[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23478-23482]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE TRADE DEFICIT

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my colleagues, Senators Alexander and 
Bingaman, have been to the floor to describe a publication that has now 
been provided to all 100 Senators. It is by the National Academy of 
Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of 
Medicine, entitled ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Energizing and 
Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.'' They have spoken 
about this report with justifiable pride. They did instigate some of 
the best scientific minds to ask and answer the question: Are we losing 
our scientific edge and what would it mean if we did and what do we do 
to get it back?
  Part of this country's long-term opportunity and the opportunity to 
create a middle class in a country with an economy unlike any other in 
the world has been technology, science, knowledge, and education. The 
question is: Are we losing our edge? The answer in this report is: Yes, 
we are. Then it describes a number of ways to put together an approach 
that would deal with that. While I think this is very helpful, it is 
the first chapter of a rather lengthy book, the book about what is 
happening in our country. It reminds me of the movie ``How Stella Got 
Her Groove Back.'' Has America lost its groove?
  This country has done so much. This is the country that split the 
atom, spliced genes. We have been inventive. We have invented 
everything: Plastics, the silicon chip, radar. We cured smallpox, 
polio. We invented the telephone, the computer, television. We built 
airplanes, learned how to fly them. We built rockets and walked on the 
moon. Particularly in the last 100 years, America has been 
extraordinary in what it has done. It is standing on one another's 
shoulders, looking over the horizon and building and inventing and 
creating. Has America lost its groove? That is not the title of my 
remarks, but that was the question that was asked. The answer is in the 
covers of a lengthy report saying, among other things, we have to 
change our education system. We have to educate more engineers. It says 
that the Chinese and the folks from India are educating far more 
engineers than we are, and that is going to have an impact. We need 
greater teaching of science in our schools. I don't disagree with any 
of that. This is a significant contribution to a debate that we should 
have about new public policy.
  But none of this means anything unless we also talk about the 
conditions under which we are exporting America's jobs and, yes, 
exporting good jobs, scientific jobs, technical jobs to other 
countries. If you triple the number of engineers educated in America 
and then discover that in the country of India you can hire five 
engineers for every engineer you pay in this country--and we continue 
to see an exodus of jobs out of this country to two countries, India 
and China--of what value has been tripling the number of engineers in 
America?
  That brings me to the central point of what I wanted to talk about 
briefly today, or perhaps not so briefly because it is Friday. Nobody 
seems to be crowding people here on the floor. What I want to talk 
about is the issue of international trade and a trade policy that 
perhaps much more than the issue of losing the edge in science and 
technology, is injuring this country and pulling the foundation out 
from under the future of all the kids now in college and high school.
  Let me describe some of this with some charts. This is our trade 
deficit. As you can see, this is a sea of red ink. Year after year we 
see our trade deficit grows worse and worse. It is now at about $700-
plus billion a year. That means for every single day, 7 days a week, 
every single day we buy $2 billion more in goods from other countries 
than we sell. That means, at the end of the year, we have a trade 
deficit. This year we expect a trade deficit of about $750 billion. Add 
to that the roughly $550 billion in fiscal policy budget deficits--that 
is the amount that the Federal debt increased in the last year--and you 
are talking about a Federal indebtedness of $1.2 trillion. You would 
think that people would have an apoplectic seizure about that, 
understanding its consequences. But we just snore through it all, 
having pleasant dreams and a soft, little sleep. Nobody seems to care 
much. You would at least think that those people who are self-defined 
conservatives, wearing flinty gray suits and steel rim glasses and 
having the banker impetus that conservatives used to have, would say: 
This has to stop. A country can't run a $1.2 trillion indebtedness and 
expect to have a better future. But there is dead silence.
  The only people who talk about this portion of the deficit are Fritz 
Hollings--he sat here. He is gone. Fritz left--I have been out here. 
Senator Byrd has from time to time. Otherwise, there is vast silence.
  I want to talk through some of this. I want to tell you about the 
trade deficit with China because this is almost one-third of our 
deficit. It is unbelievable what has happened with respect to our 
bilateral trade relationship with China. I want to also talk to you 
about China and trade agreements because I think it is at the root of 
where we are headed. Automobile trade with China is interesting. ``Here 
Come the Really Cheap Cars,'' says Time magazine.

