[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9210-9218]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        VOTE ``NO'' ON THE CENTRAL AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, this evening I am joined by fellow 
House Members, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), the gentleman 
from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), a freshman, and other House Members who 
will join us shortly as we talk a little bit about the Central American 
Free Trade Agreement. Some call it the Central American Free Labor 
Agreement, as we will soon see.
  As you can see by this calendar, we are barely 2 weeks away from the 
deadline set by the House majority leader, the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. DeLay), the most powerful Republican in the House of 
Representatives, for a vote. They plan a vote in this Chamber on the 
Central American Free Trade Agreement. This deadline coincides with the 
1-year anniversary of when President Bush signed the agreement.
  That does not seem like news, except for this: every trade agreement 
signed by the Bush administration in his 4\1/2\ years in office, every 
single trade agreement signed by the Bush administration has been voted 
on within 60 days of its signing. The President signs the agreement 
with Australia, with Singapore, with Chile, with Morocco; and this 
Congress votes on it right away, in large part because there is not 
huge opposition to the trade agreements.
  This time, we are now at 347 days since Congress, since the President 
signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement. That is how long 
CAFTA has languished in Congress without a vote. Why? Because Democrats 
and Republicans alike, people on this side of the aisle, people on that 
side of the aisle, understand that the Central American Free Trade 
Agreement is dead on arrival in the House of Representatives.
  Last month, two dozen Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined 
more than 150 business groups and labor organizations echoing a united 
message: vote ``no'' on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. 
Yesterday, just outside this building across the street, more than 400 
union workers and Members of Congress again gathered in front of the 
U.S. Capitol to deliver a united message; vote ``no'' on the Central 
American Free Trade Agreement.
  So Republican leaders in this House and the Bush administration 
understood they had a problem. On this day it will be 12 months, 1 
year, since the President sent CAFTA to Congress. There is not the 
support in this country or this Congress for this trade agreement 
because people understand what it does to our Nation, what it does to 
our workers, what it does to our food safety, what it does to the 
environment.
  So what did the Republican leaders and President Bush do? They 
brought the six presidents of these five Central American countries and 
the Dominican Republic, they brought these six presidents to the United 
States. In fact, the six presidents are touring our Nation on a United 
States Chamber of Commerce junket going around the country trying to 
convince the American people, the press, and the American Congress to 
vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
  They traveled to Miami. They went to Los Angeles, they went to 
Albuquerque, they came to my State of Ohio attempting to convince 
Americans this is a good idea.
  The Bush administration has not been able to sell it. Business in 
this country has not been able to sell it. The free trade ideologues in 
this Congress who need your vote for every trade agreement, they have 
not been able to sell it.
  So what is next? They bring the six presidents from Central America 
to come in. Unfortunately, these presidents are not telling the whole 
story. Like our own President, they tried to convince us that CAFTA 
will lift up low-income workers and that CAFTA will create jobs here at 
home.

                              {time}  2000

  First of all, there is no truth to that. We have heard that on every 
trade agreement. But what they do not say about CAFTA, what they have 
not said is that the combined purchasing power of the CAFTA nations, 
the combined purchasing power is equal to that of Columbus, Ohio, or 
equal to that of Orlando, Florida, or equal to that of

[[Page 9211]]

