[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 93 (Tuesday, June 4, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3174-S3176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Maiden Speech

  Mr. ROMNEY. Mr. President, I have been a Member of this body for 
several months now, and I would like to offer a few observations about 
the experience.
  I had been told that I might not like it here. Having previously been 
a Governor, some friends thought I might find the pace a little too 
slow and decision making too diffuse and cumbersome, but that has not 
been the case.
  My committee assignments are interesting and the work is important, 
and while few bills actually become law, the fact that both political 
parties must reach consensus for a bill to pass reinforces the ties 
that bind our Republic.
  Given the public passion of our politics these days, I had also 
presumed that the atmosphere here would vary between prickly and 
hostile, but the truth is that Senators on both sides of the aisle are 
remarkably friendly and collegial once the cameras are off.
  I have now met privately with 68 of my fellow Senators. Like them, I 
came here in part because I believe my life experience could help us 
confront our national challenges. I also believe that the values and 
policies practiced in Utah can inform national debates. Our State has 
the fastest job growth in the country. It balances its budget every 
year. It has the country's most highly educated workforce.
  It is a great privilege to represent the people of Utah in the 
Senate. I am humbled by the history that has been made here, by the 
character of the patriots whose sculptures adorn our halls, and, of 
course, by the great sacrifice made to construct the Capitol of the 
greatest Nation on Earth. To serve here is to be reminded daily of the 
history and greatness of this blessed country.
  The American character has been distinct from our very beginning. 
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans had fashioned a culture 
different from any other he had encountered.
  Just a few weeks ago, I attended the 150th anniversary of the 
completion of the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit in 
Utah. In his keynote address, historian Jon Meacham observed that, in a 
number of ways, that endeavor revealed some of the distinct elements of 
the national

[[Page S3175]]

character. President Abraham Lincoln signed the project's enabling 
legislation on the eve of the Civil War. The country was divided as 
never before or since, and the President was preoccupied with 
preserving the Union. But despite the gathering storm, he had both the 
foresight to see the impact of a transcontinental railroad and the 
confidence to believe it actually could be constructed. We Americans 
are drawn to visionary endeavors, and we rarely lack the confidence 
needed to undertake them.
  It is difficult from today's vantage point to appreciate the extent 
of the project's engineering and construction challenges. Some have 
even called it the greatest engineering triumph of the 19th century. 
Tunnels were blasted through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, 
at first only with black powder. There were no hotels or restaurants 
along the way, no local sources of energy or power tools. On some days, 
the progress through Granite Mountain was measured in inches.
  The cost was prohibitive, particularly for a country preparing for a 
war, so Congress made it a public-private partnership. Two companies--
one from the West, another from the East--were each granted tracks of 
land commensurate with the amount of track they laid. Fierce 
competition ensued, each company wanting to obtain the most land 
possible.
  There were many who opposed the idea of granting public land to 
private companies that stood to make fortunes on the lands they 
received. There were others who thought the project was the height of 
folly--too expensive, too dangerous, and unnecessary. After all, it was 
already possible to go from New York to California in just 6 weeks by 
land and 2 by sea. But having studied and debated the matter, Lincoln 
and Congress defied public criticism and did what they believed was in 
the best interest of the country.
  The construction crews numbered in the thousands. Fifteen thousand 
Chinese immigrants worked for the Central Railroad that began in 
Sacramento, and roughly 7,000 Irish immigrants labored for the Union 
Pacific Railroad coming from the East. In time, veterans of the Civil 
War joined the crews, as did several thousand Mormons from Utah.
  The work conditions were brutal. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 
to 1,000 men died. The achievement was also marred by failures of 
character. The promoters were oblivious to the rights and needs of 
Native Americans and to the plight of the immigrant workers. When the 
railroad was completed, Chinese laborers were denied citizenship. There 
can be a blindness in the human mind that is clouded by ambition. 
Despite these unfavorable and unpardonable failings, the 
Transcontinental Railroad was a grand achievement. It joined two great 
oceans and overcame the challenge of a nation spread across vast 
distances and foreboding lands.
  Intrinsic in the American mind is the conviction that we can overcome 
any challenge. In the years since then, we have achieved greater 
marvels and overcome greater challenges. Seventy-five years ago, brave 
Americans landed on the beaches in Normandy and began the process of 
liberating a continent. Americans turned the tide of two world wars, 
overcame a global depression, conquered deadly, debilitating disease, 
and walked on the surface of the Moon.
  We who have inherited this incomparably accomplished Nation might 
wonder if we will face challenges as daunting and opportunities as 
transformational as theirs. The decisions each generation of Americans 
makes affect the course of history and profoundly impact our prosperity 
and our freedom. We face such decisions today.
  Eight years ago, I argued that Russia was our No. 1 geopolitical 
adversary. Today, China is poised to assume that distinction. Russia 
continues its malign effort, of course--violating treaties, invading 
sovereign nations, pursuing nuclear superiority, interfering in 
elections, spreading lies and hate, protecting the world's worse actors 
from justice, and promoting authoritarianism--but Russia is on a 
declining path. Its population is shrinking, and its industrial base is 
lagging. John McCain famously opined that Russia is a gas station 
parading as a country. As it falls further behind, we must expect 
Russia's inevitable desperation to lead to further and more aberrant 
conduct.
  Unlike Russia, China is on a rising path. When it was admitted to the 
World Trade Organization, the expectation was that China would embrace 
the rules of the global order, including eventually respect for human 
rights. It has done the opposite--imprisoning millions in reeducation 
camps, brutally repressing dissent, censoring the media and internet, 
seizing land and sea that don't belong to it, and flouting the global 
rules of free and fair competition. Like Russia, China promotes 
authoritarianism and protects brutal dictators like Kim Jong Un and 
Nicolas Maduro.

