A resolution expressing support for peaceful demonstrations and universal freedoms in Syria and condemning the human rights violations by the Assad regime.

Madam President, I appreciate the words of Senator Cardin. He sits on the Finance Committee and was a long-time member of the House Ways and Means Committee and understands these issues as well or better than almost any Member of the Senate. I appreciate his work on that, and his leadership. He said a couple of things I want to emphasize.

He said, first of all, this is the biggest bipartisan jobs bill we have considered this year, 79 votes out of 98 when it advanced to being considered on the Senate floor. He has talked about this is a discount we give to our competitors. Imagine two gas stations in Schenectady, NY, or in Frederick, MD, or in Akron, OH. One gets its gasoline and pays 25 or 30 percent less for its gasoline than does the station across the street. The station that does not get the 25- or 30-or 35- percent subsidy goes out of business almost in a matter of days. That is the kind of unfair competition we face because we have given this discount to our competitors.

The second is Senator Cardin mentioned what this does with our budget deficit. It is pretty clear this is not a jobs bill that costs a lot of money. That is why we got 79 votes. That is why so many Republicans joined all but three Democrats in moving this bill forward. We save money. If a thousand more people go to work in Cleveland, OH, or in Buffalo, NY, or in Baltimore, MD, that is a thousand people who are not receiving unemployment benefits, who do not have to apply for food stamps, a thousand people who are paying taxes instead of being consumers of public services.

When you look at the lost jobs because of this trade policy, because China has gamed the currency system for so many years and administrations of both parties have failed to enforce laws or use the tools they have--in addition to this extra tool, this very compelling, very effective tool we are giving them--it clearly has meant that we have been behind the eight ball in that way and we have lost the opportunity when we have not enforced these trade laws.

When you look at the number of jobs lost and the number of jobs estimated to be gained, it is in the millions over time. This is exactly what the Senate should be doing this week, moving this bill to the House. There are 250 cosponsors in the House, 60 Republicans, roughly, 190 Democrats, roughly. Republican leadership has some difficulty with this bill, apparently. In the Senate, that is not an issue. In the House, among rank-and-file Members there is huge support.

As we pass this bill later this week, next week at the latest, we hope to move it to the House where it can be passed quickly.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, as the manager of this bill and the sponsor of S. 1619, I am, first of all, pleased with the bipartisan support we have seen. We have five Republican and five Democratic sponsors as the lead 10 sponsors and another dozen or so sponsors in addition to that.

The support from Senators Graham and Sessions and Burr--all three southern Republicans--and Senators Snowe and Collins--northern Republicans--joining with the first five Democratic sponsors, Senators Schumer, Stabenow, Casey, Hagan, and myself, have set the bipartisan tone here. That is why we had 79 votes in the first go-round on the bill.

But what concerns me most, and what I hear from people in the House of Representatives--and I have heard it from opponents in the Senate, and I have heard it from large multinational corporations that have outsourced so many jobs to China--is this is going to start a trade war with China. That seems to be the thrust of their comments: This is going to start a trade war.

First of all, I don't know where they are that they think that because most of America thinks we are in a trade war right now with China and, frankly, China is doing pretty darn well. It is not going that well for American workers, and it is not going that well for American manufacturers.

Go to downstate Illinois or Albuquerque or Akron and look at the number of plant closings. In many cases, companies--large companies especially, because smaller companies can't do this the same way--will shut down their production in the United States--they will shut down production in Youngstown or Dayton--and they will move to Wuhan or Xian, China, start production there, and then sell their products back to the United States. I don't know that that has ever been done in world history.

So the trade war was started by the Chinese, waged by the Chinese, and that is why we have lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs in my State. That is why we have seen the trade deficit triple in the last 10 years with China. That is why we go to the store and darned near everything we pick up, including sometimes American flags and things you can buy at the Capitol Visitor Center, are made in China. It is clear China has cheated. They cheat on currency. They just cheat, pure and simple. It is long overdue that we do something about it.

They were admitted to the World Trade Organization because of a very bad vote 10 years ago that too many of my colleagues cast in support of China doing that for PNTR. The Presiding Officer, as I did, voted against it. The Presiding Officer from New Mexico was prescient enough to see that. But they said, if you let China into the WTO, they are then going to be a trading partner and they will play fair. Well, they never have accepted, frankly, the basic governing rules from the World Trade Organization. They don't follow the rule of law. So when we say, no, we are not going to let them do that, we are accused of a trade war. Excuse me, I don't understand that.

It is a little bit like two sort of real-life examples. If somebody is eating your lunch and you take their dessert away, they are complaining? Of course they are going to complain. They want their dessert. But they can't say you are starting a war when they are already eating your lunch.

Or if you have two gas stations, you go to Springfield, OH, and there is a gas station on one side of the street and another gas station on the other side of the street, the one gets a 30-percent discount on its oil for its gasoline from Shell, and the one from Exxon on the other side of the street doesn't get a subsidy on its oil or its gasoline, of course, the one is going to put the other out of business.

That is what we do to China. We give them a 20- to 30-percent discount because they cheat on currency. And you call that a trade war because we are saying, no, we are taking that discount away? It is China that has played this protectionist game.

Mr. Fred Bergsten, who is the director of the Institute for National Economics, the Peterson Institute, hardly a flaming liberal--free fair trade group; it is a conservative, generally free trade organization-- said that China's currency policy is the most protectionist policy of any major country in the world since World War II. And for us to say, Let's play fair, we are starting a trade war? It doesn't make sense.

Let's debate the real issues. Let's not call names. Let's not say so- and-so is starting a trade war, so-and-so is protectionist, so-and-so is doing class warfare. We want more exports, we want more trade. But, remember, currency undervaluation makes our exports more expensive when we sell them into China and puts our manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage.

I think this legislation makes so much sense. That is why it got 79 votes. That is why it has such a high number of bipartisan cosponsors. That is why people in this country understand that passing this legislation to level the playing field, to give our manufacturers an opportunity, makes so much sense.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate the words of my freshman colleague, Senator Kirk. I think he recognizes from his days as a foreign policy expert, when he worked for the government on foreign policy, that a Presidential waiver is essential. My guess is he would have attacked this bill if it had not had a waiver for the President, saying there is no way the President could possibly look out for national security at the same time as he executes this legislation.

So that clearly is a nonstarter around here. Everybody recognizes that not having a Presidential waiver--because there is a case sometimes when the President does need the authority when it comes to national security, and I am concerned about national security in our trade with China. I have seen China, over a period of years--with our acquiescence as a nation, frankly--I have seen China build more and more national security infrastructure and in some cases seeing our national security infrastructure weakened because we don't do as well with steel and chemicals and all the things that go into our national security apparatus. So I am, in fact, concerned about that.

I am also concerned; I hear two things, two main arguments. I have sat on the Senate floor as the manager of this bill for several hours over the last couple or 3 days and listened to this debate. It seems the Republicans' opposition--most Republicans voted for this, so I don't want to say it is overwhelming, but the people who have spoken against it have mostly been conservative Republicans who seem to pay a lot of attention to Club for Growth and those most conservative parts of their party. But I have heard two things. I have heard ``trade war, trade war, trade war,'' and that is interesting because that echoes the words of the People's Bank of China. It echoes the words of the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China. It echoes the words of the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China. It mimics their words when I hear them say ``trade war, trade war, trade war.''

But what also concerns me is I listen to this debate and hear some of the opponents of this bill kind of playing the ``blame America first'' game. They seem to say this is not China doing this to us, this is us doing this to us--or perhaps we doing this to us, to be more grammatically correct. I am aghast

that China games its currency system, that China undercuts our manufacturing because they ``cheat,'' and that there are some Members of the Senate who stood up right here and took the oath of office to the United States of America who are blaming America first for what China is doing to us.

I can see blaming our government for not enforcing trade rules better. President Obama, while he has not come out yet for this bill, has enforced trade laws better than any President since Ronald Reagan, who actually probably set the gold standard for trade enforcement. We haven't seen it since President Obama. I am a bit intrigued that my colleagues are blaming the United States for this. It is a little like if there are gas stations on Detroit Avenue in Cleveland, in Westlake or in Rocky River or in Cleveland, one on each side of the road and one gets the gas 25 percent cheaper than the other from the supplier--from ExxonMobil or Shell--they can put the other one out of business. Do we blame the one that doesn't get the discount for going out of business? Is that what we are doing? To blame America first on this is blaming the United States when China cheats, and I don't buy that. I don't think there is any credence in that argument.

I appreciate Senator Kirk's admonition, and I appreciate his celebration, if you will, of Caterpillar and many of these companies that are exporting tens of millions and, in a few cases, billions of dollars to China. More power to them. I want them to do more exports.

Look at this chart. Look what happened. Exports to China have gone up. The year 2000 was when this Senate and the House--where the Presiding Officer from New Mexico and I sat--voted no on this when PNTR, permanent normal trade relations, with China was passed. Look what happened since then. Exports to China went up. I am glad U.S. exports with companies all over our States--Senator Kirk mentioned a handful in Illinois--went up. Look what happened to imports. Look at the number of imports that went up. Do we know why? Part of that reason is China has cheated on currency. When we did the first vote on Monday night--and all of us predicted what the Chinese Government is going to do. They are going to squawk and say: trade war, trade war, trade war. I didn't know a bunch of American politicians would mimic what they said and say: trade war, trade war, trade war.

Here is what happened--listen to this--an article in the South China Morning Post on October 5, the day after that vote: In a rare move, the central bank, the People's Bank of China, the China Ministry of Commerce, the People's Republic of China's Foreign Affairs Ministry took simultaneous, coordinated action yesterday to express Beijing's strong opposition to the bill, aimed at forcing Beijing to let its currency float. They accused Washington of politicizing global currency issues.

Where I come from, they say when you throw a rock at a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit. Of course, the Chinese are going to yelp because they don't like this. We are saying to them they have to follow the rules--no more breaking the rules. They cannot cheat the way they have cheated.

Of course, in the Communist Party, in the People's Republic of China, the Ministry of Commerce is going to squawk. Of course, the People's Bank of China is going to squawk. These are all arms of the Chinese Communist Party and arms of the Chinese Government. Of course, they are not happy when we do this. It does not mean it is not the right thing to do.

It bothers me when I see American politicians mimic what the Chinese Communist Party officials are saying, their government is saying: trade war, trade war, trade war. This is not a trade war. Fred Bergsten, head of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is a trade official--I believe an economist. He is very smart. The Peterson Institute for International Economics is a generally conservative operation that generally plays it straight on trade. If anything, they are a bit too free trade, in my mind, instead of fair trade. Fred Bergsten said:

I regard China's current policy as the most protectionist

measure taken by any major country since World War II. Its

currency manipulation has been undervalued by 20 to 30

percent.

Here is the key point:

That is equivalent to a 20 to 30 percent subsidy on all

exports and a tariff on all imports by the largest trading

country in the world.

