A resolution disapproving the request of the President for extension under section 2103(c)(1)(B)(i) of the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2002, of the trade promotion authorities under that Act.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

How much time remains for the Senator from Montana and also on the majority side?

Mr. President, it would seem to me the Senator from Iowa would want to use some time at this point. I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time run against the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, I shall not object, but I wonder if I might add to the unanimous consent request. Senator DeWine has asked for 10 minutes of Senator Grassley's time; we ask that Senator Byrd be recognized for 20 minutes from my time following the presentation by Senator DeWine; following that, Senator Burr be recognized for 10 minutes from Senator Grassley's time; following that, Senator Reid will be recognized for 10 minutes from Senator Baucus's time. I ask that by unanimous consent.

Senator Reid from Nevada.

Thank you. I apologize for interrupting my colleague.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have great respect for all of my colleagues no matter what they decide to do on this vote. I think the vote is probably predetermined this evening. I must say there are a lot of promises I have heard on the floor the last day or so. There have been a lot of promises made downtown. I would only point out that I have seen the result of most of these promises after the votes are taken and most of them have not been worth the paper they are written on or the assurances given have not been valuable at all.

One might want to look at the side agreement dealing with sugar from Mexico; one can then go on to a sweetener agreement with Mexico; then can go on to a lot of these areas and understand that there are a lot of promises in order to get these bills passed, but by and large they do not amount to very much. They will not need anybody in this Senate after the ``yes'' votes are cast.

I start at the beginning, if I might. I know we are nearing the end of this debate. I do not want to go all the way back to the beginning, but let me go back a fair piece. It is when John Adams is in Europe as they are putting this new country together. He is in Europe representing our country. He writes back to his wife Abigail and asks Abigail the question: Where is the leadership going to come from? Where will the leadership emerge to help form this great country of ours, to help form a new government?

He plaintively kept asking, where will the leadership come from? Then in subsequent letters he would say to her, there is really only us. There is me. There is Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Madison, Mason. Of course, in the rearview mirror of history, the only ``us'' represents some of the greatest human talent ever assembled. They wrote a document that is the most remarkable document. It is a document called the U.S. Constitution that begins with ``we the people.'' That Constitution that begins with ``we the people'' provides mechanisms, the framework of our Government, the framework of a representative democracy.

Over many years, with that document providing the fabric of the growth of this great country, we have been a country that has been divinely blessed in many ways. We have built a place unlike any other place on the face of this Earth. There is no place like it. One can spin the globe and on this little planet called Earth, with 6 billion neighbors, there is no place quite like the United States of America.

We created an expanded set of opportunities for all Americans, through a lot of good decisions; for example, universal education. We as a country decided long ago every young child ought to be whatever their God-given talents allow them to be. We are not going to separate kids in our school system. They get to go to school and they get to become whatever their talents allow that child to become.

That universal education for all Americans has created a country that is unlike any other in the world. We went from the Colonies to the States. We survived a Civil War. We beat back a Depression. We resisted the oppression of Adolf Hitler, won a Second World War. We provided a GI bill, and when those soldiers came back from that war, they went to college. They got their college degrees. They came back to their communities. They built a home, got married, raised a family, built schools, built communities. What a remarkable country this has been.

It all comes back to this book, this Constitution. Other countries have constitutions, but none are quite like this Constitution. This Constitution says something about international trade and commerce. It describes the regulation of commerce and trade to the Congress. It is our responsibility, not the President's responsibility.

So over a number of years we have worked on and dealt with these issues and then we have had in many ways an almost breathtaking series of decades. We have split the atom, we have spliced genes, we have cloned animals, we invented plastics, nylon, the radar, the silicon chip. We cured polio, smallpox. We built airplanes, learned to fly them. We built rockets, flew to the Moon and walked on the Moon. We created telephones, television sets, computers. What a remarkable set of achievements for the men and women in this country who are the doers, the achievers, the inventors. We stand on each other's shoulders looking to the future.

So about three decades ago things began to change. This world became smaller. We started hearing about the global economy. We began to do more and travel more and have more connections with other parts of the world, and particularly large corporations which were developed because of economies of scale. Those large corporations began to be able to do business in more than one country. Then they defined for their own interests the opportunities by which they would do that business. It then became a global economy. In that global economy, we began to hear the term free trade, free trade, like a chant, almost like the hare krishna chanting on a street corner, wearing robes: Free trade.

Well, free trade is of little interest to me. I am very interested in expanded trade and fair trade, but free trade, there are a lot of things that are free.

This country built a place unlike any other on the face of this Earth and we need to be concerned about its continuation. So the question is what kind of trade gives us the opportunity to continue improving the standard of living in America, creating an economy that produces new jobs and new opportunities?

I am sure every single set of parents in this country wants things better for their kids. If there is something in second place, beyond the importance of their children, I guess I understand that, but everybody would believe, I expect, that what is most important in their lives is their children. We care about these things that affect our children. Are we sending our kids to good schools? Are we proud of these schools? Do we believe we are able to leave a world that is a better place in which to live than the one we found? Is that what we are going to do for our kids?

So as we confront this question of the new global economy and a new

global strategy, the galloping globalization of our economy, without a set of rules that has kept pace, the question for all of us is: What does it mean for our country? What does it mean for our future? What does it mean for our kids--especially our kids?

In the past decade, we have seen a very substantial loss of American jobs. Some people say, do not worry, be happy, ignore it. It is all part of the transition. What we will see is our low-skilled jobs move elsewhere, we will educate our children, and we will assume the role of high-skill, high-paying jobs; don't worry.

So we pass trade laws. They are called CAFTA and NAFTA and GATT, WTO. We do all of these things. Then somehow, at the end of this process, we look back and we see, you know, something fundamentally has changed. Somebody has pulled the rug out from under what are the basic strengths of this country--a good job that pays well, that provides benefits, that you can count on.

About 30 years ago the biggest corporation in America was General Motors. In most cases, people who went to work for General Motors expected to work there for a lifetime. They were paid well and they had benefits, health care and retirement. That was 30 years ago.

Now the largest corporation is Wal-Mart. They do not pay so well. Most people do not spend a lifetime at Wal-Mart. The average wage is much lower, and a fairly substantial number of their employees do not have benefits.

That is a very substantial change, really a dramatic change in our country. But the biggest change has been the development of a set of ideas by those who are able to influence thought in this country, particularly the largest corporations that have unlimited quantities of money, who convinced us that free trade, as a moniker, is a mechanism for success in our country.

So we pass trade agreements, the end of which means we lose American jobs, lose economic strength, and somehow believe that somewhere in the future things are going to get better.

I want to show a chart I have shown many times during this debate. It is a chart that shows what has happened with our trade deficit. This is a dangerous trend. Behind these red lines are lost jobs, families who lost their jobs, hundreds of them, thousands of them, and millions of them. Not many people in here know those people. No one in this Chamber lost his or her job because we all put a suit and necktie on and come to work. Nobody is going to get outsourced or offshored in the Senate. But all these folks did.

I have lists of companies and lists of names of people who just lost their job because of this new approach, a new defined approach in international trade that says in our country, we will be the leader that says go ahead and find, with the mechanism of production, the lowest cost production in the world. Get your Gulfstream, circle the globe and find out where you can produce for 30 cents an hour. Move that job to that area and, by the way, when you do, we will give you a tax cut. Let me say that again, because that is kind of a Byzantine proposition. When you close your American factory and fire your American workers, you get a tax cut from our Government. And, yes, I have tried twice to change that in the Senate and, yes, a majority of the Senate voted to keep a tax cut for workers who get fired and companies that move those jobs overseas. I will put in the Congressional Record their names. I really don't need to. A very easy Nexis-Lexis search will give you the names of who decided they should keep their tax cuts for companies that move their jobs overseas.

The point is, we are seeing this inevitable, relentless move to produce where it is cheap and then sell into the established marketplace. The problem is, this is unsustainable. This is a theory that is off track and it is a practice that injures this country.

Why do I say the theory is off track? Henry Ford decided, when he was going to make Fords, that he wanted to pay his production workers sufficient money so that they could buy the cars they were producing. That is pretty simple. That is simple economics. If you are paying your workers enough money so they can buy the products they are producing, you have a market and a consumer for the product. A pretty smart guy, Henry Ford.

Now it has changed. Now we should produce those shirts and those shoes and those trousers and all the trinkets where you can do it for 30 cents an hour and then ship it to Fargo and Toledo and Dayton and Los Angeles and New York and sell it there.

The question is, Who ultimately is going to buy that? Who ultimately will buy this?

We have a lot of dislocations that are dangerous. I have not talked at all about this, and I will not talk at length. A part of this, by the way, is oil. A part of this is oil. There are some on this globe who are lucky enough to have enough oil under the sands so if you stand in a depression in the sand with boots, your soles are going to look oily because some parts of this world are loaded with oil, particularly the Middle East. So the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, and others have a lot of oil. We are desperately and hopelessly addicted to it. Our economy is addicted to it, and that is part of this. It also relates to jobs because, when you have the purchase of oil from these countries--Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and so on--they end up with American dollars, which means they want to buy American companies. They want to buy American stock. It is a way of buying part of our country.

In today's newspaper it says, ``China Tells U.S. Not To Meddle in the Bid for California Oil Giant.''

The story is the Chinese want to buy the ninth largest oil and gas company in the United States called Unocal.

Why would they want to buy Unocal? They are like everybody else. They want to control oil to the extent they can. The Chinese, I am told, now have 20 million cars. They have 1.3 billion people. By 15 years from now they are expected to have 120 million automobiles. They are going to need gas. They are going to need a lot of gas. The price of oil is not going to go down, it is going to go up. They want to buy an oil company. I don't think this should happen in a million years, by the way. I don't think we should have the Chinese buying American oil companies, but I will tell you why this is happening. It is happening because these trade deficits are putting massive amounts of money in the hands of Chinese, and it gives them the opportunity to purchase, on the open market, America's stocks, bonds, companies.

I mentioned previously that Warren Buffett, whom I like a lot--I think he is the second richest man in the world, but you would never know it. Warren is just a great guy. Warren Buffett described this problem as ``a country that is now aspiring to an ownership society will not find happiness in a sharecropper society.''

This is where we are heading, he says, a sharecropper society. He describes this is when every day, 7 days a week, you put $2 billion in the hands of foreigners. You are buying $2 billion more from foreigners than you are selling to them every day, 7 days a week. You are putting $2 billion more into hands of foreigners and foreign governments. That means each day they have more purchasing power to buy another part of America. That is where this comes from. The Chinese want to by Unocal. That is where the money comes from, the $140 billion trade deficit with China last year. That means they have our country's currency. They have the capability of buying our stocks and our companies.