       Chinese pirate companies have long been accused of 
     illegally copying easy stuff such as shoe polish and digital 
     movies. Now General Motors says a Chinese firm knocked off an 
     entire vehicle--and Americans could soon start buying its 
     cars.

  Let me tell you a story about Chinese cars. We have this giant trade 
deficit with China. We have massive numbers of jobs, this giant sucking 
sound of American jobs rushing to China, to Bangladesh and Indonesia 
and Mexico but especially China. We negotiate a trade deal with China. 
This gets to the root of my contention that our trade negotiators are 
basically incompetent. I don't say that lightly. I say it because it is 
true. Let me describe the bilateral automobile provisions of trade with 
China that our country negotiated. We negotiated a bilateral deal and 
we said: By the way, with respect to the sale and movement of 
automobiles between China and the United States, here is what we will 
agree to. We will agree that after a phase-in, any U.S. cars that are 
sold in China, you can impose a 25-percent tariff on the cars we want 
to sell in China. And the United States, we will impose a 2.5-percent 
tariff on Chinese cars you want to move here.
  Our negotiators said to a country with which we have a huge trade 
deficit: You can impose a tariff that is 10

[[Page 23479]]

times higher on American cars we want to sell in China than on Chinese 
cars they want to sell in America.
  Why on Earth would someone agree to that? It is fundamentally 
unsound. It doesn't make any sense. China has nearly 1.4 billion 
people. They have 20 million automobiles on the roads. By the year 
2020, they will have 120 million cars on the road. That means in the 
next 15 years, they will add 100 million cars. I can talk about the 
consequences for oil and energy issues with respect to that, but here 
is a market with 1.4 billion people for 100 million additional cars in 
the next 15 years. It is a country with which we have a large deficit. 
Our country has said to them: By the way, you charge a tariff that is 
10 times higher on U.S. cars we try to sell in China than we will 
charge on Chinese cars to the United States.
  Whoever negotiated that is incompetent and ought to be thrown out of 
Government immediately. But we can't figure out who did that, so that 
is what stands.
  Here is what is happening on the other side. In China, there is a 
company called Chery. That is one letter away from Chevy. The Chery 
company is producing a car called the QQ. The QQ is a car that General 
Motors says is a rip-off of the production designs, right down to the 
details, of a car that General Motors was building. So General Motors 
says the Chinese company has stolen the production design blueprints 
for a car they now call the QQ.
  What are the Chinese about to do? They are about to ramp up a 
significant automobile export industry, presumably including the QQ, 
which General Motors says was stolen from them, and we will see Chinese 
cars on the streets of this country coming in with tariffs one-tenth 
the rate of the tariffs if we were to try to sell U.S. cars in China--
not that there is a big market for U.S. cars in China because China 
isn't interested in buying too much in terms of American products.
  Here is what is happening with respect to bilateral automobile trade 
with China. It is unbelievably inept for this country to allow this to 
happen. We should not negotiate trade agreements with countries with 
which we have a huge deficit and say: Here is another big advantage to 
sucking jobs out of our country and putting those jobs in China. That 
makes no sense at all.
  The report I referenced a bit ago is a report that talks about 
science and technology. But it doesn't include the other discussions 
about the conditions of production around the world. The production, 
for example, in countries such as Bangladesh and others in which 
children are employed, in some cases in slavelike conditions, locked 
behind factory doors, working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Those are 
the conditions of production in some areas that U.S. workers are told 
to compete against. And to the U.S. workers: If you can't compete, you 
are going to get fired.
  Let me describe some examples of that. I have described this at great 
length because it is such a perfect one, but there are many others. 
This is Huffy bicycles. Again, I guess repetition is important. Huffy 
bicycles, they are not made here anymore. They were made by folks from 
Ohio. They all got fired. They got fired because they were making $11 
an hour making Huffy bicycles, $11 an hour plus benefits. But that was 
way too much money, according to the company. So these are all now made 
