[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 108 (Thursday, August 1, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7768-S7793]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRADE ACT OF 2002--CONFERENCE REPORT
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will now resume consideration of the conference report
accompanying H.R. 3009, which the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A conference report to accompany 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 10:30 a.m. shall be equally divided between the Senator from
Montana, Mr. Baucus, or the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, and the
Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan, or his designee.
The Senator from Montana is recognized.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote
yes on the motion to invoke cloture on the trade bill. Three months
ago, the Senate passed its version of the Trade Act of 2002. It was a
strong bill, it was a progressive bill, and it passed overwhelmingly
with strong bipartisan support.
We now have completed our conference with Representatives of the
House. I am pleased to present the Senate with a conference report that
retains and builds upon key elements of the Senate bill.
Let me begin by discussing the reestablishment of the President's
fast-track trade negotiating authority. This authority will make it
easier for the President to negotiate strong trade agreements, but we
do not give the President a blank check. Far from it. The bill makes
Congress a full partner in trade by laying out negotiating objectives
on a number of topics and creating a structure for consultations--I
might add, much stronger than previous fast-track bills.
Most of the debate on fast track has focused on three trouble spots
in trade negotiations: Labor rights and environmental standards; so-
called chapter 11 provisions; and U.S. trade laws.
Let me turn to them. First, labor and environmental standards. Most
importantly, this bill adopts the standards set forth in the United
States-Jordan Free Trade Agreement; that is, as a floor. No standards
in future trade agreements can go below the floor set in the United
States-Jordan Free Trade Agreement, which is a pretty high floor, but
certainly agreements can be higher.
In that agreement, in the United States-Jordan Free Trade Agreement,
both parties agreed to strive for labor standards articulated by the
ILO and for similar improvement in environmental protection. Both
countries also agreed to faithfully enforce their environmental and
labor laws and not to waive them to gain a trade advantage.
The conference bill's fast-track provisions fully adopt the Jordan
provisions, and the bill makes it clear that Jordan is the model for
every free-trade agreement we negotiate; that is, the bottom floor is
Jordan. Again, agreements can go higher. That is a big step forward.
In addition, the conference report obtains negotiating objectives
seeking to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. Senator Harkin has
been a tireless advocate on this issue, and I am proud the conference
report includes this important objective.
Another contentious issue pertains to investor-state dispute
settlement, also known as chapter 11, in reference to provisions on
this topic in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The conference report attempts to balance the legitimate needs of
U.S. investors with the legitimate needs of Federal, State, and local
regulators, and the concerns of environmental and public interest
groups.
The bill directs trade negotiators to seek provisions that keep
Chapter XI-type standards in line with the standards articulated by
U.S. courts on similar matters.
It urges the creation of a mechanism to rapidly dispose of frivolous
complaints and to deter their filing in the first place.
And it urges the creation of an appellate body to correct legal
errors and ensure consistent interpretation of key provisions by
Chapter XI arbitration panels. That is a level playing field.
So neither country has an advantage, and neither investors on the one
hand, nor municipalities nor environmental groups on the other hand,
have an advantage. It is a totally level playing field.
I am pleased that, on the whole, we were able to retain the Senate
objectives on investment.
The second difficult issue within fast track is how we ensure fair
trade.
To battle unfair trade practices, the United States and most other
developed countries maintain antidumping and countervailing duty laws.
Another critical U.S. trade law--Section 201--aims to give industries
that are seriously injured by import surges some time to adapt.
Rather than being protectionist these laws are the remedy to
protectionism. And importantly, these laws are completely consistent
with U.S. obligations under the WTO.
On a political level, these laws also serve as a guarantee to U.S.
industries and U.S. workers.
Without those critical reassurances, I suspect that the already
sagging public support for free trade would evaporate, and new trade
agreements would simply become impossible.
Now, the Senate overwhelmingly supported an amendment by Senators
Dayton and Craig. That amendment provided a process for raising a point
of order against a bill that changes trade remedy laws.
The House bill did not include this provision--although I expect the
House might support such a provision if put to a vote.
That said, in the conference process we needed to come up with an
alternative if we were going to move forward. I believe the provisions
that have come out of that process are very strong--and give Congress
an important role before an agreement is finalized. Let me explain.
First, this legislation raises concerns regarding recent dispute
settlement panels under the WTO that have ruled against U.S. trade laws
and limited their operation in unreasonable ways. These decisions
clearly go beyond the obligations agreed to in the WTO and undermine
the credibility of the world trading system. We must correct these
erroneous decisions.
That is why our concern regarding WTO dispute settlement is
identified at the very outset of the bill--as findings--and why the
Administration is directed to develop a strategy to counter or reverse
this problem, or lose fast track.
This bill also contains a principal negotiating objective directing
negotiators not to undermine U.S. trade laws. This fully expresses
Congress's view that maintaining trade laws is among the highest
priorities in our trade negotiations.
Finally--and most importantly, I believe--this bill directs the
President to send a report to Congress, 6 months before he signs an
agreement, that lays out what he plans to do with respect to our trade
laws.
This is important. This provision provides that the President--before
he reports on any other issue--must lay out any changes that would have
to be made to U.S. trade laws. This will give Congress a chance to
affect the outcome of the negotiations well before they occur.
In fact, to buttress that point, the bill provides for a resolution
process where Congress can specifically find that the proposed changes
are ``inconsistent'' with the negotiating objectives. I suspect that if
either House of Congress were to pass such a resolution--by the way, it
is privileged. I mean it is nondebatable. It cannot be filibustered. So
the relevant committees--House Ways and Means and Senate Finance--
report this out, and it starts with a resolution offered by any Member
of Congress in the respective bodies. I suspect that resolution--again,
privileged, not filibustered, not amendable--would be very much
listened to by the President.
If they don't get that message, there are ways that either House of
Congress can derail a trade agreement. But I don't think it would come
to that. I think the agreement would be renegotiated in that
circumstance--and that is the point.
[[Page S7769]]
This is a solid fast track bill. If passed, this will be the most
progressive fast track bill we have ever had.
Let me turn to the portion of the bill that I believe is the most
historic. We now have a unique opportunity to expand and improve a
program that is a critical part of moving toward a consensus on trade--
that program is Trade Adjustment Assistance.
TAA is a program with a simple, but critical, objective: To assist
workers injured by imports to adjust and find new jobs.
TAA was created back in 1962 as part of an effort to implement the
results of the so-called Kennedy Round agreement to expand world trade.
President Kennedy and the Congress agreed that there were significant
benefits to the country as a whole from expanded trade. They also
recognized, however, that some workers and firms would inevitably lose
out to increased import competition.
TAA was created as part of a new social compact that obliged the
Nation to attend to the legitimate needs of those that lose from trade
as part of the price for enjoying the benefits of increased trade.
Unfortunately, we have not always upheld that bargain in pursuing new
trade agreements.
This legislation aims to fulfill the bargain struck in 1962.
It makes several important changes in the TAA program to make it more
effective:
First, the conference bill expands the number of workers eligible for
benefits.
Like the Senate bill, the conference bill covers secondary workers.
The conference bill also expands coverage to workers affected by
shifts in production. Workers are automatically covered if their plant
moves to a country with which the United States has a free trade
agreement, or to a country that is part of a preferential trade
arrangement.
For workers whose plant moves to any other country, benefits are
available if the Secretary of Labor determines that imports have
increased or are likely to increase.
``Or are likely to increase'' is very important because obviously if
a plant moves to another country, imports are likely to increase. Since
companies that move offshore typically ship back to the United States,
I can think of no circumstances in which relocating production abroad
would not be accompanied by or lead to an increase in imports of the
product.
Moreover, I would note here that the workers do not have to prove
that the increase in imports will come from the country to which
production relocated. This is a standard that is easily satisfied.
In addition, the conference agreement also includes a new program for
farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and other agricultural producers.
Taken together, these expansions in eligibility are likely to result
in a program that would cover under 200,000 workers per year.
Moreover, TAA benefits are substantially improved.
For the first time in the history, we provide health care coverage
for displaced TAA workers.
Who would have thought--when we started this process 2 years ago--
that we would be able to achieve such an important and laudable goal?
But that is exactly what we accomplished. Workers eligible for TAA
will now receive a 65 percent advanceable, refundable tax credit that
can be used to pay for COBRA coverage, that is, coverage related to
lost health insurance on account of lost jobs or a number of other
group coverage options through the States. This assistance is available
to workers for as long as they are participating in the TAA program.
I am pleased with the health care provisions in the conference
report, and I hope that we can bring the same willingness to work
together and compromise to other important health care issues before
us.
The conference report also extends income support from 52 to 78 weeks
to allow workers to complete training. And thanks to the efforts of
Senator Edwards, it adds a further 26 weeks of training and income
support for workers who must begin with remedial education such as
English as a second language. To pay for this additional training, the
annual training budget is doubled from $110 million to $220 million.
For older workers, the conference report offers wage insurance as an
alternative to traditional TAA. Workers who qualify and who take lower-
paying jobs can receive a wage subsidy of up to 50 percent of the
difference between the old and new salary--up to $10,000 over 2 years.
The goal is to encourage on-the-job raining and faster re-employment of
older workers who generally find it difficult to change careers.
The bill included a 2-year wage insurance pilot program. The
conference report improves on the Senate bill in two ways--by making
the program permanent, and by providing TAA health benefits to workers
under the program if the new employer does not provide health
insurance.
Finally, in addition to expanding benefits and eligibility, the
conference agreement makes a number of improvements that streamline the
program. It eliminates bureaucracy. It makes the program fairer, more
efficient, and more user friendly. And I believe it will meet the
ultimate goal of TAA--getting workers back to work more quickly.
All told, this bill amounts to a major expansion and a historic re-
tooling of TAA--a step that is long overdue.
Forty years ago, President Kennedy asked Congress for trade
liberalizing legislation. It was a much simpler bill at that time, when
trade issues were more narrowly defined, but it was still
controversial. For many of the same reasons, that remains controversial
today.
President Kennedy emphasized the importance of trade for our economy,
for our workers, for American leadership, and the world. He also
recognized, even then, that trade also creates dislocation and that a
new program, trade adjust assistance, was needed to help workers left
behind by trade. Congress seized that opportunity and passed the Trade
Expansion Act of 1962.
Today, we, too, can show the world and America what we stand for.
Building not only on the vision of President Kennedy but also on the
efforts of the Presidents who followed him, we can show the world that
America will lead the way in building a new consensus on international
trade. We, too, must seize that opportunity.
I urge my colleagues to vote to invoke cloture and to pass the
conference report.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, this debate, if it is like
most debates on fast track, will not be a very thoughtful debate. There
is a relentless chanting about free trade and the global economy, but
no discussion about what is really happening in trade.
I believe in expanded trade. I believe expanded trade helps our
economy and helps economies around the world. I am not someone who
believes we should put walls around our country and try to keep other
goods out of our country. I do believe, however, our country has a
right to be a leader in demanding and insisting on fair trade. That has
not been the case for several decades. I will talk a bit about that.
In October 2001, our trade Ambassador, Mr. Zoellick--a man I like--
speaking to a business group in Chicago, described opponents of trade
promotion authority as ``xenophobes and isolationists.''
That is fairly typical of the prevailing view on trade. There is a
perception that this debate has two camps: The camp that is able to see
over the horizon, they get it, they understand it, they understand the
global economy, and they understand all of the issues; and then there
are the others, xenophobic, isolationist stooges who cannot and will
not understand.
The Senate is preparing to give the administration the power to
negotiate trade agreements in secret, and bring them back to Congress
for very limited debate. Congress will have in place a procedure that
will prevent the Senate from ever changing even one word of the
agreement. In other words, Congress signs itself up to say: Handcuff
us. Handcuff us so we cannot change a word in the next trade agreement
you bring back. We understand we will not be part of the negotiation,
we understand we will not be in the room, we will not even know where
they take place, but we agree beforehand that whatever you bring back
to us, we will not change a word.
Had I been able to change a word of the United States-Canada Free
Trade
[[Page S7770]]
Agreement, we would not have the problem with grain trade with Canada
we have had for a decade. When that trade agreement came back to the
Senate, I could not change one word because Congress passed fast track.
Trade promotion authority is a euphemism for what used to be known as
fast track. It is Congress handcuffing itself, saying: Whatever you
negotiate, wherever you negotiate it, we promise not to offer one
amendment to change one word of the trade agreement.
There are people who will sign up for almost anything. I saw in the
paper a while back that the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile was advertising
for a driver. The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, which we have seen in
clips, needed a driver, and 900 college graduates applied. I thought to
myself, people will sign up for almost anything, won't they? Nine
hundred college graduates aspire to drive the Weinermobile.
Then I see people signing up for the proposition that the Congress
ought to handcuff itself, in advance, before a trade agreement is
negotiated in secret in some location we do not yet know, and I see
people say: Sign me up, I think that is a good deal.
Let me describe the circumstances in which we find ourselves after a
barrelful of this trade strategy. This chart represents red ink, trade
deficits. Today is Thursday. Today, the American people and our
Government, our country, will incur a $1.4 billion deficit--just in
this one day. Today, every day, 7 days a week, our trade deficit is
relentless, and it increases at a relentless pace. The deficit for this
year will go off the chart, by the way. That is a trade deficit we owe
not to ourselves, as we do with the budget deficit, it is a trade
deficit we owe to other countries.
We have people who think this strategy works. Would this be
malpractice in medicine if a doctor prescribed medicine and it did not
work, and he prescribed it again and it did not work, and he said,
let's keep prescribing the same medicine that does not work? How about
a football team that calls the same plays despite the fact it does not
work?
That is exactly what we are doing in international trade. The same
people made the same promises then that they are making now: If we can
just do more of the same, our country will be better off. Total
nonsense.
The last big debate we had was NAFTA--United States, Canada and
Mexico. Prior to that debate, we had a very small trade surplus with
Mexico. We had a surplus with Mexico and a reasonably modest trade
deficit with Canada. We had people promising the Moon: If we just do
this, if we sign up for the NAFTA agreement, if you let us negotiate it
in secret--if you allow us to do that, we will add 300,000 new jobs in
the United States of America. Total nonsense.
Here is what happened after NAFTA: A trade surplus with Mexico turned
into a very large deficit; a modest trade deficit with Canada turned
into a huge trade deficit with Canada. People said: Well, if you just
sign up to this, we will import the skills of low-skill labor from
Mexico; that is what we intend to have happen. Do you know what the
three largest imports from Mexico are? Electronics, automobiles, and
automobile parts--all the product of high-skill labor. So the deficit
explodes. Now we have a very large combined deficit with our two
trading partners on the south and north of us, and we have people in
the Senate who said: Boy, this is really working. What a great deal for
our country.
I graduated from a small school, a high school class of nine in my
senior class. I know we did not have all the advanced mathematics some
other people had, but this surely must be the only venue in America
where grown men and women add 2 and 2 and get 5 and compliment each
other on their math skills.
In this morning's newspaper, there are reports about anemic economic
growth, and worries about a double dip recession. According to
economists, the trade deficit has done a lot to reduce our economic
growth to just 1.8 percent.
The fact is, this trade deficit matters, and we are getting clobbered
by it. It ties an anvil to the neck of this country's economy. And we
have people coming to the floor of the Senate saying: let's do more of
the same; let's do much more of what is not working. I, for the life of
me, cannot understand that.
Postcloture, I am going to give a speech that describes the details
of all of this and ask the question: Why are we all so interested in
having the next treaty negotiated, or the next trade agreement
negotiated, before even one problem is fixed? Let me give you some
examples of problems, even if I do not describe them all now.
How about eggs to Europe, high-fructose corn syrup to Mexico,
automobiles to China, automobiles to Korea, potato flakes to Korea,
unfairly subsidized grain from Canada, beef to Japan, flour to Europe?
I can go on, and I will go, on at some length about each of those. How
about stuffed molasses from Canada? That is an interesting one, stuffed
molasses. Brazilian sugar is sent to Canada and then mixed with liquid
molasses, put in a container, and shipped into this country in
contravention of our trade laws. They take the sugar out of the
molasses, send the molasses back to Canada, and everything is as it was
before, except we now have Brazilian sugar in our market in
contravention of our trade laws and you cannot do a blessed thing about
it. When the trade bill left the Senate, it contained a provision that
fixed this problem. The bill that came back out of conference
essentially dropped this provision. But that is typical of virtually
everything in this bill that left the Senate with some decent
provisions and came back here washed clean of those provisions.
There is a company in Canada. It is called Methanex. It is a company
that makes MTBE, a fuel additive. California has decided it is going to
discontinue the use of MTBE in fuel because it ends up in the ground
water. The fact is, it poisons people. You have to get it out of the
ground water, so you have to stop using it in fuel. So when California
decides on behalf of the safety of its citizens to stop using MTBE, a
fuel additive that is now showing up in their water supply, guess what.
The Canadian manufacturer of that product takes action in the WTO
against the United States for violating trade laws. So a State that
tries to protect its citizens from a poison going into the water supply
is now being sued, under our trade agreement, by a Canadian company.
Guess what. The NAFTA dispute tribunal is secret. They are going to
shut the door, lock the door, and in a closed room somewhere--where we
will not be told--they make a decision about whether we have the right
to protect our citizens.
I offered an amendment on this bill here in the Senate. A wide
bipartisan majority of Senators voted for it. It said: Those dispute
resolutions must be opened to the public. America needs to see them.
Let's have the disinfectant of sunlight on those trade disputes.
That makes sense, doesn't it? Except the trade bill came back from
conference with that stripped out.
The bill also came back from conference without the Dayton-Craig
amendment, which I cosponsored. The Dayton-Craig amendment said if you
are going to negotiate a trade treaty and weaken the laws that protect
us against unfair trade, then we deserve to have a separate vote on it.
Do you know what they did? They stripped that out and they said: What
you can do is you can have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
We can have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution right now. That doesn't
mean anything. To offer this kind of placebo is an insult. You are
either going to stand up for this country's interests or you are not.
If you decide you are not going to stand up for this country's
interests, just say so. Don't play a game with it.
The Dayton-Craig amendment ought to be in this piece of legislation.
The amendment I offered on transparency ought to be in this piece of
legislation. Amendments dealing with child protection and child labor
issues ought to be in this legislation--and it is not, despite the fact
that at its roots it is bad legislation.
We ought not handcuff ourselves. We should not preclude ourselves
from offering one amendment to a treaty that has not yet been
negotiated at a time and place not yet described; a treaty in which the
negotiations are not open to the public. We in the Senate agree we will
not offer one amendment; in fact, we will prohibit it. Has anybody read
the Constitution lately? That is not what the Constitution says.
[[Page S7771]]
People refuse to stand up on the floor of the Senate and say: On
behalf of our producers we demand fair trade. On behalf of farmers,
steelworkers, textile workers, we are willing to compete. Yes, we want
competition, absolutely. Bring them on. We are willing to compete. But
we demand fair competition. If it is not fair, we say to those who want
to ship their trousers and shirts and shoes and trinkets to us, ship
them to Nigeria or Zambia and see how fast they sell. Say to Korea,
that sent 630,000 cars into our marketplace and we are allowed only
2,800 cars into Korea: Korea, ship your cars to Zambia. See how many
you sell. If you want to keep shipping Hyundais and Daewoos to the
American marketplace, then open your market to American automobiles. It
is very simple.
I am going to talk more about this during the postcloture period. But
my question is very simple: When will the House and Senate stand up for
American producers? No, not for an advantage for them, just to demand
basic fairness for workers and producers in this country. Just to
demand basic fairness. When will we take action?
I said before, maybe if there is a fast track urge around here, maybe
if deep in the breasts of people around here they have some urge to do
something on fast track, we should pass a piece of legislation that
says the only fast track you have, Mr. Ambassador, is to put on fast
track the solution to our trade problems. Fix a few problems before you
negotiate a new trade agreement, just fix a few problems, then come
back here and tell us you have fixed a few, and then we will work with
you.