Memphis, Tennessee. They do not discuss the fact that people in Central 
America, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, these six 
countries, they do not discuss the fact that they are not making enough 
money to buy cars made in Ohio; they are not making enough money to buy 
software made in Washington State or steel made in Pennsylvania, or 
textiles or apparel made in North Carolina or South Carolina or 
Georgia, or planes made in Washington State. Why? Because look at the 
average wage in these countries.
  The average wage in the United States is $38,000. People who are 
making $38,000, the average wage, can usually own a car, oftentimes own 
a small home, at least rent an apartment, sometimes own a home. People 
making $38,000 a year are buying shoes. They are paying into Medicare. 
They are buying clothes. They are consumers. They are buying products. 
But look at the rest of the countries in the Central American Free 
Trade Agreement: Costa Rica, $9,000; Dominican Republic, average salary 
$6,000 a year; El Salvador, $4,800; Guatemala, $4,100; Honduras, 
$2,600; Nicaragua $2,300. They are not going to buy cars made in Ohio. 
They are not going to buy steel made in West Virginia. They are not 
going to buy software from Seattle. They are not going to buy textiles 
from North Carolina. What is this all about?
  What this is about is for U.S. companies to offsource, outsource 
offshore, send offshore jobs to these low-income countries. They will 
set up factories in Nicaragua, so they will pay Nicaraguan pennies on 
the dollar to manufacture products to sell back into the United States. 
It will not raise their standard of living in Nicaragua; it will 
certainly hurt our standard of living in this country.
  But let me for a moment share again, when these six presidents toured 
the United States, what they said and what they did not say. What they 
did not say, with all due respect to these Central American leaders, 
they did not tell us that NAFTA-CAFTA does nothing to ensure 
enforcement of labor provisions in their own country. They have not 
told reporters or the Congress or the public that more than 8,000 
Guatemalan workers protested against CAFTA last month; two of them were 
killed by the police in Guatemala. They did not mention that tens of 
thousands of El Salvadorans who protested the Central American Free 
Trade Agreement a year-and-a-half ago. They do not mention the 18,000 
letters sent last year by Honduran workers to the Honduran Congress 
protesting, decrying this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA. They did not 
tell us about the 10,000 people who protested CAFTA in Nicaragua in 
2003. They did not tell us about the 30,000 CAFTA protestors in Costa 
Rica just this past fall. Hundreds of thousands of workers in these six 
countries have protested in 50 demonstrations in the last 3 years 
saying that CAFTA is not good for those countries.
  Before yielding to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), I want to 
sort of finish this story of the six presidents. The six presidents 
last night assembled in Washington in the midst of their travels around 
the United States to sell the American people on a bad trade agreement 
between us and them. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted a reception 
for these visiting dignitaries rewarding them for their lobbying 
efforts. You can walk around the Capitol today and the last couple of 
days and you would see these presidents going from office to office to 
office trying to convince American Members of Congress that they should 
pass this trade agreement. But they were rewarded for their efforts at 
a very lavish reception at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last night.
  You can see these presidents raise their glasses, toasting these 
U.S., these large corporations in the country, thanking them for this 
tour; you can see these corporate CEOs raising their glasses, toasting 
these presidents of the six countries, thanking them for fighting for 
this trade agreement which will, more than anything, help these large 
businesses. I wondered if these CEOs and I wondered if these six 
presidents reflected on what happens to small businesses in Ohio and 
Michigan, those that do not want another failed trade agreement. I 
wondered if they thought about the family farms in North Carolina and 
Louisiana holding on for dear life. I wondered if they thought about 
those workers in Nicaragua and Costa Rica and Guatemala and El Salvador 
and Honduras and the Dominican Republic. I wondered if they thought 
about that when they were toasting, the CEOs were toasting the six 
presidents and the six presidents were toasting the CEOs. My guess is 
they did not.
  Tonight, we are here in this Special Order to talk about CAFTA facts 
and the fact that CAFTA is dead on arrival and the fact, as I mentioned 
earlier, that we are now down to 16 days. It will be 1 year, and this 
deadline is approaching, 16 days until CAFTA is absolutely buried.
  I yield to my friend from my neighboring district in Ohio (Mr. 
Kucinich).
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I want to say that 
the people of Ohio are proud of the gentleman and the work that he has 
done in challenging these unfair trade agreements. For me to have a 
chance to join the gentleman in this important challenge to CAFTA is a 
privilege, and I again want to commend the gentleman for the service 
that he has given to the people.
  I want to focus for a moment on one particular impact of CAFTA, and 
that is the impact on the availability of generic drugs, something that 
is another issue that the gentleman has worked on.
  While the Bush administration says that they understand the need for 
lower-cost medicines in developing countries, their actions demonstrate 
greater concern for protecting the extremely high profitability of 
leading pharmaceutical companies. In the trade talks that resulted in 
the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA, our government 
pressed for tighter restrictions on generic drugs in the Central 
American countries. The result will be higher prices for medicines and 
higher profits for the pharmaceutical industry paid for by some of the 
poorest people on earth.
  CAFTA has been one of the Bush administration's highest priorities in 
international trade. As we know, it extends the NAFTA agreement to all 
of the Central American countries that happen to be small and poor. The 
CAFTA countries include Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, 
Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. It was formally signed by the 
administration, and it awaits congressional votes, which is why we are 
here to appeal to the Members of Congress to think long and hard before 
they would even consider supporting CAFTA.
  The Central American countries that would be affected by CAFTA have 
significant health problems. AIDS, for instance, is more prevalent in 
the CAFTA countries taken as a whole than in the United States. 
According to Dr. Manuel Munoz, the director of Medecins Sans 
Frontiere's AIDS treatment program in Honduras, ``HIV/AIDS kills one 
person in Honduras every 2 hours, because the vast majority of people 
with HIV/AIDS cannot afford lifesaving AIDS medicines.'' Malaria and 
tuberculosis are also prevalent. As a result, the people of these 
countries need greater access to essential medicines. Yet, CAFTA will 
make access more difficult for most residents and impossible for too 
many of them.
  CAFTA accomplishes this by imposing new restrictions on the use of 
pharmaceutical regulatory data that will have the effect of limiting 
the availability of generic drugs.
  Pharmaceutical regulatory data is the result of studies of patent 
medicine's efficacy and safety. These studies are performed by the 
companies seeking approval and are often expensive to undertake. The 
data are submitted to the drug regulatory agency in the company's 
application for approval.
  When a company seeks to manufacture a generic version of a patent 
medicine, it must typically show that its product is the chemical 
equivalent of the patent medicine and that it works

[[Page 9212]]

in the body in the same way. The generic producer relies upon the drug 
regulatory agency's prior approval of the patent medicine to make its 
case of approval of the generic version.
  What CAFTA does is it gives extra patent protections to the drug 
regulatory data, thereby excluding any other user from relying upon 
them. In other words, not only might a particular medicine be protected 
by a patent, but, additionally, the drug regulatory data for that 
medicine is protected by a patent. Even if the medicine's patent 
expires, generic manufacture could be restricted due to the additional 
patent on the use of regulatory data. According to Robert Weissman, an 
attorney specializing in international trade and pharmaceuticals, ``if 
the generics cannot rely on approvals granted based on the brand-name 
data, in most cases, they simply will not enter the market. This is 
especially true in small size markets, as in Central America, where 
prospective revenues are limited.''
  Now, CAFTA was formally signed on May 28, 2004. It will only become 
law if Congress passes it. In 2002, the pharmaceutical industry gave 
over $29 million in political contributions; three-quarters of that was 
donated to the Republicans.
  Recently, I am sure the gentleman is aware, the pharmaceutical 
companies have been expatriating their profits to avoid paying income 
taxes here in the United States. They really do not want to pay income 
taxes there, but they want to control the political process here and, 
by reference, in Central America with the help of these trade 
agreements. I am glad to join the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) in 
urging the Members of Congress to oppose CAFTA. Not only is it bad for 
workers, not only is it bad for human rights, not only is it bad for 
the environment, but it is bad for people's health.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio. 
Think about what he just said. This agreement has made it even harder 
for the poorest people in this hemisphere; again, look at the income 
here. The United States average income, $38,000. The gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) mentioned Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras 
especially; their income is less than 10 percent of ours, literally, 
and they are forcing, because U.S. drug companies have convinced the 
United States Trade Representative's Office, appointed by the Bush 
administration, convinced them to squeeze the poorest people in the 
world even harder on paying for prescription drugs. I mean, it is just, 
when we talk about values, when we talk about morality, to do that to 
the poorest of the poor that need HIV drugs, that need malaria drugs, 
that need tuberculosis drugs, that need antibiotics, and they are going 
to end up paying more money because, in fact, the United States Trade 
Representative said to the government of one country, If you do not 
change your laws, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) talked about 
this and has talked about it before, if you do not change your laws, we 
are not going to allow you into the Central America Free Trade 
Agreement.
  It is not like the drug industry does not have way too much power 
with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and with Republican 
leadership and in the White House here in this country, where people 
are paying two and three and four times what they ought to be paying 
for prescription drugs; now we are seeing that drug industry exert its 
power, helped by the U.S. Government, in the poorest countries in the 
Western Hemisphere.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, when you carry this along to its 
conclusion, what we have is a condition where the people in the poorest 
countries cannot protect their health. So we are looking at their life 
expectancy beginning to decline, and one of the reasons is because they 
cannot afford the cost of the prescription drugs. And just as people 
here are held hostage by the pharmaceutical companies with the high 
cost of prescription drugs, imagine what it is like for these poor 
people in Central America, who are making a tenth, if that, of what we 
make in this country, and they are paying a high cost for prescription 
drugs because the pharmaceutical companies want these trade agreements 
which protect their patents and will not permit generics to get the 
help to people that need it the most.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Exactly right. I thank the gentleman.
  As I said, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan) 
has joined us. We are also joined by the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. 
Schakowsky), who has worked on trade agreements for years; and the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), my colleague on the other side of 
the State bordering my district to the west, who has been involved in 
trade agreements probably longer and more aggressively and more 
assertively than I think any Member of this body; the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), a freshman who has taken this issue and run 
with it. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. CARNAHAN. Mr. Speaker, it is great to be with the gentleman from 
Ohio on behalf of the great people of the State of Missouri that I am 
fortunate to represent. I want to rise tonight to add my voice in 
opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
  I have several concerns with the agreement in its current form, not 
the least of which are the effects it will have on American workers and 
the middle class. Trade agreements like CAFTA enable American companies 
employing American workers to send multiple aspects of their business 
overseas. This in turn allows these companies to exploit cheap labor in 
developing countries and import their products back into the United 
States. The resulting problem is really twofold.
  First, there are no real protections for the workers in the Central 
American countries, and second, it is yet another means to put American 
workers out of work. CAFTA's answer to protecting low-wage workers in 
Central America is a self-enforcement provision.