The question is, Do we care about that? Does anybody here want to change the strategy or do you want to do some more of it?

The attitude in the Senate, as I think we will discover when the vote is taken tonight is that if you are digging yourself into a hole, what you need is more shovels and just dig a little harder. That makes no sense to me.

If there is one person in the U.S. Congress who does not understand the danger of this, then they are in the wrong business. This is trouble. This comes from CAFTA, it comes from GATT, it comes from incompetent trade negotiators and bad trade deal after bad trade deal. I just heard on the floor of the Senate today, I will bet you six people who talked about promises that have been made to them in order to get this trade deal through the Congress. These promises mean nothing. These are totally, completely empty promises.

Let me briefly describe this. I am going to use Warren Buffett to describe it because, again, I like Warren Buffett. He described it this way. Stay with me just for a moment.

To understand why, take a wildly fanciful trip with me to

two isolated, side-by-side islands of equal size,

Squanderville and Thriftville. Land is the only capital asset

on these islands, and their communities are primitive,

needing only food and producing only food. Working eight

hours a day, in fact, each inhabitant can produce enough food

to sustain himself or herself. And for a long time that's how

things go along. On each island everybody works the

prescribed eight hours a day, which means that each society

is self-sufficient.

Eventually, though, the industrious citizens of Thriftville

decide to do some serious saving and investing, and they

start to work 16 hours a day. In this mode they continue to

live off the food they produce in eight hours of work but

begin exporting an equal amount to their one and only trading

outlet, Squanderville.

The citizens of Squanderville are ecstatic about this turn

of events, since they can now live their lives free from toil

but eat as well as ever. Oh, yes, there's a quid pro quo--but

to the Squanders, it seems harmless: All that the Thrifts

want in exchange for their food is Squanderbonds (which are

denominated, naturally, in Squanderbucks).

Over time Thriftville accumulates an enormous amount of

these bonds, which at their core represent claim checks on

the future output of Squanderville. A few pundits in

Squanderville smell trouble coming. They foresee that for the

Squanders both to eat and to pay off--or simply service--the

debt they're piling up will eventually require them to work

more than eight hours a day. But the residents of

Squanderville are in no mood to listen to such doomsaying.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Thriftville begin to get

nervous. Just how good, they ask, are the IOUs of a shiftless

island? So the Thrifts change strategy: Though they continue

to hold some bonds, they sell most of them to Squanderville

residents for Squanderbucks and use the proceeds to buy

Squanderville land. And eventually the Thrifts own all of

Squanderville.

At that point, the Squanders are forced to deal with an

ugly equation: They must now not only return to working eight

hours a day in order to eat--they have nothing left to

trade--but must also work additional hours to service their

debt and pay Thriftville rent on the land so imprudently

sold. In effect, Squanderville has been colonized by purchase

rather than conquest.

That is my friend Warren Buffett's description of what is happening. And it is why, by the way, the Chinese have the money to buy Unocal. This is about Squanderville and Thriftville. The question he asks: Is anybody listening? Regrettably, the answer in the Senate is: Precious few.

I have spoken at great length about companies. I have not spoken previously about Pennsylvania House, which I will do just for a moment. I have talked about Huffy bicycles, Radio Flyer little red wagons, Fig Newton cookies--which, by the way, went to Monterrey, Mexico, so if you want some Mexican food, order Fig Newton cookies.

Let me tell you about Pennsylvania House Furniture, high-end furniture made with Pennsylvania wood, hardwood and cherry wood, high- end, terrific furniture, made for many decades in Pennsylvania and marketed as Pennsylvania Furniture.

Pennsylvania House Furniture was purchased by Lazy Boy Corporation about 4 years ago. Lazy Boy decided it is just too expensive to manufacture Pennsylvania House furniture in Pennsylvania, so we have to move it to China. Now Pennsylvania House furniture will be made in China. They will ship the wood from Pennsylvania to China, the hardwood, the cherry wood. They will put it together in China and ship the furniture back.

So it is for Robert Zechman. Robert Zechman worked for that company for 29 years. On December 21, four days from Christmas, he got his letter: You get $92-a-year severance for the service you have given this great company. Now we are shipping the wood and your job to China. They put the furniture together and ship it back. We will still call it Pennsylvania House Furniture, but the only Pennsylvania part of that furniture is the wood. The people are expendable.

The question is, Does anybody care about that? Does it matter to anybody? It mattered to Pennsylvania. Governor Rendell said: We have 500 people who work here. We would like to save these jobs. They put together an effort to save those jobs. Finally, we were told that Lazy Boy said: We are not interested in having competition domestically, so we are not going to sell. We are moving to China.

Same story with Huffy bicycles. Same story with dozens and dozens and dozens of companies.

I spoke last week about a refrigerator company that decided they will close their American plant, notify the workers: No jobs in this country for you anymore. Why? Because we are going to make those refrigerators in Mexico. And, by the way, just to rub salt in the wound, one part of the manufacturing plant with which they will manufacture those refrigerators in Mexico has an Ex-Im Bank loan. That is a loan subsidized by this Government to build a part of a plant in Mexico to house the jobs of the workers who were fired in this country to build some refrigerators.

Does it matter? Maybe not to some. It matters to me. Does it matter whether we make refrigerators? Does it matter whether we make fine furniture? Does it matter whether we have a manufacturing base? Will America remain a strong world-class economy if it gives its manufacturing sector away?

In the last 25 years, we have lost one-half of our manufacturing capacity. Is there anybody here who is having an apoplectic seizure about that? Not hardly. We snore our way through this. President after President gives us a new trade law to see if we can improve on this massive debt that keeps growing and growing and growing. In the meantime, Robert Zechman will probably ask his Congressman or his Senator: What is going on there? Are you standing up for America, standing up for jobs in this country? Absolutely, he will hear. You bet your life. We are all for American jobs. It is just that the trade agreements trade them away--quickly. The majority of the people in the House and the Senate are going to vote for these trade agreements.

America Online--December 2003--had just laid off 450 American employees, mostly design engineers and software engineers, in its California offices. Then those same engineers read that America Online was trying to hire software development teams and engineers in Bangalore, India. Does that mean you change your name to India Online, or is it still America Online that divests itself of U.S. employees and hires the engineers in Bangalore?

The list is endless. We come down, finally, to a choice, a choice this Senate will make once again on another trade agreement. The NAFTA trade agreement, called North American Free Trade Agreement, was negotiated between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It was just one more chapter of bad trade agreements. But before that trade agreement, we had a slight surplus in trade with Mexico. We had a modest deficit with Canada. Now we have had about 10 years of trade agreements called NAFTA, and now we have a very large trade deficit with Mexico and a larger trade deficit with Canada. One would wonder if somebody would stand up and scratch their head and say: Gee, I wonder if we didn't make a mistake here.

The economists, by the way, who most trumpeted the benefits of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, were two economists named Hufbauer and Schott. I am sure they are still practicing economists. I see the names Hufbauer and Schott.

I actually used to teach economics. Economics is just a little bit of psychology pumped up with a lot of helium. I taught it for a little while and was able to overcome that experience and still lead a productive life.

But these economists, Hufbauer and Schott, said: If you just pass NAFTA, we will promise you a remarkable future. What will happen is jobs will transpose. We will see low-income, low-skilled jobs being performed by Mexicans and high-skill, high-wage jobs now producing a product to be sold into an emerging middle class in Mexico, and those will be produced in America.

These people were totally, completely wrong about everything. Has anybody said, We were wrong? Of course not. In this debate on CAFTA, which is another acronym--NAFTA, CAFTA, SHAFTA, whatever it is--on this debate, we are now hearing NAFTA was really good. Boy, if we could just get some more of this spoiled trade agreement, somehow things would be better off. They would not be better.

Let me try to tell you what I believe our obligation is. Yes, I want a strong

economy. Yes, I want American companies to understand we support their interest in competing around the world.

But I believe that, first of all, in the boardrooms they ought to say the Pledge of Allegiance from time to time. If we charter American corporations as artificial people--and that is what a corporate charter is about. We say we are going to create you as an artificial person. We are going to give you a charter which gives you limited liability. You can sue and be sued, contract and be contracted with. You are, in fact, an artificial person. If that artificial person, by corporate charter, given by this country, is in America, then it ought to care just a bit about this country's interests. And, yes, maybe just a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, occasionally, in the boardroom might help.

When we hear people say, ``We want all the benefits for our corporation being American, except the responsibility for paying taxes is something we want to shed,'' I worry about loyalty and commitment to this country. And, yes, that is happening. We see what is called inversions, where corporations want to renounce their American citizenship to become citizens of the Bahamas. Why? Because they want to become Bahamian citizens? No. Because they want to avoid paying U.S. taxes. I have always said, if they want to do that, if they run into trouble, let them call out the Bahamian Navy. My understanding is, there are about 24 people in the Bahamian Navy. Let them call on the Bahamian Navy.

The point is, I think we ought to support American companies in competing around the world, but we ought to expect certain things from them as well. The same is true with respect to other countries. Whether it is China, Japan, Europe or Korea, we should not any longer sit idly by and roll our eyes at trade agreements that are unfair to our workers and unfair to our companies.

Let me again mention just one specific piece of information. I do not mean to pick on Korea for the sake of picking on Korea. I have spoken about the Chinese automobile trade previously. Korea, this year, if this year is similar to last year, will likely send us about 680,000 Korean cars, all on ships, to be delivered to the United States, and to be sold in the United States--680,000 cars produced in Korea, with Korean labor, to be shipped to the United States.

Do you know how many cars the United States will produce that we will be able to sell in Korea? Do you think it will be 680,000? No, 3,900. Do you know why? Because Korea does not want American cars sold in Korea. They had a little spurt once on the Dodge Dakota pickup, and they shut that down real quickly. So 680,000 cars coming this way; 3,900 cars going from the United States to Korea.

I think for us to put up with this stuff is unbelievable, just unbelievable, in its ignorance. I would say to the Koreans, with respect to that piece of bilateral trade, if that is what you want to do on bilateral automobile trade, then, for a while, why don't you sell your cars in Zambia? Just ship them to Zambia, and we hope you have a good commercial success with them. Very soon, they would understand they need the American marketplace, and in exchange for needing the American marketplace, to have their marketplace wide open to us.