Understand what is going to happen today. We will have a debate that
is never at the center of the issue. We will have a vote. We will vote
cloture. Then tomorrow, after the bill is passed, the President will
talk about how wonderful it is that he has this trade promotion
authority, which is fast track. People in Congress will talk about how
wonderful it is because they understand the global economy and how
important this is. It is all sheer nonsense, and they know it.
I hope tomorrow morning someone will address this question: Why is it
when things are not working, you want to do more of it? Why is it you
want to do more of that which does not work? Just describe for one
moment why you think something that hurts this country is something
that we ought to continue.
Let me finish as I started. My speech, especially the speech I will
give later where I will go into a lot of specifics, will be
misinterpreted, because it always is, as someone who is a xenophobe
isolationist who doesn't believe in free trade. I believe in expanded
trade. I believe trade promotes opportunity for our country and for
others. But I, by God, insist on fair trade for American workers and
producers, and I do not believe that after fighting for 100 years in
this country for the right to organize, for people dying in the streets
for the right to organize in a labor force, for the right to have a
safe workplace, for the right not to employ children, 10- and 12-year-
old children in coal mines and in factories, for the right to a decent
wage--after fighting for those things for a century, I do not believe
we ought to construct an economic system where companies can pole-vault
over all of that in just a nanosecond and say, ``I renounce my American
citizenship, let me become a citizen of Bermuda and put my jobs in Sri
Lanka and Bangladesh,'' and not have to worry about all the things we
fought about for a century.
Fair is fair. There is a price for admission to the American
marketplace. You cannot have a 12-year-old kid, pay him 12 cents an
hour, work 12 him hours a day, and ship the product to Pittsburgh or
Fargo or Los Angeles and call that fair trade. It not fair to America's
workers and or producers. This fast-track trade authority for a trade
agreement that has not yet been negotiated is, in my judgment, an
aberration.
It ignores the precepts of the consultation about international
trade. In my judgment, because of what has happened in recent years,
the evidence is clear that it also hurts our country.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Edwards). The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I might
consume, but I would like to be informed if I have reached the 7-minute
mark.
Mr. President, I hope people on the other side of the aisle will take
into consideration the statements of the previous President of the
United States, President Clinton, on the importance of trade. President
Clinton rightly bragged about one-third of the new jobs during his
administration being directly related to trade emphasizing the
importance of trade. John Deere, Waterloo, IA--one-fifth of the jobs
there are related to trade: 3M in Oakville, IA--40 percent of
production is related to trade.
We want to remember that trade creates jobs. It creates jobs that pay
15 percent above the national average. According to President Clinton,
and according to the economic facts of life, trade is good for American
workers--creation of jobs, and creation of good jobs.
I would also like to say that those who have been criticizing
President Bush saying he does not have a strong economic team must, in
fact, have their heads in the sand.
Compare that criticism to what I just said about the importance of
trade as emphasized by President Clinton. Then you will see the strong
economic leadership of Ambassador Zoellick and Secretary Evans as they
have worked on trade issues generally, and particularly their
leadership on trade promotion authority.
Two things about the economic policy of this administration: They
have strong leaders in place to talk about the importance of the
economy and to carry out policy important to the economy. And
particularly they are considering continuing the trend that President
Clinton emphasized--the importance of trade to creating jobs, and good
jobs.
I think it is bunk that this administration has no strong economic
voice, particularly if you look at the strong leadership of Ambassador
Zoellick and Secretary Evans on promoting good trade policy, and their
very successful work on bringing this legislation to where it is now.
Make no doubt in anybody's mind that I rise in strong support of the
conference report accompanying H.R. 3009, the Trade Act of 2002, and
urge my colleagues to support cloture and final passage.
This bill is the product of over a year and a half of intense
negotiations, discussion, and debate from both Republicans and
Democrats in both Houses of Congress--and particularly strong
bipartisan support here in the Senate.
Because of these efforts, the Trade Act strikes a solid and balanced
compromise among a number of key issues and competing priorities in the
tradition of bipartisanship in the Senate. It is a product that should
receive broad support here in the Senate today.
The Trade Act of 2002 renews trade promotion authority for the
President for the first time in almost a decade.
Through a spirit of compromise, Democrats and Republicans were able
to break the deadlock on trade promotion authority that was the
environment during the last term of President Clinton, and we were able
to reach a balanced compromise on a number of key issues.
At the same time, we were able to provide the President with the
flexibility that he needs to negotiate strong international trade
agreements while maintaining Congress's constitutional role over U.S.
trade policy.
It represents a thoughtful approach to addressing the complex
relationships between international trade, workers' rights, and the
environment. And it does so without undermining the fundamental purpose
and proven effectiveness of this process now called trade promotion
authority.
It is an extremely solid bill. The Trade Act also reauthorizes and
improves trade adjustment assistance for America's workers whose jobs
may be displaced by trade. I think the trade adjustment provisions in
the act are a vast improvement over the legislation that passed the
Senate.
Our provisions--which I voted for but wasn't entirely in tune with--
would have completely rewritten existing law of trade adjustment
assistance.
In doing so, the Senate bill added a number of new, costly
definitions, time lines, and ambiguous administrative obligations.
[[Page S7772]]
This conference report removes these burdensome and ill-advised
changes. Unlike the Senate bill, the conference report simply amends
and builds upon existing trade adjustment assistance law.
It adds new provisions which help to actually improve trade
adjustment assistance while maintaining a linkage to trade.
In short, the Trade Act improves the Senate-passed trade adjustment
bill and represents a balanced approach to ensuring that workers
displaced by trade will get the necessary assistance in trading to
reenter the workplace.
I also mention the good provisions of the Andean pact because this
will help create new employment opportunities in the countries of
Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. It will help us, too, in our
efforts there to fight drug trafficking.
I will be the first to admit that this bill is not a perfect piece of
legislation. But, all in all, it is fair and balanced. It deserves
strong support.
International trade has long been one of our most important foreign
policy and economic tools. It was a key component for the last 50 years
for enhancing international economic strategy. This bill will make a
difference.
Nations around the world are waiting for our call and the usual U.S.
leadership of the last 50 years. Trade ministers and cabinets all over
the world are looking to the Senate now for the United States to
reestablish its leadership that we haven't had for 9 years. I hope we
will not let them down.
I urge support for the conference report, vote for cloture and
passage of the bill.
I yield the floor.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, before the Senator from Idaho speaks, I
want to thank him for all his hard work on trade remedies. And I thank
him, too, for the support and for being a very strong advocate of
checking American trade laws. I thank him for all that he has done.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Finance
Committee, and also the ranking member.
Mr. President, I rise in support of the trade promotion authority
legislation. I will speak briefly about the strong provisions contained
within the conference bill that will help the United States preserve
the effectiveness of our trade laws.
As many of you know, these laws are going to be critical to the
ability of U.S. companies, farmers, and workers to combat trading
practices that harm our economic interests. As barriers to trade come
down around the world, it becomes critically important to uphold the
rules that combat government subsidies and predatory pricing practices.
As many of you know, and many of you participated with Senator Dayton
and I in crafting an amendment aimed at preserving the ability of
Congress to have a significant role in shaping our laws, it was not
done in an isolationist or xenophobic attitude--not at all. That
amendment had overwhelming, bipartisan support, and spoke directly to
TPA and the role of the Senate.
I tell you, I was disappointed the conference did not deal with the
Craig-Dayton provision, but I do believe the conference bill does
contain several strong provisions that require the administration to
consult with us every step of the way during trade negotiations.
First, the bill makes trade law preservation a principal negotiating
objective.
Secondly, it requires the administration to report to Congress a full
6 months before a trade agreement is initialed regarding any trade law
changes that trade agreement would require. In other words, the U.S.
Trade Representative must come to the Senate and explain to each of us
what will be changed in our laws, and how those changes meet the
objectives of trade and also the rights of this Congress. We have
gained transparency in the process of negotiation. I think that is
critical.
And third, if those changes do not satisfy our requirements of
preserving U.S. trade law, well, we can vote on a resolution of
disagreement. And I will help write it.
Make no mistake, our trade laws are under attack at the WTO.
First, several countries have put forth proposals that would fire a
number of rounds into our trade laws with every intent of sinking them.
Our trade laws are also unraveling, on a monthly basis, before the
WTO dispute settlement process where bureaucrats in Geneva sit back and
tell our trade law agencies how to make their decisions, completely
ignoring the standard of review that was agreed to in the last trade
round.
These are some of the issues. So Ambassador Zoellick, Secretary
Evans, hear us loud: Do it right or bring it back here and we defeat
it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 3 minutes have expired.
Mr. CRAIG. Sixty-two Senators said: Do not negotiate away our trade
laws, or suffer the consequence.
I yield the floor.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield the remainder of the time to Senator Nickles.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Forty-one seconds.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 3
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of
the conference report that is before us today and the cloture motion.
Let me just make a couple very quick comments. I do not agree with
everything that is in this bill. And I do not agree with the way it was
put together. We had three bills together. The Andean trade bill should
have been passed a year ago. It expired in December.
You have Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru that have been needing
us to pass this bill. Those are all allies of ours, but they were held
hostage by it being put in a package. But the only way we can help them
is by passing this bill today. It is better late than never. We need to
do it. I apologize to those four countries for us taking so long.
We have been collecting duties against our allies when, for years--
for over 10 years--we have not done it. So we are long overdue. Senator
McCain has brought this to our attention on the floor. They were held
hostage because these three bills were put together.
Also, trade adjustment assistance--which the Congress has always
passed and the Senate has always passed, but not as part of trade
promotion authority, or not as part of fast track--we need to do it,
but it should not be in the same package.
I disagree strongly, very strongly, with a couple of elements that
are in the trade adjustment assistance package, particularly the
expansion of health benefits or the health tax credits. It is 65
percent for people who now are between the ages of 55 and 65. Those now
receiving Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation benefits are now going
to get health benefits. It is almost like an incentive to dump your
pension liabilities into the PBGC, which is going to have enormous
financial problems in the future. Now that is an obligation for
taxpayers.
That being said, I think it would be a disastrous thing if this
Senate did not pass trade promotion authority. And now all three bills
are tied together. So while I do not like the trade adjustment
assistance--and if it was separate, I would be voting against it--when
taken together, the good of the trade promotion authority far outweighs
the entire package. We have to pass it.
I would shutter to think what would happen if we did not pass it. I
will even guess what would happen. I remember Chairman Greenspan was
asked: What can we do to help the economy? And he said: You need to
show fiscal discipline. We have not in many cases. And you need to
promote trade. Well, if we did not pass this, there would be a big
economic shock wave that would not only resonate in Wall Street but all
across the world: The United States defeats trade promotion authority.
The United States, the world leader in trade, really defeated trade,
defeated trade promotion--taking us out of our active leadership role
which we have had since at least the 1970s, which we have had for
decades, really since the conclusion of World War II. We would be
[[Page S7773]]
saying: No, we don't want to be a leader in trade. I think that would
be a disastrous result.
So I think the stock market would have a precipitous decline. Our
leadership role in free trade would suffer an enormous defeat.
So I urge my colleagues to support the cloture motion on TPA.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the proponents has expired.
The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add 3 minutes
to my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate that both sides
should have equal time. I enjoyed listening to my colleague from
Oklahoma. I might say, however, I do not believe that Chairman
Greenspan would suggest we should promote trade deficits. I think he
suggests we promote international trade. I am all for that. Sign me up.
Count me as one who believes we ought to expand international trade. I
think that is healthy. Good for our economy and good for the economies
of those with whom we trade, provided the trade is fair and reasonably
balanced.
We have a trade deficit with China that is $60 billion to $70
billion, and headed south. We have a trade deficit with Japan that is
between $50 billion and $60 billion--slightly more than that, as a
matter of fact. We have a trade deficit with Mexico and Canada that is
becoming significant. And we have a trade deficit with Europe.
It is interesting how all of the discussion this morning has
carefully avoided the fact that the current trade policy they espouse
isn't working. The current trade policy, last month, produced a $41.5
billion trade deficit--just last month. That is a deficit that will be
a yoke on the shoulders of every American. It is relentless, it is
increasing, and everyone who speaks in favor of this trade policy
carefully and studiously ignores it. They just do not want to talk
about the fact that it isn't working.
Let me, once again, put up a chart that shows what is happening in
international trade. Our country is drowning in trade deficits. The
next line would be up here off the chart. The merchandise trade deficit
is exploding. Everyone in the Senate knows that. It emanates from a
trade strategy that is, in my judgment, weak kneed, a trade strategy in
which we lack backbone and will.
Our country refuses--refuses--to say to China or Japan or Europe or
Canada or Mexico that we demand some reciprocity and fair trade. We
just refuse to do it.
We have this huge trade deficit with China. So China wants to buy
airplanes, and goes over and buys airplanes from Airbus, which is
heavily subsidized by the European governments. Is that fair? It is
fair to an American producer of airplanes? It is fair to Boeing? You
know it is not fair.
We ought to say to China: Look, you want to sell us all of your
trousers and shirts and shoes and trinkets, and all the things you
manufacture in our marketplace; good for you. Our marketplace is open
to you, by all means. But understand this: When you need something we
produce, you ought to be buying from us. That is the way trade ought to
work.
Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. DORGAN. Of course. I have very limited time. You have used all
your time.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senator be
granted an additional 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. GREGG. And that 5 minutes be granted also on this side.
Mr. DORGAN. No. We have a vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have a vote scheduled. I will yield on
my time for a very brief question.
Mr. GREGG. Well, the vote is scheduled to start at 10:30. It would be
just an additional 5 minutes and 5 minutes.
Mr. REID. What was the request?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota has the floor.
Mr. GREGG. I asked unanimous consent the Senator be granted an
additional 5 minutes, and also 5 minutes for this side.
Mr. REID. Objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. DORGAN. I was willing to yield ever so slightly because I have
such limited time.
Let me say this: I am going to speak postcloture, and I would be
happy to engage in the debate. No one in the Senate really wants to
debate trade very much. They want to simply say there are those of us
who support fast track, and those of us who get it, who understand it,
who see over the horizon, and who have a broader view of the world. And
then there are, as Ambassador Zoellick suggests, the xenophobes and
isolationists, the stooges who just don't see it. That is the
thoughtless debate that occurs every time we talk about trade.
But I will, in the postcloture period, ask a series of questions. I
hope perhaps some colleagues will be here.
I will ask, for example, about the issue of washed versus unwashed
eggs with Europe, corn syrup with Mexico, and automobiles with China.
We will see if there are people on the floor of the Senate who agree
with the circumstances of our trade relationships. The problems are
relentless, they are pervasive, and they continue.
What we want to do is rush off and negotiate the next trade treaty
before we solve any problems in the previous treaties. How can we tell
the farmers of North Dakota that it is all right? That it doesn't
matter that they have had a problem for 10 years of a monopoly in
Canada shipping unfairly subsidized grain south? We want to do another
treaty. The folks who produce America's beef, who 12 years after the
beef agreement with Japan now have a 38.5-percent tariff on every pound
of beef sent to Japan--how can we tell these people that it just
doesn't matter?
Yes, we are a leader in trade. Regrettably, we have been a leader
without a backbone. We have refused to say to our trading partners,
there is an admission price to the American marketplace, and that
admission price is fair trade with respect to labor standards and a
range of other issues.
Most especially, from my standpoint, I am concerned about the issue
of fundamental fairness. I mentioned that I did not support fast-track
trade authority for President Clinton, didn't think he should have it.
I don't think President Bush should have it.
I also mentioned earlier, the last two experiences we have had with
fast track, both NAFTA and GATT, have not turned out well for America.
The agreement that went into conference came out of conference in much
worse shape than it left the Senate. They essentially got rid of the
Dayton-Craig amendment and put a placebo in place. They got rid of the
transparency issue I raised.
I want to talk about what they boast about with respect to this
conference agreement. It provides assistance with health insurance.
What that means is for those Americans who lose their jobs because of
the next incompetently negotiated trade agreements, we will help pay
their health insurance. That is going to be great news to people who
will lose their jobs. It is safe to say not one man or woman in the
Senate will lose their job because of this vote. Fast track will not
cost any jobs here in the Senate. No Senator's job is threatened by
this. It is also safe to say that those Americans who are working for
companies that will be subject to unfair trade, because our trade
negotiators want to negotiate the next agreement rather than fix the
problems they have created in the past, are going to have little
consolation with these provisions. If you lose your job, we give you
health insurance. Well, maybe it would be better if they didn't lose
their job.
We expand coverage for secondary workers. If you are a secondary
worker and you lose your job, we help you a bit. There is wage
insurance for the older workers who lose their jobs: We will help you a
bit. New benefits for farmers and ranchers: If you lose the farm and
the ranch because of trade negotiations, we are willing to help you. It
might be better just to negotiate trade agreements that are fair to our
producers and say to our producers: This represents fair competition.
You have to go compete. If you don't win, that is tough luck. But we
have made the rules fair for you. You have to compete and win.
[[Page S7774]]
That is not what we do here. Our trade negotiators don't do that. In
negotiation after negotiation, we discover we don't have much of a
backbone.
Will Rogers once said that the United States of America has never
lost a war and never won a conference. He surely was talking about our
trade negotiators. They usually manage to lose in a week or two;
sometimes it takes longer. I can't think of a trade negotiation in
recent years that has enhanced this country's economic interests.
How much time do I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 2\1/2\ minutes.
Mr. DORGAN. We will have a cloture vote this morning, and my
expectation is that sufficient votes exist to have cloture. We will
then have a postcloture period in which I will speak at greater length
about the specifics of unfair trade.
Let me say this: The only bright spot for me for some long while in
international trade was Mickey Kantor, trade ambassador some while ago,
who in 1 year took action against Canada for engaging in horribly
unfair trade against American farmers. I happen to like current trade
ambassador Zoellick. I think he is a charming fellow. This is not about
personalities, it is about strategy.
The fact is, this Senate is going to make a serious mistake by
deciding it will tie its hands and it will agree to tie its hands prior
to negotiation of a new trade agreement so that if and when a trade
agreement comes here for approval by the Senate, we agree not to change
a word.
Think of the difference that would have existed had we been able to
change a few words in the United States-Canada trade agreement; think
of what it would have meant for tens of thousands of American farmers
if we had been able to say: We demand fairness in this agreement. But
we couldn't. That trade agreement was negotiated, as all of them are,
in secret. The next trade agreement will be negotiated the same way. We
will come back 5 years from now, and I will be back on the floor of the
Senate, if I am here, showing with another chart that we are drowning
in red ink and jobs are leaving and opportunity is lost. We will have
people saying: We ought to do the same thing. We ought to repeat the
same failures.
It is hard for me to understand how repeating something that doesn't
work advances America's interests. This must be the only body in the
world that has grown men and women adding 2 and 2 and getting 5 and
complimenting each other on their math skills. It defies logic, in my
judgment, to believe that this strategy enhances America's economic
interests.
I yield the floor.
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will
report the motion to invoke cloture.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the
conference report to accompany H.R. 3009, the Andean Trade
bill.
Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden,
Robert G. Torricelli, John B. Breaux, Thomas A.
Daschle, Thomas R. Carper, Blanche L. Lincoln, Zell
Miller, Charles E. Grassley, Larry E. Craig, Phil
Gramm, Jon Kyl, Frank H. Murkowski, Trent Lott.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call under the rule is waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate on the
conference report accompanying H.R. 3009, the Andean Trade Promotion
and Drug Eradication Act, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are required under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Akaka), the
Senator from Vermont (Mr. Jeffords), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr.
Leahy) are necessarily absent.
Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Helms) is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Landrieu). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 64, nays 32, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 203 Leg.]
