[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9195]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    MAKING AMERICA MORE COMPETITIVE

  (Mr. TIAHRT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, Yogi Berra said that predictions are hard to 
make, especially when they are about the future. But that does not mean 
we should not look ahead. In fact, if you do sit down and think about 
what America is going to be like 5, 10, 20 years from now and how our 
economy is going to be in relationship to the rest of the world, I 
think we should all be very concerned.
  Right now, China is in the beginning stages of trying to start an 
Asian Union, much like the European Union, where the yuan is the euro 
or the monetary means. They are trying to combine the people in 
Southeast Asia, which could make an economy of about 3 billion people. 
The European Union is now absorbing new European countries, plus they 
have a natural bond to the Islamic world based on their current 
immigration trends, and they could easily develop an economy of 1 
billion people.
  So if you look downstream, the very likely position for our economy 
could be third place, unless, unless, we change the environment here in 
America.
  Last year we had a trade deficit of $671 billion and a Federal 
deficit. If we are going to bring jobs back to America, we have to 
change the environment by making our country more competitive.

                          ____________________