We know, those of us who will vote against this, and especially those who speak as I do, we know that the Washington Post, which will largely not run any op-ed pieces from those of us who hold our view, they and the other institutional thinkers on this will say: Well, do you know what you are? We have just heard you speak, and you basically ignore the world as it is. You are willing to reject the global economy, despite the fact that it exists and is there. And what you are is a xenophobic, isolationist stooge that simply is incapable of seeing over the horizon. You don't have the breadth of thought we do. And because you don't, you have a basic level of ignorance. That is how they treat people who do not buy into the jingoism of free trade.

This country used to be known as a country of shrewd Yankee traders. We were good. Our country wants us to succeed. We should want us to succeed. And we want to help others succeed with trade relationships that help lift others up, not push us down. But I have described already what we have gone through in the last century.

Unlike almost any other country on Earth, in the last century we decided some pretty basics things. And there are some people who had a tough time forcing these things to happen. I do not have the names of the people who were killed on the streets of America who were demanding the right for labor to be able to organize, but they died. Those who fought for a safe workplace, they suffered. Those who demanded a fair part of the income stream in this country for those who work for a living, they too paid the price for that. Those who fought, who said, belching chemicals into the air and water out of our factories, it is poisoning where we live, and you have to stop it--and they forced Congress to put an end to it--they paid a price for that as well.

But we did all that. It made sense. And now all of a sudden we see that does not matter. What matters is to be able to pole-vault over all of those regulations and go set up a factory in Guangzhou and produce that commodity and send it to Pittsburgh. And the consumer may get a $25 lower bill for that commodity. The consumer probably lost their job to the worker in the factory in Guangzhou, but they are able to pay slightly less for that commodity. That is not a bargain for our country. It is a way for our country to lose economic strength and to lose its way.

Now, let me just conclude by saying I have great hope for this country. If I did not have hope, I would not serve here in the Senate. We come here from a quiltwork of interests around the country--some big States and some small States, some big towns, some small towns, ivy league colleges and State schools. I come from a town of 300 people. I think it is a thrill every day to go to work. I think it is a special privilege to be here. If I did not have hope, I would not keep coming here, I would not have run for reelection last fall.

I still have hope that, in the long run, we will understand that the path we are on cannot be sustained and there is a better path. And it is not a path that is selfish. It is not demanding ``us or nothing.'' It is just a path that understands our first responsibility is to nurture and strengthen and protect this country of ours and to do what we think is necessary to give our kids opportunities. We need to leave this place better than the way we found it. And that is not what is going to happen unless we change course.

So I am on the floor of the Senate, not to preach but just to try to play a role in seeing if we cannot finally make a U-turn on these issues and head in the right direction, in a direction that says to our trading partners--China, Korea, Africa, South America, CAFTA, Central America--it says to them: Yes, we care about this. We want to help you. We want to work with you. But we do not want to do that at the expense of taking the American economy apart. We do not want to do that at the expense of saying to American families: We are busy helping somebody else down there, and so we do not have time to worry about your job.

If this country says to the people who make bicycles, ``You are paid way too much. You are paid $11 an hour plus benefits. We cannot afford that. Those jobs go to China,'' there is destined, in my judgment, to be nothing but hopelessness for those who come after us. I do not believe we can allow that to be the case.

I started by saying John Adams used to write back to his wife, when he was helping put this great country together, and asked her plaintively: Where is the leadership? Who will be the leaders? Where will the leadership come from in this country? And the answer in every generation in America has been to provide that leadership. And that question is a loud question in this country, again. It begs for an answer. Who will be the leaders? Where will the leadership come from to put this country back on track, to put its economy back on track, so 5 years, 10 years, and 25 years from now we can see something that gives us some confidence and some faith this is going to be a better place for our children.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

U.S.-Dominican Republic, Central American Free Trade Agreement

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, how much time remains on my allocation?

Mr. President, let me reserve 5 minutes of that as well.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to speak for up to 30 minutes from the time under the control of Senator Dorgan, to be followed by Senator Martinez for up to 10 minutes from the time under the control of Senator Grassley.

Mr. President, let me begin by commending, again, the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley, and Senator Baucus, the ranking Democrat, and members of that committee. It is a very important committee of the Senate, obviously. They are charged with the responsibility of dealing with trade agreements. The implications of these trade agreements obviously go beyond just the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee. It can be argued, I think very correctly, that these agreements have huge foreign policy implications, national security implications as well as, obviously, labor implications. So the Finance Committee is asked to grapple with very compelling issues that touch on a lot of other subject matters when they deal with it.

I rise today to speak about this Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, known as the CAFTA-DR agreement. Yesterday evening, I came to the floor to express my hopes that this agreement could be strengthened in the waning hours before a vote on its implementing legislation. I did so because I very much want to support this agreement.

Let me explain why again. Many of my colleagues, I suppose, know the reason. As long as I have been a Member of this body I have served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I have, for most of those years, been either the chairman or the ranking Democrat of the subcommittee dealing with Latin America.

My colleagues, many of them, know as well that some 39 years ago, as I finished my college education, I joined the Peace Corps and traveled to the Dominican Republic where, for about 2 years I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the wonderful mountain village of Bonito Moncion, not very far from the Haitian border. I have a special affection for the Dominican Republic. The people of that small mountain village embraced me as one of their own. In fact, only a few weeks ago I traveled back to that mountain village of Moncion after a 24-year absence and spent a remarkable day with people I had known, who had such a wonderful impact on my life as a young Peace Corps volunteer.

When I came to this body and went to the Congress in 1974, along with Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, we were the first two former Peace Corps volunteers to be elected to the U.S. Congress.

Paul Tsongas came to the Senate 2 years before I did. When I arrived here, we became the only Peace Corps volunteers to have served in this Senate. Today, I believe I am the only one to have had that privilege of being a volunteer in the Dominican Republic and to serve in this Senate. The countries of Central America I know well. I have traveled to all of them extensively over the years. I know the heads of states of each of these countries and have known virtually all of the heads of state over the last 24 years. It is with a great deal of personal interest, in addition to the subject matter interest, that draws me to this debate and to the Senate this afternoon. I have worked closely with many of these countries. As much as any Member of this Senate, I understand what a great boom a well-crafted agreement on trade can be to the people of Central America and for the Dominican Republic, as well as for we Americans.

I don't expect CAFTA-DR agreement to be perfect. No trade agreement ever is. There are always matters either left unaddressed or under- addressed when

we have these agreements. The question should be whether trade agreements, on balance, serve to protect American interests and lift up the countries that we are negotiating with, or whether they will lead us all in the opposite direction.

That is why I welcome the efforts of my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, to strengthen the capacity of these nations of Central America and the Dominican Republic to effectively enforce and uphold internationally recognized labor rights. I believe the commitment by the administration to provide funds for the International Labor Organization, the ILO as it is called, in these CAFTA-DR countries is a step in the right direction. I commend my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, for pursuing this provision. I commend Ambassador Portman for accepting the idea.

But to strengthen the effectiveness of the International Labor Organization in carrying out its work in Central America, I believe there also needs to be a clear understanding, before we vote on the CAFTA-DR agreement, of the freedom activity that the International Labor Organization must have if its efforts are going to be effective. After all, the problem is not just about capacity building, as important as that is, which was the focus of the agreement with our colleague from New Mexico, it must also, out of necessity, be about enforcement of those rights.

That is why I met yesterday, at some length, with Ambassador Portman and his staff and contacted the ambassadors of the five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic to describe what I believe is needed to make the International Labor Organization initiative of this agreement a meaningful one.

As my colleagues know, over the years, I have generally been a supporter of free-trade agreements. If properly constructed, I believe trade agreements are in the best long-term interests of the United States. That is because, in today's highly interconnected world, we must keep up and adjust to the changes around us if we are going to compete effectively.

This great surge toward a globalized world economy has brought gains and losses here in our own country. Some industries have benefitted greatly; others have struggled to compete. On balance, I believe free trade has benefitted our country. But we have not done enough, especially during the past few years, to help ease the transition for those many Americans who are struggling.

Globalization has affected other nations around the globe. From Latin America to India, Africa to China, no country has escaped the impact of this process. The difference is that while globalization has helped lift many nations, it has also left many others behind.

In this hemisphere, the results have been mixed. Countries such as Brazil and Chile are doing quite well.

Others have stagnated or, worse, even regressed. I put this in context for my colleagues when it comes to Central America and the Dominican Republic. When considering this debate and the conclusion of it, consider that one-third of the entire population of Latin America currently lives in poverty. In the nations south of the Rio Grande River, 128 million people survive on less than $2 a day; 50 million on less than $1 a day. That is more than a third of the entire population of these nations. In Central America alone, three out of every five citizens live in conditions of poverty. Two out of every five are indigent or in conditions of extreme poverty.

In Nicaragua, for instance, there is widespread malnutrition and unemployment rates are way over 40 percent. Nicaragua is the second poorest nation in this hemisphere, with nearly half its population living on less than $1 a day.

In Guatemala, the situation is also dire. Malnutrition rates are among the highest in the world. Life expectancy as well as infant and infant mortality rates are among the worst in this hemisphere. Illiteracy exceeds 30 percent and most people have less than 5 years of a formal education.

But there is not only tremendous poverty in these nations, income and equality in Latin America is also one of the highest in the world. Consider that the richest 10 percent of all Latin Americans earn roughly 50 percent of the total national income in these nations; whereas the bottom 10 percent earn only 1.6 percent of income.

Despite economic growth throughout the 1990s, unemployment in Latin America has actually increased. The Central American region has suffered greatly as a result of natural disasters. Hardly a year goes by that some natural tragedy does not occur in these nations. My colleagues will recall the mud slides in Haiti which last year cost thousands of people their lives and homes. There are repeated hurricanes that have hit Central America over the last decade and a half.

In early 1993, after one of those hurricanes hit Nicaragua, I went down to work with the people of those nations to clear mud out of schools and impoverished communities. Bridges were wiped out, crops were lost, the country was devastated.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch, a category 5 storm, hit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, killing 9,000 people and leaving more than 700,000 people in those four countries homeless.

We are also talking about nations, many of which were almost ripped apart by brutal civil wars and political violence. Guatemala's troubled history dates back to 1954, when a military coup overthrew Guatemala's popularly elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, triggering a bloody civil conflict that lasted more than 30 years. Guatemala's conflict was largely a struggle for land rights and resulted in the murder or disappearance of more than 200,000 people, many of them indigenous Mayans living in the highlands of Guatemala. Fortunately, this armed conflict ended in 1996, with the signing of the peace accords between the Guatemalan Government and the armed opposition, grouped together as the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit.