The 30-percent penalty is why our exports don't go up very much. The 25-percent bonus for the Chinese is why our imports go up so much. We cannot sell into China's market very well because they are cheating. That is why our exports don't grow as much, and they can sell so much into our markets because we are giving that 25 or 30 percent bonus.

This isn't a trade war--well, it is a trade war. The Chinese declared trade war on us in 2000 and look how they benefited from this trade war, and we are just going to stand here and allow them to do that? It doesn't work. That is why this legislation is so important.

Last point. There are an awful lot of American businesses that think we need to fix this. I hear my friend from Illinois and other Senators come to the floor who oppose this bill. There are only 19 who voted no out of the 98 who voted. I have heard them come to this floor and talk about exports, that their businesses have exported. Some have and more power to them. I hope they can export more and create more jobs in the United States. We need to understand that those are mostly large companies that have in some cases the wherewithal to outsource jobs to China and in other cases to be able to export large numbers.

There was a historic split in the National Association of Manufacturers, the largest trade organization for American manufacturers, over the last several years on what to do about this.

Many of the small companies such as Automation Tool & Die in Brunswick, OH, and a company in Dayton that does printing, where I just spoke to Jeff Cottrell, who owns that company and has a number of employees in Dayton, OH--those companies understand currency undercuts them. The Bennett brothers at this company in Brunswick told me in Cleveland a couple days ago why they support this bill. They said they had a contract they thought was a million-dollar contract, and they began to change their assembly line, their production facilities, their production operation capacity. At the last minute, a Chinese company came in and underpriced them by 20 percent and got the contract. Why did they underprice them 20 percent? Because we gave them a 25-percent bonus to do it. We have disarmed this trade war that we are not beginning. We are playing defense and we are fighting back.

I think the American public overwhelmingly says fight back when they play the games, fight back when they game the system. Don't blame America on this one. Stand for American interest. It is good for our exporters, big companies and small companies alike. It is good for American manufacturing. We know what that means to workers in Chillicothe, Zanesville, and Toledo. We know what it means for our local vitality and prosperity. It means so much as we begin to restore American manufacturing.

I ask for support for S. 1619.

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

I ask that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I have just a couple comments with regard to those of the Senator from South Carolina. He was the ranking member on the Economic Policy Subcommittee on which also sat the Presiding Officer from Oregon in 2009 and 2010. We held a series of hearings on manufacturing policy, and there were some agreements between Senator DeMint and me on having a manufacturing strategy. We are the only major industrial country in the world without a real strategy on manufacturing. There are three ways to create wealth in this society: manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. Manufacturing has been a dominant force and a significant creator of the middle class, and I think we agree on that. We agree we want more of it in our country. Thirty years ago, more than 25 percent of our gross domestic product was manufacturing. Today that number is less than half that, and there are countries around the world--Germany, for instance, which has had a manufacturing strategy, and they have almost twice the GDP and twice the workforce.

So while Senator DeMint and I disagree on this China trade bill, I agree with the other Republican Senator from his State, Mr. Graham, who has been a significant leader. He and Senator Schumer have worked on this for, I believe, more than half a decade on responding to the cheating the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China have done in the world trade structure. I don't believe, in any way, we are starting a trade war. Almost any economist will tell us the Chinese have been committing a trade war for a decade. That is why our trade deficit is three times what it was 10 or 11 years ago. It is why so many manufacturing jobs in Senator Graham's and Senator DeMint's State of South Carolina, the Presiding Officer's State of Oregon, and my State of Ohio have been lost, not only because of China's currency, but that is clearly a significant contributing factor. I go back to the illustration of gas stations, one across the street from the other, in Akron, OH. If one gas station could buy its gasoline with a 25-percent discount, it would soon put the other gas station out of business. That is really what has happened with China. China understands they have a 25-percent advantage given to them because they game the currency system. I know what that means. The Presiding Officer from North Carolina has seen what has happened to manufacturing in her State, a major manufacturing State. Our trade problems are not so much with companies in China, they are with the government. It really is our companies against the government. When they can game the system with a 25-percent bonus--when they sell into the United States, they get a 25- percent bonus, and when we try to sell into China, we get a 25-percent penalty on our companies' products--that hardly seems fair to me.

So as Senator Graham and Senator Schumer, the two leaders in this for many years, have said, they just want to level the playing field. They don't want us to have an advantage over China. Let's play fair and straight. Really, that is what the question is, and that is what this currency bill will finally do.

Love to.

I appreciate that. I was listening to one of the previous speakers who opposed this bill and characterized the bill as a China tariff bill. The Senator said it exactly right. When we sell to China, it is as if they put a tariff on our products. When we buy from them, we give them a 25-percent bonus--excuse me--when we try to sell to them, they ban that import. When we buy from them, they have a 25- percent bonus. It is putting us at such a disadvantage, as the Senator said.

We do. The Senator from Oregon and I have talked about this, that there is a gentleman who worked for a paper company who illustrated to me what China has done. It was a specific kind of paper, a glossy, coated paper for magazines. The Chinese bought their wood pulp in Brazil, they shipped it to China, milled it there, and sold it back to the United States, and they undercut Blue Heron and Ohio paper companies because they had that 25-percent subsidy.

There is no way, when labor costs are only about--labor is only about 10 percent of the cost of paper production--there is no way they could possibly buy something as heavy and voluminous as wood pulp, ship it across the ocean, mill it, ship it back in the form of paper, and not-- the only way they can undercut prices is by huge subsidies. There may have been other subsidies to it. It may have been water and energy and capital and land, but it surely was that 25-percent subsidy these companies have when they undercut our manufacturers.

I just know that in 15 years, I say to the Senator, or 10 years, we will look back on the history of our country and say: Why did we let one country undercut our manufacturing base so substantially and lose all those jobs and lose all that technology? When the products are invented in this country, the production is done offshore, and so much of the innovation that is done on the shop floor ends up in that country rather than here, it makes it harder for us, when we lose that innovative edge, to catch up.

As a result of the work Senator Schumer did early on this bill, with the cosponsorship of the Senator from North Carolina who is presiding, this bill really is the first major bipartisan jobs-- major, biggest jobs bill we have brought in front of this Chamber, and this is a chance to finally begin to look toward ways of reindustrializing our country and building manufacturing that matters in places such as Buffalo and Charlotte and Portland and Toledo.

This bill is a real opportunity. I think that is why we got 79 votes on the first go-round on Monday night. I think it is why we have so many Republican sponsors of this bill. It is a result of the work Senator Schumer and Senator Graham have been doing for years to begin to build that foundation, and that is why the passage of this bill is so important.

Mr. President, I said to Senator Inhofe I will be no more than 10 minutes and I appreciate his courtesy and his being here.

I rise in opposition to the Hatch amendment. I respect and appreciate my colleague from Utah and his proposal to negotiate a solution with China and other nations on currency. I have worked with him on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, as the Presiding Officer has, and I appreciate his concern on all these issues and his wide range of knowledge. My firm belief, however, is his amendment is not going to work. I know he generally does not want to take the same direction we do in standing up to the Chinese. I think, when we talk about multilateral negotiation, we are pretty much saying to the Chinese: Please stop the strategy, however unfair and in violation of international norms, that has helped your country accumulate enormous wealth. Please stop. We hope you will stop. Please stop, or we are saying please stop what Fred Bergsten says is the ``most protectionist policy any major country has taken since World War II.''

We have tried this. We now have the ability to do multilateral negotiations. Senator Hatch is right. The administration has not particularly led on that.

He is also right to add that the Bush administration also did not particularly lead on that. Before that, the Clinton administration did not particularly lead on that.

We have the ability, without amendment No. 680--because it would add nothing significant to the procedures and the steps that are already in place as a matter of current law and practice--to do these negotiations. We have an administration, a Treasury Department that may change political parties

from time to time but doesn't change strategies in dealing with the Chinese. It is always: Please stop. We hope you will do something differently. We would like it if you would change what you are doing. We think it would be better if you are not cheating on currency and cheating on international trade policies. We would like, now that we let you into the World Trade Organization, that you actually follow the rules of the WTO. We think it would be great if you follow the force of law and the rule of law.

Saying those things has gotten us nowhere. That is why, while I respect Senator Hatch, amendment No. 680 doesn't get us anywhere. It doesn't change the law. It just delays. We know how the Chinese like it when we delay because every day we delay is one more day where the Chinese cheat, where the Chinese have an advantage, where the Chinese, the People's Republic of China, the Communist Party, can again take advantage of American workers and American companies.

The Treasury Department already has specific reporting obligations. They already have ample authority to consult and engage bilaterally, multilaterally, and plurilaterally under the Exchange Rates and Economic Policy Coordination Act of 1988, which amendment No. 680 would repeal.

I appreciate what Senator Hatch wants to do, but the fact is, we have to make the Chinese understand, other than occasional pleading, occasional begging, the occasional polite requests--we have to make them understand, if they do not stop manipulating their currency, if they don't stop intervening to keep a weaker renminbi, the United States will defend itself. The United States cannot turn the other cheek on this one.

The Presiding Officer said the other day the Chinese steal our lunch, and if we take any of it back, they get all upset at us, although the Presiding Officer said it better than I just said it. But the fact is, the Chinese have not played fairly. I used the example on the Senate floor of what currency manipulation means in very simple terms. If there is a gas station on Summit Street in Akron and there is a gas station across the street--there are two Marathon stations--one of the Marathon stations gets its oil from Findlay, OH, at a 30-percent discount and the other station doesn't, the Marathon station that gets a discount is going to put the other one out of business, pure and simple.

As Senator Merkley said the other day, there is a tariff on goods we sell to China, and there is a subsidy on goods China sells to us. How do we compete with that? Amendment No. 680 will not help us compete with that, it will just delay and delay. That does not make sense. That is why this legislation, S. 1619, without the Hatch amendment, makes much more sense. It allows us to move finally and quickly. It allows us to move with certainty. It allows us to move straightforwardly. It strips away all the delay and the head fakes and the feinting and all the other things the Chinese Party Government is so good at doing.

I ask for defeat of the amendment and passage of S. 1619, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I very much thank Senator Harkin, the chairman of the HELP Committee, for his advocacy always for the middle class, advocacy always for those who aspire to the middle class, and especially the jobs bill. I particularly appreciate his comments about school construction. That is a major component of the jobs bill.

My State has gone through a pretty good period under Governor Taft, who is not in the same political party as I am but he is a friend of mine who launched a program 10 years or so ago in Ohio to begin to replace--to give incentives to local governments, local school districts, to vote bond issues where there was a lot of State matching funds that built a lot of new schools but nothing close to what we need yet with all of the progress we made.

We tell our children that education is the most important thing in their lives and our lives and our country, and then we send them to lousy, decaying, falling-apart school buildings. I do not think that quite clicks in kids' minds. So the school construction part of this bill, first of all, puts construction workers to work in their high- unemployment rates, as Senator Harkin said. Second, it puts steelworkers and cement workers and concrete workers and people who are making the products--the glass makers, the glass companies, and all manufacturers--to work for the materials. Third, it sets the foundation by building community colleges and rebuilding school buildings and all of that, putting people to work for long-term economic growth and prosperity.

