[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9022-9028]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     QUALITY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Issa). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be joined this evening by 
the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), my good friend.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to begin, as the first Independent elected to 
Congress in 40 years and I have been here now for 11 years, I want to 
talk about some issues that are often not addressed by my colleagues in 
the House or the Senate and some issues that are not talked about on 
television or radio with our corporate media but issues that need to be 
discussed and debated and thought about.
  The first issue that I want to talk about is the most important 
issue. That is the quality of American democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, we have an American flag behind us, and the American 
flag reflects the struggle and the deaths of so many Americans who 
fought and died to preserve our democracy. Democracy is a big deal. It 
means that the people, ordinary people, working people, low-income 
people, people who are not wealthy and powerful, but ordinary people 
having the right to control their own lives and making the decisions 
which impact on their children and on the future of the country, that 
is a big deal and something that we kind of take for granted.
  What I am extremely concerned about, that the quality of our 
democracy and our democratic traditions are deteriorating, and that 
more and more people are giving up on our democratic process or not 
paying attention to what is going on and believe for many very good 
reasons that this institution, that Washington, D.C., is controlled by 
big money interests who do not pay attention to the lives and struggles 
of ordinary people, to the middle class. People are saying why should I 
bother to vote, why should I bother to participate. The deck is stacked 
against me, big money controls both political parties, big money 
controls the agenda.
  Let me just say a word about what goes on in this country in terms of 
money. Let me quote if I can, Mr. Speaker, from today's Washington 
Post. ``Vice President Cheney held a reception at his official 
residence last night for $100,000 donors to the Republican Party, 
giving the Democrats, after years of enduring GOP criticism of their 
use of the perks of office for fund-raising a chance to accuse 
Republicans of engaging in the same practices. Cheney's hospitality was 
a prelude to tonight's Presidential gala, a black-tie dinner that is 
expected to raise at least $15 million for the Republican National 
Committee, and will mark President Bush's post-inaugural debut as a 
major fund-raising draw for his party.''
  Mr. Speaker, we ended our debate over education kind of early this 
evening, about 5:00, for a very special occasion. And the occasion was 
because many of our Republican colleagues were racing out to this $15 
million fund-raising dinner.
  In my State of Vermont and all over this country, people sit back and 
they cannot believe it. They cannot believe that there are people who 
go to fund-raising dinners for $25,000 a plate, Republican dinners and 
Democratic dinners, people who contribute hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to both political parties. People say, ``What is going on in 
this country. That is not what democracy is supposed to be.''
  Now, what people also understand is that folks do not go to fund-
raising dinners like the one that the Republicans are holding tonight 
and do not contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to the 
Republican Party or the Democratic Party because they believe in the 
democratic process. No one thinks that.
  The reason that people contribute huge sums of money, the reason that 
corporate America is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into the 
political process is that when you contribute, you gain access to the 
people who make the decisions, and they make decisions that benefit 
you.
  Does anybody think that at tonight's fund-raising dinner for the 
Republican Party the major donors are coming up to the President and 
saying, ``Mr. President, you have got to raise the minimum wage because 
American workers cannot make it on $5.15 an hour.''
  Does anyone think that is what is being discussed tonight? Do you 
think that the donors of the Republican Party are saying, ``Mr. 
President, what are we going to do about the fact that 43 million 
Americans have no health insurance, and many more are underinsured? Mr. 
President, we have to move that issue.'' I do not think so.
  I think what is happening tonight is the President is taking some 
bows for his tax proposal which will give hundreds of billions of 
dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, 
people who make a minimum income of $375,000; and that is why people 
contribute to the political process.
  Mr. Speaker, I would say the major issue as a Nation we have got to 
face is how do we revitalize American democracy. How do we go from 
having the lowest voter turnout of any major industrialized Nation to 
the highest voter turnout.
  In next year's election, 2002, the estimate is 36 percent of the 
American people are going to vote. Almost two-thirds of the American 
people are saying, ``I am not going to participate in terms of who is 
going to the Congress, Senate, who is going to be the governor of my 
State. It does not matter.''
  What is even scarier is that the voter turnout for young people is 
even lower, which portends very badly for the future of this country in 
terms of democratic participation.
  I hope tonight, along with the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), 
we will be exploring the role that big money plays in the political 
process, in terms of energy, tax breaks, in terms of our environment, 
and I think there is a lot to be discussed in that respect.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to a gentleman who has played a fantastic role 
in this Congress in taking on the big oil companies and fighting for an 
energy policy that makes a lot of sense to working Americans, rather 
than just Exxon and the big oil companies.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Just in following up 
on that train of thought, there is 1 billion, ``b'' as in billion, that 
is 1,000 million dollars spent by candidates for Congress in this last 
cycle; by far a new record, more than a $200 million increase.
  I have to say sadly most of that money came from powerful special 
interests whose interests is not good public policy, not universal 
health care, not how to rein in the outrageous cost of prescription 
drugs, not how to have a sustainable energy policy for the United 
States of America that benefits small business, big business and 
residential ratepayers and working people alike, but no, they are 
narrow special interests.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to read sort of a roll call here from the 
energy industry of their contributions. Now,

[[Page 9023]]

number one, it is hard to choose. I do not know whether to go to Enron 
because the CEO of Enron is Mr. Ken Lay, who is the largest single 
contributor to George Bush, $2 million over George Bush's political 
lifetime, and all of his company executives were required to give 
substantial funds to President Bush, and they raised millions of 
dollars. This is one company.