In El Salvador, it was discontent over social inequalities, a poor economy and a repressive dictatorship that in 1980 finally ignited a civil war between a repressive military government and leftist guerilla groups who united under the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. During 12 years of that civil war, 75,000 Salvadorans, mostly civilians, were killed and thousands more fled to refugee camps in Honduras and many more made their way north to the United States as immigrants. The United States provided more than $5 billion in economic and military assistance to the Salvadoran Government over the course of that conflict. But it took the U.N. to broker a peace accord to end a conflict that military force failed to resolve.

Nicaragua's story is almost somewhat similar. In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua overthrew the 40-year dictatorship of the Somoza family and took control. In 1981, the Reagan administration responded aggressively to regional concerns with respect to the leftist regime. The United States funded and organized the new paramilitary force which became known as the Contras. The Contra war, as it became known, lasted until 1988 and resulted in more than 25,000 deaths in that country and 700,000 refugees and displaced people.

Although Honduras faced no serious civil conflict of its own, it served as a staging ground for efforts of the United States to fight the insurgencies in Guatemala and El Salvador and to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

Honduras's geographically central location made it a convenient base of operations for the Contras and a center of training and supply for the Salvadoran and Guatemalan militaries.

Even democratic Costa Rica felt the ripple effects of its neighbors' conflicts as displaced persons from other countries took up residence in that nation.

Finally, the governments of Central America courageously decided to take matters into their own hands. In 1987, without any real assistance from the United States, the Presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica negotiated and signed an agreement to create conditions for peace in Central America, which became known as the Esquipulas Agreement. That agreement marked a

turning point for the people of Central America and created real possibilities for peace, reconciliation, and prosperity for the people of that region.

Since 1990, the countries of the region have made progress. The guns have been silenced. There has been political reconciliation. There have been domestic or democratic elections. But still the region struggles for many of the root causes that sparked the civil conflicts in the first place: poverty and inequality and injustice.

Taken individually or as a whole, this poverty, inequality, suffering, and political instability have severe implications. First, they threaten the political stability of Latin America. And I am very worried not only about this region but also other nations in the hemisphere that are democratic governments but are very fragile democracies. And second, by extension, they also threaten the national interests of the United States, as political instability did in the 1980s.

To understand how this is possible, I would point to--and advise my colleagues, if they have the time, to read--a 2004 report by the United Nations Development Program.

According to that report, progress in extending elective democracy across Latin America is threatened by ongoing social and economic turmoil. Most troubling, the report suggests that over 50 percent of the population of Latin America would be willing to sacrifice democratic government for real progress on economic and social fronts. That is a very frightening statistic. And it should make crystal clear the urgency of this situation.

Two decades of democratic progress in our hemisphere are at risk. Certainly, strong trade relations remain a key to creating a healthy economy both here in the United States and throughout the region. But trade alone cannot address the myriad of challenges facing Latin America, where millions of citizens in this hemisphere remain marginalized by economic insecurity and social dislocation. And, sadly, the attention and foreign aid dollars of the United States have been diverted to other parts of the world in recent years.

That is why I welcome the Bush administration's decision to reengage with the region and to strengthen economic ties by negotiating a regional free-trade agreement. I believe that the right kind of trade agreements can help these countries get on the proper course to stronger and more just societies.

The question is whether, on balance, the agreement before us is that right kind of agreement. I stress the term ``agreement'' because it reminds us that these documents are about much more than free trade.

They are about the worker who could lose his or her job. They are about the average citizen trying to provide for their families. And they are about social cohesion and political stability.

These agreements are also about the future of a nation's economy. They are about protecting our national security. And they are about ensuring that the next generation will inherit a stronger foundation on which to build their futures.

Or at least they should be.

We, in the Congress need to decide if these agreements live up to these standards. As I said earlier, I have been, throughout my years here, a strong supporter of free-trade agreements. The case we have before us--of course, CAFTA-DR, deals with the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica.

A meaningful agreement with these countries could, in my view, benefit the United States and the nations involved alike. For the most part, they need help. Poverty, corruption, social dislocation, and instability are all too familiar to the citizens of many of these nations.

But the CAFTA-Dominican Republic agreement has some weaknesses, ones we tried to address over the last several days.

Mr. President, I understand the sense of urgency the administration feels in having this agreement be decided upon in the waning hours before the Fourth of July recess. I regret, unfortunately, that we have to rush at this. But I understand why. If you do not have these agreements up under these time constraints, then they may not pass at all. So I appreciate the politics of why it is up under this shortened time-frame or up against the wall of this recess.

That said, I regret we did not have a few more days. If we did have some more time I believe we might have been able to make some very important improvements to weaknesses in the current agreement.

The most fundamental of these weaknesses I discussed last evening and I talked about at great length with Ambassador Portman yesterday.

I also sent him a letter addressing the specificity of them; and that is, namely, the issue of labor laws in the CAFTA-Dominican Republic countries.

When I speak of labor laws, I am speaking about the kinds of laws that these countries have enacted and about the enforcement of these laws. I am also speaking about current trade packages in this hemisphere that have been a major step forward to guarantee improvements in quality of life, creating wealth in these countries which, obviously, benefits us, as we want trade with nations that have people who can afford the cost of our goods and services. Both of these issues are critical components, I might add, to protecting Americans and to ensuring real progress is made in these nations.

I would turn here to the issue of labor laws. According to the CAFTA- Dominican Republic agreement, signatory countries must simply enforce the labor laws of their own nations--whatever they may be--in order to be in compliance. Indeed, I would note that the Dominican Republic and all the Central American countries, except El Salvador, have ratified what the International Labor Organization refers to as its eight fundamental conventions on labor rights. El Salvador, I might add, has ratified six of the eight. And while El Salvador needs to be brought up to speed, other signatories' laws seem to be at least minimally sufficient to the task, in my view.

Why then does the current arrangement, with respect to labor laws, weaken this agreement? Because of two things. First, it does not hold those countries to the same objective standards. In fact, the CAFTA-DR agreement would actually lower current standards. Second, it ignores the impact that a lack of objective standards could have on the region.

Let me explain.

Previous trade preference programs for the region--previous ones; this is not new ground; previous ones--provided that the President should at least take into account the extent to which the beneficiary countries provide internationally recognized workers' rights. This is not the case with the CAFTA-DR agreement.

In addition, as currently written, the CAFTA-DR agreement would weaken standards that these countries have been living under through the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the Generalized System of Preferences, where these agreements are not required. So instead of asking them to do the same with the CAFTA-DR agreement--or more--we are actually asking them to do less. It is a step backwards.

Under the current trade agreements in this region, trade benefits can be withdrawn if a country lowers its labor laws below international standards or simply fails to meet these standards. And they can be withdrawn if a government directly violates internationally accepted workers rights that might not be protected under their laws.

Under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, and the GSP, the right to file a complaint for violations of these rights is extended beyond just governments and to civil societies. But again, with this agreement, we exclude all of that.

Under this agreement, governments will only have to enforce whatever laws they have on their own books at any given time. They will not be held to any international standards. That means the ocean floor is the limit, with respect to how weak these laws can get.

Moreover, the lack of an objective standard here is troubling because it could create a race-to-the-bottom mentality where investors and companies play governments, one against the other, seeking lower labor standards in a quest for increased profits. That type of situation, in my view, could wreak havoc on civil societies in these countries, and it could also cost American workers their jobs.

A second facet of the labor rights question deals with the issue of enforcement.

As I said earlier, for the most part, CAFTA-DR nations have laws on their books. But they face a lack of resources, as well as domestic political opposition from influential people, which prevent them from enforcing these laws.

Again, this is not about pointing the finger or accusing these government leaders of malice toward their workers. I don't believe that. I don't believe that is the case here either. I believe they actually want to do the right thing. I know these leaders. I respect them. But our neighbors to the south are democratic countries. And as in all democracies, they have to deal with powerful opposition interests.

The question remains, will CAFTA-DR help these nations overcome this opposition to enforcement? In my view, it doesn't go nearly far enough to do so. That is why I met with Ambassador Portman yesterday to see if we could strengthen the prospects for enforcement. Laws that can't be enforced might as well not be there.

The administration seems to hold the view that support for expanded trade and economic growth is incompatible with advocating core labor standards in developing countries. But, in fact, experts in this area from the well-respected Institute for International Economics have concluded that ``core labor standards support sustainable and broadly shared political, social, and economic development.'' The operative word being ``shared.''

Let me say clearly I believe this agreement is fixable. I wish it could have been fixed. Ambassador Portman and I met. We exchanged letters. We worked hard yesterday to try and see if we couldn't strengthen this agreement with respect to enforcement. What we sought was the following, exactly what exists in the Cambodian Agreement that was negotiated by the Clinton administration and renewed by the Bush administration, to their credit. There we said that the International Labor Organization ought to be able to make site visits to actually go to plants and industries to see whether the labor standards were being upheld. Under CAFTA-DR, all they can do is go to the labor ministries and ask them whether the laws are being enforced. Obviously, in most of these countries the labor ministries are political appointees. They are not likely to be critical of their own government's efforts. By not having any standard which all countries must meet, each country will be able to set the floor. When they do so, of course, the competition to have a lower floor to attract more industry from outside the country lowers the living standards for the very people I have described who are living under some of the worst conditions anywhere in the world.

I am deeply troubled by this. I so much wanted to be for this agreement. I care so much about this region and what happens to these people. I would like nothing more than to be standing here today urging my colleagues to be supportive of this. This is not a minor point. It goes right to the heart of what we try to do with trade agreements; that is, to reduce these barriers, expand markets for our businesses and industries, create opportunities for additional job creation, and also to create and generate wealth in these countries so that in the long term, we can produce high value products, high value services, that are affordable in these countries.

So trade agreements have worked both ways--expanding economic opportunities for ourselves and creating wealth and opportunity in the countries with whom we trade. That is why I supported NAFTA and the Jordanian Free Trade Agreement and others. Indeed, I have supported far more of these agreements than I have opposed. But with CAFTA-DR, we are stepping backwards in a region of the world that needs a commitment to lift up the quality of life for its citizens.

I am not suggesting we could do it solely through this agreement, but you can begin to make a difference in these people's lives by insisting that they have to meet some minimum standards.