                              {time}  2015

  This really is translated into a nonenforcement provision because it 
will not help these workers in any way. The countries involved in this 
agreement do not have the necessary legal framework in place to protect 
the basic and fundamental rights of working people. If we are going to 
enter into trade agreements with other countries, it is our 
responsibility to ensure we protect the basic rights of working people 
in those countries and here at home.
  Mr. Speaker, the other glaring deficiency with CAFTA is it will 
essentially fire American workers. Approving this agreement will be a 
guarantee that more jobs will leave our country at the expense of our 
U.S. workforce. Because there are no labor protections in place in the 
Central American countries to ensure adequate wages, domestic companies 
can simply outsource their work to these countries at a low rate and 
leave our workers out.
  I will not support any agreement that displaces American workers and 
does not support basic human rights. I want to urge my colleagues to 
oppose CAFTA in its current form.
  I want to also mention the differences between these two markets, the 
U.S. market and the Central American market. The U.S. economy had a 
$10.5 trillion GDP in 2002. It is about 170 times the size of the 
economies in the Central American nations. It does not take a trade 
expert to see the economic mismatch between the U.S. and CAFTA nations.
  The viability of Central American nations as trading partners is an 
important part of the administration's CAFTA sales pitch. That is why 
U.S. trade representatives said Central America offers ``expanded 
markets for American producers and new opportunities for U.S. workers 
and manufacturers.''
  But take a look at the U.S. Conference of Mayors Metro Economies 
report released in 2003. It confirms the administration's CAFTA numbers 
do not add up. The combined economic output of CAFTA signatories, Costa 
Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala is about equal to 
that of Orlando, Florida, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) 
mentioned earlier. This falls far short of

[[Page 9213]]