in China. You can buy them at Wal-Mart and Sears and Kmart. But they 
are not American bikes. They are Chinese bikes. As an aside, the 
company Huffy has declared bankruptcy so that the people who used to 
work for Huffy will not get their pensions that were guaranteed by 
Huffy, and now the American taxpayer, through the Pension Benefit 
Guaranty Corporation, will be picking up that cost.
  Here is what happened to Huffy. These people that made Huffy bicycles 
were making an honest living, enjoyed their work, did a good job, by 
all accounts. But now they were replaced. They were fired. The new 
employees make 33 cents an hour producing these bicycles in China. They 
work 7 days a week, and they work 12 to 14 hours a day. That is how 
your Huffy bike is produced. The folks who worked in Ohio are having to 
find other things to do because they made way too much money, $11 an 
hour.
  We built this country believing that the middle class ought to be 
able to rise up and get educated and find a good job and be paid well. 
Now we are told that is a disadvantage. If you are paid well, the 
company says: Employing you is a huge disadvantage to us. We would 
sooner employ somebody whom we can pay 33 cents an hour. So we have 
Huffy bicycles. People say: That is manufacturing. We are going to lose 
those jobs because it is going to go to people in Bangladesh or China 
or other areas.
  This is a Palm pilot. The last note on that Palm pilot was from a 
wonderful young woman who did everything you should do. She was an 
African-American woman who got advanced degrees and did everything one 
should do. She went into the job market and found a job in Silicon 
Valley in technology working on the Palm Pilot. But her last job 
dealing with the Palm Pilot was to train the person from India who was 
going to take her job. That is right. They brought the replacement 
over, and then they sent her to India to train the replacement.
  Here is what she said on her Palm Pilot on her last day of work, this 
woman who did a good job, advanced college degrees, did everything you 
should do. The last message was: ``My job's gone to India.'' Why? 
Because they could hire folks there for a fraction of the cost. It is 
about driving down wages. It is about profit, and it is about not 
caring about American workers.
  The message is, if you are making $11 an hour building bicycles or 
you are working at Palm pilot, you are making too much. You should be 
paid Chinese wages. Or wages in India or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.
  Samsonite. Most of us have packed for trips with Samsonite. They sent 
1,000 U.S. workers packing. Those jobs went to Mexico. Then when 
Mexican labor got too expensive, they sent those jobs to China and to 
Vietnam.
  We have all seen the Maytag repairman on television waiting for 
something to do. Apparently he waited too long: 1,600 Maytag U.S. jobs 
gone to Mexico and then Korea.
  Fruit of the Loom. We all have seen these television commercials when 
they get three guys to dress up--kind of goofy guys dressed up like red 
grapes, green grapes, and even an apple. Fruit of the Loom guys, 3,200 
jobs gone.
  I know on the day it happened, it was in the Washington Post that 
they were shutting down all their factories. I said it is one thing to 
lose your shirt, but Fruit of the Loom is gone, now we've lost our 
shorts.
  The list, of course, is an endless list. The example I have used 
before is Fig Newton cookies. That was an all-American cookie. Now, if 
you want Mexican food, go to Monterey, Mexico, because that is where 
they make Fig Newton cookies.
  Etch-a-Sketch? We have all played Etch-a-Sketch. Wal-Mart decided 
that Etch-a-Sketch had to be sold for under $10, $9.99. Therefore the 
Etch-a-Sketch company had to move to China to hire Chinese workers in 
order to keep Etch-a-Sketch at $9.99. All those workers lost their 
jobs. The list is almost endless. They don't make one pair of Levis in 
America. What is more American than a pair of Levis, except they don't 
make one pair of Levis in America. Gone; they are all gone.
  We have all these people sitting around in this Chamber who voted for 
all these trade agreements--NAFTA, CAFTA, SHAFTA. We have all these 
acronyms for trade agreements. We have people who voted for all of 
them. Why? Because they think it is free trade and free trade is what 
leads to prosperity in our country.
  The question is, when you have the examples I have used with respect 
to trade deficits, one wonders how anyone can take a look at this and 
continue down the same road. If this is what this trade philosophy buys 
us, how can we continue it? Who will have the jobs in this country? 
Where will the jobs exist that produce a middle class and sustain a 
middle class with people coming out

