[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 22112-22115]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         FAST-TRACK LEGISLATION

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I am deeply concerned about the 
administration's top trade legislation priority: Fast track, known in 
administration circles as ``trade promotion authority.''
  How crass. How crass. ``Trade promotion authority.'' To denominate 
fast track as ``trade promotion authority'' is the acme of crassitude. 
Hear me down there at the other end of the avenue: The acme of 
crassitude! To denominate fast-track legislation as trade promotion 
authority, or by its acronym, TPA, is the acme of crassitude. One might 
better interpret the acronym TPA as standing for ``tactic to prevent 
amendments''; TPA, ``Tactic to Prevent Amendments.''
  Hear me! Colleagues on the other side of the Capitol Building, where 
the administration has put on its big push for the acme of crassitude: 
Fast track authority, calling it trade promotion authority. But it is a 
tactic to prevent amendments. That is what fast track is, a tactic to 
preclude Congress from fulfilling its constitutional obligations to 
debate and, if necessary, to amend.
  I hope they can stop this oafish piece of legislation on the other 
side of the

[[Page 22113]]

Capitol. If they can't, then bring it onto the Senate Floor.

     Come one, come all,
     This rock shall fly
     From its firm base
     As soon as I!

  Yes, come one, come all. Hear me down there at the other end of the 
avenue, the White House: Bring on your TPA. Yes, ``tactic to prevent 
amendments.''

     Come one, come all,
     This rock shall fly
     From its firm base
     As soon as I!