                              {time}  2015

  What is at stake for them? Well, last year, they had a billion 
dollars of income or a billion dollars of revenue and $100 million of 
income, a lot of it through manipulating energy markets. They do not 
produce things. They just manipulated energy markets.
  So I am going to give them the number one spot, as I said, $2 million 
from the CEO of Enron. When Mr. Cheney, who wrote our national energy 
policy, was asked to name people who he had met with, he said, well, I 
met with lots of people, lots of people; but the only one he could 
name, the only person that Cheney in that press conference, Vice 
President Cheney, could name, was Ken Lay, the head of Enron, because 
he said they have a different take on things.
  That is right. They do not produce oil and gas. They do not produce 
electricity. What they produce is money by speculating on these 
markets, driving up the price and manipulating the markets to extract 
the money from consumers, but they do not add anything productive to 
the mix.
  It was reported by the Wall Street Journal last Friday that Mr. Lay 
of Enron chose two key regulators who he had to call over to the White 
House to get appointed to be on the Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission to make certain that policies that benefit his billion 
dollar company are put in place.
  Number two, close behind Enron, they could have been number one, is 
ExxonMobil; ExxonMobil, $15.9 billion in profits in the last year. It 
is a 100 percent increase. Americans are seeing it every day at the 
pump; and they are also seeing it in their homes, because Mobil has 
very substantial interests in the natural gas market which has been 
manipulated to extraordinary new highs.
  They are kind of pikers, though. With that $15.9 billion of profits 
far outstripping the billion dollars of profits of Enron, they only 
gave $1.2 million to George Bush's election. They could have done a 
little better, but hopefully they are downtown tonight and they are 
making up for that deficit because certainly this so-called national 
energy policy which we received, this glossy, wonderful thing last 
week, in fact James Watt said that they dusted off his work from 20 
years ago. I actually kind of think it was probably written more like 
50 years ago in terms of how enlightened it is in moving us beyond the 
petroleum, coal, and nuclear economy. They certainly would do very well 
under that.
  Let us go to number three here. Looks like number three goes to 
Chevron, $5.1 billion of profits; 150 percent increase. Total pikers, 
less than a million dollars to the Republican Party, only $770,000. I 
am certain, again, that they are making up for that tonight.
  There is a direct linkage between this so-called national energy 
policy and massive, massive contributions from the energy industry in 
this country. It is just scandalous what is going on, the influence we 
have, two people from Texas, although Mr. Cheney did move his residency 
to Wyoming in order to meet constitutional requirements, where he had 
formerly lived; but they both lived in Texas up until the election; 
both working previously for oil companies, Mr. Cheney for Halliburton, 
and Mr. Bush a long history with the industry.
  People wonder what is this big run-up in prices at the pump? What is 
going on with energy deregulation in California? How can the price of 
the electricity sold in California in 2 short years go from $7 billion 
to $70 billion? The same amount of electricity will be sold in 
California this year as 2 years ago. Despite what one reads in the 
press, they are conserving. They will consume probably as much or a 
little bit less than they did 2 years ago, and the price has gone up by 
1,000 percent; 1,000 percent.
  Every small business, every big business, every residential ratepayer 
is paying through the nose for the same essential commodity that keeps 
these lights on in this so-called deregulated market; and this national 
energy policy says this is such a great plan it is working so well, so 
well in the State of California that according to an unnumbered page in 
the summary of recommendations, in appendix one of President Bush's and 
Vice President Cheney's national energy policy, that every State in the 
Union, despite, of course, the normal States' rights position of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, should be required to 
implement California-like deregulation because it would be unbelievably 
profitable for Enron.
  It is such a great deal. The lights go out. You do not know if you 
can afford your bill, but they think this is a model for the future and 
we should model this in every State in the union.
  It has failed every place it has been tried.
  Mr. SANDERS. Let me just pick up on the point of the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). All over this country people are driving to work. 
In the State of Vermont, we are one of the most rural States in the 
country. People put a lot of miles on their car, and what they are 
noticing is that the price that they are paying for gas at the pump is 
zooming upward.
  What they should also notice is that the profits of the major oil 
companies have expanded enormously. During the last year, ExxonMobil 
saw a 102 percent increase in their profits; Chevron, a 150 percent 
increase in their profits; Texaco, 116 percent increase in their 
profits; Conoco, a 155 percent increase in their profits; Phillips 
Petroleum did really good, a 205 percent increase; and on and on it 
goes.
  So while working people all over this country are paying more and 
more at the pump, while people are scared to death about what the 
heating bills will be in States like Vermont next winter, the oil 
companies are enjoying huge profits. Some of us think that it might be 
appropriate, as radical an idea as it might be, for the United States 
Congress to stand up for the working people, for the middle class, for 
those people whose heating bills and whose oil bills and gas prices are 
moving upward, rather than for the oil companies who have contributed 
so much money to the Republican Party. I know that that is a radical 
idea, but some of us think maybe it is long overdue that we begin to do 
that.
  I do not know if my friend, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), 
wants to go there yet; but there is another issue that he has alerted 
me to awhile back that I think is a fascinating issue. It deals 
obviously with energy. It deals with trade. It deals with money and 
politics. And that is the issue of OPEC.
  I must confess to my colleagues and to the American people that I am 
not a great fan of unfettered free trade. I voted against NAFTA. I 
voted against GATT. I am strongly opposed to the Most Favored Nation 
status, or PNTR, with China. We will talk about that in a little while.
  What is interesting is a majority of the Members of the House, a 
majority of the Members of the Senate and the President of the United 
States, they disagree with me. They say free trade is just a wonderful, 
wonderful thing and that everybody does well when we have no 
limitations to production, to distribution, products go in and out of 
people's countries. That is the way we have to go.
  I have a question and I want to credit my friend from Oregon for 
raising this issue a couple of months ago or longer than that, and that 
is everybody in the world understands that OPEC, the oil-producing 
countries, are a cartel. That is why they are in existence. In fact, in 
a couple of weeks they are going to be meeting, as they do 
periodically, to decide as to how much oil they will produce and what 
the price, in fact, of oil will be on the world market. It is a cartel. 
Their existence, their reason for existence, is to control oil 
production.
  I find it amazing, and I would like my friend from Oregon to comment 
on