[[Page 23480]]

of college and high school expecting to find decent jobs when those 
jobs are being moved elsewhere at a record pace?
  If they say to you, No, this is about producing factory products, 
pencils and erasers, it is not true. We are now seeing medical 
technology jobs going elsewhere. We are seeing engineering jobs go 
elsewhere. We are seeing technology jobs going elsewhere.
  IBM, Big Blue, General Motors. General Motors had a meeting that was 
little reported, but it was a meeting that was held in Detroit. It was 
on April 7, 2005. A man named Beau Anderson, who is the top purchasing 
agent for General Motors, called together all the top suppliers to 
General Motors. He told 380 executives from those suppliers that 
General Motors has to cut costs and you ought to consider building your 
car parts in China.
  The effect of that, of course, is General Motors saying to their 
suppliers: We want your jobs to go to China. Why? To save money and cut 
costs. It was interesting that 2 months after that, General Motors 
announced a plan to cut 25,000 jobs. At the same time, they move out 
their biggest selling brand on television and wave the American Flag 
and say: This is an American revolution. No, it is not an American 
revolution, not if you are telling all your suppliers to move American 
jobs to China. That is not an American revolution.
  Or what about Big Blue, IBM, a good American company? These are all 
good companies. It is just that the culture has changed. I wonder if 
they say the Pledge of Allegiance in the boardroom because their fealty 
is to the stockholders and profits and not so much caring about 
American jobs.
  IBM officials Harry Newman and Tom Lynch were in the process of 
laying off 13,000 U.S. workers and also some workers in Europe and 
hiring 14,000 workers at the same time in India. Here is an excerpt of 
the presentation the two IBM officials made. They said:

       The good news is, we have not been cited in the press for a 
     lot of what we are doing here. A couple of years ago, we went 
     to Mexico with our PC--

  That is personal computer--

     business as a cheap source of labor. Now Mexico doesn't look 
     as cheap as some other markets.

  And then they say to the managers how to break the news to the IBM 
employees who will be laid off:

       Don't be transparent regarding the purpose or the intent. 
     The terms ``onshore'' and ``offshore'' should never be used.

