--
     Notwithstanding subparagraph (B), the auction of the C-block 
     and D-block licenses described in clause (i) shall be 
     commenced no earlier than August 19, 2002, and no later than 
     September 19, 2002, and the proceeds of such auction shall be 
     deposited in accordance with paragraph (8) not later than 
     December 31, 2002.
       ``(iv) Report.--Within one year after the date of enactment 
     of this paragraph, the Commission shall submit a report to 
     Congress--

       ``(I) specifying when the Commission intends to reschedule 
     auctions 31 and 44 (other than the blocks excepted by clause 
     (i)); and
       ``(II) describing the progress made by the Commission in 
     the digital television transition and in the assignment and 
     allocation of additional spectrum for advanced mobile 
     communications services that warrants the scheduling of such 
     auctions.

       ``(D) Return of payments.--Within one month after the date 
     of enactment of this paragraph, the Commission shall return 
     to the bidders for licenses in the A-block, B-block, and E-
     block of auction 44 the full amount of all upfront payments 
     made by such bidders for such licenses.''.
       (b) Conforming Amendments.--
       (1) Communications act of 1934.--Section 309(j)(14)(C)(ii) 
     of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 
     309(j)(14)(C)(ii)) is amended by striking the second 
     sentence.
       (2) Balanced budget act of 1997.--Section 3007 of the 
     Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (111 Stat. 269) is repealed.
       (3) Consolidated appropriations act.--Paragraphs (2) and 
     (3) of section 213(a) of H.R.

[[Page H3661]]

     3425 of the 106th Congress, as enacted into law by section 
     1000(a)(5) of an Act making consolidated appropriations for 
     the fiscal year ending September 30, 2000, and for other 
     purposes (Public Law 106-113; 113 Stat. 1501A-295), are 
     repealed.

     SEC. 4. COMPLIANCE WITH AUCTION AUTHORITY.

       The Federal Communications Commission shall conduct 
     rescheduled auctions 31 and 44 prior to the expiration of the 
     auction authority under section 309(j)(11) of the 
     Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 309(j)(11)).

     SEC. 5. PRESERVATION OF BROADCASTER OBLIGATIONS.

       Nothing in this Act shall be construed to relieve 
     television broadcast station licensees of the obligation to 
     complete the digital television service conversion as 
     required by section 309(j)(14) of the Communications Act of 
     1934 (47 U.S.C. 309(j)(14)).

     SEC. 6. INTERFERENCE PROTECTION.

       (a) Interference Waivers.--In granting a request by a 
     television broadcast station licensee assigned to any of 
     channels 52-69 to utilize any channel of channels 2-51 that 
     is assigned for digital broadcasting in order to continue 
     analog broadcasting during the transition to digital 
     broadcasting, the Federal Communications Commission may not, 
     either at the time of the grant or thereafter, waive or 
     otherwise reduce--
       (1) the spacing requirements provided for analog 
     broadcasting licensees within channels 2-51 as required by 
     section 73.610 of the Commission's rules (and the table 
     contained therein) (47 CFR 73.610), or
       (2) the interference standards provided for digital 
     broadcasting licensees within channels 2-51 as required by 
     sections 73.622 and 73.623 of such rules (47 CFR 73.622, 
     73.623),
     if such waiver or reduction will result in any degradation in 
     or loss of service, or an increased level of interference, to 
     any television household except as the Commission's rules 
     would otherwise expressly permit, exclusive of any waivers 
     previously granted.
       (b) Exception for Public Safety Channel Clearing.--The 
     restrictions in subsection (a) shall not apply to a station 
     licensee that is seeking authority (either by waiver or 
     otherwise) to vacate the frequencies that constitute 
     television channel 63, 64, 68, or 69 in order to make such 
     frequencies available for public safety purposes pursuant to 
     the provisions of section 337 of the Communications Act of 
     1934 (47 U.S.C. 337).

  Mr. TAUZIN (during the reading). Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
that the Senate amendment be considered as read and printed in the 
Record.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Issa). Is there objection to the request 
of the gentleman from Louisiana?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, back in 1997, and again in 2000, over the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce's objections, the budget committees of 
the Congress commandeered the management of the Nation's airwaves. They 
set auction deadlines that were asinine, constituting a gross 
mismanagement of spectrum. Today we take back the reins and restore 
rationality to the process.
  Without question, moving forward with these auctions now would impose 
a heavy price on the American public. The Nation's airwaves are a 
scarce natural resource, and we are entrusted to manage these assets on 
the public's behalf. The bill before us is the first step to reclaiming 
that duty.
  In addition, I would note that the anti-interference provision 
contained in this bill is of particular importance to the American 
viewing public. It preserves the integrity of broadcast channels, 
making sure that consumers will be able to continue viewing both 
traditional and digital broadcasts without risk of harmful interference 
to their television sets.
  I congratulate Chairman Tauzin and others for their perseverance in 
getting this bill through both Houses, and look forward to the Federal 
Communications Commission establishing a sound spectrum management 
policy now that we have freed the agency to do so.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the original request 
of the gentleman from Louisiana?
  There was no objection.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.