  Those words from, I believe it was Scott's ``Lady of the Lake,'' are 
very apropos here. This tactic to prevent Congress from fulfilling its 
constitutional obligations to debate and, if necessary, to amend trade 
bills.
  The administration hoists its flag on the flagpole of trade promotion 
authority. This is my flag, the Constitution of the United States! I 
hold it in my hand. Those who would defy the Constitution will find the 
battle lines formed here.
  I oppose this surrender of our constitutional authority. That is what 
the White House would have us do. I oppose this surrender. ``We've just 
begun to fight.'' The authority to ``regulate commerce with foreign 
nations'' is granted exclusively to Congress in Article I, section 8, 
of the Constitution. Congress, the House, and Senate of the United 
States--not the President--has this authority under the Constitution 
and has this responsibility under the Constitution.
  So let us not be persuaded by administration attempts to promote fast 
track as an antidote to the events of September 11, 2001. There are 
those who attempt to promote the idea that, under the rubric of a 
stimulus bill, Members in the House and the Senate would add language 
that would promote their pet ideas, their pet projects. Well, under the 
rubric of ``stimulus,'' the administration is attempting to promote its 
own pet project--TPA. Trade promotion authority? Fast track. Let us not 
be persuaded by these furtive attempts.
  U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has stated that fast track 
is necessary because ``we need to strengthen the U.S. and global 
economies as they reel from the shocks of September 11.''
  Who is Robert Zoellick? Was he elected by the people of any State? 
Did he stand before the bar of judgment of the electorate? Is that how 
he became Trade Representative? No! Yet he, U.S. Trade Representative 
Robert Zoellick, has stated that fast track is necessary because ``we 
need to strengthen the U.S. and global economies as they reel from the 
shocks of September 11.'' I do not understand Mr. Zoellick's logic. Now 
is the time for the President and the Congress to stand by the 
Constitution; stand by the Constitution and work together.
  Now is the time for Congress to respond to the September 11 terrorist 
assault upon the American way of life. This is not the time for us to 
short-circuit our deliberative processes. Let us debate. Let us debate 
the trade measures. What are you afraid of, Mr. Zoellick? Moreover, the 
Ambassador cannot support his attempt to link fast track to global 
economic recovery. With or without fast track, it is going to take 
years, not months, for the President to negotiate a new world trade 
agreement.
  I question whether, in the current international climate, we should 
even desire to have a new global trade round. As the United States 
forges a coalition to fight terrorism, those countries that have been 
attacking the framework of fair trade for the past several years have 
absolutely no incentive to agree to mutually beneficial trade 
proposals. Rather, they will attempt--as they have in the past--to use 
cooperation on security issues as a bargaining chip--a bargaining chip 
to extract trade concessions from the United States.
  Just look at the so-called Harbinson text being considered at this 
very moment in Doha, Qatar. Is there any question that our trading 
partners are asking that our trade laws be substantially weakened? Is 
there any question that the administration is indicating a willingness 
to put those laws on the negotiating table? If we allow our trade laws 
to be gutted--gutted, what will happen to essential U.S. industries? 
What will happen to the steel industry? What will happen to other 
essential U.S. industries that are being picked apart by predatory 
foreign trade practices?
  In any event, it is indisputable that Congress and the President can 
work together, under the Constitution, to conclude and implement 
international trade agreements. Immediately after the September 11 
terrorist attack, Congress passed the U.S.-Jordan trade agreement, one 
in a long series of trade agreements concluded and implemented by the 
United States since fast track lapsed in 1994.
  Bring it on. Trade promotion authority--ha, ha, ha--trade promotion 
authority! Of all the gimmicks that I have heard in my 84 years of life 
on this Earth, that one takes the cake. It is plain old fast track!
  The constitutional system works and the administration has not made 
the case for tinkering with it.
  President Bush claims to need this extra-constitutional negotiating 
authority in order to exercise leadership in opening up world trade. On 
June 21, 2001, he sent many of his highest ranking trade officials, 
including Secretary of Commerce Evans--for whom I have a great deal of 
respect--and Ambassador Zoellick, to the Senate Finance Committee to 
testify on the supposed need for fast track. Ambassador Zoellick 
maintained that fast track is needed in order for the administration 
``to reassert America's leadership in trade.''
  I remember very well the old-fashioned vaudeville shows where they 
sold those patent medicines, that snake oil. This is snake oil that Mr. 
Zoellick is peddling--snake oil! It will curl your hair. If you don't 
have any hair, it will grow hair for you: Snake oil!
  The United States can, and should, lead in opening up world trade by 
offering other countries arrangements that are mutually advantageous, 
not by undermining a key provision of the Constitution.
  Senators might well consider the impact of normal debate and 
amendment rules on the basic leverage available to U.S. trade 
negotiators. Normal rules should be a matter of enhanced leverage for 
U.S. negotiators in terms of including provisions that are of strong 
appeal to Congress, the people's elected representatives in the 
legislative branch, the people's elected representatives who take an 
oath when they stand before that Presiding Officer and put their hand 
on the Holy Bible. They take an oath to support and defend the 
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and 
domestic.
  Let's remember that oath.
  The threat that an agreement might be amended by Congress to include 
a provision gives all parties to a negotiation an incentive to conclude 
realistic and politically viable agreements. If I were a negotiator, I 
would like to have the leverage of being able to say, ``if we don't 
include this provision in the agreement, Congress may include it 
anyway.''
  Congress may include it anyway. Fast-track Trade Promotional 
Authority--TPA--fast track eliminates this form of leverage.
  When you go to negotiate over the purchase of an automobile, are you 
better off going in on your own with your own free will? You can take 
it, you can leave it, or you can go somewhere else. It is common 
knowledge that you can strike a better deal if you are able to suggest 
to the seller that there is someone back home who may amend or modify 
any agreement that you might reach.
  The Administration, I think, has it exactly backwards: instead of 
concentrating its energies on accumulating as much leverage as possible 
vis-a-vis our trading partners, it is marshaling those energies to 
convince Congress to reduce its leverage on behalf of hardworking 
American families and their communities. This can only hamper our 
efforts to maintain, and enhance, U.S. leverage abroad.
  The Administration is implicitly saying: ``If you are for 
shortchanging the legislative process, you are for opening up world 
trade and combating terrorism.'' That makes no sense to me. I