  In other words, they wanted to get rid of these American employees 
but did not want to talk straight to them. And, oh, yes, the last thing 
they said in their memo to IBM employees is: Workers should be told as 
they are laid off, so they can hire these engineers in India, that this 
action in no way is a comment on the excellent work they have done over 
the years.
  Really? I thought if you did good work, if you contributed to the 
company's interests that you probably would not be someone who is fired 
or lose your job. In 2003, the Washington Post reported that more than 
one-half of all Fortune 500 companies were outsourcing software 
development overseas. One-half of the Fortune 500 companies are now 
moving software development jobs overseas.
  Let me talk for a moment about the reason that many companies are 
finding it advantageous to pole-vault from the United States to other 
countries and employ these workers. You can employ workers without the 
restrictions you have in our country. If you want to open a 
manufacturing plant in China or Bangladesh, for example, you do not 
have to worry about these things that are a nuisance here, such as the 
minimum wage. There is no minimum wage, or at least not any that is 
adhered to. You don't have to worry about worker safety. You don't have 
to worry about working in a safe work plant, about dumping chemicals 
into the air or water, and, by the way, you sure don't have to worry 
about somebody joining a labor union. You can fire them or, better yet, 
jail them, according to the Chinese authorities.
  I can offer some examples of the names of people who are now sitting 
in Chinese jails. What was their transgression? Trying to organize 
workers to decide they should not have to work 7 days a week, 12, 14 
hours a day for 30, 40, and 50 cents an hour. They tried to organize 
those workers and now they find themselves in Chinese prisons.
  We have been through all of that in this country. This is not 
something that is new to us. We, for a century, worked through these 
issues. Most people won't know of James Fyler. James Fyler, I once 
said, died of acute lead poisoning. I should not have done that. He was 
shot 54 times. James Fyler was shot 54 times. You know what he was 
doing? He was leading a labor strike in 1914 of coal miners objecting 
to working conditions, compensation, and hours. It is not just James 
Fyler who lost his life. Children working in the silk mills in 
Patterson, NJ, what was their demand? Eleven-hour days and 6-day 
workweeks. That is what they wanted. They wanted a 6-day workweek with 
11 hours a day. That is what the kids wanted in Patterson, NJ.
  In 1877, 10 coal miners were hanged in Pennsylvania. In 1903, Mary 
Harris Jones led a strike to demand a 55-hour workweek. In 1911, a fire 
at the Triangle Shirt Waste Company killed 147 people--women and mostly 
young girls locked in a 10-story building in sweatshop conditions. So 
we have been through all of this. In 1932, five U.S. autoworkers were 
beaten to death in Dearborn, MI, by Michigan police and goons when they 
went on a hunger march against Ford Motor.
  We have been through all of this. Our country decided that in America 
we want to have child labor laws, we want to have fair wages, we 
believe that workers contribute to a company, we believe people ought 
to have a right to organize, and we believe workers ought to have the 
right to work in a safe workplace. We have been through it all. And now 
the way to avoid all of that is to fire your American workers and move 
the jobs to China or some other country.
  In fact, unbelievably--and I will not name all the names today, 
although I should; I am writing a book at the moment and I will name 
all the names in the book--unbelievably, this Senate supports a tax 
provision that rewards companies that shut down their American 
manufacturing plants and move jobs overseas. We voted on that, I 
believe, four times on amendments I offered. I have lost all four of 
the amendments. On all four occasions, this Senate has expressed itself 
by saying, We believe it is appropriate to provide tax incentives to 
American companies that shut down their American plants, get rid of 
their American workers, and move the jobs overseas. That is 
unbelievable to me, but it is true, and all the names of the folks who 
voted that way--they know who they are--we will vote on it again, and 
we will continue to pay for it, we will reward it.
  The question is what kind of a country is going to exist here 5 and 
10 years from now as this line of dramatic increases in red ink 
continues.
  One of the interesting characters I have met in my life is Warren 
Buffett, the second richest man in the world. He lives in Omaha, NE. He 
is as plain as an old shoe. I am sure he doesn't mind me saying that. 
He is the second richest man in the world, and you wouldn't know it. I 
don't know how you act as the second richest man in the world. Whatever 
it is, he doesn't act it. He is an interesting, provocative thinker.
  What does he say about all this? Warren Buffett is one of the few 
major business figures in this country who says this is nuts; this is 
dangerous. He said we are heading toward a sharecropper society in this 
country in which other countries own the assets of America because 
every single day $2 billion goes to some other country. We buy $2 
billion more from those countries than we sell to those countries. They 
hold American assets with which they can buy American stocks and bonds, 
and they can buy American real estate.
  We are selling America piece by piece, and Warren Buffett is the only 
business leader I am aware of who speaks out on this subject, I am sure 
at some displeasure of other business leaders in this country.