                             General Leave

  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
on the bill just passed.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Louisiana?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Oregon 
(Mr. DeFazio) for his courtesies this evening and hope he will excuse 
my interrupting him.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, whenever I can help the powerful chairman 
of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. I may have something small to 
ask in return.
  If I could continue here, this is a very serious subject. So the 
question before the House soon will be will we rubber-stamp existing 
trade policy? Is it so good, is it working so well for the American 
people that we should say, hey, let us just keep doing more of the 
same, let us give President Bush total authority to negotiate these 
agreements in secret, then bring it back here for an up or down vote, 
no amendments allowed? Let us look at the result of our existing trade 
policy.
  Our trade deficit is the largest in the history of the world. It has 
gone from $66 billion in 1991, 1.7 percent of our gross domestic 
product, to $417 billion last year, 4.1 percent of our gross domestic 
product. That is pretty extraordinary. People say, well, wait a minute, 
our exports are expanding. They are right. Our exports over the last 
decade have gone up 17 percent; but guess what, the imports went up 44 
percent because of this misbegotten trade policy.
  Current estimates say that our trade deficit could reach $460 billion 
by the end of this year, $536 billion by 2003, and their prediction, it 
could reach 7 percent of gross domestic product, $800 billion by the 
year 2005. That means the loss of tens of thousands, hundreds of 
thousands more jobs in this country; and in fact, it means a trade 
deficit that is not sustainable.
  Essentially, if we move toward those numbers, the United States of 
America becomes the next Argentina; and the World Bank and the IMF will 
be in here dictating to us about our budget priorities and how we are 
going to clean up our house and how we are going to meet our obligation 
of our $2 trillion overseas debt. Yes, we will owe $2 trillion overseas 
in the very near future because of these persistent trade deficits.
  It is not sustainable. In fact, when Indonesia imploded, their trade 
deficit was only 4.5 percent of their gross domestic product. 
Similarly, in South Korea, and economists everywhere said, well, that 
is understandable. My God, no one can have trade deficits that large a 
percentage. We are talking the United States of America may go to 7 
percent in the near future if we maintain the current trade policies.
  The question becomes, who would want to maintain this failing trade 
policy? Well, not too many of the American workers who have lost their 
jobs, seen their wages depress. They are probably not real enthusiastic 
about it. In fact, I come from a State where when I first raised 
questions about trade, they said, oh, no, you are from Oregon, you are 
going to be a free trader. You are right there on the Pacific Rim; your 
people are going to benefit from this free trade policy of the United 
States, as I was told by President Bush first, President Clinton and 
others in opposing their successful attempts, unfortunately, to jam 
through NAFTA and GATT and the WTO. My State has lost 41,000 jobs; and 
other States have lost a lot more than that, millions of jobs across 
the country.
  Three million jobs in the United States according to the Economic 
Policy Institute were lost between 1994 and the year 2000 because of 
our trade policies.
  What else did trade deficits do? Well, they shift the composition of 
the workforce. They say, do not worry, everybody is going to wash 
dishes; we are going to become a service economy. We do not need to 
manufacture things. I do not believe that. I do not believe we cannot 
manufacture things and continue to be a great Nation. In fact, during 
the Gulf War, officials down at the Pentagon were in a panic because 
they needed some high-tech stuff. They could only get it from Japan, 
and Japan was not delivering on the schedule that our national security 
demanded. Imagine that. Do my colleagues think China, who is now 
producing some of those same critical components, is going to be real 
helpful in the future? They have been so friendly and helpful so far. I 
do not think so, particularly if we are in a conflict with them, which 
I think is very possible within the next 25 years.
  Manufacturing has lost 1.5 million jobs in the last 18 months. So we 
are having a huge change in the composition of our workforce from high-
wage, high-benefit manufacturing jobs, to low-wage jobs or lower-wage 
jobs on much lower-benefit jobs in the service sector or other 
components of manufacturing.
  What else is impacted? Stagnant wages. Average U.S. wages adjusted 
for inflation are about the same as they

[[Page H3662]]