what the projections are by the Bush administration.
  These raw numbers are bad enough. Consider the fact that a typical 
Central American consumer earns only a small fraction of a typical 
American worker's wage, about $191 a month. It is clear that CAFTA's 
true objective is not to increase U.S. exports. Central American 
consumers cannot afford to buy American-made goods today. And CAFTA's 
inadequate labor provisions ensure they will be unable to afford 
American-made goods tomorrow. This agreement offers little or no 
economic opportunity for American workers and producers. The CAFTA 
model is really a recipe for disaster. Congress must devise a trade 
agreement to promote business development and jobs in the U.S.
  CAFTA should help Central American workers earn enough to buy 
American-made products. It is time to rethink U.S. trade policy, to do 
what is right, not just for the big corporations, but what is right for 
workers, small business, communities, and the environment.
  The President is on the wrong track. Congress must demand a smarter 
trade deal than the current CAFTA negotiation.
  I thank the gentleman for leading this tonight, and it is good to be 
here with you and the other Members to speak out on this.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), for his good work and his interest, both in 
protecting American jobs and his interest in fair play in Central 
America so workers there have their living standards raised rather than 
continue to stagnate, which is what these trade agreements have done.
  We are also joined by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
  I yield next to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) who, as I 
said, has been working on trade issues for her entire 23 years in this 
Congress.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, that is the way it has turned out to be, and 
I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for his great 
leadership and vision and taking this CAFTA fight to the American 
people. It is a great privilege also to join with the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Strickland), our esteemed colleague from south and 
southeastern Ohio, who I know will be adding remarks and great insight 
as the evening proceeds; the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. 
Schakowsky); the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan); and we had the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) from the Cleveland area here a 
little bit earlier.
  It is really amazing to me when you have a trade agreement like 
NAFTA, that is so absolutely a failure, that now there is a new trade 
scheme, and they have got a name that rhymes with NAFTA. I just, I 
cannot believe it. I cannot believe they are over there. They have got 
a cookie-cutter system, and they are not paying attention to results.
  If we look at the recent history of our country, going back to the 
mid-1970s, when the first so-called free trade agreement was signed, 
every single year the United States has begun to develop trade 
deficits. That means we ship out more jobs abroad than we create jobs 
here at home. And we end up taking our income and paying somebody else 
to do the work that we used to do, and we accumulate these growing 
trade deficits. And they get worse with every decade.
  When NAFTA passed in the early 1990s, we actually had a trade surplus 
with Mexico, which immediately turned into a trade deficit; and with 
Canada we have doubled the deficit that we already had. When we signed 
the agreement with China, which those of us who were here voted 
against, we did not get any more jobs. We did not get any more income. 
All we got was more trade deficit. It is so deep America has never been 
in this kind of deep water before. In fact, this year the trade deficit 
will accumulate at over half a trillion dollars. America has never 
faced this kind of loss. So it is amazing to me that they name an 
agreement to rhyme with one of the biggest failures.
  And here are some charts, I think, that tell a fuller story about 
what has happened with the NAFTA agreement. When NAFTA was signed in 
1994, we had accumulated trade deficits with Canada; but then every 
succeeding year, they got deeper and deeper and deeper. So, with 
Canada, we have not really benefited.
  And with Mexico, the surplus we had turned into a gigantic and 
growing deficit. And now what is happening with Mexico, of course, some 
of those jobs are being shifted to Latin America and to China. So NAFTA 
has been a negative.
  And what has been going on in terms of the United States, just take 
the auto industry which is the primary category of deficit with Mexico. 
We were already getting imports from Mexico prior to NAFTA's signing. 
Now it is just an avalanche coming the other way. And what we predicted 
has come true. Mexico has turned into an export platform to the United 
States. And what we are doing is actually creating a world system where 
people work for poverty wages or starvation wages. We have high-
productivity poverty rather than high-productivity prosperity.
  And, finally, if one looks at the China agreement which has a 
relationship here because this is the same cookie-cutter approach that 
they are giving us with China, the deficits were growing, but then when 
permanent normal trade relations, if you can call an abnormal trade 
deficit normal, I have never understood the words they use. We are just 
hemorrhaging with China. And just one company alone, Wal-Mart, takes 10 
percent of the exports that China sends around the world.
  So my basic point here this evening is, why should we have more of 
the same? Why should we believe them when they say it is going to be 
all right?
  And, indeed, I would like to place in the Record an article that was 
in the New York Times this week where the President of Costa Rica 
actually said he wants to postpone legislative review on this so-called 
CAFTA, which is an expansion of NAFTA, until an independent committee 
finds that it will not harm the poor. Well, it surely will harm the 
poor. And that is why, in nations like Mexico, we have historic 
demonstrations in Mexico City for example, of farmers, of peasants, of 
people just demonstrating and saying we cannot take it anymore; 
particularly in the countryside, the people are saying we cannot take 
it anymore.
  So I want to thank my colleague for bringing this issue to light. I 
think we have to be careful of the administration and their efforts to 
try to come in here and try to buy votes and say, what kinds of 
transportation project do you like? Oh, how much do you want? Do you 
need a bridge? Which way do you want it to go, east west, up, down, you 
know, below the ocean floor? I mean, we will do it for you. What else 
do you need? Do you need a base? We are moving a few bases around. That 
is what happened during NAFTA at the very end. The American people 
would have won that debate, but it was bought. It was bought and sold. 
And now look at the negative yield that it has produced for the 
American people.
  So I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for highlighting this 
this evening. And it has been a pleasure to join my colleagues tonight.

                [From the New York Times, May 10, 2005]

               Free Trade Pact Faces Trouble in Congress

                         (By Elizabeth Becker)

       Washington.--Social Security is not the administration's 
     only economic initiative that is in trouble in Congress.
       The current centerpiece of President Bush's trade agenda, 
     the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is facing 
     unusually united Democratic opposition as well as serious 
     problems in overcoming well-entrenched special interest 
     groups like sugar producers and much of the textile industry.
       With record trade deficits, concerns about lost jobs and an 
     overarching fear that the United States is losing out in the 
     accelerated pace of global changes, the sentiment in Congress 
     is shifting away from approving new free trade agreements.
       ``I don't like Cafta; I am not going to vote for it; and I 
     will do whatever I can to kill it,'' said Senator Harry Reid 
     of Nevada, the minority leader. ``We are approaching a 
     trillion-dollar trade deficit. We can't survive as a viable, 
     strong country doing that.''

[[Page 9214]]

