American Energy and Western Jobs Act

Just for a clarification, Mr. President, are we in morning business or are we on the bill?

Is 1 hour of time equally divided?

So time is equally divided up to that point?

Thank you, Mr. President.

First, I would like to make a comment on the Republican leader's comments on the tax bill. Just make note, American people, the leader says: Do not raise taxes. But he does not mention what our proposal actually does. It imposes a 5.6-percent surcharge only on those whose incomes are above $1 million. In other words, 99 percent-plus of the American people will not have their taxes raised, nor should they.

Average middle-class people are struggling. Their incomes are declining. We should not be doing that. But for those who are the very wealthiest--and this is no aspersion to them. I think most of us on both sides of the aisle admire people who have made a lot of money. Most Americans would like to be in their shoes, and most of them have done it the hard way: by coming up with a good idea, struggling and working a business. That is great. But they are the one segment in society whose income has actually increased significantly over the last decade.

The one consensus we have in this place is that we have to reduce the deficit and reduce the budget. The one consensus we have is that we have to do that. Well, you are asking middle-class people to chip in by making it harder to pay for college because student loans are not as good or cutting back on somebody who has been unemployed. They worked their whole life, lost their job, and now are unemployed.

So how do we have the top 1 percent--the one part of society doing the best--chip in? Well, the only way is through the Tax Code because they do not need help getting their kids to college. They do not need health care help. God bless them. They have enough money to do that on their own. So this is the only way to do it. If you say no taxes on anybody, even the millionaires--which is what, I assume, the Republican leader is saying--you are saying the best off in society, who have done the best in the last decade, should not contribute to this deficit reduction we have to do.

I believe--and I will say this again and again--the only way we are going to get real deficit reduction is by raising revenues as well as cutting spending. The only real way we are going to break through on raising revenues is making sure those at the highest income contribute and contribute more than others when it comes to the tax system.

I would like to go to the bill at hand, which is S. 1619, the currency act. I know my colleagues have heard me on this all week. It is passionate for me. It is passionate not as a Democrat or not against Republicans. In fact, we have religiously tried throughout--Senator Lindsey Graham and I, throughout the history of this bill, which is a long one, and the bills before it, their predecessors--we have tried to keep this religiously bipartisan.

In fact, we have five lead Democratic sponsors and five lead Republican sponsors. Lindsey and I have opposed Presidents on this issue--whether it was the Republican President Bush or the Democrat President Obama--with equal vigor because we think administrations get too caught up in that highfalutin diplomatic world to understand what American companies, particularly middle-sized companies, go through when China does not play fair.

I am on the Senate floor on this bill many times, more often than I usually speak, because I believe passionately this is about the future of America. If we continue to lose wealth and jobs to China because they manipulate trade laws and intellectual property laws and all kinds of other economic laws for their own advantage, unfairly--against the WTO rules, against the rules of free trade--we may never recover as a country.

This is serious. This is not to gain political advantage, although most Americans agree with it, of course. But I would do this if most Americans did not, and if editorialists did not, business leaders of multinational corporations did not. I do this because when we have small companies that are growing that have great products, and China unfairly competes with them--not because China's products are better but because China's trade allows it to undercut them in our market and in the Chinese market--we are giving away our seed corn.

Take solar cells. China usually uses a one-two punch to hurt us unfairly. First, they will use some trade law to get that business in their country, whether it is rare earths, and they will say: You want these rare earths? You have to manufacture in China. Whether it is intellectual property, they just take it regardless of patent laws and other laws. Or in the case of solar cells, whether it is unfair direct subsidies to companies, they say: You make the solar cells here--the Chinese companies--you will get deep subsidies.

But that alone would not be enough to put our American companies on their butts. What happens is, after they unfairly take the business and move them there, they send them here at a 30-percent discount using currency manipulation. Our American companies--and I have spoken to company after company in manufacturing businesses, in service businesses, and things in between--say: I can't compete. My product is usually better, but not against a 30-percent currency disadvantage. So the price of the Chinese good is 30 percent cheaper.

There is a window manufacturer I just visited, I think it was last Friday. He makes high-end windows for these buildings in New York and elsewhere. The window he makes is better than the Chinese window. This was not a theft of intellectual property. He would not use the Chinese windows because he is a contractor as well. He makes the windows, and then he installs them.

He said: I wouldn't use the Chinese product, but because it has a 30- percent advantage in currency, it undercuts me in price and lots of other people use it.

Now, who would have thought that we are talking about windows? The Chinese are competing against us everywhere. High end, middle end, and low end. On the low end, frankly, we will never get the businesses back. Toys or clothing or shoes, maybe even furniture--except high-end furniture--is not coming back.

The argument that some of these editorialists use, well, they are going to go to Bangladesh or somewhere else if China has to raise its currency is true, but that is not what we are fighting for

here. We are fighting for high- and middle-end companies that have great products--solar panels, in which America has a future; jobs that if China played fairly we would win because we make a better product, and it does not have to be exported. Yet we somehow sit here and twiddle our thumbs.

What I was saying about the window guy is, not only now does China compete in manufacturing the windows, Chinese companies come here and install them. Again, it is still a 30-percent advantage because they are paying the Chinese company and workers the yuan, which is undervalued by 30 percent over there.

So this is serious. It is about the future of America, about the future of American jobs. We are all concerned about jobs. There are very few jobs bills that are, A, bipartisan, and, B, do not cost money. This is one of them. It has been a bipartisan bill all the way. The votes showed it.

I see my colleague from Alabama who has been a great partner. I saw my colleague from South Carolina who has been a great partner. How else in this deadlocked, gridlocked situation can we help American workers in a bipartisan way--that does not cost money--in a big way? This is it. There are not many others.

So I would ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--Leader Reid said on the Senate floor a few minutes ago what he said last night, that he would certainly entertain amendments and come to an agreement-- amendments from both sides of the aisle, relevant, germane amendments, relevant to trade. I am sure if we could move on cloture, Senator Hatch's amendment--he is the ranking member of the Finance Committee-- which deals with trade would be debated. We would try to have time limits. There would be a fair and open debate on an important issue, and then we could vote on the bill.

So I hope we will get a positive vote on cloture this morning, and I hope we will--not for political gain or anything like that but for American gain. We cannot, cannot, cannot continue to let China flaunt the rules.

Ten years ago or eight years ago, when Senator Graham and I started on this issue, China was a much smaller economy. Now they are huge, the second largest in the world. They compete against us up and down the line. They have found six ways from Sunday to lure businesses there. That deals with the Chinese market. But then, with trade currency, when the businesses go there, with currency manipulation they are able to undercut us and send the goods here.

Again, to me--and I am just one person and, obviously, I feel this issue more passionately than 99 percent of Americans because I have been involved in it so long--if we could do five things to restore American jobs and restore American wealth, this would be one of them. This would be one of them.

I want to see our children and grandchildren know that they are going to have better lives than their parents and grandparents, and it is a difficult and tough world to ensure that with global competition, with so many changes.

We were just talking in the gym about how our kids spend so much time on video games all day long instead of learning in school.

There are so many challenges we face as a country. At this time we cannot shrug our shoulders and be benign like maybe 20 or 25 years ago when we were in a different situation, saying: China cheats; so what. Let's not risk any change. Let's not get them mad.

We cannot afford that anymore. The future of America is at stake. To those who say it will cause a trade war, we are in a trade war. We have our clocks cleaned every day and lose jobs every day because of unfair Chinese practices. To those who say China will retaliate, China has got far more to lose in this than we do. They the are ones who benefit from all of these rules, we do not--all of these manipulations. They will not retaliate. Yes, they may do a little thing here and there, but they will not retaliate big time because it will do even more damage to the Chinese economy.

What they will do--Senator Graham and I have seen this, and Senator Sessions and Senator Brown--when they are faced with the hard reality that they will no longer be allowed by legislation or, I wish, by administration action, but that has not been forthcoming from either President Bush or President Obama, they then adjust and play fairer. That is what has happened every single time, and that will happen again.

I want to first compliment my colleagues on this legislation. I want to hope and pray--I pray in this one, me, for the future of America. And the future of America is linked to free and fair trade with China. The future of America is linked to the fact that we can no longer let China unfairly take advantage of American workers, American wealth, and the American future.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen.) The Senator from South Carolina.

Madam President, what is the time status for the majority and minority?

They are much better at this than we are.

All four of us have spoken. Again, I make a plea to my colleagues. We have had 8 months talking about debt, and many have said that is the future for our children and grandchildren. I think there is a consensus on both sides that is true. I argue that this is also about the future for our children and grandchildren, because if good American companies with great ideas are wiped out in the next 10 years--as they will be if China continues its predatory practices--the future for our children and grandchildren in this country will not be bright. Our seed corn, our family jewels are being decimated by a plague of unfair competition that has been allowed to continue. It is as if we have a plague and some of the leaders of this country, whether political or economic, shrug their shoulders and say: That is that. We cannot do that much about this.

In a bipartisan way, we have said we can do something about this plague. We are at the moment of decision. It is my belief that if we pass this in a bipartisan way--as we have to; it is the way the Senate works--the House may not take up our bill exactly, but they will do something. We will have a conference committee, and we can get something done. The odds are quite high that when China sees the train heading down the track, when their ability--I have seen the articles-- and I wanted to read some of them into the record--of China urging American companies with plants in China to lobby against this bill. But when China sees the train heading down the track and that, for the first time, their efforts with their multinational allies to stall this bill will not succeed, they will adjust and correct themselves, not just on currency but on all the other areas where they don't treat us fairly.

So this is an important vote and an important day for America.

I yield the floor.

Will the majority leader yield for a question?

Mr. President, in the form of a question to the majority leader and also the Republican leader--we are all frustrated. The Senator from Tennessee and I talked about that frustration at the beginning of the session, and it hasn't worked terribly well to try to straighten this out. You are frustrated, and we can talk about the specifics here.

The one point I make is that the majority leader, isn't it true, offered on the floor yesterday to allow amendments on this bill? And the only amendment that was sent to us was the amendment to have a vote on the President's budget, is that correct?

But it was not widely known on this side. The majority leader had offered amendments on this bill. The question I ask is this--and I will make a statement and lead up to a question. You are frustrated because you feel the tree is filled all the time and you cannot make amendments. But we are frustrated because the 60-vote rule--which has always been used here--is now used routinely, which never has been done before. Judges--district court judges--I have been here in the Senate 13 years, and I was in the House 18 years and followed the Senate and cared about judges. It never happened before. Routine appointees--assistant secretaries of this, deputy secretaries of that--60 votes. And on bill after bill after bill, the procedure of this place works that somebody has to object. That is why you file cloture; otherwise, we could proceed.