were when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, and one of 
the biggest factors in dragging that down is U.S. workers are being 
asked to compete with people in Mexico who are preferably willing to 
work for a dollar a day; and if President Bush is successful, they will 
be asked to compete with the people of Argentina who are totally 
desperate or the people of Bolivia or other nations.
  The idea is to search around the world for the most exploitable, most 
desperate workforce. Sometimes skills are required so they will have to 
go to countries like Argentina. Other times they can go overseas to 
Indonesia, Pakistan, countries like that when they are not real high 
skilled and get cheaper wages.
  So that is another result. I do have a few more points, and then I 
will yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who is a 
tremendous leader on these issues.
  It is a drag on economic growth, this $400 billion-a-year trade 
deficit. Our export output falls. Domestic demand that could be met by 
domestic output is instead satisfied by higher imports. As I said 
earlier, our exports are up by 17 percent, but our imports are up by 44 
percent. We are losing the jobs that could create that.
  We are increasingly reliant on foreign investors. We have to import 
nearly $2 billion a day from foreign investors, and perhaps later I 
will get into a list of who those foreign investors are. I think it 
will shock some of the Members of this caucus in terms of national 
security and economic security, but 40 percent of our U.S. Treasury 
debt, 40 percent of the debt of the United States of America, the 
collective debt of all of us, is owned by foreigners. That is an 
extraordinary number. It erodes our defense manufacturing base. We are 
going to saddle our children with future debt and interest payments, 
and it hurts our long-term spending on research and development.
  These are some of the grand successes of the current trade policy 
that this Congress is going to be asked to rubber-stamp by once again 
giving up all its authority to shape trade and trade policy and rubber-
stamp a fast track bill to give the President the authority to secretly 
negotiate this agreement and bring it back here for a hurried up or 
down vote.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who has been a 
tremendous leader in the House in opposing these failing trade 
policies.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to express deepest appreciation for 
the yielding of my esteemed colleague, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio); and though I am not for human cloning, I just wish that 
somehow we could clone more of him to serve in this Chamber, and the 
people of Oregon are extraordinarily fortunate to have an honest and 
very, very able Member serving their interests and indeed America's 
interests.
  I was listening to the gentleman's comments on fast track, which I 
always call the wrong track, and felt compelled to come here to the 
floor to at least try to attempt to gain just a few moments to discuss 
these issues with the gentleman. My colleague mentioned how much 
America is in hock to other countries and foreign interests borrowing 
those dollars in order to fuel this economy. The flip side of the fact 
is that 40 percent, over 40 percent now of our public debt is owned by 
foreign interests, is the interest that we have to pay them, and this 
year that number will total close to $400 billion. It is between $300 
and $400 billion, which is almost as much as we will spend on the 
defense of the United States of America to pay on our borrowings and 
the interest that is owed on those.
  So I think that the underside of this trade equation is the fact that 
piece by piece we are selling ourselves off, the public interest and 
the private interest.

                              {time}  1830

  I think the American people really have a sense of this when they go 
to the store and they look on the bottom of a cup or they look on the 
label on a piece of clothing and they sort of ask themselves, well, is 
anything made in America anymore? Everything from hedge trimmers to 
automobiles to clothing. We import over half of the oil, which we 
should totally displace by domestically produced new fuels. We are not 
independent. This was a Nation formed with the great ideal of 
independence and self-sufficiency, and piece by piece, at the end of 
this past century and now into the new one, we are frittering away that 
national endowment.
  Now, the bill that was supposed to have come before us today for the 
second time in 2 weeks has not made it to the floor. And the reason the 
fast track bill is not here today and was not here last week is because 
the motion lacks the votes necessary for passage. The problems with the 
fast track proposal are so numerous that the rule that they have 
adopted is self-executing. In other words, we cannot really change 
anything in the bill.
  And what are some of the things that are bad about it, in addition to 
its fundamental architecture, which is only going to increase more 
imports into this country? Well, first of all, the displaced workers 
that will occur in this country. And we know it is going to happen. It 
happened with NAFTA, it happened with PNTR with China. Every time we 
sign one of these agreements, more companies close in our country. It 
does not take a mental giant to figure out what is going on with 
displaced production. The money that was supposed to be in the bill to 
help the U.S. workers thrown out of their work was lowered, and there 
were lower levels of trade adjustment assistance in this fast track 
measure.
  In addition to that, there were several provisions embedded in this 
fast track bill to try to protect the seats of certain Members of this 
institution in a very tough election year.
  In addition to that, there were provisions that had been put in by 
the other body that would have protected industries in this country 
from illegal dumping of foreign goods, such as steel, and those were 
taken out.
  In addition, worker health provisions, those people who lose their 
job and then lose their health benefits, there were provisions in the 
Senate bill to protect the health benefits of our workers at least for 
a period of time. Those were taken out.
  And so those are just some of the few irresponsible ploys that were 
included by my colleagues from the other side of the aisle. And I would 
have to say to the gentleman, and I appreciate his yielding to me, 
really one of the issues that we have to consider is how, when we add 
up everything that has happened at this time of Enduring Freedom, or 
any time when we should be considering the independence of this 
country, are we either strengthening or destroying our national 
defense?
  We can look at job security, border security, industrial security, 
economic security, all of those together comprise what we take an oath 
to defend: the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, 
foreign and domestic, and to assure the defense of the United States of 
America. The end result is we become less able to make the bolts that 
go into the airplanes, we become less able to make the airframes. The 
gentleman knows a whole lot about that in the Northwestern part of our 
country with what has happened to some of the outsourced Boeing 
production. We become less able to make steel. We become less able to 
make electronics.
  If we look at what is happening with the defense base of this 
country, in my district we have just had a major nuclear incident. 
Guess what? In order to try to repair the facilities that can be 
repaired, if we need a new head on the reactor, it has to be done by 
Japan and then sent to France for finishing, and then comes back to the 
United States, and then the company is absolved of liability under 
exemptions in the Price-Anderson Act. What is going on? What is going 
on in this country?
  The last foundries have closed. I have machine tool companies in my 
district going bankrupt one after the other. That is happening all over 
this country. We have lost almost 1.5 million manufacturing jobs over 
the last 2 years. So I want to compliment the gentleman and say that I 
would like to stay for a while longer, as I listen to what he is saying 
to the people of our country and to the Record.
  This is an extraordinarily important issue. Fast track should not be 
brought up on this floor until its flaws are repaired. And why should 
we be allowing 31 more countries special access to our