       Even more troubling to the administration, which says free 
     trade agreements are critical components of any effort to 
     enhance American global competitiveness, is the stance of 
     Republicans like Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who 
     wants to hold off on new bilateral trade agreements.
       In a speech on the Senate floor and in a later opinion-page 
     article in the newspaper The Hill, Senator Chambliss said 
     that even though his state is home to global companies like 
     Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service and Georgia Pacific, he 
     could no longer support bilateral trade agreements without 
     being assured that ``American industries and workers are 
     truly benefiting from these agreements.''
       The trade deal, which was signed one year ago, involves a 
     handful of tiny countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, 
     Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. But its prospects for 
     moving forward have been soured by larger questions about 
     China's enormous economic power and whether it is playing by 
     the rules of trade in protecting intellectual property 
     rights, valuing its currency and calibrating the tide of its 
     textile exports. Also playing into the situation are unmet 
     expectations from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
       The administration accuses the Democrats and other 
     opponents of putting too much on the back of this trade deal, 
     which would reduce tariffs for many American goods and, the 
     White House says, improve the chances for democracy and free 
     market economics in Latin America.
       ``Cafta can't be held captive to China or any other trade 
     problem,'' said Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, who 
     has been crisscrossing the country trying to sell the 
     agreement since he took office in January.
       The administration admits that even in this off-election 
     year, when trade deals have the best chance of passage, it 
     does not have the votes to pass this one.
       With little sign of progress, both sides notched up the 
     battle last week. President Bush announced that he would play 
     host this week at a high-profile White House meeting. Since 
     his first term, the Bush administration has promoted free 
     trade agreements with Central America and throughout the 
     Western Hemisphere as important components of its foreign 
     policy.
       ``For too many decades,'' Secretary of State Condoleezza 
     Rice said in a speech before the Council of the Americas, 
     ``U.S. policy toward Central America and the Dominican 
     Republic has oscillated from engagement to disregard. With 
     Cafta, with the permanent engagement that free trade brings, 
     we can break this trend once and for all and we can 
     demonstrate that the United States is committed to the 
     success of all Latin American countries that embrace the 
     challenge of democracy.''
       On the other side, centrist Democrats who normally vote for 
     every new trade deal said they opposed Cafta. They said the 
     administration had yet to outline a clear policy aimed at 
     narrowing the $617 billion trade deficit. And they challenged 
     the White House to write trade deals that reflected what they 
     saw as the pressing challenges of globalization in the 21st 
     century.
       The administration characterizes most of these complaints 
     as protectionism and hopes that Rob Portman, the new United 
     States trade representative and a popular former member of 
     Congress, will be able to smooth the debate and win votes to 
     its side.
       But Representative Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the 
     ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Trade of the House 
     Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview that Cafta was 
     too small a treaty to warrant such attention.
       ``Cafta will have a minor impact on our economy; we should 
     be spending time on the big issues like China, agricultural 
     subsidies,'' Mr. Cardin said. ``If I were the administration, 
     I would not like my trade agenda to be judged on Cafta.''
       Despite its small weight, many interest groups are deeply 
     divided over Cafta. The Latino groups and politicians who 
     oppose Cafta say that Nafta, the decade-old agreement with 
     Mexico and Canada, failed to fulfill its promise.
       Representative Hilda Solis, Democrat of California, who 
     describes herself as the only member of Congress of Central 
     American descent, said she opposed Cafta because of Nafta's 
     record, which she said included 750,000 jobs lost in the 
     United States and little progress in improving workers' 
     rights in Mexico.
       By contrast, Mr. Gutierrez, the commerce secretary, said 
     Nafta was a strong selling point for Cafta.
       ``I've been associated with Mexico for almost four decades 
     and Mexico is better than it has ever been,'' said Mr. 
     Gutierrez, who started his career in that country after 
     fleeing Cuba as a child. ``It now has its lowest inflation 
     rate, and its growth last year was 4.5 percent.''
       But questions about labor rights and lost jobs are staying 
     at the forefront of the trade debate, not retreating. 
     American labor unions say the accord demands better 
     enforcement of existing labor laws in Central America without 
     imposing real sanctions. The administration defends the labor 
     provisions as groundbreaking.
       Even the countries within Cafta have some noticeable 
     divisions. The ambassadors to the United States from Cafta 
     countries are traveling around the nation to try to persuade 
     members of Congress to vote for the accord.
       But Beatrice de Carrillo, El Salvador's human rights 
     ombudswoman, said in an interview here that she opposed Cafta 
     because it was not strong enough to stop the destruction of 
     unions. And Costa Rica's president, Abel Pacheco, has said he 
     wants to postpone legislative review until an independent 
     committee finds that it will not harm the poor.

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank my friend from Toledo, the gentlewoman 
from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). And the gentlewoman is exactly right. I have a 
chart just with the Mexico trade deficit. The gentlewoman talked about 
Canada, the U.S., all of this. And you can see, we went from a trade 
surplus when NAFTA was signed to this, over $40 billion.
  And I look at the year that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) 
and I were elected to Congress in 1992. The United States, and I do not 
want to bore people with numbers, but in 1992, the year we first ran, 
the United States had a $38 billion trade deficit with the world. That 
meant we bought $38 billion more than we exported. Last year we had a 
trade deficit of $620 billion.
  Every trade agreement, as the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) 
says, they promise the same thing. They say more growth in the United 
States, more jobs, more manufacturing, more exports to the United 
States if you pass this trade agreement. Every time Congress passes 
one, it gets worse. The trade deficit keeps growing. The job loss keeps 
increasing.
  The definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and 
over and over again and you expect a different outcome. They are asking 
us to do the same thing. So we can see these same numbers come with 
Central America by increasing, increasing, increasing, increasing 
deficits every year.
  I would yield to my friend, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. 
Schakowsky). I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership, especially on 
trade issues and jobs issues and health issues.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), one of 
our best experts on trade. And in fact, the gentleman actually wrote 
the book, or at least a book on trade called ``Myths of Free Trade,'' a 
book I am happy to have and learn a lot from. And I am pleased to join 
all my colleagues. It is interesting that, so far anyway, those of us 
who are here tonight are from the Midwest where we have seen so many of 
our manufacturing jobs lost since the passage of NAFTA over 10 years 
ago.
  But, you know, I think as a people, as a Congress, certainly, we have 
to say why do we want free trade agreements? What is the purpose of 
trade agreements?
  I think all of us here think that we know that there now is a global 
marketplace, that the goal of economic integration, when done in the 
right way, is not only inevitable but can actually be desirable. The 
question is who benefits from it? What are, who are the winners and who 
are the losers? And what is CAFTA for?
  And, unfortunately, what we find is that the ordinary people of this 
country, and the ordinary people of the Central American countries now, 
the Dominican Republic and the Central American countries that are 
supposed to be part of CAFTA, it is the ordinary people, the everyday 
citizens, the hard-working people that are the losers, and the only 
ones who are the winners are corporations that really have no 
particular loyalty. They can pick up their capital, they can move their 
plants, as they did from Illinois. We lost about 100,000 jobs because 
of NAFTA. We saw a plant, a profitable plant, a Maytag plant, a nice 
manufacturing plant in Galesburg, Illinois, pick up and take with it 
over a thousand jobs. This was a plant that was actually making money. 
Why did it move? Because it could actually make more money by 
exploiting workers when they moved to Mexico.
  In a trip that was in part organized by my colleague, the gentlewoman

[[Page 9215]]