YEAS--64
Allard
Allen
Baucus
Bayh
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Bunning
Cantwell
Carper
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Craig
Crapo
Daschle
DeWine
Domenici
Ensign
Enzi
Feinstein
Fitzgerald
Frist
Graham
Gramm
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Kerry
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lott
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Miller
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Nickles
Roberts
Santorum
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thomas
Thompson
Voinovich
Warner
Wyden
NAYS--32
Boxer
Burns
Byrd
Campbell
Carnahan
Clinton
Conrad
Corzine
Dayton
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Edwards
Feingold
Harkin
Hollings
Inouye
Johnson
Kennedy
Levin
Mikulski
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sarbanes
Schumer
Sessions
Shelby
Stabenow
Thurmond
Torricelli
Wellstone
NOT VOTING--4
Akaka
Helms
Jeffords
Leahy
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this question, the yeas are 64, the nays
are 32. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted
in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, could the Chair inform me as to the
parliamentary situation as it exists?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture has been invoked on the conference
report. The Senator has a maximum of 1 hour of debate. The amendments
must be germane or the debate must be germane to the conference report.
Mr. McCAIN. I understand.
Madam President, I do not intend to take very long. I do want to
speak for a relatively brief period of time on the importance of the
Andean Trade Preference Act.
I think it is very important we recognize that in our hemisphere
today we have a number of very serious situations--the possibility of a
breakdown of democracy. Institutions which were regarded as relatively
strong and stable a short time ago, in many of the countries throughout
our hemisphere, are in danger or in some cases near a crisis situation.
That is why I think the Andean Trade Preference Act, although maybe not
of major impact, is certainly one that is important and an important
signal to send to these countries in the region. That, coupled with our
overall approval of trade authority for the President of the United
States, I hope will be an encouragement to nations in our hemisphere
that are now in varying degrees of duress.
Argentina is in a serious financial crisis. A country that was once
the fifth most wealthy nation in the world is now in such a period of
financial difficulty that their economy could be close to collapse.
Venezuela is a country whose democracy is under severe strain. Hundreds
of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets recently to demonstrate
against their elected President, and, as we all know, there was an
attempted, briefly successful, coup which was antidemocratic in nature.
In Bolivia, one of the countries that is directly affected by the
Andean Trade Preference Act, there is now a candidate for President of
that country who is running on one of his commitments to the people of
Bolivia, which is that they will resume the growth of coca--a
remarkable turnaround, particularly given that Bolivia had an
incredibly successful cocaine eradication program.
Peru is in such difficulties that the President, President Toledo,
has gotten rid of the reform economists in his Cabinet and his
popularity and approval have plummeted to almost historic lows.
As we prepare to vote on this trade package, our country is
precariously positioned in the international trade arena. Many of our
friends and allies no longer see the United States as a nation that
champions global free trade but, rather, as a nation that increasingly
fears foreign competition
[[Page S7775]]
and seeks to erect barriers to trade in order to protect domestic
industries and advance narrow political agendas.
A series of shortsighted protectionist actions in recent years has
jeopardized our relationships with our most important trading partners.
Given our recent double standards on trade, it is not surprising that
the United States is quickly losing its credibility and leadership in
championing free trade principles around the world.
Our staunchest allies and most important trading partners are now
doubting our dedication to the free trade principles we have long
championed.
Many of the nations that engage in the free exchange of commerce are
also our staunchest allies in the war on terrorism. Over the past eight
months, those countries have joined in our worthy cause, some making
substantial sacrifices to advance our shared values. During that time,
even as our allies have deployed their forces to stand alongside our
own in Central Asia, we have pursued protectionist policies on steel
and lumber, and passed into law a regressive, trade-distorting farm
bill. We are already fighting one war on a global scale. We cannot
simultaneously fight a trade war.
The United States simply cannot afford to follow the dangerous path
of protectionism. I hope that the passage of trade promotion authority
and the Andean Trade Preference Expansion Act, both of which are
included in this package, will represent a turning point. Now is our
chance to put a stop to our short-sighted protectionism and recognize
that such behavior has consequences.
Mr. President, this package of trade bills, including the Andean
Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, trade promotion authority,
and trade adjustment assistance (TAA), demonstrates what I hope is the
beginning of a renewed commitment to negotiating and expediting strong
trade agreements. Enactment of this legislation will go a long way
toward re-establishing faith and trust in the United States as a
trading partner.
The Andean Trade Preferences Act, a measure that would be expanded by
this bill, is a trade-related success story that has not only
strengthened our economy, but our national security as well. ATPA was
designed to reduce the Andean region's drug trade and spur economic
development. That Act has proven effective, and benefitted not only
Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, but also the United States. Its
extension is long past due.
Originally enacted in 1991, entire export industries have been
created through ATPA. The cut flowers industry alone has created more
than 80,000 new jobs in Ecuador, and over 150,000 new jobs in Colombia.
In Peru, the benefits of the Andean trade act encouraged farmers to
cultivate asparagus, making it that country's largest export crop to
the United States, creating 50,000 new jobs in the process. No longer
are people in these countries confined to producing the raw materials
that go into the production of cocaine; They have the ever increasing
options afforded them under ATPA.
Unlike other forms of assistance, ATPA costs the U.S. nothing. In
fact, American workers and consumers benefit through reduced prices on
goods and services.
Despite such success, it has taken Congress well over a year to
extend this non-controversial measure. Legislation was introduced in
the Senate in March 2001 to extend and expand ATPA, which was set to
expire December 2001. Along with this history, a long delay in the
appointment of conferees and partisan disagreements, all unrelated to
ATPA, prevented final Congressional action on this critical legislation
until now. Fast-track authority for the President expired 8 years ago.
By empowering the President to negotiate bilateral and multilateral
trade agreements, TPA will enable the President to eliminate trade
barriers, reduce tariffs, and open foreign markets to American goods
and services. American workers, farmers, businessmen, and consumers
will benefit from the regional free trade areas such as the Free Trade
Area of the Americas, and bilateral trade agreements such as those
currently being negotiated with Singapore and Chile.
I repeat, a man is running for President of this country of Bolivia.
One of his most popular themes is to reinitiate the cultivation and
growth of coca. If that man wins--and I do not question the will of the
people of Bolivia, but it is clear that it would be a dramatic setback
to our efforts to eradicate the growth of coca in that country.
In Peru, there are civil disturbances and the President of Peru, who
is a good and decent man from all I can tell, is suffering enormously
in popularity in polls.
Colombia is a nation with its very existence at risk due to civil
war, a lot of that fueled by the cocaine trafficking, the growth of
which begins in the country of Colombia.
Ecuador, next to Colombia, has felt many very devastating side
effects of the war in Colombia and the effects on its own economy.
I mentioned Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala are having difficulties;
Honduras, Nicaragua; and even Mexico is having some difficulties
because of the failure, in the view of many of the Mexican people, of
President Fox in delivering on many promises he made when he ran for
President of Mexico.
I cannot believe all of the troubles in our hemisphere, which in my
view are more serious than they have been since the 1980s, on the
absence of trade and the absence of renewal of the Andean Trade
Preference Act. But in the words of the Presidents of these countries
who visited my office, they said one thing: We do not want aid; we want
trade. We want trade.
Now, I have heard many of the arguments about how the lumber industry
or the steel industry or the textile industry, or any other, is being
harmed because some of the imports are lower priced goods. Well, I am
not a trained economist, but I know these cut flowers are less
expensive. I know it costs less to build a house for the average
citizens when the lumber is cheaper. It is easier to clothe people when
the apparel is cheaper.
This protectionism which has characterized many of the actions of
this body and the other body, and of the President of the United
States, is harmful to average American citizens, many of whom do not
make large campaign contributions, many of whom do not make huge
contributions to the fundraisers. But they will pay more for the price
of a house if we continue to protect lumber. They will pay more for an
automobile if we continue to protect steel. They will pay more for
clothes if we continue to protect the textile industry.
Are there people who are hurt by this free and open trade?
Absolutely. That is why I have steadfastly supported insurance, job
training, and outright assistance to any dislocated worker if the case
can be made that that worker was dislocated or removed from their job
because of a direct impact of trade.
I am worried about our hemisphere. There was a front page story in
the New York Times a couple weeks ago about the failure of free market
economies in our hemisphere and how average citizens of these poor
countries have enjoyed the benefits of the increased economic benefits
of free trade and a great discontent and unrest that exists in these
nations. We should pay attention to the difficulties in our own
hemisphere. There is no stronger supporter of the war on terror than
this Senator and all of the American people.
We are going to have great difficulties because of one thing we have
learned from the 1980s: That if governments are unable to satisfy the
people, the people turn to other means to satisfy their legitimate
yearnings and desires. We saw that manifested in guerilla movements and
armed insurrections in Central America and in Latin America in the
1980s, movements such as the Shining Path, the Sandinistas, and others.
And the United States then expended a great deal of American treasure
to try to prevent these movements from overthrowing legitimately
elected governments.
I rise in strong support today of the Andean Trade Preference Act. I
want to make it very clear that along with my support for free trade, I
also am strongly supportive of and will continue to commit to any
worker and his or her family who are dislocated by free trade. But to
argue that we should not have free trade as a result of this is
ignoring the larger picture, and that is goods and services ranging
from flowers to apparel to many other products
[[Page S7776]]
are less expensive for average American citizens, thereby allowing
American citizens to enjoy many of the things wealthier Americans are
able to enjoy.
I want to warn my colleagues. We have a serious situation in our
hemisphere. Enactment of trade authority for the President in the
Andean Trade Preference Act will not turn that around immediately. But
there is no doubt in my mind that we are on a path in our hemisphere
that could lead to enormous challenges and difficulties in the months
and years ahead. By passing the Andean Trade Preference Act and giving
the President trade authority, I think we can at least start on a path
to reversing some of the terrible misfortunes that have beset so many
innocent people in our own hemisphere.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENT--H.R. 5005
Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent the cloture vote on the motion to
proceed to H.R. 5005 be vitiated, there be a time limitation of 7 hours
on the motion to proceed on H.R. 5005, the homeland defense bill,
equally divided between Senators Lieberman and Thompson for the
proponents, and Senator Byrd for the opponents, or their designees;
that the time begin on Tuesday, September 3, at 9:30 a.m., and the
motion to proceed be the pending business at that time. I further ask
unanimous consent that at the conclusion or yielding back of time, the
Senate, without any intervening action or debate, vote on the motion to
proceed to H.R. 5005.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I listened intently to my colleague and
friend from Arizona. There is no disagreement on the proposition that I
want the benefits of international trade to accrue to American
citizens, consumers who go to the store and want to buy the best
possible product at the best possible price. There is no question about
the doctrine of comparative advantage, in which each country, doing
that which it does best and trading with other countries, promotes
efficiency. There is no question about that, and that should not be the
subject of this debate.
It is not that those of us who oppose fast track do not support free
trade. But I want to tell you about the kind of trade I do not support.
The most recent agreement that we negotiated in this country was with
China. It was a bilateral agreement, prior to their membership in the
WTO. Let me just take one small piece of that bilateral agreement with
China and ask a question.
Our negotiators negotiated with the Chinese in this bilateral
agreement, and they agreed to the following: After a phase-in period,
the United States would impose a 2.5-percent tariff on any automobiles
manufactured in China shipped to the United States, and China would
impose a 25-percent tariff on any United States automobiles shipped to
China.
I am wondering, who in this Chamber would think that is a reasonable
deal? We say to China: China, you have a $70 billion trade surplus with
us. We have a $70 billion trade deficit with you. And by the way, here
are some new terms on automobile trade. If you decide to build
automobiles and ship them to our country, and we want to ship cars to
your country--you have 1.3 billion people--we agree you can charge 10
times the tariff on United States cars going into China. Who thinks
that makes sense? Where do these negotiators come from? Do they go to a
school somewhere, a school that fails to teach them the basics of how
you negotiate and what a fair trade agreement is about?
No one wants to discuss this. One of my colleagues said: I have half
a notion to stay here and debate you.
I said: Gosh, I wish you would.
No one is interested in debating the issue of trade. There is the
simplistic and thoughtless debate saying we are for free trade, we
understand it, we see over the horizon, we understand the economy, and
the rest of you are xenophobic stooges, and you don't know what you are
talking about. That is the way the debate rages on the floor and in the
Washington Post, with the same thoughtless drivel.
I come from a State that has a lot of family farmers. We have to find
a foreign home for over half of what we produce. I am the last person
in the world who wants to retard the movement of goods around the
world. I believe in trade. I believe in expanded trade. But on behalf
of our farmers, I demand the trade relationships with other countries
be fair. It doesn't matter to me whether it is wheat or corn or
soybeans, if we are going to have a trade relationship with someone,
and we are going to connect with somebody, I want it to be fair. So let
me describe a bit what I mean about fairness.
I mentioned Japanese beef. We ship a lot of Japanese cars into this
country and good for us. If consumers want to buy them, that is good.
They want access to that product. So I represent a lot of ranchers in
North Dakota. They have a lot of beef to sell. Japan needs beef. So we
negotiated a beef agreement with the country of Japan.
Madam President, 12 years after the agreement was completed, every
pound of hamburger, every pound of T-bone steak that goes into Japan
now has a 38.5-percent tariff on it; 12 years after our agreement, we
have a 38.5-percent tariff. Should we be shipping more T-bones to
Tokyo? You bet your life we should. Why can't we? The tariff is too
high. That is after our negotiators reached an agreement with them. Do
our ranchers have a complaint? I think so; I believe so because the
trade circumstances with respect to beef to Japan are not fair, and
everybody knows it.
Let me show a chart that shows the EU's import barrier to U.S. eggs.
If you are an egg producer in this country, in the United States, it is
standard to wash eggs before shipment. So if you go to the store and
buy a carton of eggs and open the carton, that is what it is going to
look like. It is something you might want to crack and eat.
The European Union requires that imported eggs be unwashed,
supposedly because their farmers are not in the habit of washing eggs.
Therefore United States eggs cannot be sold in Europe at the retail
level, because we wash our eggs. Is that a fair trade deal? If you were
involved in selling eggs, do you think you would like what Europe is
doing to us? I don't think so.
I mentioned yesterday the issue of $100 million in United States beef
that is banned in the European Union. We have a fairly significant
trade deficit with Europe. You read the European press, they make it
sound as if all of our cows have two heads--this grotesque creature we
are trying to sell that is going to injure their consumers.
So we took the Europeans to the WTO court, the tribunal, and we said
it is unfair, the $100 million of United States beef we cannot get into
Europe, and the WTO said: Yes, you are right.
So they said: Europe, you are going to have to allow that United
States beef in.
Europe said: Go fly a kite. We don't intend to let United States beef
into Europe.
So our trade negotiators got real gutsy for once. Our trade
negotiators screwed up all of their courage and they said: Look Europe,
if you don't play fair with us, we are taking tough action against you.
What did we do? We took action against them, by imposing tariffs on
selected products. Do you know what EU products our negotiators chose
to retaliate against? Our retaliation is on truffles, goose liver, and
Roquefort cheese. That will scare the devil out of a trade adversary,
won't it? If you have a trade relationship in which someone is unfair,
you better watch out or we might take action against your goose liver
or Roquefort cheese. Maybe I come from a small town and don't
understand that, but I don't think that is going to strike fear in the
heart of a trading partner who is being unfair to America.
Let's talk about the issue of potato flakes to Korea. What if you are
a potato grower in the Red River Valley and you want to get potato
flakes to Korea from which they make snack food? There is a 70 percent
tariff trying to get potato flakes into Korea.
While we are on the subject of Korea, how about automobiles going
into Korea? Last year, this country brought 618,000 Korean automobiles
into our
[[Page S7777]]
marketplace to be sold to the American consumer. That is good for
Korea. Korea produces a pretty good car, and they ship them into the
United States, and United States consumers buy them.
Guess how many United States-manufactured cars got into Korea last
year? It wasn't 618,000. It was 2,008. Why? Try to sell a Ford Mustang
in Korea. They use all kinds of non-tariff trade barriers. This is
trade in which the Koreans sell us 217 cars for every car we can sell
in Korea--618,000 sold here, and 2,008 in Korea.
Is that because we don't make good cars? No. Is it because Koreans
don't want American cars sold in Korea? Yes. It is that simple.
I mentioned stuffed molasses, which are used to evade U.S. tariffs on
sugar. Brazilian sugar is sent to Canada. Then a Canadian company
combines the sugar with the molasses. Then it comes into this country,
and the sugar is unloaded. They get another load of sugar and bring it
down with stuffed molasses in contravention of our trade law. It has
been going on for a long period of time. We can't do a thing about it.
Trade problem? Sure, it is. If you are a sugar beet grower, is that a
problem? You bet. Is anybody about to fix it? No. Nobody cares.
Actually, the Senate version of the trade bill had a provision that
aimed to fix this problem. But, like most other things of value in the
trade bill, it was dropped out in conference. There is instead a
placebo provision that means virtually nothing.
I mentioned a bit ago that China has this huge trade surplus with us,
or we have a huge trade deficit with them. I noticed in the newspaper
the other day that China is buying Airbuses from Europe. China has a
lot of people. They need a lot of airplanes. The Airbus is deeply
subsidized by the European governments. It is unfair competition for
the Boeing Company, for example.
What is the remedy for a United States airplane manufacturer when the
European company that is deeply subsidized by the European governments
goes to China and sells them Airbuses, at the same time that China has
this huge trade surplus with us?
We had a situation recently because of NAFTA. The administration says
we must allow long-haul Mexican trucks into our country. Of course, the
fact is that long-haul Mexican trucks are not inspected the way we
inspect our trucks. Their drivers are not required to carry logbooks
the way our drivers do. There is a lot of concern about safety when
they come in and move around our country. They have been limited to a
20-mile distance from the border. Mexico said, apparently, that if we
didn't allow long-haul Mexican trucks into our country, they were going
to take action against us with respect to high-fructose corn syrup. I
have news for the Mexicans. They have already taken action. We can't
get high-fructose corn syrup into Mexico with any reasonable tariff
because they are acting in contravention of our trade laws and
agreements.
The list is endless. I could go on for a long period.
We have a trade agreement with Canada. Clayton Yeutter went to Canada
and negotiated a trade agreement with Canada. This agreement
essentially sold out the interests of our American farmers. I am sure
he received something from Canada--perhaps greater access by the
financial service community, or something. In any event, immediately
after the trade agreement was negotiated with Canada, our farmers saw
an avalanche of Canadian grain being sold in our country at unfairly
subsidized prices by a monopoly controlled by what they call the
Canadian Wheat Board. We can't do a thing about it. We sent
investigators to Canada to get information about the prices at which
they were selling the grain. They thumbed their noses at us and said:
We don't intend to give you any information about the prices at which
we are selling it in the United States.
I rode up to the Canadian border with a farmer named Earl Jensen in a
12-year-old orange truck with a couple hundred bushels of durum wheat
on the back, and we were stopped at the border despite the fact that
all the way to the border we saw 18-wheel Canadian trucks coming into
the country hauling Canadian wheat.
That is the kind of thing that angers the American people about
trade.
We have a circumstance where we have this huge trade deficit. It is
interesting. We talked about this in the debate. No one really wants to
talk about this deficit at all. People just act as if it doesn't exist.
People come out here and dance around for a while, talk about the
wonders of global trade and how terrific it is, but they want to
pretend it doesn't exist. There is this relentless griping about the
trade deficit that is increasing year after year and that is hurting
our country. We don't owe this money to ourselves as we do the budget
deficit, we owe this money to other countries. This is a claim on our
assets by other countries.
In May, the trade deficit was $41.5 billion--just last month. And the
trade ambassador has said that he is going to put our antidumping laws
on the negotiating table. We have antidumping rules. They are not very
well enforced. But we have them nonetheless. They are one of the few
tools we have to fight unfair trade. And they are now on the
negotiating table. There are discussions about their elimination. We
are willing to get rid of them in future trade negotiations--in secret,
because all these trade negotiations are in secret--willing to consider
getting rid of our antidumping rules. We will be defenseless. We have a
weakened 301, no section 22, and now we have antidumping rules on the
table.