[[Page H3663]]

market when we are hemorrhaging, when, in fact, we are hemorrhaging 
jobs all over the world, and our trade deficit will be over $360 
billion more this year?
  So I want to thank the gentleman very much for the opportunity to 
join him this evening and again compliment the very wise voters of the 
State of Oregon for sending the gentleman here. I have long admired his 
independence and his innovativeness as a Member of Congress.

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, and, of course, 
the people of Ohio also have shown extraordinary wisdom in returning 
her, for more years than I have been here, to the House of 
Representatives. The gentlewoman has been tremendous on this fight. 
Although we have been losing, the margin is getting closer and closer.
  The gentlewoman will certainly remember that last fall, after an 
extraordinary effort by the Republican leadership in this House, the 
President and all his Cabinet and others, they only prevailed by a one-
vote margin in getting through the fast track trade bill. A number of 
Members on that side had to change their vote, and voted reluctantly 
against interests of their district, particularly people from the South 
and textile States, and they got what are thus far some pretty hollow 
promises in return. Certainly the voters in those States are going to 
have to look to see what it is that their elected Representatives have 
wrought by proposing to do more and more and more of the same.
  Under this legislation, Free Trade of the Americas Act would be one 
of the things negotiated, and we would go to a few of the very few 
countries in the Western Hemisphere, where the United States is 
currently running a trade deficit, where we do not have this kind of a 
perverted free trade agreement in place, and we would give them the 
opportunity to join most other nations on Earth who are running huge 
trade surpluses with the United States, notably Uruguay, Argentina, and 
Brazil. A very large economy in Brazil would fall under this new free 
trade authority, and Brazil is a major manufacturer of automobiles, 
certainly something close to the gentlewoman's heart, and other very 
sophisticated goods.
  So we can fully expect that under this sort of an agreement that we 
would find those products coming from Brazil where labor is indeed 
much, much cheaper than it is in the United States.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
would just want to point out that Argentina and Brazil, we are already 
in deficit with them. And if we look at what has happened with Canada 
and Mexico post-NAFTA, we used to have surpluses with those countries. 
Then, when NAFTA kicked in, we have moved into gigantic deficits with 
both countries, where they are sending us more goods than we are 
sending them.
  We already have growing deficits with Argentina and Brazil and 
Venezuela. If this is passed, it will only grow worse because that has 
been what the pattern is. If we look at a country like Argentina, I 
found it very ironic that our Governor went down to Argentina in order 
to try to move Ohio product down there. But if we look at what is 
happening, Ohio's beef producers are being wiped off the map. They 
cannot get access to market. We are importing Argentinian beef into the 
United States. We have a deficit with Argentina. They are sending us 
more than we are sending them, and they were not about to buy any more 
of our beef. They want to sell us their beef.
  And in terms of Brazil and Venezuela, if we look at the steel 
industry, if we look at agriculture in those countries, the numbers are 
not moving in our direction already. And many of the people in those 
countries do not earn enough to buy what we have to sell, so we end up 
shooting ourselves in the foot.
  I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Exactly on that point, the passage of NAFTA was really 
the big lie strategy. We were told it was to produce hundreds of 
thousands of new jobs in the United States, and we were going to ship 
all these goods to Mexico. Of course, what they did not look at was the 
total buying power. If every peso earned by every person in Mexico was 
only spent on U.S.-produced goods, not on bare necessities, not on 
rent, locally, or anything else, it would have almost equaled the 
buying power of the State of New Jersey. This was theoretic. And, of 
course, obviously, that cannot happen. And, in fact, what has happened 
is our trade deficit with Mexico is up 1,861 percent. We have lost 
hundreds of thousands of jobs. We are running a $40-billion-a-year 
trade deficit to Mexico. U.S. corporations are moving their capital to 
Mexico.
  This was never intended to be an agreement for U.S. firms to produce 
in the United States and ship to Mexico. That was a joke. It was a lie, 
plain and simple. Unfortunately, a majority of our colleagues bought 
it. What it was always about was a cheap export platform in Mexico for 
U.S. manufacturers to move their capital and foreign manufacturers to 
move closer to the U.S. market so they would not have to ship things so 
far; big, heavy things.