from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), I had the privilege of going to Ciudad Juarez 
last year, a town that is really in the metropolitan area of El Paso, 
Texas, separated by the Rio Grande River. And on one side of the river 
you have got workers who are looking for good jobs to support their 
families; and on the other side of the river, we see people who are 
working in the plants for American companies. And what we saw were 
workers who were actually, some of them, actually living in the packing 
crates of the products that they were manufacturing for the companies, 
the American companies that took those good-paying jobs and went to 
Mexico.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of being there with 
the gentlewoman, and I think we both really felt deeply in our hearts 
the pain as we talked with workers.
  I remember one woman that we talked with who had children, and she 
told us she worked 9.5 hours a day, 5 days a week. She had 30 minutes 
during the day as a break, and her total take-home pay was $38 a week. 
And I just will never forget that woman and the fact that we have a 
government that has participated in that kind of what I would consider 
immoral situation where a working mother would work that hard and be 
compensated at that level. It is just pathetic.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. As the gentleman remembers, that woman had children 
who she could not afford to send to school. It costs money to send them 
to school, a modest amount of money by our standards but out of reach 
for her because she does not make the kind of income that even would 
allow her children to go to school or have adequate health care.
  Is that the point of a free trade agreement?
  The United States should and could lead the world by example through 
a trade policy that improves the lives of individuals and not just adds 
to the profits of the major corporations. We could and should benefit 
workers here in the United States and create and sustain jobs that help 
small- and middle-sized and family-owned businesses grow. And D.R. 
CAFTA, Dominican Republic CAFTA, is not going to accomplish those goals 
for us here, for our small companies, for our workers and is simply 
going to increase this race to the bottom so that, how cheap can we get 
labor?
  I wanted to make a point about, are we really looking for markets in 
these Central American countries? Do we really believe that we are 
going to find people who are going to be buying our products? The 
combined purchasing power of the Central American nations in CAFTA is 
the same as Columbus, Ohio, or New Haven, Connecticut. The average 
salary of a Nicaraguan worker is $2,300 a year, $191 a month. Are they 
going to buy that car that is made in Ohio or in Michigan?
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, very briefly, we had visitors from two 
nations, El Salvador and Honduras in our community. Some of our church 
groups brought them in. These were young women workers in some of those 
textile plants down there. They held up t-shirts that they made for 
which they received 12 cents, and then we took them to stores in our 
community. They found the very same t-shirts on the rack, and they were 
priced at $20. And I remember the expressions on their faces. They 
could not believe it. And yet those that are brokering in their poverty 
wages and exacting high prices here, $20 for a t-shirt, are making 
enormous amounts of money off of this kind of bonded labor and control 
of our marketplace without proper government intervention.
  So I also remember the gentlewoman from Chicago, Illinois (Ms. 
Schakowsky) when we were down in Ciudad Juarez, I can remember the tear 
coming down her cheek when she saw that family living in those packing 
crates. I can remember that. When it pierces your heart, you never 
forget it.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to monopolize this 
conversation. I do feel so strongly that, as the greatest country on 
the face of the Earth, the wealthiest country, the country that has the 
capacity to create jobs, to help people, to lift our own people and 
people around the world, to help lift them out of poverty, to set a 
standard that would at least work towards that goal. What a shame that 
we have before us a trade agreement that, as the gentlewoman said, my 
sister, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), just a repeat of NAFTA, 
and we know the devastating results both here in the United States and 
in Mexico and in Canada, that it did not do anything for us.
  So I just am encouraged actually that we are seeing growing 
bipartisan opposition to this. Let us go back to the drawing board and 
come up with a real trade agreement that is going to achieve the goals 
that we want, that is going to be helpful to us and to our neighbors 
around the globe and certainly our closest neighbors here in Central 
America in the Dominican Republic.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if I could interject here, the company that 
the gentlewoman mentioned from Illinois, Galesburg, Maytag. I actually 
own Maytags. What happened to the workers from the Galesburg plant? 
Were they transferred? Did they get other jobs? Were they just without 
work?
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, you can imagine a fairly mid-sized, kind 
of small-town community, when a major employer like that leaves town, 
it does not just impact that business or those workers. It resonates 
throughout the community in a very negative way, and it is really hard 
to recover from that.
  I want to say, just bringing a Wal-Mart to a community like that so 
you can buy really cheap products, is that our future in this country? 
That we will be able to buy imported goods? Flags made in China? T-
shirts that are made for 12 cents? And that is not our future if we are 
going to continue to be a great country. So it hurt Galesburg. It is 
hurting communities all over our country.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois 
(Ms. Schakowsky) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). As we 
continue this conversation, when I listen to the gentlewomen talk about 
this, we all talked about the trade deficit, that it went from $38 
billion to $620 billion, the trade deficit with Mexico going from a 
trade surplus to a trade deficit. Those are just numbers, and they make 
sense but they are just numbers.
  When you hear the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) ask about those 
families in Galesburg, these are not numbers. These are families that 
lose their job in Lorraine, Ohio, or in Portsmouth, Ohio, or in Chicago 
or Toledo. They lose their jobs. What it does to their families, often 
they lose their pensions with some of these companies. The schools have 
significantly fewer dollars to run. The police and fire departments are 
understaffed. All the kinds of things that are more likely, alcoholism, 
all that happens with the families in our country.
  Then you talk about those families in, I have seen them in Mexico; I 
have seen them in Nicaragua; I have seen them several other places; 
these families that are working, often 8 to 10 hours a day, often 6 
days a week making clothes for us.
  I was with a family in Nicaragua. They get paid 23 cents for every 
pair of jeans they sew. The mother gets paid 23 cents for every jeans 
she sews that end up at Wal-Mart getting sold for between $25 and $30. 
I was at her home in Tipitapa, a little sprawling bedroom community as 
you would say in this country, but it is a series of shacks made out of 
packing materials form the plants they work for.
  She was standing in this community home one day. I was talking to 
her, and she was holding her 3-year-old daughter who had hair down to 
about her shoulders, jet black hair, except that the bottom inch or two 
of her hair was sort of discolored. I asked somebody what that was 
about, and they said, probably this girl does not get enough protein 
because the parents cannot afford milk. The parents do not buy meat 
except for very special occasions because she is getting paid 23 cents 
for every pair of jeans.