We know for a fact the United States, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, created an infrastructure the likes of which the world had never seen. That is the foundation for our prosperity. Unfortunately, in the last 20 years we have let that infrastructure crumble. We let that infrastructure decay. When I look at these young pages here, 15, 16, 17, 18 years old, I do not want them to inherit a huge budget deficit, but I also do not want them to inherit a huge education deficit, an infrastructure deficit. We owe that to that generation to do much better than we have.

I thank Senator Harkin and yield to him.

We are joined in the Chamber by two of the sponsors of this bill: the Presiding Officer, Senator Whitehouse, and Senator Casey from Pennsylvania.

The Senator said something earlier about the supercommittee and deficit reduction, and what he said is exactly right. Many in this institution and down the hall in the House of Representatives do not seem to understand that we cannot only cut our way to prosperity, we have to grow our way to a more balanced budget and prosperity.

One of the things this China currency bill will do is, it is estimated by the Economic Policy Institute that over 10 years it will cut the deficit $600 billion to $800 billion. Why is that? Because of job growth, because this bill provides--according to the Economic Policy Institute study, it creates more than 2 million jobs. That is 2 million people, instead of receiving unemployment benefits, instead of being eligible for food stamps, instead of other kinds of things we do for people who are out of work, it will mean those 2 million people will actually be working, many of them in manufacturing. Those are $12-, $15-, $20-an-hour jobs. They will be paying taxes. They will be paying into Social Security, into Medicare, into local retirement systems--all of that--paying property taxes for the schools, doing all of the things that employed, hard-working taxpayers do.

So it is a win in that situation too. So while we need to focus on the President's jobs bill, this is one that makes so much sense, and that is why we need to move forward.

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

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

Mr. President, as we discuss our relationship with China, it strikes me that we are ignoring one of the most critical issues impacting U.S. competitiveness in regard to China--namely, China's inadequate protection of U.S. intellectual property, or what I call IP.

Let's remember that intellectual property is our Nation's No. 1 export. American IP underpins the knowledge economy, providing our workers and companies with a significant competitive advantage. In short, IP equals jobs for American workers. It is that simple. Studies have shown that IP-intensive industries employ more than 19 million workers, create higher paying jobs across all skill levels, and support more than 60 percent of total U.S. exports. That is why throughout my service here I have endeavored to ensure that U.S. innovators and content creators are able to operate in an environment in which their IP, or intellectual property, is adequately protected.

I am pleased to have been the lead Republican sponsor of the recently enacted America Invents Act, which resulted in long overdue reforms to our Nation's patent system that will strengthen our economy, create jobs, and provide a springboard for further improvements to our intellectual property laws. I was very pleased to see Senator Grassley take that over as the new ranking member of the committee and do such a great job with it. And I want to pay tribute to the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy, as well and to my colleagues in the House who saw the importance of that particular new law. It is the first time we have modified the patent laws in over 50 years, and that was a historic event.

So it is pretty apparent that I take a great interest in intellectual property and all aspects of it. I am the chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force. I have to say it is really a privilege to work with these brilliant people who work in the intellectual property area, and while many of them are in Silicon Valley out in California, we have our own Silicon Valley in Utah that is becoming very well known, a lot of innovation. So we have most of the really great companies right there in Utah as well.

U.S. leadership in innovation has not gone unnoticed by our economic and strategic competitors, who are adopting and evolving innumerable tactics to steal, expropriate, or otherwise undermine our intellectual property rights. Few, however, have been as overt in these efforts as China. The statistics on counterfeiting and piracy alone are staggering. According to a recent report by the U.S. International Trade Commission, firms in the U.S. IP-intensive economy that conducted business in China in 2009 reported losses of approximately $48.2 billion--that is billion with a ``b''--in sales, royalties, or license fees due to IP infringement in China. Now, that bears repeating: $48.2 billion in losses for U.S. companies due to intellectual property infringement in China.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the ITC report noted that companies reported that an improvement in IP protection and enforcement in China to levels comparable to that in the United States would likely increase employment by 2.5 percent. Think what that would do for our country. That amounts to almost 1 million U.S. jobs. And these aren't just jobs, these are really good jobs. These are jobs that would benefit our country a great deal.

But counterfeiting and piracy does not stop at China's border. Based on U.S. border seizure statistics, China is the primary source of counterfeited products in the United States. These counterfeited products from China run the gamut. We are talking about counterfeit toys, fake drugs, fake auto and aircraft parts, counterfeit computer chips, and counterfeit software, music, movies, and games--in essence, anything and everything that has value in the sights of Chinese counterfeiters. Imagine if you are flying on an airplane and the parts they thought were valid and good parts all of a sudden quit working. This is a very important point I am making.

Clearly, this is not incidental. It is pervasive. Given China's system of government, it is fair to draw the conclusion that piracy and counterfeiting have explicit or implicit government approval, for there is little doubt that China would deal severely with any other activity they found objectionable well before it became pervasive. If they wanted to, they could clean this up. I hope they will because it is very much to the disadvantage of our country.

It is becoming clearer every day that China's failure to protect U.S. intellectual property is part of a well-coordinated government-led national economic development plan. Nowhere is

this more obvious than in China's adoption of plans to promote ``indigenous innovation.'' China's indigenous innovation policies disadvantage U.S. innovators through rules and regulations which mandate the transfer of valuable technology and rules which provide preferential treatment for intellectual property which is developed in China. In addition, there have been continued attempts to use technology standards as both a means to erect barriers to U.S. technology and as a means to unfairly acquire very valuable U.S. technology.

This is not to say China has not made any progress in combating the theft of U.S. intellectual property. Certainly the commitments made at the recent JCCT meeting regarding indigenous innovation and government procurement were a positive step, as was the recent agreement by the Baidu Web site to license legitimate content from certain IP owners. But while these actions are a good start, there is a lot more that needs to be done.

We can debate currency manipulation all day long, but if we want to foster immediate job growth in the United States, we should focus our energies on working to find ways to staunch the bleeding when it comes to the theft of American innovation by China. Again, we are talking about close to 1 million good-paying U.S. jobs which stand to be created if we can get this problem under control.

I stand ready to work with my colleagues on this important set of issues, but these are important issues, and it is time for China to grow up and get into the world community and do what is right. It is a wonderful land. They have tremendous capacities. They are brilliant people. A lot of their engineers were educated here. They are people who really deserve to be leaders in the world community if they live in accordance with the basically honest rules of the world community. But right now they do not live in accordance with these rules, and they could do a much better job on intellectual property than they have done.

I have been there a number of times, and each time I have gone there, I have raised the intellectual property issues and I have raised the piracy issues. They always say they are going to do something about these issues, but when push comes to shove, they really don't do what really needs to be done.

Another important issue we need to discuss is enforcement, and that is why I filed amendment No. 679. My amendment requires the Comptroller General of the United States to submit an annual report to the Congress on the trade enforcement activities of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative--or we refer to it as USTR. This is a simple amendment that serves a vitally important purpose.

USTR is a relatively lean agency as compared to much of the bloated Federal bureaucracy. It is at the front lines in our efforts to open new markets to U.S. goods and services providers, and it leads the way in holding our trading partners accountable when they fail to live up to their trade commitments. It is a tough job. U.S. companies face an unrelenting onslaught of governments and NGOs which collaborate in seeking new ways to hamper America's economic competitiveness by undermining our intellectual property rights, by imposing unwarranted phyto-sanitary measures that have no basis in science, by enacting new technical barriers to trade, imposing unfair pricing and regulatory regimes upon our industries, and other equally harmful measures. Our goal, of course, should be to eliminate every single one of these. But the reality of the situation is that, in a world of limited resources, we must prioritize.

To my mind, the No. 1 priority should be removing barriers to our exports of goods and services, and eliminating foreign government practices which most impact U.S. jobs and economic well-being. Unfortunately, that has not been the case under this administration. Unfortunately, that is the situation we find ourselves in.

To cite an example, most people realize that China is an enormous problem for U.S. innovators and content creators. Our companies face policies designed to foster Chinese innovation at the expense of U.S. innovators, the imposition of standards-based barriers, the continued refusal to direct adequate resources toward stemming counterfeiting and piracy in both the online and physical realms, and other policies, laws, and regulations that diminish the value of U.S. intellectual property. To date, this administration has not filed a single intellectual property-related enforcement action against China.

Similarly, Chile continues to flagrantly violate the terms of our bilateral free-trade agreement with regard to crucial protections for intellectual property. Despite the direct and demonstrable harm to American innovators and workers, no dispute settlement process has been initiated with regard to Chile's failure to adequately protect intellectual property in accordance with the terms of our free-trade agreement that we have entered into with them.

In contrast, after 3-plus years of devoting significant resources to intensive negotiations with the Government of Guatemala, the Obama administration announced the initiation of the first ever bilateral labor dispute against an FTA partner. The administration also recently announced that it will investigate allegations by a Peruvian union that the Government of Peru has violated its labor under the United States- Peru Free Trade Agreement. To me, these actions demonstrate skewed enforcement priorities.

It is hard to believe that Guatemala's alleged failure to adequately enforce its own domestic labor laws is anywhere near the top of the list when it comes to trade barriers facing U.S. companies and workers. I also find it hard to believe that expending critical enforcement dollars to defend the interests of a Peruvian labor union should be among the top trade enforcement policies for this administration.

China, India, Brazil, Russia, and Chile are some of the many countries where we face very real threats to American industry and competitiveness due to unfair trade practices and barriers. But instead of focusing on these immediate, ongoing, and very real economic harms, the administration seeks yet again to instead score political points with labor union leadership.

I can hardly blame them for that, in a sense, because the trade unions in this country are the biggest supporters of the President and of the Democrats, but it is outrageous to not put our country first under the circumstances. It really is outrageous. I think even the trade unions are going to have to stop and think about, is this administration doing what is right with regard to our interests in all of these countries I have mentioned.

It is outrageous to direct the limited resources of our most important trade agency toward activities that have little to do with opening new markets or protecting U.S. jobs. This inability to prioritize based upon what is best for workers in the economy, as compared to what is best for building labor union support, is another unfortunate example of the administration's inability to lead on trade.

My amendment requires the Comptroller General, on a yearly basis, to detail the enforcement activities undertaken by the USTR and assess the economic impact of each such activity, including the impact on bilateral trade and on employment in the United States. It would also include an assessment of the cost of, and resources dedicated to, each such activity.

I am hopeful my amendment will assist this and future administrations in setting rational enforcement priorities. By providing an objective measure of the likely impact on trade and employment of any enforcement activities undertaken, it will also be an important resource for this and future Congresses in the conduct of our oversight responsibilities.

I would hope all of my Senate colleagues could support an amendment which provides us with important information and insights which will help us in ensuring that USTR utilizes taxpayer funds in the most effective manner possible toward opening markets and removing barriers to U.S. companies and workers.

I rise again today in support of my amendment No. 680. First, allow me to further explain some of my underlying concerns with the current bill's approach.