  Ms. KAPTUR. Again, if the gentleman would be kind enough to yield, I 
would just place on the record that the State of Ohio is one of the top 
five losers under NAFTA. We have already lost over 100,000 jobs to 
Mexico directly. That does not even count the supplier jobs and the 
service jobs that are associated with those corporate relocations.
  The impact is staggering. Income growth in our region and our State 
has not gone up. In fact, it has been stagnant, and in many cases has 
been going down. People do not have the purchasing power. And the jobs 
that are replacing them are part-time jobs with no health and 
retirement benefits.
  If we look at, and I will just give one example and then yield the 
gentleman back his time, but one of the major corporations, and I hate 
to pick on a West European company, but Daimler-Benz-Chrysler, for 
example, they are one of the many automotive manufacturers that have 
moved production to Mexico, and they manufacture the PT Cruiser in 
Toluca, Mexico. Now, that is a very popular vehicle in our country. All 
the PT Cruisers are sent back here. There is not a single PT Cruiser 
manufactured in the United States of America.
  Now, in our district we make the Jeep Liberty. We are the home of the 
jeep in Toledo, Ohio, and there are so many orders backed up for the PT 
Cruiser, our workers contacted the company and said, look, why do you 
not bring some of the excess production from Toluca up to Toledo? We 
will put on an extra line, we will meet the backlog, and we will be 
able to share in this rising market. No deal. No deal, because they can 
pay workers in Mexico so little, they can literally make $10,000 more a 
car. They do not have to pay environmental costs. They do you not have 
to pay decent wages.
  The people that work in Toluca cannot afford to buy the cars they 
make. Go to the places where they live and ask yourself, is this what 
we want for the world, people who have to use batteries to have any 
electricity in their home because they live at such a low wage?
  So if we peel the veneer off, and I must say I am not just picking on 
Daimler-Chrysler, because it is the same with the Japanese auto 
manufacturers, the Koreans, it really does not matter with these 
multinational corporations which country they are from, but their 
behavior where they locate. And, unfortunately, those jobs, if all the 
PT Cruisers are sold in the United States, why should they not be made 
here? There is a real disjuncture between production and consumption, 
and, therefore, our plant in Toledo has not increased in employment.
  Years ago we had 10,000 workers. We are down to 4,000. There are 
several hundred workers, several thousand workers actually, down in 
Mexico around that Toluca plant, but they are working at, I cannot say 
starvation wages, but close to it. They really do not have a living 
wage. That is what is going on with production. We are really hurting 
those people. We can say we are keeping them busy, but they are not 
really able to improve their lives. And our people, with the loss of 
over 1.2 million manufacturing jobs in just the last 2 years, they are 
being cashed out.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentlewoman would yield back, in fact, she is 
making an excellent point. Henry Ford sort of figured out the formula 
for success in this country back early in the last century. He said, I 
want to produce a

[[Page H3664]]

product on an assembly line with a large number of workers, and I want 
my workers to be able to buy it.
  And we did phenomenally well as a country. The managers, the owners 
of capital, and the workers all kind of came up together. Sure, the 
managers always did better, and the owners even did better yet, but 
there was some proportionality. The workers could afford to buy the 
products, and it created tremendous wealth for our Nation. It created 
an industrial base that won World War II and was the envy of the world. 
We rebuilt the world after World War II, led the race to space, and 
everything else, all those things. That was American technology based 
on sort of this formula of equality.

                              {time}  1845

  But now greed has taken over as we have seen in so many ways in 
corporate America, and if they can get the labor, desperate labor 
somewhere else a little cheaper, and avoid environmental restrictions, 
that is where they want to manufacture. And their vehicle is these free 
trade agreements. They cannot do it without the imprint and the 
approval of the President of the United States secretly negotiating 
deals that favor the export of their capital and their manufacturing 
jobs to these other countries.
  The problem is ultimately it is going to collapse; but they will not 
care, like the managers of Enron who had already looted the company and 
are living in their six, seven or eight mansions, and they may have to 
sell one of their mansions.
  Ms. KAPTUR. If the gentleman would yield, many of those mansions are 
not in the United States of America, nor are their major funds. They 
are offshore.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this long-term trade deficit is not 
sustainable. With depressed wages in this country, ultimately we are 
buying all of this on credit, and the credit is overseas. We are 
getting close to $2 trillion of debt. Forty percent of the Treasury 
debt of the United States is owned by foreigners. Our number one trade 
deficit is with China, not the country with the best interests of the 
United States in mind, in my opinion, anyway. I do not consider China 
to be a great ally or friend of the United States. Number two is Japan. 
Number three is Canada, obviously a close relationship with the United 
States. Then Mexico, Germany, Taiwan, Italy, South Korea, Malaysia, and 
Ireland. Those are the countries with whom we are accumulating this 
huge and growing debt. This is of tremendous concern.
  As we undermine the buying capacity of the American people and the 
industrial might of the United States, and ultimately when they one day 
ask for their money, their $2 trillion that they are owed, we are going 
to have the IMF and the World Bank dictating terms because this is not 
a sustainable system. We cannot borrow money year after year after 
year.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, Alan Greenspan has said fundamentally to the 
Congress, this is unsustainable. We cannot keep displacing production 
and bringing it in from elsewhere without ultimately having an impact 
on your ability to produce and create not just money for a country, but 
wealth. We can print a lot of money, but what is standing behind it is 
the productive wealth of a society. That is what we are displacing.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, Alan Greenspan said in an article in 
Business Week that over the past 6 years, 40 percent of the increase in 
the U.S. capital stock was financed by foreign investment, a pattern 
that will require an ever-larger flow of interest payments going out to 
foreigners. He said, ``Countries that have gone down this path 
invariably have run into trouble.''
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I was thinking about this today and reading 
the headlines about Afghanistan, and that country now trying to pull 
together a government and it is not very easy to do. But assuming they 
could pull the government together, through Afghanistan will come an 
oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea. Then we see the President's comments 
about Iraq and whether or not certain forces will be used to 
destabilize the government of Iraq, and we recall the Persian Gulf War 
and that oil field that lies between Iraq and Kuwait.
  Then we saw the Bush administration a few weeks ago give mixed 
messages to this Congress and the world about Venezuela and which 
government the administration was supporting or not supporting in 
Venezuela. What do Iraq, Venezuela and Afghanistan all have in common? 
They have in common the oil imperative. So many times when you see the 
United States become dependent, as we are in this oil arena, very bad 
things can happen. Indeed, wars can happen when our country is not 
independent. I think it is important what the gentleman is presenting 
in terms of the financial condition of our country and who we owe.
  The first phone call I made after 9-11 was to Alan Greenspan, and I 
wanted to know from an economical standpoint who can pull our bonds 
internationally. I said, I want you to assure me that we can hold it 
together because 40 percent of the debt of this country is now owned by 
foreign interests. He said, We can track that back to the London 
markets. And I said, What does that tell me? He said, I do not think 
you need to worry, but he could not actually tell me who holds our 
debt.
  I think he might know, I am not sure, but he was not able to tell me. 
But when we owe $400 billion a year to interests that we do not even 
have a list of, we know that it is traded in the London markets, if we 
could theorize, China is now the largest holder of our dollar reserves. 
The trade deficit is a reciprocal for that. Japan is number two. So our 
fate lies in their hands. Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries, number 
three. So behind the scenes, they have enormous leverage when 
the United States is frittering away its economic independence.