[[Page 9216]]

  So this trading system that these trade agreements bring us bring 
horrific poverty to the developing world where these people are working 
harder than maybe any of us, working 60 hours a week, not to mention 
how hard they have to work at home to do everything, getting to and 
from work on a bus that takes an hour and a half each way, and all the 
other things that happen to them.
  Then you think of the pain it inflicts on our communities, our 
schools, our health care system, our police, our fire departments, the 
safety in our communities, on our families, on our self-respect. All of 
that.
  We can talk numbers, and we can prove our case with these numbers, 
but all you have to do is look at people at both ends of the trade 
agreement and where they sit and how their lives go and what we are 
doing to them. And that is the story in so many ways.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for 
yielding to me. It is terrific to have the gentlewoman from Illinois 
(Ms. Schakowsky) and my good friend and mentor, the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) here.
  I am glad this conversation is headed in the direction here this 
evening in which I think it is heading because we are moving away from 
the numbers. We are moving away from the charts, and we are starting to 
talk about the people. The people whose lives are affected by the 
decisions that are made by this administration and by those of us who 
serve in this body. And we hear a lot of talk today, and I am glad we 
do, about the need for morality in our government.
  I think it is immoral for our government to support policies which 
benefit the richest people on the face of this Earth, many of them 
Americans, many of them from other countries that own or operate, 
manage those large multi-national companies. I think there is a moral 
dimension here.
  The gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) mentioned some church people 
who were engaged and involved in this. I think the churches in the 
United States of America should be concerned about CAFTA. I think they 
should be concerned about NAFTA. They should be concerned about human 
exploitation.
  Now, many of us in this Chamber belong to different faiths. I happen 
to be a part of the Christian faith. And Jesus Christ said, As oft as 
ye have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.
  I think we have an obligation, those of us who do embrace faith, to 
let that faith express itself in the policies that we endorse as 
individual Members of Congress and also have that impact, the policies 
that are pursued by this country.
  I think it is immoral, quite frankly, for us to enter into an 
agreement that results in the exploitation of poor Mexicans or poor 
people from Costa Rica or elsewhere. I think it is immoral for a 
working mother to be paid 12 cents for a garment that is ultimately 
sold for $20 or $25. And I ask myself, who is benefiting from such a 
policy? There is money involved. Someone is getting very rich. And yet 
it is a form of human exploitation.
  So I wish our President and I wish leaders in this House would 
understand that there is a moral dimension to United States trade 
policies.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I just want to tell the gentleman that I 
was visited by a group of religious leaders from CAFTA countries who 
said exactly what the gentleman said. They said, we know that in many 
cases our governments are supporting this policy, but we represent the 
interests of the people in our countries, our parishioners, the people 
who come to us every Sunday and during the week. And we know they are 
really suffering, and we know that this trade agreement is just going 
to be license to further exploit those people and their poverty, not 
lift them out of the poverty.
  And they were asking Members of Congress like myself to consider the 
people; and that is, the gentleman is right, we have to think about the 
faces. We have to think about the mothers and the fathers and the 
little children that suffer because of that and in our country, too, 
when those jobs are lost in our community.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, well, I represent a part of the 
Appellations region of Ohio. Every time I go home and I think my 
colleagues here have similar experiences. I talk to people who have 
lost their jobs. They have in many cases lost their health insurance. 
They have families. They may be 55, 57, 59 years of age. They have 
chronic health conditions.
  What is happening to us as a country that we would be willing to just 
tolerate such conditions? It troubles me. It really troubles me. And I 
do believe, as I said to a reporter yesterday, he said, Congressman, 
tell me what is wrong with these trade agreements that you seem to be 
so against? And I said, They leave out the human dimension. They leave 
out concern for people.
  Now, quite frankly, I do not believe Americans are willing to give up 
our middle class, to lose our standard of living, to participate in the 
exploitation of poor people around this world simply to get a pair of 
blue jeans at Wal-Mart for a couple of dollars cheaper than they may be 
able to get them than if they were made right here in the good old U.S. 
of A.
  I believe the American people have different values than that. I 
think it is our leaders who need to question their values. I think it 
is the people who are benefiting, richly benefiting from these 
agreements, that ought to be called into question and their motives 
ought to be questioned.
  And there is, I think, one word that pretty much summarizes what is 
the driving force behind NAFTA, behind the WTO, behind permanent trade 
relations with China and now this so-called CAFTA agreement. And it is 
greed. It is greed.

                              {time}  2045

  How are we going to increase our own wealth or the wealth of our 
investors? If that is going to result in poor Mexicans or poor 
Americans being exploited, then I think our government has an 
obligation to stand up and speak out, change course. We are on the 
wrong course. I would say if I could talk with him, Mr. President, we 
are on the wrong course. We are on the wrong track. We need to reverse. 
We need to go back. We need to reevaluate the results of NAFTA.
  As the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) had said earlier, why in 
the world, given the results of NAFTA, would we pursue CAFTA? It is 
almost irrational.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, as I hear you talk and I think about 
what has happened with workers around the world, one of the great 
things about our economy, one of the great things about our country is 
if you work somewhere, if you work for General Motors or if you work 
for the local hardware store, if you are a teacher or if you are a 
nurse, you create value. You create either a profit for your company, 
wealth for your company. You create value if you are not working for a 
for-profit company.
  Under our system, in part because of labor unions, in part because we 
have a democratic system, and in part because of our history and our 
traditions, you share in the wealth you create.
  The lesson of these trade agreements you can go anywhere that we have 
these trade agreements. You can go to Mexico, Nicaragua and China, and 
you will notice that workers do not share in the wealth they create.
  I heard the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) talk about this years 
ago. The best example was you go to a General Motors plant in Mexico, 
and it looks just like a General Motors plant in Ohio except it is 
often newer. The technology is up to date. It is modern. The floors are 
clean. The workers are working hard. The difference between a Mexican 
auto plant and the American auto plant, the Mexican auto plant does not 
have a parking lot because the workers cannot afford to buy the cars 
they make.
  You can go halfway around the world to Malaysia and go to a Motorola 
plant, and the workers cannot afford to buy the cell phones that they 
make. You can go back to this hemisphere, to Costa Rica, and go to a 
Disney plant.

