[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 97 (Wednesday, July 14, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H5785-H5788]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REPUBLICAN PLAN FOR AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) is recognized
for half the time until midnight as the designee of the majority
leader.
Mr. TIAHRT. Madam Speaker, while the Nation has been watching the
Presidential campaign and the events in Iraq, the Republicans in the
House have been moving forward with an agenda to bring jobs back into
America.
Now, we have seen a lot of economic success over the last year. Just
as a reminder, back in 1999 we had the first hit to our then strong
economy when we had the tech bubble burst. We had a lot of technical
industries lose a great deal of value. The NASDAQ, which typically has
tech companies as the companies that trade on that exchange, the value
of that exchange dropped dramatically to less than half. So the tech
bubble burst.
Then in 2000 we had the beginning of the recession towards the end of
the year. Technically, it started in the end of 2000 prior to President
Bush being sworn into office. That had an impact on our economy.
Then, of course, there was the events of September 11, when
terrorists took our own technology and turned it into a weapon and
attacked the Pentagon and Washington, D.C., and tore down the World
Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people. That had a dramatic impact
on our economy.
It was not any policy of the Republican administration. It was not
any policies that came out of the Republican House. It was events that
occurred, as I just discussed, beyond the circumstances of Congress.
Those events, though, have turned around since we passed tax relief.
Tax relief has been very beneficial to the American economy because
people can only do one of three things when
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they get a little money in their pocket through tax relief.
Number one, they can spend it. When they spend money, that is a
demand for goods. That means there are more goods being sold in the
economy and a demand for more jobs.
Number two, they can save the money. That makes money available for
home mortgages. And, as we know, now we have the largest expansion of
home sales we have ever had in our economy; and now minorities in
America have a higher percentage of home ownership than ever before in
the history of our Nation. If they save money, that is good for
building homes.
Third, they can invest money into the stock market, which is capital
for companies to invest in their business to hire more people and
invest in jobs.
So after the President asked for tax relief and it was initiated in
the House of Representatives and then passed to his desk for his
signature, we started to see a turnaround in the United States economy.
We have had 1.5 million new jobs since last August. We have today more
people working in America than ever before in our Nation's history, and
the average salary for all workers in America is higher than it has
ever been in the history of our country.
So this has been very good for our economy to have tax relief, and we
are starting to see the strength of our economy growing and blooming.
And yet with all that good news, we can do better. We found out that
there have been problems, barriers to bringing jobs into America. These
barriers were not created in the boardrooms of America. They were not
created by the CEOs of America or the managers or owners of small
business, and it was not created by the employees themselves, either.
These barriers have been created by Congress over the last
generation. Good intentions found their way into regulations and laws
that have hurt our economy and prevented us from bringing jobs back
into America. So the House Republicans have devised a plan called
Careers for the 21st Century. That plan is a plan to remove the
barriers that employees and small businessmen and employees, employers,
both, face every day they go to work.
We are going to try to remove those barriers. In fact, we have been
very active. As of today, we have passed 24 pieces of legislation from
the House of Representatives. We have started with taking these eight
issues that are barriers, divided into eight issues the barriers, and
then we took them a week at a time.
We started out by addressing health care security. We passed
legislation that will help reduce the cost of health care in America by
some common-sense reforms.
We then moved on to reduce the bureaucratic red tape in America. We
made significant progress.
We then went on to life-long learning so we would have an experienced
and well-trained workforce so when these jobs came to America we would
have people to take those jobs.
The next week we went on to energy self-sufficiency. It is very
important and appropriate, because we are now facing close to $2 a
gallon for gasoline, and we are having high cost for natural gas. It is
time we change our energy policy so we can create about 7 or 800,000
jobs in America, plus bring down the cost of energy, and that in turn
will allow us to attract more jobs into America. So we passed energy
self-sufficiency and security.
We then moved on to spurring innovation and talked about how
important it is to have solid research and development and how
important it is to be innovative here in America. We have a long
history of innovation that starts back during the Revolutionary War.
The idea of the principles, the virtues, the values we have in this
country enhance our ability to come up with good ideas and take those
good ideas and put them into practice by manufacturing goods and
selling those goods both here and overseas. It is these virtues and
values we talked about and how we can continue to spur innovation
through research and development.
