[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 22805]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          PATRIOT CORPORATIONS

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Iowa for his 
leadership on drug abuse issues that he has shown for so long in this 
institution. We are all appreciative, in Ohio and Iowa and Oklahoma and 
everywhere else in this country.
  We have heard a litany of stories in the last year or so about the 
steady stream of dangerous imports, especially from China. We have seen 
contaminated seafood, we have seen defective tires from China, we have 
seen dangerous ingredients in toothpaste and vitamins and pet food. In 
the last 24 hours, we have seen a continued problem with a huge number 
of toys being recalled that were painted with lead-based paint. Lead 
paint has been abandoned for almost three decades in this country. We 
know that lead in paint is a potentially terrible thing for children in 
terms of the development of their brain, especially for young children.
  In USA Today this week is an article that sums up what we have 
allowed to happen, and why this is no surprise, as we have built this 
trade relationship with China. I would like to read a couple of 
paragraphs. We went from barely a $10 billion trade deficit with China 
in 1992, the year I ran for the House of Representatives, which has 
grown by a factor of almost 25, to $250 billion today. At the same time 
we were buying so much from China, we understood China is a country 
with no real rules, no environmental laws that are enforced well, few 
food safety, toy safety, worker safety rules and regulations. As a 
result, it should come as no shock to Americans that so many of these 
products imported from China are defective or dangerous. Let me read 
this:

       Nearly all the recent alarms raised about Chinese products 
     point fingers solely at the Chinese, neglecting entirely how 
     China's success as an exporter is, in large part, the product 
     of roughly a trillion dollars of foreign investment and 
     limitless expertise that floods into the country in order to 
     escape some standard or other at home.
       First, of course, are labor standards. Chinese factory 
     workers earn roughly 65 cents an hour, about \1/40\ what 
     their American, Western European and Japanese counterparts 
     do. Export companies--and the long chain of companies that 
     supply them--commonly save money by subjecting [Chinese] 
     workers to cramped dorms, long work weeks and often brutal 
     shop bosses, which would be utterly illegal in the United 
     States workplaces.

  American business knows what it is doing, as it has offshored its 
jobs to China and offshored so many American jobs to China, so much of 
its work to China. Unfortunately, so much of what has happened is due 
to trade law and tax law. In essence, we are encouraging our businesses 
to outsource because of the incentives we provided them in the rules 
that have been written by the global economy, by U.S. trade law, by tax 
law. We can continue that or we have a choice. We can do something very 
different. What we offer this week is very different.
  Congresswoman Schakowsky in the House, with Congresswoman Sutton from 
Ohio and several other Members of Congress, Tim Ryan, also from Ohio 
and in the Senate, Senators Durbin and Obama from Illinois, are 
offering legislation to set up what we call Patriot Corporations. Those 
are companies that play by the rules, they hire American workers, do 
most of their production in the United States, they pay their taxes. As 
I said, they do most of their production in the United States. They 
provide pensions and they provide health care for their workers. Those 
companies that do that should be rewarded. We will designate them 
``Patriot Corporations.'' They will get a lower tax rate and they also 
will have a better opportunity to get Government contracts.
  Instead of going the way we have gone; that is, giving all kinds of 
incentives for American corporations to outsource jobs, giving all 
kinds of incentives for those companies to move overseas and avoid 
taxes--instead of allowing that, we, instead, should offer to American 
companies that play by the rules, those companies, again, that provide 
decent health care, pensions for their workers, do their manufacturing 
and work in the United States--we should reward them with the 
designation of ``Patriot Corporation.'' Those companies that are loyal 
to their workers, loyal to their communities and loyal to their Nation 
should be rewarded. We should be loyal to them.
  That is the choice we face, continuing this outsourcing tax and trade 
policy that costs us jobs, and we end up bringing in all kinds of 
unsafe products--whether they are food products at our breakfast table, 
whether they are toys that can potentially hurt our children. We have 
that choice; we either continue this policy or we designate 
corporations that play by the rules as Patriot Corporations.
  As I said, if they are loyal to their workers and loyal to their 
communities and loyal to our Nation, we as a government should be loyal 
to them and treat them accordingly.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

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