[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14588-14605]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          CURRENCY EXCHANGE RATE OVERSIGHT REFORM ACT OF 2011

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will 
report the bill by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1619) to provide for identification of 
     misaligned currency, require action to correct the 
     misalignment, and for other purposes.


                           Amendment No. 694

  Mr. REID. The bill having been reported, Mr. President, I have an 
amendment at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 694.

  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end, add the following new section:

     SEC. __. EFFECTIVE DATE.

       The provisions of this Act shall become effective 3 days 
     after enactment.

  Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                 Amendment No. 695 to Amendment No. 694

  Mr. REID. I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 695 to amendment No. 694.

  The amendment is as follows:

       In the amendment, strike ``3 days'', insert ``2 days''.


                Motion to Commit With Amendment No. 696

  Mr. REID. I have a motion to commit the bill with instructions that 
is also at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] moves to commit the bill 
     (S. 1619) to the Committee on Finance with instructions to 
     report back with amendment No. 696.

  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end, add the following new section:

     SEC. ___. EFFECTIVE DATE.

       The provisions of this Act shall become effective 6 days 
     after enactment.

  Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a 
sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                 Amendment No. 697 to Amendment No. 696

  Mr. REID. I have an amendment to the instructions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment to the 
instructions.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] proposes amendment 
     numbered 697 to the instructions of amendment No. 696 to the 
     motion to recommit.

  The amendment is as follows:

       In the amendment, strike ``6 days'' and insert ``5 days''.

  Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                 Amendment No. 698 to Amendment No. 697

  Mr. REID. I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the second-degree 
amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 698 to amendment No. 697.

  The amendment is as follows:

       In the amendment, strike ``5 days'' and insert ``4 days''.

  Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.


                               Jobs Bill

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, for 3 weeks President Obama has been 
traveling across the country calling on Congress to pass what he calls 
his jobs bill right away. Here is what he will say in Texas today, if 
he has not said it already: At least put this jobs bill up for a vote 
so the entire country knows where every Member of Congress stands. 
Well, I agree with the President. I think he is entitled to a vote on 
his jobs bill.
  The suggestion that the Senate Republicans are not interested in 
voting on his jobs bill is not true. I think he is entitled to a vote. 
It won't surprise anyone to know I do not think it is a good approach, 
a way that is likely to create jobs, but he has asked for a vote. I 
think we ought to accommodate the President of the United States on a 
matter he has been speaking frequently about over the last few weeks 
and give him his vote.
  In fact, they have been calling for this vote with great repetition. 
His Press Secretary said it on October 3, and David Plouffe, the White 
House Senior Adviser, said the same thing on September 27. David 
Axelrod, his top strategist, called for us to have this vote on 
September 13. The President himself--let me count the number of times: 
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11--12 times the President of the United 
States himself, over the last few weeks, has called on us to have this 
vote. As he put it: I want Congress to pass this jobs bill right away. 
Well, I hope it will not pass because I do not think it is the right 
direction for the country to take to begin to deal with the joblessness 
issue, but I do think the President makes an important point--that he 
is entitled to a vote.
  If I were to be given an opportunity by my good friend the majority 
leader, I would offer the President's jobs bill, which we think would 
be more accurately described as stimulus 2, sort of a redo of the 
approach and the bill we approved back in 2009, after which we have 
lost 1.7 million jobs. Therefore, I would ask consent to set aside the 
pending motion and amendments in order to offer the amendment which I 
have just described and hold in my hand at this moment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am not 
going to do a long dissertation on stimulus 1, the jobs bill that, in 
effect, did so much good for our country. I can't talk about the other 
49 States, but I can talk about what the Recovery Act did for the State 
of Nevada. It basically saved the State of Nevada from going into 
bankruptcy, hundreds of millions of dollars to help State government 
stop massive layoffs of teachers and create

[[Page 14589]]

tens of thousands of jobs in areas such as renewable energy. So that is 
enough on the American Recovery Act. I thought it was extremely 
important for Nevada. Other Senators can come and talk about how their 
own States benefited.
  ``Right away'' is a relative term. The President has been calling for 
a vote on his jobs bill and rightfully so. Why did he start calling for 
a vote on his jobs bill? Because there was again one of the long 
obstructions that took place in the Senate and in the House on an issue 
that was fairly simple. What was that? Funding the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency. These devastating floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and 
fires had created a situation where FEMA was about to go broke. You 
would think we could move quickly past that, but, no, we couldn't 
because something we agreed on in late July--that we would fund the 
government for the rest of the year--was again brought to the forefront 
and because the Republicans were threatening to close down the 
government again. So of course the President was calling for his jobs 
bill. He recognized that what was going on here in the Senate and in 
the House was a waste of time; that is, why were we spending time 
unnecessarily on funding one of the essentials of government; that is, 
taking care of people who have been devastated by these terrible storms 
and other calamities.
  We have moved very quickly, after we got through that slog caused by 
the Republicans, to get FEMA funded and to get the CR extended for 6 
weeks. We are now on something that is long overdue: China currency. 
China has been manipulating its currency for a long time. In the last 
10 years, we have lost 2 million jobs because of this. If there were 
ever a jobs bill, it is this we are doing on the floor right now.
  I sponsored the President's bill. I am the one who brought it to the 
floor. I have announced in a number of speeches I have given out here 
that I believe we should move to this jobs bill. We need to move to 
this right away, there is no question about that, but to tack this onto 
the China currency manipulation legislation is nothing more than a 
political stunt. We all know that. If we don't, we should know. I am 
telling everyone. I said I will bring the American Jobs Act to the 
floor this work period. We have 2 more weeks left in this work period.
  Obviously, the Republican leader, my friend, the Senator from 
Kentucky, wants to do something about the jobs bill. I am glad he does. 
He wants us to move this forward. So my suggestion would be to modify 
my friend's unanimous consent request and suggest that we have the 
permission, for lack of a better word, of the Republicans here in the 
Senate to immediately move--the motion to proceed would be unnecessary. 
We could move to that as soon as we finish--you have two choices: 
either as soon as we finish the China currency legislation or we finish 
the trade legislation, which Senator McConnell and I have talked about 
finishing next week. So I would move to modify my friend the Republican 
leader's consent agreement that we move immediately to the legislation 
I have introduced on behalf of the President either after we finish the 
China currency legislation or after the trade bill, whatever my friend 
would rather do.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending request is a request from the 
Republican leader.
  Mr. REID. I have asked that it be modified.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Republican leader so modify his----
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I 
listened carefully to what my good friend the majority leader had to 
say, and he was talking about other matters debated at other times--the 
first stimulus bill, on which I think we probably have a basic 
disagreement. I think it was almost a total failure. He also talked 
about the debate we had with regard to the continuing resolution, which 
was finally worked out on a bipartisan basis. But those are things that 
occurred in the past.
  What I am trying to do here today by suggesting that we vote on the 
President's jobs bill which my good friend the majority leader has 
previously introduced and I gather by way of introduction supports, 
that we honor the request of the President of the United States to vote 
on it now. He has been asking us repeatedly over the last few weeks to 
vote on it now. If my friend the majority leader is saying he doesn't 
want to honor the President's request and vote on it now but would like 
to consider voting on it later, that is something he and I can discuss 
as we decide how to move forward with Senate business.
  But I think the President of the United States, whose policies I, 
generally speaking, do not support--although I am happy to support his 
initiatives on trade, be they ever so late--is entitled to know where 
the Senate stands on his proposal that he has been out talking about 
over and over in the last few weeks, suggesting that we are unwilling 
to vote on it.
  What I am saying is, we don't agree that it is the right policy, but 
we are more than willing to vote on it. What I hear my friend the 
majority leader saying is that even though he supports it, he wants to 
vote on it some other time. Well, the President has been saying he 
doesn't want to vote on it some other time, he wants to vote on it now.
  If my friend is saying we are not going to vote on it now, I would be 
happy to talk to him and reach an understanding to vote on it later. 
But my feeling here is that the least we can do for the President is 
give him a chance to have a vote on his proposal now, as he has 
requested on numerous occasions. So I will object to the modification, 
understanding full well the majority leader and I, off the floor, will 
have further discussions about when we might move to the President's 
bill and give him the vote he has been requesting.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, further reserving my right to object, there 
are 14 million people in this country who are out of work.
  What a charade we have going on here. We are in the midst of some of 
the most important legislation we have done this entire year--China 
currency manipulation--and we now have a proposal that is ridiculous on 
its face; that is, we vote with no debate on the President's jobs bill. 
This is senseless. It is unfair to bring this up in this form. We are 
going to get to this, and we are going to do it either as soon as we 
finish this China currency or after we finish the trade bills, whatever 
I can work out with my Republican colleague so that I can move to it. 
It takes 60 votes to get to this legislation.
  The American people, I am sure, can see through this very clearly, 
that this is nothing more than a political stunt. It is clear we need a 
full debate on this--we don't need a filibuster--and that time will 
come very soon, so I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if I may elaborate further, we have had 
a request from the President on multiple occasions to vote on what he 
calls his jobs bill and to vote on it now. Just to count again, 1, 2, 
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11--12 times the President has asked us, over 
the last few weeks, to vote on what he calls his jobs bill now. I don't 
think the President is saying he wants an extensive debate about it; I 
think he is saying he wants a vote on it. I wanted to disabuse him of 
the notion that somehow we are unwilling to vote on his proposal. We 
are more than happy to vote on it.
  I understand why my friend the majority leader may have some 
reservations about going forward. I have read a number of critiques of 
this legislation by Democratic Senators, one part of it or another. But 
even though there is bipartisan opposition to the President's jobs 
proposal, I think he is entitled to a vote. So I am sorry it appears we 
will not be able to achieve this vote the President has repetitiously 
asked for over the last few weeks. I would like to give him that vote, 
and we will be talking to the majority leader about when we might have 
an opportunity to vote on his proposal, the President's proposal which 
the majority leader introduced, which he has been requesting us to vote 
on.

[[Page 14590]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the President introduced his jobs bill. 
Immediately, the Republicans continue their obstruction on issues very 
simple but maintain the floor. There are things going on here. You just 
can't automatically move to legislation. We know the Senate procedure 
takes 60 votes to get on a piece of legislation.
  The President was calling upon Congress, and especially the 
Republicans in Congress, to allow his jobs bill to move forward. As I 
indicated, we were hung up here on issues that had very little to do 
with the jobs bill. In fact, we should not have been doing it. All the 
time, I repeat, we have been hung up on FEMA funding, on the continuing 
resolution, which should have been approved quickly because we agreed 
to that last July, but they reneged on that even, and threatened to 
shut down the government unless FEMA was paid for the way they wanted. 
We were able ultimately to win that debate, but it took a long time.
  So when the President said he wants to move to his legislation right 
away, he was absolutely candid and forthright. He wanted to clear the 
unimportant things off the floor--the stalling tactics on the floor--
and move to his bill, and that is what we are going to do.
  What I would be willing to do, if my friend would be agreeable--would 
the Republican leader agree to a vote on the motion to proceed to the 
jobs bill? We could do that. We could interrupt this legislation right 
here. We could interrupt the trade bills. We could vote on a motion to 
proceed to the jobs bill.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, is my friend propounding a consent 
agreement or simply asking a question?
  Mr. REID. I think if the Republican leader is interested in the 
subject, I could put it in proper form, but we get the point. To get it 
on the floor, it needs 60 votes. I would be happy to, if the Republican 
leader would agree to a vote on a motion to proceed to the jobs bill.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, let me say to my good friend, I am 
prepared to vote on the President's proposal today. If the majority 
leader wants to vote on it some other day, we can talk about that, 
about how to move forward with it. But the President has been 
repeatedly asking us to take it up and vote on it now, and I am 
prepared to do that. With regard to taking it up some other time and 
voting on it some other day, we will be happy to talk about that off 
the floor, as we do frequently on every issue we deal with.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am sure that in the immediate future--
right away--the American people will see, once again, the Republicans 
are filibustering measures they shouldn't be filibustering--this time, 
the jobs bill.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would just add in closing, I think my 
good friend's problem--and I sympathize with him--is that there is 
bipartisan opposition to the President's proposal.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I heard my friend say that, and I didn't 
want to get into a long dissertation about bipartisan opposition. There 
are 53 of us. A majority of Democrats will support the President's jobs 
bill.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The majority leader just confirmed what I was saying, 
which is that there is bipartisan opposition to this, and we will 
discuss at what point the majority leader is comfortable with going 
forward with this proposal. My only reason for offering it today was to 
respond to the President's request that we vote on it, and we are 
prepared to do that. If we can't do it today, we will be happy to 
discuss, as we always do, the agenda of the Senate and when it would be 
appropriate to vote on it some other time.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I know I only have in my head the math I 
learned from Mrs. Picker at Searchlight Elementary School. But I do 
know, when we have 53--and I have told everyone here we will get a 
majority of the Senate--a majority of the Senate, not a majority of the 
Democrats, a majority of the Senate--that is not very bipartisan 
opposition to this bill.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I can only quote my good friend the 
majority leader who repeatedly has said, most recently in early 2007, 
that in the Senate it has always been the case we need 60 votes. This 
is my good friend the majority leader when he was the leader of this 
majority in March of 2007, and he said it repeatedly both when he was 
in the minority as leader of the minority or leader of the majority, 
that it requires 60 votes certainly on measures that are controversial.
  So it is not at all unusual that the President's proposal of this 
consequence, that would raise taxes, that would spend $\1/2\ trillion 
in a second stimulus bill, would have to achieve 60 votes. That is the 
way virtually all business is done in the Senate, certainly not 
extraordinarily unusual.
  Mr. REID. The American people will see very soon that a majority of 
the Senate supports the President's jobs bill.
  I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WEBB. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes and that 
following my remarks, Senator Barrasso be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I wish to speak for a few minutes about an 
amendment I introduced that, in my view, gets to the heart of some of 
the more troubling Chinese trade policies that are threatening the 
economic security and the long-term competitiveness of our country.
  It is well known that many American companies operating in China are 
required to transfer their intellectual property and proprietary 
technology to China as a prerequisite for doing business in that 
country. I will repeat that they are required to transfer this 
technology. Despite assurances from the Chinese leadership earlier this 
year that this was no longer ``official'' Chinese policy, China does 
continue to be aggressive and overt in its pursuit of foreign 
intellectual property as it seeks to develop its own, what it calls 
indigenous innovation. Companies such as General Electric and 
Westinghouse, among many others, have been required to transfer 
proprietary technology to Chinese counterparts in order to do business 
there.
  If a private company has developed technology on its own and it makes 
a business decision to transfer that technology to a joint venture 
partner in a place such as China, unless there are national security 
issues, we are obligated to respect the free marketplace. They may be 
seeking short-term profits at the expense of long-term competitiveness, 
but that is a business decision. But it is a different case when the 
American taxpayer has financed the development of these technologies 
through Federal funding assistance, and I do not believe it is 
appropriate to allow those technologies simply to be given away to 
other countries.
  Every American owns a piece of intellectual property that has been 
financed through taxpayer assistance. Federal dollars that go to R&D 
funding, loan guarantees, and public-private partnerships in order to 
help develop the next generation of technologies here are supposed to 
be making American businesses competitive and generating American jobs, 
not helping develop other industries such as those in China. My 
amendment would prohibit that practice.
  Last year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a report entitled 
``China's Drive for Indigenous Innovation.'' The Chamber noted that 
China's master plan for the development of science and technology ``is 
considered by many international technology companies to be a blueprint 
for technology theft on a scale the world has never seen before.''
  The report went on to state that China's ``persistent'' intellectual 
property theft is ``compounded by the indigenous innovation industrial 
policies