So where is the remedy for unfair trade? Under this trade bill, the
only remedy for those who lose their jobs because of these trade
agreements is that we are willing to give you some health insurance--
not all of a it, but we are willing to pay 65 percent for some health
insurance for you. Lose your jobs, and you'll get some trade adjustment
assistance. You can go home and say to your spouse: Honey, I have lost
my job. They are moving into Indonesia. They can find someone who works
for 40 cents an hour. They don't have to have a manufacturing plant
that is safe because they are not subject to all those darned OSHA
rules. And they can dump the chemicals right in the streets, and they
can pollute the air. They don't have to worry with that because there
is no enforcement. And they can work 12-year-old kids for 12 hours a
day, and nobody is going to say anything. Honey, I have lost my job,
and it is going overseas. But, honey, there is good news here because
the bill the Senate has been considering is going to get us a little
health insurance.
They have even extended it now to farmers and ranchers who lost their
farms and ranches. They get a little trade adjustment assistance as
well, when they lose their farms.
Incidentally, they are also going to expand the training budget
because they know we are going to lose some of these jobs. We are going
to give some training to all the people forced out of their jobs. Just
don't expect their new jobs to amount to much. Because good jobs are
being driven out of this country by all these trade agreements.
It is interesting to me that there is no one in the debate who wants
to defend the practices I have just described. All they want to do is
chant. You can go to the street corners and hear chanting as well.
Normally they have drum rolls and symbols, and they chant. We have the
same exercise when we talk about trade--this relentless chant: ``Free
trade, global economy, free trade, global economy.''
Is there anyone in the Senate who wants to say: Yes, let us have
expanded trade, but let us demand on behalf of this country that we
have tried rules that are fair?
This country got into a bad habit after the Second World War. We did
it necessarily, and it was something which I would have supported if I
had been here at that point. Just after the Second World War, we had a
lot of countries flat on their backs. Trade policy for us was foreign
policy. We said with all of these countries: Let us make concessions.
Let us help them. We can do almost anything. We are the biggest, the
best, the strongest, and we have the most. We can beat anybody in
international trade competition with one hand tied behind our backs. So
trade policy was then foreign policy. And that is fine.
For a quarter of a century, our trade policy was foreign policy. But
then, those who were flat on their back became shrewd, tough
international competitors: Japan, Europe, and others. Yet our trade
policy did not become
[[Page S7778]]
trade policy or economic policy, it remained foreign policy.
For the second 25 years after the Second World War, we began to see
this problem, a problem of gripping, relentless trade deficits. With
Japan, it has been a trade deficit that has continued virtually
forever--year after year after year after year--because they want to
protect their economy and keep United States goods out, to the extent
they can, and they want access to our marketplace with their
manufactured goods.
And this country has said: Fine; that's a relationship that's fine
with us.
It is not fine with me, and should not be fine with others, whose
principal interest ought to be the economic future of this country,
whose principal interest ought to be to have trade agreements that are
mutually beneficial to both trading partners.
When I started talking, I talked about this Byzantine, twisted,
perverted provision with China on automobiles. I did it for a reason.
I recognize that we do not have a lot of automobile trade with China.
China has 1.3 billion-plus people. One would expect, as the Chinese
economy advances, that the opportunities to sell automobiles in China
could be significant. But our negotiators, for reasons I could never
understand, said: Oh, by the way, let's make a little deal. Just as one
part, one paragraph, in a big, long trade agreement, here is what we
will decide on automobiles: China, you have a big trade surplus with
us, and we have a big deficit with you, but if we ever have any
automobile trade between us, you can go ahead and impose a tariff that
is 10 times higher on United States cars than we would impose on
Chinese cars.
We ought to find the person who agreed to that, and somehow put him
out here on the Senate steps, and get a chair and sit beside him, and
ask him to explain to us what school you go to, to learn that kind of
nonsense, that kind of perverted sense of fairness.
I could describe paragraphs in every trade agreement in the last 25
years that have the same absurdities, the same unwillingness to stand
up for American producers and American jobs, not at the expense of
others, but just for the benefit of ours.
Somehow there is an embarrassment in this Chamber about standing up
for this country's economic interests. Yes, it is in our economic
interest to have a system in which U.S. consumers have access to lower
priced goods from around the world. But it is not, and never will be,
in our economic interest, if those consumers are out of work, if the
jobs that provided the income that used to allow the consumers to take
the goods off the shelf through their purchases have now gone to other
countries because corporations, that at this point are no longer
American citizens but international citizens, have decided they ought
to produce where it is very inexpensive to produce and ship their goods
to the established marketplace.
That, inevitably, and, in my judgment, more significantly as the
years go on, will erode our job base of good jobs. I am talking about
manufacturing-sector jobs. No country will long remain a strong
economic power, a world economic power, if it decimates its
manufacturing base. Manufacturing is critical to our country's economy
and to our long-term economic health.
There is a fellow in North Dakota who goes to county fairs and
performs for money, and his name is John Smith. He has an act that he
takes to county fairs, and they pay him for it. He takes old cars--gets
some old wreck--and then he gins up the engine somehow, and then he
goes and he jumps four or five other cars in front of the bandstand,
wherever the county fair is. He calls himself the Flying Farmer from
Makoti. He lives in Makoti, ND, and he farms.
So he has this act where he travels with these old cars and he calls
himself the Flying Farmer. He is an interesting guy. He wanted to set
the Guinness record in the ``Guinness Book of World Records.'' And he
is now in the ``Guinness Book of World Records'' for driving in reverse
for 500 miles, averaging 38 miles an hour.
Now, you might wonder why I thought about the Flying Farmer from
Makoti. I was thinking about going in reverse this morning, and I
thought what better example of going in reverse than the Flying Farmer
from Makoti and the Senate on international trade.
Year after year after year, we go deeper and deeper and deeper in
debt. The current account deficit is somewhere around $2 trillion at
this point this year. When the year ends, we will be somewhere around
$450 to $480 billion in merchandise trade deficit. And we have to pay
somebody that, somebody living outside of our country. It injures our
economy, it injures future economic activity, and yet no one really
wants to talk much about it.
We are going in reverse. We are not making progress. Despite all of
the protests by those who think this is a wonderful thing, the evidence
is in.
With NAFTA, the last trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, we
turned a small surplus with Mexico into a big deficit; we turned a
moderate deficit with Canada into a big deficit. NAFTA was a disaster.
We were promised that there would be 300,000 new American jobs coming
from this trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. The fact is, we have
lost somewhere around 700,000 jobs.
We were told by the economists, who thought they knew what would
happen with Mexico, that we would simply get the products of low-
skilled jobs coming into this country as a result of NAFTA. The three
largest imports from Mexico are automobiles, automobile parts, and
electronics--all products of high-skilled jobs that used to exist in
major centers of manufacturing in our country but now exist in Mexico.
We are not making progress. We are losing ground. That is the reason
I oppose giving fast-track trade authority to this President. To
suggest that we ought to ignore the Constitution--and, yes, we ignore
the Constitution when we do this. The Constitution says that the
regulation of trade with other countries is the province of the
Congress--the Congress. And a majority of the Senate says: we have not
seen your next trade agreement yet. We know you will negotiate it
without us. We know it will be negotiated in secret somewhere. But we
agree in advance, so whatever you do, whenever you do it, wherever you
do it, we will handcuff ourselves so we are unable to offer even one
amendment to change one word when it comes back to the Senate.
I think that is one of the goofiest propositions I have ever heard.
It just makes no sense at all. Yet a pretty broad majority of the
Senate agrees to it.
Well, let me make a final point.
The business community in this country and in this world have become
international citizens. Multinational corporations do business all
around the world. They do not get up in the morning and say: Look, my
principal interest is the economy of the United States of America. That
is not their principal interest. Their principal interest is to their
shareholders. And their interest to their shareholders is to do, in
international economic circumstances, the best they can to improve
profits. If that means moving jobs from Pittsburgh to Indonesia, in
order to take advantage of lower labor rates, and to avoid OSHA, and to
avoid all the other things you have to comply with in this country,
then that is what they do.
The problem is, this country, as a leader in international trade, has
not described what fair competition is. We have never described, in the
new global economy, what is fair competition. The global economy has
galloped forward, but the rules have not kept pace.
It begs the question, for all of us, as a leader in world trade: What
are the rules? What are the conditions? What is the admission price for
the American economy?
I said earlier, if a company decides that it wishes to access the
lowest possible labor rate anywhere in the world, and takes its
corporate jet, and circles the globe, and looks down to see where they
can possibly do that, and discovers a place where they can hire 12-
year-olds, and they can work them 12 hours a day, and they can pay them
14 cents an hour, is that fair?
Then they ship the product of that labor to Fargo or to Denver or
Fresno and put on it the store shelf, and someone says: Isn't that a
wonderful thing? What a wonderful thing; you actually have a lower
price for that product. In fact, some studies suggest that is not the
case. The difference is made up in
[[Page S7779]]
profit for the corporation, not lower prices for the consumer. But
setting that aside, people say: Isn't that a wonderful thing? That is
lower priced than I expected.
Yes, that is good for the consumer, but it is also the case that the
would-be consumer may well have lost his job because the production of
that item no longer exists here.
I am not suggesting we should have the manufacturing advantage or
capability for all products. I believe the doctrine of comparative
advantage makes sense. If there is a country that can do it better,
more effectively, has the natural resources more available than we do,
one would expect they would do that which they do best. We do that
which represents a natural advantage for us, and we trade back and
forth.
But that is not the circumstance today. The natural economic
advantage these days is instead a natural political advantage. A
country says, our political advantage is we will allow you to hire
kids. We will allow you to pay 20 cents an hour. We will allow you to
dump your chemicals into the streams and into the air, and we will
allow you to do this in a workplace that is not required to be safe.
Those aren't economic advantages that somehow relate to natural
advantages. Those are political advantages created by a government that
says: We will not allow people to form unions or labor to collectively
bargain or rules against children put in factories. Those are political
judgments and political circumstances. There is no natural economic
advantage there. My point is, we have to come to grips with this
galloping globalism. We must do that in fairness to the American worker
and to the American businesses. To do less than that means that we
consign our economy to unfair competition in a dozen different areas.
Americans depend on us to represent our best economic interests, not
some notion of what the economic interest is for a corporation that
does business in every country and has no special interest or
recognition in our economy or our economic growth or our workers.
I know we have a 30-hour postcloture period. Several of my colleagues
will want to speak on this issue. I expect they will have significant
votes for it today and those who vote for it will be back on the floor.
I will be back on the floor of the Senate again with another chart, and
we will talk about whether it is wise for the Senate, when it discovers
that doing something isn't working, to continue doing it over and over
and over again.
Most people learn by repetition. When you repeat something that has
failed, most people understand that they want to do it differently.
That is not the case with fast track and with our current trade policy.
I believe in expanded trade. I believe economies are strengthened by
expanded trade. I believe our economy and other economies of the world
are strengthened by expanded trade. I don't want to put up a wall
around our country. I am not an isolationist. But I believe very
strongly there needs to be voices raised demanding fair trade rules.
Whether it is China, Japan, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Korea, or others
with whom we have very large trade deficits, we have a right as
Americans, as producers and as workers, to expect our Government
will represent our economic interests in demanding fair trade rules.
That has not been the case to date. I hope soon after this vote
today, we will begin to see some effort on behalf of our country in
demanding the rules of trade keep pace with the galloping pace of
global trade. That is the only thing that will be fair to American
workers and American companies.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, if the Senator will yield for a
second, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to follow the
Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I thank my colleague from North
Dakota. If the Senate had been in session listening and heard the
persuasive argument made by the distinguished Senator from North Dakota
and we had a vote, we would vote his way immediately because he has
presented the case.
The only thing is, he has not presented the case in the stark reality
that it really is. We are talking to a fixed jury. As an old trial
lawyer for some 20 years, where I made enough to afford the luxury of
serving here, I know how to talk to a fixed jury. Specifically, the
contention in the trial of this case is that we have to give the
President negotiating authority that cannot be amended; it is on a
take-it-or-leave-it basis; and that the trading nations, some, let's
say, 160, 170 trading countries, just will not enter into an agreement
unless the President has fast track.
He doesn't want to go through the negotiation period and then find
that his particular trade agreement has been amended on the floor of
the Congress.
If you refer to the 2001 Trade Policy Agenda and 2000 Annual Report,
which is the most recent, issued by the U.S. Trade Representative, turn
to page 1 of the list of trade agreements. You will find, in essence,
five trade agreements as a result of fast track, and thereafter some
200 agreements without fast track. The contention that you can't get an
agreement unless you have fast track is totally absurd.
We have had the Tokyo round, and the United States-Canada Free Trade
Agreement. Incidentally, this Senator voted for that because we have
relatively the same standard of living. We have the labor protections.
We have the environmental protections. When you have a level playing
field, I am delighted to vote for trade, and so-called free trade. But
now, we have fixed trade.
That is what we are debating. This jury is fixed. We also had the
United States-Israel trade agreement, which I also supported; NAFTA,
which I opposed; and the Uruguay Round with WTO. Those are the five so-
called trade agreements under fast track. But then turn the pages and
continue turning, and there are some 200 trade agreements without fast
track.
When I first got here, we had SALT I, and it was very complex. We had
reservations and amendments on the floor of the Congress. We had a vote
on that. We didn't have fast track for SALT I and fast track for SALT
II and fast track for the chemical weapons treaty. The contention of
the White House is you can't get trade agreements, but the President
needs to look at his own book.
Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. HOLLINGS. I am delighted to yield.
Mr. BYRD. Is he telling me that trade agreements can be negotiated
without this fast-track mechanism?
Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BYRD. Is that what he is saying?
Mr. HOLLINGS. I tell the distinguished Senator from West Virginia,
they literally have almost a dozen and a half pages of all of these
agreements, right here in the President's report, that were obtained
without fast track.
Mr. BYRD. I thought the President was saying to the country that he
has to have this fast-track thing that we will vote on today in order
to negotiate trade agreements. Is the Senator from South Carolina
telling me he doesn't have to have that?
Mr. HOLLINGS. No, sir, he doesn't. I can tell you now he wants the
fast track for the fix.
That is the point I want to make. I can tell you right now. Let's
look at the result of the so-called trade agreements. Look at 1992, and
you find that the Foreign Trade Barriers of the Office of the U.S.
Trade Representative is 267 pages long. Oh, we had WTO, we had GATT, we
had NAFTA, and we did away with all the barriers. Why then is this
year's Foreign Trade Barriers--458 pages long?
Like the monkey making love to the skunk, I cannot stand any more of
this. I can tell you that right now. For Heaven's sake, don't give me
any more free trade agreements or fast tracks. This would be the end of
the argument, if you didn't have a fixed jury. What is better proof? I
am using the President's proof. No. 1, he doesn't need fast track and,
with fast track, we are actually going out of business.
Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.
Mr. BYRD. What I have been hearing the administration say is that
this is trade promotion authority. Does the
[[Page S7780]]
Senator mean to tell me here in front of the eyes of the Nation, the
ears of the people, that the President doesn't need fast-track in order
to negotiate trade agreements for the United States? Is that what the
Senator is saying?
Mr. HOLLINGS. There is no question, Senator----
Mr. BYRD. That is not what the President has been saying, is it?
Mr. HOLLINGS. No. You bring out the point that this is bipartisan.
President Clinton said he had to have fast track for NAFTA.
Mr. BYRD. We didn't give it, did we?
Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right. They said if we pass NAFTA we would get
200,000 jobs, but we lost 700,000 textile jobs. In the State of South
Carolina, since NAFTA, we have lost more than 54,000 jobs.
Now, this farm crowd, they get their $70 billion bill, and they come
here blinking their eyes and talking about free trade, free trade. They
get all the subsidies and protection--the Export-Import Bank, support
payments, and everything else of that kind--and they run away with some
$80 billion. The poor, hard-working people, such as your mine workers
and my textile workers--
Mr. BYRD. Yes.
(Mrs. CARNAHAN assumed the Chair.)
Mr. HOLLINGS. As the distinguished Senator from Texas always says,
they are pulling the wagon, paying the taxes, keeping the country
strong. We have removed 700,000 textile jobs alone. Akio Morita and I
went to a seminar in Chicago almost 20 years ago, and they were
lecturing about the Third World countries, the emerging nations trying
to become nation states.
Morita, then head of Sony, said: Wait a minute, in order to become a
nation state, you have to develop a strong manufacturing capacity.
Then later, he turned and said to this Senator: Senator, the world
power that loses its manufacturing strength will cease to be a world
power.
I am worried about this country. I tell you, we have over a $412
billion deficit in fiscal year 2002.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that page 1 and page 60 of
the Mid-Session review on the budget just issued be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Summary
When this report was published last year, the nation was in
the midst of a recession that, predictably, was already
having detrimental effects on the government's finances. What
no one could predict was that just 20 days later, a lethal
attack on America would exacerbate the recession and trigger
extraordinary military, homeland defense, and repair
expenditures that would at least temporarily make an enormous
difference in the fiscal outlook.
By the February 2002 submission of the Budget for fiscal
year 2003, the budgetary effects of the recession and the war
on terror were well understood. It was also becoming apparent
that the flood of revenue that produced record surpluses in
the late 1990s was driven both by underlying economic growth,
the traditionally decisive factor, and, in ways no yet fully
grasped, by the extraordinary boom in the stock market. The
markedly greater dependence of revenues on stock market
developments was not yet understood by experts either inside
or outside the government.
The economic recovery appears to be underway, the one-time
costs of recovery are being paid, and the expense of war-
fighting abroad and new protective resources at home have
been incorporated in budget plans. Taking all these changes
into account, the federal government is now projected to
spend $165 billion more than it receives in revenues in 2002,
up from the $106 billion projected nearly six months ago.
Table 1 below comparing February and July estimates shows a
return to the pre-recession pattern of surpluses in 2005, and
growing surpluses thereafter. Future improvements, however,
depend to a significant extent on two key factors: (1)
restraint of the recent rapid growth in federal spending; and
(2) a resumption of growth in tax payments produced by a
stronger economy and a stronger stock market.
moving forward amid the backdrop of war
President Bush placed two purposes above all others in his
2003 Budget: Winning the war on terror and restoring the
economy to health. On both fronts, initial progress has been
encouraging. Military action in Afghanistan has depleted the
ranks and greatly weakened the operational capabilities of
the terrorists. On the economic front, the nation's gross
domestic product (GDP) grew at an impressive 6.1 percent
annual rate in the first quarter of 2002, making the
recession both shorter and shallower than most and the early
recovery far stronger than assumed in February's budget.
For the future, we can be certain only of the intentions of
our adversaries and our own resolve to defeat them. We know
neither the length of the conflict nor the budgetary expense
of victory. Nor can we be certain the economy will not be
weakened by further shocks. To preserve the flexibility to
respond to future events while maintaining a fiscal framework
that will return the budget to surplus, it is imperative that
spending, . . .
TABLE 1.--CHANGES FROM 2003 BUDGET
[In billions of dollars]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2003-2007
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2003 Budget policy surplus......... -106 -80 -14 61 86 104 157
Enacted legislation............ 34 33 17 33 4 2 89
Supplemental and other -13 -7 -6 -3 -4 -3 -25
adjustments to Administration
policy........................
Economic and technical -80 -54 -45 -37 -26 -18 -181
reestimates...................
------------------------------------
Total changes...................... -59 -29 -34 -8 -26 -20 -117
Mid-Session Review policy surplus.. -165 -109 -48 53 60 84 41
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE 20. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FINANCING AND DEBT
[In billions of dollars]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimate
2001 -----------------------------------------------------------------
Actual 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Financing:
Unified budget surplus (+)/ 127 -165 -109 -48 53 60 84
deficit (-)...................