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, we ran a trade deficit last year of $40 
billion with the OPEC countries, the same countries that are fixing oil 
prices to stick it to American consumers and the remaining industry 
that we have in this country with extortionately high prices for fuel; 
and the Bush administration, they are all for free trade. They love the 
WTO, the secret tribunals. They want to get hormone-laced beef in from 
Europe, and other things that are in favor of corporate America; but 
guess what, they will not file a complaint with the WTO against OPEC 
for price fixing which is prohibited by the World Trade Organization 
and by GATT. Why not?
  Well, maybe there is something to do with the oil industry that I am 
not quite aware of, but we are running a $40 billion trade deficit. 
These people are making no secret of the fact that they are restraining 
production to drive up the price, and that violates the WTO. It is an 
open and shut case. All the U.S. has to do is file it on behalf of its 
consumers. Consumers of the United States cannot file a case. Even 
those industries that are still left in this country cannot file a 
case. Only the Bush administration can file the case, and they are 
refusing to take on the OPEC countries and to file against them for 
price gouging of the American people.
  Also on that list, kind of interestingly enough, we ran a $5.754 
billion trade deficit with Iraq. The President is talking about 
invading Iraq, and we are running a $5.750 billion trade deficit with 
them. There is something weird about that.
  Ms. KAPTUR. If the gentleman would yield, I was speaking to my local 
press in my district, and they asked what did the President mean about 
Iraq. I said would it surprise you, in spite of what the headlines are 
saying in Washington, today we are importing 8 percent of our petroleum 
from Iraq. They were stunned. How could this be happening at the same 
time the no-fly zone is maintained over Iraq?
  The relationships that have made us more and more dependent on 
petroleum imports than we were 25 years ago is really a sad tale for 
our country, and I thank the gentleman for helping us bring this out 
into the light so those who are recording remarks and those who are 
listening, particularly the younger generation will understand, we have 
to unwind, we have to get ourselves out of these relationships because 
too often oil has been serving as a proxy for our foreign policy, and 
our trade deficit is a sign of our growing lack of independence.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Again, returning to that, we ran also a $7.4 billion 
trade deficit with Saudi Arabia, and now we find out that some of the 
most wealthy Saudis are the biggest backers of al

[[Page H3665]]

Qaeda and other terrorist groups and have been funding this network of 
schools training Islamic fundamentalist radicals around the world, and 
we are helping to finance that. It is U.S. consumers who are being 
extorted at the gas pump by price fixing and production fixing by OPEC, 
who are sending almost $13 billion a year to Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
  This is extraordinary to me; and what is the Bush administration 
response to this: we should do more of the same. These trade policies 
are working so well, price gouging the American consumers, undermining 
our industrial base, lower wages and productivity in the United States, 
we should do more of exactly the same, despite the fact that we are 
headed toward a $2 trillion debt overseas within the next 2 years.
  Mr. Speaker, $2 trillion of U.S. dollars are outstanding around the 
world, and the gentlewoman is right. What if the Chinese decide they 
are in a dispute over Taiwan or something else with the U.S. and they 
want to slow us down or hurt us, and they demand payment for, say, 
their $700 billion worth. Suddenly the U.S. is in a big credit crunch. 
We cannot afford to make those sorts of payments.