[[Page 9024]]

it, how it could be that the representative from the United States 
Trade Department, operating under the Secretary of the Treasury, has 
not raced off to Geneva, Switzerland, where the WTO is and raised the 
complaint about OPEC's policies being a clear violation of 
international trade. I find it amazing that all of the proponents of 
free trade, who think it is a great idea that corporations run to China 
and hire workers there at 20 cents an hour when they throw Americans 
out on the street, that is great. Where are they when it comes to 
taking on OPEC and the oil industry that works with OPEC?
  Mr. Speaker, I would yield to my friend from Oregon for some comments 
on that.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. The gentleman raises a very interesting point. In fact, 
I consulted with experts at the Congressional Research Service. Like 
the gentleman, I opposed the formation of the World Trade Organization; 
I opposed NAFTA; opposed Most Favored Nation status for China, and 
unfortunately and pathetically the Clinton administration was as bad as 
the Reagan administration, the Bush I administration and the Bush II 
administration on these issues. There seems to be sort of a thread that 
runs through there.
  I was concerned when I read about Mr. Chavez, the President of 
Venezuela, who is head of OPEC, saying, we can squeeze them. All we 
have to do is constrain production.
  I thought, well, wait a minute. What about this free trade stuff that 
I hear from President Clinton and I am hearing now from President Bush? 
They are all for rules-based free trade. That is why we are going to 
have the WTO and put China in there. We are going to have rules, by 
God; we are going to have rules. Well, I checked out the rules.
  I am not a lawyer, but it is pretty clear when I read the rules that 
OPEC cannot do what they are doing under the rules. So I consulted with 
the Congressional Research Service, and I said I am not a lawyer and I 
read this stuff and it kind of looks to me like OPEC, the seven 
countries in OPEC now, I did raise this issue with Vice President 
Cheney and he looked at me very smugly and said did I not know that 
Saudi Arabia was not in OPEC?
  I said, well, Mr. Vice President, I know that Saudi Arabia is not in 
OPEC, but the seven members who are in OPEC are members of the World 
Trade Organization. Saudi Arabia is an observer nation, and they want 
to be in the WTO so they have to follow the rules, too. Did not have 
much of a rejoinder to that.
  I have sent a letter to President Bush and Vice President Cheney and 
their trade representative asking them on behalf of the consumers of 
the United States, who are footing the bill every day when they pull up 
to the gas pump, to file a complaint for illegal constraint of trade 
and production under the World Trade Organization agreement and GATT by 
the OPEC nations. There has been a resounding silence.
  I think what is really going on here is one finds that the American 
oil companies use the constriction of production by OPEC as an excuse 
to raise the price even more. I mean, we go back to the ExxonMobil 
profits, that $15.9 billion, that is $159,000 million in profits, a 102 
percent increase by ExxonMobil. It had to come from somewhere.
  It came from two places. Mobil was manipulating and constricting gas 
supply to drive up the price across the country to people who use 
natural gas to produce energy to heat their homes or run their 
business; and Exxon, specializing on the other side of the equation, 
and Mobil to some extent, was using the excuse of constricted supply 
from OPEC to drive up the price twice as much as OPEC had and increase 
their profits.
  So it appears that the Bush administration, no big surprise given 
their oil background, will not use the rules-based trade that they want 
us to be in. In fact, they want to expand this to a giant super NAFTA 
which covers the entire western hemisphere. They will not use the rules 
of that to file a complaint against the OPEC countries, a complaint 
that according to the legal resources I have contacted the United 
States would win recouping billions of dollars of refunds for U.S. 
consumers.
  Now, why will they not do that? If I were President of the United 
States and I had an opportunity to go out against foreign nations who 
are manipulating a product that is essential to my economy, I would do 
it in a second; and I would refund that money to all the American 
consumers who had been gouged by this manipulation. Strangely enough, 
the Bush administration will not do that.
  As I say, to be fair, the Clinton administration before them would 
not do it either. It is a pathetic comment.
  Mr. SANDERS. The bottom line here is very clear, that when free trade 
works for the benefit of the multinationals, it is a process to be 
touted; it is an ideology to be cheered on. But when breaking up a 
cartel, which is ripping off the American people and people all over 
the world, that when taking on this cartel would hurt corporate 
America's interest, suddenly the silence is deafening.
  I want to applaud the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for raising 
this issue. I am going to stay on this issue.