[[Page 14591]]

which compel technology transfers in order to have access to the China 
market.''
  The New York Times recently reported that Ford Motor Company is 
looking to share proprietary technologies for electric vehicles in 
exchange for selling cars in China. The electric vehicle sector has 
been developed through Federal R&D funding, loan guarantees, and 
public-private partnerships--costs borne by American taxpayers. In 
2009, for instance, Ford Motor Company received a $5.9 billion loan 
guarantee from the Department of Energy to advance its vehicle 
technology manufacturing program.
  We see these types of transfers in other industries as well. The 
Washington Post reported last month that General Electric has 
transferred valuable aviation avionics technology to state-owned 
Aviation Industry Corporation of China. Our government has long 
supported the aviation industry through procurement initiatives and 
Federal research projects. The fruits of American taxpayer support will 
now be incorporated into Chinese commercial airliners, in line with 
China's desire to develop an internationally competitive aircraft 
industry that could rival American-based Boeing.
  We see similar examples of technology transfer in the nuclear energy 
sector. According to the Financial Times, Westinghouse Electric has 
transferred more than 75,000 documents to Chinese counterparts as the 
initial phase of a technology transfer program in exchange for a share 
of China's growing nuclear market. These documents relate to the 
construction of four third-generation AP1000 reactors that Westinghouse 
is building in China.
  American taxpayers supported the development of the AP1000 as well as 
its predecessor, the AP600, through decades of nuclear energy research 
and development at the Department of Energy. In other words, our 
taxpayers provided years of government support for the design and 
licensing of this reactor.
  In a January 2010 letter to Obama administration officials, the heads 
of 19 American business and industry associations wrote of ``[s]ystemic 
efforts by China to develop policies that build their domestic 
enterprises at the expense of U.S. firms and U.S. intellectual 
property.'' Signatories to that letter included the Business 
Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce.
  I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                 January 26, 2010.
     Hon. Hillary Rodham Clinton,
     Secretary of State.
     Hon. Timothy Geithner,
     Secretary of the Treasury.
     Hon. Eric H. Holder, Jr.,
     Attorney General.
     Hon. Gary F. Locke,
     Secretary of Commerce.
     Hon. Ron Kirk,
     U.S. Trade Representative.
       Dear Secretary Clinton, Secretary Geithner, Attorney 
     General Holder, Secretary Locke and Ambassador Kirk: We seek 
     your urgent attention to policy developments in China that 
     pose an immediate danger to U.S. companies. The Chinese 
     government has promulgated a series of ``indigenous 
     innovation'' programs as part of a long-term plan that 
     threaten to exclude a wide array of U.S. firms from a market 
     that is vital to their future growth and ability to create 
     jobs here at home. Given the far-reaching impact of these 
     policies on the American economy, we urge you to make this a 
     strategic priority in our bilateral economic engagement with 
     China.
       For several years, the Chinese government has been 
     implementing indigenous innovation policies aimed at carving 
     out markets for national champions and increasing the locally 
     owned and developed intellectual property of innovative 
     products. We are increasingly alarmed by the means China is 
     using to achieve these goals.
       Of most immediate concern are new rules issued by the 
     Chinese government in November to establish a national 
     catalogue of products to receive significant preferences for 
     government procurement. Among the criteria for eligibility 
     for the catalogue is that the products contain intellectual 
     property that is developed and owned in China and that any 
     associated trademarks are originally registered in China. 
     This represents an unprecedented use of domestic intellectual 
     property as a market-access condition and makes it nearly 
     impossible for the products of American companies to qualify 
     unless they are prepared to establish Chinese brands and 
     transfer their research and development of new products to 
     China.
       This directive targets some of our most innovative and 
     competitive manufacturing and service industries, including 
     computers, software, telecommunications and green technology. 
     Once this system is in place, it is expected to be expanded 
     to other industries. The November directive was followed in 
     late December by the announcement that the government would 
     develop a broader catalogue of indigenous innovation products 
     and sectors to be afforded preferences beyond government 
     procurement (i.e., including subsidies and other preferential 
     treatment). The December announcement, which was issued by 
     four Chinese agencies including the State Owned Assets 
     Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), also 
     raises the specter of China subtly encouraging its many 
     state-owned enterprises to discriminate against foreign 
     companies in the context of procurement, including for 
     commercial purposes.
       These particular programs are part of a broader set of 
     government policy initiatives covering, for example, patents 
     and standards, competition policy, encryption and tax, the 
     effect of which is creating barriers to competition in the 
     Chinese market for our most innovative companies.
       They also run counter to repeated pledges by the Chinese 
     government to avoid protectionism, including the joint 
     commitment of President Hu and President Obama at their 
     recent summit in November to pursue open trade and 
     investment. Moreover, they do not provide a constructive 
     framework for a positive, cooperative and mutually beneficial 
     relationship.
       U.S. economic growth relies in significant measure on 
     access to key international markets. China is the world's 
     third largest economy and represents a major potential growth 
     market for the United States. A healthy U.S.-China bilateral 
     relationship requires an expanding economic relationship 
     based on mutual openness. Systematic efforts by China to 
     develop policies that build their domestic enterprises at the 
     expense of U.S. firms and U.S. intellectual property is not a 
     framework for a positive and cooperative relationship. 
     Additionally, we are further concerned that such policies, if 
     left unchallenged, will be pursued by other important trading 
     partners, compounding the impact on the U.S. economy.
       We respectfully request that your agencies make this issue 
     in particular a strategic priority in your bilateral economic 
     engagement with China; develop, in consultation with the 
     business community and like-minded foreign governments, a 
     strong, fully coordinated response to the Chinese government; 
     and raise this issue with your Chinese counterparts in all 
     appropriate multilateral and bilateral meetings and forums.
           With best regards,
         Stephen J. Ubl, President and CEO, AdvaMed; Richard R. 
           Vuylsteke, President, The American Chamber of Commerce 
           in Hong Kong; Brenda Lei Foster, President, The 
           American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai; Harley 
           Seyedin, President, The American Chamber of Commerce in 
           South China; John Castellani, President, Business 
           Roundtable (BRT); Robert W. Hlolleyman, II, President 
           and CEO, Business Software Alliance (BSA); Bob Vastine, 
           President, Coaliton of Service Industries (CSI); Gary 
           Shapiro, President and CEO, Consumer Electronics 
           Association (CEA); Calman J. Cohen, President, 
           Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT); Dean C. 
           Garfield, President, Information Technology Industry 
           Council (ITI); Robert Barchiesi; President, The 
           International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC); John 
           Engler, President and CEO, National Association of 
           Manufacturers (NAM); Evan R. Gaddis, President and CEO, 
           National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA); 
           Bill Reinsch, President, National Foreign Trade Council 
           (NFTC); Ken Wasch, President, Software & Information 
           Industry Association (SIIA); Phillip J. Bond, President 
           and CEO, TechAmerica; Grant Seiffert, President, 
           Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA); Peter 
           Robinson, President and CEO, United States Council for 
           International Business (USCIB); Thomas J. Donohue, 
           President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

  Mr. WEBB. I am introducing a very simple amendment. It is intended to 
protect American innovation and American jobs, and it is intended to 
make America more competitive and to create jobs here at home. In cases 
where technologies are developed with the support of the American 
taxpayer, my legislation prohibits companies from transferring the 
technology to

[[Page 14592]]

countries that by law, practice or policy, require proprietary 
technology transfers as a matter of doing business.
  Specifically, it says: A country which, by law, practice or policy, 
is required to transfer proprietary technology or intellectual property 
as a condition of doing business in that country will not be the 
recipient of any of these technologies that were developed with the 
assistance of the American taxpayer.
  Quite simply, if taxpayers supported the development of the 
technology, they own a piece of it, and it can't just be given away. 
The transfer of publicly supported proprietary technologies by American 
firms to China, and potentially other countries, clearly and 
unequivocally places the competitive advantage of the American economy 
at risk.
  Our trade laws are designed in order to protect national security, 
but our economic security is also an element of our national security. 
Intellectual property in the civilian sector should also be protected. 
My amendment seeks to do that.
  I believe this is an issue every Senator can support.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.


                            A Second Opinion

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor, as I have 
repeatedly since the health care bill was signed into law, to offer a 
doctor's second opinion about issues related to that health care law.
  A group of House and Senate Republican lawmakers, including Senator 
Thune of South Dakota, released a startling new report about the 
President's health care law. The report is entitled ``CLASS' Untold 
Story: Taxpayers, Employers, and States on the Hook for Flawed 
Entitlement Program.'' I commend this report to my colleagues.
  Many may remember that President Obama's health care law established 
a brandnew, Federal long-term care entitlement program. It is called 
the CLASS Program, the Community Living Assistance Services and 
Supports Program.
  This CLASS Program pays a stipend to individuals enrolled when they 
are unable to perform daily living activities--dressing, bathing, 
eating. To qualify for the benefits, an individual would have to pay a 
monthly premium for 5 years--pay a monthly premium for 5 years--before 
the Federal Government starts to pay out any of the benefits.
  The health care law mandates that the CLASS Program collect 
individual premiums for those 5 years before the program actually even 
starts to pay out benefits.
  It sounds pretty good but not so fast. When it comes to the health 
care law, the American people have come to realize that if it sounds 
too good to be true, it probably is.
  The CLASS Program was supposed to start January 1, 2011--10 months 
ago. But the Obama administration's officials decided to delay the 
program because they know it does not work. It is now known that the 
CLASS Program was an intentionally designed budget gimmick--that is 
correct: an intentionally designed budget gimmick.
  During Senate floor debate of the President's health care bill, I, 
along with many other Members of this side of the aisle, warned 
repeatedly--repeatedly--that the CLASS Program is a financial disaster 
waiting to happen.
  The Congressional Budget Office estimated the CLASS Program would 
reduce the deficit by $70 billion over a 10-year period. These savings 
are mythical, and they come from the premium dollars CLASS collects 
those first 5 years, before it pays out a single penny.
  During those first 5 years, the program is not required to pay out 
any benefits to any individuals. Over its first 10 years, the 
Congressional Budget Office says this CLASS Program will collect $83 
billion in premiums and only pay out $13 billion in benefits.
  But instead of holding on to the $70 billion in excess premiums 
collected to pay for future expenses we know are coming, Members of the 
Senate--Members on the other side of the aisle--used those same funds 
to pay for President Obama's health care law.
  To add insult to injury, Washington Democrats then tried to claim 
that the $70 billion could also be used to pay down the deficit.
  The American people immediately saw this claim was irresponsible. 
Even the Senate Budget Committee chairman, Senator Kent Conrad from 
North Dakota, admitted the CLASS Program was ``a Ponzi scheme of the 
first order--something Bernie Madoff would be proud of.'' Yet the 
President and Washington Democrats pushed to include this CLASS Program 
in the health care law.
  This new report provides undeniable evidence that administration 
officials knew the CLASS Program's design and payment structure were 
fiscally unsustainable. The Obama administration knew it. Yet they 
repeatedly ignored the explicit and persistent warnings.
  One might ask: Why is that? The only logical explanation is, 
administration officials chose to hide the CLASS Program's true cost 
from congressional lawmakers and the American people--all to advance 
President Obama's ideological health care agenda.
  This push to advance an agenda, rather than reasonable patient-
centered health care reforms, served only to create yet another 
unsustainable entitlement program, an entitlement program this country 
simply cannot afford. The Obama administration's own Chief Actuary, a 
man named Richard Foster, repeatedly tried to tell administration 
officials that the CLASS Program was not fiscally sound. Internal e-
mails from Mr. Foster first warned administration officials in May of 
2009--well before the health care law was enacted.
  According to that report, Mr. Foster's e-mail says:

       The program is intended to be ``actuarially sound'', but at 
     first glance this goal may be impossible. Due to the limited 
     scope of the insurance coverage, the voluntary CLASS plan 
     would probably not attract many participants other than 
     individuals who already meet the criteria to qualify as 
     beneficiaries.