  Of course, there is one other point that is interesting. I befuddled 
an economist the other evening. It was Paul Krugman from the New York 
Times. He is an interesting man, but blind on trade issues. He is a big 
believer in free trade. We asked him if a $400 billion-a-year trade 
deficit is sustainable.
  He said, oh, no, that is close to what Indonesia had before they 
collapsed. It is not sustainable.
  We asked, How is that going to rectify itself?
  He said the dollar will collapse.
  And so I said the idea is that the dollar collapses, we pay more for 
goods, U.S. goods are cheaper. Right?
  Yes.
  But I said, guess what, if we do not manufacture anything anymore, it 
just means everything you are importing to run your economy has become 
a lot more expensive, like oil, critical high-tech components, 
everything that we are buying, all of the shoes and clothes, all 
becomes more expensive here in the United States; and our trade deficit 
might even go up.
  With that he turned away from me and did not want to continue the 
conversation. We are defying conventional wisdom here. The conventional 
wisdom is if our dollar tanks, yes, it hurts a little bit; but we will 
turn our sights inward and buy from our own manufacturers. But guess 
what, our own manufacturers have been sold out by these trade 
agreements.
  Try and buy some running shoes made in America. There is apparently 
one company that makes men's shoes in the United States. Try to buy a 
suit made in the United States of America.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, do not try to 
buy slab specialty steel made by domestic manufacturers in the 
heartland of America that I represent because the last one just closed. 
If you are an independent machine toolmaker, you cannot find that 
product. It is a very, very serious situation.
  I just want to put two words on the record to add to this discussion: 
one is ``recession'' and another is ``repression.''
  In terms of recession, if we think about the recession that we are 
crawling our way out of, and some parts of America are still in, what 
triggered it? Rising oil prices for imported fuel. People have 
forgotten that.
  Before September 11, we were already struggling with a hammerlock on 
this economy; and then after September 11 when the OPEC countries and 
some of the other oil exporting countries got worried, they lowered 
prices. Then they are coming back up again. This is a very manipulated 
price scheme, and that was proven by the Federal Trade Commission in 
some of the initial investigations done as we entered this recession.
  The American people should remember that rising petroleum costs and 
imports, the rising costs of imports, can really kick this economy in 
the shins. If we think back to the 1970s and what happened in those 
decades with the Arab oil embargoes and the severe depression that this 
country was thrown into because of the costs of rising imports, we are 
now importing more than we did back then. Yes, we are conserving more 
at the same time, but we have not created the new fuels here at home. 
What we need to do on the public and private sides, we have been 
bunting rather than hitting three-base hits.

                              {time}  1900

  It has made a huge difference in our ability to handle our economy in 
a way that preserves our independence and does not do as much harm here 
at home.
  The other word I wanted to just say a word about, if I could, and 
that is repression, because some of the very countries that receive the 
dollars when our people go to the gas pump, for example, and they buy 
petroleum that is refined into gasoline from other countries, those 
dollars go to them. What do they use them for? The gentleman from 
Oregon mentioned Saudi Arabia. Most of the terrorists were born or 
spent time in Saudi Arabia. That is a very repressive regime. And our 
dollars support it. What did Osama bin Laden say? He said that he 
wanted U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia. What are U.S. troops doing in 
Saudi Arabia? Thousands and thousands and thousands of troops, what are 
they doing there? And what happened to the USS Cole about a year and a 
half ago in Yemen harbor when a suicide bomber hit our destroyer, what 
was that ship doing there in the Middle East? Could it be anything to 
do with watching the oil lanes and the movement of tankers out of that 
region of the world? I think it had a whole lot to do with that and I 
think it is important for us to think about who we are supporting when 
we spend our dollars.
  It is very hard for the American people to do anything on the 
petroleum issue because when they go to the gas pump, they do not know 
that Citgo gets its gasoline from Venezuela, they do not know that 
Occidental has fields in Colombia, they do not really think about Exxon 
in Saudi Arabia, they do not associate a company name with a country. 
Yet that is exactly what is going on. And so if you buy that product, 
you support through the transaction the regimes of those countries and 
there is not a single democracy among them. And in the end the people 
living in those countries translate our behavior as a society into what 
they experience in their own homelands and they want a better way of 
life, but the regimes there do not permit it. And so some of the anger 
directed against the United States is a direct result of the economic 
relationships that keep them down.
  I would just maybe brag a little bit here about an organization in 
northwest Ohio called Northwest Ohio Ethanol, because at the same time 
as our Marines and Special Forces are defending the edge of freedom 
globally, there are things people can do here at home. And in terms of 
our energy trade deficit, one of the most important actions we can take 
is to become fuel self-sufficient. We have a new private company, 
Northwest Ohio Ethanol, that has been incorporated, that is selling 
shares on the private market so that Ohio's farmers can come together 
and provide a new fuel for the future.
  We only have two biofuel pumps in the entire State of Ohio, a State 
of 11 million people. I want to buy an E-85 car. I want to buy a 
biodiesel vehicle. I would be a fool to do it in Ohio because I cannot 
get the fuel to put in it. And so this deficit is really a very wicked 
thing, because the average American cannot alone dig out of it. The 
actions that one could take as a consumer are precluded because of the 
very large interests that control the refining and the supply of fuel 
to the marketplace. It is important to think about the words recession 
at home and repression abroad and what kind of a political endowment we 
are bequeathing to the future.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio for assisting in this 
special order this evening. We will have opportunities to discuss this 
again. You have certainly opened up the door to discuss energy self-
sufficiency and energy policy which I think is one of the strongest 
steps we could take to make this country secure for the next century, 
both militarily and economically. I would love to engage in a special 
order on that subject some evening.