This week we dealt with trade fairness and opportunity, very
important issues as far as opening up new markets so that we can create
more jobs by exporting.
Then we will go on next week to tax relief and simplification. Tax
relief is so important, but simplification is also important. It helps
us do the job more quickly and not waste money on preparing taxes. That
money can be diverted to creating more jobs.
We will then come back in September and deal with Indian lawsuit
abuse.
Going back to trade fairness and opportunity, why is it so important
for us to address this issue? If you look at the recent history in this
country, we have had lot of problems in opening up markets overseas. If
you look at the trade agreements that we have had recently, it was
during the Reagan administration that we finally got a free trade
agreement with Israel back in 1985. Then we did not have any agreement
until we finally got an agreement with Canada in 1988, again in the
Reagan administration.
Then we moved on to Mexico in through the NAFTA agreement, and that
was done in 1994 under the Clinton administration. And since then we
have been able to get a free trade agreement with Jordan, with
Singapore, with Chili, and today we passed from the House an agreement
for free trade between Australia and America.
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These types of agreements are very important because they open up
markets for small companies. One of these success stories in America is
a guy that lives in Wichita, Kansas. His name is Leon Trammel. Leon
traveled around overseas and he saw a very real need and figured out a
way to satisfy that need.
Many of the countries import grain or export grain. That grain has to
be taken off the ship and put into some kind of storage container or it
would have to be taken out of a storage container and put on to a ship.
If it was an open conveyor belt to go between those two objects, the
ship and the containment facility or the milling operation, if it was
open to the environment, it was subject to environmental risk from rain
and dust. It would be part of that, and he has figured out a way to
convey grain or any other substance in a clean fashion by encasing
these conveyor belts and using a century old principle of elevating
these conveyor belts on a sheet of air. Much like you have on air
hockey game that you can find at your local arcade.
Well, Leon took that, put it into practical application, and he has
been able to take that technology all over the globe. He has used it in
Norway, China, in Asia, as well as in America, Canada and Mexico. So he
has been able to benefit from these free trade agreements that we have
set into place.
Now, why is it important we have free trade agreements? Why does it
mean something when we open up these markets? Here is a comparison of
existing barriers on the sale of manufactured goods in foreign markets.
If you look at America, our levels are about 4.3 percent as an
average for incoming goods. We put a tariff on that, a tax. It helps us
with our Federal budget, but it is a tax that comes in, and it is an
opportunity for us to attract goods and services into America.
But if you compare that to other parts of the world, we have Pakistan
that has nearly 50 percent tariff. Now, how are we going to be able to
export goods into Pakistan when we have that big of a barrier to
overcome in just the amount of money that goes towards paying fees to
Pakistan? As a result, they have a very weak economy. They should
change that and open up the goods for trading.
Saudi Arabia has an almost 12\1/2\ percent tariff; Thailand near 15
percent. India has a 32 percent tariff. Their economies suffer from
that, and it keeps us from exporting goods and services to them. It is
important we negotiate these trade agreements so we can have lower
trade fees for exports, and that allows us to more easily access their
markets.
When they can open up the markets, as in South Korea, which has about
7\1/2\ percent, we can have people in small companies around the United
States that can then trade with these countries.
There is a small company in Wichita, Kansas, called LP Technologies,
Incorporated. The president is Samuel Lee. It is just a small company
of eight employees, but their markets are Taiwan and Korea. They sell
measuring and monitoring equipment for the communications industry.
Their sales last
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year were $1.8 million. Now, it does not seem like a lot in the scheme
of things, but when you realize that four out of five jobs in Kansas
are small employers like this, being able to start a whole lot of these
small businesses is very good for our economy. It puts people to work
and allows them to have their dreams come true and export agreements,
free trade agreements are the things that open up that kind of a
market.
Now what happens when you do not have a free trade opportunity? A
good example is Creekstone Farm Premium Beef in Arkansas City. Now,
Creekstone used to export meat to Japan and to South Korea, and then we
had a cow come in from Canada that had BSE or mad cow disease. We were
able to isolate that cow and it did not get into our meat markets, and
we now have had measures put in place in Canada so that they can
prevent this from happening again, but America has the safest meat
supply in the world. There is no problem there, but yet Japan and South
Korea were worried about it so they have closed their export markets.