  He went on to say:

       While the 5-year ``vesting period'' would allow the fund to 
     accumulate a modest level of assets, all such assets could be 
     used just to meet benefit payments due in the first few 
     months of the 6th year.

  Then, a key sentence:

       The resulting substantial premium increases required to 
     prevent fund exhaustion would likely reduce the number of 
     participants, and a classic ``assessment spiral'' or 
     ``insurance death spiral'' would ensue.

  What does this mean in plain English? It means the CLASS premiums 
will be too expensive to persuade young, healthy people to participate. 
It means the CLASS plan's long-term care payout is very enticing to 
people who know they are going to need the care; healthy people do not 
participate, sicker people do participate. Individuals in the health 
care system call this phenomenon adverse selection. When adverse 
selection occurs, the American taxpayer is at very serious risk of 
being forced to bail out the program when it fails.
  The report goes on to show that Mr. Foster repeated his concerns 
during the summer of 2009. He writes to another administration 
official:

       I'm sorry to report that I remain very doubtful that this 
     proposal is sustainable at the specified premium and benefit 
     amounts.

  He says:

       Thirty-six years of actuarial experience lead me to believe 
     that this program would collapse in short order and require 
     significant federal subsidies to continue.

  Let me remind everyone that the Chief Actuary is a nonpartisan, high-
ranking official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 
The Chief Actuary's estimates are critical to understand the health 
care law's true fiscal impact and long-term viability.
  Mr. Foster certainly does not have an ax to grind. He simply offered 
his analysis based on the data, and the Obama administration ignored 
it. Not only did Obama administration officials ignore Mr. Foster, they 
stopped requesting his input. But Mr. Foster was not alone.
  In the fall of 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services' 
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning

[[Page 14593]]

and Evaluation also raised the red flag. According to the report, one 
employee wrote in an e-mail on October 22:

       Seems like a recipe for disaster to me. . . . I can't 
     imagine that CLASS would not have high levels of adverse 
     selection given the significantly higher premiums compared to 
     similar policies in the private market.

  Just a week after Senator Thune released this stunning new report on 
the floor of the Senate, media outlets indicated that the Department of 
Health and Human Services has closed its CLASS Program. Mr. Bob Yee, 
the CLASS Chief Actuary, announced the closure in an e-mail. He went on 
to say he would leave his position as the CLASS office Actuary 
effective immediately. News reports indicated the CLASS office's 
employees have either been reassigned or asked to leave.
  Mysteriously, however, the Department of Health and Human Services 
issued a statement denying the office was officially closing. In fact, 
the statement failed to say if and when the CLASS Program would even 
start. The Obama administration has had 18 months to figure out how to 
implement this CLASS Program. Recent developments show they are not 
even close to resolving questions about the program's solvency.
  The American people deserve more. The American people deserve the 
truth. The evidence is indisputable. Administration officials at the 
Department of Health and Human Services knew the CLASS Program was 
unsustainable, and they knew it before President Obama signed the 
health care bill into law. They knew it. Yet this Senate and the House 
of Representatives and the administration failed in their duty to be 
honest with the American people and to tell them the truth.
  Were administration officials deliberately hiding CLASS's true cost 
for political gain? This is certainly not the first time during the 
last several weeks that we have seen troubling reports exposing the 
administration's tendency to ignore financial warnings. They ignore the 
warnings so they can advance politically important projects to them--
projects that turn into expensive failures, with the American taxpayers 
being stuck with the bill.
  I see this report, this incredible study, as yet one more piece of 
evidence that the President's health care law must be repealed. It must 
be repealed and replaced with reasonable, commonsense, and financially 
sound alternatives: patient-centered reforms that allow individuals to 
get the care they need, from the doctor they want, at a price they can 
afford.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise in support of amendment No. 680 that 
we have filed. I am concerned that the bill before us will have only 
marginal effects on China's manipulation of its currency. My amendment 
offers a different approach, one which I believe will be more effective 
over the long term.
  Let me first say, I strongly agree with the sponsors of this bill 
about the need to send a strong signal to China, and other currency 
manipulators as well, that massive intervention in the currency markets 
to gain trade advantage will no longer be tolerated. For the 
international economic system to work, every country, including China, 
needs to play by the rules.
  Similarly to many of my colleagues, my frustrations with China's 
trade and economic practices go far beyond currency manipulation. For 
example, China's failure to protect intellectual property rights, 
China's industrial policies, their limitations on American investment, 
and their unfair support and subsidization of State-owned and State-
assisted enterprises are all very serious problems we need to address.
  So while today we are focusing on currency manipulation, I look 
forward to working with Senator Baucus to examine potential solutions 
to these problems through Finance Committee hearings on China, which I 
hope we will hold soon.
  The sponsors of this bill assure us that their approach is WTO 
consistent and will not result in a trade war with one of our largest 
trading partners. Given the importance of these questions, I wrote 
Secretary Geithner and Ambassador Kirk to request the administration's 
views. While they assured us they are reviewing the bill, to date, they 
have not publicly weighed in one way or the other. It seems to me they 
need to weigh in. Given that they know the Senate is debating the 
legislation this week, I think this is very unfortunate. If the 
administration is going to have any impact on this debate, I would urge 
them to comment soon.
  Even though I have supported similar legislation in the past, I have 
continuing reservations about this approach. Fundamentally, we must 
remain focused on one question: Will this legislation actually solve 
the currency problem with China? After careful consideration, I have 
come to the conclusion it will not. While well-intentioned, the bill is 
too focused on unilateral remedial actions. As a result, I fear the 
bill will only have a marginal effect on China's practices, while at 
the same time potentially targeting many U.S. exporters for trade 
retaliation by China.
  For example, the Congressional Budget Office scored this bill as 
generating $61 million in revenue over 10 years. To put this in 
context, in 2010 alone, the United States imported almost $365 billion 
of goods from China. Given the scope of the problem, I find it 
difficult to believe that unilaterally imposing an additional $6 
million in antidumping and countervailing duties a year on Chinese 
imports will compel China to change its currency policies or have any 
meaningful impact on our trade deficit with China.
  Many of the other remedial provisions in this bill require the U.S. 
Government to take other unilateral actions against China, many of 
which may actually harm U.S. exporters directly or expose them to 
potential retaliation by the Chinese. To succeed over the long term, I 
think we must go in a different direction.
  My amendment does just that. My amendment strikes the unilateral 
provisions while retaining the core of the bill that actually advances 
our shared goal of combating Chinese currency practices. I agree with 
my colleagues that the exchange rates and International Economic Policy 
Coordination Act of 1988 is simply not working. Administration after 
administration refuses to exercise its authority and deem China a 
currency manipulator. This is enormously frustrating to all of us, 
especially since candidate Obama campaigned against China's current 
currency practices, and after being elected had his own Treasury 
Secretary testify before Congress that China is, in fact, manipulating 
its currency. Yet they refuse to act.
  So I agree the Congress must tighten the criteria and establish a 
more objective approach to identifying fundamentally misaligned 
currencies and designating fundamentally misaligned currencies for 
priority action.
  I supported this goal in the past and continue to today. I also agree 
we need to hold the Secretary of the Treasury and the U.S. Trade 
Representative accountable. So I have retained the requirements under 
this bill that they report to and testify before Congress on their 
progress. But to succeed over the long term we need to adopt a 
fundamentally different approach.
  We have had some success in the past. For example, during the Bush 
administration, from 2005 to 2008, negotiations pushed China to 
appreciate its currency by 20 percent. Unfortunately, the Obama 
administration has had no such success.
  My amendment builds on this successful model but also takes it a step 
further. First, my amendment directs the Secretary of the Treasury and 
the U.S. Trade Representative to initiate negotiations in the World 
Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund to develop 
effective remedial rules and actions that will mitigate the adverse 
trade and economic effects of fundamentally misaligned currencies 
designated for priority action under this bill, and that will encourage 
priority action countries to adopt appropriate policies to eliminate 
the fundamental misalignment of their currencies.
  The WTO and the IMF were designed to handle complex issues like 
currency,

[[Page 14594]]

so we should start there and work with our allies to devise long-term 
and effective solutions. Working with like-minded countries, we should 
be able to agree that when individual members advance their 
nationalistic interests so aggressively through currency manipulation 
that they threaten the whole global economy and their own long-term 
interests, and their actions need to be addressed.
  Many of my colleagues may argue that negotiations in the WTO and IMF 
will not work. My amendment addresses that potential problem in its 
second section. It provides that if the Secretary of the Treasury and 
the U.S. Trade Representative cannot make progress to effectively 
mitigate the adverse effects of fundamentally misaligned currencies 
within the WTO and the IMF within 90 days, then the administration 
shall enter into plurilateral negotiations outside of the WTO and IMF 
to develop agreements with our friends and allies who are also 
committed to open and fair currency policies.
  These negotiations will need to develop mechanisms to mitigate the 
adverse effects of priority action country currency policies, and to 
encourage those priority action countries to abandon their 
interventions into their currencies.
  We have seen multilateral approaches work in the past in combating 
some of China's unfair trade and economic practices. For example, China 
changed course on both its aggressive indigenous innovation policies 
and on efforts to hoard its rare earth materials primarily due to 
multilateral pressure against the Chinese. These important issues have 
not been solved and require additional efforts.
  But by working with our friends and our allies, we effectively 
convinced the Chinese Government to take a more constructive approach. 
Let's build on the successes we have witnessed in recent years. Let's 
work together to counter, in a systematic and comprehensive way, the 
efforts of those priority action countries that derive trade advances 
through current policy.
  To be clear, I am not suggesting that the United States violate any 
of its international obligations. That point is made clear in the 
amendment. But I am suggesting that the solution to the currency 
problem cannot be achieved unilaterally, and our negotiators must reach 
out to our allies to aggressively counter the behavior of China and 
others. So far the administration has failed to lead on the currency 
issue. My amendment requires that they do so.
  The third section of my amendment helps maintain pressure on the 
administration to take concrete action. It requires the Treasury 
Department and the USTR to report to Congress every 180 days following 
enactment of this bill. In these reports the administration must 
identify: one, the countries with which the United States is conducting 
negotiations to mitigate the adverse effects of priority action 
currencies, and in what international fora or negotiating 
configurations those negotiations are taking place; two, the remedial 
rules and actions under discussion in those negotiations; three, any 
remedial rules that have been adopted and any remedial actions that 
have been taken pursuant to those negotiations; and, four, what, if 
any, additional authority the Secretary or the U.S. Trade 
Representative needs from Congress to conduct these negotiations and to 
effectively mitigate the adverse trade and economic effects of 
fundamentally misaligned currencies or to implement coordinated actions 
with other countries.
  Finally, my amendment sets up a process to immediately take advantage 
of ongoing international trade negotiations by establishing a new 
priority negotiating objective of the United States for ongoing and 
future trade agreements. This new objective requires that each party 
agree to not fundamentally misalign its currency in a manner that would 
result in a priority action designation and agree to work together to 
mitigate the adverse trade and economic effects of fundamentally 
misaligned currency by non-parties such as China.
  For example, if the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are to 
tackle 21st-century trade and investment issues, as the USTR continues 
to promise, I think this plurilateral negotiation would be a great 
place to start to address the challenges of fundamentally misaligned 
currencies. Working with this group of like-minded countries, we should 
be able to agree amongst all nine parties that no party will 
fundamentally misalign its currency.
  We should also be able to agree to work together to counter the 
actions of other countries whose interventions in currency markets 
destabilize the global economy. We have seen multilateral engagement 
work in other areas. If we are truly going to solve this currency 
problem, we need to look at what other efforts have actually produced 
some results in moving the Chinese off a mercantilist policy course and 
improve the conditions for American businesses and workers competing 
against the Chinese.
  We can all agree that China's massive interventions in its financial 
sector and currency have disrupted global trade and that its efforts to 
benefit China at the expense of others has harmed many countries and 
workers, including many in our own United States. But I believe rather 
than merely sending a message to China, we must try and find real, 
long-term solutions and empower and direct our negotiators to reach out 
to our friends and allies around the world and finally solve the 
problem.
  If existing institutions are not working, we must modify them. If 
that is not possible, we must look to create new effective 
international agreements. The challenge that China's currency 
interventions present are not just to the United States but to the 
international economic community. We, the Congress, must demand that 
the administration launch these critical negotiations so we can avert 
further damage by currency policies of countries like China.
  So I call on my colleagues to join me and to not just send a message 
but to take actions that could, in fact, produce results. In the end, 
China itself, as well as its neighbors and trading partners, will 
benefit from a more open, transparent, and fairly exchanged currency 
regime. What is at stake is far more than making a statement. We need 
to actually alter the international agreements and the rules of the 
game to address the problems of today and tomorrow.
  So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment when it comes up. I 
hope we can get it up once we come to the final agreement on how to 
proceed on this bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, my main purpose is to address the China 
currency bill, particularly in regards to the remarks of Speaker 
Boehner and Chairman Bernanke. But there are two other points I wish to 
make on previous speakers' comments. First, Senator Webb's amendment.
  It is a very important amendment. What it says, of course, is that in 
cases where commercial technologies are developed with the support of 
U.S. taxpayers, it prohibits companies from transferring the technology 
to countries that force proprietary transfers as a condition of doing 
business. We have seen this over and over.
  China, which does not play fair up and down the line, basically gets 
away with economic murder. One of their techniques is to say to a big 
American company: We will allow you to sell a ton of stuff to us. You 
will make lots of money. But in return you must give us your 
proprietary technology--basically your family jewels.
  It is outrageous, and in the long run it weakens America's ability to 
grow and create jobs. The companies do this because in the 5- or 10-
year period in which they have signed the contract, they get a lot of 
revenue. But it certainly hurts American workers, and it certainly 
hurts these companies in the long run. But the CEOs probably figure 
they will be long gone before that money is made. So I want to support 
Senator Webb's amendment.
  In regards to my good friend from Utah who proposed an alternative, I