[[Page 22114]]

am for free trade that is fair to all parties. What is wrong with that? 
And I am certainly for rooting out terrorism and enacting measures to 
ensure our national security. We need not, however, abandon the 
Constitution in order to achieve these objectives!
  I didn't take an oath up here before this Presiding Officer to 
abandon the Constitution. That is what we are doing.
  I am not saying we ought to debate every little duty on every little 
toothbrush that comes into this country, or every little paper clip or 
every fiddle bow or every violin string. I am not saying we ought to 
debate the duties on toothpicks if they come from China or wherever. 
But I am saying, the elected representatives of the people ought not 
even to be asked to give up the cherished right to debate and amend 
trade legislation when the people's interests are involved.
  We need not abandon the Constitution in order to achieve these 
objectives. We Senators need carefully to consider and analyze the 
claims that we hear about the benefits of fast track.
  There may be one amendment or two amendments or three that go to 
policy when we deal with trade matters. I am not saying, as I have 
already indicated, that we ought to take a microscope and go over a 
trade bill and get ourselves involved in the teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy 
little pieces here or there. But I am saying that there may be major 
policy amendments that we may wish to debate or on which we may want to 
vote.
  Now, I have a letter dated June 28, 1993, from then-United States 
Trade Representative Kantor, urging support for what he called ``the 
fast track negotiating authority needed to complete the Uruguay 
Round.'' He wrote: ``As the world's leading exporter and the world's 
most open economy, the U.S. stands to benefit greatly by reducing 
barriers and opening markets around the world for manufactured goods, 
agricultural products and services.'' How accurate was this 
prognostication? If, as the former Ambassador suggested, the last round 
of multilateral trade agreements was focused on reducing foreign trade 
barriers--not opening up the floodgates to imports--shouldn't our 
overall balance of trade have improved in the 1990s?
  The facts belie the fast-track sales pitch. That is what it is--a 
fast-track sales pitch. In the year 2000, the United States ran a trade 
deficit on the current account of $435 billion. That is nearly nine 
times the trade deficit in 1992. How much longer can this go on? Even 
more disturbingly, it equals 4.5 percent of America's total national 
output. On a percentage basis, that is the worst trade performance in 
U.S. history!
  How long can the United States continue to run these deficits? Have 
the laws of international economics been repealed? Is the so-called 
``New Economy'' a land flowing with milk and honey, in which we no 
longer need a real economy, that is, an economy that produces goods and 
services, and employs workers? Have we entered the Promised Land of 
perspiration-free economics? I am afraid not. Even our foreign trading 
partners cannot be sanguine as the United States, historically the 
engine of growth for the entire world, is left without the means to 
play that role.
  America is becoming ever more dependent on foreign suppliers of basic 
manufactured products, even in areas--such as steel--where our 
producers are the most technologically sophisticated and efficient in 
the world. Has anyone stopped to consider the impact on our national 
defense of this foreign dependence? Has anyone attempted to determine 
how our international position will be affected as we become more 
susceptible to economic blackmail? Has anyone taken full account of how 
unfair international trade has helped to restrict income growth at 
home, particularly in the case of middle class families? Many such 
families now need two incomes--both parents out in the workplace--to 
maintain the kind of lifestyle that single-earner families could expect 
a generation ago.
  We hear a lot about the projected economic benefits of fast track. Of 
course, this administration does not dare call it fast track. No, it is 
``trade promotion authority''--``trade promotion authority.'' That is 
an attempt to hoodwink those who would fall for it: fast track!
  We hear a lot about the projected economic benefits of trade 
promotion authority, fast track. Yet, as a recent study by the Economic 
Policy Institute pointed out, the forecast model most frequently cited 
by fast track advocates relies on unrealistic assumptions. For example, 
the model assumes that there is no unemployment here or anywhere else 
in the world and that there are no national labor or environmental 
standards. Moreover, the model assumes that denying elected officials 
the authority to set the rules of the marketplace has no costs either 
in terms of the functioning of the global economy or the achievement of 
domestic economic and social objectives. These assumptions tell us more 
about the prejudices of a global trade elite than they do about the 
economic circumstances in which we find ourselves.
  Let us have a trade policy for the new millennium. Let us demand that 
trade negotiations become a two-way street, both in form and in 
substance. Let us make it clear to our trading partners that we will 
not be duped by those who would grant America the mantle of 
``leadership''--the mantle of ``leadership''--only in exchange for 
unilateral concessions. All countries stand to benefit from expanded 
international trade, and all countries should bear the costs of 
constructing the framework of that trade. American workers should no 
longer be left holding the bag in international trade negotiations. The 
steel workers have been left holding the bag all too long, the textile 
workers have been left holding the bag all too long in international 
trade. The automobile workers have been left holding the bag all too 
long in international trade negotiations.
  U.S. trade negotiators need congressional input. Let's debate it. 
Let's talk about it, and, if necessary, let's amend it. U.S. trade 
negotiators need congressional input in the negotiating process. 
Remember the ad? ``Do it here. Do it now.'' The same with trade 
negotiations. U.S. trade negotiators need congressional input. Enhanced 
legislative participation will help them in their efforts to reinforce 
the framework of fair trade. Is it only fair trade when the United 
States continues to run up huge deficits in the billions of dollars or 
in the hundreds of billions of dollars? It will give the results of 
trade negotiations greater legitimacy and increase public understanding 
of the costs and benefits of globalization. The Constitution--ah, there 
is the Rock of Gibraltar, the Constitution--the Constitution requires 
that we make this effort, and the American people expect it.
  Mr. President, toward the end of his life, in a letter to Henry Lee, 
Thomas Jefferson brilliantly analyzed the fundamental issue upon which 
the debate over fast track turns. This is what he said:

       Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two 
     parties: Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to 
     draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher 
     classes, and, Those who identify themselves with the people. 
     . . . In every country these two parties exist; and in every 
     one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will 
     declare themselves.

  Mr. President, from 1974 to 1994, Congress was, unfortunately, asleep 
at the wheel as the one-sided trade jalopy--I wonder if our little 
pages here have ever heard that word, ``jalopy''?--as the one-sided 
trade jalopy rumbled down the fast track. The people's branch of 
Government--ha, ha, ha--let's let that other branch of Government down 
the avenue become aware again that there is the people's branch, that 
does not bend before any President, that isn't elected by any 
President, that isn't sent here by any President, that cannot be fired 
by any President--let them hear it from Capitol Hill. Bring on your 
trade promotion authority. You will get your fight right here.
  The people's branch of the Government--the Congress--allowed itself, 
I am ashamed to say, to be shunted aside in the process of formulating 
and implementing U.S. trade policy. Let us

[[Page 22115]]

resolve to seize the day, to restore the constitutional balance--bring 
it on; there isn't enough time left in this year, if we did nothing 
else, to pass it in this body--and to make international trade 
agreements reflect the interests of hard-working Americans. There is 
not enough time left in the year to pass ``fast track'' here, unless I 
am very, very badly and sadly mistaken.
  Now is the time to move past the failed trade paradigm of recent 
administrations, both Republican and Democratic. Now is the time to 
restore the people's faith that they can have an impact on the policies 
that shape their lives. Mr. Zoellick, we are talking about the people's 
lives. ``I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.''
  Mr. President, I come to bury fast-track authority, not to praise it! 
Now is the time to reject fast track and to embrace republican self-
government as it has been bequeathed to us by the Framers of the 
Constitution, by those who debated the Constitution, by those who 
ratified it in the State conventions.
  We must be steadfast in our loyalty to the Constitution. Forget about 
political party. Think of the Constitution and think of the people who 
send us here. We are not to be yeasayers or naysayers. We are here to 
debate and to amend and to render our considered judgment on behalf of 
the people who send us here, who pay our salaries, and who can bring us 
back home when the day of judgment comes.
  We must be steadfast in our loyalty to that Constitution. Here it is 
in my hand, the Constitution. There is my trade promotion authority! 
See it? There is my trade promotion authority, my TPA, the Constitution 
of the United States!
  We must be steadfast in our loyalty to the Constitution, that 
exquisitely balanced instrument of the people, by the people, and for 
the people. We must stand together and resist the temptation to once 
again ignore the clear dictates of our most fundamental law.

                          ____________________