[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14523-14524]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 CAFTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, last year, Tom DeLay, the most 
powerful Republican in the Congress, promised this House that we would 
vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, so-called CAFTA, 
before the end of last calendar year, before December 31 of 2004. Then 
earlier this year he promised we would vote on CAFTA sometime before 
Memorial Day. Then he promised that we would vote on CAFTA sometime 
before July 4. The simple question is why has Congress not voted on the 
Central American Free Trade Agreement? The simple answer is that dozens 
of Republicans and Democrats, small businesses and manufacturers, 
farmers, ranchers, workers, environmentalists and food safety advocates 
all across the board oppose this agreement. There simply are not enough 
votes in this Congress to pass the Central American Free Trade 
Agreement.

[[Page 14524]]

  During this whole period, supporters of CAFTA continued to make the 
same old, tired promises about trade. They promised that passage of 
CAFTA would reduce our trade deficit, but it continues the failed trade 
policy of the last dozen years. In 1992, the year I ran for Congress, 
we had in this country a $38 billion trade deficit. Last year, a dozen 
years later, our trade deficit had mushroomed to $618 billion. From $38 
billion to $618 billion and the CAFTA supporters say that CAFTA will 
reduce our trade deficit.
  CAFTA supporters say it will increase manufacturing jobs. Again, 
another broken promise from these trade agreements. The facts are that 
in the last 5 years, the U.S. has lost more than 2 million 
manufacturing jobs, more than 200,000 of them in my State of Ohio, 
another 200,000 in Michigan and Pennsylvania and New York, hundreds of 
thousands in Texas and California, in the southeast North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Georgia, those regions of the country.
  Because no one believed these promises that it would cut the trade 
deficit, that it would increase our exports, the promise that it would 
raise the standard of living in Central America, they now are bringing 
out a whole nother round of promises. One promise they have made, CAFTA 
will stop illegal immigration from Central America. The facts are that 
based on a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a quarter million 
undocumented Mexican-born workers entered the U.S. from 1990 to 1994, 
prior to NAFTA. Then NAFTA passed, the number of illegals entering the 
U.S. sharply increased to almost a half million from 2000 to 2004. Free 
trade agreements are not a solution for illegal immigration.
  Another promise they made, another wild, unsubstantiated promise, is 
that CAFTA will stop illegal drugs from entering the U.S. However, all 
you have got to do is look at what happened with NAFTA. Despite the 
passage of NAFTA, the State Department says Mexico is the principal 
transit country for South American cocaine entering the U.S. The report 
says that Mexican drug traffickers have steadily increased operations 
in all illicit drug sectors in the U.S. during the period after NAFTA.
  Another wild, unsubstantiated claim is that CAFTA will stop al Qaeda 
from utilizing our southern border to enter the U.S. Geography 101, Mr. 
Speaker, shows that our southern border is with Mexico, not Central 
America, and despite claims made about NAFTA, border security remains 
low. CAFTA supporters fail to argue how passage of the Central American 
Free Trade Agreement will fix the Mexico border problem.
  Another wild, unsubstantiated claim is that Central American 
presidents support labor unions. The facts are very different from 
that. In every one of these CAFTA countries, Dominican Republic and the 
five countries in Central America, these nations are not compliant with 
internationally recognized labor standards today as defined by the 
International Labor Organization. Most CAFTA nations have inadequate 
protection for workers who try to join unions in violation of ILO 
Convention 98's right to organize and bargain collectively. They 
maintain onerous strike requirements in violation of the right to 
associate under ILO Convention 87. In Honduras, not a single one of the 
8,000 workers in the Porvenir Export Processing Zone has the right of 
freedom of association. One worker in that zone said, ``Look, there's a 
whole mountain of workers who have been fired over the last few years 
for trying to organize in the industrial park. They simply don't allow 
it.'' In other words, these nations, one after another, continue to 
violate International Labor Organization standards.
  CAFTA would lock in those lower wage standards, lower worker safety 
standards, right to organize, bargain collectively, prohibition on 
child labor, all of those things that we hold dear as our moral values 
in this country, human rights issues, protecting workers, protecting 
children, protecting against forced labor.
  Mr. Speaker, the answer is, defeat this CAFTA. It has been promised 
that it would come to the floor week after week, month after month. 
Defeat this CAFTA and renegotiate a Central American Free Trade 
Agreement that workers and small businesses and farmers and 
manufacturers and environmentalists and food safety advocates and 
businesses can support.

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