[[Page 9217]]

The workers cannot afford to buy the Disney toys for their children 
that they make. You can go back halfway around the world to China and 
go to a Nike plant, and the workers cannot afford to buy the shoes that 
they make.
  That is what these trade agreements have failed to do. So when a Nike 
worker in Oregon loses her job and a Nike job in China is created, that 
means that Nike worker in Oregon is no longer paying into Medicare, no 
longer paying into Social Security, no longer able to buy Nike, no 
longer able to buy a car, no longer able to do whatever. So the world 
has one fewer consumer. The world really is poorer. Nike is a little 
bit richer, but the world overall is poorer.
  In China there is no real wealth created because they are not able to 
buy anything other than subsistence living and the community in Oregon, 
in Medford or whatever town, has less wealth.
  My definition of successful trade is when the world's poorest workers 
can buy American products rather than just make products for Americans. 
Then we will know that our trade policies finally are working.
  Once this deadline has expired, the President normally takes 2 months 
to pass a trade agreement. This one has taken 11.5 months. Republican 
leadership, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the most powerful 
Republican in the House, has said that we will vote on it by May 27. 
That will be roughly 1 year.
  We need to go back, as the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) 
said, and start again. I want a great trade agreement with Central 
America because I think we can write one that will lift their workers 
up so they will want to buy our products as we buy their products. We 
can do that. We need to start again.
  So once the CAFTA countdown, we are at 16 days, something like that 
now, once that is past the end of this month, let us just go back to 
the drawing board and write a CAFTA that, number one, we can be proud 
of; number two, that will lift up workers in those countries and will 
help invigorate the middle class in this country. It is very possible 
to do that. It is just we do not have the will to do it.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, if I could, it is bad enough I suppose 
that usually these workers are paid such low wages, but should those 
workers try to organize themselves into a union to try and stand up for 
better working conditions and better wages, we know that in those 
countries that human rights violations for people who want to form a 
union are rampant; and the problem with CAFTA is that it really does 
virtually nothing to protect those workers who want to organize.
  We hear in CAFTA, ostensibly it requires enforcement of the local 
labor laws, both that may exist in the country. Of course, those could 
change, but even then the penalties are very, very weak. Violations of 
core labor standards cannot be taken to dispute resolution, and the 
commitment to enforce domestic labor laws is subject to remedies weaker 
than those available for commercial dispute.
  So every time we put the rights of capital, the rights of 
intellectual property, the rights of the corporations up here and the 
rights of workers even to stand up for themselves to try and 
collectively bargain for better conditions or wages, and it is often at 
peril of their lives that they do that, not just job loss, but we find 
in many of those countries that it is very dangerous to be a labor 
organizer. You can find those people dead.
  The other thing is we spend a lot of time around here talking about 
illegal immigration; and, again, if you think about it in human terms, 
people do not generally want to leave their homeland. They would prefer 
to stay there, the place where they are born, where their families 
live, where their ancestors are, where they have roots. Why do they 
leave those countries to come to the United States, to risk crossing 
that river, risk crossing that border? It is because they cannot make a 
living. They cannot provide any kind of a decent life for their family, 
and they are willing to do anything to do that and so they come here.
  If we want to be able to protect our borders and to have good trade 
policies, then we have to look at things that will help to lift those 
workers in other countries so that they can prosper in their homelands.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I want to 
follow on that point because if one looks just at NAFTA and Mexico, and 
the inability when we were debating that to include provisions for 
those that were going to be displaced from their farms in Mexico, what 
is propelling U.S. immigration is NAFTA because every year now we have 
over 450,000 individuals from Mexico coming over our border, the vast 
majority illegal.
  You say, well, why would they do that? Because they are in desperate 
circumstances. Desperation propels them, just as the gentlewoman from 
Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) says. Imagine being willing to die going 
across the desert in Arizona to get here, a place you do not even know, 
and what is at the root of it?
  The root of it is that their land is no longer productive. The big 
corporate interests down there buy imported corn, and these people were 
given no way of transitioning. They had a heartless government, and I 
think because they did, we might see the first massive historic change 
in Mexico's elections next year. I hope so, and I want to say to the 
gentleman from Portsmith, Ohio (Mr. Strickland), when he talked about 
the churches and the synagogues and the temples and the mosques, they 
are doing some of the most important work in these trade agreements. 
They are trying to reach out to people, just like you said, and whether 
it is fair trade coffee or whether it is quilts or whatever they are 
buying, they are trying to bring it in and pay people a decent price 
for whatever that product is and to cut out these middle extortionists, 
I call them, people in the middle that are trading on that squalor and 
that exploitation.
  Also to say that one of the greatest religious leaders I ever met 
said ultimately God's judgment would demand not just individual 
morality for us as persons, but in a rich and powerful Nation like 
America, justice of us as a Nation. So we are judged not just as 
persons within our own family, but the kind of society and country we 
create. We will be judged on many levels; and I think these trade 
agreements are, as you said, immoral because those who are the least 
among us are hurt the most.
  I think of Norma McFadden from Dixon Ticonderoga in Sandusky, Ohio, 
who worked there her whole life and was about my age and then was told 
you get a pink slip, even though the company was profitable, and moved 
to Mexico. What happened to Norma? What happened to Norma was she could 
not afford health benefits because under the Federal program, COBRA, it 
costs about $800 a month. Well, she lost her job. She could not afford 
the $800 for COBRA. So at 55, 58 years of age, she went back to school 
to become a phlebotomist to learn how to take blood, and she had to 
drive to work in her old ramshackle car to try to go to school and 
ultimately tried to get a job at a hospital as a receptionist and just 
trying to tread water there in the years when really she should have 
some peace of mind because she has been a working woman her whole life, 
she has raised her family.
  So, to me, these trade agreements are some of the most anti-life 
measures that I have ever seen. They hurt people all over our world, 
surely those in our country who just do not have another leg to stand 
on; and I think God will judge America very harshly for what we have 
done because we are in the power position in negotiating these 
agreements.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio 
(Ms. Kaptur), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentlewoman 
from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Carnahan), and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) earlier. I 
appreciate that human spiritual component.
  I would close in an optimistic tone. The gentlewoman from Illinois 
(Ms. Schakowsky) talked about what happens with labor unions and human

[[Page 9218]]

rights in Central America and in South America and in Mexico. Just hold 
up for a model what happened in Central and Eastern Europe in the last 
20 years. The thrust of their equal rights movement came out of the 
labor movement, and flowing out of that labor movement came a much 
better way of life, came freedom, better economic security, more wealth 
for workers, all that we should be striving for. That is why labor 
standards for these workers in these trade agreements is so important.
  As the CAFTA countdown comes, we are down to the last 16 days, it is 
pretty clear NAFTA will be dead on arrival. It is time at the end of 
May when we come back in June to start with a new trade agreement that 
will lift workers up and make us both spiritually and intellectually 
and in every other way proud of what we do.

                          ____________________