We have heard many estimates of job losses in the United States associated

with our trade deficit with China, following China's entry into the WTO, the World Trade Organization. Unfortunately, most of those estimates are highly unreliable and should be taken with a large amount of skepticism.

We have heard numbers coming out of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, saying that 2.8 million U.S. jobs have been lost or displaced because of trade deficits with China since that country's entry into the WTO, with 1.9 million of those jobs estimated to have been in manufacturing. Unfortunately, those estimates come from an unreliable static analysis which essentially says imports displace labor used in domestic production and, therefore, lead directly to job loss and unemployment.

Looking at this particular chart here, you can see from that chart the relation between U.S. imports, which is the blue line, and the unemployment rate, which is the red line, and you can see how it has shot up since 2008, and it is still wavering at the top--does not seem to conform the jobs and unemployment claims being made with some of the numbers being used in our current debate. If anything, a casual observer might even say that when import growth is strong, it tends to be associated with a strong underlying economy, one in which unemployment is relatively low.

You can see from this chart that the imports were going up throughout the first part of 2002 to 2008, when they hit the pinnacle and then all of a sudden drop down with this administration. Now they are coming back up. But the unemployment rate has now gone up tremendously, and it doesn't seem to be coming down very far. So there is a correlation here. And, frankly, one that concerns me, as the chart suggests, following the pro-growth tax relief of 2003, the economy began to pick up some steam, imports correspondingly grew, and the unemployment rate fell until the financial crisis hit. That unemployment rate went down. The 2.8 million job loss number from the labor-funded think tank, or the 1.6 million job loss number the majority leader recently mentioned here on the floor, and many of the other job loss numbers associated with the China currency issue that are being offered by many of my colleagues on the other side of the floor, are highly unreliable and often not much different from numbers simply picked out of thin air.

The jobs numbers do not account for dynamic flows of workers from industry to industry, and the message being delivered is that if a job and an industry went away and net imports were going up, then the job must have been lost or displaced because of trade. Well, that is foolish.

What happened to the displaced worker? The analysis doesn't take that into account, and merely suggests, misleadingly, that the worker is unemployed. What happens to the dollars that are associated with financing any increased net increase in imports? The analysis doesn't take that into account.

If we run a higher trade deficit, finance it with dollar outflows, and foreign countries recycle the dollars back into Treasury bills to finance the President's stimulus spending spree, does the analysis take into account the resulting jobs that the President claims become ``saved or created''? No. Those jobs numbers are only convenient when advocates of the stimulus, such as the EPI, wish to promote more debt- fueled government spending.

I do not dispute that there are important dynamic effects of international trade on the U.S. labor market. I do dispute many of the numbers being tossed about and offered as estimates of job losses stemming from trade with China. I do dispute that dealing with our bilateral trade deficit with China is the most important thing we can do for jobs today, as the Senate majority leader has suggested. Those doubts, of course, are not reasons to not act on the Chinese currency issue, but they do lead me to doubt the job creation priorities of my friends on the other side of the aisle.

The President has been actively campaigning for congressional consideration and passage of the so-called American Jobs Act--right now, today--yet the majority leader here in the Senate refuses to let us consider the President's proposal right now, despite the minority leader having introduced a proposal for Senate consideration. Evidently, Senate Democrats believe that construction of a new mechanism to use to confront China and raise prospects of trade wars is more important to jobs than the President's plan. I don't think so.

The President states--rightfully so--that unemployed American workers don't have 14 months to wait for action on jobs. Yet we are considering a currency bill that, at best, would set in motion a lengthy process of currency misalignment determinations and perhaps ensuing trade sanctions. If anyone believes that the process set up in the currency bill to confront any currency misalignment in existence today will lead to job creation right now or in the next 14 months, then I suggest they do not understand much about international trade, labor markets, and the often painfully slow processes of international trade negotiations.

It took President Obama over 2\1/2\ years to send free-trade agreements to Congress, bills that were all set to go from the day he took office. Do you believe the legislation before us, even if it went into effect right now, would lead to a fundamental misalignment finding immediately, along with rapidly ensuing dialogue and action that would lead to job creation right now? Even if the legislation before us today were implemented today, it would likely take months and years before it achieved any results.

It is important to confront existing currency misalignments and global imbalances, the sources of which include persistently high amounts of U.S. debt made significantly worse during the past 3 years of deficits in excess of $1 trillion that were used wastefully on so- called ``stimulus'' and commercially non-viable green energy experiments that just plain did not work. People are starting to wake up to this type of approach to government.

To say that the issue of China's managed currency peg is the most important issue for job creation today is telling, and it certainly does not speak well for how the President's jobs act is perceived by his Senate Democratic colleagues as a job creator.

My concerns go beyond some of the claims related to job creation. I am afraid the current bill will be ineffective, and could actually end up harming our exporters through retaliation. That is a real fear, it is a real concern, especially since the Chinese have said they will retaliate. We don't need that right now, with the economy the way it is. But that is what they are going to do if this bill passes, even though some might think that is the right thing to do. And I am not the only one with concerns. Today, according to an article by the Associated Press, the White House finally publicly stated that it has concerns with this legislation. While we still don't know what those specific concerns are, we do know that they believe approval of the bill would be counterproductive.

We know that. Why doesn't the administration come out and say it? Why is it the President cannot lead on these issues? Why is it he always calls on Congress to lead on these issues? That is why we elected him as President--or should I say, that is why they elected him as President, because I did not vote for him, even though I like him personally. I did vote for my colleague, John McCain.

Similar concerns were expressed in an opinion editorial by the New York Times entitled ``The Wrong Way to Deal with China.'' They call this bill a ``bad idea'' and ``too blunt of an instrument.'' Specifically, they state that the bill is very unlikely to persuade China to change its practices, noting that it will instead ``add an explosive new conflict to an already heavy list of bilateral frictions.''

That is the New York Times. My goodness. That is pretty much the Bible for folks on the other side, and they do write very effectively on some of these issues.

I agree currency manipulation is a serious problem, and I have proposed a better way to address it. My amendment empowers the administration to work within existing frameworks to mitigate the effects of currency manipulation and stop it from occurring. If our negotiators cannot make progress in the WTO and IMF--we go there first--we must go outside these organizations and align with other like-minded countries to confront the Chinese currency interventions together.

I could not agree more with my colleagues who have introduced the bill we are debating that China's beggar-thy-neighbor's currency policies do harm the United States and our workers, and from that standpoint, I commend my colleagues. But massive currency interventions harm many other economies and their workers as well. We should join together in a pluralistic way to counter China's actions and negotiate a long-term solution to stop the fundamental misalignment of currencies, whether by China or any other country. If we did that, it would bring tremendous worldwide pressure on China, rather than acting in a bilateral fashion, which this bill will do. My amendment would allow that to occur. I would be happy to give credit to the other side if they would accept that amendment. They have to know it is a prescient, worthy amendment--something that would make a difference, rather than just making talking points or creating a trade war with a country that we should work toward getting along with.

Appreciating the Chinese currency will help address global macroeconomic imbalances and serve China's long-term economic interests as well, while ensuring that American businesses, farmers, manufacturers, service providers, and workers compete on a level playing field.

I just introduced this amendment yesterday around noon and I am pleased many of my colleagues have reviewed my substitute bill and they do support it and support a different approach. I think, if we want to work together, it is a perfect way of doing it because it gives what the folks want on this side and brings the right kind of pressure, without causing a huge trade war that is going to be very much to our disadvantage.

In addition, since the introduction of my amendment, many business associations, advocacy groups, think tanks, and others have come out in support of my substitute bill. I did not file that for political reasons. I did not file that to just cause trouble. I filed it because these ideas in that bill are far superior to the ideas in the underlying bill. I think my friends on the other side ought to look at it and tell me where they can improve it and take it over, if they will. The fact is, it is far superior to what the underlying bill is.

Many agree my approach is our best chance at solving this problem that we all find so frustrating. To those who think this is more of the same old approach, I say absolutely not. The old policies and the old Exchange Rate Act have not worked and they need to go. On that I think we all agree.

My proposal does not say try and work this out with China and hope for the best. Instead, my approach directs our negotiators to work with others and challenge China until a solution is agreed to. My approach does not prevent the United States from taking unilateral action, but it does demand that the administration seek out those countries that will join our efforts to combat currency manipulation so our actions are more effective and bring worldwide pressure on China to do what is right and to be more fair. We do need a bold, new approach, and we need to empower our negotiators to work within the WTO and IMF to ensure a level playing field for American businesses and workers. But if they cannot do that there and these institutions cannot handle this problem, then we must join with other like-minded countries to act in concert to counter China's currency policies outside the WTO and IMF.

This bill is going to cause a tremendous dislocation if it passes, and it is going to cause a trade war that is much to our disadvantage. It may make good populist talk, but it will be very much to our disadvantage and, in the end, will not do what they want it to do. My bill will. It may take some effort, but my bill will.

If they cannot confront these existing currency misalignments and global imbalances the way we are suggesting, if they cannot do that there and these institutions cannot handle this problem, then we have to join other like-minded countries to act in concert to counter China's currency policies outside the WTO and IMF.

That is what leadership is all about. That is what real executive branch leadership should be about. That is what a real USTR should be about. But we also need a partner. We need an administration that will lead on this issue. If I have an objection to this administration, it is that they do not lead on anything. They didn't send up a budget or the one they did failed 97 to zero. But they have not taken it seriously. They just wait for Congress to act and for Congress to do these things. That is what we elected the President to do, to send up his approach to this. That is what we elected him for and he ought to do that. But they do not, for some reason.

We also need a partner. We need an administration that will lead on this issue. My amendment will hold the administration accountable until they achieve results and that is whether it is this administration or a successive administration. We are debating which approach will better solve the chronic currency manipulation problem with China. My approach has been endorsed by Americans for Tax Reform, which said that the Hatch amendment ``offers a sensible approach that utilizes the mechanisms created by the international trade community to resolve such disputes.''

The Emergency Committee for American Trade says the Hatch amendment ``will more effectively address concerns about currency misalignment by China and other countries, without opening the door to many harmful effects on U.S. business and workers.''

The Retail Industry Leaders Association also supports my amendment, as does the Financial Services Roundtable. This amendment is already generating significant support. Why don't my friends on the other side take it, declare victory, and go from there? They can refile it in their name. That will be fine with me. I don't care who gets the credit for it, I just care that we handle it in a way that makes sense rather than make a bunch of political points that frankly will irritate the daylights out of our friends from China.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and let's all agree to hold the administration accountable and work with the other like-minded countries to challenge China's currency practices.

I am happy to yield the floor at this point.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks by the senior Senator from Ohio I be recognized.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent at the conclusion of my remarks that Senator Harkin be recognized.

Mr. President, recently both the majority leader and the minority leader came down to the floor to talk about the President's jobs bill. There was an effort to bring up this bill by the minority leader, and it was objected to by the majority leader. And I understand that, but all we have heard from the President from the very first time he introduced this was ``pass the bill, pass the bill, pass the bill.'' I know there is some reason he keeps using that phrase over and over. It has probably been tested and is one that I think he believes will move a lot of people. Frankly, I don't think it will because too many people remember what happened the last time he had a stimulus bill. That is something which has not been really discussed on the floor in consideration of what he refers to as the jobs bill. So I can see why he keeps talking about passing the bill, because he doesn't really want to talk about it.