This is what we should be saying: We want to do business in your country. We want to accept your products. We want to trade with you. But the small price we ask is that you have some basic standards for the people who are going to do the jobs.

When you eliminate that, then you invite the kind of problems we are going to see with these people.

I am terribly disappointed today. I had hoped I would be able to support this agreement. I wanted to be a part of this effort. I respect immensely the President inviting us down and talking about this. I raised the issue with him. I also respect Rob Portman. He is a good man. Obviously, he has the difficulty of dealing with all 535 of us, in both this Chamber and the other, to try and get the votes to pass these agreements. This agreement is probably going to be passed tonight. My hope was that we would be able to broaden the specter along bipartisan support for this agreement both here and in the other Chamber. Unfortunately, I don't believe that will be the case.

Let me say to my colleagues: Even with the adoption of this agreement and the absence of these labor standards I feel so strongly about, it is my intention, through appropriate vehicles, to condition aid and other assistance on improving these standards in these countries. I will find one way or the other to try and improve them, to insist that these countries, in exchange for getting the kind of access to our markets, at the very least they ought to be required to improve the quality of life and the standards under which many of these people work.

We stand today at a moment of great opportunity and great risk for this hemisphere. The past two decades have witnessed the rise of democratic governments in nations that have long languished under dictatorship of left or right. But this progress is endangered. Globalization and free trade promise to bring historic levels of prosperity to nations north and south. But economic and social conditions for millions of men and women continue to lag dangerously far behind, threatening what we have worked so hard to build. Through well-crafted trade agreements, the United States can enhance its own prosperity and lift other nations on a stable and democratic path.

That is why I am so disappointed the administration wasn't able to explicitly support the efforts to give the ILO a greater role in the monitoring and verification process. I believe that in doing so, we would have significantly strengthened this agreement, especially given the troubled history of the region and the potential for mutual prosperity that a CAFTA-DR agreement held for all. Unfortunately, the agreement before us won't do that.

Last night I sent Ambassador Portman a letter detailing proposals that have already been adopted in other agreements. This is not breaking new ground. I appreciate Ambassador Portman's response today in the letter he wrote back to me, but I regret that his letter included no real concrete commitment that the U.S. Government would guarantee the implementation that I am requesting--specifically, that the ILO would be granted unfettered access to workplaces, permitted to establish mechanisms for receiving and investigating matters related to ILO labor standards, to make private recommendations to worker and employer organizations and appropriate officials within each government, and to issue periodic public reports of its findings on matters of concern.

Therefore, I am left to conclude that instead of breaking new ground and raising standards, the CAFTA-DR agreement is a step backwards from existing law. That fact saddens me deeply. This agreement will create a weaker set of standards that could very well negatively impact the people of this region, negatively impact American workers and our national security, and weaken democracy in these countries.

Regrettably, I won't be able to support this agreement when it comes to a vote. I say this with a very heavy heart.

But I will make a promise to the American people and to the people of these countries that I will work vigorously to ensure as we move forward with this agreement, workers' rights are protected and new avenues are explored for pursuing this goal. I hope at the end of the day, with all of the interests in this agreement, that our keeping the light shining on labor rights issues will make this agreement

work. Because even though I can't support this agreement in its current form, I truly want to it work for all.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, on April 6 of this year, Senator Dorgan and I introduced S. Res. 100, a resolution to prevent a 2-year extension of the so-called fast track or trade promotion authority, which the Congress granted the administration in the Trade Act of 2002. If our resolution were approved, existing fast-track negotiating authority would expire this year. If only it would. If only it would. Wouldn't it be ideal if it would expire? I think so. But, instead, it will be extended through 2007. That is a crying shame.

Senator Dorgan and I introduced that resolution of disapproval to fast track because we oppose giving any executive--any chief executive, Democrat or Republican--the unfettered authority to negotiate trade agreements such as CAFTA which cannot be amended by the Congress. It cannot be amended. All of this praise I hear of CAFTA--we have too little time here to consider and no time to amend. We cannot amend. Too little time. Too much praise. Too much short shrift. Too much short shrift is given to this, the Constitution of the United States, which I hold in my hand. Yes, too much praise, too little time, too much short shrift.

I opposed fast track when it was used to negotiate the NAFTA; I opposed fast track when it was used to negotiate the Uruguay Round; and I oppose fast track today.

Let me restate what I have said so many times--so many times--in the past, something that I think people may be finally beginning to comprehend. Article I, section 8 of this Constitution, which I hold in my hand, states that the Congress--hear me--that the Congress, not the executive, shall have the power to ``regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.'' And under Article I, section 7, the Senate is permitted to ``propose or concur with'' amendments to all revenue bills.

But under fast track--this shabby, shabby piece of trash--under fast track--this trumped-up power grab called fast track which is now disingenuously called trade promotion authority--listen to that: trade promotion authority--the Congress is left with no ability to modify the text of these trade agreements. And we did it to ourselves. Congress did it to itself. As a result, they are negotiated by a small band of bureaucratic gnomes--bureaucratic gnomes--accountable to whom? Accountable to no one, bureaucratic gnomes accountable to no one. But we should not blame them. We should blame ourselves. The Congress of the United States cut its own throat.

Under fast track, the Congress cannot modify, the Congress cannot amend, the Congress cannot delete any section of trade agreements negotiated by the USTR. Congress is excluded from the process, just like we did to ourselves when we shifted the power to declare war to a President, one man. We did it to ourselves. We shifted power under this Constitution--lodged

in the Congress, which shall declare war under this Constitution--we shifted that power to one man, and in so doing we relegated ourselves to the sideline.

So today what can we say? We cannot say anything. We did it to ourselves. We said: Here, Mr. President, take it. It is yours, lock, stock, and barrel. That is what we did when it came to declaring war. And we are paying for it in Iraq.

But let's get back on this matter. We did it to ourselves again. We excluded ourselves from the process. We cut ourselves out of the loop. We cast ourselves aside, like excess baggage, shunned, shunned like the woman who wore the scarlet letter.

But unlike Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne, who had to sport only one letter as a symbol of her wrongdoing, the shamed in this story should be forced to wear three letters to highlight their humiliation. And those letters are ``TPA,'' which stands for ``trade promotion authority.'' What a misnomer. How disingenuous can we become? Fast- track negotiating authority is an abomination--an abomination.

Is this what we think the Founding Fathers had in mind when they created our three separate branches of Government? We don't pay too much attention to that these days. Is this what they had in mind when they created our three separate branches of Government? First, in this Constitution, the legislative branch, then the executive branch, then the judicial branch. But that first branch, the people's branch, is this what they had in mind when they created that first branch? Blind adherence to agreements negotiated behind closed doors, dictated word for word by only one branch of the Government, the executive branch? Is that what they had in mind? That is not what the Constitution says. It says that the Congress shall regulate foreign commerce.

But the Congress, like blind mice or hyperactive lemmings, time and time and time again just keeps on making the same mistake. It approves fast track. Each agreement negotiated under fast track destroys more American jobs and leads our Nation into deeper and deeper deficits.

The overall U.S. trade deficit in 1993, when NAFTA was enacted, was $75.7 billion. Today what is it? Not $75.7 billion. It is nearly $700 billion. Back in 1993--that hasn't been too long ago, back in 1993--the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of $2.4 billion. Not too long ago, 1993. Look backward, O time, in thy flight. We had a trade surplus with Mexico of $2.4 billion in 1993, $2.4 billion. Last year we ran a trade deficit of $45 billion with Mexico. There you have it. The facts speak for themselves. Were these some of the promised benefits of NAFTA? It is too easy to forget. Were these some of the promised benefits of NAFTA? Sky high, yes, way up in the stratosphere, sky-high trade deficits? Since NAFTA and the Uruguay Round were negotiated under fast track, the United States has lost thousands--thousands, I say--of manufacturing and service jobs, a substantial portion of which have been outsourced--we hear much of that word these days, ``outsourced''-- to India or to China, leaving American workers' jobs without health care and with diminished pensions.

I have seen it over and over again in West Virginia. I have seen it happen time and time and time and time again, firsthand, in West Virginia. It has happened in our steel industry in West Virginia. It has happened in the aluminum industry. It has happened in the glass industry. It has happened in the communications industry. It has happened in the special metals industry. It has happened in the furniture industry. It has happened in textiles. It has happened in handtools. Were these the promised benefits of NAFTA? Were these the promised benefits of the Uruguay Round? Who could have foreseen that these agreements would cause such massive dislocation, such grief? Who? Who?

I will tell you who: Those of us who wisely voted against them. I did, and so did about a third of the U.S. Senate. But the majority back then refused to see what was coming. The majority refused to look. The majority blindfolded itself and refused to see what was coming. I hope they recognize what they see today.

Administrations like to allege that because they sometimes deign to ``consult'' with the Congress on fast track trade agreements, their consultations satisfy the need of Congress to be involved in drafting the text of these agreements. We all know what a sham that is. Yes, they condescend to consult with Congress, the people's elected representatives. The President is indirectly elected by the electors, the representatives of the people. We are elected by the people, directly by the people. I come here, as it were, directly from the voting booth of the people. Despite all the assurances we heard during the 2002 trade debate, I have been told that even members of the Finance Committee, the Senate Committee that is charged with jurisdiction over trade matters, have been shut out. Can you believe it? Let me say that again. I can hardly believe what I am saying.

Despite all the assurances we heard during the 2002 trade debate, I have been told that even members of the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate committee that is charged with jurisdiction over trade matters, have been shut out of substantive consultations on CAFTA. My, how the mighty have fallen. Since only certain members of the Finance Committee are part of the congressional oversight group which was supposedly created in 2002 to ``consult'' with the White House, other Senators on the Finance Committee who are not a part of that group have rarely been consulted on CAFTA at all. What kind of consultation is that? What kind?

Similarly, the majority-controlled Senate Finance Committee refused to hold a hearing on the TPA resolution of disapproval that Senator Dorgan and I introduced in April. The committee also refused--maybe I should say ``declined''--to discharge the resolution so it could receive an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

You hear that a lot around here, this demand for an up-or-down vote. I hear it said that nominees deserve an up-or-down vote. Who said that? The President and others say the nominees deserve an up-or-down vote. The Constitution doesn't say that. Here is the Constitution. It doesn't say that. What do the American people deserve? That is what counts.

Well, the Senate leadership refused to give our resolution an up-or- down vote. Instead, they killed it in committee. It died a natural death. They killed it in committee, despite a written request asking for its discharge that was sent by Senators Dorgan, Graham, Rockefeller, Johnson, Levin, Inouye, Dayton, and myself.