[[Page 23481]]

  I know some will listen to all of this and say it is the same old 
anticorporation rant. I want corporations to do well. I recognize big 
isn't always bad and small isn't always beautiful. You are not going to 
build a 757 airplane in a garage someplace in a small town. We need 
economies of scale. We do need larger enterprises for that. But I also 
believe there ought to be some courage to stand up for the economic 
interests of this country and, once it is decided the gate is open for 
companies to decide anywhere in the world they want to hire workers for 
pennies on the hour and get rid of their American workers, we ought to 
understand the consequences of that for our country.
  The solution is not to train triple or quadruple the number of 
engineers in our country. While I would think that is probably a useful 
thing, that does not solve our problem. Having trained engineers who 
are unemployed is relatively worthless. What we need are trade 
agreements that stand up for our country's economic interests and, 
regrettably, those trade agreements at this point don't exist.
  I wish to point out that nobody wants to talk about these issues, 
least of all the Labor Department. This is from the Associated Press. 
It says, ``Labor Department Withholds Trade Reports.'' And just before 
we voted on the Central American free trade agreement, the Department 
of Labor, we discover, had kept secret for more than a year Government-
commissioned studies that supported those of us who were opponents of 
this new trade deal. It talks about the fact that in the Central 
American countries there are just horrible labor conditions.
  I wanted to show you a picture that shows the face of Central 
American labor. This is a young--I believe this boy is 11 years old in 
the sugarcane field in Honduras in this particular case. That is the 
face of labor in Central America.
  The report in question was kept secret by the Department of Labor for 
a year. Why? Because they didn't want those of us in the Chamber who 
opposed the Central American free trade agreement to have that 
information.
  If you wonder what the face of unfair trade looks like, this is an 
example. These are teenage girls whose hands are bound by ropes. I 
believe this is in Bangladesh. These pictures were taken by a 
journalist who was there. These young girls raised some objections to 
the working conditions in their factory in Bangladesh. The working 
conditions were unbelievable: 12- to 14-hour days, 7 days a week. And 
so they decided to protest. These are young kids who are held virtually 
captive. By the way, the product of their work comes to the United 
States and Europe for sale.
  But let me show you the rest of the photographs that have been taken 
in Bangladesh. Here is a young woman shot in the stomach, part of the 
same group. Here are the pictures by the same photographer of the 
beatings.
  What is this all about? It is about young kids, kids as young as 10 
and 12 years old being put in factories in intolerable conditions 
working 12, 14 hours a day, 7 days a week without a break saying, Wait 
a second, this is killing us. And what is the result? The result is a 
trained police force comes in and decides to beat them mercilessly.
  That picture is self-explanatory. That man is dead, shot dead because 
he believed that those labor conditions were intolerable and believed 
people ought to have a right to some self-determination.
  We talk a lot about freedom these days. What about the freedom for 
these kids in Bangladesh? What about some knowledge by American 
consumers about the conditions of production for all these cheap 
products? It is something nobody wants to talk much about, but it is 
something one of these days this Congress and this country are going to 
have to deal with.
  This economy is not doing well. Most of us know that. Oh, there was a 
spurt of some income-tax receipts and the spurt of those income-tax 
receipts recently was caused by a perverse business decision by this 
Congress, and those who voted for that will know of that as well. That 
decision was, let's decide for all those companies that have moved 