In the past, the motion to proceed was not routinely blocked. And almost every single bill--important bills, obviously--and nobody thinks the health care bill should have passed by 51 votes. But on minor bills--we had a filibuster on technical corrections to the Transportation bill, where 287 was written down by mistake instead of 387. It was filibustered--60 votes. So our defense is to fill the tree.

But what we ought to try to do here--and, as I said, the Senator from Tennessee and I futilely tried earlier this year to maybe calm things down--is to maybe use this flashpoint to try to come together and work that out again. Maybe the minority would not routinely filibuster everything--appointments, judges, minor bills--and can save it for the major bills. In return--and I agree with the minority leader that the deal around this place is the majority sets the agenda and the minority gets to offer amendments. That has been the rule since I got here and one of the reasons--he is correct, I say to my friend from Kentucky-- why I left the House to run for the Senate.

But it has gotten to the extreme. While my colleagues on the other side would say it got to the extreme because we always fill the tree, we would say it got to the extreme because you filibuster everything and require 60 votes on everything--we only have 53, we know that-- including judges, appointments, and minor bills. If we are going to bring this place back to order, if we are going to bring this place back to a place where we can legislate, both sides have to back off, and we are going to have to figure out how to do that, which we haven't done adequately yet.

One other point before I ask my question. The Senator from West Virginia had a few of us on his boat this week. A number of the freshmen Senators from the other side of the aisle were on the boat, as I was. We began to talk, and they were asking, why is this place so mixed up? I explained that some of the greatest joys I have had in the Senate and the House were conference committees, and offering amendments, and things such as that. We all said, together, why can't we get back to that?

Let me say that it is not simply filling the tree and preventing amendments that caused this problem. It is routinely requiring 60 votes before the Senate can get a drink of water.

My question to the majority leader is this: Would he be willing--we need a little bit of a cooling-off period--to sit down with the minority leader and others in an effort to try to figure out how we can get back to somewhat more of a regular order in regard to what I said?

Madam President, the majority leader has agreed that if cloture is invoked, Senator Hatch's amendment will be one that will be voted on. There was an agreement. Other amendments, too, would be allowed. I believe the minority has to protect its right to offer amendments, consistent with other processes that we have had here that I am not happy with. The amendments offered by the majority, I believe, are legitimate.

I am a bit offended, and I don't appreciate the view that this is a protectionist piece of legislation. I believe it protects free trade because trade can't exist when one party is manipulating the rules in a significant way that substantially impacts the balance of trade.

I will just ask the question: Is former Governor, now Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney a protectionist? Governor Huntsman from Utah, a Presidential candidate and also former Ambassador to China for President Obama, said he would sign this bill if it came before him if he is elected President; and Rob Portman, our fabulous new Senator, President Bush's former Trade Representative, said he supports the bipartisan legislation.

I don't think it is protectionism. I think it is an effort to protect trade. There are some who are religious about free trade; it is a religion. They believe that no matter how bad our trading partners act, we should not retaliate because that might cause a trade war. I think that is not against common sense. Trade is not my religion. I think any trading relationship should depend on how well the agreement serves the interests of both parties. It is similar to any other business relationship. Is it serving the interests of both parties? In this trade situation, it is a dramatic factor in the American loss of jobs. It is indisputable, in my opinion.

A group of professors from California said our trade imbalance, over the last decade, has cost 10 million jobs. Let me just say we are going to have dynamic changes in our economy. That happens all the time, and there are winners and losers. We can compete with China and we are, in many ways. When we give them a currency advantage as large as this, good companies that are capable of competing and being successful are being hammered. The middle class in this country is being hammered.

This has to stop, and we have to ask ourselves: Is this country going to abandon its commitment or belief in a manufacturing economy? Are we going to give up manufacturing entirely? I don't think that is remotely conceivable. We have had brilliant economists tell us we need to be a service economy and we can just deal with computers and e-mails and move paper around and that this creates growth and wealth. We need a manufacturing economy.

I see Senator Brown, who has been a strong advocate of this. Senators Schumer and Graham have been at this for years. I voted for the legislation in 2005. I have become energized about this because I believe it is a deep responsibility for every government official to protect our national security and protect our economic security. When we have clear evidence that a predatory trade policy of a major world exporter--the largest exporter in the history of the world is China to the United States. They are abusing their trade privileges, and the administration refuses to act. I say the Congress can and should act.

I believe this is a reasonable bill. It allows the administration to negotiate an end to this matter over a period of time, and it will provide the power and the requirement that that happen.

I am pleased to.

If a manufacturing company in Dayton is competing with the Chinese company to manufacture a widget, they can, on the currency alone, more than have an advantage

shipping the product from China here--a 25-percent advantage. As we know, in modern trade and sales today, margins are very small, and 25 percent is a huge margin that would be provided by the currency alone. Then we have the things that are done in trying to block our companies from moving and selling there. To go beyond currency, it adds to the price of our goods if we attempt to sell them in China.

This is not a two-way street. I believe that any rational government should not allow its manufacturing industry and its workers to be subjected to such unfair practices. We have an absolute responsibility to stand up and fix it. The best way to do it is the bill that Senators Schumer, Graham, Brown, and others have offered. It will do it in a rational, effective way. Other alternatives are less effective and will not do the job. It is time for us to do it now.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of our time.

I will yield the 2 minutes to Senator Schumer.

Madam President, I was pleased that earlier today the Senate voted to move forward with the China currency legislation that has been worked on for so many years by Senators Schumer and Graham, and I am pleased to join with them. I supported similar legislation in 2005. I will say a couple things as our Members evaluate what they will do on final passage.

I believe in trade. I believe in good trade, and most trade is good trade. Countries do need to compete with the production in other countries. If you have a trade partner, normally both partners, through a relationship, benefit. In a treaty, trade, or business relationship, if one party to that relationship is being damaged by that relationship, then they have to confront the problem and fix it or withdraw from the relationship. That is just the way life is.

I see that some of my free market friends--and I have a lot of them-- on trade issues are religious about it. It is a religion with them. They don't want to analyze whether the trading agreement advantages the United States or the other party; they just want to say: If it is a trade agreement, be for it. Anything that promotes trade is good, and peace will break out in the world.

Well, that is not right, and that is not what I think conservatives believe. I am a conservative--a conservative who believes in reality. Conservatism is a cast of mind, not an ideology. It is an approach to complex issues. As my friend Bob Tyrrell at the American Spectator said, it is an approach to issues, a cast of mind.

How do you approach this matter? We are getting hurt in this relationship. Every editorial I have seen--even those groups who are specifically advocating against this legislation contend and acknowledge that the United States is being disadvantaged by this currency manipulation. They all acknowledge that. When you acknowledge that, you acknowledge that we

are losing jobs and losing manufacturing in this country as a result, not of competition, but of unfair competition.

Let's be in contact with reality. The People's Republic of China is state-dominated. Those companies are not free to do as they normally would in the United States. It is a state-dominated thing. Every agenda carried out by China--by their companies even--tends to be driven by expanding the national interest of China.

That is the way they think and that is the way they operate. Their theory of trade is mercantilist. They believe in maximizing their exports, minimizing their imports, and accumulating wealth.

Some of our friends here say: Oh, it is all right. The products that are sold at Walmart are from China and, all right, yes, we closed a factory in the United States. But don't worry, Mother can buy her sneakers or her children's clothes cheaper because it is imported. Don't worry about it. Manufacturing is not that important, they have told us.

We have seen that in the writings around the Nation from some of our great economic minds. But I don't believe that is true. I do not believe this Nation can be a strong, vibrant force in the world without a manufacturing sector.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Schulz, the CEO of ThyssenKrupp, a steel company in Germany. He just retired. He is 70 and a very impressive man. He was investing in my home State of Alabama, and he said publicly and to me privately, with great passion, you have to have a renaissance of manufacturing. He said: Germany was criticized for attempting to hold on to its manufacturing base in Europe, people saying they were not part of the modern economy--the service economy. But he said: We did more than most of the Europeans to maintain our manufacturing base, and we are now the healthiest economy in Europe.

We have to have a manufacturing base. Wealth is sent abroad every time we purchase imported products. The deficit with China last year was $273 billion. This year it will be the largest in history--$300 billion. There has never been a trading relationship result in deficits as large as those in the history of the world. China is the second largest economy in the world. China is growing rapidly. They have been doing this for a decade.

Let me say I celebrate prosperity in China. I would like to see prosperity in all the nations of the world, and they will benefit the United States, not harm us, if China is prosperous. But if their prosperity is driven by disadvantaging the United States to their advantage, as the currency process does, then that is a different story. It is not a fair competition and it is not helpful to the United States.

We are told this will not hurt us, that we can move to a service economy, that we don't have to have manufacturing, and the doctrine of comparative advantage is such that if a product can be manufactured cheaper in China, so be it. We will put the American businesses out of business. Let them close their doors.

As a conservative, I am not comfortable with that and let me say why. First, this creates too rapid a dislocation in our economy, causing too much damage societally from rapid unemployment and closing of manufacturing in our country. Secondly, we now know with certainty that the manipulation of currency--the 30-percent or 25-percent difference-- is resulting in unfair competition with American businesses and causing the closing down of businesses.

We have a chance to rebound, I am convinced, in manufacturing. China's salaries are going up. Salaries around the world are going up. China's utilities and energy costs are higher than ours. Their advantages are not so great as they were a few years ago, and we are becoming more sophisticated. Our businesses are lean and competitive now. I think we have a real chance to get back into the game but not if we have a 25- to 30-percent currency differential, where when we sell a product to China it costs 25 percent more than the competing Chinese production would, and when they sell to our country they have a 25- percent advantage over our manufacturers. When margins are as close as they are in the world economy today, that is too large. Any unfairness is too large. So I would contend we have to act. Thirdly, there is damage being done to the middle class in our country, and a large part of it is arising out of unfair trade practices. We have to be aware that millions of Americans are hurting. Maybe the wife, maybe the husband has lost his or her job and is now unemployed, and families are struggling to get by. Wages are not going up. In fact, wages have trended down just a little bit. Unemployment is not going down. It is maybe going up now for the last several months. Inflation is on the scene.

If the wages aren't going up, the number of people employed isn't going up, we get into a situation in which we can't see economic growth occur. There is not extra money to go to the store or market to buy things. As one businessman told me, one of the great marketing chains in the United States--Walmart: People don't have the money to come to the store to buy anything. If a person doesn't have a job, they don't have the money to buy anything.

So this is a serious economic problem we are facing. I have come to the conclusion we can no longer borrow money to spend today to try to create a sugar high and jump-start our economy. That didn't work before. We don't have the money and the debt is already too great. We need to look for ways to create American jobs now without costing the U.S. Treasury or raising taxes on an already weak economy. This is one of those things we can do. Senators Schumer, Brown, Graham, and I agree, in a bipartisan way, this is a way to create jobs without harming our economy, without raising the debt of America. It is a bipartisan act to create greater employment by simply eliminating an unfairness that is hammering American manufacturers and American workers.