The proponents of fast track, TPA, and CAFTA argue that by expanding free trade in Central America we will help the workers in those countries--I have heard some of that today--become more stable and less of a national security threat. That is what we were told about NAFTA. What happened? Did NAFTA stabilize immigration? No. Since NAFTA was implemented, the number of those migrating illegally into the United States to seek work has doubled. Perhaps this is because the wages of Mexican workers have declined and the number of people in poverty there has grown.

Yet the administration wants us to enact now another NAFTA, this time called CAFTA--NAFTA, CAFTA; NAFTA CAFTA. Poetic, isn't it? It has a rhyming sound. NAFTA, CAFTA. Yesterday NAFTA, today CAFTA, what the AFL-CIO tells us will not require its members to maintain or improve their labor laws or to protect the core labor rights of their workers.

So the administration continues to negotiate these failed free-trade agreements, when it should be focusing on the real trade crises that face our Nation.

For example, while the administration has been spending its resources on these agreements, it is doing nothing to address our Nation's enormous trade deficit, which soon will surpass $700 billion. What a deficit--$700 billion.

I am so sorry about that, Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that I may be given 5 more minutes.

I thank the Chair for his courtesy. May I say that the chairman

of the Finance Committee is a man whom I like. He is always friendly, always courteous to me, and in Shakespeare's words, ``He's a man after my own kidney.''

The administration also refuses to bring WTO cases against other countries that violate international law. Yet it acquiesces when the WTO unfairly and deliberately twists international rules to strike down our own laws. In fact, the current administration has taken on only 12 cases to the WTO in over 4 years, compared with its predecessor, which filed an average of 11 WTO cases per year.

The U.S. Trade Representative sits idly by while the WTO tries to undermine and/or eliminate our most critical trade laws, including the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, also known as the Byrd amendment. A strong majority of the Senate supports the Byrd amendment, and this law will not be repealed or modified in response to the WTO. In fact, in the fiscal year 2004 and 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Acts both Houses of Congress directed the administration to start negotiating a solution to this WTO dispute. In response to this congressional mandate, the administration, in early 2004, submitted a proposal to a negotiating group in Geneva to reverse this WTO ruling against our law. But the administration has done nothing to advance those negotiations since April 2004. The administration needs to stop stalling and start solving this problem.

History shows that it is a big mistake for the Congress to cede its authority to negotiate trade agreements to the Executive--and I am not just talking about this administration. I have been in Congress 53 years, and it is the same in every administration, Democratic and Republican. They follow the State Department line all the time--because the outcome of those agreements can have disastrous consequences for American industry.

How much more negative history, how many more flawed consequences must our Nation suffer before we wake up and realize that fast track has been a disaster? Instead of negotiating more unfair, at any rate, agreements such as CAFTA, we should be fighting aggressively to preserve our Nation's trade laws and to protect the American workers and their families, and also protect the Constitution of the United States.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want, first to compliment the subcommittee chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations bill, Senator Peter Domenici, and the ranking member, Senator Harry Reid, for the outstanding job they have done in putting together this bill. The well- being of the Nation depends greatly upon adequate investments in the many programs and activities contained in this bill.

Through this measure, we are supporting the backbone of our Nation's water transportation and flood protection programs through the Army Corps of Engineers; the irrigation water supply systems for the western States through the Bureau of Reclamation; the protection of our Nation's nuclear weapons stockpile; the advancement of science programs to help ensure that the United States remains a leader in the international scientific community; a number of independent agencies and commissions, including the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Denali Commission, and the Delta Regional Authority; and now, due to the restructuring of subcommittee jurisdictions, the entire Department of Energy, DOE.

As part of that restructuring, the Energy and Water Subcommittee was charged with oversight and appropriations responsibilities for the fossil energy research and development, R&D, within the Department of Energy. Senator Domenici and I have long worked on these programs, and I thank him and Senator Reid and their staffs for their hard work, diligence, and support for fossil energy research in this bill.

Through the Fossil Energy R&D programs, DOE supports research involving economically and environmentally sound use of our Nation's domestically produced fossil energy resources. It forges partnerships between Government and industry to accelerate the development, demonstration, and deployment of advanced technologies that show promise in helping to ensure cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable energy, now and in the future.

While the subcommittee did not hold a fiscal year 2006 budget hearing on the fossil energy R&D programs this spring, I appreciate Senator Domenici's commitment to hold annual oversight hearings on the fossil energy programs beginning next year. I look forward to participating in these hearings as our fossil energy resources will continue to be important to this Nation.

I would also like to mention that the clean coal program, which falls under the fossil energy portfolio, has been critical to the development of cleaner, low-carbon fossil energy technologies.

I created the Clean Coal Technology program in 1985, and I am very proud to report that after five solicitations, 32 projects have been completed, with a combined value of $3.7 billion Government/industry investments to develop advanced technologies that are resulting in cleaner, more efficient, and more cost-effective power generation.

The subsequent Clean Coal Power Initiative, started by President Bush in 2000, was to be a $2 billion demonstration program over 10 years, consisting of four rounds of solicitations. The administration's fiscal year 2006 budget request of $50 million falls woefully short of being able to keep the CCPI on a 2-year solicitation schedule. However, I am very appreciative of the additional $50 million that was provided

by Senators Domenici and Reid, at my request. This funding will help to pave the way for a third CCPI solicitation in the near future.

If we ever hope to increase our energy security, reduce our dependence on foreign energy resources, and develop fossil energy technologies that allow us to burn coal with little to no pollution, we must adequately invest in these critical programs. There are no better champions for energy research than Senator Domenici, Senator Reid, and me. We have been able not only to authorize initiatives so critical to America's energy independence, but we also have been able to direct resources to those important efforts and keep them adequately funded for at least another year.

On Tuesday, June 28, 2005, the Senate passed a bipartisan Energy bill, and I was happy to support that bill. It is generally a positive bill, but it is also very much of a business-as-usual approach toward energy policy. This bill simply provides authorization for new and existing programs related to energy policy. Despite the fact that the administration is strongly pressing for an Energy bill, I have to wonder if the necessary funding to support this legislation will ever emerge in subsequent administration budgets.

Certainly, the administration's track record on funding other important measures like No Child Left Behind makes one wonder if energy funding will face continued shortfalls despite the prized rhetoric and Rose Garden ceremonies. Due to very constrained budget allocations, the Appropriations Committee is likely to find it extremely difficult to maintain funding for current energy programs, to say nothing of adding funding for the new or expanded energy programs in an Energy bill.

At least for the next fiscal year, the Senate's mark for the fossil energy programs will keep these programs moving in the right direction, despite the administration's budget cuts. Again, I thank the chairman and the ranking member of the Energy and Water Subcommittee and their staff, Scott O'Malia, Roger Cockrell, Emily Brunini, Drew Willison, and Nancy Olkewicz, for their extraordinary efforts in this regard and for producing a bill that I believe we can all support.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes and that the time be charged under the control of Senator Grassley.

Mr. President, I have been listening to the debate upstairs on television. I thought I might come down and indicate the reasons I am going to vote for this Central American Free Trade Agreement.

This agreement has sparked a great deal of debate about our trade agenda,

the effects of trade agreements on labor rights and the environment, and the impact of increased imports on sensitive domestic industries. I understand the concerns of my colleagues, including members of my own party, who do not support this agreement.

For me, I have always approached these agreements on a case-by-case basis. I have supported some, and I have opposed others. For example, I opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Singapore-Chile Free Trade Agreement. I opposed NAFTA because of the concerns about the impact of jobs and the environment, and I opposed the Chile-Singapore Free Trade Agreement because of the inclusion of immigration provisions.

But in my view, this is an important opportunity for this Congress to go on record in support of economic growth and political stability in these countries and new markets and opportunities for our manufacturers and farmers.

Bottom line, this agreement provides immediate benefits for American exports. It balances an uneven trading relationship. Some have said this, but I do not think it has sunk in: approximately 80 percent of goods manufactured in these countries and 99 percent of their agricultural products already enter the United States duty free. But America's exports into these countries face stiff tariffs on a number of key products. Let me give some examples.

Wood products have an average tariff of 10 percent; motor vehicles and parts, an average of 11.1 percent; vegetables, fruits, and nuts, an average of 16.7 percent--that is today--dairy products, an average of 19.5 percent and up to 60 percent in some cases. In some cases, to send dairy products into these countries, they face a tariff of 60 percent; grains, an average tariff of 10.6 percent; beef, up to 30 percent; rice, up to 60 percent; and wine is as high as 35 percent.

Upon enactment of this agreement, 80 percent of U.S. industrial exports will enter the CAFTA countries duty free, with the remaining tariffs eliminated over 10 years. That is good for us. That is good for our workers because in these industries it will produce more jobs. Fifty percent of agricultural exports become duty free immediately, with remaining tariffs eliminated over 15 and 20 years.

A World Bank and University of Michigan study estimates that with the agreement, U.S. income will rise by $17 billion and the income of CAFTA countries by $5 billion. I think that is substantial. According to the American Farm Bureau, CAFTA would increase U.S. agricultural exports by $1.5 billion annually.

Now let me just talk about my own State of California. It has often been said we are the fifth largest economic engine on Earth. We have a $1.4 trillion economy. We are a leader in U.S. and global markets, with products ranging from high tech to agriculture. Our workers, our farmers, and our businesses need access to new and expanding markets to sustain that leadership position.

In 2004, my State exports to the CAFTA countries totaled $660 million. That was the sixth largest of the 50 States. Manufactured goods accounted for 89 percent of the total, including computers and electronic equipment, fabric mill products, and coal products.

CAFTA will provide significant opportunities for several California export industries. Let me go over them. Let us take dairy, for example. California's producers represent a $4 billion dairy industry. We know it is the largest in the Nation. Their exports face duties as high as 60 percent today. Each country in this agreement establishes tariff rate quotas for certain dairy products totaling 10,000 metric tons across the six CAFTA countries. Access will increase by 5 percent a year for the Central American countries and 10 percent a year for the Dominican Republic, and all duties will be eliminated over 20 years.

Beef: Current duties on beef are as high as 30 percent. Duties on prime and choice cuts will be eliminated immediately in the Central American countries. Duties on other beef products will be phased out over 5 to 10 years.

Wine: Current duties on American wine are as high as 35 percent. Duties on standard size U.S. bottled wine will be eliminated immediately. All others will be phased out over 15 years.

