[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 30, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1717-H1718]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    FREE/FAIR TRADE AND UNEMPLOYMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I hail from the Great State of Ohio, 
where we have lost 300,000 jobs since George Bush has been President, 
2,000 a week, 260 a day. In Youngstown, the biggest city in my 
district, we have an unemployment rate of 16 percent. In the city of 
Warren, the second largest city in my district, we have an unemployment 
rate of 14 percent. This President's economic policies are clearly not 
working in the industrial Midwest.
  Now, the gentleman from Texas who was up a few moments before me was 
talking about all of the benefits of free trade, and he said that it 
increased wages in this country, he said it increased the standard of 
living in this country, and he said that it lowered prices for 
consumers in this country. I do not think we can challenge the fact 
that free trade has clearly lowered prices or kept prices from getting 
out of control and from skyrocketing. I do not know if they clearly 
show the level of savings. I think the savings by offshore cheap labor 
has been a boom for the corporations but not necessarily a boom all the 
way across the board for consumers.
  But what I want to talk about tonight is just a few issues that I 
think the American people are beginning to recognize and understand.
  First, on the issue of unemployment benefits.
  We have human beings, we have workers who work throughout the United 
States of America who are running out of unemployment benefits, who are 
going to have nothing left, and we want to talk about the intellectual 
battles of free trade while United States citizens are going to fall 
through the cracks.
  This administration's priorities have been tax cuts, tax cuts, tax 
cuts to the top 1 percent. They are a one-trick pony, this 
administration is and this Congress is. A one-trick pony. Tax cuts are 
the answers for any social ill that we have here, and it is not 
working.
  Second, the debate between free trade and fair trade, I think, has 
been obscured. You are either for free trade, or you are against it, 
and you are for putting up protections and not agreeing to any trade 
whatsoever. When I talk about fair trade, I think we need to look at 
the issue on the whole, and we need to say to each other what the 
benefits of trading are and what are the downsides of free trade are.
  The downsides are obvious. We are displacing workers. We have 
unemployment rates going through the roof. We are losing good-paying 
jobs for menial-wage jobs, and we are competing with a labor force that 
is getting paid nickels an hour, no health care benefits, no 
environmental relations, no OSHA, and we are asking American workers to

[[Page H1718]]

compete with that. We cannot even get international labor organization 
standards put into our free trade agreements which just say no child 
labor, no slave labor in these other countries. We cannot even get 
those into the agreements we sign.
  We are not asking for everything. We are asking for basic human 
rights in the trade agreements that we sign.
  When a lot of us talk about fair trade in this country, at least, at 
the minimum, have a social safety net that addresses unemployment 
benefits, that addresses health care insurance for people. How much 
anxiety would be relieved if you did lose your job if you knew you were 
going to have health care provided for you and your family.
  Every time free trade agreements have come before this House and 
before this country, the commitment was always made that we had to 
invest in education. Meanwhile, in Ohio, the No Child Left Behind 
provisions are underfunded by $1.5 billion, with a ``B'', a year. That 
is $1.5 billion. So if we want to grab the last 25 percent of the kids 
and pull them across the finish line, which is what No Child Left 
Behind is supposed to do, and we are going to have all these Federal 
mandates, the Federal government must make a decision. Are we going to 
give tax cuts to the top 1 percent or are we going to invest that money 
in the No Child Left Behind so that every single child in this country 
will have an opportunity to compete on an already uneven playing field 
in the global economy?
  Investments in research and development through the Veterans 
Administration are being cut. The facts are that we have told our kids 
that they must make investments in themselves and in their education 
through going to college, and yet we see the Pell Grant not keeping up 
with inflation and we see children not having the opportunity to live 
and work in a country where there is a reasonable wage and an 
opportunity for upward mobility.
  We are trying to argue comparative advantage, a doctrine that was 
established in the early 1800s. We need to change our policy. I never 
thought that we would be asking for Newt Gingrich to come back and 
bring some reasonableness to this Congress.

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