Some say if we insist on this, China will be offended. First, China is a great nation. They have the second largest economy in the whole world. They are bellicose. They attack us aggressively. We don't hide under the table when they say something bad about the United States, do we? Neither are they going to hide under the table if the Senate, the Congress says they have to get their currency correct. Great nations don't wither and crawl away.

I was looking at an article in Forbes magazine, written by Mr. Gordon Chang, who talked about this question posed by Chris Chocola, the president of the Club for Growth, who opposes this legislation. Mr. Chocola asked this: ``What do they say to arguments that starting a trade war with China would kill jobs, not create them?''

In other words, Mr. Chocola is saying, if we start a trade war, we are going to lose jobs. First of all, Mr. Chocola's hands are not so clean in this issue. When he was in the House of Representatives a few years ago, he introduced a bill--the China Act--that would have imposed tariffs on China if it tried to manipulate its currency, according to his press release at the time. I guess he has changed his mind. We all have a right to change our minds. But I will just say I am not too impressed with that argument, and I would note that Mr. Chang, in his comments about it, made a very good point.

Writing in Forbes, he says:

Chocola is correct that a trade war with China would kill

jobs--but most of them would be in China.

That is absolutely so. A trade war will not occur, in my opinion. But if we had a trade war, Mr. Chocola says it would hurt jobs in the United States. But Chang continues:

How do we know this? Last year, the United States ran a

deficit in trade in goods with that country of $273.1

billion. In trade wars, it is the surplus countries--

countries that depend on exports--that get hurt. Americans

know this because we were the powerhouse exporter in the

1930s when nations fought a tariff war.

That was when the Depression hit and trade froze after tariffs and other actions and we were hurt the most because we were exporting goods. In this case, China would be hurt the most. Mr. Chang goes on to note how large China's economy is and its dependence on exports to the United States. He says:

And this is a pretty good indication that Beijing, although

it will undoubtedly huff and puff and might engage in minor

retaliation, will not escalate the fight. China cannot afford

more unemployment.

Mr. Chang quotes Premier Wen Jiabao as saying, if you change this

currency, ``countless Chinese workers become unemployed.''

What does that say? The Premier of China is saying, if we have a fair currency rate, the Chinese would lose jobs. Somebody is going to gain those jobs--maybe it will be in Dayton or maybe it will be in Birmingham or Mobile.

As Mr. Chang says, and this puts it on the line:

If China manipulates its currency to gain a trade

advantage, then Premier Wen is seeking to put American

workers on the bread line.

Not Chinese workers on the bread line. Quoting the article further:

So Donald Trump hit the mark when he tweeted last week that

``China is stealing our jobs.''

I am not here trying to condemn China. I am here saying we have failed to aggressively defend our legitimate national interests, and we need to do that. I believe this legislation puts us on that path.

I believe in trade. I expect to support the Colombian trade bill as it comes forward. I think it serves our national interest. The Panamanian trade bill serves our national interest and will help us be more profitable. I believe the trade agreement we have negotiated with South Korea is also in our national interest and will help us. But this deal needs to be fixed. It is time to stop it. It has gone on too long.

It is great to see my colleague, Senator Brown. I know he will be ready to talk as we move forward to final passage, but let me congratulate Senator Brown and Senator Schumer and others who have worked on the bill. I believe it is a reasonable piece of legislation, and it provides exits if something dangerous were to occur. It gives discretion to the President to delay, even stop, actions that might occur under this process if it is damaging to the United States, and it gives Congress a chance to be involved in that process.

This is the right way to do it. If someone has some better ideas, maybe we can improve the bill. But fundamentally, I think it is a good piece of legislation that will do the job, and I am proud to be a part of this bipartisan effort that has moved this legislation that will help create American jobs without expanding our debt.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would only add that the practical effect of where we are, not having been allowed to offer any amendments during the consideration of this bill, is we are left with motions to suspend. As the majority leader indicated, we are going to have some discussions about how many motions to suspend the majority will, shall I say, tolerate. The bad part of all of this from the Senate's point of view as an institution is that the minority is put at a substantial disadvantage.

Having said that, as the majority leader indicated, the floor staff is going to work together and see whether we can come up with some list of motions to instruct that will at least allow the minority to have some voice in the course of the consideration of this piece of legislation.

Would my good friend yield for a question? I listened very carefully to what the majority leader said. We interact every day. What my good friend has just said is that he would be more than happy to have amendments he gets to pick. He gets to pick what amendments we get to offer. That is not, I would say to my good friend, the view of the minority as to how we ought to operate. We ought to be able to determine what amendments we are going to offer, not my good friend the majority leader. What he is saying, in effect, is, yes, he would be prepared to allow us to offer amendments, but he would select which of our amendments might be appropriate. That is not a place that the minority, no matter which party is in the minority, would like to find themselves.

Mr. President, I would only add the way the Senate used to work was the majority didn't pick the amendments the minority chose to offer, but there was some ability to determine whether it got a vote because any Senator could prevent a time agreement on the opportunity to get a vote on an amendment. So it wasn't totally freewheeling. Then at some point, if 60 Members of the Senate thought we ought to move to conclusion, we would. It was a much more orderly and open process, leading to the same result, which is that if 60 Members of the Senate wanted to end the matter and bring it to a conclusion, they could. So my complaint is about what we do before we get to the 60 votes, which I think in this particular instance is unfair to the minority.

Now, my party was divided on this issue. Some Members were for it; some Members were against it. That meant for sure that at some point 60 votes were going to be achieved and it was going to pass. The problem, I would say to my good friend, is what we did before then, which has the practical effect of putting the minority in the position where it gets no amendments at all or is, once again, at the sufferance of the majority with motions to suspend at the end, in which we are basically--the majority determines how many we get, and all of that.

This level of control is not necessary, in my judgment, in order to make the Senate move forward because, I will say again before I yield the floor, if 60 Senators are in favor of bringing a matter to a conclusion, it will be brought to a conclusion. That is what just happened a few minutes ago.

So I hope we can move forward in a more orderly process in the future, and maybe we can work out some agreement to have motions to suspend this afternoon that will not require us to be here tomorrow.

My good friend referred to ``the good old days.'' The good old days weren't that long ago. I can remember just a few years ago when my party was in the majority in this body, and I was the assistant leader,

making the point with great repetition while listening to a lot of grumbling that the price for being in the majority is, you have to take bad votes; you have to take votes you don't like in order to get legislation across the floor and finished.

So this is not ancient times we are talking about where the minority actually got votes, took votes, and were not shut out. I hope we can move back in that direction. I think it would be a lot better for the Senate.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

I wish to make sure I understand the amendment lineup. The majority leader has substituted, I would say to my friend, or has added a Paul amendment, and it is my understanding Senator Paul is willing to stand down on that for the time being and offer it on some other occasion. The Senator has added in place of that----

Mr. President, if I may, I am still trying to get this correct. Let me just ask my friend, the majority leader, did his list include Coburn No. 670 on foreign aid?

It included Barrasso 672 on cement regs?

It included Hatch 680 On China?

It included DeMint No. 689 on right to work?

It included McConnell No. 735 on stimulus?

Cornyn 677 on Taiwan?

So the majority leader has substituted from the list I gave him a Paul amendment--the number of which I don't have----

Instead of the Johanns amendment on farm dust.

Mr. President, I would like to try to modify the majority leader's list, not to expand the number because we agree on seven. But the list I submitted to the majority leader included the Johanns amendment No. 692 on farm dust, instead of

the Paul amendment, the number of which I do not have.

All I would say to my friend, the majority leader, is that we would sort of like to be able to pick our amendments and not have him pick them. We have worked hard to narrow down to a list of seven. Senator Paul graciously decided he would step aside for the moment, and we had included the Johanns amendment on farm dust.

I would remind everyone the minority has not been able to offer any amendments prior to cloture, and now we are left with motions to suspend, at a 67-vote threshold, and all we are asking for is the right to pick our own amendments.

I appreciate the majority leader agreeing to seven. That is the number we had finally settled on. But I do think it would be fair to let the minority pick its amendments. We had hundreds of amendments that people would have liked to have had. We worked very hard to get it to a list of seven. I don't think it is unreasonable, not having any amendments prior to cloture, to at least be able to prioritize our seven.

I might say to my friend, I may be confused from a parliamentary point of view, but, technically, I would ask the Parliamentarian, through the Chair, if it requires consent to offer motions to suspend at this point.

At the end of cloture, would it require consent to offer motions to suspend?

Reserving the right to object.

Let me just say, again, all we are asking is the opportunity to prioritize the seven that the minority would like to offer.

At the end of cloture, as I just heard the Parliamentarian say, we would be entitled to offer it anyway. We are trying to cooperate and get these motions lined up in a way that would give everybody an opportunity to vote shortly.

I just would say to my friend the majority leader, it doesn't seem to me unreasonable for the minority to be able to pick the minority's amendments. It was challenging enough for us to filter our way through the hundreds that my Members would have liked to have offered to get down to seven. It was particularly challenging since they were not allowed to offer any amendments prior to cloture on the bill, which would be the normal process around here.

I object.

Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

If I may make a brief observation. Listening carefully to the majority leader, he is suggesting the specter of filibustering by amendment when, in fact, we had already agreed to seven.

Having agreed to seven, it strikes me as very difficult to argue that we are establishing some precedent for filibustering by amendment because he and I had agreed to seven. The only place this ran aground was the majority leader trying to pick all seven of the minority's amendments.

So what we have is that no amendments have been considered other than those of a technical nature offered by the majority leader in order to fill up the tree. That was prior to cloture. So what is about to happen is that the majority is trying to set a new precedent on how the Senate operates.

For the record, my preference would have been to consider amendments on both sides under a regular process, which we could have done earlier this week. Instead, we have been locked out, and in a few moments the rules of the Senate will be effectively changed to lock out the minority party even more.

Mr. President, will the majority leader yield?

What I hear the majority leader saying is we are going to vote on the trade agreements on Wednesday. Is that what my friend is saying?

That means the President of South Korea will have the opportunity to address the joint session on Thursday, having, hopefully, seen the United States approve these long-awaited trade agreements.

Mr. President, who has the floor?

I would like to also give my version, if I may, to the distinguished Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. REID addressed the Chair.

Yes. Let me, for the benefit of our colleagues, explain what, in fact, happened. It is not complicated.

It was pretty clear, whether you liked this bill or did not, it was going to pass. You could tell that by cloture on the motion to proceed with a very large majority. So I do not think my good friend the majority leader had to worry about whether his bill was ultimately going to pass. The question was whether there were going to be any amendments at any point to the bill. And my conference made a decision--actually against my best advice--to go on and invoke cloture on the bill after we had no amendments. The reason we had no amendments is because the majority leader used a device we have all become too familiar with called filling the tree, thereby allowing no amendments he does not approve. And he said that we are open for amendments, but what he means is this: We are open for any amendment I approve. So he filled the tree and, prior to cloture on the bill, controlled whether any amendments would be allowed and chose not to allow any, as a practical matter. So against my best advice, my conference decided to invoke cloture on the bill. So we were moving to approving the bill with no expression whatsoever.