Financing other than the change
in debt held by the public:
Premiums paid (-) on -11 -4
buybacks of Treasury
securities\1\.............
Net purchases (-) on non- ......... -6 -11 -* * * *
Federal securities by the
National Railroad
Retirement Investment
Trust.....................
Changes in: \2\
Treasury operating cash 8 -6 -5 ......... ......... -5 .........
balance...............
Checks outstanding, -13 -12 10 ......... ......... ......... .........
deposit funds, etc.\3\
Seigniorage on coins....... 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Less: Net financing
disbursements:
Direct loan financing -19 -15 -15 -15 -15 -15 -15
accounts:.............
Guaranteed loan -4 -2 3 3 4 5 5
financing accounts....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total, financing -37 -44 -17 -11 -9 -14 -8
other than the
change in debt
held by the public
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total amount 90 -209 -126 -58 44 47 76
available to repay
debt held by the
public............
Change in debt held by the -90 209 126 58 -44 -47 -76
public........................
Debt Subject to Statutory
Limitation, End of Year:
Debt issued by Treasury........ 5,743 6,155 6,535 6,897 7,195 7,506 7,805
Adjustment for Treasury debt -15 -15 -15 -15 -15 -15 -15
not subject to limitation and
agency debt subject to
limitation\4\.................
Adjustment for discount and 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
premium\5\....................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total, debt subject to 5,733 6,145 6,524 6,887 7,184 7,496 7,795
statutory limitation\6\...
Debt Outstanding, End of Year:
Gross Federal Debt:\7\
Debt issued by Treasury 5,743 6,155 6,535 6,897 7,195 7,506 7,805
[[Page S7781]]
Debt issued by other 27 27 26 26 24 24 23
agencies..............
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total, gross 5,770 6,182 6,561 6,923 7,219 7,530 7,828
Federal debt......
Held by:
Debt securities held by 2,450 2,654 2,906 3,210 3,550 3,908 4,282
Government accounts...
Debt securities held by 3,320 3,529 3,655 3,713 3,669 3,622 3,546
the public\8\.........
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* $500 million or less
\1\ Includes only premiums paid on buybacks through April 2002. Estimates are not made for subsequent buybacks.
\2\ A decrease in the Treasury operating cash balance (which is an asset) would be a means of financing a
deficit and therefore has a positive sign. An increase in checks outstanding or deposit fund balances (which
are liabilities) would also be a means of financing a deficit and therefore would also have a positive sign.
\3\ Besides checks outstanding and deposit funds, includes accrued interest payable on Treasury debt,
miscellaneous liability accounts, allocations of special drawing rights, and, as an offset, cash and monetary
assets other than the Treasury operating cash balance, miscellaneous asset accounts, and profit on sale of
gold.
\4\ Consists primarily of Federal Financing Bank debt.
\5\ Consists of unamortized discount (less premium) on public issues of Treasury notes and bonds (other than
zero-coupon bonds) and unrealized discount on Government account series securities.
\6\ The statutory debt limit is $6,400 billion.
\7\ Treasury securities held by the public and zero-coupon bonds held by Government accounts are almost all
measured at sales price plus amortized discount or less amortized premium. Agency debt securities are almost
all measured at face value. Treasury securities in the Government account series are measured at face value
less unrealized discount (if any).
\8\ At the end of 2001, the Federal Reserve Banks held $534.1 billion of Federal securities and the rest of the
public held $2,785.9 billion. Debt held by the Federal Reserve Banks is not estimated for future years.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Now you begin to see what I started to talk about--the
corruption, not of Senators, but of the process. You and I saw the
corruption of the process when they brought TV cameras in here. I first
got here 35 years ago. If you wanted to know what was going on down on
the floor, you had to go down on the floor. So you always had 20, 25
Senators in this cloakroom, 20 Senators over in that cloakroom; and a
point was made that you could immediately go out and contest that
point. Now I stay back in my office looking at my TV. I know that is
wrong, and I should run over to the floor. But when I get here, two
other Senators have been waiting for an hour as the next speakers. So
there is no debate. The process has been corrupted, as the budget
process has been corrupted.
Let me tell you exactly how it happened because I was chairman of the
Budget Committee. I went over with Alan Greenspan in January of 1981 to
brief President Reagan on the budget. He had pledged to balance the
budget. He pledged, of course, tax cuts. He also pledged to balance the
budget in 1 year. After the briefing, he said: Oops, this is way worse
than I thought. It is going to take 3 years.
That is how we got into the 3-year budgets. And with Gramm-Rudman-
Hollings, we got the 5-year budget, and now we have 10-year budgets.
Whoopee, let's have a 20-year budget and make all kinds of happy
projections and re-elect ourselves. That is the corruption that has
gone on.
After President Reagan came in, the Greenspan Commission issued their
report on Social Security, making it fiscally sound. Section 21 of the
Greenspan Commission report said: Put Social Security off budget.
As a former chairman of the Budget Committee and an old-timer, I
worked with John Heinz from Pennsylvania, and we finally got it passed.
On November 5, 1990, George Herbert Walker Bush--President senior
Bush--signed into law, section 13.301 that says you shall not use
Social Security in your budget. But we do. The President violates it,
the Congress violates it, and, more particularly, the media does.
The distinguished Senator from West Virginia is so terrific on
historical reference, and I must think at this moment of President
Thomas Jefferson. When he was asked: Between a free government and a
free press, which would you choose? He said: I choose the latter. So
long as the free press tells the truth to the American people, the
Government will remain free.
Why do they say on page 1, which we have just put into the Record,
the deficit is $165 billion? But on page 60, the deficit, the real debt
we will spend in this fiscal year, Madam President, is $412 billion
more than we take in. Why? Because Mitch Daniels, our Enron
accountant--wants to fool Americans. He is more interested in rolling
out hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for Kenny-Boy Lay.
Now, President Reagan, in trying to get both tax cuts and his pledge
to balance the budget, got what he called ``unified.'' That was the
biggest bunch of nonsense and charade I ever saw because it was all but
unified. He just separated out the trust funds, including Social
Security, and the civil service retirement and military retirees funds.
He factored them out, and the next thing you know, we had unified.
Then, under President Clinton, we went to on-budget, off-budget, on-
budget, off-budget. Then to continue the charade, under President Bush,
we refer to it as public debt and Government debt, Government debt and
public debt. They confuse the public in order to get reelected. They
tell everybody Social Security is not spent. That is exactly what the
Secretary of the Treasury said this last Sunday. He said that under no
circumstance would we spend Social Security.
I almost went through the TV set when I heard him say:
Social Security moneys are never spent for anything except
Social Security. It's a red herring.
CBO has already said we will owe not $1.170 trillion, but $1.333
trillion to Social Security. In fact, on page 44 of the Mid-Session
Review you will see Mitch Daniels hides that fact. I ask unanimous
consent that page 44 be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
TABLE 7.--BUDGET SUMMARY BY CATEGORY
[In billions of dollars]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2003-2007
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outlays:
Discretionary
Defense.............................. 332 371 388 408 423 437 2,028
Nondefense........................... 379 399 413 418 424 432 2.086
Subtotal, discretionary.................. 711 771 801 826 847 870 4,114
Emergency response fund.................. 36 17 8 3 2 1 30
Mandatory:
Social Security...................... 453 473 494 515 538 566 2,587
Medicare............................. 223 232 242 260 282 307 1,324
Medicaid............................. 147 161 173 188 205 223 950
Other mandatory...................... 291 305 302 307 319 323 1,556
Subtotal, mandatory...................... 1,114 1,171 1,212 1,270 1,345 1,419 6,417
Net interest............................. 171 180 196 198 197 194 965
Total Outlays................................ 2,032 2,138 2,217 2,298 2,390 2,483 11,526
Receipts..................................... 1,867 2,029 2,169 2,351 2,451 2,567 11,567
Surplus...................................... -165 -109 -48 53 60 84 41
On-budget surplus........................ -322 -282 -236 -165 -176 -171 -1,031
Off-budget surplus....................... 157 173 189 219 237 255 1,072
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[Page S7782]]
Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, you will see on page 44 that the
Social Security moneys, to the tune of $157 billion, is spent. It shows
it in his own document. We need to catch these fellows. That is why I
say the budget is corrupt.
Robert Kennedy, who used to sit at this desk, wrote a famous book,
``The Enemy Within.'' I could write a book called ``Your Best Friends
and My Best Friends.'' The best friends are the Chamber of Commerce,
the Business Roundtable, the National Manufacturers Association, and
the National Federation of Independent Business. They are the enemy
within for fixed trade. Yes, they want to export--export our jobs. That
is what this is all about. Senator Byrd, over half of what we consume
in this country is imported. Does the Senator realize that?
We import 56 percent of our optical goods; 80 percent of our watches;
and 42 percent of our semiconductors. I thought we were in the age of
high tech, high tech, high tech--that motor of growth, high tech, high
tech. But we import 42 percent of our semiconductors.
By the way, out in Silicon Valley, they do not have health care, and
I say to Senator Byrd, they do not have medical care. They are part-
time workers. My friends at Microsoft had to sue to get health care. I
would rather have a GE plant where they are making turbines and
employee make $24 an hour, than to have high tech, high tech plants,
where people make $12 or $14 an hour. Don't give me this high-tech
stuff.
This is all catching up with corporate America on the front pages.
Corrupt executives are going to be indicted. The Justice Department has
charged some executives already, but not Kenny Boy Lay, of Enron. You
do not even hear about him.
The Commerce Committee brought the Enron and WorldCom crowds in for
hearings. We also heard from David Freeman, of the California Power
Authority. I wanted to know how Kenny Boy Lay could not have heard
about the fraudulent pricing structure Enron had out there. I saw his
wife on TV, who said Mr. Lay did not know anything. Mr. Freeman said he
knew everything going on out in California, I can tell you that.
We have enough to bring charges. But that said, I am wondering and
worrying about this because the fellow in charge of this, Deputy
Attorney General Larry Thompson, used to worked at a law firm that
represented Enron. And if you think we cleaned up corporate America the
other day with the new accounting bill, we did not, because it did not
include expensing stock options. We also need companies to change
auditors every 5 years. If they do, then every 5 years you will have
the auditors auditing the auditors. When you know that another audit
group is going to come in behind you, you do not start any tricky
stuff. You are on trial. That is the quickest way to clean up the
books.
I wanted to offer an amendment for that, but the leadership on both
sides had it tabled. We have not solved that problem, but I will be
back.
Back to the task at hand, we import 46 percent of our camera
equipment; 93 percent of electrical capacitors; 55 percent of printing
and related machinery; and already 36 percent of motor vehicles. That
is a third of the vehicles Americans drive. Imported cars keep taking
over the market here, they keep taking over the market. Also we import
62 percent of our motorcycles; over 50 percent of our office machines;
70 percent of our television sets; and 50 percent of our crude
petroleum.
I ask unanimous consent to print this list in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Import
Commodity percentage
Optical Goods......................................................56.5
Ball and Roller Bearing............................................28.4
Watches............................................................80.8
Household Appliances...............................................31.5
Air Conditioning Equip.............................................23.0
Semiconductors.....................................................51.2
Computers, Peripherals, Parts......................................56.5
Cameras and Equipment..............................................46.8
Electrical Capacitors..............................................93.5
Metal Forming Machine Tools........................................46.9
Mechanical Power Transmission Equip................................36.2
Printing and Related Machinery.....................................55.2
Textile Machinery..................................................58.3
Electrical Transformers............................................51.8
Motor Vehicles.....................................................35.6
Motorcycles........................................................62.1
Office Machines....................................................50.7
Televisions........................................................69.2
Crude Petroleum....................................................49.8
Steel Mill Products................................................21.3
Electric Motors....................................................29.8
Consumer Electronics...............................................95.5
TV and Radio Broadcasting..........................................86.7
Printed Circuits...................................................24.6
Mr. BYRD. Madam President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. HOLLINGS. I yield.
Mr. BYRD. But don't we need this trade promotion authority? Don't we
need this trade promotion authority to wipe out those deficits so we
can start moving our goods, other than farm products and along with
them, too, don't we need this trade promotion authority, I say to the
Senator? ``Trade promotion authority,'' that tells me it promotes
trade.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I just read a list of products, showing how the fix is
on with respect to trade. What they do is fix us. In other words, House
members are elected every two years, so they have to explain their
votes every 2 years. In the Senate, we just have to explain our votes
every 6 years. So we do not have to explain too much.
On our side, the Finance Committee is either a bunch of oil people or
farmers--and that is a fix. When you get that crowd in there, they will
accept anything with regards to trade, which they did with this
particular conference report.
Here is how they have fixed it in the past. In November of 1993,
under fast track, Rep. Peter King helped President Clinton organize the
GOP supporters of NAFTA. When Rep. King went home and found the Army
Corps of Engineers was reneging on a deal to dredge, President Clinton
fixed the problem for him.
Lynn Martin, President Bush's Labor secretary, said that
``If the president didn't make deals, they'd be saying he
doesn't understand Washington.''
Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which the Senator from
West Virginia carries in his breast pocket, says the Congress--not the
President, not the Supreme Court--but the Congress shall regulate
foreign trade.
Mr. BYRD. Right.
Mr. HOLLINGS. But here is how it is regulated. The President comes
over and he gets this so-called fast track, which is fixed trade. So he
gets a peanut butter deal, Durham wheat deal, orange juice deal, sugar
deal, cucumber deal, beef deal, winter vegetable deal, frozen food
deal, wine deal, and Honda auto parts deal.
I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From USA Today, November 18, 1993]
Wheeling, Dealing, To Assure a Victory
(By Steve Komarow)
President Clinton couldn't get Rep. Clay Shaw's vote with a
highway overpass, water project or federal courthouse. Shaw's
demand was more personal: extradition from Mexico of the man
accused of raping a 4-year old girl.
``I am now confident that the Mexican authorities will do
everything in their power to see him brought to justice,''
said Shaw, R-Fla., as he announced his vote for the North
American Free Trade Agreement.
The California child, now 5, is the niece of Shaw's
secretary and ``just a beautiful little girl,'' he said.
Until NAFTA, it appeared unlikely her suspected attacker
would be tried.
Mexico doesn't send its citizens to the United States for
trial, despite the existence of an extradition treaty between
the two countries.
But not Mexican Attorney General Jorge Carpizo has
personally assured Shaw that they'll pursue Serapio Zuniga
Rios and, if he's captured, extradite him.
Shaw's deal stood out among the flurry of bargains the
White House struck to secure passage of NAFTA. But at least
``it had something to do with Mexico,'' unlike many, said
colleague Jim Bacchus, D-Fla.
More often, they fell in the traditional category of favors
a president can bestow within limits of the budget.
The White House offered everything from presidential
jogging dates to road projects during its final push.
Opponents screamed foul.
``It's obscene, this horse-trading of votes,'' said Rep.
John Lewis, D-Ga., a ``no'' vote.
``We knew we couldn't compete. . . . We didn't have any
bridges to give away,'' said former representative Jim Jontz,
head of the anti-NAFTA Citizens Trade Campaign.
But the administration said it was just using whatever
legitimate influence it had, at a time when it might do some
good.
``I think when we end up, there's no cost to the
Treasury,'' said Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.
A sheaf of last-minute side agreements was added, and
promises were made to help the
[[Page S7783]]
wine, citrus, glass, sugar, peanut and textile industries.
Not only fence-sitters won concessions. The White House
also took care of allies.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who helped Clinton organize GOP
supporters of NAFTA, had gone home last weekend to find the
Army Corps of Engineers was reneging on a deal to dredge an
inlet in his Long Island district.
``I was endorsing him . . . and getting screwed by the
administration,'' he said. ``It was a bureaucratic foul-up,
but it was putting me in a very awkward spot.''
Not for long. King called the White House, explaining his
predicament. ``And yesterday they faxed us a signed copy of
the agreement,'' he said.
Clinton's signature was all over Capitol Hill.
``I know that peanut growers are concerned about imports of
peanut butter and peanut paste as well as quality,'' the
president intoned in a typical letter to lawmakers with
goober-growers in their districts.
Better to risk looking like a wheeler-dealer than to risk
losing the critical NAFTA vote. And what's so bad about a
little give-and-take?
Said Lynn Martin, President Bush's Labor secretary, on
Larry King Live: ``If the president didn't make deals, they'd
be saying he doesn't understand Washington.''
Quid pro quo: Who got what to win votes for the North
American Free Trade Agreement, President Clinton has made
side deals with members of Congress, promising benefits for
their districts--mainly protecting the prices farmers and
manufacturers get for their products. Some examples:
Peanut Butter the Deal: U.S. peanut growers claim Canada,
with 25% of the U.S. market, evades trade barriers by
processing peanuts from China and Africa. Clinton will seek
limits on peanut butter and paste shipments to the USA if
Canada doesn't cut back within 60 days.
Durum Wheat the Deal: U.S. producers of durum wheat, used
in spaghetti and macaroni, complain Canadian growers get
transportation subsidies. President Clinton promised talks
with Canada and, if talks fail, said he'd seek limits on
imports from Canada. Either way, the price would go up.
Orange Juice the Deal: Clinton would impose pre-NAFTA
tariffs on frozen orange juice concentrate if Mexican
shipments rise, pushing prices below a five-year average for
five straight days. Also, he'll limit tariff reductions the
administration would accept in free-trade talks with other
countries.
Sugar the Deal: Mexico agreed to tighten controls on sugar
and high fructose corn syrup exports to the USA. If the
ceiling is exceeded, Clinton could impose tariffs. Also,
Mexico pledged to prevent Mexican candymakers from using corn
syrup, which would have freed Mexican sugar production for
export.
Cucumbers the Deal: Clinton would impose pre-NAFTA tariffs
if Mexican shipments rise, pushing prices down. Also, he'll
limit tariff reductions the administration would accept in
talks with other countries.
Beef the Deal: New rules will keep Australian and New
Zealand beef from coming though Mexico by requiring shippers
to show where the animals were raised.
Winter Vegetable the Deal: Clinton pledged to diligently
enforce NAFTA provisions that would allow reimposition of
tariffs to protect against sudden import surges from Mexico
of tomatoes, sweet corn and peppers.
Frozen Food the Deal: Clinton agreed to push for ``country
of origin'' labeling on products like frozen broccoli. Unions
complains many plants in that category have moved to Mexico
in recent years to take advantage of Mexican vegetable
production and cheaper labor.
Wine the Deal: Clinton would open negotiations to eliminate
Mexico's tariffs more quickly than the 10-year phaseout NAFTA
specifies. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor promised a new
arrangement by May 1994.
Textiles, Clothing the Deal: Clinton promised to work
toward a 15-year, rather than 10-year, phaseout of American
textile quotas in global free-trade talks. Also, the Customs
Service will step up enforcement of trade quotas.
Honda Auto Parts the Deal: The administration added a
provision that will relieve Honda of paying $17 million in
duties on auto parts shipped from Canada to its assembly
plant in Ohio since 1989.
Mr. HOLLINGS. The point is the fix is in. Members get all kinds of
favors for their votes. I remember my good friend Jake Pickle got help
with a cultural center down in Texas. I remember in northern California
there were two golf games with President Clinton. Then there were two
C-17s given down in Texas where they were making them, and on and on.
Members who vote for trade get all the favors. They have already fixed
this vote, and that is why you see the empty Chamber. They have made up
their minds.
But the country is in trouble with a $412 billion fiscal deficit, and
we heard the figure by the distinguished Senator from North Dakota.
Last month there was a $41.5 billion trade deficit, so we are right at
a $500 billion current account deficit, with the outcome being a
weakening of the dollar.