  Today, we mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. That 
day, cries for freedom were brutally crushed. Since then, China has 
pursued a relentless course to smother the kinds of hopes and dreams 
that filled that square 30 years ago.
  It is possible that China might someday experience a discontinuity or 
another uprising that will change its course. But barring that, because 
China's population is almost four times our size, its economy should 
eventually dwarf ours, and because economic advantage enables military 
advantage, China's military could even pass by ours as well. It is 
possible that freedom itself would be in jeopardy. If we fail to act 
now, that possibility may become reality.
  I believe we have two imperatives: First, strengthen ourselves and, 
second, stop China's predation.
  In the long run, for a country like ours, with a relatively small 
population, to rival a country like China, with its much larger 
population, we must join our economic and military might with that of 
other free nations. Alliances are absolutely essential to America's 
security, to our future. I can't state that more plainly. Our alliances 
are invaluable to us and to the cause of freedom. We should strengthen 
our alliances, not dismiss or begrudge them. We should enhance our 
trade with allies, not disrupt them, and coordinate all the more 
closely our security and our defense with them.
  It is in the most vital interest of the United States to see a strong 
NATO, a strong Europe, stronger ties with the free nations of Asia, the 
Pacific, the subcontinent, and with every free country. We need to hold 
our friends closer, not neglect them or drive them away. These 
alliances are a key advantage we have over China. America has many 
friends; China has very few.
  We have another advantage: innovation. The country that leads in 
innovation will lead in prosperity. China knows that as well as we do. 
After all, China began its economic rise by stealing our technologies. 
But today, China has become an impressive innovator all by itself. Last 
year, China received almost as many global patents as did the United 
States. It is far ahead of us in 5G. It is on track to surpass us in 
artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence is a general 
purpose technology that will have systemic impact on the world.
  It is critical that we protect our technology and propel the 
innovation we need in the future. Well resourced and guided, our great 
research universities, combined with the productivity inherent in free 
enterprise, are capable of reasserting America's innovation leadership.
  One dimension of American innovation is often underestimated, 
however. America is a magnet for the world's best and brightest. They 
want to come here, not China. Over half of the 25 most valuable high-
tech companies in America were founded by immigrants or by their 
children. It is very much in our national interest to keep attracting 
the world's best minds to America.
  We also need to tame our national debt and deficit if we are to 
remain strong. The Federal Government took in about $3 trillion last 
year and spent about $4 trillion. Adding a trillion dollars every year 
to the debt means that in 10 years, we would be spending almost as much 
on interest as we do on our military. America won't be strong enough to 
defend its interests and leadership if it strains under the burden of 
crippling financial debt.
  In addition to strengthening America, we must also confront China's 
aggression. China has focused its ambition most acutely on trade. 
Flouting global rules and conventions, China has corrupted the free 
market. China views companies in countries that play by