His new proposal reminds me so much of that $825 billion stimulus package he rammed through Congress shortly after entering office. It is almost the same thing. The Recovery Act is the $825 billion act. It included only $27.5 billion in highway spending, which was the stimulus portion of that bill. We are talking about 3 percent of the $825 billion.

I am particularly sensitive to this since I have in the past been the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and I am now the ranking member. We have a Transportation reauthorization bill we are trying to get up and get up on a bipartisan basis.

Back during the consideration of the Recovery Act, the $825 billion, I tried to pass an amendment on this floor to increase that to about 30 percent instead of 3 percent of the bill. If that had happened, we would not be in the situation we are today. We would have a lot of jobs out there that would be under construction and good things would be happening.

In the case of this $447 billion bill, which is kind of the Recovery Act lite, there is only $27 billion in highway spending, and it is not conceivable that he didn't learn his lesson from the first go-around that that is the main reason people are upset with it right now. That is the reason he keeps saying: Pass the bill, pass the bill.

The proposal includes a few different things, but much of it will be sent to the President to spend however he wants. Now, you may be wondering, will Congress tell the President where to spend the money? To a very limited extent, that is right. When Congress does not tell the President exactly what he is to do with each dime he gets, the President gets to decide what to fund.

This administration has a history of making incredibly poor spending decisions with the money appropriated to it. The biggest example I can think of is the $825 billion stimulus package. When the President signed this bill in February of 2009, he said--and I want you to hold this thought--he said:

What I'm signing, then, is a balanced plan with a mix of

tax cuts and investments. It's a plan that's been put

together without earmarks or the usual pork barrel spending.

It's a plan that will be implemented with an unprecedented

level of transparency and accountability.

That is what he said. That is a direct quote. For those of you who are watching, I have news for you: Despite the President's remarks, the spending was not balanced, and it had a tremendous amount of porkbarrel earmark spending even though there were no congressional earmarks. This is a distinction not many people make. I tried to get this point across back when the Republicans very foolishly talked about having a moratorium on earmarks. I said: Those are congressional earmarks. That is not where the problem is. The problem is in bureaucratic earmarks.

The clearest and most recent example of a huge earmark is the loan guarantee that was given to Solyndra. We have been reading about this and hearing about it recently. It is now a bankrupt solar panel manufacturing company. We have heard about that. Solyndra was a politically connected firm from California that was able to lobby the White House to obtain a loan guarantee of $535 million to fund its green jobs pipedream. This happened despite the fact that some in the administration were warning the White House to give them more time to evaluate the company's finances. It seems they were concerned about the company's long-term viability. But these warnings were ignored by the White House. They wanted to fund the project anyway. Why? I think it was for two reasons: First, the White House has a fascination with green energy; second, political gamesmanship. Some of Solyndra's biggest investors are big fundraisers and have been big fundraisers for President Obama. We now know they made repeated visits to the White House. That is not just a coincidence.

Another question is this: How did the White House have the authority to give the loan guarantee to Solyndra in the first place? The short answer is Obama's stimulus package. That was the $825 billion stimulus package. It significantly expanded the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program, and with this expansion the White

House was able to select Solyndra for a loan guarantee.

While the stimulus package did not include any porkbarrel spending in the way that most people think about it--congressional earmarks--this provides clarity to the fact that when Congress does not explicitly state where taxpayer funds should go, the money is handed over to the administration to spend however they want. They get to earmark every last dime.

In the case of Solyndra, the President handed it over to his political buddies who were in favor of the green energy projects. If that isn't a porkbarrel project, I don't know what is. Now the damage has been done, and the taxpayers are going to be on the hook for as much as $535 million in losses.

Sadly, Solyndra is just one of many examples of porkbarrel spending in the stimulus bill. We are talking about the first stimulus bill, the $825 billion bill. Not too long ago, Sean Hannity had on his program--I think it took him two programs to get it through--the 102 most egregious earmarks that are recorded. It is really kind of interesting. In fact, I have the whole list here, and I am going to ask that it be made a part of the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

I would love to be able to name all of these. These are just ridiculous. There is $219,000 to study the hookup behavior of female college co-eds in New York; $1.1 million to pay for the beautification of Los Angeles, Sunset Boulevard; $10,000 to study whether mice become disoriented when they consume alcohol in Florida. It goes on and on. Again, there are 102 of these. These are the most egregious.

What is interesting is that the day after Sean Hannity exposed these earmarks--102 of them--I came to the floor and I read all 102 of them. I said: What do these 102 earmarks have in common? The answer: Not one is a congressional earmark. They are all bureaucratic earmarks. They all came from the $825 billion.

Remember I said a minute ago that he said there will be no earmarks in this package? It is the same thing he is saying about this second go-around for the jobs bill he is talking about today. The administration took $825 billion that Congress gave it and chose to spend it on stupid things such as the ones I just listed, but there are 102 of them. I hope he will take the time, since it will be in the Record, to read all 102 of them.

What does this have to do with the jobs bill? To me, the jobs bill is simply the President coming back to Congress to ask for more money to spend however he wants on porkbarrel projects such as these. No one has talked about this on the floor. They have talked about the problems they have with this spending bill and why it is really not a jobs bill, but no one is talking about the fact that this is exactly what he did before. I don't know why we are not talking about this and featuring this because if he said before that there were going to be no earmarks and then he had 102 egregious earmarks, why would he not do the same thing now? The answer is, he would do it. He would like to hand this out to his cronies in ways that would best benefit him.

You may remember the President's State of the Union Address from earlier this year. In it, he promised, and I quote, ``If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.'' Well, you have a promise from the President that unless Congress gives him all of the authority to determine how money is spent through the bureaucratic earmark process, he will veto the bill. In other words, he will veto a bill unless he has total authority on how to spend it, and he can spend it on his own earmarks in spite of the fact that he said there will be no earmarks. So for any jobs bill to be considered, Congress is going to have to let the President decide how all the money is being spent. It is a hard concept to get ahold of.

``Earmarks'' has become a dirty word, and people assume that when you say ``earmarks,'' you are talking about congressional earmarks. That is not the problem. I have legislation I am going to be talking about that will correct this and better inform the public as to what is really going on. So we are finding ourselves in the same situation again.

What is worse is the fact that the problem of bureaucratic earmarks is not limited to special stimulus packages. It is a normal course of business. On any given day, the administration is making thousands of decisions on how to spend money it has appropriated. Congress first passes laws authorizing the executive branch to do certain things, and then we appropriate the money and go and do it. But unless Congress gives specific instructions as to where to spend the money--a process many people decry as congressional earmarks--the administration gets to decide where to spend the money. In other words, the bureaucracy does the earmark or President Obama does it.

I serve on the Armed Services Committee. We are staffed with experts in defending America. We have experts in missile defense, experts in lift capability, all of that. The way it has always happened before is the President--whether it was President Bush or Clinton or any other President--designs a budget, and that budget, the parameters, goes to Congress. Then we in the authorization committees decide if we agree with the President and how he wants to defend America.

A good example of that is that right before the prohibition on earmarks came in, the President sent his budget down--I think that was his first budget--and in that budget was $330 million for a launching system. It was called a Bucket of Rockets. It was a good system. It was something I would like to have for defending America. But when we analyzed it, we looked and we thought, with what is happening right now, our greatest need is to expand our F-18 program and buy six new F- 18s. So we took the $330 million he would have spent on the rocket- launching system and spent it on six new F-18s, and it was a wise thing to do. You can't do that now because the President has to make all of the decisions because that would be called a congressional earmark.

Earmarks don't increase spending at all. All they do is say: All right, Mr. President, you go ahead and spend it the way you want to. A recent example of this comes from the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior.

While I could talk for hours about whether the management of Federal lands is appropriate for government to do, that is not what I want to bring your attention to. That is another discussion for another time. What I am concerned about is how carefully the Bureau of Land Management works to keep its actions aligned with the authorization and power it has been given by Congress. We write laws for a reason. We say the bureaucracy can do certain things and not do certain things. When we do that, we are limiting the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy's authority. We are not saying they can interpret the law in any way they choose, but generally that doesn't stop them from trying.

One thing the Bureau of Land Management is authorized to do by a statute is to enter into contracts and cooperative agreements to manage, protect, develop, and sell public lands. In managing public lands, title 43 authorizes the BLM to, among others things, preserve the land's historic value.

A few days ago, as I was searching through the government's grants database--by the way, this database is something we put in when Republicans were a majority in our committee. The Environment and Public Works Committee has a database which will show people, if they care to wander through, just what the bureaucracy is spending money on.

I was looking through the grants database, and I came across one that shocked me. On September 9 of this year, just a few days ago, the BLM announced its intent to award a grant of $214,000 to the Public Land Foundation to fund a research project to describe in detail why the Homestead Act of 1862 had a significant impact on the history of America. When I asked them to justify that, they started talking about how important history is.

Today, my question is this: What part of this grant has anything to do with today's actual public lands? This is not a grant to dust off the historic landmarks at national parks. This is a research project to study history, which may be a noble task, but nonetheless that is what it is for.

What the American people need to understand is that this sort of thing happens all the time. The bureaucracy is completely numb to the fact that we have a $1.5 trillion deficit just in this year alone, and while this should inform the way it spends money and help to prioritize accordingly, it doesn't. The bureaucracy takes the money given to it by Congress and spends it on porkbarrel projects that are important to the President. Right now, there is no way around this. There is no accountability or transparency built into it in any way. The bureaucracy earmarks its funds.

I believe this needs to be changed, and I am currently drafting legislation that will change the way the bureaucracy makes funding decisions. My legislation will bring true transparency and accountability to the process, and it will require the administration to state explicitly which laws authorize its grant awards. It will also provide a way for Congress to weigh in and challenge the administration's thinking. This is not just for the current administration; it is for any administration.

With trillions of dollars in deficits, we cannot afford to give the President another $447 billion to spend on whatever he wants because that is what it would be. We need to reduce spending, but we also need to ensure that the spending we are doing is justified by the laws Congress passes. Because of this, we need to bring more light and accountability to the bureaucratic earmarking process.

Further, I warn my colleagues to not be fooled into the idea that whenever we pass money off to the administration, it is in safe hands. The opposite is true, and I urge my colleagues to oppose more blank check stimulus spending because of it.

Again, after President Obama stated on February 17, 2009, there will be no earmarks in his $825 billion stimulus bill, it contained more than 100 very egregious, offensive earmarks. I could--again, I am not going to read off the list, but it will be a part of the Record following these remarks I am making now.

He will do it again. If we pass another $450 billion stimulus bill, we can be sure it will be full of earmarks as bad as the ones he put in the initial stimulus bill.

This is our second blank check for the President. He fooled us once. Do not let it happen again.