What that meant to Creekstone is they have already laid off about 60
people. The 750 employees that are there now are cut back from a 5-day
work week to a 4-day work week. We are trying to open up the markets by
allowing some voluntary screening. That is being blocked by USDA right
now, but as an example of closing markets, it means that we close down
jobs in America. By opening up markets, we are going to open up jobs in
America. So Creekstone is currently suffering from that. We are in the
process of trying to change that environment.
Another success story, though, is a couple of Americans who came over
from China as a result of the Tiananmen Square incident. Both of them
have some experience in aerospace parts manufacturing, and they have
some contacts in China through their families, but the company's name
is Mid-American Supply Corporation and Tom Tian is the president.
They are a wholesaler of aircraft parts to the Chinese aircraft
industry. They export to China. They exported $2.4 million worth of
goods in fiscal year 2000. They came about with this idea that took
advantage of open markets in China, and they went over there and
created a company, and now they are very successful. It is another
successful small business. These types of small businesses are very
important for our economy.
Trade correctly spurs the economy, and it creates jobs by expanding
markets for American business. We know all too well that economic and
market changes brought about by trade do displace workers from specific
jobs, but rather than turn to a trade barrier, which only slows our
economy and leads to lower productivity and living standards, we are
committed as House Republicans to preparing American workers for
changes in ensuring higher paying and higher quality jobs for them by
embracing free and fair trade opportunities.
We have had some people who have resisted change, trying to cling on
to old jobs in America, and instead of looking forward, they sort of
look backward. I think a good example is the railroad.
United Transportation Union was very hesitant to release firemen from
off the engine on the railroad, the engines that pull the freight cars.
If you think about it, we had firemen that were initially put on the
engines of railroads so that they could shovel the coal into a furnace
which then heated the water. That created steam which propelled the
engine and pulled the cars down the track. Well, when they went from
those old coal-burning engines and wood-burning engines that created
steam and they went to a diesel engine that created electricity by
turning a generator, which is what it works like today, there was no
longer a need for somebody to shovel coal or throw wood into a furnace,
but yet they insisted on keeping firemen on the engine, riding on the
front of the train, and there was no need for it.
So years and years went by, even decades, and my brother-in-law works
on the railroad now. He is a conductor on the railroad, and when he
first started they still had firemen. Then they let the firemen go
because there was no need for them. It was an inefficient job. Those
guys have gone out, many of them have been retrained, and they are off
learning new jobs and becoming more productive in America with
productive jobs.
So we cannot look backwards. We need to make sure that we continue
our productivity.
One way of ensuring it is to ensure that we have open trade
agreements so that we will become more efficient, that we will prepare
our work force for new technologies and we will be innovative and move
forward.
The trade possibilities are endless. As President Bush said, look at
it this way, America's got 5 percent of the world's population. That
means that 95 percent of the potential customers are in other
countries. Even if a great level of protectionism were implemented,
low-tech jobs would still be replaced by technology or shifted to lower
wage locations and overtime.
I think another good example is our agriculture environment here in
America. If you go back to when I was just a young kid out on a farm,
we had probably six families that were farming the ground that my
grandfather owned. If you take those six families and look at them over
the years, they gradually moved on to other things. My grandfather, and
then later on my father, bought larger and larger equipment. They
became more and more productive. Their crop yields increased, and yet
their expense costs for labor went down.
{time} 2320
So they went from having horses being involved in the agricultural
process to having huge tractors that pulled eight-row and larger
equipment. Well, the American farmer has become more and more
productive and that productivity has ensured lower food costs. In fact,
in America, we pay the lowest percentage of our income on food of any
of our trading partners in the world. So it is very important that we
continue to move forward with productivity as a way of having a strong
economy.
There has been a lot of study on this issue, people who have looked
into this and saw what impact there would be if we did not have trade,
what impact there would be if we had more trade, and how important it
is for us to open new markets. Ana Isabel Erias, from the Heritage
Foundation, said, ``Goods and services flowing across borders foster
new ideas and allow U.S. producers to learn about the markets from the
failure and success of trading products. As they learn more, they are
able to innovate and remain competitive.''