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the rules as the proverbial fish in a barrel. Too often, we just ignore 
China's aggression, genuflecting before the throne of free markets. But 
you don't have a free market if the biggest player is allowed to cheat.
  China's cheating takes many forms. For many years, it held down the 
value of its currency to make its products artificially inexpensive, 
intending to drive competitors from other countries out of business. 
More recently, China has debased its currency to partially compensate 
for tariffs imposed on its goods. Today, so-called industrial policy is 
China's primary weapon of choice. China subsidizes a company by loaning 
it funds at submarket rates, by forgiving loans, by providing free 
research and development, or simply by allowing it to use intellectual 
property stolen from other nations.
  Subsidy is even easier to hide when the company is owned by the 
government itself. There are 140,000 state-owned enterprises in China, 
accounting for 40 percent of its industrial assets. Profitability, 
return on capital, and repayment of debt are mostly irrelevant in such 
state-owned enterprises. They can employ predatory pricing--entering a 
foreign market by pricing a product well below its cost, driving 
domestic competitors out of business. When an American company does 
that, it is prosecuted under antitrust laws, but proving a Chinese 
product is priced below cost is extremely difficult given the lack of 
reliable cost data.
  China's industrial policies are killing and debilitating businesses 
throughout the world.
  Look, I am a free market, free trade guy, but free markets require 
rules to enforce honest competition. Slavishly accepting China's 
cheating as a dynamic of a free market, competitive workplace makes no 
sense at all. The President is right to use tariffs to crack down on 
China's theft of intellectual property, but when it comes to China's 
predatory industrial policy, the cheating will not end. We need to 
counter it directly.
  Classically, a country has several tools to counter a predatory 
competitor. It can ban all or certain of its products. We did this with 
the Soviets during the Cold War. It can employ counterbalancing 
subsidies. It can require high levels of local content. And, of course, 
it can align with other nations to establish strict rules of conduct, 
which it then vigorously and swiftly enforces. All or some mix of these 
is needed.

  As we confront China's aggression, we must also endeavor to convince 
it to turn back from the road of economic, military, and geopolitical 
conflict upon which it has embarked. Joining the other nations of the 
world in genuinely fair and free trade and in respect for the 
sovereignty of its trading partners and neighbors is very much in 
China's, America's, and the world's interest. China is not yet a 
geopolitical foe, but its actions over the last several years have 
brought it right up to that line.
  What I have said today won't come as a surprise to leaders here in 
Washington. The forms of China's aggression are widely understood by 
members of the administration, Members of Congress, and foreign affairs 
experts on both sides of the aisle. But, to date, our national response 
has largely been ad hoc or short-term or piecemeal. It is past time for 
us to conduct and construct a comprehensive strategy to meet the 
challenge of an ambitious and increasingly hostile China.
  I said at the outset of my remarks that there are two dimensions 
needed in a strategy to preserve American leadership: First, strengthen 
America, and second, confront China's predation. There is a third 
dimension. We must alert the American people to the threat we face and 
unite them to the greatest extent possible in our response. In the 
past, an act of war or blustering threats by hostile actors have united 
us. But don't expect to see the Chinese President pound his shoe on the 
counter or shout that he is going to bury us, as Nikita Khrushchev did 
long ago. No, China intends to overcome us just like the cook who kills 
the frog in a pot of boiling water, smiling and cajoling as it slowly 
turns up the military and economic heat.
  The disappearance of traditional media and the emergence of social 
media have made it more difficult to unite the country. Conspiring 
voices online prey on the human tendency to diminish the dignity and 
worth of people of different views, of different races, religions, or 
colors. Contempt rather than empathy is a growing feature in our 
politics and media. Each of us must make an effort to shut out the 
voices of hate and fear, to ignore divisive and alarming conspiracies, 
and to be more respectful, more empathetic of our fellow Americans. And 
when it comes to cooling the rhetoric and encouraging unity, there is 
no more powerful medium than the bully pulpit of the President of the 
United States.
  Bringing a nation of 330 million people together in a shared effort 
is a greater challenge these days than bringing 2 coasts together with 
a railroad. But now, as then, national unity demands that the voices of 
leaders draw upon the better angels of our nature. They must call upon 
the distinctive qualities of our national character evidenced time and 
again in American history. We must reaffirm the principles of the 
Declaration of Independence.
  Jon Meacham said it well: The greatest words ever originally written 
in English may be these: ``All Men are created equal.'' That founding 
conviction propelled America to become the greatest Nation on Earth. No 
people have done more to assuage poverty, to combat tyranny, or to 
advance the God-given right of every woman and man to be free. That is 
still our common cause, our enduring legacy, and our promise to 
generations unborn. Only America can lead that endeavor, but only with 
honor, with integrity, and with the combined strength of the friends of 
freedom will we succeed.
  America remains the best hope of Earth and the champion of freedom. 
May God bless us with the courage and wisdom to keep that sacred trust.
  I yield the floor.
  (The remarks of Ms. Cantwell pertaining to the introduction of S. 
1703 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Ms. CANTWELL. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.