                              {time}  2030

  I think the American people want the United States Trade 
Representative to go to Geneva and demand free trade in terms of the 
production of oil. We are concerned not only about what the rising 
price of oil and gas at the pumps means for people who are driving, but 
for the state of our whole economy and, clearly, Congress and the White 
House have to take some action on that.
  Let me switch gears for a moment.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, just before we do that, just to go after 
this WTO thing for a moment, one of the concerns I have had about the 
WTO, and we are part of it, and I led the Democratic side with the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) leading the Republican side, on a vote 
to withdraw from the WTO last fall, and we were defeated resoundingly; 
I do not think we even got 100 votes, and people around the country 
should check out their Members of Congress and see how many of them 
voted to withdraw from this manipulated trade organization, which is 
set up for multinational corporations, not for consumers, not for the 
environment, not for people who consume energy, not for people 
concerned about working conditions, but for the corporations; that the 
U.S. has changed laws, weakened laws because the WTO has found against 
us because we wanted to protect dolphins; the WTO has found against the 
United States for clean air. We have to import dirty gasoline from 
overseas under WTO rules from Venezuela because they found our clean 
air restrictions were an illegal international trade constraint.
  Under NAFTA, the horrible pollution of our water table about the 
substance called MTBE, the United States may have to pay Canada 
hundreds of millions of dollars under NAFTA to stop the production and 
the introduction of MTBE into poisoning our water supply, because of 
that trade agreement, and the U.S. accedes to all of these things. We 
pay the penalties, we repeal the laws. Not myself, but other Members of 
Congress vote for these things because they bow to the World Trade 
Organization and to the NAFTA tribunals.
  But somehow, when it comes to the American consumers, when it comes 
to people pulling up to the pump in their cars, when it comes to people 
from my rural areas pulling up, and we hear a lot about Americans and 
their brand-new SUVs and the bad gas mileage, but I have a heck of a 
lot more people in my district who are driving their beat-up pickup 
trucks to the pump in the few rural gas stations we have left in my 
State, they are getting gouged twice as much as some of the big city 
folks, and somehow, the United States of America, the President of the 
United States cannot stand up for them in the World Trade Organization 
and against OPEC. I find that absolutely pathetic.
  I would trace it back to the Rollcall I was reading before. The 
profits: Exxon-Mobil, $15.9 billion; Chevron, $5.1 billion; Texaco, 
$2.5 billion; Conoco, $1.9 billion; Philips Petroleum, $1.9

[[Page 9025]]