So we have in the postcloture environment the motion to suspend, which has not been abused by this minority--not been abused by this minority. The majority leader, in effect, has overruled the Chair with a simple majority vote and established the precedent that even one single motion to suspend--even one--is dilatory, changing the rules of the Senate. And if you look back at his bill, what we have had, in effect, is no amendments before cloture, no motions to suspend after cloture, no expression on the part of the minority at all.

I do not know why anybody should act as though they were offended by nongermane amendments. This is the Senate. We do not have any rules of germaneness. No, we do not. Any subject on any bill can be offered as an amendment. We all know that.

The fundamental problem here is that the majority never likes to take votes. That is the core problem. And I can remember, when I was the whip in the majority, saying to my members over and over again, when they were whining about casting votes they did not want to vote, that the price of being in the majority is that you have to take bad votes because in the Senate, the minority is entitled to be heard--not entitled to win but entitled to be heard. So that is the core problem.

I would say to my friend the majority leader--and this is nothing personal about him; I like him, and we deal with each other every day-- we are fundamentally turning the Senate into the House: no amendments before cloture, no motions to suspend after cloture, and the minority is out of business. And it is particularly bad on a bill that has the support of over 60 Members, as this one did. If you are not among those 60, you are out of luck.

Now, look, this is a bad mistake. The way you get business done in the Senate is to be prepared to take bad votes. At some point, if 60 Members of the Senate want a bill to pass, it will pass. If 60 Members of the Senate do not want a bill to pass, it will not pass. It is more time consuming. I assume that is why a lot of people ran for the Senate instead of the House--because they wanted to be able to express themselves. This is a free-wheeling body, and everybody is better off when we operate that way. Everybody is, whether you are in the majority or the minority, because today's minority may be tomorrow's majority, and the country is better off to have at least one place where there is extended debate and where you have to reach a supermajority to do things.

So I would say to my good friend the majority leader that I understand his frustration. But you were going to win on this bill. You did not need to jam us. You should not jam us on any bill, but on this bill you were going to win. Now, some of us think we were wasting our time because, as the Senator from Tennessee said, this was not going to become law anyway, and we are sitting around here when we ought to be passing trade bills.

The President has asked us to vote on his jobs bill. I wanted to give him an opportunity to have his vote the other day. You guys did not even want to vote on what the President was asking us to vote on without any changes. But you can prevent that, and you did.

Look, let's not change this place. America does not need less debate, it needs more debate. And when 60 Members of the Senate decide to pass something, it will pass.

I think we made a big mistake tonight. As soon as we all kind of cool off and think about it over the weekend, I hope we will undo what we did tonight because it is not in the best interests of this institution or the American people.

Let me make sure we understand. There are not any rules of germaneness precloture in the Senate. There are not any. Any amendment can be offered on any subject. And that has been one of the great frustrations of every majority down through the years. We all know that. So my friend the majority leader, in order to prevent the votes on unpleasant amendments, fills up the tree and decides himself that he is going to confine the amendments to those that are either germane--relevant--or, put another way, of his choosing, whatever you want to allow.

My friend keeps talking about wasting time. Well, wasting time to him might not be wasting time to us. We might not think that offering an amendment on something we think is important for the country is a waste of the Senate's time.

So who gets to decide who is wasting time around here? None of us. None of us have that authority to decide who is wasting time. But the way you make things happen is you get 60 votes at some point, and you move a matter to conclusion, and the best way to do that is to have an open amendment process. That is the way this place used to operate.

I have been here a while. I know this is not the way it has always happened. This is not the way we always operated. And we did get things accomplished, not by trying to strangle everybody and shut everybody up but by allowing the process to work. And when the Senate gets tired of the process, 60 people shut it down, and you move to conclusion. That is how you move something ahead, not by preventing the voices.

I mean, we have sat around here 2 days in quorum calls. Have you all noticed that? We could have been voting on amendments. Sitting around in quorum calls--talk about a waste of time.

Mr. President, the Senator from Mississippi is accurate. Until the vote we had just a few moments ago, motions to suspend postcloture were appropriate. No longer are they appropriate because, as my friend from Mississippi pointed out, we have in effect changed the rule.

Mr. President, how much time is being divided now or is it divided?

Well, Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may use under the 1 hour, and I will not use all that, by any means.

Mr. President, this is obviously an issue that is more complicated than the debate may have indicated--at all moments, at least. I think there are complicated and longstanding frustrations that have built up with a lot of Senators and a lot of people in America that bring us here to this moment on the Senate floor.

As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I have a reluctance to see us engage in an effort that I think can put other interests at risk in certain ways. On the other hand, I have voted to allow and help this legislation to reach the point of postcloture because I think it is an important debate and because I think China needs to carefully think about the process and the substance of what people are saying on the floor of the Senate.

This is a very complicated relationship, with enormous interests on both sides, and we need to avoid a confrontation in a lot of different ways. There are a lot of different kinds of confrontations--trade, physical confrontation in the South China Sea and the straits and elsewhere, confrontations over human rights in Tibet--and there are a lot of issues at play. But with respect to the trade issue, China has a huge interest in the United States being able to export more effectively to China.

China has an interest in its middle class growing in its purchasing power and expressing that purchasing power through consumption. One of the things China needs is its own higher level of domestic consumption. It is saving too much. One of the reasons it saves too much is it doesn't have a safety net structure of any kind, really, so people do save. That is the nature of life there. But at the same time, I think China is seeing a slowdown of its own economy now. One of the reasons for the slowdown in China's economy is the fact that we have had a slowdown in our economy and our ability to consume, and the American consumer is paying off debt, wisely, and consuming less of the goods brought in from China. So it all is interconnected.

China is also our biggest banker. China is critical to our ability to deal with our current economic challenge in many ways--and Europe's, I might add. Both Europe and the United States would benefit significantly with a new trade relationship with China.

That is what I want to talk about for a moment. I believe in trade. I have supported trade here. I don't believe in unequal trade. I don't believe in unfair trade. I believe in enforcing the agreements we have. If you look at NAFTA, for instance, NAFTA had side agreements--side agreements on the environment, side agreements on labor standards--and they were never enforced. People have a right to be angry if they see an agreement that is made and then parts of it are enforced, parts of it are not, and they see their jobs go

overseas, whether it is from North Carolina or Georgia or Massachusetts or Ohio or any other place in our country. So I think it is important to have trade that is fair and sensible.

You are not going to grow your economy trading with yourself--no way--particularly if your overall population growth isn't growing that fast and you are a mature economy. Economics just doesn't work that way. You need newer markets and other places to expand. So I believe it is important for us to recognize that the world's trading system only works if the participants treat each other fairly.

Over the last decade, our national debate on the costs and benefits of trade has intensified, and, frankly, the uneasy alliance, the uneasy consensus that had been created from the 1980s forward with respect to trade is being frayed right now, is being frayed for understandable and clearly definable reasons.

The American worker is not seeing their wages go up. There are a lot of reasons for that: the unfairness of our Tax Code, the inability of people in America today to be able to bargain the way they used to, the lack of an NLRB and a court that uphold the rights of labor to be able to negotiate--a whole bunch of reasons people are disadvantaged today. One of them is the fact that you have this unfair competition.

In order to keep the consensus that allows Americans to say: Yes, trade is a good thing, it has to be a good thing. And to be a good thing, it has to be fair and it has to result in people's lives being improved by it, meaning their wages go up, their job gets better, and their opportunities are better. But everything has been working in the opposite direction. I think that is why so many of our colleagues feel a responsibility to come to the floor on this legislation and make sure that China and others hear from the American people loudly and clearly.

We did this before on a vote we took on currency legislation back in 2005. I think China heard us then, and China began slowly to allow the value of its currency to begin to fluctuate rather than keeping it pegged tightly to the dollar.

China has taken measures. In fairness, China's currency has appreciated over the course of the last few years. Some argue exactly how much--somewhere in the vicinity of 27 percent, maybe 7 percent the last year--but it is not fast enough, and it is still not fair enough. And the fact is that there are other Chinese trade tactics that contribute to our increasing trade deficit with China, not just currency.

Unfortunately, our efforts through multilateral institutions--nobody can point a finger at the United States and suggest that we haven't played by the rules or that we haven't gone to the global institutions in order to try to resolve these differences. We have gone to the World Trade Organization, and we have won, step by step, slowly but surely. But if your tactic is to just keep in this highly mercantilistic, focused strategy of China's to just keep on pushing, take advantage of everything you can, and you get a little nibble against you here and there at the WTO, a little nibble over there, that is really just an inconvenience on the road to a kind of trade domination that is bad for everybody.

That is why I am here today. That is why I have voted for this legislation to come to the floor, to have this debate. This debate is an imperfect stand-in for the broader discussion we need to have about our economic relationship with China. The truth is that our bilateral relationship is both filled with promise and plagued by complex challenges we have to overcome for the good of both countries.

The Chinese market is a huge and growing opportunity for American firms, obviously. Despite the hurdles to entry--and there are hurdles-- China is still our fastest growing export market today. People had better think about this as we go forward.

I am convinced that the key to America pulling itself out of this economic challenge we are in today and the key to Europe pulling itself out is for the United States and Europe to actually work out, almost formally, a new and better relationship with respect to trade with China, as well as with the other fast-developing countries--Mexico, South Korea, Brazil, India--because if those societies will allow us adequate entry to market and if those societies will purchase more from Europe and the United States, then we will export more, manufacture more, and come out of the economic doldrums. That reverberates to China's benefit, also, because their investments in the United States become more secure, because our debt goes down, because we have a stronger economy, and because we are purchasing more in return from them. What goes around comes around.

My hope is that we can agree on fair terms and conditions for trade with these rising powers. If we do, we will create jobs. That is the fastest way we have to create jobs and pull out of our economic doldrums today. The simplest, fastest, most obvious way to do this is to be able to access those other markets rapidly with American goods and begin to restore confidence to the marketplace so that people believe they will get a larger return on their investment and begin to reinvest in job creation and in the marketplace.

The current trade model we are operating under with massive U.S. trade deficits and enormous Chinese trade surpluses is not only unfair, it is unsustainable. So we have to rebalance that relationship. And China's own leaders need to understand that their country's long-term economic health absolutely cannot rest on a foundation of subsidized exports fueled by an indebted American consumer and the credit card of the American consumer. That is a deathly unvirtuous--to use our former Fed Chairman's comments about virtuous and unvirtuous cycles, it is about as unvirtuous as you can get in that economic relationship.