[[Page 14595]]

would say this: We have tried for a decade to get multilateral action. 
That involves getting China's acquiescence. It is not going to happen. 
Multilateral action--like saying to the Chinese: Please--has not 
worked. It will not work. Our legislation is much stronger. It can 
pass. It got a large vote here this week. It has bipartisan support.
  I know Speaker Boehner--I will talk about this in a minute--has said 
he will not take up our bill. But there is going to be huge pressure 
for him to do so, as I will elaborate later.
  So to my good friend from Utah--and I have tremendous respect for 
him, and I do not doubt for a minute his good intentions, his 
integrity, his hard work and desire to see things happen. To say to the 
Chinese: Please negotiate, is a strategy for weakness, is a strategy 
for failure, and multilateral action will not succeed. The Chinese 
understand only one thing--I will yield in a brief moment to my 
colleague for a question or a comment, whichever he prefers.
  But the Chinese only understand one thing: being tough; telling them, 
if they do not discontinue these actions we are going to take action 
unilaterally on our own. I have been doing this for years. I can tell 
you, China's policies get worse and worse and worse. As one of my 
constituents said to me: Uncle Sam, when it comes to China, is Uncle 
Sam.
  To have a policy that involves large multilateral actions and says to 
the Chinese: Come and negotiate with us, makes no sense at all.
  I yield for a brief moment on my time to my colleague from Utah--for 
a minute or so.
  Mr. HATCH. Well, I appreciate that. My colleague has always been very 
fair and gracious to me. I feel the same way toward him. I understand 
his deep feelings about this matter. I respect and appreciate them as 
well. But I am not talking about necessarily negotiating with China 
directly, other than what we can do. I am talking about dealing with 
nations that literally are feeling the same way we do, and gradually 
multiplying our effectiveness by working together--not just sending a 
message but getting the whole world to start saying: Yes, the United 
States is right; yes, this group of nations is right. And we can do 
that even outside of the international organizations that currently 
exist.
  But I would like my colleague to look at that amendment and see--I 
think he will see some real good in it. I think it will get us farther 
down the pathway of doing what he knows needs to be done, and I know 
needs to be done, without necessarily causing a major trade war.
  So I just bring that up to my colleague for that purpose, respecting 
him and what he is trying to do. I think this plural lateral approach I 
am talking about goes far beyond the IMF and some of the other 
worldwide organizations; it means really doing effective diplomatic 
work to bring worldwide pressure to get people to live within certain 
monetary constraints.
  I thank my colleague for yielding.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague, and I understand his good 
intentions and desire to get to the same place, which is to get China 
to behave fairly. I certainly will look at his bill.
  I simply say this: Growing up in Brooklyn, we had to deal with a lot 
of bullies. The only time bullies give in is when you stand up to them. 
The proposal my colleague has made does not stand up to China.
  The nations of the world have made their opinions clear. Recently, 
Brazil did. China doesn't care. They will only care if there are 
sanctions, tough sanctions that give consequences to their unfair--and 
usually illegal by WTO standards--action.
  Now I want to talk about Speaker Boehner's remarks and Ben Bernanke's 
remarks.
  Last night was a milestone in the Senate. For years, the Government 
of China has been willfully breaking the rules of free trade without 
provoking a formal response from the U.S. Government--until yesterday. 
The full Senate for the first time went on record that it wanted to 
consider formal action to confront China's currency manipulation. It 
was a lopsided vote, a bipartisan majority of both parties, with 79 
Senators in favor. We will spend the next few days debating the 
particulars, but make no mistake about it, when it comes to China's 
unfair trade practices, there is a consensus to act in the Senate.
  It can be hard at times here to get 79 votes to turn the lights on. 
When the majority leader and the minority leader vote together to move 
forward on a major jobs-boosting measure, we should not delay in moving 
forward. But then today, less than 24 hours after the Senate saw the 
overwhelming vote in favor of moving forward to finally confront China 
with real action, the Speaker of the House of Representatives suggested 
he would not take up the bill if it passes the Senate. He called it 
dangerous. The Speaker's argument is behind the times. The only thing 
that would be dangerous would be to continue turning the other cheek 
while China mounts its assault on U.S. jobs, U.S. wealth, and U.S. 
manufacturing. Up and down the line, they oppose fair practices. They 
are mercantilists, maximizing their wealth at the expense of American 
workers, American companies, and American jobs.
  Critics like the Speaker say the bill could start a trade war with 
China. Well, I have news, Mr. President: We are already in a trade war 
with China, and it is not going that well. American companies are 
fighting for survival in the United States and around the globe, 
battling subsidized Chinese exports with a built-in price advantage of 
20 to 40 percent.
  We cannot raise the white flag on American jobs, American wealth, and 
American manufacturing. We can compete successfully against Chinese 
competition at home and in China and around the world but only--only--
if we level the playing field. Our bill helps level that playing field.
  There is already a trade war going on, I say to the Speaker. China is 
cheating to gain unfair advantage. It is about time we do something 
about it. As Mr. Samuelson said in his article in the Washington Post, 
the only thing worse than a trade war--and I believe that won't happen 
because China has more to lose in a trade war than we do, and if they 
are one thing, they are smart, and they won't cut off their nose to 
spite their face. They may take a few sanctions, but they won't create 
a trade war. The only thing worse than even a trade war is continuing 
our present policies where, 5 and 10 years from now, America cannot get 
up off the ground because of unfair Chinese policies.
  The House Speaker seems to want to sit out this fight. He seems to 
want us to take a hands-off approach to China. He says, ``This is well 
beyond what Congress should be doing.'' I am aghast at that notion, 
that the Speaker says that fighting for American jobs against unfair 
practices China foists upon us is well beyond what Congress should be 
doing. What should we be doing? There is nothing else Congress should 
be doing except rising to defend American jobs.
  If he doesn't believe these practices are unfair, he should just 
listen--the Speaker should--to Chairman Bernanke. This is what he said 
this morning:

       The Chinese currency policy is blocking what might be a 
     more normal recovery process in the global economy. It is . . 
     . hurting the recovery.

  He is the top economist in the land. It is hurting the recovery, I 
say to the Speaker. That is what Ben Bernanke said. Does the Speaker 
really think it is beyond what Congress should be doing--to confront 
something that is hurting the recovery, that everyone who studies it 
says is unfair, that nobody has come up with a solution to? 
Multilateral negotiations? Give me a break. China won't budge. We know 
that.
  I find it ironic that the Speaker wants a hands-off approach on 
China's unfair currency practices considering he, along with the rest 
of the Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate, just 
sent a letter a couple weeks ago seeking to meddle in U.S. currency 
policies. Just 2 weeks ago, the Republican leadership in the House and 
Senate sent a letter to Chairman Bernanke trying to influence his 
handling of monetary policies in a highly

[[Page 14596]]

inappropriate way. It was nothing short of a breach of a protocol that 
has long been observed, which is that you don't put political pressure 
on the Federal Reserve because they need to handle monetary policy in 
an economic way, not a political way. A former Fed official called that 
attempt to politically meddle in the Fed's independent policymaking 
outrageous. Politico wrote that the letter was ``an audacious move 
against a central bank that prizes its political independence.'' A 
leading economist said that ``it crosses a line that shouldn't be 
crossed.''
  Let me get this straight. The Speaker and the House leadership feel 
it is OK to cross the line and try to strong-arm the Fed but it is not 
OK to have the will to stand up to China. This is totally inconsistent, 
and it is hard to figure out how you could do one thing one week and 
say another the next week--unless, of course, the House leadership's 
goal is to hold back our economic recovery. I fear to think that. I 
fear to think their goal is to make sure the economy is so bad that 
they might do what our Republican leader said was his No. 1 goal: 
unseat President Obama. I shudder to think that the millions of 
American households without jobs, with people looking and searching to 
find a way to provide some dignity for their families, have to be 
political fodder for a goal to hold the economy back. I don't want to 
embrace that conclusion, but it is hard to see another explanation for, 
on the one hand, trying to twist the arm of the Fed when it comes to 
U.S. monetary policy but when it comes to fighting back against China, 
to say: Hands off. That is totally inconsistent.
  I also find the Speaker's position on this China currency measure 
strange because if he blocks this measure, he is effectively thwarting 
the will of his own Members in the House, where there are 225 
cosponsors--61 Republicans at last count--for a measure similar to the 
one being debated in the Senate right now. It is clear there is a 
consensus in the House very similar to the one here in the Senate. So I 
urge the Speaker to heed his own Chamber and put this bill on the 
floor. Don't thwart your own Members who want to support this measure. 
Give it an up-or-down vote. Even if the leadership doesn't want to vote 
for it, they should at least allow the will of the House to go forward. 
They should not suppress the collective will of their Chamber because 
at the end of the day you have to ask yourself which side you are on.
  Two major candidates for President on the Republican side support 
this legislation. John Huntsman, who just got back from China--hardly 
known as a radical--said he would sign this bill. I haven't talked to 
him, but I can tell you, having worked on this issue for 6 years, I am 
sure that former Ambassador Huntsman is totally frustrated with the 
Chinese, and he knows that, unfortunately, the legislation introduced 
by his fellow Utahan doesn't address it and that the Chinese don't 
react when you ask nicely. They don't react when you ask, period. They 
only react when there are consequences that are harmful to them if they 
continue the unfair, anti-free-trade policy.
  For some inexplicable reason, the Republican leadership in the House 
is siding with the Chinese Government. This is not the time to go soft 
on China. The top economist in the country tells us China is holding 
back the recovery. Many other economists say that China, in its 
currency policies, is thwarting and distorting world trade. I have seen 
some list it as one of the causes for the international recession we 
have. We know--we know--it costs America in jobs.
  I want to relate what I did yesterday. Just one company in upstate 
New York--and I remind some of the editorial writers and pundits who 
say this will just move jobs from China to Bangladesh, that they are 5 
years behind the times. We are not talking about jobs that are in 
labor-intensive industries such as toys, clothing, or furniture. Those 
are gone, and they are not coming back. They are talking about top-end, 
middle-size, and smaller size American manufacturers and producers who 
have to fight with one hand tied behind their back because of Chinese 
currency.
  This company, which makes a ceramic that is put in generators, 
electric generators, prevents pollution. They have a great ceramic 
tool. They are doing fine. But a few years ago, China stole it; they 
just took it. The head of the company told me he didn't mind because 
his growth was so large just from selling these in the United States 
and Europe that if China wanted to sell them in China, where they are 
building lots of powerplants, so be it. But now China is not only 
producing them for consumption in China--his product--it is producing 
them to export to America, and this gentleman said he cannot compete 
with them head to head. But when China gets a built-in 30 percent 
advantage on intellectual property that they stole, how is he going to 
survive?
  That story can be repeated over and over. Of course China is holding 
back our recovery. Of course China's policies lose us millions of 
American jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of American wealth. 
And finally this body, in a strictly bipartisan way, with five lead 
Republicans and five lead Democrats as cosponsors--and we have 
criticized both Presidents Bush and Obama for their failure to act--
this body gets some resolve, and the Speaker says no.
  Do you know what, I don't believe his ``no'' is going to stand. This 
is an issue the American people know has to happen. This is something 
they care about--Democrats and Republicans. Look at the polling. There 
is no partisan divide; it includes both liberals and conservatives. You 
don't have to have a Ph.D. in economics to know that China is cheating 
us and playing unfairly with us.
  I believe the pressure from Members on both sides of the aisle in the 
other body and, more importantly, from the American people and 
manufacturers all over the country could work, could get the Speaker to 
reconsider his view. And I plead, pray, and hope that it does because 
there is no greater step we can take to restore jobs in America than to 
pass this important bill, get it enacted into law, and see, for once, 
our top-notch American companies be able to compete evenly--a fair 
fight--with Chinese manufacturers.
  I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 15 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                      EPA Inspector General Report

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I wanted to come to the floor today 
because 2 days ago I got the results of an inspector general's report 
that I requested 18 months ago having to do with the endangerment 
finding of the EPA. While it is a little bit complicated, I will go 
back and put this in perspective.
  Back in the 1990s, we were asked by the then-Clinton administration 
to ratify a treaty called the Kyoto treaty. This was a treaty that was 
aimed at the reduction of greenhouse gases--anthropogenic gases and 
this type of thing. Well, it didn't pass. It went down 95 to 0 because 
of two reasons: We all declared in this body we weren't going to ratify 
any treaty that, No. 1, was damaging economically to the country; and, 
No. 2, we would treat developing countries differently than developed 
nations. Of course this missed on both those criteria.
  After that happened, it became popular by some of the more radical 
environmentalist groups who enjoy the overregulation we have so much of 
in this country to seek the introduction of different bills. We had the 
McCain-Lieberman bill of 2003 and again in 2005. We had the Warner-
Lieberman bill and several others--the Sanders-Boxer bill--and then, I 
guess, the last one was a House bill called the Waxman-Markey bill.