billion; Duke Energy, $1.8 billion; I am sorry, we are getting into 
electricity; maybe we will get to that later. Occidental Petroleum, 
$1.6 billion; and so on and so on. The list goes on and on. I think 
that has a little bit more to do with it than the fact that American 
consumers are getting gouged.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, while we are on the issue of trade, I want 
to touch on an issue, talk about amazing issues, we talked about the 
WTO and OPEC. This one, in many respects, is even more amazing, and 
that is the Permanent Normalized Trade Relations with China. Let us 
talk a little bit about that and talk about it in two respects. Number 
one, what is going on?
  Well, for a start, it seems to me that overall, our trade policy is 
almost by definition a disaster. Today, the United States has over a 
$400 billion trade deficit, which means that products that used to be 
manufactured in the United States by workers here who are making a 
living wage are now being manufactured in China, Mexico, many other 
countries around the world where people are being paid 20 cents or 30 
cents an hour. Now, I find it very hard to talk about ``free trade'' 
and fairness in trade when American workers are being asked to compete 
against desperate people in China who make 20 cents an hour, who cannot 
form a union, who, if they stood up and asked for the most basic, 
elemental, democratic rights, they would be thrown in jail, and that is 
our competition.
  Now, what is also very interesting about what is going on in terms of 
our relationships to China is how little we are hearing from the media 
on this issue.
  If we look at our relations to China, and I am not anti-China, anti-
Chinese, I do not want a Cold War with China, I want to see China 
integrated into the world economy, China has a fantastic history, and 
so forth and so on. I am not anti-Chinese. But why would we want to 
continue a trade policy with a country in which we have an $84 billion 
trade deficit, record-breaking trade deficit with China? If one is in 
Vermont, if one is in any State of the country, walk into the local 
department store and look at the labels of the products that we are 
buying, and we are not talking about cheap 50 cent products?
  We are talking about a wide variety of products, some of them very, 
very good quality. One of the most important economic realities that 
has taken place in this country in the last decade is that the major 
multinational corporations have, to a significant degree, stopped 
investing in New England, stopped investing in the Midwest and many 
other sections of our country, but instead are investing billions and 
billions of dollars building state-of-the-art factories in China. And 
the reason for their doing that is, I guess, China is a great place to 
do business. Workers are forced to work for starvation wages, they 
cannot form unions, they cannot stand up for their rights; 
environmental regulations are weak or nonexistent.
  What a fantastic place to do business. You can bribe government 
officials all over the place. It is a fantastic place. Why would one 
want to invest in the United States, pay workers here a living wage, 
have to obey environmental regulations and so forth and so on?
  So what we are seeing is a huge amount of investment in China. And 
the support of this trade agreement, which has been a disaster for 
American workers by corporate America and their representatives in the 
United States Congress.
  Now, what I found very interesting is that after we opened up our 
market to China, and we said to the American companies and so forth 
that are doing business in China, come on in, you could be Nike, you 
can pay your workers 20 cents an hour, you can sell your sneakers in 
this country for $100, great idea, no problem. Well, in the midst of 
all of this, a funny thing happened. A couple of months ago, as 
everybody knows, an American plane was collided with by a Chinese 
pilot. As a result of the heroic efforts of the American pilot, 24 
service people were able to stay alive as their plane crash landed in 
China.
  Now, one would think, one might think that given the fact that we 
have granted permanent normalized trade relations with China, that we 
have allowed them to sell products into our market which results in the 
loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs, lowering of the wages 
of American workers, one might think that in the midst of all of that, 
what the Chinese government might say is, we are sorry for the 
accident.
  Obviously, we are going to release the 24 American servicemen who 
crash landed, and you are going to get your plane back as soon as you 
possibly can. That would seem to me to be the logical response of a 
government which now has complete access to the American market, which 
has been granted Permanent Most Favored Nation status. Instead, this 
country held prisoner 24 American service people for 11 days and still 
has our airplane. Where is the outrage? Where is the outrage?
  Well, in fact, as my colleague from Oregon knows, in a couple of 
months, within a couple of months, there will be another vote on Most 
Favored Nation status with China. The big money people are pouring huge 
amounts of money into the political process, and despite the recent 
outrage, my expectation is that MFN with China will, once again, be 
passed, and that we will not revoke PNTR, as I think we should.
  So let me conclude my remarks in that regard by saying, I am not 
anti-Chinese. I do not want a Cold War with China. I want trade with 
China. But it has got to be trade based on principles that are fair for 
the American worker, not just corporate America, and a policy which 
results in a positive political relationship between China and the 
United States, which clearly the recent incident with the airplane 
indicates is not the case.
  I yield to my friend for any thoughts he has on that issue.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, Mr. Speaker, certainly, big news in the Pacific 
Northwest recently was that the Boeing Company, after about a half a 
century, has moved its headquarters out of Seattle, and the rumor, and 
I have to unfortunately think it is true, is that the Boeing executives 
wanted to get out of town before they shipped the jobs to China. They 
have already outsourced some manufacturing to China. We know they would 
like to outsource more of their manufacturing of their planes to China. 
The CEO of the company has said he cannot wait until the day that he 
does not have to say it is an American corporation, that it is 
something else, a stateless company, and we know that they can get 
labor much cheaper in China. They are producing significant components 
of their planes there.
  So the pressure on this administration, as the last administration, 
from the biggest corporations in this country, Boeing, Nike, IBM, 
Westinghouse, we can go down the list, is no matter what the Chinese 
do, so what if they sold nuclear weapons to terrorists, so what if they 
held our men and women hostage, so what if they are the most unfair 
trading nation on earth and they are stealing our jobs.
  A few companies are making a little bit of money over there, and that 
is what drives U.S. policy and, unfortunately, and pathetically, this 
administration is going to be no different than the last, the Clinton 
administration no different than Bush I and Reagan on this issue; that 
is, whatever the dictators, the bloody dictators in Beijing want, they 
will get, no matter how high the price.
  Last year the price was an $83.8 billion deficit with China, the most 
unfair trading nation on earth.
  Pick up the report of the U.S. Trade Representative. It is about this 
thick, and read page after page after page after page of the ways that 
the Chinese have discriminated against U.S. manufactured goods. They 
are not buying our goods, except when they want to make copies of them. 
That is the only time they buy them. They are very studiously 
developing a market in the U.S. and avoiding U.S. goods coming into 
their country.
  Last year, the wheat farmers from eastern Oregon came in to see me 
and they were just hysterical about the idea that they could get into 
China if

[[Page 9026]]

we just only gave them permanent, Most Favored Nation status, and I 
said, I disagree. I gave them transcripts of radio talks by the Chinese 
agriculture minister saying there is no way we are going to allow our 
country to become dependent upon imports of food.
  In fact, we intend to be exporting wheat and other goods. We only 
want access to their markets. And in trade we have to say nice things, 
but that is not what we mean and we are really going to do something 
totally different. I gave them the transcripts. They said, no, that is 
not true.
  In fact, just before we voted here in this House of Representatives, 
a majority of our colleagues voted to give the Chinese everything they 
could ever dream of and, despite all of their misbehavior, they took in 
a boatload of wheat. Guess what? It is the last one they ever took. In 
fact, the same farmers came in to see me this year, they sat down 
quietly, and we were just sitting there on opposite sides of the office 
and they said, well, are you going to say it? I said, say what? They 
said, are you going to say you were right? I said yes, I was right, but 
what are we going to do about it?
  Mr. Speaker, group after group of Americans has been snookered on 
this free trade rhetoric. They believe, and they are good Americans and 
they are hard-working Americans and they care about their family farms 
and their small businesses or their industrial small manufacturing 
plants. Group after group after group has come to me over the years on 
these trade issues and said, no, Congressman, they tell us it is going 
to benefit us, and group after group after group has come back 1 or 2 
or 3 years later and said, we have been devastated. They are doing 
exactly the opposite of what they told us, and exactly the opposite has 
happened to our wheat folks. Not a grain of Oregon wheat has gone into 
China since that agreement was penciled.
  Now, maybe they will take another boatload this spring because they 
need to get another vote here in this Congress, or maybe it will be 
apples from Washington or maybe it will be who-knows-what. It is a 
pretty cheap price to them when they are running an $83.8 billion 
unfair trade surplus with the U.S.
  By the Commerce Department's own numbers, that is $1,660,000 U.S. 
manufacturing jobs that are gone to China. They always want to talk 
about oh, hey, every billion dollars of trade is 20,000 jobs. The only 
thing is they never talk about the net. We sent like $16 billion worth 
of stuff to China and we imported over $100 billion of stuff from 
China. That is the net number.