We now have high unemployment. We have a Secretary of the Treasury
that says everything is fine. That is nonsense. They want more tax
cuts. They cut $1.7 trillion of the revenues and then wonder why at
this time last year we were talking about a 10-year $5.6 trillion
surplus and now we have a $412 billion deficit.
They try to blame that on the war. I think we ought to look at this
particular article about the Office of Management and Budget.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mitchell Daniels, on September 4, 2001--7 days before
September 11--projected for fiscal year 2001 that our government would
have the second largest surplus in history.
I have looked at the figures. Overall, 9/11 cost the government, and
I say this to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee $31 billion.
Of that $4 billion was during fiscal year 2001, and $27 billion in this
fiscal year. The war did not cause the supposed surplus to disappear.
We have always paid for our wars, but this President comes along and
says we have a war on so we are going to have to run deficits, and
incidentally the war is never going to end.
When we go home, Governors are struggling. Mayors are cutting back
spending. They are having to layoff firemen and policemen. But in
Washington, there is no tomorrow. We have a war on, so let's have some
more tax cuts even with a $412 billion deficit.
Wall Street talks about consumer confidence, but there is not
confidence in the Government. On Wall Street, they know those long-term
interest rates are bound to go up. The Government is going to crowd in
with its sharp elbows, borrowing the money to keep it going, crowding
out business finance, running up the long-term interest rates. That is
what is happening to the stock market. It is not another tax cut, for
heaven's sake, that we need. The President ought to come back and go to
work and cut out his fund-raising, for goodness' sake.
We have problems in this country. The biggest problem that is
unmentioned, except by the Senator from Minnesota, the distinguished
Senator from North Dakota, the Senator from West Virginia and others,
is we are spending Social Security moneys.
The Enron accounting did not start with Kenny Boy Lay. It started
with us 20 years ago. Infectious greed? No, Madam President. Infectious
fraud, fraud on the American people.
I am not proud to say that, but the process has been corrupted.
I ask unanimous consent that this article in the Financial Times from
2 days ago be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered printed in the
Record, as follows:
[From the Financial Times, July 30, 2002]
Infectious Fraud
How can Americans be confident in the stock market and the
country when everything seems to be one grand fraud? It seems
as if every day another blue-chip corporation is under
investigation. And somebody in Washington is cooking the
books, when last year the US had a 10-year $5,600bn surplus
and this year it has an estimated $412bn deficit.
Enron bookkeeping started in Washington. In 1983, the
Greenspan commission restored the soundness of Social
Security with a graduated payroll tax, meant to take care of
the baby-boomers in this century. The commission's report
required surpluses from Social Security to be put in an off-
budget trust fund to be used for future generations. Back
then Reaganomics, the policy of economic growth by cutting
taxes, led to spending Social Security and other trust funds
in order to say the deficit was decreasing, while it was in
fact increasing.
President George H. W. Bush called Reaganomics ``Voodoo''.
Now President George W. Bush is giving us Voodoo II. This
Enron system of accounting hides the truth by juggling two
sets of books. It is like paying off one credit card with
another.
The Bush administration continues this charade by dividing
the budget into public debt and government debt. Both debts
combined constitute the total national debt. But Mr. Bush
talks only about the public debt (the bonds and notes America
issues) while hiding the government debt (the Social Security
and other trust funds being raided). What Mr. Bush needs to
talk about is the total national debt.
The budget committee tried to stop this charade in 1990 by
passing section 13301 of the Budget Act, forbidding the
president and the Congress from citing a budget that spends
Social Security. But, no matter, the president, the Congress
and the media--acting like Enron--violate section 13301 by
spending Social Security and other trust funds and
fraudulently reporting that they have not been spent.
The financial markets see this fraud. They know the
government will need to borrow
[[Page S7784]]
money, coming into the market with its sharp elbows, crowding
out business finance, stultifying the economy and causing
long-term interest rates to go up. When Ronald Reagan came
into office the interest cost on the national debt was $95bn.
By 2001 it was $359bn--so every day the government borrows
nearly $1bn to service the national debt. This is outrageous
waste. But the bigger outrage is the president, Congress and
the media crying foul at Enron while engaging in the same
type of fraud.
To expose this fraud, in 1989 a debt clock was erected near
Times Square in New York. It spins like a speedometer
reporting the combined public and government debt going up,
up and away. In 2000, when the debt started coming down, the
clock was turned off. But this month the government's office
of management and budget released numbers showing an alarming
amount of new red ink.
On page one of the mid-session review, the deficit was for
this fiscal year ending September 30 will hit $165bn. Of
course, this is the ``Enron figure'' the government hopes
everyone will use, not the real number. On the last page of
the report readers can find that this year's true deficit is
$412bn, of which only $27bn is due to September 11. The debt
clock has been turned on again.
The true story of today's economic downfall began with
candidate Bush in 2000. He stated that his first order of
business as president would be to cut taxes. In office, Mr.
Bush told the nation that not only was there enough money for
a tax cut; there would also be money left over to pay down
the debt, to protect Social Security and Medicare, and
$1,000bn for any special needs. The dam really broke in
January 2001 when Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal
Reserve, in a fit of irrational exuberance, cautioned that
surpluses were growing too fast and we were paying down too
much debt. With this blessing of tax cuts, Wall Street
started selling. And in less than four months, we went from a
$2bn surplus in June 2001, when the tax cut was passed, to a
$143bn deficit on September 30 last year. Less than $4bn of
this was because of September 11.
In the 1990s, when we were paying down the debt with
spending cuts and tax increases, America had eight years of
the best economic growth in history. Mr. Bush's $1,700bn tax
cut has put the country into the ditch.
The president says we should not worry about deficits while
there is a war on. There is no end to the war and he calls
for more tax cuts. This requires further government invasion
into the market, so the market stays on edge.
The US should freeze next year's budget at this year's
levels, with the exception of defense and homeland security;
cancel the tax cuts; and start, once again, paying down the
debt. If Americans want to regain confidence in the stock
market and in the country they should know the problem is
infectious fraud, not infectious greed.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Here's another headline from July 31, ``Automakers Get
Even More Mileage From The Third World. Low Cost Plants Abroad Start To
Supply Home Markets As Quality Picks Up Steam.'' And this one from the
Los Angeles Times, ``High-paid Jobs Latest U.S. Export.'' That is what
we are exporting. That is what the people ought to be reading.
Understand that we are going out of business. Productivity is high,
yes, of what we produce, but we are not producing anything. We are
giving fast food to each other and going the way of England. At the end
of World War II, they said, do not worry, instead of a nation of brawn,
we will be a nation of brains. Instead of producing products, we will
provide services. We have heard that ``service economy wag'' in this
Chamber. Instead of creating finances, we will handle it and be the
financial center. They have the haves and the have-nots, and a bunch of
scandal sheets and debating Parliamentarians. We are going the way of
England. We are going out of business and nobody wants to talk about it
because we have the campaign; we have lunch coming along.
I remind everybody what made this country great. It was in the
earliest days--and this has to be included in the Record--under our
Founding Fathers. The British said to our little fledgling colony, now
that you have won your freedom, what you ought to do is trade back to
the mother country what you produce best and the mother country will
trade back what it produces best.
We were saved by Alexander Hamilton, who helped write the papers, his
report on manufacturers. It is too much, I believe, to put in the
Record, but in a line, he told the British, ``bug off.'' He said, we
are not going to remain your colony, importing the finished goods and
just exporting our timber, our coal, our iron, our ore, our farm
products. We are going to become a strong economy, a nation state.
The first bill was the seal of the United States of America, and the
second bill on July 4, 1789, was a tariff bill, protectionism. These
children run around on the floor hollering, ``protectionism,
protectionism.'' They do not know how the country was built. They have
no idea of history, no sense of accomplishment. We did not pass the
income tax until 1913. We built this strong United States of America
with protectionism, tariffs.
Fast forward 100 years to Teddy Roosevelt, and Edmund Morris' book
``Theodore Rex.'' We ought look at the turn of the century when old
Teddy came in. The United States was already so rich in goods and
services that she was more self-sustaining than any industrial power in
history.
We are not today by any manner or means. We do not have a strong
economy by any manner or means. Tell the Secretary of the Treasury.
Back then, we consumed only a fraction of what we produced.
The rest went overseas at prices other exporters found hard
to match. As Andrew Carnegie said, the ``Nation that makes
the cheapest steel has other nations as its feet.'' More than
half of the world's cotton, corn, copper, and oil, flowed
from the American cornucopia, and at least one-third of all
steel, iron, silver, and gold did, too. The excellence of her
manufactured products, guaranteed her dominance of world
markets. That was in the early 1900s.
I went to New York recently on Amtrak's Acela. It is a
train made in Canada. When I arrived at the station, the dogs
that sniffed me were from Czechoslovakia. We are even
importing the dogs. We don't have anything Made In America
around here, other than a few politicians. I wish newspapers
and politicians could be produced overseas. If they were, we
could straighten this country out overnight, I can tell you
that right now.
Senator Wellstone, before you would be able to open up Wellstone
Manufacturing, you would have to have for your employees a minimum
wage, clean air, clean water, Social Security, Medicare, plant closing
notice, parental leave, safe working place, safe machinery--on and on
and on. Then the plant next door says: Wait a minute. I can go down to
Mexico and pay workers 58 cents an hour and have to do none of that.
And they go. Unless you follow, you will go broke.
The job policy in the Senate today is to export and get rid of jobs.
I remember when Sam Ervin stood at that desk and we added $5 billion
for highway construction in the 1970s to create jobs that were needed.
Now, instead of creating jobs, we come in and have a welfare reform
bill. They stand in the well and pride themselves, look, we have
extended payments for unemployment; we are offering a little bit more
for health care. They do not talk about creating jobs anymore. They
present this as a welfare reform bill. I don't want welfare reform. I
need to hold on to my job.
What happens to the some 54,000 textile workers in South Carolina?
Washington said: Go global. Be like Mao Tse-tung and reeducate them if
they lose their jobs. In my state, the mills that made the T-shirts,
they get closed down. They had 487 employees. The average age was 47
years.
The Senate said: Let's retrain them for high tech. And tomorrow
morning we have 487 expert computer operators. Are you going to hire a
47-year-old expert computer operator and take on their retirement costs
and their health costs? Or are you going to hire a 21-year-old?
We brought in BMW to South Carolina, but we still have empty towns
back home. A couple years ago, we had 3.2 percent unemployment. Now
it's over 6 percent. In some counties, it is over 10 percent
unemployment, and we have lost 54,000 textile jobs alone. There you go.
I regret the corruption and the fix. You talk about accounting
corruptions, option corruptions; you talk about job corruptions. They
could care less about the jobs. I can go right down, article after
article, where the recovery will not reach.
We have corrupted the financial and fiscal affairs of the Nation. We
have corrupted the economic base all on the premise that we need fast
track because trade issues are very complex; whereas, one more time,
Senator, I don't believe you were here, but in my hand is the trade
policy agenda of the President of the United States, issued by the U.S.
Trade Representative. To negotiate five trade agreements the President
had fast track authority: Tokyo, NAFTA, U.S.-Canada, U.S.-Israel, the
Uruguay, or WTO. But the next dozen pages contain some 200
[[Page S7785]]
trade treaties and agreements that have been entered into without fast
track. They can do it, but we are in the hands of the Philistines,
unless we can get corporate America to pull in its hold.
I do see a minor sign of hope. General Electric said they would start
expensing their stock options. This is very different than the way GE's
Jack Welch ran the place. I have the record here and his particular
article I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material 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)
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,
superaggressive 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, 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 its 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 (chart, page 74). 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 Monterrey meeting at Paoli (Pa.)-based Ametek,
whose aerospace unit makes aircraft instruments. The internet
report, a copy of which Business 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 Part
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 Welch and even prompt GE
to tone down its demands on suppliers. But it won't rebuild
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. Just two years ago Mr. Welch met with his suppliers and
said to them: you will have to go overseas in order to make it. Unless
you move to Mexico and cut your costs, you will not be a supplier of
GE. Then he held seminars around the country for all the suppliers
saying: Get out of the country, get out of the country, get out of the
country.
Now, unless these industrial leaders gain a conscience and quit
telling all the suppliers they have to go to Mexico or China; and quit
telling their board of directors they have to go to Bermuda to avoid
taxes, we are going to be in serious trouble. They need to help us
rebuild the industrial strength of the United States of America.
But we are in a fix. The debate in the Senate is controlled. We
already have cloture. People are ready to go home and pass over the
responsibility.
Senator Helms could not be here. But he and I wanted to get that
printing, dyeing, and finishing provision in the Caribbean trade bill.
They didn't want to do it. They had plenty of time to do it, but the
Bush administration said: We can fix this and get the vote of the
Congressman from Greenville--which they did. And he voted again for
fast track. But now that we have the fast track he voted for, what we
wanted for printing, dyeing, and finishing is out. It has gone to
Andean countries.
When I was Governor of South Carolina, we had a contest for the
slogan of an insurance company, Capital Life. We said:
Capital Life will surely pay, if the small print on the
back don't take it away. That was the winning slogan, and
that is what we have in Washington.
They have won out. We have lost the blooming stuff. They fixed the
jury here, and they are all getting fattened up in order to win the
next election.
[[Page S7786]]
But on how to win the economy and save this country--there is no
interest.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, before the Senator from South
Carolina leaves, I want him to know that normally I ask unanimous
consent to follow and normally I might have gone back to the office and
done some other things. But there are a few Senators I like to come out
on the floor and listen to. The Senator from South Carolina is one of
them.
He is the opposite of sterile and plastic and scripted and rehearsed.
He is colorful, but, frankly, and more importantly, he is prophetic and
he is right. In my years in the Senate, which is going on 12, there is
not another Senator for whom I have greater respect. I mean that as
sincerely as I can say it.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Senator. He is overgenerous
to me. But I am trying to follow you and our hero, Senator Humphrey.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, building on the comments of the
Senator from South Carolina, I really feel sorry for working people
right now in our country. I just think they are getting pounded. I
believe ordinary citizens are just getting pounded. For example, take
Qwest workers in Minnesota. When Arthur Levitt was the Chair of the
Securities and Exchange Commission several years ago, he tried to put
into effect a rule that would have dealt with this conflict of interest
situation. The Senator from South Carolina talked about this a few
minutes ago. It would have prohibited the Arthur Andersens of the world
from raking it in on these consulting contracts when they do an
independent audit. He was stopped by too many Members of the House and
Senate. But he did get a rule put into effect that they at least had to
disclose their contracts.
With Qwest, as it turns out, in the year 2001 and 2002, by first a 6-
to-1 ratio and then in 2002 a 8-to-1 ratio, Arthur Andersen was getting
all kinds of money from these consulting contracts. I am not even sure
what they did for all this money--6-to-1 to the actual money they got
for the independent audit. So you know you don't bite the hand that
feeds you. They didn't do an independent audit. And all of a sudden we
find out Qwest was short quite a bit of money.
Above and beyond that--I am just going to give this context--above
and beyond that, the management of Qwest tells the workers and the
investors--a lot of little people are investors--we have had this
company audited. Our auditing company wants to be clear with you that
we have had this independent audit that we can vouch for, so on and so
forth. But it turns out at the same time the actual audit committee did
not say that. They actually do not say that they can, with 100-percent
assurance, say this is a completely independent audit.
At the same time that this is being said, the CEOs are dumping some
of their stock. And at the same time, too much of the workers' pension
plan is invested in stock in the company, trying to be loyal workers,
and they are locked in, and no one is helping them out. Now you have a
lot of people out of work and, in addition, they have seen a lot of
their pension plan eroded in value.
That is the story of a lot of people in the country who are not part
of lobbying coalitions in Washington, not big investors, not heavy
hitters, not well connected. I really feel sorry for working people.
Frankly, I think this piece of legislation is yet another example of
pounding a lot of regular people--regular people, ordinary citizens. I
don't mean it in a pejorative sense, I mean it in a positive way.
One good thing that came out of conference is that there are some
additional health care benefits for some of our older steelworkers--
some of our retirees, some of our older steelworkers. That is good. But
as I look at what happened in this conference committee, this bill is
infinitely worse. This trade promotion authority bill is infinitely
worse than when it left the Senate.
There was the Dayton-Craig amendment. I am very proud of the Senator
from Minnesota, Mark Dayton, for his work, so that any Senator would
have been allowed to raise a point of order to any part of the trade
agreement that would weaken U.S. trade remedy laws such as section 201,
saying: Look, we are not going to give up our right to protect working
people. If you have a trade agreement that basically undercuts our
trade remedy laws, we are not just going to forfeit our responsibility
to come out here on the floor and challenge that. We have to represent
people back in our States.
That passed in the Senate but was taken out of the conference report.
I wonder why.
Then my colleague, Senator Harkin from Iowa, who has such passion
about the exploitation of children, working God knows how many hours a
day for so little wages--he had language that would have prohibited the
use of exploitative child labor among our trading partners. That was
taken out of the conference report.
I had an amendment that said our trading partners ought to respect
human rights--would respect human rights. That was taken out of the
conference report.
I had another amendment that said: Let's do a real jobs impact
analysis. Let's really find out what is going on. Sometimes ignorance
is not random and people don't want to know what they don't want to
know.
Recently the Economic Policy Institute noted:
NAFTA has contributed to rising income inequality,
suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened
collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions
and reduced fringe benefits.
We are talking about a net total of 3 million actual and potential
jobs lost in the U.S. economy from 1994 to now. But the provision I had
in the legislation was also taken out in conference.
This administration is gung ho on commercial property rights. They
want to make sure they are fully protected in our trade agreements.
This administration is gung ho on all the big financial institutions
and all the big multinational corporations. That is where they raise
their money. A lot of the key positions in the administration come from
this background. A lot of their task forces are disproportionately made
up of such people--you name it. They are gung ho when it comes to the
commercial property rights of multinationals and big financial
institutions. But when it comes to labor, when it comes to
environmental, when it comes to human rights, they are nowhere to be
found. I think that is wrong. I think it is profoundly wrong. And I
think it is tragic that so many Democrats are not out here on the floor
fighting for these rights.
I think the vast majority of people in Minnesota and the vast
majority of people in the country would say we do not want to put walls
up at our border. I get so angry at the charge: You are an
isolationist. My father was born in Odessa, fled persecution in Russia,
spoke 10 languages fluently. I grew up in a home that made me, by
definition, an internationalist. My mother's family was from Ukraine.
She was a cafeteria worker. I grew up in a family that emphasized that
we live in a world and we ignore that world at our peril, and also
emphasized being there for working people.
That is not the question. The question is whether or not we have
trade agreements that respect basic human rights, that lead with our
values as Americans, and that focus on promoting democracy. If we, as a
country, can't promote democracy and human rights, who are we? That
really protects little children, and says it is wrong to have a 9-year-
old working 19 hours a day for 30 cents hour; that also says there
should be environmental standards; there should be fair trade; do not
put our workers in the position of when they try to organize or do
organization and bargain collectively for better wages for their
families, companies say, no, we are leaving, we are going to Mexico.
When those workers try to organize, companies say no, we are going to
leave and go to South Korea, or Indonesia. Then those companies say to
those countries, if you should pass any legislation that would give
workers the right to organize, or have environmental standards, or have
child labor standards, we will not invest in your country.
Where are the values that promote the good standard of living for
families in our country and families in the developing countries as
well?
There was a Washington Post piece entitled ``Worked Till They Drop:
Few
[[Page S7787]]
Protections for China's New Laborers.'' The article is heartbreaking.
It tells of the death of Li Chunmei. I quote:
Coworkers said she had been on her feet for nearly 16
hours, running back and forth inside the Bainan Toy Factory,
carrying toy parts from machine to machine. When the quitting
bell finally rang shortly after midnight, her young face was
covered with sweat.