[[Page 14597]]

  Anyway, these bills were all aimed at what we can do in this country 
in order to restrict our use of CO2. Obviously--and there is 
no disagreement on this--if we in the United States unilaterally reduce 
our CO2, it will not affect the CO2 emissions 
worldwide because this isn't where the problem lies.
  Even when I asked Lisa Jackson, the Obama-appointed Administrator at 
the EPA, for whom I have a great deal of respect, if we were to pass 
any of these bills I just mentioned--that would have the effect of the 
Kyoto treaty but only on the United States in reducing anthropogenic 
gases--would this have the effect of reducing CO2 emissions, 
she said, no, because, as I pointed out, this would only affect the 
United States.
  I would take the argument one step further and say it would have the 
effect of increasing, not decreasing, emissions because, as our 
manufacturing base has to find power to generate itself, they have to 
go where that is. Anyway, I only wanted to bring that up because that 
effort is still going on today.
  With all these bills that have been before us--and at the time of 
most of them the Republicans were in the majority and I was the 
chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee which had 
jurisdiction over this subject--I was the one who stood on the floor of 
the Senate to defeat these bills, and it became easier as each bill 
came along because people recognized that while the science is in 
question, the economics are not.
  It had been determined by a number of sources--including a branch of 
the Wharton School of Economics, MIT, and CRA, or Charles River 
Associates--that the range of the cost of a cap-and-trade bill is 
always in the range of between $300 billion and $400 billion a year.
  It is confusing when we talk about these large numbers. Peoples' eyes 
glaze over. They do not understand, and even I have a hard time 
understanding how this affects me and my 20 kids and grandkids out in 
Oklahoma. So I have a system--and I recommend it to my friends in the 
Senate--that I take the number of family income tax returns that are 
filed each year--get a current figure--and then I do my math. So this 
range between $300 billion and $400 billion, when we reduce it down to 
what it would cost each family, is in excess of $3,000 a year. Even if 
we were to pass something like this, it still wouldn't reduce the 
emissions, and that is what we need to get over.
  Anyway, when President Obama saw this, he saw there was no way in the 
world the Senate or the House would pass a cap-and-trade bill. So he 
decided to do it just by regulation, and we have been talking about 
overregulation in the Senate. Sometimes we are inclined to think the 
antibusiness attitude of this administration is just in overtaxation 
and this type of thing. That is not true. Overregulation is also a 
killer. In this case, we are talking about the overregulation of 
something we cannot sustain.
  So in order for the President to be able to do through regulation 
what he could not do through legislation, he had to have what they call 
an endangerment finding; that is, the Environmental Protection Agency 
had to come up with a conclusion that CO2 is dangerous to 
our health. It is called an endangerment finding.
  I was getting ready to go over to a meeting in Copenhagen they have 
every year. These people who are promoting these programs have these 
meetings, and I was getting ready to go over there, and we had 
Administrator Jackson before our committee. I remember looking at her 
and saying: I am leaving for Copenhagen tomorrow. Shall I assume you 
are going to have an endangerment finding as soon as I leave town? She 
didn't answer, but she smiled. She smiles a lot. Anyway, that is what 
happened when I left.
  An endangerment finding has to be based on science, and that is where 
this inspector general's report came in. Again, this is new stuff, just 
2 days ago. I had requested 18 months ago that they look into the 
endangerment finding to see if this, in fact, is based on science. Of 
course, they came out with this report, which was just released. It 
confirms the endangerment finding, which was the very foundation of 
President Obama's job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed--and I 
am using their words, ``rushed, biased and flawed.'' It calls the 
scientific integrity of the EPA's decisionmaking process into question 
and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.
  Keep in mind, we have to have an endangerment finding before we can 
start regulating all this stuff. Well, the inspector general's 
investigation uncovered the EPA's failure to engage in the required 
recordkeeping process leading up to the endangerment finding. That is a 
requirement by law. So they did not comply with the law at that time. 
It also did not follow its own peer review procedures. Peer review is 
something that is required, and they didn't do it.
  Administrator Jackson readily admitted way back in 2009 that the EPA 
had outsourced its scientific review to the United Nations' 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  Now, this is interesting because they are going back to say: All 
right, you guys. You do the peer review on the very thing you have 
developed. Well, it doesn't work that way, and I think at that time we 
were complaining about that. So the EPA still refused to conduct its 
own independent review of the science, as the EPA inspector general 
found. Whatever one thinks of the U.N. science, the EPA is still 
required by its own procedures, by law, to conduct an independent 
review.
  Of course, I have long warned about the IPCC process and what they 
have been doing in the past. In fact, it was 6 years ago that I sent a 
letter to Dr. Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, specifically raising the 
many weaknesses of the IPCC's peer review process. But Dr. Pachauri 
dismissed my concerns, and here is what Reuters said in their article 
on how Dr. Pachauri responded to my request. I am quoting now from 
Reuters:

       In the one-page letter, [Pachauri] denies the IPCC has an 
     alarmist bias and says ``I have a deep commitment to the 
     integrity and objectivity of the IPCC process.'' Pachauri's 
     main argument is that the IPCC comprises both scientists and 
     more than 130 governments who approve IPCC reports line by 
     line.

  Now, that is what he said, as reported. As I predicted, it all came 
apart for the IPCC. On the Senate floor last year I highlighted several 
media reports uncovering serious errors and possible fraud by the IPCC. 
This is the United Nations we are talking about. They are the ones that 
started all this.
  ABC News, the Economist, Time magazine, and the Times of London--
among many others--reported that the IPCC's research contains 
embarrassing flaws--using their language--and the IPCC chairman and 
scientists knew of the flaws but published them anyway. Media reports 
uncovered a number of non-peer-reviewed studies that the IPCC used to 
make baseless claims, including that global warming would--and listen 
to this; this is the IPCC stuff that has totally been rebuked--melt the 
Himalayan glaciers by 2035. Didn't happen.
  It had 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest endangered by global 
warming. It didn't happen.
  Melt mountain ice in the Alps, Andes, and Africa. It didn't happen.
  Slash crop production by 50 percent in North Africa by 2020. It is 
something that is not even going on.
  These embarrassments led to a number of these same publications to 
demand that the IPCC come clean on the review process of the IPCC.
  I am going to read this to let everyone know how serious this is.
  The Financial Times, talking about the IPCC:

       Now it is time to implement fundamental reforms that would 
     reduce the risk of bias and errors appearing in future IPCC 
     assessments, increase transparency and open up the whole 
     field of climate research to the widest possible range of 
     scientific views.

  Time Magazine has always kind of been on the other side of this 
issue. We might remember, Time Magazine had on their cover this last 
polar bear standing on the last cube of ice and we are all going to 
die. Time Magazine, when they talked about the glaciers all melting, 
said:

       Glaciergate is a black eye for the IPCC and for the climate 
     science community as a whole.


[[Page 14598]]


  The Economist:

       This mixture of sloppiness, lack of communication, and 
     high-handedness gives the IPCC's critics a lot to work with.

  Newsweek came out:

       Some of the IPCC's most-quoted data and recommendations 
     were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, 
     newspaper articles, and corporate reports--including claims 
     of plummeting crop yields in Africa and the rising cost of 
     warming-related natural disasters, both of which have been 
     refuted by academic studies. Just as damaging, many climate 
     scientists have responded to critiques by questioning the 
     integrity of their critics, rather than by supplying data and 
     reasoned arguments.

  That was in Newsweek. So their analysis was that they are doing all 
this stuff, and they resort to name-calling and this type of thing 
because they don't have a logical response for it.
  Last year--and keeping in mind this is after I requested the 
inspector general's report and before; and still 1 year ago in a speech 
I made right here I said:

       There is a crisis of confidence in the IPCC. The challenges 
     to the integrity and credibility of the IPCC merit a closer 
     examination by the U.S. Congress. The ramifications of the 
     IPCC spread far and wide, most notably to the Environmental 
     Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gases from mobile 
     sources endanger public health and welfare. EPA's finding 
     rests in large measure on the IPCC's conclusions--and EPA has 
     accepted them wholesale, without an independent assessment. 
     At this pivotal time, as the Obama EPA is preparing to enact 
     policies potentially costing trillions of dollars and 
     thousands of jobs, the IPCC's errors make plain that we need 
     openness, transparency, and accountability in the scientific 
     research financed by the U.S. taxpayers.

  That was a year before the IG report came out, and it is almost 
exactly what the IG report said just this last week.
  Two months before that speech, I asked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson 
to delay the EPA endangerment finding based on Climategate. She told 
me--and I have a lot of respect for her, by the way. I have professed 
that many times. She is one whom normally I will ask her a question, 
and she will come out and give an answer, even though it may be an 
unpopular answer with her boss, President Obama. She said:

       I do not agree that the IPCC has been totally discredited 
     in any way. In fact, I think it is important to understand 
     that the IPCC is a body that follows impartial and open and 
     objective assessments.

  She is saying essentially the same thing:

       Yes, they had concerns about e-mail. I do not defend the 
     conduct of those who sent those e-mails.

  Here, they are talking about Climategate. We all remember those 
secret e-mails going back and forth between the principals to somehow 
fraudulently manipulate the science. She goes on to say:

       There is peer-review, which is part of the IPCC process. 
     There are numerous, numerous groups of teams and independent 
     researchers all a part of coming up with IPCC findings, such 
     that even the IPCC has said that while we need to investigate 
     and ensure that our scientists are to a standard of 
     scientific conduct that we can be proud of, we stand behind 
     our findings.

  So they are all whitewashing the work of the IPCC--again, that was 
before the IG report came out--but it didn't work because there are 
magazines throughout the world, publications which generally were on 
the other side of this argument or their side of the argument. The 
Guardian, for example, talking about Climategate and how they are a 
disgrace, said:

       Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to 
     make it go away.

  The Daily Telegraph said:

       This scandal could well be the greatest in modern science.

  This is what they are talking about with Climategate.
  The Atlantic Monthly:

       The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.

  Let's remember, the economic ramifications of global warming 
regulations imposed upon the EPA under the Clean Air Act will cost 
American consumers somewhere in the range of $300 billion to $400 
billion a year. This is not to mention the absurd result that EPA 
readily admits they need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend 
an additional $21 billion to implement its greenhouse gas regime if 
they are not given wide discretion to circumvent the law, and all this 
economic pain is for nothing--no gain at all. As the EPA Administrator 
admitted before our committee, it would have no effect on the overall 
release of anthropogenic gases.
  Also, of note, what happened to the EPA's vow in 2009 that the Agency 
would commit to high standards of transparency because ``the success of 
our environmental efforts depends on earning and maintaining the trust 
of the public we serve'' or Obama adviser John Holdren's promise that 
the administration would make decisions based on the best science 
possible because, as the President said, ``the public must be able to 
trust the science and scientific process informing public decisions.'' 
Given what has come to light in this report, it appears the Obama EPA 
cannot be trusted on the most consequential decision the Agency has 
ever made.
  I have already called upon the committees in the Senate--this would 
be my committee of which I am the ranking member, the Environment and 
Public Works Committee--to have an investigation. My gosh, I don't ever 
recall in the years I have been here an IG report coming out where 
there weren't numerous hearings to find out and to probe into why they 
came up with the decisions they made.
  I have tried for 10 years now to pursue this thing with the various 
bills that were introduced to do legislatively--to implement the 
requirements. Then, when we see they are unable to do it--and if we 
look around this Senate, there are only about 30 votes now. They don't 
have half the number of votes to impose cap and trade. They don't have 
it. It is not here. That is why the President is trying to do it 
through regulations.
  It is kind of interesting, if we put this in perspective. This 
supercommittee they keep talking about, the 12 people--6 Democrats, 6 
Republicans, 3 from the House, 3 from the Senate--their goal is to find 
$1.5 trillion in 10 years. We have a President in his own budget--and 
this isn't Democrats or Republicans or House or Senate. This is the 
President. His three budgets he came out with have just under a $5 
trillion deficit. That is inconceivable.
  I can remember coming down here in the mid-1990s, when President 
Clinton was in power. The first $1.5 trillion budget we had, I 
complained this is not sustainable. Now it is $1.5 trillion over and 
above what it costs to run America. Obviously, that can't be done.
  So when we stop to think about the fact that it should be fairly easy 
to find $1.5 trillion, that would just be his deficit for 1 year to 
find $1.5 trillion.
  This is kind of hard to follow. But if they were successful in 
implementing what they could not do by legislation and have a cap and 
trade, that would cost a minimum of $300 billion a year; or, multiply 
that by 10, that would be $3 trillion.
  So we have this supercommittee out there trying to find $1.5 
trillion; at the same time, they are advocating increasing the cost to 
America by $3 trillion. It is not believable.
  I think it is very important, and I am on the floor now trying to 
gather support for having a hearing. We can't have an IG report talking 
about the flawed product of the EPA, of the IPCC, of the United Nations 
and not have some kind of investigation. I hope we will be able to do 
that.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I ask the order for the quorum call be 
rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I rise to speak this afternoon about the 
legislation that is before us, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight 
Reform Act, which got an overwhelming vote yesterday. There are not 
many times when a piece of legislation on a specific topic gets the 
kind of overwhelming support to move forward as we saw yesterday in the 
vote that took place, and now we are considering the bill.