With that, I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

Bureaucratic Earmarks in the Stimulus Bill

102. Protecting a Michigan insect collection from other

insects ($187,632)

101. Highway beautified by fish art in Washington ($10,000)

100. University studying hookup behavior of female college

coeds in New York ($219,000)

99. Police department getting 92 blackberries for

supervisors in Rhode Island ($95,000)

98. Upgrades to seldom-used river cruise boat in Oklahoma

($1.8 million)

97. Precast concrete toilet buildings for Mark Twain

National Forest in Montana ($462,000)

96. University studying whether mice become disoriented

when they consume alcohol in Florida ($8,408)

95. Foreign bus wheel polishers for California ($259,000)

94. Recovering crab pots lost at sea in Oregon ($700,000)

93. Developing a program to develop ``machine-generated

humor'' in Illinois ($712,883)

92. Colorado museum where stimulus was signed (and already

has $90 million in the bank) gets geothermal stimulus grant

($2.6 million)

91. Grant to the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance to

support the traditional arts apprenticeship program,

gathering and festival ($30,000)

90. Studying methamphetamines and the female rat sex drive

in Maryland ($30,000)

89. Studying mating decisions of cactus bugs in Florida

($325,394)

88. Studying why deleting a gene can create sex reversal in

people, but not in mice in Minnesota ($190,000)

87. College hires director for project on genetic control

of sensory hair cell membrane channels in zebra fish in

California ($327,337)

86. New jumbo recycling bins with microchips embedded

inside to track participation in Ohio ($500,000)

85. Oregon Federal Building's ``green'' renovation at

nearly the price of a brand new building ($133 million)

84. Massachusetts middle school getting money to build a

solar array on its roof ($150,000)

83. Road widening that could have been millions of dollars

cheaper if Louisiana hadn't opted to replace a bridge that

may not have needed replacing ($60 million)

82. Cleanup effort of a Washington nuclear waste site that

already got $12 billion from the Department of Energy ($1.9

billion)

81. Six woodlands water taxis getting a new home in Texas

($750,000)

80. Maryland group gets money to develop ``real life''

stories that underscore job and infrastructure-related

research findings ($363,760)

79. Studying social networks, such as Facebook, in North

Carolina ($498,000)

78. Eighteen (18) North Carolina teacher coaches to

heighten math and reading performance ($4.4 million)

77. Retrofitting light switches with motion sensors for one

company in Arizona ($800,000)

76. Removing graffiti along 100 miles of flood-control

ditches in California ($837,000)

75. Bicycle lanes, shared lane signs and bike racks in

Pennsylvania ($105,000)

74. Privately-owned steakhouse rehabilitating its

restaurant space in Missouri ($75,000)

73. National dinner cruise boat company in Illinois

outfitting vessels with surveillance systems to protect

against terrorists ($1 million)

72. Producing and transporting peanuts and peanut butter in

North Carolina ($900,000)

71. Refurnishing and delivering picnic tables in Iowa

($30,000)

70. Digital television converter box coupon program in D.C.

($650,000)

69. Elevating and relocating 3,000' of track for the Napa

Valley Wine Train in California ($54 million)

68. Hosting events for Earth Day, the summer solstice, in

Minnesota ($50,000)

67. Expanding ocean aquaculture in Hawaii ($99,960)

66. Raising railroad tracks 18 inches in Oregon because the

residents of one small town were tired of taking a detour

around them ($4.2 million)

65. Professors and employees of Iowa state universities

voluntarily taking retirement ($43 million)

64. Minnesota theatre named after Che Guevara putting on

``socially conscious'' puppet shows ($25,000)

63. Replacing a basketball court lighting system with a

more energy efficient one in Arizona ($20,000)

62. Repainting and adding a security camera to one bridge

in Oregon ($3.5 million)

61. Missouri bridge project that already was full-funded

with state money ($8 million)

60. New hospital parking garage in New York that will

employ less people ($19.5 million)

59. University in North Carolina studying why adults with

ADHD smoke more ($400,000)

58. Low-income housing residents in one Minnesota city

receiving free laptops, WiFi and iPod Touches to ``educate''

them in technology ($5 million)

57. University in California sending students to Africa to

study why Africans vote the way they do in their elections

($200,000)

56. Researching the impact of air pollution combined with a

high-fat diet on obesity development in Ohio ($225,000)

55. Studying how make and female birds care for their

offspring and how it compares to how humans care for their

children in Oklahoma ($90,000)

54. University in Pennsylvania researching fossils in

Argentina (over $1 million)

53. University in Tennessee studying how black holes form

(over $1 million)

52. University in Oklahoma sending 3 researchers to Alaska

to study grandparents and how they pass on knowledge to

younger generations ($1.5 million)

51. Grant application from a Pennsylvania university for a

researcher named in the Climate-gate scandal (Rep. Darrell

Issa is calling on the president to freeze the grant)

($500,000)

50. Studying the impact of global warming on wild flowers

in a Colorado ghost town ($500,000)

49. Bridge build over railroad crossing so 168 Nebraska

town residents don't have to wait for the trains to pass ($7

million)

48. Renovating an old hotel into a visitors center in

Kentucky ($300,000)

47. Removing overgrown weeds in a Rhode Island park

($250,000)

46. Renovating 5 seldom-used ports of entry on the U.S.-

Canada border in Montana ($77 million)

45. Testing how to control private home appliances in

Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts from an off-site computer

($800,000)

44. Repainting a rarely-used bridge in North Carolina ($3.1

million)

43. Renovating a desolate Wisconsin bridge that averages 10

cars a day ($426,000)

42. Four new buses for New Hampshire ($2 million)

41. Re-paving a 1-mile stretch of Atlanta road that had

parts of it already re-paved in 2007 ($490,000)

40. Florida beauty school tuition ($2.3 million)

39. Extending a bike path to the Minnesota Twins stadium

($500,000)

38. Beautification of Los Angeles' Sunset Boulevard ($1.1

million)

37. Colorado Dragon Boat Festival ($10,000)

36. Developing the next generation of supersonic corporate

jets in Maryland that could cost $80 million each ($4.7

million)

35. New spring training facilities for the Arizona

Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies ($30 million)

34. Demolishing 35 old laboratories in New Mexico ($212

million)

33. Putting free WiFi, Internet kiosks and interactive

history lessons in 2 Texas rest stops ($13.8 million)

32. Replacing a single boat motor in a government boat in

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

Mr. President, I rise just for a few moments to make a few comments regarding the pending legislation that deals with the currency policies that China has had in place which have proven to be adverse to American workers. I was saying on the floor yesterday, and I will say it again, that this is not a complicated issue. When China does not play by the rules, when they cheat on the international stage on their currency policies, Americans lose jobs.

We have lost far too many of them for us to just sit back and do nothing or sit back and just discuss and urge and plead instead of taking action. But what I failed to do yesterday was put a couple of basic numbers on the table. I mentioned in some of my comments yesterday that we had a hearing in the Joint Economic Committee, which for those who are not as familiar with the workings of that committee, it is a House-Senate joint committee where we have Senators and House Members, obviously, from both parties meeting and participating in hearings on a whole range of topics, most of them dealing with the economy and jobs.

Yesterday, we had the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, who testified broadly about a lot of issues. But I asked him about currency, and one of the things he said--I thought this was a pretty significant statement. I am just reading something Chairman Bernanke said in pertinent part. This is not, obviously, a full statement. But when I asked him about currency, China currency and their policy, he said:

I think right now, a concern is that the Chinese currency

policy is blocking what might be a more normal recovery

process in the global economy. The Chinese currency policy is

blocking that process.

I should add here, ``process'' meaning the recovery. Then he goes on to say:

So it is to some extent hurting the recovery process.

That is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, someone whose job it is not to comment on public policy on a regular basis necessarily or to take positions on one side or the other on public policy; but the fact that he made that statement, which made it abundantly clear that this is not simply a problem for our workers when we lose jobs, when we hemorrhage the jobs we have lost, but this currency policy that China has in place is an impediment to the recovery, the economic recovery of the world.

So I thought it was a critically important statement that he made as further evidence that this bill we are working on is the right way to go. I do not want to imply that he endorsed the bill; he did not. But I thought it was interesting that he focused on the economic recovery worldwide and not only on the adverse consequences for our workers, our companies, our jobs.

Two other notes, and then I will sit down. One is the impact in a State such as Pennsylvania. I have the privilege to represent the people of Pennsylvania. So I want to make sure the record is clear in terms of what China's policies, both on currency, and more broadly on trade, have meant in the context of Pennsylvania workers.

A report released just recently by the Economic Policy Institute--and we hear the so-called EPI quoted a lot--estimates that from the year 2001 through 2010 our trade deficit with China has led to the loss of 106,970 jobs in Pennsylvania, almost 2 percent of total employment in Pennsylvania.

Across the Nation, the same trade deficit has led to a loss of 2.8 million jobs since 2001. Basically, you are talking about less than a decade. Because of the trade deficit with China, we lost 2.8 million jobs nationally, and a little shy of 107,000 jobs in one State--the State of Pennsylvania.

Some would say, well, you should be careful how you say that because we are not saying that the currency policy they have in place--which I assert is cheating--that the job loss could be attributed to that solely. I am not saying that. But there is no question--and I think the record is replete with evidence and examples--that much of that job loss can be attributed to their currency policies, as well as other policies they have in place. I will not even get into the infringement on copyright and intellectual property, and the whole range of other issues where we have disagreements with other policies emanating from China.

Two more points, finally, about EPI. The Economic Policy Institute did an analysis, and they released the report on June 17, 2011. They wanted to make a determination that if China were to revalue its currency and play by the rules, to the extent of a 28-percent level-- and some people think the manipulation they are doing amounts to more than 28 percent--but if they are able to revalue their currency up to that level, what would happen? Here is what EPI found:

If only China revalued to 28.5 percent, the growth in U.S.

gross domestic product would support 1.631 million U.S. jobs.

If other Asian countries also revalued [at that level, 28.5

percent] then 2.250 million U.S. jobs would be created.

I mentioned the study yesterday. I said: What if their estimates are off? What if, for some reason, you had to scale down that estimate? Well, if 1.6 million jobs--if they are off by even a lot, that is still a big job number. If you add the other Asian countries that are impacted by the policies in China, you are over 2.2 million jobs. Even if that is off, it is still a lot of jobs.

This is a jobs bill. We talk about creating new consequences for China cheating on currency. This is a job creator if we do it--if we can pass the bill and implement the policy. We can create a lot of jobs over the next several years at the same time. This has an impact on job creation and, ultimately, on GDP.

I know that when I go back to Pennsylvania, people will say to me: Let me get this straight: You have a bill that deals with getting tougher on China, relating to their currency policy; you have bipartisan support in the Senate, and it is a job-creating bill. Why won't this pass, and why don't you have this enacted into law?