                              {time}  2045

  That is our job loss. Why will they not talk about that?
  Mr. SANDERS. That is only half of the story. That is job loss. The 
other half of the story is what our trade policy with China means in 
terms of driving wages down in this country.
  Every worker in this country knows that if we stand up and fight for 
decent wages, decent benefits, we have a boss there to say, ``Hey, you 
are lucky that you have this job because I could go to Mexico, I could 
go to China. Look at that factory down the road, what they did last 
year.''
  So the presence of a huge labor market in China where people are 
forced to work for horrendous wages has not only resulted in the loss 
of huge numbers of jobs, but has certainly had an impact in lowering 
the real wages of American workers.
  The fact is, one of the things that we hear in the media, and I want 
to say a word about the media, because I have found media coverage of 
this whole issue very, very interesting.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Very interesting, or nonexistent?
  Mr. SANDERS. Both; interesting for its nonexistence. We should ask 
ourselves why, when we look, for example, at Fox Television, owned by 
the right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch, he is making a huge effort 
to get into the Chinese market. He is very clear. He has said it and 
his family has said it, that they do not want to disturb the Chinese 
government and they do not want to raise these types of issues.
  General Electric, which owns NBC, has significant investments in 
China. Westinghouse, Disney, et cetera, et cetera, many of the major 
multinationals who own the media in the United States, are also 
investing in China. The last thing they want to see is the Congress 
rethink its trade agreements with China.
  I think not only on that issue but on the issue of media in general, 
the American people should do a whole lot of hard thinking as to why we 
hear what we hear and why we do not hear what we do not hear. I would 
say that the example of coverage regarding China is a perfect example 
about the biases of corporate media in terms of what we hear.
  I would also like to touch on an issue regarding the media and what 
is going on in our economy. When we do hear the media for the last 10 
years, what we have been hearing over and over again is a drumbeat 
which says, ``The economy is booming; America, you have never had it so 
good,'' over and over.
  I go back to Vermont. I hold many town meetings around the State. 
What I invariably do is say, ``I just read in the newspaper or saw on 
TV that the economy is booming. You have never had it so good. Please 
raise your hand if you think that is true.''
  I do remember at a meeting of several hundred farmers, one guy did 
raise his hand. He thought the economy was going very well. 
Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the people understand the reality 
of their lives; that is, that in many instances the middle class is 
working longer hours for lower wages.
  Yes, the economy is booming for all of the people who are 
millionaires and billionaires. In fact, they have never had it so good. 
But if one is in the middle class, then what one runs into is that, 
everything being equal, we are now working a lot more hours than we 
used to.
  If there is a family member who would prefer to stay home with the 
kids and raise the kids in the house, increasingly that is becoming 
impossible because families now need two breadwinners in order to pay 
the bills.
  There was a study that came out I think from the International Labor 
Organization several years ago in which the United States claimed the 
very dubious distinction of having surpassed Japan for now working 
longer hours than the workers of any other major country on Earth.
  So it seems to me that if real wages have declined, if people are 
working longer and longer hours, in my State of Vermont it is not 
uncommon not only for people to work two jobs, sometimes they work 
three jobs, and often these are part-time jobs, jobs without benefits.
  We have 43 million Americans who have no health insurance, tens of 
millions of Americans who are underinsured. We have families going 
deeply into debt in order to figure out how they can pay for their 
kids' college education. We have elderly people who are not eating 
adequately because they have to pay the exorbitant prices that the drug 
companies are demanding from us for prescription drugs. On and on it 
goes.
  I want to know, in the midst of all of that context, where the 
richest 1 percent of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 99 
percent, where the CEOs of major corporations now earn 500 times what 
their employees earn, in the midst of all that, how can the media 
continue to talk about the booming economy?
  Let us look at reality here and what is happening to the middle class 
in this country.
  I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Just to follow up on that, Mr. Speaker, the point about 
the extraordinary, galloping increase in CEO salaries, whether or not 
the corporations are profitable, and absent the whole dot.com 
craziness, the gentleman is right, it is more than 500 times the 
average line worker's salary, up from a mere 20 years ago, when it was 
27 times the average line worker's salary.
  Just to break that down, in 365 days in a year, though people do not 
work that many days, say 220, basically a CEO earns more in one-half of 
one day