[[Page 14599]]

  When you go across Pennsylvania, if you drew a line down the middle 
of our State and moved to the east, a lot of communities were 
devastated by flooding. Other than that issue, the No. 1 issue for the 
people of our State--and I think the people of the United States in 
total--is the issue of jobs. In their frustration, they look to 
Washington for action and for solutions. Too often what they see when 
they turn on the television set or read about what is happening here, 
they see a lot of fighting, a lot of bickering, a lot of back and forth 
and, frankly, a lot of politics but not enough action on the question 
of jobs.
  What we have before us is not some esoteric bill about currency, 
although it is somewhat about that. Obviously, it truly is not that. 
This is a bill that speaks directly to the frustration Americans feel 
and I know the people of Pennsylvania feel. There are not many places 
in Pennsylvania I can go where I talk about this issue of China for 
many years cheating on currency and us losing lots and lots of jobs 
because of it. Hundreds and thousands of jobs are lost because of that. 
There are not many places in our State where I can go to talk about 
that where the point of view that I express doesn't receive unanimous 
support.
  This is a very real issue for people. This isn't far off. They know 
that, just as in other aspects of life, especially on something as 
consequential and significant as international trade--most people 
understand that when we are involved in that kind of endeavor, we have 
to play by the rules. Every country should play by the rules. When we 
have a country as big and as significant in the international economy 
or the international marketplace as China not playing by the rules, 
cheating time after time after time, giving their workers and their 
industries an unfair advantage, I think most people know what that 
means. It is not just a question of fairness and playing by the rules; 
it is the impact of that cheating, as Americans lose jobs and have lost 
jobs. So we have to take action. The time is up. We have been talking 
about this for years. We have been pleading with China in one way or 
another, urging them, pushing them, but the time for that is over. The 
time to act is now.
  This is a prudent piece of legislation. It does a couple of things. 
Basically what it does is to at long last help American manufacturers 
and our workers by clarifying that our trade enforcement laws can and 
should be used to address currency undervaluation. It also provides an 
opportunity for us to improve oversight by establishing objective 
criteria to identify misaligned currencies and imposing tough 
consequences for offenders. So it doesn't put into place a new rule for 
international trade; it just says that if you violate the rules, there 
are going to be consequences and that our Treasury Department and our 
Commerce Department are going to take action no matter what 
administration is in office, a Democratic administration or a 
Republican administration.
  I can point to a number of Senators in both parties--and I think I am 
one of them--who have been urging this administration and the prior 
administration to take stronger, more decisive action. For a variety of 
reasons, they haven't done that. That is not to say they haven't been 
working on it and not to say they haven't been pushing their 
counterparts in China, but I think we have been far too timid in the 
approach we take because, again, this isn't some far-off issue. This is 
about American jobs and whether we are going to stand by and allow more 
and more--tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands more--American 
jobs to be lost in the next decade as we have seen hemorrhage from our 
society in the last 10 years. One of the causes, one of the substantial 
factors in that job loss--not the only but one--is the cheating China 
does on its currency.
  It is as if we are telling our workers and our companies: Look, we 
are going to have a foot race with Chinese companies and Chinese 
workers, and we are going to have this competition, as we have every 
day in the international marketplace, but China is going to start at 
the--if this is a 100-yard dash, they are going to start at the 20- or 
25- or 30-yard line and then we are going to start the race and see how 
we do.
  It is completely unfair to our workers. It undermines their ability 
to compete even if they are working as hard as they can, even if they 
have a high skill level, even if the company has invested time and 
training in those workers, has invested capital in the equipment and 
the technology. Sometimes it doesn't matter what the company does to 
improve its production, to improve its efficiency. It doesn't matter 
what the workers do. They can go to school and learn and prepare and 
get trained. But if they are at a 15- or 20- or 25-percent 
disadvantage--by the way, those are the lowest estimates. This has been 
a problem of above 30 percent or higher at times. But no matter what 
the percentage is, we know there has been a lot of cheating and we know 
it is costing us jobs. So it is time for action.
  This morning at the Joint Economic Committee hearing, we had Federal 
Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. I asked him about currency, and I 
actually read to him some statements he has made in the past about 
currency and about the adverse role China has played, the role about 
which I am as frustrated as any American. I asked him about that. The 
summation of his comments has been reported already, but in addition to 
commenting about the impact on our workers and our companies, he talked 
about the impact of China's currency policies on the global economic 
recovery. So this isn't just an adverse consequence for America, for 
the United States, this is an impediment to a full and robust recovery 
around the world. So this isn't just limited to the impact on our 
workers and our companies, it has worldwide reach, worldwide impact, 
and worldwide consequences.
  So the United States is unwilling, so far, to crack down on China's 
currency and to crack down on what I would assert is manipulation. Some 
will say: Well, it might be something different than that, but I think 
it is basic manipulation--cheating. I think it is a step we have to 
take now, to have rules in place for how we react to their cheating and 
then to have very tough consequences. That is what is in the bill.
  Unfortunately, this inability to respond appropriately or assertively 
or aggressively is one of many, I would argue, pieces of a flawed trade 
strategy that have been a prevailing point of view over the course of 
two administrations. We are going to have some debate about trade 
coming up, and we are going to see some interesting alliances, some 
interesting coalitions here. But our flawed trade strategy--if we can 
even call it a strategy--has failed over many years, failed our workers 
and failed our companies.
  We will get to the debate on the trade agreements later, but at least 
today and this week we can finally make progress on an issue that has 
cost the American people lots and lots of jobs.
  Let me give my colleagues a sense of what could happen if we are able 
to pass this legislation. In a report dated June 17 of this year from 
the Economic Policy Institute--one of the many think tanks across 
Washington of various points of view that have studied this issue--and 
I am broadly summarizing, but one of the many conclusions they reached 
about this issue is that if China revalued its currency by 28.5 
percent--now, many would say it is a bigger problem than a 28.5-percent 
or 28.5-percent advantage their workers and their companies have--if 
they revalued to that level, at 28.5 percent, the growth in our gross 
domestic product in the United States would support 1,631,000 U.S. 
jobs. If other Asian countries also revalued their currency, then 
2,250,000 American jobs would be created. So even if someone could 
prove those numbers are off by 10,000 or 20,000 or even if we could 
debate the number being off because some might reach different 
numbers--but I have seen numbers that high, and I have also seen 
numbers in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
  So any policy we can enact here--in this case, being appropriately 
tough with China on the cheating they do on

[[Page 14600]]

currency--if passage of legislation such as this, the one we are 
considering, leads to the creation of 1.6 million jobs just as it 
relates to having China play by the rules, why wouldn't we pass 
legislation to do that?
  People are saying over and over to us, please do something about 
jobs. And sometimes the response is, well, we are trying, but we can't 
get agreement or we are trying, but we don't have all the solutions. We 
finally have a piece of legislation that will create jobs for sure and 
has broad and substantial bipartisan support.
  We should pass this bill because it will send two messages that are 
badly needed right now from us to the American people--No. 1, that we 
are focused on job creation in the near term, not 10 years from now but 
in the next year or two. So it is a very specific answer to their 
request of us as their elected representatives that we focus on 
enacting legislation that will create jobs. Secondly, the message we 
will send to the American people is that we finally get it. Finally, 
Democrats and Republicans can come together on a very serious issue of 
great consequence to families who have been devastated by job loss; 
that we are finally coming together, Democrats and Republicans, working 
together to have a unanimous vote on a job-creation bill.
  It is that simple. Anyone who tries to make it more complicated than 
that is probably trying to mislead because it is that simple. We need 
to focus our attention in the days ahead to get this legislation passed 
and to finally take action in a way that is directed at job creation in 
a bipartisan way.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I appreciate the Presiding 
Officer's comments earlier in support of the Currency Exchange Rate 
Oversight Reform Act of 2011. The Presiding Officer and I--both 
Democrats--joined by five Republicans and three other Democrats--are 
the prime sponsors of the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act 
of 2011.
  The cloture motion on the motion to proceed was agreed to--the rules 
in the Senate are sometimes a bit impenetrable, but the cloture motion 
on the motion to proceed to the bill was agreed to last night with 79 
votes out of 98. So there is clear interest in this body to debate one 
of the most important jobs bills we have seen in front of us, I say to 
the Presiding Officer, in our almost 5 years in the Senate. I have not 
seen in my time here another jobs bill be voted on this overwhelmingly, 
this bipartisanly, that was this important for putting people back to 
work.
  Let me sort of expand on that. First of all, this Currency Exchange 
Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011 has broad support from business and 
labor. It creates jobs without spending taxpayer dollars. In fact, this 
legislation raises revenue and reduces our deficit, clearly, because 
when people go back to work, people who are now on unemployment 
benefits--sometimes receiving food stamps, sometimes getting other 
subsidies, maybe trade adjustment assistance, which the Presiding 
Officer has been so involved in--instead, people going back to work 
will be paying taxes and not be the beneficiaries of those programs. So 
it is a plus both ways in terms of reducing our government's budget 
deficit.
  Most important, it is in response to an enormous problem, an enormous 
economic threat, brought on by the Chinese Communist Party Government. 
Senators Schumer, Casey, Snowe, Stabenow, Sessions, Burr, Hagan, 
Collins and I have been working closely to bring this bill to the 
floor. I thank the majority leader, who usually sits at this desk, for 
bringing this bill to the floor to respond, purely and simply, to 
China's protectionist trade policies. This is not the United States 
turning inward and pointing fingers at other countries. This is a 
response to Chinese protectionism, to Chinese economic policies and 
trade policies that have been unfair, that cheat--the Chinese have 
cheated--and that cost us American jobs.
  We know when a factory closes--we have had 50,000; Senator Sanders 
said earlier today, we have had 50,000 factories close in this country 
in the last decade or so, not all because of China. I do not blame them 
nearly for all that. But when a factory closes, we know what it does to 
a community, whether it is in Harrisburg, whether it is in Sharon, 
whether it is in Erie, whether it is in Cleveland or Akron or Canton.
  I am encouraged by my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who 
support this bill who see how China's protectionist trade policies have 
undermined businesses, have disadvantaged manufacturers, and 
ultimately, most importantly, have cost American jobs. We all know the 
problem. For years, China subsidized its exports by adopting 
artificial, manipulated exchange rates not based on market forces. As a 
result, China's exports to the United States remain cheap, our exports 
to China remain more expensive. In other words, because they cheat on 
their currency, a product made in Wuhan and sold in Lima or Dayton, OH, 
will be cheaper because they have subsidized their production by 
weakening their currency.
  At the same time, if a company in Lima or Dayton, OH, tries to sell 
into China, the cost of that item is 25 percent more because China has 
gamed the currency system. So by keeping the value of the renminbi, the 
RMB or the yuan, the words for the Chinese currency, by keeping the RMB 
artificially low, China incentivizes foreign corporations to shift 
production there because it reduces the price of investing in China and 
makes Chinese exports cheaper.
  In this continued devaluation--I use the percentage 25 percent, some 
economists say it may be as high as 40 percent, but clearly it is that 
range--they are cheating, they are gaming the system 25 to 40 percent. 
Think about in Pennsylvania and Ohio, two States that have a lot in 
common. Think about a company, think of two gas stations on opposite 
corners. One buys its oil 25, 30 or 35 or 40 percent less expensively, 
pays a lower price than the competitor across the street. It is clear 
what is going to happen. The competitor that cannot get the break, get 
the subsidy, is going to go out of business pretty quickly.
  It is that phenomenon that has caused serious harm to the U.S. 
economy and has cost America jobs. In 1993, the Chinese currency, the 
RMB, was valued at approximately 5.5 to 1 U.S. dollar. Then, from 1995 
to 2005, it was valued at about 8.28 without change during that period. 
That can mean one of two things: a huge coincidence or blatant currency 
manipulation.
  Our trade deficit with China in 1993 was about $30 billion, $40 
billion--in that range. Today, we run a deficit 8, 9, 10 times that, of 
$275 billion--a bilateral deficit just in our relationship with the 
Chinese. According to a recent Economic Policies Institute report, 
since China joined the WTO, the World Trade Organization, in 2001, 2.8 
million jobs have been lost or displaced in the United States as a 
result of the U.S. trade deficit--2.8 million jobs. That is hundreds of 
thousands in my State. It is tens of thousands in States as small as 
West Virginia. It is hundreds of thousands in States as large as 
Pennsylvania.
  Currency manipulation is not the only reason China enjoys an enormous 
trade surplus, but it is certainly a big part of the reason. From 2005 
to the middle of 2008, we started to fight back and were headed in the 
right direction, however slowly. The Senate overwhelmingly supported a 
measure offered by New York Democratic Senator Schumer and South 
Carolina Republican Senator Graham that would put tariffs on Chinese 
imports if the government did not let its currency appreciate.
  All it did was it wiped clean the advantage China had created by 
manipulating its currency. That bill passed the Senate, but it did not 
pass the

[[Page 14601]]

