[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16506-16507]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          VOTE ``NO'' ON CAFTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I am back on the floor 
again tonight, just like the gentleman that just spoke. I am from North 
Carolina, a State I am greatly proud of; but I am so concerned about 
this CAFTA bill.
  I want to just go back to 1992, to the Presidential debates of that 
year, 1992. I want to quote one of the candidates for the United States 
Presidency, Ross Perot: ``You implement that NAFTA, the Mexican Trade 
Agreement, where they pay people a dollar an hour, have no health care, 
no retirement, no pollution controls, and you are going to hear a giant 
sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country, right at a time 
when we need the tax base to pay the debt of this Nation.''

                              {time}  1800

  Mr. Speaker, what is so ironic about that is that we are in the same 
situation today. Our Nation is in so much debt, the deficit is about 
$417 billion, $7 trillion in debt itself; the average citizen of 
America owes about $26,000 if they were going to pay off the debt of 
this Nation. How can we continue to send jobs overseas? Already, China 
has 1.5 million jobs since 1989. NAFTA itself, since we joined in 1993, 
in North Carolina alone, we have lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs; the 
United States has lost over 2.5 million manufacturing jobs.
  Let me tell my colleagues what is so ironic. So many times when we 
have these debates, they say, well, if you create a better opportunity 
down in Guatemala, or whatever country it might be, then they are going 
to stay home. Let me tell my colleagues how ironic and ridiculous that 
is. The number of aliens has grown from 1.3 million people in 1992; 
that was the one year before NAFTA. Since NAFTA, 5.9 million illegal 
aliens have come across the border, and that is just for the year 2004. 
That is a 350 percent increase. It does not work. It only works if you 
are going to increase the livelihood of those people in those 
countries. It did not happen in Mexico, and it is not going to happen 
in these five countries in Central America.
  Let me talk a little bit about CAFTA. CAFTA is the cousin of NAFTA. 
Eighty-five percent of the language in CAFTA is identical to the 
language in NAFTA; and, therefore, it is not going to do what needs to 
be done to help the American people and the American workers.
  Let me talk about TPA, Trade Promotion Authority, which became the 
law of the land in August of 2002. My State of North Carolina, since 
that happened, 52,000 manufacturing jobs lost, and over 600,000 
manufacturing jobs in the United States of America. CAFTA will not do 
what is being proposed by those who say we should pass CAFTA.
  CAFTA is also going to be a way to allow the Chinese to back-door 
their goods to these five Central American countries, have them 
manufacture the product or put the product together, and then sell 
these duty-free over into America.
  Mr. Speaker, I again want to say that I hope that we as a Congress 
will not

[[Page 16507]]

pass CAFTA as it is drawn. If they want to go back to the table and 
redraw this legislation so that it is good for America and then good 
for these other countries, then we will look at it again. But as it is 
now, it is not good for the American government, it is not good for the 
American people, and I stand with my Republican friends, I stand with 
my Democratic friends, and I hope and believe that we will defeat 
CAFTA. It needs to be defeated.

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