their jobs overseas and that are making money overseas move to America 
at some point and repatriate their profit and pay taxes, let's decide 
for them that we will give them a 5\1/4\-percent tax rate. Nobody else 
in the country has that. Nobody. But for those who moved their jobs 
overseas and they repatriate their income, we will let them pay 5\1/4\ 
rather than 35 percent.
  What about my Uncle Harold? Why shouldn't he pay 5\1/4\ percent? Why 
shouldn't the rest of the people pay 5\1/4\ percent income tax? No, 
that wasn't good enough for all Americans, just the big interests that 
moved their jobs overseas.
  I didn't support it. I thought it was outrageous, unbelievable to do 
this, but this Congress did it. It is pretty accommodating to big 
economic interests, and so we had votes and I voted against it; many 
voted for it. And so we have had a repatriation of income and had some 
small increase in income tax because of that. That is temporary. So now 
people say, Well, the deficit is less this year than last year. This 
year is still the third highest deficit in the history of this country. 
And it is going higher. It was less this year because of this 
perversion of rewarding companies that moved their jobs overseas. In 
fact, the Federal debt increased in the last year by over a half a 
trillion dollars. The trade debt increased, or will increase, this year 
by over $700 billion. That is $1.2 trillion in total indebtedness. We 
are way off track, just way off track.
  Is there alarm or concern about it? No, not really I guess. We get 
hit with a hurricane. Well, the payment for that is very much like the 
war in Iraq. We get a budget from the President at the start of the 
year and it says, OK, we are in Iraq, we have 140,000 American troops 
in Iraq, it is costing a great deal of money, it is costing about $5 to 
$6 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan and guess what, my budget 
requests zero funding for it. Zero. This wouldn't pass eighth grade 
arithmetic.
  So now every year the President sends us a budget with zero funding. 
So OK, we pass a budget because we understand later on the President 
will come back to this Chamber and say, oh, by the way, there is 
another expenditure to be approved outside the budget for emergency 
funding. It can add to the debt and nobody should care about that. And 
so then we get an emergency funding request for $50 billion, $40 
billion, $70 billion, and that is the way it goes. No one is willing to 
stare truth in the face. But we are in significant trouble here, headed 
toward a result that is not a good result for this country.
  The question for all of us is, When will we be straight? When will 
this Congress and this President be straight with the American people? 
Being straight with the American people means to get the fiscal house 
in order and to solve this trade mess. If we don't, we are burdening 
our kids with massive amounts of debt, unparalleled in the history of 
this country.
  Is there evidence that the President is interested in this? No. Very 
little, very little at all. Is there evidence that Congress wants to 
deal with this?
  Well, it is interesting. You go back to the year 2001 when the 
expectation was there had been a turnaround, things were looking 
better, not necessarily with respect to trade but with respect to the 
budget, we were going to have surpluses and all of a sudden the 
prediction was surpluses for 10 straight years and the President said 
to the Congress: You know what the predictions are for 10 straight 
years. Let's provide really big tax cuts. Some of us said: You know, 
maybe that is not the conservative way. Maybe we should be 
conservative. What if something happens? What if the surpluses don't 
materialize? The expectation of surpluses for 10 years, what if they 
are not there? What if something happens? Oh, don't worry, be happy, 
let's have big tax cuts.
  And so those who got the biggest tax cuts were those with the biggest 
income. If you were a millionaire, I am telling you, in 2001 you should 
have had a lot of celebrating to do because you got the largest tax 
cuts you had ever seen.