Now, conflict, in my judgment, is not the best way to resolve our tensions. Making clear how we feel and what we think the reality is and what is important in our relationship is critical.

Some of our colleagues have come to the floor to argue that our two countries are already in a trade war. Others have come to the floor to say this bill is going to trigger one. I don't agree with either view. I don't think either one of those views is correct.

If we were in a real trade war with our largest lender, let me tell you, they would be doing a heck of a lot more damage than the misalignment of currency is currently doing to us.

The specific remedy proposed in this legislation is neither as dramatic nor as offensive as some people have said. This is a pretty carefully structured piece of legislation, and I think the language has been chosen in a thoughtful way and the remedies that are available under this bill are not as dramatic as some would suggest. It doesn't propose raising tariffs on all Chinese goods. It only proposes increasing tariffs on those Chinese goods that receive an unfair advantage from an undervalued currency and then compete with American- made goods here in the United States. It is a pretty limited and targeted message. And that is within our rights. If the yuan is properly valued, that will simply not be necessary. That is China's decision, China's choice.

I would much prefer a negotiated, multilateral solution, as I described, involving this new relationship, a new trade relationship on a global basis, which I think would send an extraordinary message to a beleaguered Europe, where Greece, as we all know, is basically fundamentally insolvent, needing some kind of a managed, structured transition hopefully that avoids a greater crisis in Italy and Spain and contagion in their banking system, which clearly needs recapitalization, clearly needs more than the $440 billion that was put on the table, clearly needs some kind of a rescue fund with some very tight kinds of requirements not dissimilar to what we did in the United States in 2008 and 2009 out of sheer necessity. My hope is they will do that.

Nothing would do more to send a message of confidence about the future of job growth than to have this new trade understanding and relationship where responsible partners are behaving responsibly and accepting responsibility for the global marketplace in which we all operate, not just exploit it but support it, protect it, nurture it.

Beyond the currency, there are many other sources of tension in our economic relationship, and they need to be resolved. China does not protect adequately our intellectual property in its

market. That is almost a euphemism. The violations of intellectual property rights, the outright theft in some streets and communities within China of billions of dollars of American designed and marketed and developed property is shocking. In addition to that, China imposes artificial regulatory barriers to the entry of many of our goods. It fails to crack down on cyber attacks, and it has executed a thinly veiled effort to appropriate key foreign technologies. On each of these issues, and others, we have been going to the WTO, we have been bringing cases, and we have been winning those cases. As I have said, that is not a substitute for this larger fix in the relationship that is critical.

I believe overcoming market access challenges is actually where we ought to be focusing our efforts in China and also in the other large, fast-growing markets. That, as I have said several times, is really the answer--the quick answer, if you will. We can develop goods and we can invest in companies here, but if we can't sell the goods to more than ourselves, we have some serious limits on us. It is important for us to be fighting for that market access.

I believe that to increase our exports, we are going to have to increase our competitiveness at home and we are going to have to convince our partners to lower their tariffs, remove discriminatory regulatory restrictions on our exporters, protect intellectual property, use scientific standards as the basis for allowing our agricultural goods to enter, and recognize that trade in services is becoming as important to the modern economy as trade in goods. We need to make the case that doing all of these things is not to the advantage of one country or another, it is to all of our shared advantage because of the nature of the global marketplace in which we live.

Countries such as China, India, and Brazil are stakeholders. Whether or not they want to admit it publicly, they are stakeholders in the West's economic success. They need access to our customers. They need access to our investors. They want to make deals over here. They want to be in joint ventures. They want to own companies. And their businesses and citizens will benefit from strong, sustainable growth in the world's largest economies.

China is an important partner of the United States in a lot of ways. It is also a major investor in the United States. So I don't think we are here to rupture that relationship; I think we are here to send a message to the Chinese about the urgent need to repair it. We want a mutually beneficial relationship, an equitable partnership that will pay dividends for both countries. And I believe, if we listen to each other and work in good faith, we can make that happen and we can enter into a better framework of cooperation that inures to the benefits and the security and the stability and the leadership demands of both of our countries.

We both sit on the Security Council of the United Nations. We both have remarkable responsibilities through our economic power. We are still the largest economy on the face of this planet, maybe three times larger than China--still, even as China is growing. China will surpass us. With that reality of where China stands today economically comes major responsibility. No country has exercised that responsibility through all the last century and into this century with a greater sense of purpose and responsibility than the United States. Hopefully, China will embrace the notion that its new economic power brings with it that same shared responsibility. I hope we can engage in the creation of that kind of mutually beneficial relationship.

I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as were many of my colleagues, I was back home last week talking, in my case, to Alaskans, and the issues on their minds are pretty simple: the economy and jobs. Alaska has fared better than most States over the last 2 years, but no matter where I go--maybe a small convenience store, while I am driving around town or at Home Depot, a gas station, or wherever I may get a chance to engage with Alaskans--people are concerned about the economy and the ability for jobs to be created in this great country of ours.

Alaskans know the economy will take some time to turn around. That is why today I am pleased to talk a little bit about the jobs act before us this week and, hopefully, while moving forward we will spend some time on the debate about how important this work will be.

Last week when I was in Alaska, I had Transportation Secretary LaHood in Alaska, and we had a chance to travel around and get a good sense of what is important to Alaska with regard to ports, roads, airports, and rail. The core infrastructure of our State is no different than any other State. It is critical that we repair, put into shape, some of the facilities that are falling apart or, in some cases, expand them. The jobs act alone would mean $200 million to repair Alaska's transportation network.

As one can imagine, that $200 million will be spent in the private sector by construction companies and contractors hiring private individuals, workers to work on those jobs--good-paying jobs to provide good incomes for their families. The same is true that the jobs act will offer for Alaska around $62 million for school construction.

As I travel around my State--and I am sure for many other States--the need is strong for improvements to and expansion of schools for those that have been there for many years and have not had the renovations necessary, again, providing hundreds and hundreds of jobs.

The jobs act also has some good steps to deal with small businesses-- how to ensure they get a break off their taxes, to ensure they have a benefit as we try to move this economy forward. The tax provisions, the payroll tax reduction, which would affect 20,000 Alaska businesses in a positive way, will reduce their tax burden, as well as working families, who will see a reduction in their payroll taxes.

On average, for a middle-class family, it would be almost $2,000--not a bad gift, in a sense, as we move into this holiday season. But it is really their money. Giving back this $2,000 to middle-class families means they will put it into the economy. They will spend it in the economy. They will use it as they see fit.

However, I wish to lay down a marker. As I have said, the jobs bill is important for the roads and water and sewer and ports that need to be repaired and renovated and expanded, the schools that need to be built or expanded and repaired also, as well as the benefits to our small business community and the benefits to our middle-class working families--all important. But how we pay for it is also important because we have to make sure it is paid for. But I wish to put down a marker on at least the first proposal that was laid down regarding how the President was planning to pay for this.

Let me first start with the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry for Alaska is about 85 percent of our economy in the sense that the money goes into our State treasury and provides well over 40,000 jobs. Nationwide, the oil and gas industry produces over 9 million jobs and contributes over $2 trillion to our economy.

I know some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle like to blast Big Oil. But as we know, the oil and gas industry is made up of hundreds, well over 500 companies of all sizes--small, medium-sized, and large. Singling out a growing industry and imposing a tax penalty, in my view, is the wrong choice. It is the wrong road to go down. We need to recognize the potential for more job creation instead by supporting increased domestic oil and gas development.

By developing Alaska's Arctic offshore resources alone, we can create over 50,000 jobs nationwide over the coming decade, jobs being created right here in our country. As an example, 400 jobs just in Washington to upgrade the Kulluk drilling unit which will be utilized in Alaska or the 1,000 jobs in Louisiana to build a new Arctic supply ship right now.

So when we look at the potential, and when we look at the opportunities in the Arctic for oil and gas development, it creates American jobs, American jobs not only in the Arctic in Alaska but also throughout the country where many of the facilities or the material utilized is located to construct what is needed, such as in Washington State and Louisiana, as I mentioned.

Also, Federal revenue would be generated. The Chamber of Commerce has estimated that developing and increasing production on Federal lands could produce well over $200 billion in new revenues to our country.

An Alaska analysis puts the Federal revenues just for Beaufort and Chukchi Sea at $160 billion. For those who are not familiar with where those are, those are just above the North Slope in the Arctic. These have a potential of well over 24 billion barrels of oil development in the known technically recoverable reserves today--upwards to 24 billion, 26 billion.

I will tell you I do support--and I understand in the original proposal they wanted to take away some of these tax incentives that help our industry move forward, especially the smaller companies to expand exploration and development. I recognize that tax reform needs to be done, and I am a strong supporter of tax reform. Senator Wyden and Senator Coats and I have supported a piece of legislation that is all about tax reform. I believe in a holistic proposal, not just selective industries. So do not get me wrong. Do I believe in tax reform? Do I believe in trying to clear out loopholes and incentives that are not working or may be used improperly? Absolutely. Again, that is why we supported a much broader perspective. But in pay-fors or tax proposals to pay for the jobs bill, this is not the right approach.

Another concern I have is on aviation. Alaska has 6 times more pilots and 16 times more aircraft per capita than any other State in the country. Alaska has limited road infrastructure. Eighty percent of our communities are accessed not by roads but by water or air. So it is critical we have the right kind of aviation system.

General aviation is not a luxury in Alaska, it is a necessity. It is our highway in the sky. That is the utilization of our airlines and small planes. The general aviation component is critical for business, life safety, moving things from one village to another.

One piece of the President's jobs bill would change the way businesses can treat the depreciation of general aviation aircraft and create a disincentive to buy American-made aircraft and further depress an industry that has already felt a significant impact due to the recession.

The administration and Congress should not be demonizing legitimate business travel. General aviation is more than just business jets. I know we like to read about it and see it in papers and that is what people like to highlight. But in Alaska it is about moving from one community to the other. This would impact the turbo-prop aircraft which are the workhorses for Alaska's general aviation fleet.

Another administration proposal would impose a $100-per-flight user fee on certain general aviation aircraft. This is not a wise or even cost-effective way to administer a tax. General aviation users pay their fair share now. They pay for the aviation system through a per- gallon tax on their aviation fuel.

As a matter of fact, the general aviation industry has even agreed to a modest increase in this fuel tax as part of the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration, reauthorization bill which passed the Senate earlier this year. It shows their commitment to pay their fair share, but in an efficient way, and also puts it back into aviation, which is what in our State is, again, as I said, the highway in the sky to move goods and people all across our State. Again, I think the idea the administration has of a $100-per-flight user fee is just another burden, another fee, another tax that is not necessary and very inefficient.

As we think about job creation and what is going on, the other piece of this I am concerned about as to the taxes that are associated with this idea of the jobs bill--which I support elements of, as I mentioned; very important--but the issue when it comes to limiting the itemized deductions for charitable contributions and mortgage interest for families earning over $200,000, again, I think this is not a well- founded idea. I recognize the administration is trying to find ways to pay for things, but this is not, in my view, a good idea or a smart move.