I believe we have a lot of momentum for passage. I hope the bipartisan support we have on the Republican side of the aisle, with a number of Democrats, will result in passage of this legislation, especially when you put it in the context of two points I made--one, the job impact or the job loss that has resulted from China cheating on its currency policy over all these years; secondly, when you put it into the context

of not just our economy but the world economy--when we have the Chairman of the Federal Reserve saying their policy on currency is impeding--well, I will read what he said:

. . . the Chinese currency policy is blocking what might be

a more normal recovery process in the global economy. . . .

Blocking recovery in the global economy. That is compelling testimony for anyone who cares about and is concerned about creating jobs here, strengthening our recovery and, obviously, helping the recovery worldwide. I think the evidence is overwhelming. The support for this legislation is as broad based as any I have seen for any bill I have ever considered in the almost 5 years I have been in the Senate.

We need to finish this debate this week and get a vote. I hope we will continue to have an overwhelming vote that reflects the overwhelming support across the United States.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business.

We have been dealing with an issue that relates to China's currency policies. I know that has been the pending business, but I have been wanting to address another issue for a number of days now and I am grateful for this opportunity. It is an issue that a number of people here in both parties are very concerned about. It relates to Syria.

I rise to talk about the situation in Syria, which is a place of ever increasing violence, and this violence has taken the lives of more than 2,600 Syrians.

I spoke a number of months ago at a hearing about a Pennsylvanian. His name is Hazem Hallek, a doctor who lives outside of Philadelphia in a suburban community. His brother Sakher lived in Syria and visited the United States for a medical conference earlier this year. Upon his return to Syria, demonstrations against the Assad regime were beginning to intensify. Sakher was not engaged in politics, nor did he want to be engaged in politics. But despite this, he went missing and was soon found dead in a ditch in a village south of the town of Aleppo. Sakher was subjected to unspeakable torture before he was killed. His visit to the United States was enough for the Assad regime to target him for death. So his brother, a constituent of mine, Hazem, has asked me to do everything I can to support democratic change in Syria and to protect civilians who continue to be hunted down by this brutal regime.

I believe--and I know this is a broad-based point of view in this Chamber--Democrats and Republicans alike believe that now, more than ever, it is critical that the international community, led by the United States--and the United States has done a lot already but needs to do more--show support for the Syrian people who continue to live under this dictatorship. The Syrian people, especially the democracy and human rights activists, feel defenseless against the tanks, guns, and the bullets of the Assad regime.

The United Nations Human Rights Council passed an important resolution which called for the deployment of three human rights monitors to bear witness to the terrible crimes in Syria. I was very disappointed, and I know others were as well, but unfortunately we weren't surprised to see that Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution just last night. This resolution had been watered down so much that observers had taken to calling it the so-called monsoon resolution. Yet the Russians and the Chinese still refused to recognize the terrible actions of the Assad regime and show support for the embattled people of Syria.

I am an original cosponsor of Senate Resolution 180, which was introduced in May. This resolution expresses support for the peaceful demonstrations and universal freedoms in Syria and condemns the human rights violations perpetrated by the Assad regime. This bipartisan resolution has 25 cosponsors, but it has been held up by one Senator who will not let us pass through by unanimous consent--the language we use around here for letting legislation pass without a rollcall vote, so-called unanimous consent--one Senator, holding up a resolution to show our solidarity with and support for the Syrian people who have been living through the most horrific of nightmares, torture, killing, and abuse, for all these months.

There is a lot we can do and that we should do. There is also a lot we should be debating here in the Senate. But I can't understand, on an issue of such importance, how we cannot come to consensus on something this basic, to

show fundamental solidarity with the people of Syria, especially at this hour. We cannot let another day pass without the Senate expressing its outrage over the behavior of the Assad regime. It is not enough just to condemn it in words. It is very important the Senate go on record to pass this resolution.

I have spoken in the past very highly of Ambassador Ford and his team in Damascus; he is our Ambassador from the United States to Syria, and I was proud to support his nomination. Instead of conferring legitimacy on Mr. Assad and his regime, Ambassador Ford is the most high-profile opponent of the Assad regime, sending out regular condemnations through press releases and Facebook postings. But what has been even more impressive is the personal courage demonstrated on an almost daily basis that Ambassador Ford and his staff have demonstrated in traveling throughout the country and engaging directly with the democratic opposition in Syria.

Last week, Ambassador Ford met with the leader of the opposition national democratic gathering in Damascus. Ambassador Ford's vehicles were attacked, and he was forced to stay inside the building until security forces arrived 3 hours later to escort him from the premises.

He has attended the funerals of human rights activists, observed the aftermath of government massacres, and engaged directly with the people of Syria. He will say that he is just doing his job, like good soldiers say often when we commend them for their valor and bravery and service. But I am glad the Senate finally did its job last night in confirming Ambassador Ford. Long overdue, by the way, but it was finally done.

Ambassador Ford serves as a shining example of the best our Foreign Service has to offer to the world. Countries that have representatives remaining in Damascus should join Ambassador Ford on his visits with opposition figures and human rights activists around the country. He should not be the only one who bears witness to this horror. Other diplomats should join him on his travels throughout Syria.

We have seen some positive developments among other countries in the international community. I want to acknowledge the increasingly positive role played by Turkey, which is reportedly considering sanctions against Syria. Turkey is Syria's largest trading partner, and sanctions could have a serious impact in Damascus. Turkey has also provided safe haven in border camps for more than 7,000 refugees who have fled from Syria to Turkey. Turkey's concrete support for the Syrian people, combined with ongoing diplomatic pressure, is a critical element in isolating the Syrian regime.

We know some of the history here, and it is a history of a lot of horror and death. Twenty-nine years ago, Bashir al-Assad's father unleashed the government's security forces on the community of Hama to repress unrest in that city. The killing that took place in February of 1982 was both indiscriminate and massive in its scale. Some estimate that more than 10,000 Syrians were killed as security forces literally razed the city. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, dedicated a chapter entitled ``Hama Rules'' in his book, ``From Beirut to Jerusalem,'' to the horror seen in this town in 1982. Assad's Hama rules were meant to send a chilling effect to all who would dare to question the authority of that Assad regime.

Bashar al-Assad has proven today, and certainly over the last several months, if not years, that he is incapable of reform.

When faced with the democratic movement inspired by the wave of change sweeping across the region, the younger Assad responded with his own 2011 version of Hama rules. As the world watched, as I said before, over 2,600 Syrians have been killed in a number of communities. Whether it is in Hama, or Homs, Rastan, Talbiseh, and several other towns across the country, Assad's rules seem to be focused on the use of militias that have been deployed most recently in Rastan to conduct the most repressive operations that we can think of. These gangs receive informal support from the Syrian security services and have been implicated in Syria's crimes and atrocities. The Syrian people have asked for international monitors to be deployed in the country in order to bear witness and perhaps to provide a deterrent against the wrath of these militias.

In the intervening 29 years since the massacre at Hama, Syria has changed indeed. The Syrian people have shown that they will not be cowed by violence. The opposition has made remarkable progress. Hama rules no longer work in Syria. The opposition has stood up and voted with its feet, every Friday turning out to demonstrate and face the wrath, the terrible, deadly wrath of this regime. Moreover, scores of security forces have abandoned the regime and have come to the side of the opposition, something that did not happen in 1982 when the elder Assad brutally applied his Hama rules.

In recent weeks we have seen emerge elements among the opposition who have resorted to violence. One cannot blame the Syrian people for defending themselves in the face of unspeakable violence. But I do hope, though, that the aspirations of the Syrian people can be met through a commitment to nonviolence, as difficult as that is, and an understanding that democratic change comes not from the barrel of a gun, as we have often said on this floor, but the desire of all citizens to chart a new course, the course of peace.

In summary, the international community can do more to support the Syrian people during this darkest of hours starting right here in this Chamber, in the Senate. This week we sent a strong message in confirming Ambassador Ford. Today we can pass a resolution denouncing the behavior of the Syrian regime. More importantly, the international community can and should do more. Here are some of the measures I believe should take place in the coming days and weeks.

No. 1, the United Nations has proven to not be the best international institution to address the strife in Syria, but key regional organizations could have a positive and substantial impact moving forward. The Arab League should suspend Syria's membership and call for President Assad to step down. The Gulf Cooperation Council should explicitly say that President Assad is no longer the legitimate leader of the country.

No. 2, concerned countries in the West should work together with the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries to establish an international Friends of the Syrian People as a contact group for the region which can serve as the main point of contact for the democratic opposition and the Syrian people. Participation in such a group would not necessarily limit the options of individual members and would not preclude bilateral efforts to take separate action in support of the Syrian people. It would, however, send a clear message of international solidarity in support of nonviolent change in Syria.

No. 3, the Syrian people have asked that international humanitarian observers be deployed in the country to monitor the situation and perhaps to serve as a deterrent against violence in the country. Similar to the OSCE human rights monitors deployed to Kosovo in 1998 to bear witness to the violence wrought by the Milosevic regime, this international team of monitors, primarily composed of individuals from the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, could address a central concern of the Syrian people and would be a welcome alternative to military intervention from the outside.

No. 4, finally, key countries in the international community need to cut off commercial ties with the Assad regime. The United States has done its part, as has the European Union. Turkey may announce new sanctions. But many countries continue to conduct business as usual with the Assad regime. For example, there are reports that India is considering the purchase of crude oil from Syria. The timing of such a purchase is ill-advised and we hope India can look to identify other sources of energy in the region, especially at this time.

The stakes have been raised in Syria as never before. The opposition is understandably tired and to some extent beaten down, and there is some despair that is starting to set in among the abused population of the country. At this critical time, the newly constituted Syrian National Council needs

to show the Syrian people that it can deliver results in the international community. The establishment of a Friends of the Syrian People group, a contact group as I said before, and the deployment of international humanitarian monitors, would demonstrate that the Syrian National Council is effective, and it would send a critical message to the Syrian people. Our options to leverage change in Syria are limited but they do exist. We should be making every effort to build increased international pressure on and isolation of the Assad regime.

Mr. Hallek and his family and thousands of other families across Syria have suffered enough. They have suffered so much and they deserve nothing less than our support, our solidarity, and our help in this dark hour.

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

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

Mr. President, exports are absolutely critical to our economic growth in this country. In fact, there are nearly 10 million good-paying American jobs that are related to exports. The President, Members of Congress, and so on talk about that a lot. But I am disappointed we are not moving forward with an aggressive agenda to actually open new markets for our exports.

I am encouraged that the administration, finally, this week, sent forward three trade agreements that do just that--the Korea, Colombia, and Panama trade agreements. These open markets to U.S. workers and farmers, those who provide services, so it is going to be good for jobs in this country. The President's own metrics indicate these three agreements alone will create 250,000 new jobs. We need them badly.

I also want to congratulate Chairman Dave Camp and the House Ways and

Means Committee for reporting out all three of these agreements this afternoon. My understanding is, each agreement received a strong bipartisan vote, and I am hopeful those agreements will now come to the Senate for us to be able to move forward--again, opening these critical markets that will create over 200,000 jobs for Americans.