House. It was never signed by the President. But what it did do was get 
China's attention. Beginning in 2005, China began to do a slight 
currency appreciation, which allowed for a few years of modest progress 
toward letting its currency appreciate.
  But then in the summer of 2008, China abandoned its feigned interest 
in fairness. It once again fixed the value of the renminbi against the 
U.S. dollar. Then, in June 2010, China vowed to allow its currency to 
float more freely against the dollar and other foreign currencies. The 
Peterson Institute for International Economics found that, despite the 
intervention appreciation, the RMB is even more undervalued today 
against the dollar than it was 1 year ago. That is the recent history 
of China's currency manipulation.
  The Chinese, in other words, when they know people are watching, when 
they see the U.S. Government, with our very strong economy--even when 
we look weak internally and way too many people unemployed, we are the 
major economic force on Earth--when they see us doing something, they 
respond. They start to act a little better. It is a little bit similar 
to a naughty kid. When the parents are watching, they are going to act 
better. When the Chinese--we hope our kids do not break the law the way 
the Chinese do, international trade law, but when we watch them, they 
behave better. When we exert discipline on them, in other words, we are 
going to change this law the way they have gamed the system on 
currency, they begin to let the currency float and let it appreciate 
and do some better, more fairminded things.
  New research by economists at MIT shows how much damage China's trade 
and export policies have done to our labor market and to our 
communities. The report shows China imports actually have effects on 
jobs but also increased use of Federal programs such as the Social 
Security and disability insurance program. Of course it does. When 
people get laid off, all kinds of things happen in their lives. They 
apply for food stamps. They may lose their home, causing, if they are 
foreclosed on, the values of homes in the neighborhood to decline, and 
the public schools do not have quite the support. They may not be able 
to hire one teacher as a result of a handful of people losing their 
jobs. All those things happen. So when the Chinese game the currency 
system and jobs are lost in Pittsburgh or in Dayton, then bad things 
happen in Pittsburgh and Dayton to those families, to those 
communities, to those States.
  What has been our response when our trading partners use any means 
necessary--low labor costs, direct subsidies, currency manipulation--to 
compete? What has been our response? It has been inaction. We have not 
done very much. It has been adherence to the status quo, and we can no 
longer afford to do that. Some like the Presiding Officer from 
Pennsylvania and others of us around here have been beating the drum 
for a long time that these trade agreements are not fair, that they are 
not fair to the American worker and to Americans, particularly small 
manufacturers. Bigger manufacturers kind of take care of themselves. 
They kind of do it by moving production overseas. Small manufacturers 
usually cannot do that.
  We know what it does to our workers--bad tax law, bad trade law, bad 
currency policy. This bill is a modest measure. It is not as sweeping 
as I would like to do. But it is a modest measure that gives our 
government the tools to fight back. With different parts authored by 
several of my colleagues, this bill came from two other bills we put 
together. The bill updates the processes and tools the government would 
have at its disposal when it comes to countries that are currency 
manipulators, that are in some ways repeat currency manipulators.
  Senator Snowe from Maine, a Republican, and I, a Democrat, have 
worked on a part that would immediately designate unfair subsidies as 
an unfair trade practice. That means jobs for a number of industries: 
coated paper in southwest Ohio, tires in Finley, OH, aluminum 
extrusion, tubular steel in northeast Ohio. It means more American 
manufacturers, from autos to clean energy, can petition the government 
against unfair subsidies from importing countries.
  That measure is combined with comprehensive measures to reform the 
structural deficiencies in our government's approach to combating 
currency manipulation. That part of the bill was spearheaded by 
Senators Schumer and Graham. It would improve oversight of currency 
exchange rates--and I would add Senator Stabenow was involved in that.
  It would improve oversight of currency exchange rates. It would 
ensure that the Treasury Department properly identifies countries that 
undervalue their currency. Under the Omnibus Trade Act of 1988, the 
Treasury Department is required to formally identify countries that 
manipulate their currency for the purpose of gaining an unfair 
competitive trade advantage. In recent years, Treasury has found that 
certain country's currencies were undervalued. It was pretty clear and 
pretty obvious.
  Reputable economists from the Reagan administration, from the Carter 
administration, for years respectable economists were saying these 
currencies were undervalued 25 percent, 35 percent, some have said as 
high as 50 percent. It was pretty hard for the Treasury Department to 
say anything other than these countries' currencies were undervalued.
  However, based on the interpretation of the law's legal standard for 
a finding of manipulation, the finding of the word ``manipulation,'' 
Treasury has refused and continues to cite such countries as currency 
manipulators.
  Our legislation is bipartisan. As I said, five Republicans, five 
Democrats are the primary sponsors. It got 79 votes. Three Democrats 
voted against moving the bill forward yesterday; 16 Republicans voted 
against it. So it has broad bipartisan support.
  But what is amazing is the President of the United States, in either 
party--President Bush was negligent in finding of manipulation. 
President Obama has been negligent in finding manipulation. I will give 
some credit to President Obama in his move, in some cases, of actually 
doing real enforcement of trade rules and trade laws. It has turned 
immediately into job growth in the Mahoning Valley, a new steel mill, 
in Finley with tires, in southwest Ohio with paper. But the President 
and the Treasury Department have just neglected to do their duty; that 
is, interpreting and saying China has manipulated currency.
  The biannual release of this statutorily required report to Congress 
is almost a Washington charade. Last year, Secretary Geithner even 
announced he would delay the report's release. I care less about the 
exact timing of this report than I do the administration's willingness 
to be open with Congress and the American people about what it is doing 
and why it is doing it. But here is why it is important.
  Some argue the Commerce Department already has the authority to treat 
currency manipulation as an export subsidy and apply countervailing 
duties. But the Commerce Department has tended to also kick these 
decisions down the road, duck the issue of currency manipulation when 
it investigates other subsidies. The bill puts an end to that 
bureaucratic end-around.
  I told a story earlier today on the Senate floor. I would like to 
repeat it, briefly. A trade lawyer representing a southwest Ohio paper 
company told me China did not even have a coated paper industry, the 
glossy paper magazines are typically printed on--did not even have that 
technology until a decade or so ago.
  When they started those companies in China, they bought their wood 
pulp in Brazil, they shipped it to China, they milled it in China, and 
they sold it back here--at the high cost of transporting something as 
heavy as paper, as bulky as paper, for the price of paper; it is a 
pretty expensive move to ship it from Brazil to China to the United 
States. The cost of labor is only about 10 percent of the production of 
paper. Yet China has found a way to underprice Ohio paper and 
underprice paper made in other parts of the country.

[[Page 14602]]

  It is pretty clear that is, in part, because they get a 25-, 30-, 35-
, 40-percent basically add-on benefit for their price because of 
currency manipulation. That is why, in part, they are being able to do 
that. They are probably subsidizing their water, their energy and their 
land and their capital also, so that they can underprice us. That is 
why this is so serious.
  Ohio workers have lost jobs because China has gamed the currency 
system. That is all we should need to know. American companies have 
folded, have gone out of business, because China has cheated on its 
trade policies, not following the rule of law in the World Trade 
Organization. That should be enough to get 100 votes in this body.
  It got us 79 yesterday. Our bill makes it clear that countervailing 
duties can be applied when imported goods benefit from currency 
manipulation as an export subsidy.
  The bill would establish new criteria to identify countries 
misaligning currency--and trigger tougher consequences for those who 
engage in such unfair trade practices.
  We can no longer accept China and other countries doing whatever it 
takes to make their exports cheaper. We can no longer accept that China 
continues to mount a massive trade surplus in the United States.
  It is time to enforce the trade laws, and it is time the WTO enforces 
its rules.
  Critics claim this bill would ignite a trade war with China. Frankly, 
they declared a trade war at least one decade ago. If it is not a trade 
war, critics assert this bill is not compliant with our World Trade 
Organization obligations.
  I have listened to many multinational companies argue our bill will 
provoke retaliation by China. My question to these detractors is, How 
can China impose retaliation against something that is, in fact, WTO 
legal? But since receiving PNTR status and the benefits of WTO 
membership, China has taken money from American consumers and investors 
without fully opening its markets to American businesses and workers.
  The results are record trade deficits and millions of lost jobs in 
Ohio and across the United States.
  These arguments come from the same proponents of giving China PNTR 
status and WTO membership, so China would adhere to a rules-based 
trading system--and they predicted and promised in 2000, when it 
passed, that China would adhere to a rules-based trading system. They 
have not been. People care about our exports to China, as do I. 
Remember, currency undervaluation makes exports harder to sell also. 
Yes, our exports have grown in China. But while U.S. exports to China 
have increased to China, they have not come close to balancing imports 
from China. Imports from China have grown faster--in fact, about three 
times as many as we export to China.
  Look at our trade deficit with China versus the rest of the world. In 
2000, China represented 26 percent of our total trade deficit. Last 
year, it was just over 70 percent. In the space of 10 years, look how 
this changed. That is the whole story.
  Currency is a big factor that cannot be denied. While many 
multinational companies don't say it, I think it is clear that even the 
most ardent proponents of China PNTR are feeling a bit of buyer's 
remorse because of China's aggressive protectionism.
  Others, in criticizing this bill, will say there is nothing we can do 
to bring back the jobs we have lost--that Americans don't want to work 
at those jobs anymore anyway. That is a pretty naive view of American 
manufacturing. My State is No. 3 in manufacturing. California, which 
has three times the population, and Texas make more than we do.
  If we don't act, we are not just talking about jobs in textiles or 
steel or tires, which are important; we are talking about jobs in clean 
energy, semiconductors, and auto supplies.
  A trade war? WTO compliance? Retaliation? We welcome this debate. I 
want colleagues to come to the floor--some of the 19 who opposed moving 
this bill forward, when they say China will start a trade war and talk 
about WTO compliance and retaliation. The fact is China has been 
playing that trade war for 10 years.
  The American people have been patient as the administration continues 
a strategy of talk without action. But our patience is up, as more U.S. 
businesses are undercut and more U.S. jobs are eliminated.
  This bill is about economic competitiveness, where everyone is 
competing in the market by the same set of rules.
  I have been to maybe 150 manufacturing plants in my State in the last 
3, 4 years. I know American businesses can compete and American workers 
can compete. Let's make the playing field level, and S. 1619 will help 
us do that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, first, I commend the Senator from Ohio for 
his leadership on this bill. This has been a long time in coming. It is 
a long battle that is being fought over Chinese unfair trade practices. 
One of the most significant and damaging unfair trade practices is the 
manipulation of currency by the Chinese. Senator Brown is taking the 
lead in getting this finally rectified. I commend him for it. I know 
the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Pennsylvania, is also a real 
fighter in this area, trying to correct the unfairness that has been 
allowed to exist when the Chinese currency is manipulated. Senator 
Casey, I believe, has been a leader and is an original cosponsor. I am 
proud to be a cosponsor of the bill.
  I have long supported the effort to take action against unfair 
currency manipulation by our trading partners. I think for at least the 
last 8 years we have had bills that have been introduced to address the 
issue of unfair currency manipulation. This is an unfair trade practice 
that contributes to large U.S. trade deficits and to job loss.
  The reality is that when American companies do business in the global 
marketplace, they are not competing against companies overseas; they 
are competing against foreign governments that support those companies. 
That is especially true with foreign governments such as China and, in 
the past, Japan and other countries that manipulate the value of their 
currency to keep its value artificially low. Currency manipulation 
makes Chinese exports unfairly cheap and U.S. products more expensive 
in China, displacing U.S. production and jobs. This is nothing short, 
as Senator Brown has said, of a Chinese Government subsidy, and we 
should be fighting against it--hard.
  Trade creates new jobs when we export. Trade results in the loss of 
jobs when imports replace goods that were once produced here. When 
trade deficits rise, we are losing jobs to imports. The reality is, we 
have been running massive, unsustainable trade deficits with China. 
Just in the first 7 months of this year, we had a trade deficit of more 
than $160 billion with China. That is four times larger than our 
deficit with any other trading partner. Last year, we exported $92 
billion of goods to China, and we imported an astounding $365 billion 
from China. So there is a growing trade surplus, as illustrated by the 
charts Senator Brown has presented to us.
  China's growing trade surplus with the United States and the rest of 
the world has been fueled by massive currency manipulation, subsidies, 
and other unfair trade practices. Estimates are, the Chinese currency 
is undervalued by up to 40 percent, which makes U.S. goods that much 
more expensive for Chinese consumers and makes Chinese goods 
artificially cheap in the United States and around the world. As a 
result, U.S. imports from China have increased, and U.S. exports to 
China have been suppressed.
  Senator Brown has gone through some of the numbers, and I will repeat 
them because I think it is important that every American focus on these 
numbers and the growth of this trade deficit with China.
  In 2001, our trade deficit with China was $84 billion. It grew to 
$278 billion in 2010. According to an Economic Policy Institute study, 
released in September, this deficit resulted in the loss

[[Page 14603]]

or displacement of nearly 2.8 million U.S. jobs over that period. The 
report blamed part of our deficit with China on their manipulation of 
its currency, and it is simply long overdue that we enact legislation 
to end that unfair advantage because the tools we have to combat the 
problem have been, so far, unequal to the task.
  The International Monetary Fund has what it calls articles of 
agreement. Those articles prohibit countries from manipulating their 
currency for the purpose of gaining unfair trade advantage. But the 
words are hollow because the IMF has no means to enforce that 
prohibition.
  Our current laws give the administration, on paper, the power to act 
to combat currency manipulation. But those laws are easily bypassed and 
too easily ignored. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have 
failed to take action. The Treasury Department is required to issue a 
semiannual report on international economic and exchange rate policies, 
in which it could conclude--as almost every independent observer 
concludes--that China is manipulating its currency. To date, the 
Treasury Department has never made such a finding since the 1988 Trade 
Act mandated the report. Instead, what it does--the Treasury 
Department--is hint, suggests, and sometimes threatens, but it doesn't 
act.
  A couple examples. The Bush administration's 2006 exchange rate 
report said the following:

       China needs to move quickly to introduce exchange rate 
     flexibility at a far faster pace than it has done to date. 
     Given our strong disappointment [5 years ago] and the 
     importance of China to the world economy, the Treasury 
     Department will closely monitor China's progress in 
     implementing its economic rebalancing strategy, remain fully 
     engaged at every opportunity with China, and continue 
     actively and frankly to press China to quicken the pace of 
     renminbi flexibility.

  That was the Bush administration 6 years ago. In May of 2011, under 
the Obama administration, here is what the exchange rate report states:

       Treasury's view, however, is that progress thus far is 
     insufficient and that more rapid progress is needed. Treasury 
     will continue to closely monitor--

  Those were the same words used 5 years ago. Maybe they took this from 
the computer and moved it from 2006 to 2011.

     the pace of appreciation of the renminbi by China. It is a 
     high priority for Treasury--

  Really? That is good news. The trouble is, the facts don't support 
the statement.

     working through the G-20, the IMF, and through direct 
     bilateral discussions to encourage policies that will produce 
     greater exchange rate flexibility.