Rice: Currently, U.S. rice exports face tariffs of up to 60 percent. Under the agreement, each country will establish a tariff rate quota for milled rice and rough rice, except for the Dominican Republic, which will have a tariff rate quota for brown rice. In the first year, 400,000 metric tons will be imported duty free, growing as the tariff is eventually eliminated.

Fruits: Duties of up to 20 percent on U.S. grapes, raisins, fresh and canned peaches, and fresh and canned pears will be eliminated immediately upon enactment of the agreement.

Tree nuts: Duties of up to 20 percent on U.S. walnuts, almonds, and pistachios will be eliminated immediately upon enactment of the agreement.

Services: The agreement provides broad market access and regulatory transparency for telecommunications, insurance, financial services, distribution services, computer and business technology services, and tourism, among others. U.S. financial service suppliers will have full rights to establish subsidiaries, joint ventures or branches for banks and insurance companies.

High tech: The agreement eliminates distribution barriers for information technology products. It requires countries to eliminate information technology tariffs by signing the World Trade Organization Information Technology Agreement, and it opens up information technology services. All exports of products covered by the Information Technology Agreement, including computer equipment and communications equipment, will receive immediate duty-free treatment.

Entertainment: California is a big entertainment State, and this is very important. The agreement provides for increased market access for U.S. films and television programs through cable, satellite, and the Internet. Currently, movies face tariffs ranging from 5 to 20 percent. Compact discs and DVDs face tariffs of up to 10 percent. The agreement provides for zero tariffs on movies, music, consumer products, software, books and magazines, and nondiscriminatory treatment for digital products such as U.S. software, music, text, and videos. It also includes protections for U.S. trademarks, copyrighted works, patents, trade secrets, and penalties for piracy and counterfeiting. As a matter of fact, Peter Chernin, the CEO and president of the Fox Group, said this: This agreement sets a template for what agreements should look like.

Textiles: Apparel from garment factories in Central America supporting 400,000 jobs will be duty free and quota free in the United States if they contain U.S. fabric and yarn, thus benefiting U.S. fabric and yarn exports. The CAFTA countries are the largest market for U.S. apparel and yarn exports. That is $2.2 billion in 2003. Tariffs on U.S. textile exports are currently 18 percent, and they will be eliminated immediately upon enactment of the agreement.

Now, these are all win-win-win for my State and I believe for the United States. Perhaps because of the NAFTA agreement, which was a very different agreement, people look at this agreement as they looked at NAFTA. In fact, CAFTA countries now export most of their products into the United States at no tariff, and most of our products face tariffs which would either be eliminated immediately or eliminated over a period of time under CAFTA.

So I do not think it should come as any surprise that there is very wide support among California businesses, farmers, and agricultural organizations: the Farm Bureau, the Wine Institute, the United Dairymen, the Rice Commission, the Cattlemen's Association, the Pork Producers, the Table Grape Commission. In high tech, virtually every company: Cisco, Intel, National Semiconductor, Apple, Oracle, Hewlett- Packard, Qualcomm, IBM, Kodak, and the Telecommunications Industry of America. This is opening markets for our products. Entertainment: the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry of America, the Independent Film and Television Alliance, and the Entertainment Software Association.

As the New York Times stated in an editorial:

Denying poor people in Central America the benefits of

better access to the American market is certainly not the way

to lift them out of poverty.

That is the flip side of this, that by creating an agreement that reduces these tariffs on American products, a more competitive and higher quality marketplace is produced for citizens of these countries, and that is not bad.

Denying these countries access to the U.S. market is certainly not the way to reward them for advances made in the area of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Twenty years ago, these countries were marred by constant warfare, human rights abuses, poverty, and political instability. Since then, they have all made enormous strides, and passage of CAFTA will not only promote economic development and rising standards of living by allowing their products to compete in the U.S. market, it will also lock in economic reforms, respect for the rule of law, and solidify democratic institutions. Each country now has a democratically elected leader, and I think we should reward those allies and not turn our backs on them.

I ask unanimous consent to have a letter from former President Jimmy Carter printed in the Record.

Former President Jimmy Carter states:

If the United States Congress were to turn its back on

CAFTA, it would undercut these fragile democracies, compel

them to retreat to protectionism, and make it harder for them

to cooperate with the United States.

I do not think there has been any American President that has reached out more fully to the rest of the world with more humanitarian work and more concern about human rights and labor rights than Jimmy Carter.

I understand several of my colleagues believe labor and environmental provisions of the agreement fall short of what is needed to protect workers' rights and the natural resources of the CAFTA countries. I think free-trade advocates often make the mistake of arguing that these agreements are a panacea for the ills of the developing world, including lax labor and environmental standards. I certainly do not believe that.

The passage of the CAFTA alone will not bring labor and environmental standards and the capacity to enforce those standards up to United States levels. We have to admit that. But--and I say ``but''--combined with a robust assistance package to help the CAFTA countries identify shortcomings and improve the enforcement of their laws, this agreement will mark an important step in the right direction. This is not about sacrificing the rights of workers and the protection of the environment for open markets and increased trade. We can provide new opportunities for American and Central American goods and services and establish programs to help those countries raise their labor standards.

What Senator Bingaman said when he came to the floor is very constructive. I give him a great deal of credit and credit to the administration. This is the first trade treaty I can remember when they have been open to change.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent just 5 additional minutes.

This is the first trade agreement where the administration, perhaps because they have had to struggle for the votes, has been welcoming of suggestions; not only welcoming of suggestions, they made some changes. That is appreciated.

One of the changes was $40 million earmarked for labor and environment capacity building for the CAFTA countries, from 2006 through 2009, and $3 million annually through 2009 for the International Labor Organization to monitor and verify progress in CAFTA countries in improving labor law enforcement and working conditions, with periodic reports that are transparent, every 6 months, on such projects.

That is a first and I think it is important and I do believe it can make a difference. I do believe the comments of those who are concerned about impact on Central America's labor laws are right to be concerned. I join them in that concern. This $3 million can go a long way to seeing the kind of enforcement that is necessary to begin to bring those countries up to where it is an approximately level playing field. This is a significant commitment, and I thank Ambassador Portman for his willingness to engage with the Congress on this issue.

I also look forward to providing assistance to workers in this country through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program for those who have lost their jobs because of increased trade.

This is where I think the rub really is. It is always hard to see whether the benefits of free trade do in fact outweigh the negatives. But we must recognize that some workers lose their jobs and they have to be helped to learn new skills. We have to find ways to keep manufacturing in this country. We have to find ways to limit research and development tax credits to the production of jobs in this country.

Some of us were struck a mortal blow when we repatriated tax funds and there was an amendment on the floor of the Senate that said ``as long as those funds will be used for production of jobs in this country,'' and that amendment failed. That, for me, was a dark day because I believe that American corporations do have an obligation to this country, not only to the bottom line but an obligation to their workers. American workers are the best in productivity and the best in the world. We have to find ways to see that this country is competitive in education, in standards, to be attractive for manufacturing once again.

Today, the Democrats in the Democratic Policy Committee heard a very interesting presentation which pointed out how necessary manufacturing jobs, production line jobs--not high-skilled jobs--were going to be to the future of this great country. I remember when I was mayor of San Francisco, Akio Morita, the chairman of Sony, at that time he was the head of The Keidanren, saying to me that when America loses its manufacturing edge, it is the first step to America becoming a second rate power. I believe that is correct. Yet a trade agreement which reduces tariffs on our exports is not bad; it is good. I think that is the benefit of that, and of this agreement.

With that in mind, and because I believe virtually every industry in my

State is in support of this agreement, I intend to vote aye.

I thank the Chair for the extension of time, and I yield the floor.

I appreciated the recent efforts the administration made to engage the sugar industry to work out an agreement. However, I am concerned that the two sides only recently came to the table to address this divisive issue. The trade agreement has been signed for nearly a year, but talks only began about 3 weeks ago. The problem should have been recognized and truly addressed earlier in the process. I am convinced that an agreement could have been reached. As it was, the sugar industry chose not to accept a short-term offer by the administration. The offer would have provided a remedy for the length of the farm bill, this year and next year's sugar beet crop. As I stated before, sugar beet farmers in Wyoming have made long-term investments in their processing facilities. They need a long-term solution, not a short-term fix.

This problem will not go away. As the administration continues to seek additional free-trade agreements with countries that desire to send their sugar to our markets, this issue will resurface. I recommend that the administration and the sugar industry continue creative discussions to identify a long-term solution beyond the next farm bill to ensure the viability of the sugar industry and the small family farmers that the industry supports in the United States.

Beyond Wyoming sugar, Wyoming cattle producers have made it clear to me that they want mandatory country of origin labeling implemented before new trade agreements are signed that could bring in additional beef and meat products. I agree that consumers should have the opportunity to make an informed purchase regarding their meat's country of origin at their grocery store. U.S. beef is competitive, but it does not receive a chance to compete when it is not labeled as U.S. beef for consumers.

With my vote against this bill, it would be easy for my opponents to cast me as a free-trade obstructionist. I remind them that until today, I have never voted against a free-trade agreement on the floor of the Senate. The principles of fair trade, which I support, generally bring about increased democracy, more transparency in Government and increased productivity. Along these lines, there are industries in Wyoming that communicated their support of CAFTA to me. I am pleased the agreement will improve market access for important industries, such as soda ash and oil and gas. I recognize the benefits this agreement will bring to many and applaud the administration for their hard work in bringing this agreement to fruition. Unfortunately, I cannot vote for the agreement today because the costs outweigh the benefits for my State as a whole.

If the chair will be so kind to let me know when I have 2 minutes left?

Mr. President, let me say from the start, I have thought about this long and hard. I believe in the seriousness and the potential for free-trade agreements. But after looking at this particular one, and looking at it in the context of our overall macroeconomic policy, I am unfortunately going to have to vote against this proposed Dominican Republic-Central America-Free Trade Agreement.

I have supported other agreements: Australia, Jordan, and Morocco. I believe in comparative advantage. There are lots of good reasons why free-trade agreements that are fair are ones we ought to promote. But they need to preserve and protect important labor, environmental, and security interests as well. I do not think this one does that. As a matter of fact, a trade agreement between the United States and Central America with the proper safeguards I think is a good thing. I just do not believe that we have embedded those in this particular agreement.

American workers justifiably feel insecure in today's economy, particularly with the outsourcing or exporting

of American jobs that comes from so much of our trade policy. People are concerned whether those American jobs are going to stay at home. The increasing trade deficit puts an exclamation point on ``there is something afoul'' with our trade policy.