This was the busy season, before Christmas, when orders
peaked from Japan and the United States for the factory's
stuffed animals. Long hours were mandatory, and at least two
months had passed since Li and the other workers had enjoyed
even a Sunday off.
``Lying on her bed that night, starting at the bunk above
her, the slight 19-year old complained she felt worn out, her
roommates recalled. Finally the lights went out. Her
roommates had already fallen asleep when Li started coughing
up blood. They found her in the bathroom a few hours later,
curled up on the floor, moaning softly in the dark, bleeding
from her nose and mouth. Someone called an ambulance, but she
died before she arrived.''
The article goes on to say that what happened to Li ``is
described by family and friends and co-workers as an example
of what China's more daring newspapers call guolaosi. (GO-
LAO-SI). The phrase means ``overwork death,'' and usually
applies to young workers who suddenly collapse and die after
working exceedingly long hours, day after day.
Can't we with our trade policy lead with our values? Can't we promote
human rights? Can't we protect children? Can't we promote protection of
the environment? Can't we protect the rights of working people to
organize and bargain collectively?
I could read from the State Department report in country after
country after country--in Colombia, there are so many examples of
workers who have been murdered for trying to join a union; same sort of
coercive practices that workers in Mexico have experienced for years.
Certainly that is the case in China. And the list goes on and on.
I believe that most Americans believe trade policy should be about
promotion of human rights. Trade policy should be about respect for
human rights. Trade policy should be about promoting a decent
fundamentally good standard of living for Americans as well as our
brothers and our sisters in other countries as well.
What this piece of legislation says to me, as a Senator from the
State of Minnesota, is that I have to forgo my constitutional rights to
represent people in my State. When I see a trade agreement that
overturns or overrides consumer protection in Minnesota, environmental
protection in Minnesota, and workers' rights in Minnesota, I don't have
the right to come out here and challenge that? I don't have the right
to come out here with an amendment?
I didn't vote to give fast-track authority to President Clinton, and
I am certainly not going to vote to give fast-track authority to
President Bush. I will say it on the line. I have seen what this
administration has done with repetitive stress injury. I have seen the
way in which they overturned an important rule to protect people. I
have seen what they have done when it comes to practically nothing by
way of making safer workplaces for people. I have seen what they have
done which amounts to practically nothing when it comes to mine safety
issues. I have seen what they have done in trying to go after
prevailing wages. I have seen what they have done in terms of one
antilabor initiative after another. I have seen what they have done
when it comes to a lack of commitment to people being able to organize
and bargain collectively and labor law reform.
Frankly, I wouldn't for anything in the world give away my right to
represent Minnesota and to represent workers and to represent unions. I
am a proud labor Senator. I am a proud Senator who represents working
people. You want to know something else. The best thing is there are a
lot of people in the business sector who feel the same way.
I think exports are so critically important to our economy and very
important to Minnesota. We do really well. I think imports are good
because imports mean our companies have to compete. We should have that
competition.
The only thing I want to see is some rules that go with this new
global economy. I want to see fair trade. I want to see a global
economy that does more than just promote the interests of multinational
corporations. I want to see a global economy that promotes the
environment. I want to see a global economy that promotes human rights.
I want to see a global economy that promotes democracy. I want to see a
global economy that protects the interests of working families in
Minnesota and all across the country.
That is what I speak for. That is what I fight for. That is what I
believe in. That is why I believe that this piece of legislation, which
will pass overwhelmingly, is so profoundly wrong and so profoundly
mistaken.
I feel sorry for working families today. They are getting pounded. I
think we should do a better job of representing them.
I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Miller). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, earlier today a number of the minority held
a press conference. I have not spoken to Senator Daschle, but I know
what took place at that press conference. It was all directed toward
Tom Daschle. I think it was so unfair what they did.
They went to some printer and got a little thing printed up, and they
passed this out to the press as a progress report on what has happened
in the Senate.
Of course, they selectively picked some things that are not totally
completed at this time. But it is interesting how they did this. For
example, they talked about judicial nominations. I talked to Senator
Leahy yesterday. I think we have done 73, or something like that,
judicial nominations--way ahead of what has ever been done before. We
have a batch of them we are going to do today.
They complained about the Defense appropriations conference, that it
is incomplete. We just finished the bill yesterday, Mr. President, in
record time. Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye did this in record
time. The largest Defense bill in the history of the world, and we
completed it yesterday in record time.
Homeland security, we have worked out an arrangement that we are
going to go to that immediately when we return. The minute we get back
here there will be a debate on that and we will be on the bill on
Wednesday, the second day we are back.
Prescription drugs, they criticize Senator Daschle for not doing
something on prescription drugs. I will tell you, that takes a lot of
nerve, a lot of nerve, because we all know that there was, first, the
Graham-Miller, and then we tried to do something less than that to try
to develop a consensus here. I mean, we spent almost 3 weeks on that
bill.
So I guess the best offense, in their mind, is what you do when you
are on the defensive--energy, complaining about that.
The fact is, Mr. President, that in addition to this ``progress
report'' that they made, a ``report card'' to the majority leader, one
of the things we picked up, as they were hurrying out of there--because
some, of course, are going to go away to the beach this summer, or at
least part of the time--and we found--it just happened to fall out--a
list of what they are going to be reading this summer.
I don't know, I guess, in a rush to get out of here, someone from the
minority side must have dropped their required reading assignment for
this summer. But in the interest of making sure all are aware of these
reading assignments, I would like to read a list of books the GOP
leadership has assigned to its caucus.
The first isn't a bestseller yet, but it possibly could be. It is
called: ``Paying U.S. Taxes is for Suckers: A Guide to Offshore Banking
in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.''
Another book is: ``Grapes of Wrath 2002: How to Let Medicare Wither
on the Vine.''
Another book that I am fascinated with--I think I will take a look at
it--is: ``See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil: Economic Leadership
for the Enron Era.''
[[Page S7788]]
A book: ``Master of the Senate Republicans: How Drug Company Cash
Killed the Prescription Drug Benefit,'' or one that should be pretty
exciting is: ``Drilling Our Way to a Cleaner Environment,'' or ``Sea
Dick Run . . . From Haliburton Accounting,'' or ``The Art of Timely
Self-Promotion by Harvey Pitt (includes a foreward on securing non
military burial rights at Arlington Cemetery).''
Another, Mr. President, is: ``How to Succeed in Business Without
Really Earning: The Inside Story of [the] Harkin Energy [Company].''
And then the final book they put on the list--I am not sure the order
is appropriate--is called: ``Someone to Watch Over You: The John
Ashcroft Story.''
In all seriousness, Mr. President, everyone can play these games
about what has not been accomplished, what has been accomplished. But
we have really worked hard to try to come up with legislation, and we
have done a lot. People have to understand how much we have been able
to accomplish. The country, the people of Missouri, Georgia, Nevada,
all over this country, should be proud of the work we have done.
The rules in the Senate were not developed yesterday. They have been
here for more than 200 years. I have to tell you, it is hard. I served
in the House of Representatives. The Presiding Officer served in the
State legislature in Georgia, was Governor of the State of Georgia. The
rules are not the same.
For example, Mr. President, the State of Nevada met on Monday, a
special session of the Nevada State Legislature, called by the
Governor. Why? Because we have, in the State of Nevada, a medical
malpractice problem. And, you know, they handle it in the State of
Nevada where it should be handled. And they did. They finished at 4:15
this morning. They now have, for the Governor to sign as soon as he
wakes up this morning, the bill. We have a new medical malpractice law
in the State of Nevada. But they did it in 3\1/2\ days. Here that would
take 3\1/2\ weeks. But that is the way it is.
The U.S. Senate has these rules, but we have been able to do a lot. I
repeat, our country can take pride in what we have done.
Let me talk about a few things: Antiterrorism use of force
resolution; immediate $40 billion response to terrorist attacks;
defense/homeland security appropriations, significant ones;
supplemental Defense appropriations; the United States Patriot Act;
airport, border, and port security; terrorism insurance, which we
passed out of here--it was tough; we finally got a conference report on
that--support for the airline industry; economic stimulus, which
included unemployment insurance.
We passed a Patients' Bill of Rights; corporate and auditing
accountability, the Sarbanes bill; greater access to affordable
prescription drugs. We worked so hard on that, Mr. President. As the
Presiding Officer knows, we did not get everything we wanted, but we
passed something dealing with generic drugs, dealing with giving the
States help that they need so badly with their medical problems. That
is all in this bill we passed yesterday. In that bill was prescription
drug reimportation to reduce costs. Fiscal relief to States is in
there. I have just talked about that. The trade bill, some like that a
lot. It is going to pass sometime today.
We have had campaign finance reform; election reform, as I have
mentioned, judicial confirmations; clean water and brownfields
revitalization.
This brownfields bill is so important. We learned that we could not
completely revamp and renovate and change Superfund legislation, but we
learned there are things we could do. There are brownfields sites,
industrialized sites in our States that are not really in bad shape.
Maybe they had a dry cleaning establishment there.
Under the brownfields legislation, we can come in and take care of
that. It is happening all over the country. In Nevada alone it is going
to create thousands of new jobs, some of them at shopping centers where
we had dry cleaning establishments and lenders stayed away. They didn't
want the Superfund liability. We took care of that with this
legislation.
There was education reform; that certainly was done. We passed the
energy bill; that is now in conference. I am a member of the
conference, chaired by Mr. Tauzin of Louisiana. We finished all the
secondary items this week. As soon as we get back, the first week, we
will see if we can work our way through that. I believe we can.
We passed a huge farm bill that was so difficult but so important,
especially for various sectors of our country. Then we passed the
Defense authorization. And we will pass, in just a little while, the
largest appropriations bill in the history of the world.
We have done a lot. I don't think we need to talk about Tom Daschle's
report card. He has done a good job. He has been a magnificent leader.
I wish we wouldn't do this. It is not good for the whole body
politic. It does not help. Tom Daschle is somebody who is respected.
Why? Because he is a quick learner. He is totally ethical. He works
tireless hours. He tries to be fair to everybody. We don't need this
kind of stuff. We don't need these readings lists.
Anybody who comes out here and slaps around Tom Daschle, I will slap
back. They can have the report cards. They can have all their progress
reports they want. I will come back. I am not going to let these
scurrilous attacks on a fine man go unanswered. If they don't want to
hear about their reading list, then leave Tom Daschle alone. If there
is something they don't like that is going on, do it right here. This
is the place to do it, where we can have a good debate and go on to
something else. I hope we can do that.
These were not Democratic accomplishments alone, although I will take
credit for what we have done. But we have been able to do them because
you don't do anything here alone. We have passed these. We should be
proud of this. It is good for the country. We don't need any more of
this.
Mrs. CARNAHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business for up to 10 minutes for the purpose of introducing a
bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
Senator from Missouri is recognized.
Mrs. CARNAHAN. I ask unanimous consent that the time used be counted
against my hour postcloture.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mrs. Carnahan pertaining to the introduction of S.
2842 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mrs. CARNAHAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I see a Senator on the other side who is
prepared to speak. Does he wish to speak immediately? What is his
situation?
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I would like to speak on TPA at
sometime during the debate for around 7 to 10 minutes. But the senior
Senator from West Virginia was in the Chamber preceding me, so I will
recognize his attendance here and his seniority.
Mr. BYRD. I thank the Senator. He would need 7 minutes?
Mr. BROWNBACK. That is approximately the amount of time I would
speak.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, ordinarily I would suggest that the Senator
take his 7 minutes now. My speech is probably going to be 45 minutes or
longer, and I understand there is a vote scheduled for 2 o'clock; is
that correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. At 2 o'clock, we will consider the Department
of Defense appropriations bill.
Mr. BYRD. There is not a vote at that point?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. BYRD. Very well. Mr. President, I have the floor, do I not?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has the floor.
Mr. BYRD. I have an hour under the cloture motion?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I yield to the distinguished Senator for 7
minutes.
Mr. BROWNBACK. I will try to do it in around 5 minutes.
[[Page S7789]]
Mr. BYRD. I yield for no more than 7 minutes on his time, but I
retain my right to the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his courtesy. I
want to talk about trade promotion authority, and I appreciate very
much the Senator's graciousness.
I met yesterday with members of the administration at the U.S. Trade
Representative's office in the Department of Commerce and the President
of the United States. I stated to the President that I don't think
there is another thing we could do in the near term for us to be able
to grow this economy that would be more important than to pass trade
promotion authority. I think it is that critical a piece of legislation
for us to stimulate the economy. At this point in time, this is
critical for us to do.
We received economic figures today that showed anemic growth in the
last quarter--1.1-percent economic growth. We need to do everything
possible to stimulate this economy. Trade promotion authority is the
lead piece of legislation that we can do to expand the trade
opportunities for this Nation. I strongly believe that.
I have worked in the trade field. In 1990 and 1991, I worked in the
U.S. Trade Representative's office when we were beginning the
negotiations for the NAFTA treaty--certainly a treaty that is not
perfect, but one that has expanded trade opportunity and has grown the
economy of the United States. The United States has an international
economy. From that, I mean to say we have an economy that is based
substantially upon trade. My State has an economy that is based
substantially upon trade. My family is dependent substantially upon
trade. We are in agriculture. We produce grains, cattle, and these are
things in which we have a significant trade market.
Trade promotion authority will allow the President to negotiate trade
agreements and trade tariff agreements that will reduce tariffs. I
think people need to recognize that a tariff is a tax. So this will be
a tax reduction treaty. It will also open up trading opportunities for
the United States and for our trading partners. One of the lead ways we
can grow it is by doing this. What trade does when you lower tariffs,
lower the barriers to trade, is it allows people to compete based upon
the theory of comparative advantage and who can do the best and more.
Fortunately for the United States, we have comparative advantages in
main economic fields. So we are going to be able to compete more
aggressively with more countries because there will be fewer barriers.
The United States also has one of the lowest trade barriers. We have
fewer barriers to trade in the United States than most nations.
With this trade promotion authority, we are going to be able to
negotiate trade-opening agreements with a number of countries around
the world. It is going to reduce barriers in other nations more than in
the United States for their incoming products. We are going to have
more ability to go there, and that will expand because of the
comparative advantages of the U.S. economy in producing goods and
services--though not all goods and services. There are going to be
problem areas that we will need to protect in our economy because of
difficulties we have, or subsidies in other countries, or because of
things they do trying to block our products. We may have to respond in
kind at times.
The administration is aware of that. They are seeking this authority.
It is an authority that we need to grant to the administration. I think
with it we are going to see substantial trading blocs expand for the
benefit of the United States. We have a NAFTA trading bloc of Canada,
the United States, and Mexico. I see that expanding. The administration
is pushing to expand to Central America and South America, so we have
an entire Western Hemisphere; North and South America will be in one
open trading type of bloc.
We are also being pursued by other countries to expand trade
opportunities with them. These hold substantial opportunities for us to
grow. But without trade promotion authority, the agreements will not
happen.
For those reasons, I am a strong proponent of trade promotion
authority. I believe it is important for us to have. I think this is
the right time and place for us to do it. This country needs to let
this President have trade promotion authority so we can expand
agreements. So I will be voting for TPA. I urge my colleagues to do so
as well.
With that, I thank the Senator from West Virginia for allowing me
this time. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?
Mr. BYRD. Yes, I yield.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have spoken with the distinguished
President pro tempore of the Senate, and he has indicated his remarks
will probably take 50 minutes or thereabouts.
Mr. BYRD. Yes.
Mr. REID. I, therefore, ask unanimous consent that the defense matter
which is now scheduled to begin at 2 o'clock, that time which is
encompassed in the unanimous consent agreement, be delayed to begin at
2:20 p.m. today rather than 2 o'clock.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. So the President pro tempore can use his time postcloture
and can come back later.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished majority whip. As
always, he is most gracious, most considerate, and most courteous. He
also wants to be helpful.
Mr. REID. I thank the Senator.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent?
Mr. BYRD. I yield to the distinguished Senator for a unanimous
consent request provided that my speech does not show an interruption
and that I retain my right to the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BAUCUS. I ask unanimous consent I be able to speak for 7 minutes
concluding the remarks of the distinguished Senator from West Virginia.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, in the dead of night, under cover of
darkness, near the bewitching hour of midnight on July 25, 2002, House
and Senate conferees reached agreement on a new trade bill. The White
House embraces this new trade bill, not because it contains trade
adjustment assistance--no, no, no--but because it provides the
President with fast-track negotiating authority. The administration
likes to refer to it as trade promotion authority--that is an old
Vaudeville trick--trade promotion authority.
This is fast-track negotiating authority that the President wants,
but he does not call it fast track. He wants to call it ``trade
promotion authority.'' That sounds good. That has a sweet ring to my
ears--trade promotion. Who would not be for trade promotion? The
President knows how to frame these terms in ways one may be lulled to
sleep--trade promotion authority--but it provides the President with
fast-track negotiating authority, fast track.
As we all know, the real effect of fast track is not to promote
trade--no, no, no--not to promote trade but to prevent amendments to
trade agreements. That is why we have fast track.
This Constitution, which I hold in my hand, gives to the Congress the
power to regulate trade and commerce with foreign nations. This
Constitution is my authority, not fast track. This is my authority.
This bill we are talking about here and about to vote on and upon
which cloture was invoked earlier today is a fast-track bill. It is not
really about creating jobs or helping workers. It is about weakening
our trade laws, making it easier for multinational corporations to move
offshore where they can pay slave wages and where they do not have to
pay health insurance and where they do not have to pay retirement
benefits. That is what this bill does. That is why the Chambers of
Commerce around the country favor it.
Just in my home State of West Virginia, we have lost thousands--
thousands--of jobs, good jobs that supported families and breadwinners
who worked hard for their money, very hard, indeed.
When I was first elected to Congress 50 years ago--elected 51 years
ago--we had glass factories in West Virginia; we had pottery plants in
West Virginia; we
[[Page S7790]]
had leather goods; we made shoes; we produced steel. We employed many
West Virginians in the steel industry. That was 56 years ago when I
first got into politics, and then 50 years ago when I first came to
Congress. We had those thousands of good jobs in West Virginia.
Those jobs supported families and breadwinners who worked hard for
their money, I say. They labored in the coal mines. They labored in the
steel mills. They labored in the glass plants. They labored in the
chemical manufacturing works. They worked in the leather goods
industries in West Virginia. They were employed in the textile and
apparel industries in West Virginia. These hard-working families
deserve a fair slice of the pie.
These and other American workers elected the various Members of this
body to look after their interests in national trade matters. Senator
Randolph and I, when we came to this Chamber, did just that; but other
States elected their Senators, too, to give them, the American workers,
a fair shake when the trade deals were being made. I have to say that
Senators cannot fulfill this obligation by handing Presidents fast-
track authority.
The President proclaimed victory in obtaining his trade bill, but it
is a hollow victory. It is a Pyrrhic victory. Remember Pyrrhus, who
fought the Romans, who was the first to bring elephants to Rome and to
the Italian peninsula to fight the war? That was in 280 B.C. He won a
victory but a very costly one, and that has been called a Pyrrhic
victory.
So the President won a Pyrrhic victory for America.
The President threatened to veto the bill unless the conferees
dropped the Dayton-Craig amendment. So what did they do? They folded.
They dropped it because the President waved his veto pen.
Why should that make one falter or faint or fall? The Constitution
gives the President that right. The Constitution says he can veto a
bill. But why shake and tremble in one's boots because the President
threatens to use his veto pen? Let him veto it. Go to it. Explain to
the American people, Mr. President, your veto of this protection that
was written into this bill. Explain to them. Yes, go ahead and veto it.
He has a constitutional right to do that. Of course, the House and
the Senate under the Constitution have the right to override his veto,
but they will not on this bill.
In these 50 years that I have been in the Congress, the House and the
Senate, every administration, Democratic and Republican, has sung the
same old song. It is the State Department song. Administration after
administration, Democratic and Republican, have sung the same old song:
Give us free trade agreements.