I will tell you, these three agreements were all negotiated and signed over 4 years ago. During that interim period, the United States has been absent from the kind of trade-opening negotiations we ought to be involved with. This President--for the first time since Franklin Delano Roosevelt--has not asked, as his predecessors did, for trade promotion authority to be able to negotiate new agreements. So we are losing market share.

Every day there are American workers who do not have the same opportunities to compete in foreign markets as those workers from other countries do because the United States is not actively engaged in opening markets. We need to do that.

Right now, we have no ongoing bilateral trade agreements. We have one multilateral agreement, which I support moving forward on--the Trans- Pacific Partnership--but, frankly, there are over 100 bilateral negotiations going on right now, and America is not a partner in any of them. We need to get engaged because it is so critical to growing our economy.

During the debate we have had over the last couple of weeks on trade adjustment assistance, where I was supportive of a version of trade adjustment assistance to get the trade agreements moving, we had a discussion about giving the President trade promotion authority. We were not able to get support from the administration for that. This is critical to move forward. It is because growing goods and services is absolutely critical to our economic health.

Over 95 percent of consumers in the world, of course, live outside of our borders. We want to access those consumers, we want to sell more to them. Export growth and a healthy trading system depends on these export-opening agreements, but it also depends on having a healthy international trading system where all the players play by the international rules. So the export-expanding agreements are good. We need to do more of that. We should be much more engaged, but we also have to insist that everybody plays by the same rules.

Today the Senate is debating legislation that has to do with one of those rules, and that is the issue of currency, and specifically the issue of China and their currency manipulation. China is a country, as you know, where we have a persistent and unprecedented trade deficit. It is also a very important trading partner for us. So it is critical we keep that strong trade relationship but do it on a basis that is fair for us and for China.

I consistently hear about this China currency issue when I am back in Ohio. I hear about it a lot from manufacturers and the workers at those plants who tell me it is just not fair that in the global marketplace Ohio products are not able to compete on a level playing field.

Just this year I have worked with a lot of Ohio companies that are facing various problems, including Ohio candle makers, steel manufacturers, diamond saw blade producers, rare earth magnet manufacturers, and others who are concerned about getting a fair shake in the global economy and want to be sure they are not competing with unfair Chinese competition.

Again, I believe in the benefits of trade. I know they work. I believe in reducing barriers, but I also believe opening export markets and vigorous enforcement of trade laws go hand in hand. They both should be something that the United States pursues.

China's undervalued currency does provide, in my view, an export subsidy, making Chinese exports to the United States less expensive in the global marketplace and making our exports to China relatively more expensive.

I have long had concerns about this. Actually, when I was before the Senate Finance Committee in my confirmation hearings to be U.S. Trade Representative years ago I stated that I believed China currency does affect trade, and I stated that China should revalue their currency. I still believe that. I believe this administration should label China a currency manipulator because I think it is clear there continues to be manipulation.

The legislation before us today is not the perfect answer, and I do hope the Senate will permit my colleague, Senator Hatch, to offer his amendment, which I think is a constructive amendment to improve parts of the legislation. But I do support the bill with the expectation that it is compliant with our international trade obligations and that it gives the administration the flexibility it needs to implement this bill in a smart and sensible way.

However, I would also say this bill has been described on this floor many times over the last couple days as I have listened to the debate as doing more than it does. We should not overstate it. It does not address some other issues that, frankly, I think would make a bigger difference in our important trade relationship with China.

One of these issues would be indigenous innovation, which I believe to be an unfair practice that China is currently practicing. Also, there is the issue of violations of intellectual property rights. It is not so much that the laws are not in place; it is that many times there is not adequate enforcement of the intellectual property laws that are in place. Of course, there is the issue of anticompetitive practices and subsidies that continue with regard to state-owned enterprises. I am also working with Senator Wyden and others--a bipartisan group of Senators--on combatting transshipment and customs duty evasion problems, which involve companies from various countries but include China.

So we have a growing list of complex issues facing our relationship with China. I believe they should all be addressed together. I hope the next round of diplomatic and commercial negotiations with China will bring about some of that discussion and bring about some solutions, not just more broken promises.

I understand the JCCT, called the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, between the United States and China will meet in November--next month--and that the next round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue will take place next year. I urge the administration to use these negotiations as leverage to get some of these real results that are so necessary.

We should also look at multilateral approaches, including the World Trade Organization, and certainly the International Monetary Fund. I will tell you, as someone who has sat across the table in negotiations with tough Chinese negotiators, endless dialog is not the answer. Sometimes that is what occurs. We are not just looking for more talk. I think it is important we get serious--both U.S. leaders and Chinese leaders--about some of our lingering trade problems that we have had through the years so we can have a healthy trade relationship based on mutual respect.

Each country is important to the other. We cannot overlook the fact that China continues to be a very vital U.S. export market, despite the issues I talked about. Right now, China is the third largest export market for Ohio goods, for instance. The State I represent sends over $2.2 billion a year in exports to China. With 25 percent of Ohio manufacturing jobs dependent upon exports, this is incredibly important to us.

One out of every three acres of land in Ohio is planted for export, so agricultural exports are also important. There is also an important issue with China that relates to investment both ways: our investment in China and Chinese investment here. Let me read to you from an editorial that was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer last Thursday. Its title is: ``Chinese investors are welcome here.''

If Greater Cleveland is going to prosper in the 21st

century, it has to build strong two-way connections with the

rest of the world. The region has to sell more of its

services and products abroad and welcome talent and capital

from overseas. That's the path to jobs and wealth.

The editorial goes on to talk about the collaboration between Chinese companies and investors looking to build relationships with Cleveland's world-renowned medical device industry.

Just last week, the mayor of Toledo, OH, Mike Bell, returned from a 12-day

trade mission to Asia in order to boost job creation in northwest Ohio. Since Mayor Bell's trip, plans have been announced for increased commercial ties between Chinese and Ohio job creators and companies, including launching a new international business center in downtown Toledo.

These are just a couple of examples in my State of the importance of this relationship and why it needs to be taken so seriously. This relationship is vital to the future not just of our two countries but, in my view, to the global economy. So we need to be sure, again, it is a healthy relationship. It needs to be fair. It needs to be on a basis where, again, there is a level playing field on both sides. So it is time for our trading partners to play by the rules so that, indeed, we can have a fair trading system.

Trade is key to growth. But, again, it is only one part of a broader problem that is holding back our economy today, holding back Ohio manufacturers from hiring and innovating. Another big issue that has come to the attention of this Senate time and time again is the incredible regulatory burden that is placed on Ohio's job creators. So in order to be successful in trade, we need to have more open markets. We talked about that: a level playing field. But, also, we need to be more competitive at home or else we are not going to be able to create the jobs in this century that we need to keep our economy moving forward.

At a time when we have over 9 percent unemployment, it is critical we be sure our economy is more competitive. This regulatory burden is one issue that I think all sides can agree ought to be addressed.

I am joined today by the junior Senator from Nevada, my friend and colleague, to offer a couple of amendments designed to give American employers some relief from the regulatory mandates that continue to hold back our economy and hinder job creation.

There is no official counting of this total regulatory burden on our economy, and estimates do vary. But one study that is often cited is from the Obama administration's own Small Business Administration where they report the regulatory costs exceed $1.75 trillion annually. That is, of course, even more than is collected by the IRS in income taxes every year. So it is a huge burden. We can talk about what the exact number is, but the fact is this is something that is forcing Ohio companies and other companies around our country to have higher costs of creating a job.

The Office of Management and Budget estimates that the annual cost of a narrow set of rules--these are just what are called the major rules that are reviewed by OMB over one 10-year period--registers at $43 billion to $55 billion per year.

I have been encouraged by what the current administration has recently been saying about regulations. I have been less encouraged about what they have done. The new regulatory costs on the private sector are real, and they are mounting.

Compared to historic trends, we have seen a sharp uptick over the last 2 years in these new so-called major or economically significant rules that have an economic impact of over $100 million on the economy. They also have an impact, of course, on consumer prices and American competitiveness.

George Washington University Regulatory Studies recently told us that this administration has been regulating at an average of 84 new major rules per year, which, by way of comparison, is about a 35-percent increase from the last administration and about a 50-percent increase from the Clinton administration.

These figures do include the independent agencies which must be included in the calculations. So there has been an uptick in regulations, and continues to be, again, despite much of the rhetoric to the contrary. One commonsense step we can take to address this issue is to improve and strengthen what is called the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, UMRA.

I worked on this along with some of my colleagues who are now in the Senate back when I was in the House. It was a bipartisan effort that basically said Federal regulators ought to know the costs of what they are imposing. We also ought to know what the benefits are, and we ought to know if there are less costly alternatives.

The two amendments I am offering today are drawn from a bill that I introduced back in June called the Unfunded Mandates Accountability Act. It is an effort that now has over 20 cosponsors. Again, it seems to me it is a commonsense effort that should be bipartisan.

The first amendment would strengthen the analysis that is required in some very important ways. First, it requires agencies to specifically assess the potential effect of new regulations on job creation, which is not currently a requirement, and in this economy it must be. Also, to consider market-based and nongovernmental alternatives to regulation, again, something we need to look at.

It also broadens the scope of UMRA to require a cost-benefit analysis of rules that impose direct or indirect economic costs of $100 million or more. It requires agencies to adopt the least costly and least burdensome alternative to achieve the policy goal that has been set out. So, currently, agencies have to consider that, but they do not have to follow the least costly alternative. We simply cannot afford that, again, because of the tough economic times we have.

The second amendment extends those same requirements to the independent agencies. This is incredibly important, and these are agencies such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, agencies that are very important on the regulatory side and are currently exempt from these cost-benefit rules that affect all other agencies.

On this issue I was very pleased to see that President Obama issued an Executive order in July which was specifically related to independent agencies. That order and the accompanying Presidential memorandum called on independent agencies to participate in a look- back, but also, very importantly, called on independent agencies to evaluate the costs and benefits of new regulation just as, again, all executive agencies were already required to do.

It is a step in the right direction, but the problem is that the President's order is entirely nonbinding because a President cannot require independent agencies to do that. Congress can. We can do it by statute. And independent agencies do not answer to the President. So since this order was issued in July--by the way, we have not seen a rush by independent agencies to pledge to comply with these principles. Again, they are not required to, so this amendment, this second amendment, would effectively write the President's new request into law so it can be effective.

Independent agencies would be required under UMRA to evaluate regulatory costs, benefits, and less costly alternatives before issuing any rule that would impose a cost of $100 million on the private sector or on State, local, and tribal governments. The fact is, independent agencies are not doing this on their own. According to a 2011 OMB report, not one of the 17 major rules issued by independent agencies in 2010 included an assessment of both cost and benefit. Not one.

Closing this independent agency loophole is a reform we should be able to agree with on both sides of the aisle. Certainly, the President should agree with it since it is part of his Executive order and memorandum, and this is the right vehicle to do it.

This a jobs issue again and a commonsense approach. No major regulation, whatever its source, should be imposed on American employers on State and local governments without a serious consideration of the costs, the benefits, and the availability of less burdensome alternatives. These amendments move us further to that goal.

I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support them.

I yield the floor.