When we think of a family, some might say: A family making $200,000 is wealthy. I will tell you, if they have a couple kids in school and are trying to figure out their future, after they figure out the deductions, their health care costs, and everything else, $200,000 disappears very quickly. We need to ensure that the deductions for mortgage interest and charitable contributions continue for these middle-class families at the level they can take a benefit from.

So for those three or four items I have a concern with the way the pay-fors or the tax increases to pay for the jobs bill are being handled. I know there is new discussion. I am glad there is new discussion because it would be difficult for me to support any jobs bill with a pile of these new taxes or tax increases that are being proposed. This would not be in the interest of my constituents in Alaska. It would not be in the interest of my industries that work hard in Alaska, creating jobs not only in our State but across this country.

I agree we need to do what we can to have a jobs bill, but let's have a fair pay-for in order to pay for it, not these additional taxes that I think would be a burden on working families and small businesses.

Mr. President, I would like to digress for one last second before I yield the floor to speak on another issue. It is always enjoyable. I read every business newspaper I can. I try to read every business magazine I can. I want to absorb as much information as I can when I am here in Washington during the sessions and workweeks and then when I go back home, hearing from individuals. But it is amazing to me--and I know on the Senate floor we have our philosophical debates. We saw some of that just a little bit ago on the old days versus the new days. I have never seen the old days. I have been here only 3 years, and this place has not run very well in the sense of trying to get things up and dealt with.

But I will tell you, Mr. President, some of the positions you have taken and I have taken and many on this side of the aisle have taken have been a lot of votes that have helped move this country forward. I will tell you one specifically which is about the auto industry.

As I was sitting here waiting for the debate, I was looking through these articles. Here is one from yesterday from the Wall Street Journal, which is not the most liberal newspaper, to say the least. But if we recall, a couple years ago we made a decision that we were going to take some risk, we were going to try to move the country forward, save an industry that was struggling that employed people in this country and was competing worldwide.

Folks on the other side said we were going to create a disaster by our actions, we would destroy the economy, we would sink this industry. The list went on and on--all the complaints. But as I read the headline in the Wall Street Journal from yesterday, it reads: ``Automakers Now Import Jobs.''

``Import jobs,'' what does this mean? This means they are bringing jobs back to this country. They specifically mention Japan and China.

Now, 3 years ago, I could read a different headline: Auto Industry on Their Deathbed, never going to survive. Maybe we would only have one auto company left. We now have three. Actually, if we look at the numbers, Chrysler is 27 percent up over the previous year in sales; GM, 20 percent up; Ford, 9 percent up. The American auto industry is doing well because of what we did here.

Some called it a bailout. I disagree. What we did was partner with industry to help them get over the hump, the recession, the struggle. They are paying back every dime the Federal Government loaned them, and they are profitable. They are hiring people. They are growing the industry, and they are bringing jobs back to this country.

I would say the policy we had--despite the naysayers, the negative attitudes people had on the other side--worked. Maybe the Wall Street Journal is wrong, but I do not think so because I have seen article after article that states the same. I can point to many others.

Is it as robust as we want in the economy? No. Can it do better? Absolutely. That is why the jobs bill is important--important for my State, important for every State, investing in the issues that matter: water, roads, sewers, electrification, schools, you name it, putting money back into taxpayers' pockets instead of the IRS taking it and hoarding it, putting it back where it counts. That is what the jobs bill does.

We have disagreements on how to pay for it. I think we are going to get to a better solution because several of us--more the moderate wing of the Democrats--are arguing that we cannot have these selective taxes the way they are laid out in the proposal presented by the President. We need to have a more simplified system and pay for it in a different way but not penalize certain companies because maybe we do not like them or it creates a great headline. But let's focus on the right way to do this.

I anticipate we will be able to have a different pay-for, a different proposal on how to pay for a great potential to bring more jobs back. But I end on that note only because I want to make sure--I know we are going to hear more naysaying, but the bottom line is the proof is in the pudding. That article I just read from gives us that.

Mr. President, I, again, thank you for the time and the opportunity to say a few words about the jobs bill, my concern, where I want to lay my marker down, but also to speak about the success we have had on taking some votes that were tough votes and the success we have had to move this economy forward--not as fast as we all would like, but better than I think what the folks said on the other side who just say nay, say no to everything.

So let me end there, Mr. President.

I yield the floor back and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I rise today to speak about the issue of creating jobs in America--more specifically, the loss of jobs that has been driven by the unfair trade practices of China. The bottom line is this: Chinese manipulation of currency is a tariff on American products and a subsidy to Chinese exports, greatly disadvantaging manufacturing in America and destroying thousands of American jobs.

When we look at our challenge, it is not to simply strengthen the overall economy, often measured by the gross domestic product. Our challenge is to strengthen the American family, the financial foundations that depend upon a good living-wage job. So every proposal we consider should be weighed by whether it creates jobs or destroys jobs. That is true in times of a robust economy. It is particularly true now when we have a persistent high unemployment rate, when families have been battered not just by the loss of jobs but by the loss of equity in their homes, by the loss of their health care that went with their jobs, by the loss of their retirement savings--all of these at a time when the price of things fundamental to families keeps going up.

There are many who looked to the opening of China as an opportunity to have a vast market for American products. Indeed, many continue today to talk about China in terms of the market opportunities for American products. But the picture has changed dramatically over the last decade, and we, as policymakers here in the Senate, must recognize that change: that China has become a vast manufacturing enterprise, that it has done so through a deliberate manufacturing and export strategy, and that strategy is destroying jobs in the United States of America.

Over the last 10 years, China has reaped benefits, but it has not upheld its end of the bargain. Indeed, one piece of the deal is that they would create a rule of law that they would enforce restrictions on the theft of intellectual property. But I can tell you that when we took a bipartisan delegation to China earlier this year, led by the majority leader, company after company told us the stories of their products being stolen by Chinese enterprises, and not just the design of their products that were then replicated and sold without the appropriate patents but also the software.

If you want a simple example of this, take Microsoft Windows and its products and its Office suite. Only about

half of the copies used by the official government in China are legal copies, and outside of the government, only a very small fraction of the copies are legal copies. That is just the beginning of the vast intellectual theft where China has not upheld its end of the bargain to create a rule of law and stop the outright thievery of American intellectual property, damaging American companies.

Second, we have the Chinese-pegged currency. Now, when a country pegs its currency to another, as they have their currency to the dollar, they can do so and adjust it periodically according to market influences; they can decide to end the pegging and let it float, which then you get a real market valuation or they can deliberately keep printing money to sustain a situation in which the currency is undervalued. And that is exactly what China has done. When they make their currency cheap, what they do is make their products much less expensive to other nations. That is equivalent to subsidizing their exports. When they make their currency cheap and make dollars very expensive, it is equivalent to putting a tax on American products, a tariff on American products.

While much of America has thought of the World Trade Organization as one that created a platform for free trade or even a level playing field, that is far from the truth. The truth is that China has been allowed to sustain a pegged currency that puts the equivalent of a 25- percent tariff disadvantage to American products and a 25-percent subsidy to Chinese products.

There are those in this Chamber who have come to this floor and said that to challenge the Chinese tariff on American products is to launch a trade war. My friends, do you not realize that the Chinese tariff on America is a trade war and that they are winning this war and they are destroying American jobs while vastly increasing their own production? If not, please go to China and talk to American companies and talk to the American companies that have been shut down in America. We have lost 3 million manufacturing jobs since 1998, a little bit over a decade. Not all of that is the consequence of Chinese practices, but a great amount of it is.

We must not stand by trying to pretend that the world is one way and that China represents solely a market and not a manufacturing competitor when the truth is they are a fierce competitor using industrial policy and a pegged currency to outcompete American products, to penalize American products.

In terms of the currency manipulation, our Secretary of the Treasury said this:

Whatever your definition of manipulation is, what matters

is the currency is undervalued. They are intervening--

Referring to China--

to hold it down. That adversely affects our economic

interests, and there is an overwhelmingly compelling economic

case for the world, for China's trading partners, for China,

for us, to try to alter that basic practice.

Well, certainly we have the Secretary of the Treasury echoing that we have a challenge that is hurting America and that we need to respond to that challenge. That is why we have this bill on the floor addressing the Chinese manipulation of currency.

This is not the only strategy China uses. They also, through their use of rules, use a strategy of holding down interest rates below the inflation rate. This means any Chinese citizen who puts their money in a state-controlled bank--and that is the only option they have--loses value every year on that money. This is sometimes given the fancy name of ``financial repression'' by economists--where they repress or hold down the interest rates. But let's call it something a little more understandable: insurance rate manipulation. That is done in order to allow the central bank--the Chinese banking system--to reap great revenues, which they can then take to subsidize their manufacturing. They do this through a series of grants and through a series of subsidized loans.

An American entrepreneur was in my office the morning before yesterday talking about how an individual he knows went to China and started out negotiations with China, where they offered him a 3-percent interest rate on money to operate his enterprise. They ended up offering a negative 3-percent interest rate. In other words, they would pay him to take the money in order to bring that manufacturing to China. In other words, take his plant out of the United States and bring it to China. They would pay him to do that. That is a vast subsidy.

That is not the only subsidy. The grants, the subsidization of water costs, and the subsidization of electricity--all these subsidies--have a big impact. If we go to the WTO Web site, we will see how it summarizes the structure of the WTO. Under the section called ``Subsidies,'' they note:

[Subsidies] are prohibited because they are specifically

designed to distort international trades, and are they're

therefore likely to hurt other countries' trade.

So the plan was, when subsidies were used deliberately to distort international trade, they would be outlawed. Guess what. China is ignoring this. China is flaunting this. They are required to disclose each and every year all the subsidies they provide to their manufacturing, and they do not do it. They did it once in 2006, a very minimal disclosure.

Why is it we continue to believe we have a structure that facilitates mutually beneficial trade in the WTO when China, through currency manipulation and direct subsidies to exports, is breaking every key aspect of the WTO framework with hardly a protest from the United States?

We have on the floor a bill which says we will no longer turn our head from the deliberate distortion of the international trading regime that was supposed to benefit both nations but, in fact, has become a powerful international tool for stealing jobs from the United States of America and undermining the success of the American worker.

Let's take a look at paper. Just a few months ago, Blue Heron, a company that has operated for nearly a century in Oregon, shut down. It is a paper company. They shut down for one simple reason: because the Chinese currency manipulation and the Chinese direct subsidies to those who manufacture paper for export in China completely undermined the market for manufacturers in the United States. So the lives of these American workers are destroyed. The workers owned Blue Heron. When they got notice they were going to have to shut down because of these Chinese subsidies and Chinese currency manipulations, they basically were completely out on the street--no health care after the Friday they shut down, no severance payment. Indeed, they are having to start from scratch--workers who are 40, 50 years old starting from scratch--in an economy where there are no jobs to be found. But they are not alone. Paper companies across the United States have been shutting down for exactly the same reasons.