Well, I voted against about every one that I can think of that came
before this Senate, NICPAC--no, not NICPAC, but you name it, I voted
against these so-called free trade agreements.
I am for free trade. We are for free trade. Who would not be for free
trade? But as some say, there is a great deal of difference between
free trade and fair trade. They are two different terms.
So the conferees dropped it. They dropped the Dayton-Craig amendment.
They trembled when they heard the President say he would veto it. What
happened? They dropped that language. The President struck fear, I
suppose, into their weak hearts by saying, ``I will veto that bill. If
it comes with that language in it, I will veto it.''
I say, go to it, Mr. President. You just go ahead and veto it. I dare
you to veto it and then go and tell the American people. Let's both go.
Let's have a debate on this. Let the American people know.
So they scrapped the only meaningful part of the bill that allowed
the Congress to stop the President from weakening our trade law. They
scrapped the Dayton-Craig amendment, the only meaningful part of the
bill that allowed the Congress to stop the President from weakening our
trade laws in the next round of trade negotiations. Dayton-Craig would
have allowed the Congress to exercise its constitutional right to amend
and strengthen whatever agreement the President brings back to us.
Without Dayton-Craig, we are at the mercy of our negotiators in Geneva,
the same old place where nearly every week some WTO panel tells the
United States that it has no right to enforce its own laws.
The Dayton-Craig amendment was a bipartisan amendment that I
cosponsored along with a third of the Senate. Although the amendment
was supported by an overwhelming majority of the Senate--62 Members of
the Senate from both sides of the aisle now--in conference it was
blithely cast aside as a bag of dirty laundry in the face of the veto
threat by the President. Like a bag of dirty laundry, whiff, out went
the Dayton-Craig amendment.
The President said he was afraid it might offend certain members of
the WTO.
Well, Mr. President, I must ask this question--ungrammatically I will
put the question: Who is the President working for, the WTO or the
United States?
As I have often said, I was sent to the Congress not by the President
of the United States. I have worked with 11 Presidents since I have
been in Congress. Not one of them sent me to the House or to the
Senate. I was not sent by any electoral college either. As I have often
said, I was sent by the people, we the people of West Virginia. I
listen to them. I was not sent by the President, and I was not sent by
the WTO--nor was that Senator, nor that Senator, nor that Senator, nor
that Senator. The last time I checked, neither the President nor I was
elected by the WTO but by the American people.
Not surprisingly, the very day after the trade conferees' deal was
announced, the Director General of the WTO commended President Bush.
Imagine that. The very day after the trade conferees' deal was
announced, the Director General of the WTO commended President Bush.
The WTO Director General congratulated the President of the United
States for having obtained a trade bill that wrests from the Congress
its right to strengthen and protect American trade laws under article
I, section 8, of this U.S. Constitution which I hold in my hand.
Again I ask: For whom is the President working? I will say it
ungrammatically: Who is the President working for, the WTO or the
people of the United States? Who is he working for, the President, the
WTO, or the people of the United States?
Of course, the Director General of the WTO is pleased with the
President's trade bill. If I were pleased with it, I would congratulate
him, too. The WTO is pleased with it. The President is now free to
negotiate trade deals more favorable to other WTO members than to the
citizens of West Virginia and the citizens of the United States. That
is this trade bill I am talking about.
I have seen how the employment figures in West Virginia have gone
down over these years that I have been in Congress, and we have voted
one time after another to take the Congress out of the equation, give
Presidents free trade agreements. They can negotiate trade agreements
without this bill we are going to vote on. They can. They don't need
this to negotiate trade agreements. They call it promotion trade
authority. What is that--PTA? Forget it. That is not promotion trade
authority. That sounds good, count me in, if we promote trade.
But this is fast track, nothing short of it. This is the old hat
trick. Don't watch what is going on in this hand; watch what is going
on over here. Everything really is happening over here. This is the old
hat trick.
So the WTO Director General ``congratulated'' the President for
having obtained a trade bill that wrests from the Congress what
Congress is entitled to under that Constitution--the right to debate
and particularly the right to amend.
These are the very same countries whose representatives, sitting on
WTO dispute settlement panels, have ruled against the United States in
nearly each and every U.S. antidumping, countervailing duty, and
safeguards case taken to the WTO since the last round of international
trade negotiations.
So now, inexplicably, our President wants to enter into a new round
of international trade negotiations. Why? To further undermine the
ability of the United States to enforce its own laws against unfair
trade. Despite congressional advice to the contrary, this
administration honored the requests of
[[Page S7791]]
foreign governments to renegotiate our trade laws, knowing full well
that these are the same governments that are gutting these laws in
Geneva.
So again I ask, Who does the President work for, the WTO or the
people of the United States? Why would our President want to do this?
Let's step back a minute and look at this objectively. What exactly is
the point of giving the President this authority to negotiate new trade
agreements? Whom are we kidding? The goal of foreign governments in
these negotiations is not to strengthen U.S. trade laws but to weaken
them. And they have said as much. They begged us to put our laws on the
negotiating table so they could water them down or kill them.
Does anyone really believe that negotiating new trade agreements at
the explicit request of the very nations that are committed to
destroying our trade laws would somehow result in a better deal for the
United States than if we had simply walked away?
The foreign governments whose representatives sit on these WTO panels
are launching a two-pronged attack on the United States. First, they
seek to undermine our trade laws by having the President renegotiate
them, meaning weaken them, in the new trade round. At the same time,
whenever the United States applies an antidumping or countervailing
duty order or a remedy under section 201 as we did recently in the
steel case, our foreign competitors simply take us to the WTO where
they continue to chip, chip, chip away at the laws passed by Congress
precisely to stop their illegal actions.
We already know, based on bitter experience, that regardless of what
is negotiated in Geneva, future WTO panels will continue to find U.S.
law inconsistent with the new international agreement. These WTO panels
are not ruling against the United States based on their understanding
of international law. They are not seeking to uphold a greater good.
These panels are ruling against the United States to eviscerate--
eviscerate, disembowel--our trade laws so they can gain unfettered
access to our markets--aha, the largest and most lucrative markets on
Earth. And inconceivably this administration wants to help them do it.
Even the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Baucus,
agrees that the WTO panel's interim ruling against the Continued
Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, known to some as the Byrd amendment,
was yet another example of how WTO panels are trying to undermine our
trade remedies by telling us that we cannot enforce our own laws. These
WTO panels are not seeking simply to prevent us from enforcing our own
laws. No, they are going far beyond that. They are basically making new
laws. That is what they are doing. They are basically making new laws
by exceeding the scope of legal review that is permitted under the WTO
agreements. Standard of review of the relevant WTO agreements is based
on language that was painstakingly negotiated by all WTO members during
the Uruguay round.
In those negotiations, WTO members agreed that in a dumping case, a
panel is not permitted to substitute its own judgment for a member's
government so long as, one, there is more than one permissible
interpretation of a WTO agreement; and, two, the interpretation by the
member government is a permissible one.
The problem is, according to the WTO, there is only one permissible
interpretation to these agreements. That permissible interpretation, it
turns out, is never the interpretation of the United States. Instead,
it is always the interpretation of the WTO panel. Rigged? We are beaten
before we go in. We are out of the game before we enter. Instead, it is
always the interpretation of the WTO panel.
During the Uruguay round, all WTO members agreed that there could be
more than one permissible interpretation of a WTO agreement, but
current WTO panelists dismiss that.
So if WTO panels do not respect their own agreements today, why does
President Bush think they will abide by the agreements he negotiates
tomorrow? Why should they? They know if down the line they refuse to
play by the rules, this President will simply suggest another round of
trade negotiations and those negotiations in the end will benefit whom.
Them. Not us.
The President is again getting started on these lengthy negotiations
right away. Why? Who does he work for, the WTO or the American people
out there who are watching through those lenses? He thinks he can
appease our trading partners. In effect, this administration is trying
to ``buy off'' our foreign competitors. It is more worried about them
than it is about America. The administration is like Willy Loman in
``Death of a Salesman.'' He wants everybody to like us--everybody.
I have a new little dog. It is a Tibetan terrier. Its ancestors were
born and bred in Tibet. They were to be used in the palace because they
were so loving. They loved everybody. My new little dog is called
Trouble. My wife named our little dog Trouble.
No dog will ever take the place of Billy, but Billy is gone. Billy
has gone on to Billy's heaven, and so has Bonnie, his sister.
Now we have a new dog--a new dog, a little dog. It is a lap dog, a
real lap dog. That is why these dogs were bred. And they are loving.
They are small. They were born and bred for the palace in Tibet--China.
So the little dog loves everybody. I can pick up that little dog, and
it will lick me, and it will lick me, and it will wash my face, and it
will kiss me. It loves everybody.
Well, that is the way it is here. That is the way it is here. The
administration is like Willy Loman in ``Death of a Salesman.'' It wants
everybody to love us.
Maybe the President has a special nickname for each of our foreign
competitors, as he does for our adversaries in the press corps. How
about that? The President has a nickname for adversaries in the press
corps--the fourth estate that sits up there in those galleries and
watches, watches, and listens every hour and every minute that we are
here.
So he has a special nickname for each of our foreign competitors--
maybe--as he does for his adversaries in the press corps. But his
desire to have the United States be loved by everyone could result in
our trading partners' loving us to death. His ongoing attempts to buy
friendship abroad are sowing the seeds of destruction here at home.
For example, the Bush administration continues to compulsively exempt
foreign imports from the 201 remedy on steel because it is concerned
that the remedy is ``upsetting'' our foreign competitors. Rather than
adhering to the letter of the 201 law, in the face of foreign critics,
the administration every few weeks bows and scrapes, hems and haws,
and, lo and behold, issues a new list of products suddenly exempted
from the 201. These exclusions amount to thousands of tons of imported
foreign steel. Is it any wonder that, despite the 201 tariffs, there
was a 37 percent increase in steel imports in June compared to May of
this year?
And here is another question. Is the President's strategy of
appeasing our offended trading partners paying off? Apparently not. As
of July 12, the President had excluded 247 products from the 201
remedy, which amounted to 740,000 tons of foreign, unfairly-traded
steel. However, after reviewing the exclusions that were announced by
the administration on July 11, a spokesman for the European Commission
said those exclusions were ``not enough.'' The EC said the United
States would have to provide more exclusions or the EC would retaliate.
So, glory be, what a surprise, on July 19, 2002, the President issued a
new list of additional exclusions, including, of course, more
exclusions of European steel. If that wasn't enough, the administration
went on to announce that it would continue to grant exclusions on a
``rolling'' basis--which apparently means whenever we are threatened
with retaliation--through the end of August. Not surprisingly, the EC
suddenly announced it had decided to postpone its decision on whether
to retaliate until the end of September. Coincidence? I think not.
Listen to what the EC told us. The Danish Foreign Minister, speaking
for the EC, candidly stated, ``We decided that if we sanctioned the
United States now, it might prove more difficult for the U.S. to add
additional exclusions.'' But notice he did not say that the EC would
not retaliate at the end of September, even if the President gives the
EC all of the exclusions it asks for. Will we be able to buy off the EC
by continuing to grant these exclusions? Not based on recent history.
Listen to this.
[[Page S7792]]
On Monday, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body announced it was adding
Brazil to the list of seven other WTO members that have requested a WTO
panel in Geneva to contest our steel 201 remedy. If someone were to
ask, ``Well, why didn't the President just exclude Brazilian products
from the 201, as he has so many others?'' they might be surprised to
learn that, in fact, Brazil was one of the first nations to be granted
a 201 exclusion, and it was a whopper. You know about those fish we
catch--``And it was a whopper.'' Obviously, it is not only futile but
ridiculous for the United States to keep caving in to the demands of
foreign critics. Why are we allowing ourselves to be cuckolded by
foreign suitors we know are insincere? We cannot appease them by giving
them further exclusions. They will have their cake and eat it, too--
won't they?
Professor John Jackson of the University of Michigan is considered to
be one of the most knowledgeable experts on GATT and the WTO in the
whole wide world. Listen to what Professor Jackson wrote about the
origins of the GATT in 1969. He wrote that it was an invention created
by men, that was perhaps the least handsome of all the major
international institutions of our time. He said the GATT began as only
one wheel of a larger machine, the ill-fated International Trade
Organization. And, he said, when the ILO fell apart, this wheel--the
GATT--became a unicycle on which the burdens of the larger machine were
heaped. He said of the GATT:
This unicycle, for reasons not fully understood, has
continued to roll through two decades since it was put
together. To be sure, it takes careful balance to keep it
rolling and ad hoc repairs and tinkering have brought it to a
point where the bailing wire and scrap metal which hold it
together form an almost incomprehensible maze.
Professor Jackson made this observation in 1969. Add to this maze
another thirty-three years of bailing wire, scrap metal, and ad hoc
repairs and what do you get? The World Trade Organization. The WTO. An
incomprehensible maze that is still rolling along, but rolling so hard
and fast now, it's careening out of control.
And the greatest irony of all of this, Mr. President, is that it all
began at the behest of the United States. In the early 30's, at the
request of Senator Roosevelt's Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, the
United States enacted the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934.
Between 1934 and 1945, the President negotiated and entered into 32
trade agreements. Most, if not all of the clauses in the GATT, can be
traced to one or another of the clauses that were contained in those
early trade agreements. So the United States was there at the inception
of the GATT, and it continues to nurture what is now the WTO. And, I am
sorry to report that we in the United States are still the greatest
financial contributor to the WTO, paying approximately 16 percent of
its total budget for the luxury of being told our laws are meaningless,
and we don't know how to interpret WTO agreements that are rooted in
American law.
I submit we are being hoisted on our own petard, and that, rather
than protecting us, the Bush administration is simply helping to
sharpen the blade.
I yield the floor. I reserve the remainder of my time, if I have
anything.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, today we stand on the precipice of passing
a monumental expansion of trade adjustment assistance and overdue fast
track trade negotiating authority for our country.
Before the debate closes, I wanted to explain how important this
legislation is to my home State of Montana. Montana exports nearly a
half billion dollars in products a year. We only have 900,000 people in
our State. This includes $260 million in agricultural commodities, $100
million in industrial machinery, $24 million in chemical products, and
$37 million in wood and paper products.
We export more than $300 million to Canada, $34 million to Mexico and
have significant trade with China, Japan, Germany and the United
Kingdom. In fact, just last week, Ambassador Moreno from Colombia
visited Great Falls, Montana and announced a major wheat and barley
purchase, with more trade opportunities to follow.
And that is just the beginning--if we are willing to engage the
world. This bill helps us do that by allowing the President to
negotiate new agreements to open foreign markets which is so necessary
to the United States, and brings down trade barriers which is so
important to this country.
I would like to read a letter I received from the Montana Grain
Growers, Montana Stockgrowers, Montana Farm Bureau and Montana Chamber
of Commerce that addresses this very point. To quote:
We are aware that trade is not always free or fair, but we
believe this legislation is vital in putting the United
States on a similar playing field with agreements that are
negotiated around the world. While we understand that trade
promotion authority will not fully address inequities with
existing trade agreements, we feel strongly that this is an
important way of establishing long-term agreements that will
help return profitability back to the producer level.
I could not agree more. We need to take a seat at the negotiating
table and level the playing field for our producers. It is not level
today.
This means taking aim at the Canadian wheat board and finally
dismantling its market distorting monopoly.
This means reducing foreign agricultural tariffs to levels that are
the same as or lower than those in the United States. These are the
same tariffs that block Montana beef exports to Korea and Japan.
This means eliminating all export subsidies on agricultural
commodities while maintaining bona fide food aid and export credit
programs that allow the U.S. to compete with other foreign export
promotion efforts.
As you well know, Mr. President, the European Union maintains the
lion's share of these agricultural export subsidies. You know this
figure. It is 60 times more than the U.S. agricultural export
subsidies--not 6, 60 times more than the United States. How can we as
Americans ever expect to compete in the world if we are undersold time
and time again by foreign-backed competitors? We can't. We need a trade
agreement so we can begin to level that playing field and begin to
eliminate those trade-distorting subsidies that are 60 times greater in
one area than those of the United States.
This means preventing unjustified sanitary or phytosanitary
restrictions not based on sound science. For three decades we fought to
pry open the Chinese market to Pacific Northwest wheat. Now we are
struggling with markets in Chile and Russia that place arbitrary
sanitary barriers on U.S. exports of beef, pork and poultry. This must
end, to say nothing about the EU restriction on American beef.
They will not take American beef. I remember meeting with Mrs.
Margaret Thatcher. She admitted to me that it was a phony excuse. She
said that to me personally.
And, most importantly, this means promoting trade while
simultaneously maintaining a strong agricultural policy that preserves
our family farms and rural communities.
Agriculture is not the only industry dependent on trade, however. We
must continue to work to guarantee that small businesses have access to
foreign markets.
It is open foreign markets that create new opportunities for a
Bozeman, MT company that ships trailers for mining equipment to Latin
America; that allow a Missoula company to expand its nutraceutical
trade; it is open foreign markets that allow our nurseries to send
seeds and seedling trees to developing nations rather than fighting
phony sanitary barriers.
The potential for preserving good jobs--and even creating new jobs--
doesn't stop there.
But there is a potential downside to trade that is also addressed by
this bill. In this package we target assistance for workers who are
struggling because of trade assistance for workers who are struggling
because of trade by expanding the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program.
[[Page S7793]]
Many Montana workers are now back at work and many firms are still in
business thanks to TAA. Take for example, Montola Growers which is
researching new markets for its safflower oil, Thirteen Mile Lamb and
Wool Company which is designing new garments for manufacture by
contract knitters, and Pyramid Lumber, which is improving its milling
efficiency.
Expanded trade adjustment assistance will help Montana workers by
streamlining the process and expanding the net of eligibility. More
will be eligible. In addition, a new program will provide up to $10,000
in cash assistance to Montana farmers and ranchers injured by imports.
This should be a good incentive to keep Montana farmers and ranchers,
their families, and future generations on the land.
Good jobs will be created in Montana if we are willing to give our
negotiators the strong hand needed to secure sound trade agreements,
open those markets, and knock down those barriers. I hope my colleagues
will feel the same about their own constituencies and lend their
support to this very important matter.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the
letter I quoted be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
July 31, 2002.
Hon. Max Baucus,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
RE: Unified Support for TPA Passage
Dear Senator Baucus: On behalf of the Montana Farm Bureau
Federation. The Montana Stockgrowers Association, the Montana
Grain Growers Association and the Montana Chamber of Commerce
we would like to reconfirm our support of Trade Promotion
Authority (TPA). We ask for your support as well when the
bill comes to the floor of the Senate later this week.
As you know, this bill has already overcome many hurdles,
including passage in both the House and Senate. Just last
week, the House approved the conference report. Passage in
the Senate is the last hurdle before it goes to the President
for signature.
We are aware that trade is not always free or fair. But we
believe this legislation is vital in putting the United
States on a similar playing field with agreements that are
negotiated around the world. While we understand that trade
promotion authority will not fully address inequities with
existing trade agreements, we feel strongly that this is an
important way of establishing long term agreements that will
help return profitability back to the producer level.
It should be noted that Montana sold over half a billion
dollars worth of exports last year to 100 foreign markets.
Agriculture accounted for half of that value. We must find a
way to put more money in the pockets of our farmers and
ranchers or they will not be able to stay in business. The
vast majority of ag producers recognize that increasing
exports increases their bottom line.
Thank you for your continued strong support of Montana
agricultural producers.
Sincerely.
Jake Cummins,
Executive Vice President, Montana Farm Bureau Federation.
Steve Pilcher,
Executive Vice President, Montana Stockgrowers Association.
Webb Brown,
President, Montana Chamber of Commerce.
Richard Owen,
Executive Vice President, Montana Grain Growers
Association.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
____________________