[[Page 9027]]

than their line workers who work day in and day out 50 weeks a year, 40 
hours a week. Something is a little bit wrong with that equation, the 
people who are producing the wealth.
  What is the answer we get? We hear a lot of talk about the so-called 
surplus here in Washington, D.C., which is based upon some pretty funny 
budget estimates. I fear that we will be like Texas. Two years ago the 
legislature cut taxes twice at the behest of then Governor Bush in 
Texas. Now they are down there saying, hey, what were we thinking? What 
were we smoking? They have a $700 million deficit, and they are going 
to raise taxes.
  This group here, should they jam through these tax cuts, particularly 
these tax cuts so heavily tilted towards the people who earn over 
$373,000 a year, and 43 percent of the benefits go to people who earn 
over that, will be in a very similar situation.
  The programs for everybody else, student loans for their kids, 
prescription drug benefits for seniors, the Coast Guard, I had the 
Coast Guard come in and they said, we have to cut patrols 20 percent. 
The Corps of Engineers are saying, we are cutting back on flood 
controls. I asked, are they not part of the Bush administration? Do we 
not have a surplus? How come they were telling me about the cuts they 
are going to make?
  Those were the orders from the White House: cut, cut, cut. Programs 
that serve the American people are being cut. Then the big bonus goes 
to this tiny fraction of people at the top. The American people are 
supposed to be happy with the crumbs they get at the table.
  We cannot replace for $400 a year the cuts in Pell grants, the cuts 
in services to one's parents or oneself in Medicare; or when we are out 
there and the boat sinks and the Coast Guard says, ``Well, sorry, we 
had to cut back 20 percent of the patrols because the budget is tight 
because we had to have the tax cuts for the wealthy,'' and by the way, 
they have crews and lifeboats on their yachts, and so we are out there 
in our dingy boat and we sink, that is too bad.
  Mr. SANDERS. The gentleman makes a very important point. Not only is 
the President's tax proposal grossly unfair, and the statistics that I 
have seen are even higher than that, that the wealthiest 1 percent end 
up getting 50 percent of the tax breaks.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I was being conservative, 43.
  Mr. SANDERS. That is, remember, people with a minimum income of 
$373,000. Meanwhile, one could be a mother raising two kids making 
$22,000 a year. Do Members know what that tax cut is? Zero, not one 
nickel.
  So it seems to me not only is the Bush tax proposal grotesquely 
unfair, giving huge tax breaks to the people who need it the least, but 
it is absolutely irresponsible.
  President Bush, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), myself, the 
American people, do not know what the economy will be next year, in 5 
years, and certainly not in 10 years. Nobody knows.
  For years and years, our conservative friends have been saying, we 
cannot spend money we do not have. We have to be cautious with the 
taxpayers' money. But they have decided to give out at minimum $1.3 
trillion or probably a lot more over a 10-year period. Meanwhile, back 
in Vermont and throughout this country, young people who graduate from 
a 4-year college are ending up at $19,000 in debt, on average. Lower-
income kids are ending up even more in debt, and that does not count 
the debt incurred by the young man's or woman's parents.
  For the first time in many years, a lot of low-income high school 
graduates are thinking twice about whether or not they want to go to 
college. Meanwhile, Pell grants and other student aid programs for 
college students have in no way kept pace with the escalating cost of 
college, putting enormous stress on the middle class.
  Yes, we have hundreds of billions of dollars available for tax breaks 
for the richest 1 percent; no, we cannot significantly increase Pell 
grants and other student aid programs for the middle class.
  Just last Saturday in South Royalton, Vermont, I held a town meeting 
on an issue which needs an enormous amount of discussion and awareness, 
an increase in awareness, in public consciousness. That is the absolute 
crisis that exists in child care in this country today.
  I find it appalling that there are people who would come up to this 
podium and talk about family values and their love of children and 
working families, and continue to ignore the crisis in child care which 
goes on in America today.
  The reality, in my State and virtually all across this country, is 
that working families cannot find quality, affordable child care. It is 
much too expensive. Meanwhile, child care workers themselves are 
working for horrendously low wages. If they are running their own home 
centers, in some cases they are making below the minimum wage.
  The turnover among child care workers is extremely high. People are 
not getting the training that they need.
  Study after study demonstrates what common sense tells us, that the 
first 5 years of a child's life are the most formative years. What kind 
of Nation are we when we are ignoring the needs of millions of 
children? The end result is that while we do not put money in the front 
end in terms of child care, what we are doing certainly is putting 
money in the back end when these kids fail out of high school and end 
in jail, and we are spending $25,000 for them in jail, but we are not 
paying attention to their needs in child care.
  The reality in child care is that huge numbers of women are now in 
the work force. They need help. As a society we have to pay attention. 
I think it makes a lot more sense to put money into child care, put 
money into financial aid for college students, rather than give tax 
breaks to people who do not need it.
  I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Oregon.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Remember, as we are having this conversation, that the 
Republicans adjourned the House earlier today so they could go down to 
a $15 million, $25,000 a plate fundraiser. I have to say, most of the 
issues we are talking about here tonight are not very well represented 
at that event.
  If I could just go back to tax cuts for a moment, one thing, of all 
the strange things this administration has said recently, or of this 
1950s energy policy they gave us, which is just a tremendous, 
tremendous windfall for the oil, gas, and coil industry, was one where 
the administration said, well, we are putting an immediate stimulus, 
so-called, into the tax cut, around $100 million, and that money can be 
spent by the American people to pay the higher fuel bills.
  First off, of course, approximately half of that is going to go to 
the people at the top who are not noticing the higher prices. Then when 
we divide up the rest of that among all the other Americans, it is not 
going to pay for a tank of gas at this inflated price-gouging we are 
seeing at the gas pump, let alone what we are seeing with the thousand 
percent run-up in electric prices in the West.
  It is almost kind of like a Marie Antoinette ``Let them eat cake'' 
kind of thing; we are giving them some crumbs, what is their problem? 
They are going to get a little bit of money back. So what if they are 
being gouged at the pump by Enron, Dynegy, Synergy, all these other 
companies, Reliant, of course, being my favorite.
  Just a minute on that. I have to refer to the fact that the Reliant 
Energy Company, based in Houston, Texas, according to the San Francisco 
Chronicle on Sunday, was gaming the California energy market on 10-
minute increments. That is, they actually had their plant operators in 
the two crummy plants they bought in California at a very cheap price, 
old plants, they actually had them on the line to their traders on the 
floor in Houston.
  The traders on the floor in Houston, as soon as they saw energy 
prices go down, would tell them to shut the plants down. As soon as 
they saw energy prices go up, they would tell them to crank the plants 
up. Of course, this wears the plants out quickly, causes them to go 
down, and hurts the energy supply.