Let's take the case of wind turbines. Wind turbines imported into China are subject to a 10-percent tariff, while wind turbines imported into the United States are subject to only a 2\1/2\-percent tariff. Why do we--on top of everything else I have noted--add to the injury by putting a lower tariff on their imports than they put on ours?

Can someone in this Chamber explain to me why shutting down manufacturing in the United States and opening manufacturing in China and piling on lower tariffs on a country that is already subsidizing its exports and already putting a tariff on ours makes any sense? I certainly would be very interested in that explanation. I think the workers in an industry that would otherwise be manufacturing these wind turbines in the United States would be very interested in the explanation.

China doesn't give our wind turbines a fair chance to be used in their energy products. Let me read this quote from 2009 regarding the award of contracts on Chinese projects.

. . . all multinational firms bidding on National

Development and Reform Commission projects [were] quickly

disqualified on technical grounds within 3 days of applying.

In other words, a nontariff barrier in China was added, on top of everything else, to make sure that only Chinese manufacturers would have a chance to get the contracts.

Let's turn to solar--solar voltaic panels. The whole technology was invented in the United States, but we can see that over the last 3 years the tremendous subsidies to solar in China are destroying the American industry. One of the few remaining manufacturers is

SolarWorld. It is located in my State--the State of Oregon. In the span of less than 10 months--from 2009 to 2010--three major manufacturers shut down, destroying hundreds of jobs--jobs that would not be restored.

SolarWorld is incredibly efficient. They are working with American technology. We should be building and selling these solar panels to the world, but we aren't going to be able to do so if China--using their manipulated interest rates to produce funds for grants and subsidized loans--continues to virtually pay folks to ship their manufacturing into China and discriminates against American products. I want SolarWorld to be there not just next year but 10 years from now or 20 years from now. That will not happen if we don't address this massive assault on American manufacturing.

Because China has failed to disclose its subsidies, as required under WTO, I have proposed an amendment to the bill--an amendment that will not be heard because a deal cannot be worked out to allow amendments on this bill. I am very disappointed in that. This amendment simply says, if China or any other country under the WTO fails to do the notification of subsidies that is required, our U.S. Trade Representative will do a counternotification, putting those subsidies on the table. That way we can see exactly what they are and we can be part of this debate. It is the beginning of holding China accountable for breaking the WTO rules.

This is not a Democratic amendment and it is not a Republican amendment. This is an amendment about the future of the middle class in America, the future of the worker in America. I am pleased to have Senator Enzi as my chief cosponsor and additional colleagues from across the aisle--Senator Barrasso and Senator Snowe. I am pleased on this side of the aisle to have Senators Nelson, Schumer, and Levin as cosponsors. That pretty much spans the spectrum of opinion in this Chamber, where everyone agrees China should be held accountable. If they are subsidizing their manufacturing, which they are, they have to disclose it, and they are not. We can have a better debate about how to end their rule-breaking under the WTO if we have that information.

In closing, I just wish to note that this debate should have happened a decade ago--it should have happened 5 years ago--because over that timespan we have continued to hemorrhage jobs, we have continued to hope China would apply the rule of law on intellectual property, we have continued to hope they would end their manipulation of their currency, we have continued to hope they would end their illegal subsidies and the undermining of American products. Those hopes have not been realized. China has not chosen to honor the framework that was established. So while we hope, American workers are losing their jobs. That is why we have to have this debate on the floor. That is why this bill before us must be passed--to give the President greater leverage and to send a message to China that we are now fully paying attention at a level we should have a decade ago. The fact we have not paid attention is water under the bridge, but we are paying attention now. If anyone cares about having an American middle class, with living wages for workers, then I ask them to fully support this bill. The trade war China has been carrying out, decimating manufacturing in our Nation, must not go without full debate and a full response.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Madam President.

Madam President, I rise today to speak on the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Act of 2011. Before I get into the bill, I want to say this is not an easy vote for me. It is a difficult vote because, beginning in 1979, I developed a relationship as mayor of San Francisco with China. Over these 30-plus years, I have seen China make the greatest changes of virtually any large country in the world. I know China has wanted to reach out, and the United States has reached out. On the Pacific Coast we have developed a century of trade which long ago overtook the Atlantic Coast. This trade between Asia and this country is, indeed, large and prized.

During that time, I have had occasion to have meetings with the former President of China, the former Premier of China, and the latest Foreign Minister on the subject of currency. I have urged each to let the renminbi float freely.

In every conversation, they have indicated that Beijing is aware of the situation and the need to allow the renminbi to respond to market forces, and there has been some progress. From July 2005 to July of 2008, the renminbi appreciated by 21 percent against the dollar, and since 2010 it has risen by an additional 7 percent. Unfortunately, action on this matter has not been sufficient, and China continues to resist a free-floating currency.

My last conversation with a major government official took place last Friday evening in San Francisco. On Saturday, I pulled out my binoculars. Our home is situated on a hill, and it overlooks San Francisco Bay. I watched the big cargo ships pulling out of the Port of Oakland going through the Golden Gate. I watched five of them, and I saw they were half loaded. Half-loaded cargo ships leaving the ports of America, going to Asia and particularly China, have become more and more a part of daily routine. Most are loaded with scrap paper, but equal trade is missing. We import huge amounts of goods from China, and the same amount--with the exception of some high-valued goods--does not go back to China.

I believe if we are going to have this great trading basin on the Pacific Ocean, everybody has to play by the same rules. In my view, this bill is not about putting sanctions on China. It is not about imposing retaliatory tariffs. It is about sending a clear message to Beijing that we are serious about the need to let the renminbi respond fully to market forces.

Let me point out that China is not specifically mentioned in this bill. The aim is to address misaligned exchange rates whenever we find them. This does not talk about manipulation of rates.

The bill has three fundamental purposes. First, it requires Treasury to report to Congress which currencies are fundamentally misaligned-- not manipulated, but misaligned--including those currencies that require priority action.

Secondly, the legislation provides a mechanism for the Commerce Department at the request of a U.S. industry to investigate whether an undervalued currency constitutes a subsidy subject to retaliatory tariffs.

Finally, the bill triggers certain penalties. If a priority country fails to realign its currency immediately upon designation, additional consequences take effect after 90 and 360 days subject to a Presidential waiver.

What does this all mean? What it means is that for the first time we are going to monitor exchange rates and determine whether any currency is misaligned. If that currency, in fact, is misaligned, then the bill triggers a period of time to remedy that misalignment. If it is not remedied within 3 months, it provides additional action. Again, all of this is subject to a Presidential waiver.

In effect, what you have is the Senate of the United States speaking out and saying enough is enough. The time has come to let the renminbi float freely, just as the dollar floats freely, and we take the upside along with the downside. If that is the case, then you have an equal and fair trading community. If it is not the case, you have a downward sloping trading community.

The penalties include a prohibition on OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, loans; increasing antidumping duties on imports from countries with undervalued currencies; a prohibition on Federal procurement; opposition to any new financing from multilateral banks.

There is little doubt that the renminbi is undervalued. The Chinese leadership understands it, the Chinese people understand it, and the American people understand it.

In April 2011, in a study by William Cline and John Williamson at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, it was argued that the renminbi is undervalued by approximately 28.5 percent. Other studies provide different estimates, but the conclusion that the renminbi is undervalued is constant in virtually every study that has been done. This gives Chinese goods a steep advantage over U.S. goods. It results in a loss of U.S. jobs, and it results in my putting on my binoculars and watching huge cargo ships leave the large port of Oakland going under the Golden Gate Bridge only half full. When it is half full, it is usually waste paper.

You can only take so much of this. In my own way, I have been importuning the Chinese for over a decade. They are always polite, they always say, yes, they understand, but they also say, China has to take steps as China can take steps. Well, the United States is now at a pivotal point. In the great State of California, our unemployment rate is over 12 percent, and the half-empty cargo ships have to be filled up if we are going to have a fair trading community. As I look at it, letting the renminbi float free is what is necessary to do this.

In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in September of 2010, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner argued this:

The undervalued renminbi helps China's export sector and

means imports are more expensive in China than they otherwise

would be . . . It encourages outsourcing of production and

jobs from the United States. And it makes it more difficult

for goods and services produced by American workers to

compete with Chinese-made goods and services in China, the

United States, and third countries.

Every economic report agrees with our Treasury Secretary's conclusion. History indicates that is correct. Just using one's eyes indicates that is happening. Indeed, cheaper Chinese goods lead to bigger trade deficits with the United States, and that leads to fewer U.S. jobs.

Here's another report by economist Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, and he found that between 2001 and 2010, the trade deficit with China cost the United States 2.8 million jobs, of which 1.9 million were in manufacturing. Nothing makes up for it. We have gained in education jobs, health care jobs, but they are minuscule in comparison with the loss of manufacturing jobs.

The report also argues that this trade deficit has been compounded by China's decision to keep the renminbi artificially low, essentially subsidizing Chinese exports at the expense of their American competitors. Regardless of whether the number of job losses is as high as the Economic Policy Institute

estimates, or as I have just said, at a time when we have got this national unemployment rate at almost 10 percent and 12 percent in California, we have to use every tool at our disposal to put Americans back to work. That means, quite simply stated, that the Senate can no longer afford to ignore the devastation of the manufacturing sector in this country.

A July 2009 article from the Harvard Business Review by Gary Pisano and Willy Shih argues that the decline in manufacturing will negatively impact our status as a leader in innovation. I agree that in order for the United States to address these ills and promote economic growth, we have got to reclaim our leadership in research, development, and high- tech manufacturing. In order to do so, we have to address the undervaluation of the renminbi. A market-based exchange rate between the renminbi and the dollar is not going to solve all of our problems, and nobody should believe it will, but it will create a level playing field. Trading communities cannot long exist on an unlevel trading field.

So this is very important for America at this time.

In a sense--and I don't like to say this, but in a sense--the legislation is a ``shot across the bow.'' It gives the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department clear authority to take actions against undervalued currencies wherever they may occur, and particularly for high priority currencies. But it is also important that this bill is not merely about imposing penalties. It is very well drafted, in my view, and I read it cover to cover. It mandates consultations with priority countries, the International Monetary Fund, and key trading partners. In other words, it continues to place an emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy.

The bill provides another tool for U.S. companies that have been affected by cheaper Chinese imports due to an undervalued renminbi. It makes it clear that Congress has the authority to investigate whether an undervalued currency is a subsidy subject to countervailing duties, and it provides two well-known methodologies to determine the value of the benefit conferred on exports by an undervalued currency.