  The failure of administration after administration to do more than 
closely monitor rather than take action is why Congress must act to 
pass legislation to require action against foreign countries that are 
unfairly manipulating their currency.
  So the bill before us, S. 1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight 
Act, which is a bipartisan bill, combines several earlier currency 
manipulation bills. It clarifies that U.S. countervailing duty laws can 
address currency undervaluation, giving American companies and 
manufacturers stronger tools to fight back against these unfair trade 
practices. It would also replace the weak and flawed currency 
provisions in current law with a new framework, based on objective 
criteria that will require Treasury to identify misaligned currencies 
and require action by the administration if countries fail to correct 
the misalignment.
  Under this bill, the administration would be required to take 
specific action if a country with a priority currency designation does 
not adopt policies to eliminate the misalignment within specified 
periods of time. For instance, if no policies are adopted after 90 
days, the legislation directs the administration to, among other 
things, prohibit Federal procurement of goods and services from the 
designated country, unless that country is a member of the WTO 
Agreement on Government Procurement, of which China is not. After 360 
days of failure to adopt appropriate policies, the USTR--the Trade 
Representative--is required to request a dispute settlement in the WTO 
with the government responsible for the misaligned currency.
  Congress is on record in support of fighting currency manipulation. 
In 2007, a majority of Senators went on record supporting a currency 
manipulation bill that was brought up as an amendment to a State 
Department reauthorization bill. That bill would have imposed tariffs 
on Chinese imports to compensate for currency manipulation by China. 
But it was withdrawn by its sponsors in exchange for a promise to 
develop and vote on a WTO-compliant bill. The pending bill is a WTO-
compliant bill. Last Congress, the House of Representatives passed a 
bill, H.R. 2378, the Currency Reform For Fair Trade Act. That narrower 
currency manipulation bill made it clear that the Department of 
Commerce is to fight the illegal subsidization of foreign currencies by 
using U.S. countervailing duty laws. Unfortunately, the Senate ran out 
of time at the end of the session and we did not take up the bill.
  So the bill before us, S. 1619, will allow us to deal with any 
country that is found to be manipulating its currency, not just China, 
which is at the moment the worst offender. In the 1990s and early 
2000s, Japan manipulated its currency, and this was a major problem for 
our manufacturers and put them at an unfair competitive disadvantage 
vis-a-vis Japanese manufacturers. For instance, when the Japanese 
Government was intervening in currency markets to hold the yen at 116 
yen to the dollar, that translated into an $8,000 subsidy for every 
large vehicle imported into the United States from Japan. The market 
share gained by Japanese auto manufacturers was to a significant degree 
the result of the currency manipulation undertaken by the Japanese 
Government on behalf of its exporters. Because today the Japanese yen 
is at historic highs, Japanese currency is not an immediate concern. 
This could change at any time because Japan has recently indicated it 
is willing to intervene again in currency markets.
  So, Mr. President, with both Chambers now on record supporting 
currency manipulation legislation, there is no reason we should not 
pass this legislation quickly and send it to the President for his 
signature. I hope our colleagues will support this bipartisan 
legislation because it will finally--finally, long overdue, years too 
late--address the very problematic and costly practice of our trade 
competitors who manipulate their currencies to create jobs in their 
countries at the expense of jobs here in the United States.
  I again thank Senator Brown of Ohio for his great work on this bill. 
I know he and the Presiding Officer, Senator Casey, and others, 
including my colleague from Michigan, have been working hard on this 
bill, and hopefully in the next couple of days it will come to a 
fruitful conclusion.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I thank Senator Levin. There is no 
better team in any State in the country than Senator Levin and Senator 
Stabenow. With all the troubles they have had in that State with 
manufacturing, as has my State, they are always on the right side of 
these issues and advocating for local companies, especially small 
companies that feed into the auto supply chain, and for the workers of 
those companies. So I am appreciative of his leadership for so many 
years.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of 
the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011, and I would 
note the presence on the floor of one of its principal sponsors, 
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, whom I have been very

[[Page 14604]]

pleased to work with on this legislation.
  I am proud to be one of the original cosponsors of this bill, an 
important piece of bipartisan legislation that will help protect 
American workers from the trade-distorting effects of currency 
manipulation. In particular, this legislation will allow us to fight 
back against policies China has used to gain an unfair advantage over 
American manufacturers.
  Our American trade deficit with China rose from $83 billion in 2001--
the year China joined the World Trade Organization--to $273 billion in 
2010. That trend is discouraging enough on its own, but it is more 
troubling to consider that the growing trade deficit ultimately 
represents goods no longer made in the United States by U.S. workers. 
In fact, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the trade deficit 
with China has cost 2.8 million American jobs over the past decade, 
including nearly 12,000 jobs in my home State of Rhode Island.
  With so many families still struggling with unemployment in the wake 
of the recession, it is important that we examine just how we came to 
lose so many jobs to a single country and respond accordingly. It would 
be one thing if the answer was that China's workers are just more 
talented, their products are of higher quality, and they have simply 
bested us in the open market. But that is not the case. The evidence 
suggests another explanation: that China is gaming the international 
system.
  First, China provides subsidies to critical industries, which likely 
violates World Trade Organization rules and gives Chinese companies an 
unfair competitive advantage over American manufacturers.
  Second, by restricting exports of their raw materials, China drives 
up the cost of making products here in the United States.
  Third, by turning a blind eye to or even facilitating the rampant 
theft of American intellectual property, China benefits from what may 
be the largest illicit transfer of wealth in history.
  Finally, of course, China appears to be intentionally manipulating 
the value of its currency. Indeed, through controlled purchases of 
massive amounts of U.S. currency, the Chinese central bank has made the 
value of its currency--the yuan--artificially cheap relative to the 
U.S. dollar. Economists estimate the yuan is currently undervalued by 
as much as 28 percent against our dollar. The depressed value makes it 
28 percent cheaper to buy goods from China than from the United States 
and it makes U.S. goods correspondingly more expensive. It is 
essentially a subsidy for Chinese products and a tax on U.S. products.
  This is much more than a problem of abstract economic theory. The 
consequences of currency manipulation are deeply felt in households in 
Rhode Island and across the country. In the Presiding Officer's home 
State of Pennsylvania, in the floor manager's home State of Ohio, and 
all across the United States, it is felt by families who for 
generations have contributed to our growth as a nation by going to work 
every day and building things, from cars and boats to toys and 
electronics. These workers helped define our American character, from 
the start of the industrial revolution at Slater Mill on the banks of 
Rhode Island's Blackstone River through the first decade of the 21st 
century. But they have watched in recent years as job after job has 
been lost to China.
  This unfair competition needs to stop. The advantage the undervalued 
currency gives to Chinese companies has put American manufacturers out 
of business and middle-class Americans out of work.
  The Wall Street Journal reported last week on a study that measured 
the impact of unbalanced trade with China on communities across the 
country. The research shows that areas with industries exposed to 
Chinese import competition have higher unemployment rates and lower 
wages, and the people in these areas are forced to rely more heavily on 
government safety net programs.
  That study ranked the Greater Providence, RI, area second among 
regions exposed to competition from China. This comes as no surprise to 
Rhode Islanders.
  Rhode Island was once a world leader in textiles and jewelry 
manufacturing. But these industries have been hit hard by a flood of 
cheap imports from China, greatly straining our State's economy. If we 
regained the nearly 12,000 jobs estimated to have been lost to China 
over the past decade, our unemployment rate in Rhode Island would drop 
by two full percentage points.
  As I travel around Rhode Island, I have heard time and time again 
from workers and business owners about the costs of Chinese currency 
manipulation.
  George Shuster is the CEO of Cranston Print Works, a textile 
manufacturer that traces its roots in Rhode Island back to 1807. He 
told me:

       We know first-hand the impact that China's disruptive 
     policies have had as we have seen factory after factory close 
     their doors around us. Addressing China's manipulation of its 
     currency would be a good first step to bringing our trade 
     policy to where it needs to be to help get American 
     manufacturers moving in the right direction again.

  Leslie Taito is the CEO of the nonprofit Rhode Island Manufacturing 
Extension Service. She has worked with a diverse set of manufacturers 
across the State to help them increase their efficiency and become more 
competitive. She told me this:

       U.S. manufacturers are resourceful, agile, and fully 
     capable to meet national and international demand. Currency 
     manipulation creates an uneven playing field that has cost 
     the United States countless jobs and has dramatically 
     increased our trade deficit. I equate it to telling a boxer 
     to go into the ring with one hand tied behind his back and 
     asking him to come out the victor. Manufacturers in this 
     country aren't asking for special consideration, they just 
     want it to be fair.

  Mr. President, this is why I made addressing currency manipulation a 
central part of my ``Making It in Rhode Island'' manufacturing agenda, 
and why I was one of the original cosponsors of the legislation that is 
before the Senate today.
  The Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011 will 
strengthen the tools that we have at our disposal to counter the 
actions of countries such as China that choose to manipulate their 
currency rates. This legislation will first improve the oversight of 
exchange rates and allow us to identify currencies that are misaligned. 
For countries found to manipulate their currency values or that fail to 
correct a misalignment, this law will trigger tough consequences. Our 
trade enforcement agencies will gain clear authority to eliminate the 
advantage created by currency manipulation by imposing tariffs on 
products imported from offending countries. This should send a clear 
message to China, or any currency manipulator, that if they abuse the 
currency markets, they will not benefit.
  Simply put, this legislation will help level the playing field for 
American companies. Economists have predicted that a fair market for 
our exports would reduce our annual trade deficit by between $100 
billion and $200 billion. The resulting increase in production would 
add over one-quarter of $1 trillion to our GDP and create up to 2.25 
million American jobs.
  Are the Chinese squawking about this? Are the big multinational 
corporations who have no allegiance to any flag or nation squawking 
about this? Yes. Of course, they are. America has for too long been 
taken advantage of, allowing the wiles of others to erode our wealth. 
The winners at a rigged game will always object when the other party 
gets wise to the fact that the game is rigged and begin to do something 
about it.
  But if we are to solve the problem of China's currency manipulation 
and stand up for American companies, American manufacturers, and 
American workers, we should pass this legislation.
  I applaud my colleagues from both sides of the aisle for their work 
on this bill, and I commend in particular Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio 
who is here on the Senate floor managing the bill right now.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, with unemployment stuck at 9.1 percent,

[[Page 14605]]

and consumer confidence plummeting, we must take action now to help put 
Americans back to work.
  Our Nation's job creators have been telling us for some time that the 
lack of jobs is largely due to a climate of uncertainty, most notably 
the uncertainty and cost created by new Federal regulations.
  America needs a ``time-out'' from regulations that discourage job 
creation and hurt our economy. If a proposed rule would have an adverse 
impact on jobs, the economy, or America's international 
competitiveness, it should not go into effect.
  Today, I am filing an amendment to provide a 1-year moratorium on 
final rules that could have an adverse effect on the economy. The 
amendment is based on S. 1538, The Regulatory Time-Out Act, which I 
introduced last month with 16 of my colleagues. The timeout would cover 
major rules costing more than $100 million per year, and other rules 
that have been considered ``significant'' under Executive orders going 
back to President Clinton and followed by President George W. Bush and 
President Obama.
  The point of my amendment is to provide job creators with a sensible 
breather from burdensome new regulations. This would give businesses 
time to get back on their feet, create the jobs that Americans so 
desperately need, and enhance the global competitiveness of American 
workers.
  This moratorium would also provide us with the time we need to review 
and improve the regulatory process. Earlier this year, I proposed the 
CURB Act, which stands for clearing unnecessary regulatory burdens, 
which would reform the regulatory process in several important ways. 
Many of our colleagues have also introduced regulatory reform 
proposals, and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee 
has already held three hearings on the topic this year. I expect this 
issue will be a priority for our committee this fall.
  In sports, a ``time-out'' gives athletes a chance to catch their 
breaths. American workers and businesses are the athletes in a global 
competition that we must win. Our workers need policies that will get 
them off the sidelines and back on the job. Our economy needs a time-
out from excessive and costly regulations. My amendment will provide 
this needed time-out. I am pleased that Senators Blunt, Coats, Coburn, 
Enzi, Hutchison, and Thune have joined me in offering this amendment, 
and I urge my colleagues to support it.
  Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of the Currency 
Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act, which I was pleased to join with 
Senators Brown of Ohio, Schumer, Graham, Snowe, and others in 
introducing. This legislation will ensure that the U.S. government 
finally gets tough with countries, like China, that manipulate their 
currency to gain an unfair trade advantage.
  Maine's manufacturers and their employees can compete with the best 
in the world, but not when the competition is gaming the system to get 
a leg up. Time and time again, I hear from Maine manufacturers whose 
efforts to compete successfully in the global economy simply cannot 
overcome the practices of illegal pricing and subsidies of countries 
such as China. The results of these unfair practices are lost jobs, 
shuttered factories, and decimated economies.
  A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute estimates that 
between 2001 and 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China eliminated or 
displaced 2.8 million American jobs, including 9,500 jobs in the State 
of Maine. China's policy of intervening in currency markets to limit 
the appreciation of its currency against the dollar has played a major 
role in driving this deficit by making Chinese exports cheaper and 
imports more expensive.
  The bill that we are now considering is an important step toward 
holding accountable countries, such as China, that manipulate their 
currency for the purpose of gaining an unfair trade advantage. I thank 
the leader for bringing this bill to the floor, and I urge my 
colleagues to support this legislation.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a cloture motion at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The cloture motion having been 
presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the 
motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on S. 1619, a bill to 
     provide for identification of misaligned currency, require 
     action to correct the misalignment, and for other purposes.
         Harry Reid, Sherrod Brown, Charles E. Schumer, Al 
           Franken, Jeanne Shaheen, Kay R. Hagan, Robert P. Casey, 
           Jr., Richard J. Durbin, Michael F. Bennet, Richard 
           Blumenthal, Carl Levin, Kent Conrad, Jim Webb, Benjamin 
           L. Cardin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tom Harkin, Daniel K. 
           Inouye.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory 
quorum under rule XXII be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________