[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13542-13543]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



          EXPLAINING THE DANGERS OF FAST TRACK TRADE PROPOSALS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening first of all to thank my 
colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), for arranging a 
discussion this evening on the important issue of trade, especially the 
fast track procedure that is making its way through this community. It 
is essential for the American people to truly understand what this fast 
track trade proposal is all about and how damaging it can be to each 
and every one of our individual lives.
  Now, the procedure that is known as fast track puts our trade laws 
and everything that is associated with them on a rush course through 
Congress. It limits the time we can spend on important issues that deal 
with food safety, with agriculture, with the environment, and worker 
laws and worker protections. It allows only an up-or-down vote, and no 
amendments, on huge trade bills, like the GATT bill in 1995 or the 
NAFTA bill in 1993. It leaves Congress with little power to stop the 
bad parts of trade legislation from becoming law.
  I would remind my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that this whole idea of 
fast track is something that is relatively new. It was only in 1974 
when Richard Nixon first proposed it. It has only been used five times. 
In fact, during the last administration, the Clinton administration, we 
did 200 trade deals around the world successfully without fast track.
  This is a huge usurpation of the authority given to the United States 
House of Representatives and the Congress by the Constitution of the 
United States. By doing so, it not only threatens the work that we do 
here on behalf of the American people on food safety, on labor law, on 
the environment and all kinds of other important issues; but it also 
affects what happens to the activity at the local level, in the 
village, in the city, in the township or at the State level. Those laws 
are in jeopardy as well.
  Now, let me say this, Mr. Speaker: we have worked very hard over the 
last 100 years in this country to put into law these protections. There 
was a time that we did not have food safety laws. Upton Sinclair wrote 
the wonderful novel called ``The Jungle,'' and it alerted the American 
people to what was happening in food safety and food spoilage. There 
was a movement called the Progressive Movement, and a lot of things 
flowed from that.
  The labor movement flowed at the beginning of the century, so people 
could have workmen's comp, unemployment comp, good pay, pensions and 
overtime protection and all of those things we have in law today.
  All of that is at risk with these trade laws. If we continue on the 
path that we are on, or we have been on, we are spiraling down to the 
least common denominator in our law. We are going into the valley where 
countries who have no protections for their workers simply live today.
  When we fail to meet these standards, workers in Bangladesh remain in 
sweatshops. When we fail to meet these standards of worker safety and 
the environment, children in the Ivory Coast are forced into slave 
labor. At home, workers lose their jobs because companies relocate to 
areas with fewer safety and environmental standards.
  We have seen the great exodus out of many of our communities. 
Manufacturing concerns get up and go. They do not want to pay the $12 
an hour, the $14 an hour. They go down to Mexico where they pay less 
than $1 an hour.

                              {time}  2145

  They manufacture and assemble what they have to, ship it right back 
across the border, often on trucks that are not safe, moving through 
our country, with no protection for the Mexican workers down there. So 
the Mexican worker loses, our worker loses. The only people that profit 
are basically the wealthy multinational corporations and the CEOs, 
particularly at the top of those corporations.
  Mr. Speaker, we simply cannot afford the negative consequences that 
come along with bad trade deals. Too much is at stake. I would just 
urge my colleagues tonight, as we proceed on this debate on fast track, 
to be very careful and very thoughtful in how we approach it.
  This is a very important issue for the future of this country and for 
the future of our children. We need to have

[[Page 13543]]

environmental safety laws into all of our trade deals, and we need to 
also make sure we have worker rights embodied in the core agreements of 
our trade deals so that our workers are not punished here at home and 
the workers abroad and in developing countries as well have a chance to 
earn a decent wage so that they can buy the products that they are 
making.

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