All I have to do is point to this chart. Since 1993, when we started with NAFTA to where we are today, we have seen nothing but red ink flow from the trade agreements and trade arrangements that we have. Something is not working.

I would like to understand how this agreement is not just another piece, another one in a long line of bad trade agreements. Before we rush forward with this, I would like to understand what is happening that has brought about this kind of problem. We have a $617 billion trade deficit on an annualized basis this year. I believe we have a lot of evaluation that needs to be taken before we step forward on this. We are clearly on the wrong track, based on the policies that we have.

On a parochial level, since NAFTA was implemented back in 1994, New Jersey has lost 130,000 manufacturing jobs. We used to have about 25 percent of our workforce in the mid-1980s in the manufacturing industry. Today it is below 9 percent.

We have seen the textile industry in New Jersey absolutely decimated. From the economic calculations that I have seen, 46,000 of those 130,000 manufacturing jobs lost were due to NAFTA.

We had great companies--Allied Signal, American Standard. All of Patterson's textile industry left our State. We have had enough of it. I think we need to understand what we are doing and what the implications are for working men and women of this country of another free-trade agreement.

If you put this into a context that the gross metropolitan product of the city of Newark is $103 billion, and this is only $85 billion for all these countries--I don't understand why this is such a priority, particularly given all the other issues that we have in this country and particularly while we are thinking about it in the context of a $617 billion trade deficit.

I don't think we have our priorities ordered right here. I particularly think we do not have them ordered right when you compare this issue with our trade deficit with China, which is $162 billion. This, I am told, is the No. 1 priority of the administration with regard to trade policy. Where does that come from, when we have all of these difficulties in our trade arrangements?

China has had a fixed currency pegging versus the dollar since the late 1990s, not working to protect intellectual property rights between our two countries, and there are all kinds of enforcement issues with the WTO. I don't get it. Where are our priorities? We have a $617 billion trade deficit. We are talking about something that will be a minuscule piece of that. And we are doing it with a blind eye to major problems in our trade policy.

That is the major reason I am voting against it. There are a whole host of other issues that need to be considered. What happens to labor rights and what happens to environmental rights not only with regard to our workers but in those countries themselves? Where are we going to go, when we look at the lack of enforcement with regard to labor principles in those individual countries? The same thing goes for environmental issues. I don't understand why we are ceding the ground on these issues. Believe me, we have enforcement standards with regard to commercial rights and investment rights, but when it comes to working men and women, when it comes to our environmental protection-- which, by the way, is a global issue--we just say it is up to them with regard to their own standards.

That is not the way to do business, in my view, and I think this is a failed piece of legislation. It is a step back from what we did with Morocco and Jordan and other trade agreements that had positive enforcement responsibilities with regard to labor and environmental rights. This harms workers in those countries, not only harming workers in the United States.

There is a very clear example. I want to talk a little bit about it. NAFTA's liberalization, so-called, was supposed to promote job growth in Mexico. It lost 1.7 million rural farmers their access into the agricultural sector in Mexico, with the only increase, of about 800,000 new jobs, in the industrial sector. Some of those are now leaving because they are losing out to other parts of the world that have even lower labor standards and environmental standards and lower costs of labor. There is something wrong with this vicious cycle of eroding jobs here at home, even in some of the places that we think we are promoting them, through these free-trade agreements, and we have to get this settled out.

I do not understand why we continue to stay on the same track--and I am an old, washed-up businessman. I believe in making sure the comparative advantage follows in the proper way. If it turns out you go from a balanced trade arrangement to a $617 billion trade imbalance in a given year, and you have seen almost nothing but a straight line fall off in our ability to export our goods on a relative basis to the rest of the world, we are making a big mistake, and we have a lot to reevaluate.

It is time for a change with regard to our trade policies because they are not working economically and we are losing our ability to control our own destiny in our foreign reserves in other countries. It is not working because we are losing jobs at home and undermining working men and women's ability to have a high-quality standard of living, and we are not particularly helping others overseas. It is not a net boom for the countries we think we are trying to support.

If we are not going to have strong labor, strong environmental rights, if we are not going to get some kind of benefit, a major macroeconomic benefit, I don't understand why we are approving all of these trade agreements. That is why I will be voting no on this CAFTA legislation before the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, after serious deliberation, I will be voting against the United States-Dominican Republic Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. While I support the principle of free trade, free trade must also be fair. I have supported our trade agreements with Australia, Jordan, and Morocco because these agreements reduce or eliminate barriers to American exports while preserving and protecting important labor, environmental and security interests around the globe.

A trade agreement between the United States and Central America with the same safeguards has the potential to serve as an important tool for promoting development and advancing meaningful socioeconomic reform in the region. That said, the agreement before us takes a significant step back from previous agreements with respect to both labor and environmental protections, and will only exacerbate the outsourcing of American jobs and aggravate an already dangerous world trade imbalance. American workers justifiably feel insecure in today's economy, and the outsourcing of American jobs at home is a major reason. The increasing trade deficit puts an exclamation point on their concerns.

I would like to understand how this agreement is not just another in a long line of bad trade agreements that exacerbate our trade problems. Before we rush forward with policies that on the surface are failing, I would like some assurances that this won't be just another punch to the stomach of American industry and American workers. What we have been doing obviously has not been working. Why do we continue down this misguided path? The American trade deficit over the past ten years demonstrates we're on the wrong track.

At a more parochial level, since NAFTA was implemented in 1994, New Jersey has lost 130,000 manufacturing jobs--46,000 as a direct result of NAFTA. New Jersey was once a center for manufacturing. In 1996, Allied Signal in Eatontown sent 230 jobs to Mexico, and required the laid off workers to train their Mexican replacements. American Standard in Piscataway and Hamilton sent 495 jobs to Mexico. Patterson's textile industry disappeared. I could go on and on about town after town in New Jersey that lost jobs after NAFTA--from Millville to Elizabeth, from Woodbridge to Pennsauken. Another bad trade agreement is the last thing New Jersey needs.

It is clear this is part of the Bush administration's misguided strategy with respect to U.S. trade policy. The Bush administration has made CAFTA, not China, is its No. 1 trade priority. Yet trade with Central American countries represents only 1.5 percent of U.S. trade. The Gross Metropolitan Product, GMP, of the city of Newark is $103 billion, larger than the GDP of all of these countries combined, $85.2 billion. Compare that with the fact that, just last year, the United States ran a $162 billion trade deficit with China. Our trade deficit alone with China is nearly double the GDP of the entire Central American trade region. This is a much more pressing issue for our economic security, and we should be focusing our attention on where the risks to imbalances are. Where is the pressure for currency adjustment with China or the protection of intellectual property rights?

But this administration insists we first take up CAFTA, and so I feel compelled to discuss my opposition to this agreement. Free trade agreements must protect the rights of workers, both at home and abroad. When NAFTA was passed by Congress more than eleven years ago, there was great hope that the agreement would create thousands of new jobs in America and promote labor rights abroad.

Yet, as we stand here 11 years later, we know that the U.S. Department of Labor has certified more than 525,000 workers for NAFTA trade adjustment assistance because their jobs were lost due to NAFTA imports or shifts in production to Canada or Mexico under NAFTA. Those same numbers reveal that, through 2002, more than 46,000 New Jersey workers had similarly lost their jobs. And the numbers are actually more serious, because since 2002, the Department of Labor has refused to release these sobering statistics--some estimates suggest it is closer to one million jobs lost.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, ITC, predicts that CAFTA will actually increase the U.S. trade deficit with Central America because American companies will relocate their workforces and export their products back to the United States, just as companies did under NAFTA. This can continue to decimate communities across the country, as local plants shut down and the jobs moved overseas. NAFTA established the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, TAA, to help thousands of manufacturing workers receive retraining, keep their health insurance, and make a new start. But service sector jobs were left out. During the past several years, nearly half a million service jobs have moved offshore to other--mostly low-wage--countries. Senator Wyden's bipartisan amendment to extend TAA to service employees was accepted by the Finance Committee. Yet, when President Bush sent the CAFTA legislation to Congress, this amendment had been stripped from the bill. This amendment was sensible, it was fair, and it should have been included in this legislation.

For all of the harm CAFTA would cause U.S. workers, I am equally as concerned about the harm the agreement could do to the rights and protections of workers in Central America. A fair trade agreement must require each nation to improve domestic labor laws to meet basic workers' rights. And it should discourage our trading partners from weakening or eliminating entirely their labor laws in order to gain an unfair trade advantage. But CAFTA does neither. CAFTA's lone enforceable workers' rights provision requires only that these countries enforce their own labor laws--laws that our own State Department has said fail to meet recognized international standards. This not the standard for commercial or investment standards. This failure to include an enforceable requirement that labor laws meet basic international standards represents a significant step backwards from the labor rights provisions of our agreement with Jordan, a country with significantly stronger labor protections. In our shared goal at improving labor standards around the world, trade agreements like CAFTA should be both the carrot and the stick. CAFTA is neither.

CAFTA proponents have argued that this agreement is the principle means to lift Central America out of poverty and promote these shared principles. But this agreement will not do that, and the consequences of NAFTA are evidence of why. Since NAFTA was implemented more than eleven years ago, real wages in Mexico have fallen, the number of people in poverty has grown, and the number of people illegally migrating to the United States to seek work has doubled.

NAFTA's liberalization in the agriculture sector displaced more than 1.7 million rural small farmers, overwhelming the 800,000 number of new jobs created in the export processing sectors. Rather than learn from these sobering failings by negotiating a trade

agreement that creates good jobs, guarantees worker rights, and lays the groundwork for a strong middle class, the Administration has cloned NAFTA. Unfortunately, the results are likely to be the same.

What is also likely to be the same is the devastating impact on the environment that CAFTA is likely have on Central America. Central America is one of the most biologically diverse areas of the world. The region faces daunting environmental challenges that threaten its potential for sustainable development. Yet CAFTA would undermine hard- won environmental protections by allowing foreign investors to challenge environmental laws and regulations in all of the countries, including the U.S., that are parties to the agreement.

We have not learned the lessons of the past. This is another bad trade agreement that fails to address the real economic issues our nation faces today. We should be addressing our trade imbalance. We should be promoting job growth here in the United States, instead of further encouraging companies to move jobs elsewhere. I oppose CAFTA because it fails to preserve worker rights, protect the environment, or promote economic development at home and abroad. It is wrong for New Jersey, and it is wrong for America.