[[Page H3666]]

  Ms. KAPTUR. I would enjoy that opportunity as you are such a leader 
in all those areas.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentlewoman. I realize she has to leave and 
I am almost done myself.
  I want to go back and reiterate a couple of points. In my own State, 
41,000 jobs lost to trade in the last decade, a number in wood 
products, some in textiles, others in other industries. This is a loss 
that did not need to happen. We did not need to lose these industrial 
wage jobs with good benefits to unfair trade. But unfortunately it was 
done under auspices of United States law. That is, agreements that were 
pushed through, started in the Reagan administration, continued in the 
first Bush administration, brought to fruition by the Clinton 
administration and now the next Bush administration, the current Bush 
administration wants to expand on those failing policies.
  Think of that. How much bigger do they want the trade deficit to be? 
How many more millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs do they want to 
export? There are not many left. We already know that the deficit is 
not sustainable. The growth of our merchandise trade deficits over the 
last 10 years, 1990 to 2001, with our free trade partners, Mexico, 
1,861 percent growth; China 713 percent growth; the WTO membership 
generally that is from the Uruguay Round, 300 percent; the Caribbean 
Basin Parity Act, 131 percent; and sub-Saharan Africa, 64 percent. 
Those are numbers from our own international trade commission. That is 
an outline of the success of these trade policies. They are a success 
for multinational corporations or corporations that were formerly U.S. 
corporations but now do not want to think of themselves or act in that 
manner anymore, who are exporting our wealth and our jobs.
  I have a couple of more quotes. This one is from one of my favorite 
groups, the International Monetary Fund, and that was said 
sarcastically. I think they have done more damage to the world economy 
than virtually any other organization, but they are now saying:
  ``The sustainability of the large U.S. current account deficit hinges 
on the ability of the United States to continue to attract sizable 
capital inflows. Up to now these inflows in large part have reflected 
the perceived attractiveness of the U.S. investment environment but 
such perceptions are subject to continuous reappraisal.''
  And with the questions about the bookkeeping and the real 
profitability of many firms on Wall Street, with the rapid decline of 
the U.S. dollar, those perceptions are changing very quickly. In fact, 
the United States of America, not one of these corrupt companies like 
Enron, the United States of America has been put on the Standard & 
Poor's watch list for 20 countries that are vulnerable to a credit 
bust. Why is that? Because Americans are not working hard? No. Because 
we are a resource poor country? No. Because we have a totally failed 
trade policy and the current President and the majority in the House of 
Representatives, the Republicans, want more of the same as medicine to 
cure that ill. We are talking about the potential to bankrupt the 
United States of America, to turn us into a yet larger Argentina. They 
were the miracle of South America, the highest standard of living, a 
European country in South America is what they were called for many 
years and now they are a basket case, because of the dictates of the 
IMF, because of policies that are similar to the ones we are engaging 
in here in the United States with trade.
  This is not sustainable. These policies must be changed. It will be 
unconscionable. And the fact that we are not working here tonight, we 
are just chattering and in fact the House got out of here at 3 o'clock 
today and are rumored to be out at 2 o'clock tomorrow and maybe 1 
o'clock on Thursday and noon on Friday, because the Republicans cannot 
quite get together the votes to jam through one more time a bill to 
rubber stamp this totally discredited and failed trade policy. The 
President is probably on the horn right now to some reluctant Members 
saying, ``Oh, I know it's going to hurt you at home. I know it's going 
to put people in your district out of work. I know this is a real 
problem for you, but I'll do something to make it up.'' Those are the 
kind of phone calls that are going on on that side of the aisle. They 
want their Members to vote against the interests of the people living 
and working in their districts and in the United States of America in 
the interest of a few very powerful multinational corporations, the oil 
industry and others who are essentially dictating trade policies 
through this administration, and, sadly, as they did through the 
Clinton administration and the predecessor Presidents for the last 25 
years, ever since we started running huge and growing trade deficits, 
our trade policy has been run by corporate America and intellectual 
elite that do not see reality and do not want to regard reality and do 
not want to look at sustainability.
  I am hoping that a majority of my colleagues here in the House of 
Representatives will see that issue for what it is, the lies for what 
they are, and vote to adopt a new trade policy for this country, one 
that will serve us better and turn our deficits and our hemorrhaging of 
industrial jobs around.

                          ____________________