That is part of why America needs to support free trade, because it
moves us forward. It does not collapse around us, but it moves us
forward. The Heritage Foundation went on to say, ``Free trade allows
the U.S. to specialize in goods and services that American workers
produce more efficiently than the rest of the world, and at the same
time free trade allows domestic producers to shop around the world for
the least expensive inputs they can use for their production, which in
turn allows them to keep their cost of production down, without
sacrificing quality.''
So I think it is very important that we keep this concept of free
trade moving forward. We have other countries that we need to open up
markets in, and especially for our agricultural community, especially
for aerospace products, and especially for these new technologies we
are currently developing. It is important because that brings jobs into
the country.
I have another chart that I want to move on to. This one talks about
a geographic distribution of U.S. exports and imports from 1990 to
2002. Now, if we look at the top part of these, it looks like an eye
test. The group of countries here, Canada, the European Union, Japan,
and other advanced economies, in 1990 they used to make about 63.1
percent of our total exports. Today, or in 2002, that dropped slightly
to 57.6 percent of our exports. On imports, the advanced economies
consist of 58.7 percent of imports in 1990. By 2002, that dropped six
points to 57.2.
But when we look at the developing countries, in 1990, that only
consisted of 19.9 percent of our exports. By 2002, that had grown to 37
percent. Imports in 1990 from the developing countries was 36.1
percent. That has grown to 41.7 percent. So that is a very good
indication of why we need to open up markets in developing countries
and why
[[Page H5788]]
we need to look at some of these countries that have these high trade
barriers and to negotiate those down to where they are closer to where
ours are. That will help us export goods and develop new markets and
bring jobs into America.
The four pieces of legislation that were included in this week's
trade and fairness opportunity block of bills consisted of H.R. 4759,
which was the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement
Implementation Act. That is going to allow us to open up markets in
Australia and allow us to compete with agricultural goods and
airplanes, like those airplanes made in Wichita, Kansas, the air
capital of the world. It will be good for our economy.
We also passed H.R. 3463, which was the State Unemployment Tax Act
Dumping Prevention Act. That allowed us to watch these companies that
are trying to avoid State unemployment tax and bring them back in. This
makes this unemployment tax system fairer to the other employers in the
State and fairer to the employees who may have to suffer some
unemployment at some time while they are being retrained. It brings
these employers into line with other companies that they are competing
with.
Then we passed H. Res. 705, urging the President to resolve the
disparate treatment of direct and indirect taxes presently provided by
the World Trade Organization.
And the last one we passed was H. Res. 576, urging the government of
the People's Republic of China to improve its protection of
intellectual property rights.
As we all know, the intellectual property rights have been greatly
violated in China. We want them to crack down on that because it means
that our developing ideas, our art, our books, our pharmaceutical
advancements are protected by patents, and we want them to acknowledge
that.
So these four bills have been added to the 20 bills we passed before
with previous legislation in the eight categories. We have passed the
first five categories, that included 20 bills, and these four add to
that to make a total of 24.
Again, we started out with health care security, under the eight
issues that are contained in the Careers For A 21st Century in America.
We helped lower the cost of health care in America to make ourselves
more competitive. Then we addressed bureaucratic red tape termination
to cut down the bulk of paperwork that we have here that prevents us
from expanding our economy. We then went on to lifelong learning so
that we would have a trained workforce for these new jobs. We then
dealt with energy self-sufficiency and security.
We moved on the following week to spurring innovation through
research and development. This week, we dealt with trade fairness and
opportunity. Next week we will be on tax relief and simplification. And
then, in September, we are going to address the issue of ending lawsuit
abuse.
These issues are barriers to bringing jobs back into America.
Congress created this environment and the Congress is addressing that
environment, changing it so that we can open markets, so that we can
bring back workers into America and have a stronger economy. This will
mean that our kids and our grandkids will have the opportunity to start
the businesses they want to start or get the jobs that they want.
It has been a good program that we have dealt with here on the floor
of the House. We hope that we can get it to the President's desk for
signature, all 24 of these bills. We will continue this effort until we
find the relief that is necessary to bring more jobs back into America.
We have heard a lot of people complain about outsourcing of American
jobs. The problems that they are facing that cause outsourcing are
these eight issues that Congress has created, and it is time we change
that environment.
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