[[Page 23482]]

  So we had tax cuts and then all of a sudden we have a recession. Then 
we have a war in Afghanistan. We have the terrorist attack of 9/11, a 
war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq. Then we have the proposed surpluses 
turning to big deficits, following which we have massive natural 
disasters. Now we have continuing costs of $5 to $6 billion a month in 
Iraq and Afghanistan and we have been hit with Hurricane Katrina and 
Hurricane Rita. The President says we can deal with all that.
  If we just took back the tax cuts for those with over $1 million a 
year in income, just that, and should probably do it this afternoon, if 
we just took back the tax cuts, the tax cuts given to those with a 
million a year or more of income, we would raise about $32 billion a 
year.
  Use that to reduce the deficit. I am for that. Is that picking on 
millionaires? No. They have the highest growth in income in the last 
decade. They didn't need a tax cut, especially a tax cut that we have 
charged and added to the debt because the surplus didn't exist.
  But, Mr. President, we cannot possibly begin to put this country back 
on track unless we address both issues of the fiscal policy that is 
dangerously off track and a trade policy that is not only incompetent 
and ``fundamentally dumb'' with people chanting on street corners about 
free trade when the evidence is all around us that has abysmally 
failed. If we don't address these things, we don't have much of an 
economic future.
  There is not a Republican or Democratic way to address them. There is 
a right and a wrong way to address them. And you can't start until the 
country has the will, until the Congress and the President have the 
will and exhibit the leadership to address them.
  McCullough spoke about John Adams in that book ``John Adams'' as they 
were trying to put this new country together. Adams is traveling a lot, 
especially in Europe, and he writes to Abigail. And that is why we know 
a lot about John Adams. Back then he would say to Abigail as he was 
traveling: From where will the leadership come? Where will the 
leadership come from to help form this new country of ours? Where will 
the leadership emerge?
  Then in a later letter he would sort of say lamentingly, there is 
really only us to provide the leadership. There is just us. There is 
me; there is George Washington; there is Thomas Jefferson; there is Ben 
Franklin; there is Mason; there is Madison. Well, in the rearview 
mirror of history they were only a few of some of the great talent in 
human history who framed quite a remarkable country and a Constitution 
that says ``we the people.''
  But every generation of Americans has to ask the same question: From 
where will the leadership come? Who will emerge as the leaders to help 
put this on track? That is especially the case now. Who will emerge as 
the leaders to begin standing up for the economic interests of this 
country and to say that we can't continue these kinds of trade 
deficits, we can't continue shipping good American jobs overseas 
because people who make $11 an hour are paid too much? Where will the 
middle class in America be? Will we have a middle class if $11 an hour 
is the wage that is too high? Are we going to be willing to stand up 
for the economic interests for our country? Are our trade policies 
designed to raise other countries or push our country down? The answer 
to that, quite clearly, is push down wages and opportunities.
  You read every day in your local newspapers about what is happening 
to pensions and benefits for workers across this country and, for that 
matter, wages.
  If I might close with just the Palm Pilot message from the young 
woman from Silicon Valley. I think it says it all. I mean you lose your 
job in this country. You go to school; you get an education; you go to 
work for a technology company; you build Palm Pilots, help design them; 
and the last message on this young woman's Palm Pilot was ``My job's 
gone to India.'' Guess what. She trained her successor as well. That is 
what the company required her to do at her last job. So the next time 
people say it is only about manufacturing jobs and it is really 
advantageous for us if we can find someone to make shoes and shirts and 
pants and clothes and trinkets and trousers in China or Bangladesh 
because it is cheaper for us to go to a big box retailer and pay that 
money, when they say that, understand it is not just about those jobs. 
Yes, it is jobs, but it is about jobs going to India and somebody who 
made Palm Pilots. It is about engineers going to India. It is about a 
massive loss of American jobs, 3 million in the last 4 years, and much, 
much more to come, given the trade agreements we have had and given the 
trade agreements that are now being negotiated.
  I have one last point. Right now Ambassador Portman is negotiating a 
new trade deal in a place called Doha. I am assuming they are 
negotiating in Doha because they can't do it in New York or Paris or 
London or places such as that; the streets would be full of 
demonstrators because people are fed up with these kinds of agreements. 
So they are negotiating in Doha behind closed doors in secret and our 
negotiator has, in my judgment, just put a cherry on top of whipped 
cream on the sundae here in terms of incompetency. He said everything 
is on the table.
  That means for everybody who is unfairly dumping in our country, we 
are willing to trade it away; it is on the table as they trade away our 
antidumping laws. That is the protection we are supposed to have in 
trade law against those who would commit unfair trade practices against 
us. We are willing to trade that away, the antidumping and the 
counterveiling duties. It is all on the table.
  This is unbelievable to me. This country needs a spine, a backbone, 
and a willingness to stand up for its own economic interests, and this 
has now been the case for some long while.
  Mr. President, I will again offer amendments dealing with trade. I 
will offer the amendment which has been defeated now four times that 
rewards tax breaks, companies that ship American jobs overseas and 
hope, perhaps, that if not enough see the light perhaps more will feel 
the heat. One day perhaps there will be a majority who will step 
forward to stop this insidious practice to provide tax breaks for 
companies that ship American jobs overseas. If we can't take the first 
baby step, there is little hope to keep good jobs in this county.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE. The Senator from Ohio.

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