Let me be clear. This bill does not mandate any countervailing tariffs due to an undervalued currency. It simply restates that Commerce has the authority to investigate whether such duties are appropriate if a domestic company provides the proper documentation.

Over the past 30 years, in visit after visit, I have seen how dialogue and cooperation have solidified ties between the United States and China, and Sino-American cooperation is very important. I watched the process becoming the foundation for what I believe is our most important bilateral relationship. Indeed, in my view, this relationship can positively impact the security and economic well-being of both countries. As such, when addressing disputes that may arise between Washington and Beijing, I believe it is in the interests of both nations to use diplomacy and negotiation to find commonsense solutions.

Yet, on this matter, I believe the time has come. We are past the polite talks where people say ``I realize, I know, I understand,'' and not much happens. In the last 10 years, it looked as if China were going to take action, and then China has retrenched on that action. So I believe we must send a clear signal to China that it has to move faster to a market-based exchange rate.

I know China doesn't like this. I know it has serious concerns about the bill. I understand that many U.S. companies and national organizations that do business in China are concerned about the impact this bill will have on our bilateral economic relationship. But I also know over the 20-year period I have been following the currencies of both countries, the improvement is small, and the impact on the United States has been great.

So as a friend of China and a strong supporter of United States-China ties, I hope this vote will demonstrate our deep concern. I hope it will give the administration the leverage it needs to encourage Beijing to work with us and our partners in the international community to bring the renminbi into alignment with market forces. I do not say this in a hostile way. I say it in friendship and with hope that there is a future where trading between China and the United States can be on equal terms.

I also wish to salute the authors of this legislation because I think they have done a very good job. Senator Brown, who is on the floor, Senator Schumer, Senator Graham, and others have put forward, I think, a carefully worded bill which carries with it the real opportunity for change between the trading relationships of our two great countries. So I thank them, and I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I would like to address the Senate on an amendment I have to the pending legislation, which will be familiar to my colleagues because it is similar to a bipartisan bill Senator Menendez of New Jersey and I have introduced, a stand-alone bill. It is called the Taiwan Airpower Modernization Act of 2011.

It does something very simple but very important: It requires the United States to respond to a request by the Government of Taiwan to purchase 66 F-16C/D models of fighter aircraft. Why is this important? It is important for all sorts of reasons, one of which Robert Kaplan recently pointed out in an op-ed in the September 23 edition of the Washington Post:

By 2020, the United States will not be able to defend

Taiwan from a Chinese air attack, a 2009 RAND study found,

even with America's F-22s, two carrier strike groups in the

region and continued access to the Kadena Air Base in

Okinawa.

The United States will not be able to defend Taiwan. So it is very important that we sell Taiwan, at no taxpayer expense--it is cash money coming from the Taiwanese Government to the United States that happens to sustain thousands of jobs right here in America--that we sell them these F-16s so they can defend themselves.

Dan Blumenthal, in an October 3, 2011, article published by the American Enterprise Institute, lists what he calls the top 10 unicorns of China policy. He says in the article:

A unicorn is a beautiful make-believe creature, but despite

overwhelming evidence of its fantastical nature, many people

still believe in them.

He lists the top 10 unicorns of U.S.-China policy. The No. 2 unicorn relates to the subject of this amendment, and it is entitled ``Abandoning Taiwan will remove the biggest obstacle to Sino-American relations.'' In other words, rather than antagonize China, Communist China, by selling 66 F-16C/D models to Taiwan, some might suggest we should withhold and not make that sale, as the Obama administration has apparently at least decided to do for now, because we do not want to antagonize China. If we antagonize China, our relationship will deteriorate. But, as Mr. Blumenthal points out, rather than basking in the recent warming of its relationship with Taiwan, China has picked fights with Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and India.

He goes on to say:

It doesn't matter what obstacles the United States removes,

China's foreign policy has its own internal logic that is

hard for the United States to shape. Abandoning Taiwan for

the sake of better relations is yet another dangerous

fantasy.

As my colleagues may recall, I introduced this amendment earlier on the trade adjustment assistance provisions, the TAA, and the distinguished chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, from Montana, quoted Ecclesiastes to make the point that it was not the right time. He said, ``For every thing there is a season.'' He also indicated that my amendment might derail the carefully negotiated bipartisan agreement on trade assistance. I did not agree with him at that time because my amendment was related to trade because these F-16s represent an export for the U.S. economy that creates jobs right here at home, in addition to its importance for other reasons.

But now the reason for that objection no longer exists. The pending legislation is not a carefully negotiated bipartisan agreement. And I hope my colleagues who shared my concerns--or shared the concerns the chairman of the Finance Committee argued earlier--will find an opportunity to support this amendment on the merits today because I think it is very important.

The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee also argued at the time against my amendment on the TAA bill. He said it was unprecedented for the Congress to force the White House's hand when it comes to foreign military sales. The fact is, I remind my colleagues, the Taiwan Relations Act that passed and was signed into law in 1979 makes it clear that Congress has a very important role to play. The Taiwan Relations Act says:

The President and the Congress shall determine the nature

and quantity of such defense articles and services based

solely upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan. . . .

This is the law of the land.

Unfortunately, I do not believe the administration's policy when it comes to selling defensive weaponry to Taiwan, that their agreement that we should just upgrade the existing fleet of F-16s is adequate to meet the demands of the Taiwan Relations Act.

This chart, taken from Defense Intelligence Agency public materials, shows the incredible shrinking Taiwan air force. Taiwan's projected fighter fleet over time goes from roughly 400, as part of a total of 490 combat aircraft. As you can see, the F-5 is an obsolete American aircraft, basically because of needed repairs, replacement parts, and it is basically not dependable anymore. The French Mirage 2000, it is estimated, will basically drop off the chart shortly after 2015 or so. Then we see the F-16 A/B models, which the administration says we should upgrade, and roughly 150 of those will be basically the remaining Taiwan air force, down from a total of roughly 400 fighters today. Actually, the administration's proposed upgrade will essentially take some of these F-16s offline, a whole squadron of F-16A/Bs, during the retrofitting period, further diminishing the number of aircraft available for Taiwan to defend itself.

The Taiwan Relations Act was a responsible decision in response to a decision of the executive branch of the Federal Government that Congress happened to disagree with. Congress can disagree with the administration and force the administration's hand when Congress believes it is appropriate to do so. The Taiwan Relations Act was one example of that. That decision was based on President Carter's diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China and the breaking of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Congress had a different view and wanted to make sure the freedom of the Taiwanese people was secure, so we passed bipartisan legislation which was ultimately signed into law by President Carter.

But what is great about the Taiwan Relations Act and the relationship of the United States with Taiwan is it has always enjoyed strong bipartisan support. This is not a partisan issue at all. Here is what former Senator Jesse Helms said about it 20 years after the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act:

It is a bit of a rarity when an issue comes up that brings

Jesse Helms and Ted Kennedy together.

I never served with Senator Helms. I did serve with Senator Kennedy. I can assure you, from what I know about Senator Helms and his record, that was an understatement.

He said:

But this was precisely such an issue. Senator Kennedy,

Senator Goldwater, and I--along with Congressman Wolff,

Derwinski and others--set out to ensure that after having

their treaty of alliance tossed in the trash can, our friends

in Taiwan would be left with far more than the vague verbal

promises the Carter administration was offering Taiwan. So we

went to work and the result was the Taiwan Relations Act.

I believe my amendment is a natural extension--actually, a fulfillment--of the Taiwan Relations Act and a reaffirmation of the bipartisan leadership the Senate has brought, which originally brought Senator Kennedy and Senator Helms together way back in 1979. We should not depart from that strong bipartisan tradition of supporting our ally in Taiwan and providing the defensive weaponry they need in order to defend themselves so the United States will not have to fill that gap.

During the debates on the trade assistance authority bill, the Senator from Massachusetts and distinguished chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that President Ma of Taiwan is happy with the administration's decision merely to upgrade the existing F-16A/B models and not to replace the F-5s and Mirages and other aircraft that are fast becoming obsolete. The Senator from Massachusetts went so far as to say at the time that ``the President of Taiwan has said [the approved package] is entirely adequate. He feels they have the defensive capacity necessary under the [Taiwan Relations Act] in order to be able to defend themselves at the current level with the upgrade we are providing.''

The facts are the government of Taiwan needs both the existing F-16A/ B models upgraded through this upgrade but also the 66 additional F- 16C/D aircraft that are the subject of my amendment. To quote Taiwan's foreign minister, he said:

Our government will continue to work closely with the

United States to strengthen our national defense and security

. . . by urging the United States to continue its arms sales

to Taiwan with needed articles and systems for our defensive

capabilities . . . including F-16C/D aircrafts and diesel-

electric submarines.

Again, to remind my colleagues, this is a familiar chart from the last time I offered this amendment, which shows the growing imbalance of the Taiwan Strait, with China having some 2,300 operational combat aircraft and Taiwan with 490 operational combat aircraft, including 400 fighters, as part of their air force.

The fact is we know China doesn't tell the truth when it comes to its defensive and national security expenditures. It shows only a fraction of what it spends as it projects power across the world to follow its economic needs and interests.

Let me quote the Taiwan defense minister. Earlier I quoted another Taiwanese official. Taiwan's defense minister said:

The F-16A/B fleet upgrade package and the F-16C/D fighters

purchase have different needs and purposes. It is not

contradictory to have both cases done.

Last Friday, September 30, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, who happens to be of the other party, met with President Ma in Taiwan. According to the official press release by the Government of Taiwan, President Ma commented that:

The upgrades of the F-16A/B series aircraft are aimed at

extending the life of fighter jets and avoiding a lack of

spare parts due to the age of the F-16A/B series. Meanwhile,

[Taiwan] wishes to purchase F-16C/D fighter jets to replace

its aging fleet of F-5E fighter jets.

That is in red here, the aging F-5E fighter jets.

President Ma explained, ``Therefore, the objectives of the two are different.''

Let me leave with one final comment. Several of my colleagues have argued the Obama administration could approve the sale of the F-16C/D series at a later date, but that is actually not the case. The F-16 production line recently received a small order from the Air Force of Iraq to sell Iraq F-16s, but without additional orders the production line will soon be shutting down. The people who are working there will be laid off or reassigned other jobs. We are rapidly approaching a point at which the President of the United States will not be able to approve the sale of new F-16s because they will not be able to be manufactured because the production line will be shut down. I hope my colleagues will keep this in mind as they consider my amendment.

Even if the production line was not an issue, why should we make our allies in Taiwan wait? Why would the United States tell our friends to come back later? Well, as I said, the chairman of the Finance Committee quoted Ecclesiastes during our last debate. Allow me to conclude with some wise words from Proverbs:

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it

is in your power to act.

Do not say to your neighbor, come back tomorrow, and I'll

give it to you when you already have it with you.

To that, I hope my colleagues would give a hearty amen.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.