[[Page 9028]]

  But Reliant and Enron and Dynegy and Synergy and Exxon-Mobil and all 
the others, they are downtown eating caviar, popping very expensive 
champagne, and having a good old time with the President, and the 
Americans are being told, do not worry, there is a tax bill moving 
through Congress that will help you pay for a tank of gas.

                              {time}  2100

  Now, of course, you buy more than one tank a year. You are going to 
be kind of netted out on this issue.
  Well, we cannot do anything about that. That is the free market. It 
is not the free markets. It is market manipulation. It is price 
gouging. It is lack of action against the OPEC cartel.
  It is lack of action by the Bush Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
to reign in what their own staff has said are unjustifiable prices in 
the wholesale energy.
  The pattern here just runs through everything and it all comes back 
to follow the money. The money runs straight down to 1500 Pennsylvania 
Avenue, or whatever the address is at the White House there. That is 
where it is going and that is where it is flowing.


                Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Issa). The Chair must caution Members 
against casting personal innuendo toward the President or the Vice 
President of the United States.
  The gentleman may continue.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, I thank the Chair.
  Mr. Speaker, I certainly did not impugn any motive to them. I am just 
stating a fact. The fact, and I can read the facts here of the 
contributions, Exxon-Mobil, $1.2 million to the Republican Party in the 
last election cycle; Chevron, $770,000; Enron, $1.7 million; these are 
all from the Federal Election Commission, El Paso Energy, $787,000; 
Arco Petroleum, $439,000; Edison International, $503,000; Williams 
Company, $288,000; Reliance, $642,000; Dynergy, $305,000.
  Those are facts that that money went to Bush-Cheney for their 
election. It is a fact, and I would regret if anybody found that that 
was somehow impugning pecuniary motives to this administration.


                Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will clarify.
  Remarks in debate may fairly criticize the President's positions or 
policies, but they may not level personal characterizations or 
accusations of impropriety.
  To imply a cause-and-effect relationship between political 
contributions and actions by the President or the Vice President is not 
in order.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, I would certainly be chastened by the Chair, and I 
just listed the millions of dollars that flowed to candidates Cheney 
and Bush. I would just observe that they are at a $25,000 plate fund-
raiser downtown where they are going to collect a minimum of $15 
million, and many of these same companies that are doing so well in 
this energy policy will be present tonight.
  However, I certainly would not link in any way those contributions to 
policy decisions by this administration. Any such linkage is merely 
certainly beyond the bounds of this Member to impugn.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), it is hard to imagine that the millions and 
millions of dollars that come in have any influence in public policy.
  It is probably that the oil companies are concerned about the quality 
of our democracy and just want to get more debate and political 
interest out there.
  We are running out of time here, and I just want to say a few words 
in closing, and, that is, I think what is very sad about what is going 
on in this country is we are, in fact, a very great Nation of great 
people.
  We have enormous productivity. We have great wealth. We have great 
energy. Given that reality, this Nation today has the capability of 
providing a good quality of life and a decent standard of living for 
every man, woman, and child.
  It is no longer Utopian to talk about every American having good 
quality health care through a national health care system as a right of 
citizenship. That is not Utopian. That, in fact, exists in virtually 
every other major country. We are the only Nation on Earth that does 
not guarantee health care to all people as a right of citizenship.
  It is not Utopian today to say that every person in this country, 
regardless of income, should be able to get all of the education that 
they are capable of absorbing, rather than seeing so many of our young 
people going deeply into debt as they have to figure out a way to pay 
for the high costs of college education. That is not Utopian.
  It is not Utopian to say that we can do, as France does, for example, 
and have universal high-quality child care for all of our people. It is 
not Utopian to say that we can provide the health care that our 
veterans who put their lives on the line defending this country are 
entitled to. That is not Utopian.
  It is not Utopian to say that we can produce the energy that this 
country requires in an environmentally sound way rather than 
contributing to global warming or to acid rain or to other 
environmental degradation. That is not Utopian. The technology is here 
today.
  It seems to me that what we as a Nation have to do is revitalize 
American democracy, get people actively involved in the political 
process, get people to stand up for their rights, for the rights of 
their children. If we do that, we can, in fact, take back this country 
for the big money interests who have so much power over us today.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if I can make a quick sentence on the 
energy policy. What we are putting forward is a really grand 1953 
energy policy, dig, drill, burn, build, and profit, profit, profit. I 
would just reflect, it is time to move beyond that. We have the 
technology and the capability of becoming the most energy-efficient and 
most well-fed, housed, clothed and heated Nation on Earth with new 
technologies.
  We just need to invest in it. The Stone Age did not end because they 
ran out of rocks. They evolved. We need to evolve here in the United 
States of America.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Oregon 
(Mr. DeFazio), my friend, for joining me this evening.

                          ____________________